Mark 7: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Pharisees and scribes from Jerusalem question Jesus about why his disciples eat without the ceremonial hand washing required by the tradition of the elders. Jesus quotes Isaiah against them, points to the Corban practice as a case where their tradition cancels God's command to honor father and mother, and then tells the crowd that what defiles a person comes from inside, not from what is eaten. He goes north to the region of Tyre, where a Syrophoenician woman's answer wins the healing of her daughter, and then returns by way of the Decapolis, where he heals a deaf man with a speech problem and tells the witnesses to keep quiet.

Claim by Claim

1. 7:1
   • Pharisees and some of the scribes gathered together to Jesus.
   • Those scribes had come from Jerusalem.
2. 7:2
   • They saw some of Jesus' disciples eating bread with defiled hands.
   • Defiled hands means unwashed hands.
   • They found fault with this.
3. 7:3
   • The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands in the prescribed way.
   • They do this holding the tradition of the elders.
4. 7:4
   • When they come from the market, they do not eat unless they wash.
   • There are many other things they have received to hold.
   • Among these are the washing of cups.
   • Among these are the washing of pots.
   • Among these are the washing of bronze vessels.
   • Among these are the washing of dining couches.
5. 7:5
   • The Pharisees and scribes asked Jesus why his disciples do not walk according to the tradition of the elders.
   • They asked why his disciples eat bread with unwashed hands.
6. 7:6
   • Jesus answered them.
   • Jesus said Isaiah prophesied well about them.
   • Jesus called them hypocrites.
   • Jesus said it is written.
   • The quoted words say this people honors God with their lips.
   • The quoted words say their heart is far from God.
7. 7:7
   • The quoted words say they worship God in vain.
   • The quoted words say they teach the commandments of men as doctrines.
8. 7:8
   • Jesus said they lay aside the commandment of God.
   • Jesus said they hold the tradition of men.
   • Jesus named the washing of pots and cups as such a tradition.
   • Jesus said they do many other such things.
9. 7:9
   • Jesus said to them.
   • Jesus said they thoroughly reject the commandment of God.
   • Jesus said they do this so that they may keep their own tradition.
10. 7:10
    • Jesus said Moses said, Honor your father and your mother.
    • Jesus said Moses said, Whoever curses father or mother must surely die.
11. 7:11
    • Jesus said they say something different.
    • In their saying, a man may say to his father or mother that whatever he might have profited them by is Corban.
    • Corban means a gift.
    • In their saying, such a man is released from obligation.
12. 7:12
    • Jesus said they no longer permit that man to do anything for his father or his mother.
13. 7:13
    • Jesus said they make the word of God of no effect through their tradition.
    • Jesus said they have handed down that tradition.
    • Jesus said they do many such things.
14. 7:14
    • Jesus called all the people to him.
    • Jesus told them to listen to him, every one of them.
    • Jesus told them to understand.
15. 7:15
    • Nothing from outside a man that enters into him can defile him.
    • The things that come out of a man are what defile the man.
16. 7:16
    • Jesus said that if any man has ears to hear, let him hear.
17. 7:17
    • Jesus entered a house away from the people.
    • His disciples asked him about the parable.
18. 7:18
    • Jesus said to them.
    • Jesus asked whether they too were so without understanding.
    • Jesus asked whether they did not perceive that whatever enters a man from outside cannot defile him.
19. 7:19
    • What enters a man does not enter his heart.
    • It enters the belly.
    • It goes out into the latrine.
    • This purges all foods.
20. 7:20
    • Jesus said that what comes out of the man is what defiles the man.
21. 7:21
    • From within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts.
    • From within proceed adulteries.
    • From within proceed sexual immoralities.
    • From within proceed murders.
22. 7:22
    • From within proceed thefts.
    • From within proceeds covetousness.
    • From within proceeds wickedness.
    • From within proceeds deceit.
    • From within proceeds sensuality.
    • From within proceeds an envious eye.
    • From within proceeds slander.
    • From within proceeds pride.
    • From within proceeds foolishness.
23. 7:23
    • All these evil things come from within.
    • All these evil things defile the man.
24. 7:24
    • Jesus arose from that place.
    • Jesus went into the region of Tyre and Sidon.
    • Jesus entered a house.
    • Jesus wanted no one to know it.
    • Jesus could not be hidden.
25. 7:25
    • A certain woman heard about Jesus.
    • Her young daughter had an unclean spirit.
    • The woman came to Jesus.
    • The woman fell at his feet.
26. 7:26
    • The woman was a Greek.
    • She was Syrophoenician by nationality.
    • She begged Jesus to cast the demon out of her daughter.
27. 7:27
    • Jesus said to her to let the children first be filled.
    • Jesus said it is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.
28. 7:28
    • She answered him.
    • She called him Lord and agreed.
    • She said the dogs under the table eat of the children's crumbs.
29. 7:29
    • Jesus said to her that because of this saying she could go.
    • Jesus said the demon had gone out of her daughter.
30. 7:30
    • The woman came to her house.
    • She found the demon gone out.
    • She found her daughter lying on the bed.
31. 7:31
    • Jesus departed from the region of Tyre and Sidon.
    • Jesus came to the Sea of Galilee.
    • He came through the midst of the region of the Decapolis.
32. 7:32
    • People brought to Jesus a man who was deaf.
    • The man had an impediment in his speech.
    • They begged Jesus to put his hand on him.
33. 7:33
    • Jesus took the man aside away from the crowd.
    • Jesus put his fingers into the man's ears.
    • Jesus spat.
    • Jesus touched the man's tongue.
34. 7:34
    • Jesus looked up to heaven.
    • Jesus sighed.
    • Jesus said to him, Ephphatha.
    • Ephphatha means Be opened.
35. 7:35
    • Immediately the man's ears were opened.
    • The bond of his tongue was loosed.
    • He spoke plainly.
36. 7:36
    • Jesus charged them to tell no one.
    • The more he charged them, the more abundantly they proclaimed it.
37. 7:37
    • They were astonished beyond measure.
    • They said he has done all things well.
    • They said he makes the deaf to hear.
    • They said he makes the mute to speak.

