What Does Mark 1:32 Mean?
And when evening came, when the sun had gone down, they brought to him all who were ill, and those held by demons.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And at even, when the sun did set, they brought unto him all that were diseased, and them that were possessed with devils.THE KEY
At sundown, the scene’s first act is not healing but carrying: the suffering are borne toward Jesus.
THE MEANING
As daylight closes, the ill and the demonized are brought toward Jesus together. Need does not have to arrive under its own strength; others carry those who cannot come alone. Their arrival is already a movement from isolation toward presence.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The afflicted must reach help by their own strength before they can be received. Here, others carry them into the encounter.
THE ROOT
ἔφερον
epheron
GROWS FROM
φέρω
pherō
To carry, bear, or bring.
The verb places the crowd in the role of carriers: they bear the suffering toward Jesus. The Greek phrase for “brought unto him” joins this carrying verb with “toward him,” making the arrival itself a bearing of people and their need into his presence.
ALSO GROWS
pherein: To carry or bear.
φέρειν
This infinitive form makes the physical carrying within “brought” easy to see.
prospherō: To bring to; to offer.
προσφέρω
This compound joins “toward” with “carry,” echoing the movement of bringing people toward Jesus.
anapherō: To carry up; to bear; to offer.
ἀναφέρω
This related compound shows how carrying can also mean bearing something into another’s keeping.
THE PATTERN
What weighs on a person moves toward care when it is carried or laid before another.
Throw your load upon the LORD, and he holds you. He does not give the aligned one to totter for the ages.Surely he has borne our sicknesses, and carried our wounds. Yet we reckoned him struck, beaten by God, and bowed low.And they came to him, bringing a paralyzed man, lifted by four.THE THREAD
And they came to him, bringing a paralyzed man, lifted by four.Mark 1:32 uses ἔφερον (epheron, “they were carrying”); Mark 2:3 uses a form from the same φέρω (pherō, “carry, bear, bring”) word family. The second scene makes the carrying visible: one person reaches Jesus because four others bear him.
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