What Does Mark 9:49 Mean in the King James?
For every one shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt.
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
Salt marks the sacrifice, but the fire in this verse reaches every person.
THE MEANING
You are inside the verse’s “every one”: no person stands outside the fire it names. It sets this beside the sacrifice salted with salt, recalling salt as a covenant mark on offerings. The fire stays severe; the line does not explain it away.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that any person stands outside the fire named here; “every one” leaves no exemption.
THE ROOT
ἁλισθήσεται
halisthēsetai
GROWS FROM
ἁλ-
hal-
Salt; the word-family of salt and salting.
The verse uses the same salt word-family for the person being salted and the sacrifice receiving salt, bringing human life alongside the offering. In the Greek of Leviticus 2:13, this family also names the covenant salt laid on every offering, so the image carries a sacrificial and covenant echo while the fire retains its severity.
ALSO GROWS
hálas: Salt.
ἅλας
This is the noun behind the verse’s repeated image: the person and the sacrifice are both brought into the language of salt.
halízō: To salt.
ἁλίζω
This verb gives the action expressed by “shall be salted,” joining the person directly to the offering’s salt.
halykós: Salty or brackish.
ἁλυκός
This related word-family form appears in James 3:12, keeping the salt image connected to a quality that can be tasted.
THE PATTERN
Scripture marks what belongs to God with covenant salt and portrays its passage through fire as refining.
And every oblation of thy meat offering shalt thou season with salt; neither shalt thou suffer the salt of the covenant of thy God to be lacking from thy meat offering: with all thine offerings thou shalt offer salt.And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the LORD an offering in righteousness.That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ:THE THREAD
Salt is good: but if the salt have lost his saltness, wherewith will ye season it? Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another.The Greek word-family behind “salted” here continues directly in “salt” in the next verse. Mark shifts from every person being salted to having salt within, then names peace with one another as the setting in which that salt is held.
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