Words Worth Explaining

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

7:1

The Pharisees were a strict religious movement known for careful keeping of the law of Moses along with a large body of additional oral rules. The "scribes" were professional experts in that law, which is why the rendering calls them religious teachers. That these particular ones had come from Jerusalem gives them the weight of the capital and its temple.

7:2

"Eat bread" in the King James usually just means eat a meal. The washing at issue is not hygiene but a ritual rinse: "defiled" means ceremonially unfit to approach holy things, not dirty.

7:3

"Wash their hands oft" translates a Greek phrase that literally reads "with the fist," whose exact sense is unknown and was already puzzling to ancient readers. Suggested meanings include up to the wrist, up to the elbow, or with a cupped handful of water. The "tradition of the elders" was the body of unwritten rules handed down alongside the written law of Moses.

7:4

A marketplace meant contact with crowds, goods, and people who did not keep the purity rules, so a rinse on getting home was a precaution. "Brasen vessels" are copper or bronze pots. "Tables" translates a word for the couches people reclined on while eating, not tables in the modern sense.

7:5

To "walk according to" a rule is a Hebrew and Greek idiom for ordering your whole way of life by it.

7:6

"Esaias" is the Greek form of the name Isaiah; the quotation is Isaiah 29:13. The Greek word behind "hypocrites" originally meant an actor speaking lines from behind a mask.

7:7

"Howbeit" means however. "Doctrines" here simply means teachings, and "the commandments of men" means rules of merely human origin as opposed to God's.

7:9

"Full well ye reject" is sarcasm: you are very good at setting God's command aside.

7:10

The two quotations are Exodus 20:12 and Exodus 21:17. "Let him die the death" reproduces a Hebrew construction that doubles the verb for emphasis; it means he must certainly be put to death.

7:11

Corban is a Hebrew and Aramaic word for something formally dedicated to God, which Mark stops to explain because his Greek-speaking readers would not know it. Declaring property Corban put it out of reach for ordinary purposes. The dispute is over treating such a vow as binding even when honoring it leaves a man's parents unsupported.

7:12

"Suffer" here means allow or permit, and "ought" (aught) means anything at all.

7:13

"Of none effect" means cancelled, made void. "Delivered" means handed on; it is the ordinary word for passing a tradition down from one generation to the next.

7:14

"Hearken" means listen.

7:15

"Defile" belongs to the vocabulary of ritual purity: to make someone unfit to approach what is holy until the impurity is dealt with. In itself the word says nothing about dirt or about moral guilt.

