Mark 10: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Traveling toward Judea beyond the Jordan, Jesus answers a test question from the Pharisees about divorce, then blesses the children brought to him. A rich man asks how to inherit eternal life and leaves sad when told to sell what he owns, and Jesus talks with the disciples about wealth, about what those who leave things behind receive, and about the first being last. On the road to Jerusalem he tells the twelve a third time that he will be handed over, killed, and rise on the third day; when James and John ask for the seats at his right and left, he teaches that greatness among them means serving. The chapter ends outside Jericho, where blind Bartimaeus calls out to him and receives his sight.

Claim by Claim

1. 10:1
   • Jesus arose from that place
   • Jesus came into the region of Judea beyond the Jordan
   • Crowds gathered to him again
   • He taught them again, as was his custom
2. 10:2
   • Pharisees came to him
   • The Pharisees asked him whether it is lawful for a man to put away his wife
   • The Pharisees asked this to test him
3. 10:3
   • Jesus answered them
   • Jesus asked them what Moses commanded them
4. 10:4
   • They said that Moses permitted a man to write a bill of divorcement
   • They said that Moses permitted a man to put his wife away
5. 10:5
   • Jesus answered them
   • Jesus said Moses wrote this precept for them because of their hardness of heart
6. 10:6
   • Jesus said that from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female
7. 10:7
   • Jesus said that for this cause a man shall leave his father and mother
   • Jesus said that a man shall cleave to his wife
8. 10:8
   • Jesus said the two shall be one flesh
   • Jesus said that therefore they are no longer two but one flesh
9. 10:9
   • Jesus said God has joined them together
   • Jesus commanded that man not separate what God has joined together
10. 10:10
    • In the house the disciples asked him again about this matter
11. 10:11
    • Jesus said to them that whoever puts away his wife and marries another commits adultery against her
12. 10:12
    • Jesus said that if a woman puts away her husband and marries another, she commits adultery
13. 10:13
    • People brought young children to Jesus
    • They brought them so that he would touch them
    • The disciples rebuked those who brought them
14. 10:14
    • Jesus saw it
    • Jesus was indignant
    • Jesus said to let the little children come to him
    • Jesus said not to forbid them
    • Jesus said the kingdom of God belongs to such as these
15. 10:15
    • Jesus said truly to them
    • Jesus said that whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall not enter it
16. 10:16
    • Jesus took the children into his arms
    • Jesus put his hands on them
    • Jesus blessed them
17. 10:17
    • Jesus was going out into the way
    • A man ran up to him
    • The man knelt to him
    • The man called him Good Master
    • The man asked what he should do to inherit eternal life
18. 10:18
    • Jesus asked him why he called him good
    • Jesus said no one is good except one, that is, God
19. 10:19
    • Jesus said the man knew the commandments
    • Jesus cited the command not to commit adultery
    • Jesus cited the command not to kill
    • Jesus cited the command not to steal
    • Jesus cited the command not to bear false witness
    • Jesus cited the command not to defraud
    • Jesus cited the command to honor father and mother
20. 10:20
    • The man answered him
    • The man called him Master
    • The man said he had kept all these from his youth
21. 10:21
    • Jesus looked at him
    • Jesus loved him
    • Jesus said he lacked one thing
    • Jesus told him to go and sell whatever he had
    • Jesus told him to give to the poor
    • Jesus said he would then have treasure in heaven
    • Jesus told him to take up the cross
    • Jesus told him to come and follow him
22. 10:22
    • The man was sad at that saying
    • The man went away grieved
    • The man had great possessions
23. 10:23
    • Jesus looked around
    • Jesus said to his disciples that those who have riches will enter the kingdom of God with great difficulty
24. 10:24
    • The disciples were astonished at his words
    • Jesus answered again
    • Jesus called them children
    • Jesus said how hard it is for those who trust in riches to enter the kingdom of God
25. 10:25
    • Jesus said it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God
26. 10:26
    • They were astonished beyond measure
    • They said among themselves, asking who then can be saved
27. 10:27
    • Jesus looked upon them
    • Jesus said that with men it is impossible
    • Jesus said it is not impossible with God
    • Jesus said that with God all things are possible
28. 10:28
