What Does Mark 12:8 Mean in the King James?
And they took him, and killed him, and cast him out of the vineyard.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The tenants do not merely kill the heir; they throw him beyond the boundary, as though expulsion could turn entrusted ground into their own.
THE MEANING
The verse holds violence without disguise: the son is seized, killed, and put outside the vineyard. The final movement makes exclusion part of the violence, as if the tenants can secure possession by removing the one who carries the owner’s claim.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that expelling the heir erases the owner’s claim; the act exposes the tenants’ refusal, not their right to possess the vineyard.
THE ROOT
ἐξέβαλον
exebalon
GROWS FROM
βάλλω
To throw, cast, or put.
“cast out” in this verse is exebalon. The verb is ἐκβάλλω, “throw out,” and Mark immediately adds ἔξω, “outside,” marking the boundary twice. The son is not only killed; his removal from the vineyard is made explicit, as though casting him out could make the place theirs.
ALSO GROWS
ballō: Throw, cast, or place.
βάλλω
This is the base verb beneath the compound, keeping the act physical: the son is cast away.
ekballō: Throw out, drive out, or expel.
ἐκβάλλω
This compound adds “out” to the throwing and names the expulsion carried out against the son.
THE PATTERN
Those who mistake what is entrusted for what is theirs drive out the one who bears the rightful claim.
The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner.He came unto his own, and his own received him not.Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate.THE THREAD
For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant: and he looked for judgment, but behold oppression; for righteousness, but behold a cry.Isaiah names the vineyard as the LORD’s people and describes the fruit its owner seeks. That gives the son’s expulsion a wider frame: the tenants reject the owner’s claim and the justice the vineyard is meant to bear.
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