The Road to Jerusalem Measures Greatness Differently

“The farther side of Jordan” is Perea, east of the river. Galilean pilgrims often went south that way to avoid Samaria and crossed back near Jericho, which is where this chapter ends. “As he was wont” means as was his custom: the teaching goes on even on the road to Jerusalem.

Perea belonged to Herod Antipas, the ruler who had John beheaded for condemning his marriage (6:18). A question about divorce asked in his territory was not an idle one. “Put away” is apolysai, to release or dismiss, and “tempting” is again the verb for testing.

Jesus asks what Moses “commanded”, and in the next verse they answer with what Moses “suffered”, permitted. The difference between command and permission becomes the hinge of the argument. “You” is pointed: Moses’ instruction to you.

The provision is Deuteronomy 24:1–4. The “bill of divorcement” was a document that freed the woman to remarry without being charged with adultery. The schools of Shammai and Hillel disputed what grounds it required; Hillel’s school allowed it even if she spoiled a meal (Mishnah Gittin 9:10).

“Hardness of your heart” is sklērokardia, the word the Greek Old Testament uses in Deuteronomy 10:16, “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiffnecked”. “Precept” is entolē, commandment; Jesus grants that Moses wrote it and gives the reason.

The quotation is Genesis 1:27, “male and female created he them”. A Qumran text, the Damascus Document, cites the same words against a man taking a second wife, so Jesus is not alone in reading a marriage law from the creation account.

The words are Genesis 2:24. “Cleave” is proskollēthēsetai, to be glued to, to stick fast. It is the man who leaves his parents in this line, though in the village custom of the day the bride usually moved to the husband’s family home. Some older manuscripts lack “and cleave to his wife”.

“Twain” is the 1611 word for two. The Greek Old Testament, which Jesus quotes, has “the two” where the Hebrew of Genesis 2:24 reads simply “they shall be one flesh”. The conclusion that follows depends on exactly that number: no more two.

“Joined together” is synezeuxen, yoked together, the word for oxen under one yoke. “Put asunder” is chōrizetō, separate. “Man” is anthrōpos, a human being, which could be a husband issuing the bill or a court approving it.

The house again becomes the classroom, as in 7:17 and 9:28. Matthew 19:10 records how the disciples took the teaching: “If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry.” Mark gives only the fact that they asked.

“Against her” is the surprise. In Jewish law adultery was an offence against a husband; a man could not commit it against his own wife. Here the wife is named as the one wronged.

Jewish law gave a wife no right to divorce her husband, but Roman law did. Josephus records Herod the Great’s sister Salome sending her husband a bill of divorce, against Jewish law, and Herodias herself had left her first husband. Only Mark includes this clause, suited to readers under Roman law.

Parents brought children to respected teachers and elders for a blessing, a custom later rabbinic sources describe on the Day of Atonement. “Young children” is paidia, and Luke 18:15 calls some of them infants. “Touch them” means the laying on of hands in blessing.

“Much displeased” is ēganaktēsen, indignant, and this is the only place in the Gospels where the verb is used of Jesus. Mark uses it again in verse 41 for the ten fuming at James and John. “Of such” means those like them: the kingdom belongs to people of this kind.

The Greek can be taken two ways: receive the kingdom as a child receives it, or receive the kingdom as one receives a child, which would echo 9:37, “Whosoever shall receive one of such children”. Most readers take the first, but the phrase allows both.

“Blessed” is kateulogei, an intensified form of the verb found only here in the New Testament, and the tense is imperfect: he kept blessing them, child after child. The order is embrace, then hands, then blessing, more than the parents had asked for.

“Good Master” was an unusual address; scholars have found no example of a rabbi being called “good teacher” in Jewish sources of the period. “Inherit” is the language of receiving land, used here for “eternal life”, a phrase first found in Daniel 12:2, “everlasting life”.

“None good but one, that is, God” echoes the Shema, “The LORD our God is one LORD” (Deuteronomy 6:4). Interpreters differ on whether Jesus is deflecting the compliment or inviting the man to think about what he has just said. The question is left for the reader too.

