What Does Mark 10:19 Mean?
You know the commandments. Do not commit adultery, do not kill, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your father and mother.
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
Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Defraud not, Honour thy father and mother.THE KEY
This list makes quietly withholding what is owed visible as harm to a neighbor.
THE MEANING
These commands describe a life in which another person’s body, truth, property, and due are not treated as yours to violate. The list places deprivation beside adultery, killing, theft, and false testimony: harm includes withholding what another is owed. It speaks wherever your choices hold another person’s claim in your hands.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Only visible violence counts as harming a neighbor. This verse also names the concealed harm of withholding what belongs to someone else.
THE ROOT
ἀποστερήσῃς
apostērēsēs
GROWS FROM
στερε-/στερη- (stere-/sterē-), in ἀποστερέω (apo-stereō)
To deprive someone of what is theirs; ἀπό (apo) adds the sense of taking away.
“Defraud not” in this verse is apostērēsēs. The command uses ἀποστερήσῃς (apostērēsēs), a form of ἀποστερέω (apostereō): to deprive or defraud. Its word family holds the act and the resulting deprivation together, so the harm includes leaving someone without what belongs to them. James uses the same verb family for wages kept back, making that quiet withholding explicit.
ALSO GROWS
apostereō: To deprive, defraud, or rob.
ἀποστερέω
This is the verb behind the command and the phrase “kept back by fraud” in James 5:4.
sterēsis: Deprivation or lack.
στέρησις
The noun names what withholding produces: another person is left without what is due.
THE PATTERN
Neighbor-love protects another’s well-being by refusing both direct injury and the withholding of what is due.
You shall not press your neighbor, nor tear from him; the wage of the hired hand shall not lodge with you all night until the morning.Look, the wages of the workers who mowed your fields, stripped away by your fraud, cry out, and the cries of those who reaped have gone into the ears of the LORD of hosts.Love does not work evil on the neighbor. So love is the fullness of the instruction.THE THREAD
Look, the wages of the workers who mowed your fields, stripped away by your fraud, cry out, and the cries of those who reaped have gone into the ears of the LORD of hosts.Mark’s command uses a form of ἀποστερέω (apostereō), to deprive or defraud; James uses the same verb family for wages “kept back by fraud.” The connection shows that defrauding includes withholding what is due, even when no property is visibly taken.
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