Familiar Faces, Two Meals, and an Unlearned Lesson

“His own country” is patris, his home town, and Mark never names it here; 1:9 has already said Nazareth. The disciples come too, so this is a teacher returning with pupils, not a son coming home for a visit.

The townspeople ask where he got it all, and the question already contains their answer: the wisdom is “given unto him”, a passive that points past Nazareth altogether. “Mighty works” is dynameis, deeds of power. “By his hands” fits a craftsman, which the next verse will insist he is.

“Carpenter” is tektōn, a builder in wood or stone. Matthew 13:55 has “the carpenter’s son”, and some copies of Mark follow it. Calling a man “son of Mary” rather than by his father was unusual; it may mean Joseph was dead, or carry a slur about the birth. “Offended” is eskandalizonto, stumbled, the word of the rocky ground in 4:17.

Versions of the proverb circulated widely; the Gospel of Thomas has “no prophet is accepted in his own village; no physician heals those who know him”. Only Mark adds “among his own kin”, which reaches back to the family who came in 3:21 to take him home.

Matthew 13:58 turns this into “he did not many mighty works there”, which suggests a later writer found Mark’s “could not” awkward. “Sick folk” is arrōstois, the feeble or ailing, the chronically unwell rather than the dying.

The Gospels record Jesus marvelling twice: here at unbelief, and at the faith of a Gentile centurion (Matthew 8:10, Luke 7:9). One amazement is at home, the other at a foreigner. “Went round about” is kyklō, in a circuit, village by village.

Deuteronomy 19:15 required two witnesses to establish a matter, and Jewish envoys commonly travelled in pairs; Luke 10:1 sends the seventy the same way. “Began to send them forth” is apostellein, the verb from which “apostle” comes.

“Scrip” is pēra, a traveller’s bag, and also the begging bag of wandering Cynic philosophers, who carried a staff and bag as their badge. “Money in their purse” is literally copper in the belt: coins were tucked in the folds of a sash. Matthew 10:10 and Luke 9:3 forbid even the staff that Mark allows.

Staff in hand and sandals on the feet was how Israel ate the first Passover, ready to leave in haste (Exodus 12:11). The “coats” are chitōnes, tunics worn next to the skin; a second one would be a traveller’s cover against the cold at night.

The house becomes the base for the whole stay in a town, as the house of Simon and Andrew was in Capernaum (1:29, 2:1). “Abide” is menete, remain. The instruction assumes hosts will open their doors to strangers.

Jews returning from Gentile lands were said to shake off the dust of foreign soil; to do it to a Jewish town treated it as foreign. Paul and Barnabas do exactly this at Pisidian Antioch (Acts 13:51). The sentence about Sodom and Gomorrha is missing from older manuscripts of Mark and seems borrowed from Matthew 10:15.

The message is summarised in one word, repent, the same metanoia John preached in 1:4 and Jesus announced in 1:15. Mark gives no sermon, only the verb and the result.

Olive oil was the ordinary medicine for wounds and illness: the Samaritan pours oil and wine on the injured man (Luke 10:34), and Isaiah 1:6 laments sores “neither mollified with ointment”. Only Mark mentions the twelve anointing. James 5:14 later tells church elders to anoint the sick.

Antipas was a tetrarch, not a king, and Matthew and Luke correct the title. Mark uses the popular name. According to Josephus, Antipas later asked Rome for the royal title and was exiled for it in AD 39. “Baptist” here is again the participle, the baptizer.

Elijah was expected before the day of the LORD (Malachi 4:5). “As one of the prophets” means a prophet in the old line. The same three answers, John, Elijah and a prophet, come back at Caesarea Philippi when Jesus asks the disciples who men say he is (8:28).

“Whom I beheaded” has an emphatic “I” in Greek: Herod owns the act. Josephus also records the killing and says Antipas feared John’s influence could lead to a revolt (Antiquities 18.116–119). The Book of Mark supplies a different, more private reason, and the two need not exclude each other.

Josephus says Herodias’s first husband was a son of Herod the Great also called Herod, not Philip the tetrarch, who married Herodias’s daughter. Some reconcile the two by calling him Herod Philip; others see a slip. Herodias was also Antipas’s niece, the daughter of his half-brother Aristobulus.

Leviticus 18:16 and 20:21 forbid marrying a brother’s wife; the only exception, levirate marriage (Deuteronomy 25:5), applied after a brother died childless. Herodias’s husband was alive. “Had said” is imperfect: John kept saying it, and to Herod’s face.

