What Does Mark 3:5 Mean?
And when he had looked around at them with swelling anger, pained together over the stoniness of their hearts, he said to the man, Stretch out your hand. And he stretched it out, and his hand was set back in place, whole as the other.
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 when he had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts, he saith unto the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it out: and his hand was restored whole as the other.THE KEY
The hand becomes whole as the callus of the watching hearts is exposed as another wound.
THE MEANING
The verse meets you now with two conditions at once: a hand made whole and a watching heart exposed as callused toward another’s need. Anger and grief stand beside restoration, revealing that the visible injury is not the only wound in the scene.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that only the visibly impaired person needs restoration; a heart that refuses to feel another’s need is also shown as wounded.
THE ROOT
πωρώσει
pōrōsei
GROWS FROM
πωρ-
pōr-
A stone-like hardening or callus that dulls responsiveness.
The Greek word for the heart’s hardness belongs to a family of words for stone and callusing. The hand is restored while the heart’s callus is brought into view, revealing that the scene holds more than one kind of injury.
ALSO GROWS
pōros: A hard stone or callus.
πῶρος
This branch shows hardness as something that forms over a surface and dulls sensation.
pōroō: To make callous or harden.
πωρόω
This verb presents hardness as a process that can cover a heart’s capacity to respond.
συλλυπούμενος
syllupoumenos
GROWS FROM
λυπ-
lyp-
Sorrow or grief; the compound adds the sense of being grieved with or alongside.
“pained together” in this verse is syllupoumenos. The verse holds grief together with anger rather than presenting a cold judgment. The compound’s συν- (“with, together”) and the grief-root show an emotional response that remains engaged with the scene.
ALSO GROWS
lypē: Grief or sorrow.
λύπη
This is the sorrow carried within the word translated “grieved.”
lypeō: To grieve or cause sorrow.
λυπέω
This verb shows grief as an active response to what brings pain.
ἀπεκατεστάθη
apekatestathē
GROWS FROM
καθίστημι
kathistēmi
To set in place, establish, or put into a condition.
“set back in place” in this verse is apekatestathē. The verb for the hand’s restoration grows from the idea of setting something in place again. The hand is made whole as the other; the wording presents wholeness as a return to its condition, not the addition of something foreign.
ALSO GROWS
kathistēmi: To set in place, establish, or appoint.
καθίστημι
This is the base verb whose sense of setting gives shape to the language of restoration.
apokathistēmi: To restore or reestablish.
ἀποκαθίστημι
This is the verb family behind the hand being restored to wholeness.
THE PATTERN
Restoration reveals whether devotion is serving life or protecting hardness.
For I delight in faithful love and not slaughter, and the knowledge of God more than the ascending offerings.Is this not the fast I have chosen, to open the bonds of wickedness, to untie the cords of the yoke, to send the crushed away free, and to tear away every yoke?And this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom the Adversary has bound, look, these eighteen years, ought she not to be unbound from this binding on the sabbath day?THE THREAD
with their understanding gone dark, made foreign to the life of God through the not knowing that is in them, because of the hardening of their heart.Mark’s “hardness” and Ephesians’ “blindness” translate the same Greek noun, πώρωσις (pōrōsis). The shared word connects a callused heart with dulled perception, showing hardness as a wound that obscures life.
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