What Does Mark 9:50 Mean in the King James?
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 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 salt within seasons the life you share, linking what each of you carries inwardly to peace between you.
THE MEANING
Salt is an inner quality whose loss leaves life unsavored, and the verse names no outside remedy for it. It joins that inward quality to the way you live with one another: peace takes shape between you. The verse undoes the belief that peace between people can be separated from what each person carries within.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that peace between people can be separated from what each person carries within.
THE ROOT
ἀρτύσετε
artusete
GROWS FROM
ἀρτυ-
arty-
To season or prepare.
The verb translated “season” appears again in Colossians 4:6, where speech is “seasoned with salt.” The shared word links the salt within to what passes between people: inner quality gives shared words their savor.
ALSO GROWS
artysis: Seasoning or preparation.
ἄρτυσις
This related noun makes explicit the act of preparing or seasoning that Mark’s verb carries.
ērtumenos: Seasoned.
ἠρτυμένος
This participle from the same verb appears in Colossians 4:6 for speech seasoned with salt.
ἅλας
halas
GROWS FROM
ἁλ-
hal-
Salt; a salty substance.
The Greek word belongs to a family that includes both salt itself and the act of salting. The verse’s question about lost saltiness turns on a quality that must remain present to affect what it touches.
ALSO GROWS
halizō: To salt or season with salt.
ἁλίζω
This verb appears in Mark 9:49, just before this verse, where everyone is said to be salted with fire.
halykos: Salty.
ἁλυκός
James 3:12 uses this related word for salt water, showing the same salt-family across another image.
εἰρηνεύετε
eirēneuete
GROWS FROM
εἰρην-
eirēn-
Peace, concord, wholeness.
The verb carries the sense of being at peace, while its family includes the noun εἰρήνη (eirēnē, peace or wholeness). Wholeness here takes shape between people, not only within a person.
ALSO GROWS
eirēnē: Peace; wholeness.
εἰρήνη
This is the related noun behind the verse’s language of peace.
eirēnopoios: Peacemaker.
εἰρηνοποιός
This related compound names one who makes peace, echoing the verse’s relational focus.
THE PATTERN
What is held inwardly gives distinctiveness and savor to what is shared.
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.Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man.THE THREAD
Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man.Mark’s “season” and Colossians’ “seasoned” come from the same Greek verb, ἀρτύω (artyō), to season or prepare. Colossians shows one place the salt within becomes visible: in the words shared with another.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
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