What Does Mark 14:1 Mean?
After two days was the feast of Passover and of unleavened bread, and the chief priests and the writers sought how they might seize him in a snare and put him to death.
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
After two days was the feast of the passover, and of unleavened bread: and the chief priests and the scribes sought how they might take him by craft, and put him to death.THE KEY
The search for a way to seize by deceit is already part of the violence, before the killing begins.
THE MEANING
The verse reveals violence becoming active while concealment is still being planned: those with authority seek a deceitful way to seize a person and kill him. The whole chain is visible at once, deception becomes a grip, and the grip is aimed at death.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that violence begins only when the blow lands: the deceitful plan to seize and kill is already violence.
THE ROOT
δόλος
dolos
GROWS FROM
δολ-
Deceit, guile, trickery.
“in a snare” in this verse is dolos. The word translated “craft” names a deliberate cover for the seizure, not just a vague flaw in character. The violence is already taking shape in the concealed method.
ALSO GROWS
dolioō: to deceive or act deceitfully
δολιόω
This verb from the same word family makes the craft an active strategy of deception.
adolos: without deceit; guileless
ἄδολος
The negative form reveals the contrast carried by this word family: dealings can be free of deceit or shaped by it.
κρατήσαντες
kratēsantes
GROWS FROM
κρατ-
Strength, power; to hold fast or prevail.
The word rendered “take” carries the force of seizing and holding, so the plan is not merely to trick him but to get him into their grip. The root joins power to possession: the deceit serves the seizure.
ALSO GROWS
krateō: to hold, seize, or retain
κρατέω
This is the verb family behind the verse’s planned seizure and the grip that follows.
kratos: strength, might, power
κράτος
This related noun makes the force inside the seizure audible: the plan seeks power over a person.
THE PATTERN
Violence often conceals its intended wound before it becomes visible force.
He sits in the ambush of the enclosures. In the hidden places he strikes down the clean-handed, and his eyes watch for the helpless.Hatred is covered with deceit; his harm is uncovered at the appointed time in the assembly.Then from that day forward they took counsel together to put him to death.THE THREAD
They laid hands on him and seized him.The Greek verb κρατέω (krateō, to seize or hold) carries the same root as the planned seizure in this verse. Mark moves from the concealed plan to the hands laid on him: the grip sought by deceit becomes visible.
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