The list is from the second table of the Ten Commandments, with one addition: “Defraud not” is not among the Ten. It may stand in for coveting, or recall the law against withholding a hired servant’s wages (Deuteronomy 24:14). Either way, it is the commandment most likely to trouble a rich man.

The man drops the adjective: before it was “Good Master”, now simply “Master”. “From my youth” probably means since he became answerable to the Law as a boy. He has kept the commandments he was asked about, and nothing in Mark says he is lying.

“Beholding” is emblepsas, looking straight at him. “Treasure in heaven” was a Jewish phrase for giving to the poor; Tobit 4:8–9 says that giving alms lays up “a good treasure” against the day of need. “Take up the cross” is absent from older manuscripts here.

“Sad” is stygnasas, his face darkened, a word used of a lowering sky; Matthew 16:3 uses it of weather, “the sky is red and lowring”. “Great possessions” is ktēmata polla, and ktēmata often meant landed property, fields and estates.

“How hardly” means with what difficulty. The disciples’ shock makes sense against a common reading of the Law, in which wealth was a mark of God’s blessing on the faithful (Deuteronomy 28:1–14; Job 42:10). If the rich find it hard, the disciples reckon, everyone does.

“Children” is tekna, the only time in Mark that Jesus addresses the disciples this way. The older manuscripts lack “for them that trust in riches” and read simply “how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!”, which makes the saying harder still, since it then applies to anyone.

The camel was the largest animal a Galilean would see. Later rabbinic sayings use an elephant passing through the eye of a needle as a figure for the impossible (Talmud, Berakhot 55b). A few late manuscripts read kamilon, rope, for kamēlon, camel, softening the image, but the reading has little support.

“Out of measure” is perissōs, beyond bounds. The passage uses three phrases for one thing: inherit eternal life (verse 17), enter the kingdom (verse 23), and now be saved. The disciples treat them as interchangeable, and Jesus does not correct them.

“Looking upon them” is emblepsas, the same steady look he gave the rich man in verse 21. “With God all things are possible” recalls the question put to Sarah, “Is any thing too hard for the LORD?” (Genesis 18:14), and Job’s confession, “I know that thou canst do every thing” (Job 42:2).

Peter’s “we” is emphatic, set against the man who just walked away. Both verbs are perfects: we have left and stay left; we have followed and are still following. It reads as both claim and question, and Jesus answers the question.

The list has seven items. “Or wife” is missing from older manuscripts of Mark, though Luke 18:29 has it. “For my sake, and the gospel’s” is the same pairing Mark gave in 8:35: the message is set beside the person.

“Hundredfold” is the top yield of the good ground in the sower (4:8, 20). The new list mirrors the old one, with one difference: “father” is missing. Those who leave fathers gain brothers, sisters, mothers and children, but in this list God alone is left as Father, which many commentators think deliberate.

Mark records this saying only here; Matthew uses it twice, around the parable of the labourers (19:30, 20:16). Coming straight after Peter’s “we have left all”, it cuts both ways: the disciples may be first, but claiming to be first is already risky.

“Going up” is exact: the road from Jericho, about 850 feet below sea level, climbs more than 3,000 feet in some fifteen miles to Jerusalem. “Went before them” is proagōn, the verb the young man at the tomb uses: “he goeth before you into Galilee” (16:7).

This third prediction adds something the first two did not: the Gentiles. There are two handings over: first to the chief priests and scribes, then by them to the Gentiles. “Condemn” is katakrinousin, a formal sentence, the verb used when the council condemns him in 14:64.

Each item is fulfilled in Mark’s passion account: spitting (14:65, 15:19), mocking (15:20, 31), scourging (15:15), death, and rising on the third day. This is the most detailed of the three predictions, given on the steepest stretch of road.

“Master” is didaskale, teacher. Matthew 20:20 puts the request in the mouth of their mother; Mark has the brothers speak for themselves. They begin with a blank request, whatever we ask, before naming what they want.