“Had a quarrel against him” is eneichen, she held it in, nursed a grudge. Readers have long seen the pattern of Elijah, Ahab and Jezebel here: a prophet in rough clothes, a weak king, and a queen who wants the prophet dead (1 Kings 19:2).

“Observed him” in 1611 meant preserved or respected him; the Greek synetērei means kept him safe. Instead of “he did many things”, many manuscripts read “he was much perplexed”, one letter different in Greek, and most modern translations follow that reading.

“Convenient” is eukairou, opportune, and the opportunity is Herodias’s. The guests fall into three classes: megistanes, court magnates; chiliarchs, commanders of a thousand; and the leading men of Galilee. The only other birthday feast in Scripture is Pharaoh’s, which also ended in an execution (Genesis 40:20–22).

Josephus names Herodias’s daughter Salome; Mark does not. “Damsel” is korasion, the same word for Jairus’s daughter a chapter earlier (5:41–42). One girl is raised from the dead, the other asks for a man’s death. Some manuscripts read “his daughter Herodias”, which raises its own difficulties.

“Unto the half of my kingdom” is what Ahasuerus says to Esther three times (Esther 5:3, 5:6, 7:2). Antipas held his territory at Rome’s pleasure and had no kingdom to divide, which makes the oath a borrowed boast.

“What shall I ask?” uses the middle voice: what shall I ask for myself? The girl had no request ready; the mother answers without a pause. The oath was made to the daughter, but the demand comes from the mother.

“By and by” in 1611 meant at once; the Greek is exautēs, immediately. The English phrase later drifted to mean “eventually”. A “charger” is a large flat dish or platter. She adds the platter herself, turning the demand into a course at the banquet.

“Exceeding sorry” is perilypos, the word Jesus uses of himself in Gethsemane, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death” (14:34). The same grief belongs to the king who allows an execution and to the man who submits to one.

“Executioner” is spekoulatōr, a Latin loanword: a speculator was a scout or bodyguard who also carried out executions. Josephus places John’s imprisonment at Machaerus, the fortress palace east of the Dead Sea; a feast for the nobility of Galilee could have been held there or at Tiberias, and the prison may not have been far.

The Book of Mark says nothing about what Herodias did with the head. A later tradition, reported by Jerome, has her piercing the dead prophet’s tongue with a pin, the tongue that had condemned her marriage. Mark’s account stops at the handing over.

John’s disciples are not mentioned again in Mark. “Corpse” is ptōma, a fallen body, the word used in 15:45 when Pilate gives Jesus’ body to Joseph. John’s disciples bury their teacher; when Jesus is buried, his own disciples will be absent.

This is the only place in the King James text of Mark that calls the twelve “apostles”, those sent, and it comes exactly as they return from being sent. “Told him all things” covers both deeds and teaching: they report on the mission as agents to the one who sent them.

“Ye yourselves” is emphatic: you, on your own. “Rest a while” is anapausasthe oligon, a short rest, not a holiday. The problem of 3:20, when they could not eat for the crowds, has come back.

“Privately” is kat’ idian, on their own. Luke places the destination near Bethsaida (Luke 9:10), at the north end of the lake. The boat is meant to give them the distance that a house could not.

“Afoot” is pezē, by land. The walk around the north shore from Capernaum toward Bethsaida is only a few miles, and a boat against the wind can be slower than a crowd on foot. “Outwent them” means they arrived first.

“As sheep not having a shepherd” is Moses’ phrase in Numbers 27:17, when he asks God for a successor so that the congregation will not be left shepherdless. The successor given is Joshua, whose name in Greek is Iēsous, the same as Jesus. Ezekiel 34 and 1 Kings 22:17 use the same picture.

Israel in the wilderness had asked, “Can God furnish a table in the wilderness?” (Psalm 78:19). The disciples raise the same practical problem: a deserted place, and the day nearly gone. “Far passed” is literally “the hour is much”.

The disciples’ plan is sensible: disperse the crowd to the farms, agrous, and the villages, kōmas, and let them buy food. “Buy” is agorasōsin, to go to market. The solution they propose depends on money and distance; the one that follows needs neither.

“Ye” is emphatic: you give them something. A penny was a denarius, a labourer’s day wage (Matthew 20:2), so two hundred pennyworth is roughly eight months’ pay. The disciples answer with arithmetic, and some readers hear sarcasm in it.