    • Peter began to speak to him
    • Peter said they had left all
    • Peter said they had followed him
29. 10:29
    • Jesus answered and said
    • Jesus said truly to them
    • Jesus said there is no one who has left house, or brothers, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands for his sake and the gospel's
30. 10:30
    • Jesus said such a person shall receive a hundredfold now in this time
    • Jesus said the hundredfold includes houses, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, and lands
    • Jesus said this comes with persecutions
    • Jesus said that in the world to come such a person receives eternal life
31. 10:31
    • Jesus said many that are first shall be last
    • Jesus said the last shall be first
32. 10:32
    • They were on the way going up to Jerusalem
    • Jesus went before them
    • They were amazed
    • Those who followed were afraid
    • Jesus took the twelve aside again
    • Jesus began to tell them what things would happen to him
33. 10:33
    • Jesus said they were going up to Jerusalem
    • Jesus said the Son of man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes
    • Jesus said they will condemn him to death
    • Jesus said they will deliver him to the Gentiles
34. 10:34
    • Jesus said they will mock him
    • Jesus said they will scourge him
    • Jesus said they will spit on him
    • Jesus said they will kill him
    • Jesus said he shall rise again the third day
35. 10:35
    • James and John came to him
    • James and John are the sons of Zebedee
    • They called him Master
    • They said they wanted him to do for them whatever they asked
36. 10:36
    • Jesus asked them what they wanted him to do for them
37. 10:37
    • They asked him to grant that one of them sit at his right hand and the other at his left hand
    • They asked for this in his glory
38. 10:38
    • Jesus said to them that they do not know what they ask
    • Jesus asked whether they can drink the cup that he drinks
    • Jesus asked whether they can be baptized with the baptism he is baptized with
39. 10:39
    • They said they can
    • Jesus said they shall indeed drink the cup that he drinks
    • Jesus said they shall be baptized with the baptism he is baptized with
40. 10:40
    • Jesus said that to sit at his right hand or his left hand is not his to give
    • Jesus said it shall be given to those for whom it is prepared
41. 10:41
    • The ten heard it
    • The ten began to be indignant with James and John
42. 10:42
    • Jesus called them to him
    • Jesus said they know that those accounted to rule over the Gentiles exercise lordship over them
    • Jesus said their great ones exercise authority upon them
43. 10:43
    • Jesus said it shall not be so among them
    • Jesus said whoever wants to be great among them shall be their minister
44. 10:44
    • Jesus said whoever of them wants to be first shall be servant of all
45. 10:45
    • Jesus said the Son of man did not come to be ministered unto
    • Jesus said the Son of man came to minister
    • Jesus said the Son of man came to give his life a ransom for many
46. 10:46
    • They came to Jericho
    • Jesus went out of Jericho with his disciples and a great crowd
    • Bartimaeus was the son of Timaeus
    • Bartimaeus was blind
    • Bartimaeus was a beggar
    • Bartimaeus sat by the roadside
47. 10:47
    • He heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth
    • He began to cry out
    • He called Jesus the son of David
    • He asked Jesus to have mercy on him
48. 10:48
    • Many rebuked him so that he would be silent
    • He cried out much more
    • He called him son of David
    • He asked him to have mercy on him
49. 10:49
    • Jesus stood still
    • Jesus commanded that the man be called
    • They called the blind man
    • They told him to be of good comfort
    • They told him to rise
    • They told him that Jesus was calling him
50. 10:50
    • He cast away his garment
    • He sprang up
    • He came to Jesus
51. 10:51
    • Jesus answered him
    • Jesus asked what he wanted him to do for him
    • The blind man called him Rabboni
    • The blind man asked that he might receive his sight
52. 10:52
    • Jesus told him to go his way
    • Jesus said his faith had made him whole
    • He immediately received his sight
    • He followed Jesus in the way

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

10:1

The King James "coasts" does not mean seashore; in 1611 it meant borders or the territory within them, so the phrase means the region of Judea. "As he was wont" means as was his habit. The area "by the farther side of Jordan" is Perea, the strip east of the Jordan River ruled by Herod Antipas, which Galilean travelers commonly crossed on the way south to Jerusalem to avoid Samaria.

