What Does Mark 6:32 Mean in the King James?
And they departed into a desert place by ship privately.
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 “desert place” is not simply terrain: it is a place emptied of the crowd and made their own.
THE MEANING
You meet the verse in a shared departure: they travel by boat toward a place marked by absence and privacy. Here, solitude has a location and a boundary; a group can be together while apart from the public flow.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse unsettles the belief that solitude means being alone: they go privately, yet they go together.
THE ROOT
ἔρημον
erēmon
GROWS FROM
ἐρημ-
Greek lexical stem
Desolate, solitary, uninhabited.
The English “desert” can suggest terrain; this word names a place by its desolation and solitude. Paired with “privately,” it gives the destination both an absence of surrounding people and a sense of being apart from them.
ALSO GROWS
erēmia: Desolation; wilderness.
ἐρημία
This related word keeps the emphasis on a place defined by being uninhabited or removed from ordinary life.
erēmoō: To make desolate or lay waste.
ἐρημόω
The same word family names both the desolate condition and the act of leaving a place desolate.
ἰδίαν
idian
GROWS FROM
ἰδι- (Greek lexical stem of ἴδιος)
One’s own; belonging particularly to oneself.
“Privately” grows from the idea of what is one’s own. The phrase marks a space apart from the crowd, but the plural “they” makes clear that this is shared privacy, not solitary isolation.
ALSO GROWS
idios: One’s own; private; particular.
ἴδιος
This is the word behind the phrase translated “privately,” tying privacy to a space set apart as their own.
idiōtēs: A private individual; a layperson.
ἰδιώτης
This related word retains the sense of an individual outside a public role, echoing the group’s departure from the surrounding public flow.
THE PATTERN
A space apart from the crowd can become a setting for encounter.
And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day.A Psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness of Judah. O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is;And he withdrew himself into the wilderness, and prayed.THE THREAD
And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while: for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat.The words translated “desert place” and “apart” in verse 31 recur in verse 32. Verse 31 names the invitation; verse 32 shows the group moving toward that shared space away from the crowd.
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