What Does Mark 5:11 Mean?
Now a great herd of swine was feeding there, near the mountain.
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
Now there was there nigh unto the mountains a great herd of swine feeding.THE KEY
The quiet act of feeding becomes the hinge between an unseen presence and its visible cost.
THE MEANING
The herd grazes calmly while an unseen presence presses toward a place to enter. The scene holds ordinary provision beside a destructive force about to make itself visible in what it touches.
THE ROOT
βοσκομένη
boskomenē
GROWS FROM
βοσκ-
bosk-
To feed, pasture, or let graze.
“feeding” in this verse is boskomenē. The Greek verb βόσκω (boskō, “feed or pasture”) can describe both animals grazing and the tending of a flock. Its use here shares a word with Jesus’ later command to feed his sheep, placing a scene of ordinary grazing beside the question of what truly sustains or consumes a life.
ALSO GROWS
boskein: To feed or pasture.
βόσκειν
In Luke 15:15 this form describes the son being sent into the fields to feed swine, linking the act of feeding with the condition of the one assigned to it.
boske: Feed; tend by providing nourishment.
βόσκε
Jesus uses this form in John 21:17 when he tells Peter to feed his sheep, giving the same root a picture of care and sustenance.
THE PATTERN
A feeding place makes visible who is being sustained and the condition of that life.
He lays me down in green pastures; he leads me beside resting waters.And he went and clung to a citizen of that land, and the citizen sent him into his fields to feed pigs.He said to him a third time, "Simon, son of Jonas, do you hold me dear?" Peter was pained because he said to him a third time, "Do you hold me dear?" And he said to him, "Lord, you know all things; you know that I hold you dear." Jesus said to him, "Pasture my sheep."THE THREAD
He said to him a third time, "Simon, son of Jonas, do you hold me dear?" Peter was pained because he said to him a third time, "Do you hold me dear?" And he said to him, "Lord, you know all things; you know that I hold you dear." Jesus said to him, "Pasture my sheep."The Greek verb βόσκω (boskō, “feed or pasture”) describes the swine grazing here and appears in Jesus’ command, βόσκε (boske, “feed or pasture”), to Peter. The shared word connects animal grazing with the work of sustaining a flock, while the surrounding scenes reveal the difference between what gives life and what destroys.
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