“Go and see” makes them count what they have, not what they lack. John 6:9 says the loaves were barley, the bread of the poor. The fish were probably dried or salted; Magdala on the lake was known in Greek as Taricheae, from the word for salting fish.

“By companies” is symposia symposia, a doubled word meaning “dinner party by dinner party”. Only Mark says the grass was green; the hills around the lake are green in spring and brown by early summer, which fits John 6:4, which puts this near Passover.

“In ranks” is prasiai prasiai, “garden bed by garden bed”, as if the groups looked like plots in a vegetable garden from above. Hundreds and fifties are the divisions Moses used to organise Israel in the wilderness (Exodus 18:21).

The four verbs, took, blessed, brake, gave, return in the same order at the Last Supper (14:22). The Jewish blessing over bread thanks God rather than blessing the loaf: “Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who bringest forth bread from the earth.”

“Were filled” is echortasthēsan, a verb first used of feeding animals on fodder until they were full. It comes from chortos, grass, the same word as the green grass of verse 39. They sat on the grass and ate their fill.

“Baskets” are kophinoi, stout wicker baskets; the Roman satirist Juvenal mocks Jews for carrying one everywhere. Elisha fed a hundred men with twenty loaves, and “they did eat, and left thereof” (2 Kings 4:44). The fragments here fill twelve baskets, one for each disciple who served.

“Men” is andres, males, a count by heads of household as the crowd sat in its companies. Matthew 14:21 adds “beside women and children”. The number is given at the very end, after the leftovers, like a total at the bottom of a page.

“Constrained” is ēnankasen, compelled, a strong word for sending friends off. John 6:15 says the crowd wanted to take Jesus by force and make him king, which may explain the haste. The boat is sent toward Bethsaida, but it lands at Gennesaret (verse 53); Bethsaida is only reached in 8:22.

“Sent them away” is apotaxamenos, having taken leave of them, the courteous word for saying goodbye. After the biggest crowd yet, Jesus again goes alone to pray, as he did after the busy night at Capernaum (1:35).

The Book of Mark divides the scene in two: the boat mid-lake, Jesus alone on the land. At its northern end the lake is about four miles across. “When even was come” begins a night that will last until the fourth watch.

“Toiling” is basanizomenous, tormented, the word the spirit used in 5:7, “torment me not”. The fourth watch in Roman reckoning ran from about 3 to 6 in the morning. “Would have passed by” echoes God passing by Moses on the mountain (Exodus 33:22) and Elijah at Horeb (1 Kings 19:11).

“Spirit” here is phantasma, an apparition or ghost, not pneuma. Job 9:8 says of God that he alone “treadeth upon the waves of the sea”, and two verses later, “he passeth on also, but I perceive him not” (Job 9:11).

“It is I” is egō eimi, literally “I am”. It can be an ordinary “it’s me”, but it is also the form of the divine name in the Greek of Exodus 3:14 and Isaiah 43:10, and many readers hear both. “Be of good cheer” is tharseite, take courage.

“Ceased” is ekopasen, grew tired, the verb used of the wind in 4:39. The Greek stacks its intensifiers, lian ek perissou, exceedingly beyond measure, as though Mark could not find words strong enough for the disciples’ astonishment.

“Considered” is synēkan, understood, the verb of Isaiah 6:9 that Jesus quoted in 4:12 about outsiders who hear and do not understand. Now the same verb in the negative is used of the twelve. The outsiders’ condition has reached the insiders.

Gennesaret is the fertile plain on the north-west shore, just south of Capernaum. Josephus praises it lavishly for walnuts, palms, figs and olives, with grapes and figs in season ten months of the year (Jewish War 3.516–521). “Drew to the shore” means they moored, a verb found only here in the New Testament.

“Knew him” is epignontes, recognised. The subject changes without warning from the disciples in the boat to the people on the shore, and those strangers recognise him before the boat is even tied up.

“Where they heard he was” describes rolling news: people carry the sick toward the last report, and when he moves on they change direction. The Greek verb for running around the whole region, periedramon, pictures many small runs in many directions.

“Streets” is agorais, the marketplaces, the open squares where the sick could be laid in his path. The “border” is kraspedon, the tassel the Law commanded on the corners of a garment (Numbers 15:38–39) as a reminder of God’s commandments; Jesus wore them.