What Does Mark 8:31 Mean in the King James?
And he began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.
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 passage names rejection and death plainly, yet rising is already part of the same sentence.
THE MEANING
Suffering, rejection, and death are real in this verse, yet they do not exhaust its movement; rising follows. Its words hold the reader’s horizon open beyond the verdict of human authorities and what appears final.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that rejection proves worthlessness, or that death has the final word.
THE ROOT
ἀποδοκιμασθῆναι
apodokimasthēnai
GROWS FROM
δοκιμ-
dokim-
The word family carries the sense of testing, examining, and approval; this form means to reject or disapprove.
The English word “rejected” hides a connection to the language of testing and approval: this is a verdict that disqualifies. Yet the verse places that verdict before death and rising, so it does not name the final outcome.
ALSO GROWS
dokimazō: Test, examine, or approve.
δοκιμάζω
It shows the approval sense within the word family from which rejection takes its force.
dokimos: Approved, tested, or genuine.
δόκιμος
Its contrast with rejection reveals that the verse centers on a human judgment that does not determine what follows.
ἀναστῆναι
anastēnai
GROWS FROM
στα-/στη- (sta-/stē-, from ἵστημι, histēmi)
Stand or set; with the sense of rising up, the word names a return to standing.
“rise again” in this verse is anastēnai. The Greek word joins rising with the language of standing. The same family names resurrection, keeping the verse’s movement concrete: after being killed, he stands again.
ALSO GROWS
histēmi: Stand or set.
ἵστημι
This is the underlying verb that gives rising its image of standing.
anastasis: Rising or resurrection.
ἀνάστασις
The related noun carries the same standing-up image into the language of resurrection.
παθεῖν
pathein
GROWS FROM
πάσχ-
pasch-
Undergo or experience; in this passage, suffer.
“suffer” in this verse is pathein. The verse does not blur suffering into a symbol: it names what is undergone before naming death and rising. That sequence holds the violence and the continuation together.
ALSO GROWS
paschō: Undergo, experience, or suffer.
πάσχω
This is the verb family behind the verse’s direct statement of suffering.
pathēma: Suffering or affliction.
πάθημα
The related noun makes suffering something endured, not merely an idea.
THE PATTERN
Rejection and death do not determine the final status of life.
The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner.Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that he should be holden of it.To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious,THE THREAD
To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious,The word translated “disallowed” comes from ἀποδοκιμάζω (apodokimazō), meaning to reject or disapprove, the same verb family as “rejected” here. Peter calls the rejected one a living stone, chosen and precious, showing that human disapproval does not settle the deeper outcome.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
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