What Does Mark 16:13 Mean?
And they went and told it to the rest, and neither would they trust them.
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 went and told it unto the residue: neither believed they them.THE KEY
A message can reach its hearers and still fail at the point of trust.
THE MEANING
Hearing a report and trusting the person who brings it are distinct: the message is spoken, yet the hearers do not lean their weight on its witnesses. That gap remains recognizable whenever words reach you without becoming trustworthy to you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Being told something does not mean it has been trusted.
THE ROOT
ἐπίστευσαν
episteusan
GROWS FROM
πιστ-
pist-
Trust; to lean your weight on what is trustworthy.
“believed” in this verse is episteusan. The Greek word-family carries more than accepting a statement as true: it brings the idea of trust and reliance into view. Its branches connect believing with trust itself and with being trustworthy, showing that this moment turns on whether the witnesses are relied upon, not merely whether their report is heard.
ALSO GROWS
pistis: Trust; reliance.
πίστις
This noun names the trust that the hearers do not place in the witnesses.
pistos: Trustworthy; steady.
πιστός
This branch brings the question of a witness’s trustworthiness into view alongside the hearer’s response.
THE PATTERN
A report, even when joined by visible signs, can be present without being trusted.
Who has leaned their weight on what we have heard, and upon whom has the arm of the LORD been uncovered?And their words appeared before them like babble, and they did not trust them.But though he had done so many signs before them, they did not lean their weight on him.THE THREAD
And their words appeared before them like babble, and they did not trust them.Luke uses the same Greek verb family, pisteuō (πιστεύω), for believing. Here the report sounds like empty words; in Mark, it is told and still not trusted, the same gap between hearing a witness and leaning on what the witness says.
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