What Does Mark 7:19 Mean in the King James?
Because it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging all meats?
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
What passes through the body is not what reaches the heart, and its exit is described with the language of cleansing.
THE MEANING
Food enters the belly and leaves by the draught; it does not enter the heart. The verse distinguishes bodily passage from the inward center, describing that passage as a purging of all foods.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A particular food, by entering the body, makes the heart unclean.
THE ROOT
καθαρίζον
katharizōn
GROWS FROM
καθαρ-
kathar-
clean, make clean
The participle translated “purging” belongs to the same Greek word family as “clean” and “cleansing.” The line holds bodily expulsion and cleanness together: food passes through the belly and out.
ALSO GROWS
katharos: clean, pure
καθαρός
This related word makes the cleansing sense of “purging” visible within the same word family.
katharismos: cleansing, purification
καθαρισμός
This branch names the act of cleansing, echoing the verse’s description of food passing through and out.
καρδία
kardia
GROWS FROM
καρδ-
kard-
heart, the inner center
Kardia names the heart, which the verse distinguishes from the belly: food enters one place but does not reach the other. Its branches keep the heart as the inward site of condition and knowing.
ALSO GROWS
sklērokardia: hardness of heart
σκληροκαρδία
This compound uses the same heart word for an inward condition, showing what the verse sets apart from bodily digestion.
kardiognōstēs: knower of hearts
καρδιογνώστης
This word presents the heart as an inward place that can be known, not merely a bodily passage.
THE PATTERN
What enters the body does not determine the heart’s cleanness; the decisive concern is the inward condition and what is called clean.
Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man.For meat destroy not the work of God. All things indeed are pure; but it is evil for that man who eateth with offence.THE THREAD
And the voice spake unto him again the second time, What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common.The Greek verb translated “purging” here shares the root καθαρ- (kathar-, clean) with “cleansed” in Acts 10:15. That shared root brings the language of cleansing into view in both verses.
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