What Does Mark 11:15 Mean?
And they came to Jerusalem. And Jesus entered the temple and began to throw out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and turned over the tables of the coin-changers and the seats of those who sold doves.
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 they come to Jerusalem: and Jesus went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves;THE KEY
The disruption reaches both the traders and the machinery of trade: Jesus drives people out and physically turns their tables over.
THE MEANING
The scene meets you now with Jesus entering sacred space and changing what can occupy it: he expels sellers and buyers, then overturns the tables and seats arranged for their trade. The force reaches both the people and the structures that support the exchange.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that an activity becomes untouchable simply because it takes place in a sacred setting; here Jesus enters and dismantles its arrangement.
THE ROOT
κατέστρεψεν
katestrepsen
GROWS FROM
στρέφω (strephō; stem στρεφ-)
To turn or twist.
“turned over” in this verse is katestrepsen. English “overthrew” can suggest abstract defeat, while the Greek keeps the physical sense of turning things over. The tables and seats are not merely criticized; their arrangement is flipped.
ALSO GROWS
strephō: Turn, twist.
στρέφω
The base verb makes the physical motion audible inside “overthrew.”
epistrephō: Turn toward, turn back.
ἐπιστρέφω
The same root can name a change of direction; here the compound names a literal reversal of the tables.
katastrephō: Overturn, turn upside down.
καταστρέφω
This is the dictionary form of the verb used for the tables and seats.
ἐκβάλλειν
ekballein
GROWS FROM
βάλλω (ballō; stem βαλλ-)
To throw or cast.
“throw out” in this verse is ekballein. The Greek keeps the image of throwing in “cast out.” Alongside the turned tables, it makes the disruption concrete: people are driven out while the furniture of their trade is overturned.
ALSO GROWS
ballō: Throw, cast.
βάλλω
This is the verb at the root of the expulsion.
ekballō: Throw out, drive out.
ἐκβάλλω
The compound used in this verse carries the force of throwing someone outside.
apoballō: Throw away, cast off.
ἀποβάλλω
This related compound preserves the same throwing motion while directing it away.
τραπέζας
trapezas
GROWS FROM
τραπεζ- (trapez-; τραπέζα, trapeza)
Table; in related words, a banker’s table.
A related Greek word, τραπεζίτης (trapezitēs), means banker. In a verse naming moneychangers, that word family makes clear that these tables are part of the working arrangement of exchange, not incidental furniture.
ALSO GROWS
trapeza: Table.
τραπέζα
This is the noun used for the overturned furniture.
trapezitēs: Banker, moneychanger.
τραπεζίτης
The related word links the table family with financial exchange, the activity named in the verse.
THE PATTERN
The Lord’s presence in sacred space confronts what has displaced the place’s purpose.
Them also will I bring to my set-apart mountain, and gladden them in my house of prayer. Their ascending offerings and their sacrifices shall be received with favor upon my altar, for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all the peoples.And he will sit as the refiner and cleanser of silver, and he will cleanse the sons of Levi, and strain them like gold and silver, and they will bring near to the LORD an offering in alignment.And when he had made a whip of cords, he threw them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen. He poured out the coins of the coin-breakers and turned over their tables.THE THREAD
And he taught, saying to them, Is it not written, My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations? But you have made it a cave of robbers.The next verse names the house’s purpose as prayer for all nations and says that its occupants have made it a den of thieves. That gives the overturned tables a direct axis: the conflict concerns what the house is being made into.
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