What Does Mark 1:43 Mean?
And snorting at him, he straightway threw him out.
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 he straitly charged him, and forthwith sent him away;THE KEY
The word translated “sent him away” is ekballō, “to cast out,” giving the departure the force of a decisive sending.
THE MEANING
Jesus speaks with bristling urgency and sends the man away at once. The verse binds speech to movement: the charge does not linger as words but becomes an immediate departure. The scene leaves that sharpness fully visible.
THE ROOT
ἐξέβαλεν
exebalen
GROWS FROM
βάλλω
ballō
to throw or cast; with ἐκ (ek), “out,” the compound means to cast or drive out
“sent him away” in this verse is exebalen. The verb is stronger than a neutral dismissal: it pictures a forceful movement outward. The man is sent away at once, so urgency is built into the action itself.
ALSO GROWS
ekballō: cast out, drive out, send away
ἐκβάλλω
This is the verb’s dictionary form and makes the force behind “sent him away” visible.
apoballō: cast off or throw away
ἀποβάλλω
In Mark 10:50, the same βάλλω seed appears in the blind man’s casting away his garment, a forceful act of throwing something off.
ἐμβριμησάμενος
embrimēsamenos
GROWS FROM
ἐμβριμάομαι
embrimaomai
to snort or bristle with strong feeling; by extension, to speak sternly
“snorting at him” in this verse is embrimēsamenos. This is not a mild or casual warning: the verb carries force and intensity. The same verb describes indignation in Mark 14:5 and Jesus being deeply moved at Lazarus’s tomb in John 11:33, showing that the charge here comes with emotional weight.
ALSO GROWS
enebrimōnto: they were indignant
ἐνεβριμῶντο
Mark 14:5 uses this form for the strong reaction of those who object to the costly ointment.
enebrimēsato: he was deeply moved
ἐνεβριμήσατο
John 11:33 uses this form as Jesus encounters the grief surrounding Lazarus’s death, revealing the verb’s emotional force.
THE PATTERN
A decisive casting out marks a boundary from which the next movement begins.
And straightway the Breath threw him out into the wilderness.But when the crowd was thrown out, he entered and grasped her hand, and the girl rose.And they laughed at him. But he threw them all out, and took the father and the mother of the child and those with him, and went in where the child was lying.THE THREAD
And straightway the Breath threw him out into the wilderness.The same Greek verb, ekballō, appears in both verses: it means to cast or drive out. Here it sends the man away; there it drives Jesus into the wilderness, joining both moments through the same forceful outward movement.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
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