What Does Mark 2:6 Mean?
But some of the scribes were sitting there, reasoning in their hearts.
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
But there were certain of the scribes sitting there, and reasoning in their hearts,THE KEY
The scribes’ private reasoning is already their response: the heart is where they are weighing what they see.
THE MEANING
A response can take shape in you before it reaches your lips. Your heart is already weighing what you see; silence does not make that inward reckoning unreal.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that an unspoken thought does not count as a response.
THE ROOT
διαλογιζόμενοι
dialogizomenoi
GROWS FROM
λογίζομαι
logizomai
to reckon, count, or account
The verb for “reasoning” grows from a word for reckoning, so the scribes’ thoughts carry the sense of inward weighing. English “reasoning” can hide this accounting quality: what is happening in their hearts is a judgment taking shape.
ALSO GROWS
logizomai: reckon, count, account
λογίζομαι
This is the verbal seed beneath “reasoning,” giving the inner thought the feel of weighing or calculating.
dialogismos: reasoning, deliberation, dispute
διαλογισμός
This related noun names the kind of inward argument or deliberation that the verb describes taking place in the scribes.
καρδίαις
kardiais
GROWS FROM
καρδία
kardia
heart, the inward center of thought and desire
“hearts” in this verse is kardiais. The Greek word for heart includes the inner life where thoughts and intentions take shape. Here, the reasoning is not separate from the heart: the heart itself is where the judgment is being formed.
ALSO GROWS
sklērokardia: hardness of heart
σκληροκαρδία
This compound shows the heart as an inward posture that can become hardened, giving depth to the verse’s picture of thought rooted within.
kardiognōstēs: knower of hearts
καρδιογνώστης
This compound treats the heart as an inward life that can be known, echoing the verse’s focus on what is held inside.
THE PATTERN
The heart’s unspoken reasoning is already open to the one who sees within.
Straightway Jesus perceived in his breath that they reasoned this way within themselves, and he said to them, Why do you reason these things in your hearts?You perceive my sitting and my rising, and from afar you separate out my thought.For the word of God is living and working, and sharper than any two-edged sword, reaching through even to the dividing of living soul and breath, of joints and marrow, and it separates the inward movements and thoughts of the heart.THE THREAD
But Jesus perceived their reckonings, and answering, said to them, Why do you reason in your hearts?Luke uses the same Greek verb, διαλογίζομαι (dialogizomai), meaning “to reason or deliberate,” and the same word for “hearts,” καρδία (kardia). The parallel makes explicit that the inward reckoning named here is already perceived and answered.
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