What Does Mark 10:5 Mean?
Jesus answered and said to them, For the hardness of your heart he wrote you this command.
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 Jesus answered and said unto them, For the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept.THE KEY
The precept is written because the heart is hardened; the rule exposes the condition it meets rather than making that condition the design.
THE MEANING
The verse locates the written precept in a hardened heart: it answers a condition the heart carries now. Hardness shapes what must be addressed, but it does not by itself reveal the heart’s intended form.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A rule that makes room for hardness proves that hardness is the intended design.
THE ROOT
σκληροκαρδίαν
sklērokardian
GROWS FROM
σκληρ-
sklēr-
hard, stiff, resistant
“hardness” in this verse is sklērokardian. The word joins σκληρός (sklēros, hard) with καρδία (kardia, heart): the heart is not absent, but resistant. Related words describe hardening as a process and stiffness as a posture, revealing the precept as an answer to resistance rather than proof that resistance is the heart’s original shape.
ALSO GROWS
sklēros: hard, harsh
σκληρός
This adjective supplies the hard quality in the compound, pointing to resistance rather than simply a lack of tenderness.
sklērynō: to harden
σκληρύνω
The verb names hardening as something that happens, so the condition in the verse is not merely a fixed identity.
sklērotrachēlos: stiff-necked
σκληροτράχηλος
This related compound carries hardness into bodily posture, showing resistance as something enacted.
THE PATTERN
A hardened heart is a condition Scripture exposes and addresses, not the measure of the heart’s intended form.
He said to them, Because of the stiffness of your hearts, Moses allowed you to send away your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.A new heart I will give you, and a new breath I will set within you. I will take the stone heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.But urge one another each day, while it is called Today, lest any of you be hardened through the deceit of falling short.THE THREAD
He said to them, Because of the stiffness of your hearts, Moses allowed you to send away your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.Matthew uses the same compound σκληροκαρδία (sklērokardia, hardness of heart), then adds the line just beyond this verse: “but from the beginning it was not so.” The shared word shows the precept addressing a hardened condition while distinguishing that condition from the original design.
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