Hands Restored and Lines Drawn

“Withered” is exērammenēn, a perfect participle, dried up: the wording suggests a hand that had become useless rather than one malformed from birth. Jerome quotes a lost gospel used by Jewish Christians in which the man was a stonemason who asked to be healed so he would not have to beg.

“Watched” is paretēroun, to watch closely from the side, the verb for spying or lying in wait. Jewish teaching allowed the sabbath to be broken to save a life, but a withered hand was not in danger; healing it could wait a day. That is the gap the watchers are hoping to catch him in.

“Stand forth” is literally “rise into the middle”. Jesus does not heal in a corner. He sets the man in the centre of the synagogue, in full view of those watching for a charge, so that nothing that follows can be missed or denied.

“Held their peace” is esiōpōn, an imperfect: they kept silent, and went on keeping it. Mark uses the same verb of Jesus before the high priest in 14:61, “he held his peace”. On the sabbath the accusers refuse to answer; at his trial Jesus will refuse to answer them.

Nowhere else in the Gospels is the noun for anger, orgē, used of Jesus, and Matthew and Luke both leave it out of their accounts. “Hardness” is pōrōsis, the forming of a callus, a word Mark later applies to the disciples (6:52, 8:17). “Restored” is the verb used of Elijah restoring all things in 9:12.

The Herodians were supporters of Herod Antipas’s dynasty, strange allies for Pharisees, who resented Herodian rule. Antipas is the ruler who will behead John in chapter 6. The same pairing, Pharisees with Herodians, returns in 12:13 to trap Jesus over the tribute money.

After a plot to destroy him, Jesus takes his disciples out of the synagogue and down to the open shore. The grammar makes a small distinction: the Galileans “followed him”, while the people from further off, listed in the next verse, “came unto him”.

Idumaea is the region south of Judaea that had once been Edom; Herod the Great’s family came from there, and this is its only mention in the New Testament. Tyre and Sidon were Gentile cities on the Phoenician coast. The list covers almost every quarter of old Israel and beyond, with Samaria left out.

“A small ship” is ploiarion, a little boat. “Wait on him” means stand constantly ready, and “throng” is thlibōsin, to crush. The boat kept ready here is the one Jesus will sit in to teach at the start of chapter 4.

“Plagues” is mastigas, literally whips or scourges: diseases pictured as lashes. The verb from the same root is used in 10:34 for the scourging Jesus foretells for himself. “Pressed upon” is epipiptein, to fall on, a crowd surging forward with arms outstretched.

The verbs are in the imperfect, “whenever they saw him, they fell down”. Up to this point in Mark only two voices have called Jesus the Son of God: the opening title of 1:1 and the voice from heaven in 1:11. Now unclean spirits say it, and the next human being to say it is the centurion at the cross (15:39).

“Straitly charged” here is epetima, rebuked, the verb used when Jesus silenced the spirit in 1:25 and when he will quiet the storm in 4:39. It is a different word from the “straitly charged” of 1:43. Mark adds “much”, polla: the silencing was forceful and repeated.

“A mountain” is simply “the mountain”, the hill country above the lake. “Whom he would” is emphatic, those he himself wanted. “They came unto him” is literally “they went off to him”, a verb that implies leaving somewhere else behind.

“Ordained” is epoiēsen, simply “he made”; the Greek implies no rite, though the 1611 word suggests one. The Greek Old Testament uses the same verb in 1 Samuel 12:6, where the LORD “advanced”, literally made, Moses and Aaron. Twelve is the number of Jacob’s sons and Israel’s tribes. Some manuscripts add “whom also he named apostles”.

“Power” is exousia, the word the synagogue crowd reached for in 1:22 and 1:27 when they said he taught and commanded “with authority”. What was his is now delegated. Older manuscripts lack “to heal sicknesses” and give only the authority to cast out devils.

Peter is Petros, the Greek form of the Aramaic Kepha, rock, which gives Cephas. Mark records the name and gives no explanation for it, unlike Matthew 16:18. From here on Mark calls him Peter, except in Gethsemane, where Jesus says, “Simon, sleepest thou?” (14:37).

Only Mark keeps the Aramaic nickname. The Greek spelling is awkward, and scholars debate what Aramaic words lie behind it; bene regesh, sons of commotion, is one proposal. Luke 9:54 shows the brothers asking to call down fire on a Samaritan village, which some take as the kind of temper the name recalls.