10:2

"Tempting him" in the King James means putting him to the test, not luring him into sin. The question was a live legal dispute: teachers of the day agreed divorce was permitted but argued about the grounds, one school allowing it only for serious sexual misconduct and another for almost any cause. Asking this in Herod Antipas's territory also carried risk, since John the Baptist had been executed after criticizing Antipas's marriage.

10:3

Moses was a leader long, long before Jesus. God gave his rules to the people through Moses.

10:4

The rule is Deuteronomy 24:1. "Suffered" in the King James means permitted. The "bill of divorcement" was a written certificate the husband handed his wife; its legal effect was to certify that she was free to marry someone else, which protected her from a later charge of adultery. Under Jewish law of the period only the husband could issue it.

10:5

"Hardness of heart" translates a single Greek word meaning stubbornness or an unteachable disposition. In biblical usage the heart is the seat of thought and will rather than of feeling, so the phrase is closer to hard-headed than to cold-hearted.

10:6

The words "God made them male and female" are a quotation of Genesis 1:27.

10:7

This verse and the next quote Genesis 2:24. "Cleave" in the King James means to stick fast to, from a different old verb than the one meaning to split. "For this cause" means for this reason.

10:8

"Twain" is an old word for two. "One flesh" is a Hebrew idiom for a single kinship unit: marriage makes two families into relatives, in the way blood relatives are called one flesh elsewhere in the Old Testament.

10:9

"Put asunder" means pull apart or separate.

10:10

Disciples are students who follow a teacher.

10:11

The point turns on how adultery was normally reckoned. In Jewish law of the period a married man who slept with an unmarried woman was thought to wrong her father or her future husband, not his own wife. Saying he commits adultery "against her" treats the wife as the person actually wronged.

10:12

A wife divorcing her husband was not an option under Jewish law of the time, where only the husband could issue the certificate. It was possible under Greek and Roman law, and Mark's readers in the wider empire would have known of it.

10:13

Bringing children to a respected teacher to be touched and blessed was a normal custom; the laying on of hands was the recognized gesture of blessing.

10:14

"Suffer the little children" means let the little children, not make them suffer; "suffer" in the King James often means allow. "Much displeased" translates a strong word meaning indignant or angry, not merely annoyed. "Of such is the kingdom of God" means it belongs to people like these.

10:15

"Verily I say unto you" translates "Amen, I say to you." Amen was normally said at the end of someone else's prayer to affirm it; Jesus's habit of putting it at the front of his own statement is unusual and functions as a claim that what follows is reliable.

10:16

To bless someone means to ask God to be kind and good to them.

10:17

"Master" in the King James usually means teacher, not owner. "Inherit eternal life" was a standing Jewish expression for receiving a share in the life of the age to come, when God would set the world right; it draws on the language of inheriting a portion of the promised land.

10:19

The list comes from the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20, Deuteronomy 5), specifically the commands about dealings between people. "Bear false witness" means give false testimony in a legal case. "Defraud not" is not one of the ten; it may stand in for the command against coveting, or echo the law against holding back a hired worker's wages.

10:21

"Take up the cross" is missing from the earliest manuscripts of Mark here and is likely an early copyist's addition from Mark 8:34. The image is of a condemned prisoner carrying the crossbeam of his own cross to the place of execution, a sight familiar under Roman rule.

10:22

"He was sad at that saying" translates a word describing a face darkening or falling. "Great possessions" means a large estate, chiefly land.

10:23

"How hardly" in the King James means with what difficulty, not how harshly.

10:24

"For them that trust in riches" is absent from the earliest manuscripts, which read simply "how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God." The shorter reading explains why the disciples are astonished twice over. "Children" here is an affectionate form of address from a teacher to his students.

10:25

The needle is an ordinary sewing needle, and the camel was the largest animal people in the region handled, so the picture is deliberately impossible. The popular explanation that a low gate in Jerusalem was called the Needle's Eye has no evidence behind it before the Middle Ages.

10:26

"Astonished out of measure" means astonished beyond measure. The disciples' surprise reflects a common assumption that wealth was a sign of God's favor, which made the rich seem the likeliest candidates to be saved, not the least likely.

10:27

Peter and the others called Jesus their teacher and followed him everywhere.

10:28

"Lo" is simply look or listen, a word to get attention.

