What Does Mark 12:4 Mean?
And again he sent to them another servant, and at him they threw stones, and struck him on the head, and sent him away treated without weight.
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 again he sent unto them another servant; and at him they cast stones, and wounded him in the head, and sent him away shamefully handled.THE KEY
The same sending verb names both the owner’s reach toward the tenants and their attempt to send the servant away.
THE MEANING
The owner keeps reaching through a servant, and the tenants answer with stones and humiliation. The one sent carries the owner’s claim, so the attack on him is also a refusal of the one who sends him. The verse shows rejection becoming physical and public.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that rejection settles the matter dissolves here: sending the servant away does not cancel the owner’s claim.
THE ROOT
ἀπέστειλεν
apesteilen
GROWS FROM
ἀποστέλλω
apostellō
To send forth or dispatch.
“sent / sent him away” in this verse is apesteilen. The Greek uses the same verb when the owner sends the servant and when the tenants send him away. One sending carries the owner’s claim; the other tries to expel its bearer, but does not erase where he came from.
ALSO GROWS
apostolos: A sent one; a messenger.
ἀπόστολος
The servant is not acting on his own behalf: he carries the one who sends him.
apostolē: A sending or commission.
ἀποστολή
The violence falls on someone who arrives with an entrusted purpose.
ἠτίμασαν
ētimasan
GROWS FROM
τιμ-
tim-
Value, price, or honor.
“treated without weight” in this verse is ētimasan. The verb means to dishonor, to treat someone as though they have no worth. Its root also names value and preciousness, so the verse holds a sharp contrast: the tenants strip the servant of honor, but their contempt cannot decide his value.
ALSO GROWS
timē: Honor, value, or price.
τιμή
This is the worth the tenants refuse to recognize in the servant.
timios: Precious, valuable, or honored.
τίμιος
The same root can name what is precious, revealing how dishonor treats as worthless what may still be valued by the sender.
THE PATTERN
When people refuse the sender’s claim, they turn their violence on the messengers who carry it.
But they mocked the messengers of God, and despised his words, and scoffed at his prophets, until the burning of the LORD's anger rose against his people, until there was no healing.Therefore, look, I send you prophets, and wise ones, and writers. Some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will whip in your gatherings and pursue from city to city.THE THREAD
Coming to him, as to a living stone, tested and set aside by men, but chosen by God and precious,Mark’s word for dishonor, ἀτιμάζω (atimazō, treat as without honor), belongs to the τιμή (timē, value or honor) family. Peter uses τίμιος (timios, precious or valuable) for the stone people reject: human contempt does not determine what is precious.
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