“The Canaanite” has nothing to do with Canaan: Kananaios renders the Aramaic qan’ana, zealous, and Luke 6:15 translates it “Zelotes”. Bartholomew is a patronymic, bar Tolmai, son of Tolmai. Where Mark and Matthew have Thaddaeus, Luke’s list has Judas the son of James, probably the same man under another name.

Iscariot most likely means “man of Kerioth”, a town in southern Judah (Joshua 15:25), which would make Judas the one Judaean among Galileans; other proposals exist. “Betrayed” is paredōken, handed over, the verb used of John’s arrest in 1:14. “They went into an house” begins the next scene in most modern editions.

The crowd of 2:2 is back at the door. “Eat bread” is a Hebrew way of saying to have a meal of any kind. The crush that made a boat necessary at the shore now fills the house, with no boat to escape into.

“His friends” is hoi par’ autou, “those from beside him”, his own people; verse 31 shows who they are. “Lay hold on” is kratēsai, to seize, the verb for Herod arresting John (6:17) and the arrest in Gethsemane (14:46). “Beside himself” is exestē, the verb Mark used in 2:12 for the crowd being “amazed”.

The Greek manuscripts read Beelzeboul. Baal-zebub, “lord of flies”, was the god of Ekron consulted by Ahaziah in 2 Kings 1:2; Beelzeboul is often taken as “lord of the dwelling”, which would fit Jesus’ reply about a house. “Came down” is exact: Jerusalem sits about 2,500 feet above sea level, Capernaum below it.

Mark uses the word “parables” for the first time here, a chapter before the parables of the sower and the seed. Jesus “called them unto him”: he summons his accusers rather than avoiding them. His opening question turns their charge into a puzzle they have to solve themselves.

Mark’s first readers knew what a divided kingdom looked like. In 63 BC the brothers Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II fought over the Judaean throne, both appealed to Rome, and Pompey marched into Jerusalem. The land had not been independent since.

“House” can mean a building, a household or a dynasty. The saying lands in a crowded house, while Jesus’ own household is outside saying he is out of his mind (verse 21). The scene around him supplies the example of a house divided.

“Hath an end” is telos echei, is finished. The argument is a conditional: if Satan were at war with himself, his reign would already be over. Jesus does not say that is how Satan falls. The next verse gives another explanation for why his hold is breaking.

“Strong man” is ischyros, and John had announced one “mightier”, ischyroteros, coming after him (1:7). Isaiah 49:24–25 asks, “Shall the prey be taken from the mighty?” and answers that the captives of the mighty shall be taken away. “Spoil” is diarpasai, to plunder a house completely.

“Verily” is amēn, the first time in Mark that Jesus uses his formula “Amen, I say unto you”. Others said amen at the end, to agree with a prayer or statement; Jesus puts it at the start of his own sentences. It occurs thirteen times in Mark.

“Damnation” in 1611 meant condemnation, a judicial verdict, and the Received Text here has kriseōs, judgment. Older manuscripts read “eternal sin”, hamartēmatos, a sin whose guilt remains for ever. “In danger of” is enochos, liable to, the legal word for being held to answer.

The Book of Mark adds its own explanation to Jesus’ saying. “Unclean spirit” is the exact term for what Jesus has been casting out since the synagogue in 1:23. The scribes have put him in the class of the very thing he expels. “They said” is imperfect: they kept saying it.

Mark names the brothers in 6:3: James, Joses, Juda and Simon. Their relation to Jesus has been read three ways since the fourth century: younger sons of Mary (Helvidius), sons of Joseph by an earlier marriage (Epiphanius), or cousins (Jerome). The family “sent unto him”, relaying a message through the crowd.

“Sat about him” is the posture of pupils around a teacher. Some manuscripts add “and thy sisters” to the message, which would prepare for the “sister” of verse 35. “Seek for thee” uses the same verb as the disciples in 1:37, and again the seekers want Jesus somewhere other than where he is.

The question hangs for a moment before verse 34 answers it with a look and a gesture. Mary is never named in Mark except once, by the people of Nazareth in 6:3, “the carpenter, the son of Mary”. Here she is simply “thy mother”, standing outside.

“Looked round about” is periblepsamenos, Mark’s word for Jesus’ slow searching look, used in 3:5 in anger, and again in 5:32, 9:8, 10:23 and 11:11. The other Gospels almost never use it. The same look that swept the synagogue in anger now sweeps the circle of listeners.

“The will of God” appears only here in Mark. The nearest echo comes in Gethsemane, where Jesus himself prays, “not what I will, but what thou wilt” (14:36). The saying defines family by the same obedience he will be asked to give.