What Does Mark 3:30 Mean in the King James?
Because they said, He hath an unclean spirit.
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 charge of impurity may reveal the accuser’s label more than the true source of the liberating work.
THE MEANING
A voice can call the breath at work in a liberating act unclean. The accusation is recorded as an accusation; its naming does not establish its truth. Condemnation can attach itself to the very source it cannot explain.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
If a work is called unclean, its source must be corrupt. This verse shows that a charge names a judgment; it does not prove the judgment true.
THE ROOT
πνεῦμα
pneuma
GROWS FROM
πνέω
pneō
to breathe or blow
English “spirit” can sound separate from embodied life, but this word belongs to the family of breathing and blowing. The accusation calls the breath associated with Jesus unclean; the verse records that charge without granting it as fact.
ALSO GROWS
pnoē: breath; a blowing
πνοή
This related word makes the breath and wind sense audible beneath the English word “spirit.”
empneō: to breathe in or upon
ἐμπνέω
This compound preserves the same breathing root, showing how the language of breath can describe something active and present.
ἀκάθαρτος
akathartos
GROWS FROM
καθαρ-
kathar-
clean or pure; the initial alpha negates it, making the word “not clean”
“unclean” in this verse is akathartos. The accusation uses a word formed by negating cleanness. Its wording turns a judgment about the source into a claim of defilement, but the root itself does not establish that the judgment is true.
ALSO GROWS
katharos: clean; pure
καθαρός
The positive form shows the cleanness that the accusation denies.
katharizō: to cleanse; make clean
καθαρίζω
This cleansing branch reveals that the same word family can name a movement from defilement toward cleanness.
THE PATTERN
When perception is ruled by a fixed label, what is good can be named evil and what is clean can be named common.
Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!And many of them said, He hath a devil, and is mad; why hear ye him?And the voice spake unto him again the second time, What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common.THE THREAD
But if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto you.Matthew uses the same Greek word for “spirit,” but identifies it as the Spirit of God and names the work as casting out devils. The shared word makes the accusation’s reversal visible: what is called unclean here is named as the source of release there.
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