Herod had given a blank promise to a girl and been trapped by it (6:22–23). Jesus does the opposite: he gives no oath and asks what they want before promising anything. The Greek is compact and a little awkward, as though interrupting them mid-request.

The right hand was the place of highest honour beside a king, as in Psalm 110:1, “Sit thou at my right hand”; the left was second. “In thy glory” shows they remembered 8:38, the Son of man coming in the glory of his Father, and took it to mean a throne room.

The cup was a prophetic picture of God’s judgment poured out to be drunk (Isaiah 51:17, Psalm 75:8); in Gethsemane Jesus will pray, “take away this cup from me” (14:36). Baptism as being overwhelmed by waters recalls Psalm 69:1–2, “the waters are come in unto my soul”.

James was the first of the twelve to be killed, put to death with the sword by Herod Agrippa about AD 44 (Acts 12:2). Tradition about John divides: most early sources say he lived long and died in Ephesus. The prediction came true for James within about fifteen years.

“Prepared” is hētoimastai, a perfect passive: already prepared, by someone other than Jesus. The next time Mark mentions a right and a left, it is at the cross, where two thieves are crucified “the one on his right hand, and the other on his left” (15:27).

“The ten” is Mark’s count of everyone else, dividing the twelve into two and ten. Their anger is described with the same word as Jesus’ indignation in verse 14. That the ten are angry rather than amused suggests they wanted the seats too, though that is an inference Mark leaves to be drawn.

“Which are accounted to rule” is hoi dokountes archein, those reputed or seeming to rule, a hint that their rule is more appearance than substance. “Exercise lordship” is katakyrieuousin, to lord it down over; 1 Peter 5:3 uses the same verb warning elders not to lord it over the flock.

Older manuscripts read “it is not so among you”, a statement of fact, where the King James has a future, “shall not be”. “Minister” is diakonos, the servant who waits at table.

The steps go down: in verse 43 the great one is a diakonos, a table servant; here the first is a doulos, a slave, owned and without rights. “Of all” widens it from “among you” in the verse before.

“Ransom” is lytron, the price paid to free a slave or a prisoner of war. “For many” is anti pollōn, in place of many. “Many” is the word of Isaiah 53:11–12, where the servant “shall justify many” and “bare the sin of many”.

Herodian Jericho, with Herod’s winter palace, lay about a mile from the ancient mound of Joshua’s Jericho, and some explain Luke’s “as he was come nigh” (18:35) against Mark’s “as he went out” by the two sites. Bartimaeus is Aramaic, bar Timai, son of Timaeus. He is the only person healed in Mark whose name is given.

No one in Mark has yet called Jesus “Son of David”, the royal title promised through 2 Samuel 7:12–16. A blind beggar is the first. “Have mercy on me” is eleēson, the cry of the Psalms (Psalm 51:1), which the church later kept in its Greek form as Kyrie eleison.

“Many charged him” is epetimōn, rebuked him, the word the disciples used on those who brought the children in verse 13. The crowd tries to silence the beggar as the disciples tried to keep the children away. “Cried” is imperfect: he kept shouting.

The man who walked ahead of everyone on the road up (verse 32) now stops. “Be of good comfort” is tharsei, take courage, the word Jesus used on the water in 6:50. The verb “call” comes three times in one verse, as the summons passes from Jesus to the crowd to the man.

The garment is the himation, the outer cloak a beggar spread out to catch coins and slept in at night; the Law required a poor man’s cloak taken in pledge to be returned by sunset (Exodus 22:26–27). Older manuscripts read “sprang up” for “rose”.

Where the King James has “Lord”, the Greek is Rabbouni, a heightened form of rabbi, “my master”, the word Mary Magdalene uses at the tomb in John 20:16. “Receive my sight” is anablepsō, to look up again, which suggests he had once seen.

Unlike the blind man at Bethsaida, healed privately with spittle and two touches (8:23–25), Bartimaeus is healed in public by a word alone. He is told “Go thy way”, and the way he goes is Jesus’ way, up to Jerusalem.