What Does Matthew 15:17 Mean in the King James?
Do not ye yet understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught?
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 enters the body travels through it and leaves; passing through you is not the same as becoming your nature.
THE MEANING
Your body receives what comes through the mouth, carries it into the belly, and expels it. What passes through your body is distinct from what proceeds from within you. The next verse names the heart as the source of what defiles.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that consuming something automatically makes you inwardly defiled; bodily passage and what comes from the heart are distinct.
THE ROOT
εἰσπορευόμενον
eisporeuomenon
GROWS FROM
πορευ-
poreu-
To go, proceed, or travel.
The word for what “entereth” is built on a verb meaning to go or travel. In Mark’s parallel, the word for what “goeth out” uses the same base with the opposite direction, revealing the body as a passage with an entry and an exit.
ALSO GROWS
eisporeuomai: Go in, enter.
εἰσπορεύομαι
The prefix εἰς (eis, into) directs the movement inward, as food enters the body here.
ekporeuomai: Go out, come forth.
ἐκπορεύομαι
Mark 7:19 uses this matched form for what exits, showing entry and exit as two directions of the same movement.
poreia: Journey, way.
πορεία
This related word carries the sense of movement along a way, underscoring that what enters follows a passage through the body.
THE PATTERN
What the body takes in follows a physical passage, while the heart and life cannot be reduced to food.
But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man.Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats: but God shall destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body.Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?THE THREAD
Because it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging all meats?The Greek pairs a form of εἰσπορεύομαι (eisporeuomai, go in) with ἐκπορεύομαι (ekporeuomai, go out), sharing the root πορευ- (poreu-, go or travel). The same movement enters and exits, making clear that food passes through the body without becoming the heart.
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