What Does Mark 2:7 Mean?
Why does this man speak against God like this? Who can release shortcomings but God alone?
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
Why doth this man thus speak blasphemies? who can forgive sins but God only?THE KEY
The verb translated “forgive” pictures what is missing being sent away, so the question is who has authority to release it.
THE MEANING
This question names the conviction that only God can release what is wrong. It also presses a living possibility: God’s authority may be at work in a human voice that speaks release before the change is visible.
THE ROOT
ἀφίημι
aphiēmi
GROWS FROM
ἵημι (híēmi), with ἀπό (apó)
To send or let go; with ἀπό, to send away or release.
The verb carries the image of letting something go from your hold. The question is not only about pardon as a feeling, but about who can release what is missing.
ALSO GROWS
áphesis: Release, remission, deliverance
ἄφεσις
This noun names the release itself; it appears in Luke’s language for deliverance to captives.
aphéntes: Having released, having let go
ἀφέντες
This form makes release an action: what is held can be let go.
ἁμαρτία
hamartía
GROWS FROM
ἁμαρτ-
hamart-
Missing or erring; a failure to hit the mark.
“shortcomings” in this verse is hamartía. The question concerns the release of what is missing. Read alongside the verb for release, the phrase holds both the deviation and its letting go together.
ALSO GROWS
hamartánō: To miss, err, or do wrong
ἁμαρτάνω
The verb gives the word for sin an active sense of missing or going astray.
hamártēma: A misdeed or offense
ἁμάρτημα
This branch names the particular wrong that can be released.
THE PATTERN
Release is pictured as what God sends away and what people extend to one another.
I, even I, I AM, the one who wipes away your rebellion for my own sake, and I will not remember your missed marks.The breath of the LORD is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the emptied. He has sent me to heal the shattered in heart, to herald release to the captives, and the return of sight for the blind, to send the crushed away into release.And release our debts, as we also release our debtors.THE THREAD
But so that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to release shortcomings, he said to the paralyzed man.The same Greek release verb appears again, now joined to the Son of man’s authority on earth. The question in verse 7 opens onto the claim that this authority is present in the speaker.
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