What Does Mark 4:33 Mean?
And with many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they could hear it.
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 with many such parables spake he the word unto them, as they were able to hear it.THE KEY
Each parable sets an image beside the word, so meaning reaches the hearer through comparison.
THE MEANING
The word reaches the reader through many parables, with each image set beside what it means. Hearing has a measure: the word is spoken as the hearers can receive it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that hearing is all-or-nothing: a person can receive the word in the measure they can hear now.
THE ROOT
παραβολαῖς
parabolais
GROWS FROM
βάλλω
ballō
To throw or cast; joined with para-, it forms the sense of placing alongside.
“parables” in this verse is parabolais. A parable is a comparison set beside the word: meaning comes through an image placed alongside it. The English word can sound like a story category, while the Greek keeps the motion of setting one thing beside another.
ALSO GROWS
paraballō: To place beside; compare.
παραβάλλω
This verb carries the action inside parabolē: an image is placed beside the word so the hearer can approach its meaning through comparison.
bolē: A cast or throw.
βολή
In Luke’s phrase “a stone’s cast,” bolē marks the reach of something thrown; parabolē adds para-, setting one thing beside another.
ἠδύναντο
ēdynanto
GROWS FROM
δύναμαι (dynamai), δυνα- (dyna-)
To be able or capable; to have strength or power.
The verse describes hearing in terms of capacity: the word is spoken as far as the hearers are able to receive it. The Greek family also names power and capability, giving “able to hear” a sense of capacity rather than mere sound reaching the ear.
ALSO GROWS
dynamis: Power, ability, capacity.
δύναμις
This branch makes the capacity in “able to hear” explicit: hearing here is bounded by what the hearers can take in.
dynatos: Able, capable, powerful.
δυνατός
The same family describes what someone is capable of, reinforcing that the verse measures the speech by the hearers’ capacity.
THE PATTERN
Speech meets hearers at the measure they can bear.
Whom will he teach to perceive? And whom will he make to understand what is heard? Those weaned from milk, drawn from the breasts.I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot carry them now.I gave you milk to drink, not food, for until now you were not able to carry it, nor even now are you able.THE THREAD
Therefore I speak to them in parables, because looking, they do not see; and hearing, they do not hear, nor do they put it together.Matthew uses the same word translated “parables”, Greek παραβολή (parabolē), a comparison set beside, and shows that an image can be present without being received. Mark’s phrase “as they were able to hear” names the limit as capacity; Matthew shows what it looks like when hearing does not become understanding.
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