What Does Mark 2:16 Mean?
When the scribes and the separated ones saw him eat with tax collectors and those who miss the mark, they said to his disciples, How is it that he eats and drinks with 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 when the scribes and Pharisees saw him eat with publicans and sinners, they said unto his disciples, How is it that he eateth and drinketh with publicans and sinners?THE KEY
The shared meal makes the boundary visible: the people called “sinners” are eating and drinking in Jesus’ company.
THE MEANING
The question treats a meal as evidence of whose company Jesus shares. The people named as missing the mark are at the same table with him, and that closeness draws scrutiny. The verse brings the reader face to face with the boundary people draw around who belongs.
THE ROOT
ἁμαρτωλῶν
hamartōlōn
GROWS FROM
ἁμαρτ-
hamart-
To miss, err, or miss the mark; this form means “of sinners.”
“those who miss the mark” in this verse is hamartōlōn. The label grows from the language of missing: these people are named by what they miss. Yet they are eating and drinking in Jesus’ company while the label remains; the meal makes that nearness impossible to overlook.
ALSO GROWS
hamartanō: To miss or err.
ἁμαρτάνω
The verb makes the family’s sense of missing visible beneath the label applied to the people at the table.
hamartia: Missing, missing the mark.
ἁμαρτία
This noun names the missing itself, connecting the disputed company to the root idea carried by “sinners.”
THE PATTERN
Who eats with whom makes a boundary of belonging visible.
And they set out for him by himself, and for them by themselves, and for the Egyptians, who ate with him, by themselves, for the Egyptians could not eat bread with the Hebrews, for that is a recoiling thing to the Egyptians.Saying, You went in to men uncircumcised, and ate with them.For before some came from James, he ate together with the nations. But when they came, he drew back and marked himself off, fearing those from the circumcision.THE THREAD
When Jesus heard it, he said to them, Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the aligned, but those who miss the mark into turning.The same Greek word family for “sinners” appears in Jesus’ answer. The people named by missing are also the ones he calls, so the shared meal belongs to the calling itself.
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