What Does Mark 14:16 Mean?
And his disciples went out and came into the city, and found as he had said to them. And they made ready the Passover.
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 his disciples went forth, and came into the city, and found as he had said unto them: and they made ready the passover.THE KEY
The disciples’ first work is not making the promise true but finding it true, and only then making ready.
THE MEANING
What is spoken to you can be encountered as it was said, and recognition opens into preparation. Readiness takes shape in concrete action, through movement, arrival, and setting what is needed in place.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
You have to make a promise true by yourself before you can trust it. Here, preparation follows the discovery that what was said is already so.
THE ROOT
ἡτοίμασαν
hētoímasan
GROWS FROM
ἑτοιμ-
Ready, prepared.
“made ready” in this verse is hētoímasan. This verb belongs to the same Greek family as “ready” and “preparation”: its action is readiness taking shape. Here, the disciples prepare after finding the scene as spoken, so readiness follows recognition.
ALSO GROWS
hétoimos: Ready, prepared.
ἕτοιμος
The shared ἑτοιμ- stem links the state of readiness to the act of making ready.
hetoimasía: Preparation, readiness.
ἑτοιμασία
This noun shares the same stem and names the preparation that the verb expresses as an action.
εὗρον
heûron
GROWS FROM
εὑρ-
Find, discover.
The word belongs to a Greek family for finding and what is found. Finding is the hinge here: what the disciples encounter matches what was spoken, and that recognition leads directly into preparation.
ALSO GROWS
heurískō: Find, discover.
εὑρίσκω
This is the verb’s lexical family; it names the act expressed by εὗρον.
heúrēma: A thing found, a discovery.
εὕρημα
This related noun names what the act of finding brings into view.
THE PATTERN
A spoken word becomes visible when what it describes is encountered and answered with action.
And the children of Israel went away, and did as the LORD had commanded Moses and Aaron; so they did.There fell not one good word of all that the LORD had spoken unto the house of Israel; all of it came.And Simon answered him, Master, we have toiled through the whole night and taken nothing, but at your word I will loosen the nets.THE THREAD
And he will show you a large upper room, spread and made ready. There make ready for us.The instruction in the previous verse uses the same Greek root family, ἑτοιμ- (hetoim-, ready or prepared), that appears here. The room is already prepared, while the disciples make the Passover ready; provision and response share the language of readiness.
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