What Does Mark 2:3 Mean?
And they came to him, bringing a paralyzed man, lifted by four.
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 come unto him, bringing one sick of the palsy, which was borne of four.THE KEY
The man who cannot move on his own still comes near because four others lend him their movement.
THE MEANING
The verse holds a person who cannot move unaided in the center of an approach to Jesus. His nearness is made possible through the shared movement of four others; need does not erase his access.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
If I cannot get there under my own power, I have no way to come near.
THE ROOT
αἰρόμενον
airomenon
GROWS FROM
αἴρω
To lift, raise, carry, or take up.
“lifted” in this verse is airomenon. The Greek word behind “borne” is αἰρόμενον (airomenon), from αἴρω (airō), the verb for lifting or taking up. The four do not merely accompany him: they supply the lift that makes his approach possible.
ALSO GROWS
epairō: Lift up, raise.
ἐπαίρω
This prefixed form keeps the same lifting root, showing the physical action by which others make the man’s approach possible.
apairō: Take away, remove, or depart.
ἀπαίρω
This prefixed form can describe taking away or moving off; here the shared root carries the man toward Jesus.
THE PATTERN
A movement one person cannot sustain becomes possible when others share the carrying.
For if they fall, the one raises up the one joined to him. But woe to the one who falls with no second to gird him.But Moses' hands were heavy. And they took a stone and set it under him, and he sat upon it. And Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on this side and the other on that side, and his hands were steady until the sun went down.Carry one another's weights, and so you fill up the instruction of the Anointed One.THE THREAD
Which is easier, to say to the paralyzed man, Your shortcomings are released to you, or to say, Arise, take up your mat, and walk?The same Greek root behind “borne” in verse 3 appears in “take up” in verse 9. First, others lift the man; then he is told to lift what carried him.
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