This is a great example of a translation that is meant to highlight one possible meaning and obscure all the other possible meanings. But while most of Jesus's words have the wordplay translated out of them, that is much more difficult here. All the "nouns" here are actually adjectives, plural, referring to people, not things. They are all also in the form of  subjects, so  they are all equated, but only one verb "to be" appears, in the future tense after "many" and before "first." 

The alternate translation is "Many, however, will be highest, lowest and lowest, highest." Imagine how this could have been said with different gestures and inflections to change its meaning. Where we mentally add the verbs "are" can change the meaning dramatically. For example, "Many, however, shall are first, they are last, and they are last, first."

All these adjectives have several different meanings depending on their context. The word translated as "many" can also mean "mighty" or "great in value."   If the context is "the realm of the sky," then a sense of "first" and "last" could well be "highest" and "lowest," especially since this is these word's meaning when referring to people's rank, which seems to be the point.  The next chapter begins with a parable illustrating this idea. The terms translated as "first" and "last" are superlative forms of adjectives. How we translated these words also changes the meaning dramatically. For example, "Many, however, shall are highest, they are lowest, and they are lowest, highest."