7:16

This verse is missing from the oldest and most reliable Greek manuscripts of Mark and is generally thought to have been copied in by a later scribe from Mark 4:9 or 4:23. That is why many modern translations skip from verse 15 to verse 17.

7:17

"Parable" translates a word covering riddles, proverbs, and comparisons of every kind, not only the story parables. The disciples are asking about a saying they found cryptic.

7:18

"Perceive" here means understand, and "without understanding" translates a word for being slow or dull of mind rather than ignorant of facts.

7:19

"The draught" is the latrine or sewer. "Purging all meats" renders a genuinely difficult bit of Greek: the phrase "cleansing all foods" can hang either on the digestive process just described or on Jesus himself, as the narrator's own comment. The rendering follows the second reading, which most modern translations adopt. "Meats" in 1611 English means food of any kind, not flesh.

7:21

"Fornications" translates a broad Greek word covering sexual activity outside marriage of every sort. Several of these nouns are plural in the Greek, meaning individual acts of the kind rather than the vice in the abstract.

7:22

"Covetousness" is grasping greed for more. "Lasciviousness" means unrestrained, shameless indecency. "An evil eye" was a stock idiom of the time for envy or a grudging, stingy spirit. "Blasphemy" in Greek covers abusive speech against God and slander against other people alike. "Pride" here is the arrogance of a man puffed up over others.

7:24

Tyre and Sidon were Phoenician port cities up the Mediterranean coast, outside Jewish territory and populated mainly by non-Jews. Many early manuscripts read only "Tyre" here. "Borders" means the surrounding territory or region rather than a boundary line, and "coasts" in verse 31 has the same sense.

7:25

"Unclean spirit" is Mark's usual term for what verse 26 calls a demon. "Unclean" is again the vocabulary of ritual impurity.

7:26

"A Greek" here means a non-Jew: Greek-speaking in culture and pagan in religion, not necessarily a native of Greece. "Syrophenician" places her more exactly as a Phoenician from the stretch of that coast attached to the Roman province of Syria, distinguishing her from the Phoenicians of North Africa.

7:27

"It is not meet" means it is not fitting or proper. The Greek word for "dogs" here is a diminutive, the small dog kept around the house rather than the scavenging street dog, and the woman's reply turns on exactly that: house dogs are under the table at mealtimes.

7:28

"Lord" translates a word whose range runs from "sir" as ordinary polite address up to a title of high authority; which weight it carries on her lips is left open.

7:29

"For this saying" means because of this reply, that is, because of what she has just said. "Go thy way" is simply "you may go."

7:31

The Decapolis, literally "Ten Cities," was a group of Greek-style cities lying mostly east and southeast of the Sea of Galilee, largely non-Jewish in population. The route described is roundabout: north from Tyre to Sidon, then inland and south, a long detour through Gentile territory.

7:32

"Impediment in his speech" translates a rare Greek word found nowhere else in the New Testament; it can mean either speaking with difficulty or not speaking at all. Laying a hand on a sick person was the familiar gesture of a healer or of someone giving a blessing.

7:33

Saliva was widely credited with healing power in the ancient Mediterranean world and appears that way in Greek and Roman medical writers as well as in Jewish sources. The gestures here are the recognized ones a healer would use, and they are also the only way to tell a man who cannot hear what is about to happen.

7:34

"Ephphatha" is Aramaic, the everyday spoken language of Jesus and his hearers. Mark keeps a handful of such words in their original form and then translates them for his Greek-speaking readers. "Sighed" translates a word for a deep groan drawn up from within.

7:35

"The string of his tongue" renders a Greek phrase about the bond or fetter that held the tongue; the picture is of something tied being untied. "Spake plain" means spoke clearly, not spoke simply or bluntly.

7:36

"Charged" means gave strict orders. "Published" in 1611 English means spread abroad by word of mouth and has nothing to do with printing.

7:37

"Beyond measure astonished" renders an emphatic Greek expression, roughly "overwhelmingly amazed." "Dumb" in the King James means unable to speak and carries no suggestion of stupidity. The crowd's words closely echo the Greek wording of Isaiah 35:5-6, where the deaf hear and the tongue of the speechless sings.

Where the Manuscripts Differ

Worth knowing before you stand up: a listener following a modern translation may not have this verse in front of them.

7:16

Most modern translations leave this verse out. It is in the Greek text the King James translators worked from, but not in the older manuscripts found since, so scholars generally take it as a copyist’s addition rather than part of the original.