What Does Mark 2:21 Mean?
No one sews a patch of new cloth onto an old garment, or else the new patch that fills it lifts away from the old, and the tear grows worse.
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
No man also seweth a piece of new cloth on an old garment: else the new piece that filled it up taketh away from the old, and the rent is made worse.THE KEY
A fresh patch can enlarge the tear when it is fastened to a form too worn to bear it.
THE MEANING
You see a repair fail when a new piece is sewn onto an old garment: as the piece pulls away, the split grows worse. The image shows how forcing newness into a worn form can deepen the damage instead of mending it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that adding something new automatically repairs what is old; a mismatch can make the damage worse.
THE ROOT
σχίσμα
schisma
GROWS FROM
σχίζω
schizō
To split or tear apart.
“tear” in this verse is schisma. The Greek word for the garment’s rent belongs to the same word family used for divisions among people. A split in cloth and a split in a community share the image of something coming apart.
ALSO GROWS
schizō: To split or tear; Mark 15:38 uses it when the temple veil is rent in two.
σχίζω
The same action describes fabric being torn open, preserving the physical force of the image.
schisma: A tear or division; 1 Corinthians 1:10 uses this word for divisions among people.
σχίσμα
The garment’s rent and a community’s division belong to the same word family: a fracture can widen beyond its first point.
καινόν
kainon
GROWS FROM
καιν-
kain-
New, fresh, or unused; the stem carries the sense of newness.
The word here is a form of καινός (kainos, new or fresh), whose word family also names newness and renewal. The image sets new material against an old, worn garment: the problem is their mismatch, not newness by itself.
ALSO GROWS
kainotēs: Newness; Romans 6:4 speaks of walking in newness of life.
καινότης
This branch shows the same word family naming a new condition, not merely a recent addition.
anakainoō: To renew or make new; Colossians 3:10 uses it for being renewed in knowledge.
ἀνακαινόω
Renewal belongs to this family too, giving depth to the contrast between newness and a worn form.
THE PATTERN
A new reality arrives with a form of its own; forcing it into an exhausted form makes the old give way.
Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will cut a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.So if anyone is in the Anointed One, he is a new creation. What was old has passed by. Look, all things have become new.In that he says, 'A new covenant,' he has made the first old. And what is wearing thin and growing old is near to passing out of sight.THE THREAD
Now I urge you, brothers, by the nature of our Lord Jesus, the Anointed One, that you all say the same thing, and that there be no rending among you, but that you be mended together in the same mind and the same judgment.The Greek word σχίσμα (schisma, tear or division) in this verse belongs to the same word family as σχίσματα (schismata, divisions) in 1 Corinthians 1:10. A garment’s widening tear and a community’s division share one word family, showing how a split can grow beyond its first seam.
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