What Does Mark 2:25 Mean?
He said to them, Have you never read what David did when he had need and was hungry, he and those who were with him?
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 he said unto them, Have ye never read what David did, when he had need, and was an hungred, he, and they that were with him?THE KEY
Jesus makes hunger part of the reading itself: the story cannot be read without the need it names.
THE MEANING
David is remembered with hunger still attached to his story. As you read this now, the need named in the text remains part of its meaning; it cannot be trimmed away while keeping the passage intact.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a reading can be faithful while treating the need named in the text as irrelevant.
THE ROOT
χρείαν
chreian
GROWS FROM
χρει-
Need, necessity; something needed.
The word places David’s need directly inside the story Jesus asks them to read. It is part of what the account preserves, not a detail to set aside.
ALSO GROWS
chreia: Need, necessity
χρεία
This is the noun used for David’s need in the verse.
chrēizō: To need, to have need of
χρῄζω
The related verb keeps the same condition visible as something a person experiences.
ἀνέγνωτε
anegnōte
GROWS FROM
γινώσκω
Know, recognize.
The verb means “read” here and belongs to the γινώσκω family of knowing and recognizing. Jesus’ question turns reading toward recognition: the story includes the person’s need.
ALSO GROWS
ginōskō: Know, recognize
γινώσκω
This related verb makes visible the knowing beneath the word for reading.
anagnōsis: Reading, reading aloud
ἀνάγνωσις
This noun from the same word family names the act of reading.
ἐπείνασεν
epeinasen
GROWS FROM
πειν-
Hunger, the experience of needing food.
“hungered” in this verse is epeinasen. The Greek names bodily hunger directly. The question keeps that hunger attached to David’s story, so the remembered account cannot be reduced to a rule without the person living through it.
ALSO GROWS
peinaō: To hunger
πεινάω
This is the verb in its dictionary form, naming the experience expressed in the verse.
peina: Hunger
πεῖνα
This related noun names the condition itself.
THE PATTERN
Scripture keeps human need visible within its account of sacred provision.
So the priest gave him set-apart bread, for there was no bread there but the bread of the faces, which was removed from before the LORD, to set in hot bread on the day it was taken away.Who makes judgment for the pressed, who gives bread to the hungry. The LORD loosens the bound.He said to them, The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.THE THREAD
Whoever has the world's means of living, and gazes upon his brother in need, and shuts his inner parts away from him, how does the love of God remain in him?The same Greek word, χρεία (chreia, “need”), names David’s condition here and a brother’s need in 1 John. In one verse the need is remembered in a story; in the other it is seen in the person before you.
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