10:29

"The gospel" translates a Greek word meaning good news or an announcement of good tidings, the kind of report brought of a victory or a new ruler. It did not yet mean a book.

10:30

"In this time" and "in the world to come" reflect a standard Jewish division of history into the present age and the age to come. "A hundredfold" is the language of a harvest yield. The list of what is received back leaves out a wife, though the list of what is left behind includes one.

10:31

People thought the most important person should always come first. Jesus said God turns that around.

10:32

People always spoke of going "up" to Jerusalem regardless of the direction of travel, because the city sits high in the hill country; the road from Jericho climbs about three thousand feet. "The twelve" is Mark's usual shorthand for the twelve disciples Jesus had chosen.

10:33

"Son of man" is the phrase Jesus regularly uses of himself in the Gospels. In Aramaic it can simply mean a human being or serve as an indirect way of saying "I," and it also recalls the figure "like a son of man" given authority in Daniel 7. The chief priests were the heads of the leading priestly families who, with the scribes and elders, made up the ruling council in Jerusalem. Handing him to the Gentiles means to the Roman authorities, who alone held the power to execute.

10:34

"Scourge" means to flog with a whip, often one with several thongs weighted with bone or metal. Under Roman practice this regularly preceded execution and could itself be fatal.

10:35

Zebedee was a Galilean fisherman; James and John had left his boats to follow Jesus.

10:37

The seats immediately to the right and left of an enthroned king were the two highest places of honor in his court, held by his chief officers. "In thy glory" means when he is enthroned in royal splendor.

10:38

"The cup" is an Old Testament image for the portion God hands someone, most often a portion of suffering or judgment. "Baptized" translates a word that simply means dipped or plunged under, and it was used of being overwhelmed or swamped, as by disaster; Jesus uses it here of what is coming to him rather than of a rite.

10:40

Jesus means God the Father decides who sits in those places.

10:41

"Much displeased" again means genuinely angry. The other ten are not shocked at the ambition; they wanted the same places.

10:42

"They which are accounted to rule" means those who are regarded as rulers, which may carry a hint that their authority is more apparent than real. "Exercise lordship" and "exercise authority" translate verbs that mean to dominate or throw one's weight around. The Gentile rulers in view would be the Roman emperor, his governors, and client kings like the Herods.

10:43

"Minister" in the King James means a servant or attendant, someone who waits on others at table; it does not mean a member of the clergy.

10:44

"Chiefest" means first in rank. "Servant" here translates a different and stronger word than in the previous verse: it means a slave, someone who is owned and has no standing of his own.

10:45

"Ransom" translates a word used for the price paid to free a prisoner of war or to buy a slave out of slavery, and in the Greek Old Testament for the payment that redeems a life or a piece of family property. "Ministered unto" means waited on or served.

10:46

Jericho lay about fifteen miles northeast of Jerusalem on the pilgrim road, and crowds would have been large near Passover. Bartimaeus is Aramaic for "son of Timaeus," which is why the verse appears to say the same thing twice; Mark translates the name for readers who did not know Aramaic. A blind man had no way to earn a living, so begging beside a road busy with pilgrims was the ordinary recourse.

10:47

"Son of David" is a royal title. It identifies a descendant of King David and was used of the awaited anointed king who would restore David's line. Shouting it at a man in a crowd on the road to Jerusalem was a public and dangerous claim, which helps explain why the bystanders tried to silence him.

10:48

"Hold his peace" means keep quiet. "He cried the more a great deal" means he shouted all the louder.

10:49

"Be of good comfort" means take courage, cheer up.

10:50

The garment is the outer cloak, which for a beggar was both his blanket and, spread on the ground, the thing that caught the coins thrown to him. It was usually his single most valuable possession, and leaving it behind meant leaving everything he had.

10:51

The King James "Lord" here renders the Aramaic word Rabboni, an intensified form of rabbi meaning "my master" or "my teacher." It appears only twice in the Gospels. His request is literally that he might see again, which suggests he had not been blind from birth.

10:52

"Made thee whole" translates a verb that covers both healing and saving; it is the same word the disciples used earlier in the chapter when they asked "who then can be saved?" "In the way" means on the road, which in Mark is the road up to Jerusalem that Jesus has just been describing.