What Does Mark 14:5 Mean in the King James?
For it might have been sold for more than three hundred pence, and have been given to the poor. And they murmured against her.
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
They use the help that might have reached the poor to condemn the gift she actually gives.
THE MEANING
The verse exposes how a possible act of care can become an accusation against a gift already offered. The poor are named as the imagined recipients, but the only action this sentence reports is the murmuring against her. You can hear how concern for people in need can be used as an argument without itself becoming help.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
If I name a better use for someone else’s gift, my criticism is itself an act of care.
THE ROOT
δοθῆναι
dothēnai
GROWS FROM
δίδωμι
didōmi
to give, grant, or hand over
“given” in this verse is dothēnai. The passive infinitive makes the donation a possibility within the accusation: the imagined sale would lead to an imagined giving. The same word family holds both the act of giving and the word for a gift, exposing the gap between invoking generosity and carrying it out.
ALSO GROWS
dosis: a giving; a gift
δόσις
It links the act named in the verse with the gift itself: giving is something done, not merely proposed.
dōron: a gift or present
δῶρον
This word from the same giving family makes the contrast sharper: the woman’s gift is present, while the proposed gift to the poor remains imagined.
πτωχοῖς
ptōchois
GROWS FROM
πτωχός
ptōchos
destitute, reduced to begging; its word family is associated with crouching or cowering
“poor” in this verse is ptōchois. The word evokes people brought low by material need, not an abstract category in a budget. Yet here they appear as the recipients of a gift that might have been given, while the murmuring against her is what actually happens.
ALSO GROWS
ptōcheia: poverty or destitution
πτωχεία
It names the condition behind the proposed help and keeps the verse’s concern grounded in real need.
ptōcheuō: to be poor or become poor
πτωχεύω
It shows the word family describing a lived condition, while the verse’s proposed relief remains only a possibility.
THE PATTERN
Concern for the poor takes concrete form in actual provision; a hypothetical gift remains only a claim.
If there be among you a poor man of one of thy brethren within any of thy gates in thy land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not harden thine heart, nor shut thine hand from thy poor brother:For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good: but me ye have not always.And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?THE THREAD
And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?The verb translated “given” here and “give” in James belongs to the same Greek word family, δίδωμι (didōmi, to give). James sets that giving beside words of blessing and asks what they accomplish without material help, bringing the imagined donation in Mark into focus as a question of whether care actually reaches anyone.
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