What Does Mark 5:14 Mean?
And those who fed the swine fled and told it in the city and in the fields. And they came out to see what had happened.
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 they that fed the swine fled, and told it in the city, and in the country. And they went out to see what it was that was done.THE KEY
The people who first flee become the message that draws everyone else out to see.
THE MEANING
The event moves through people: those who flee carry its report into city and countryside, and others come out to see what has happened. A disturbance becomes public witness, and sight gives way to inquiry.
THE ROOT
ἀπήγγειλαν
apēngeilan
GROWS FROM
ἀγγέλλω
aggellō
To announce or report; the word here means they carried the news outward.
“told” in this verse is apēngeilan. The report is not a footnote to the flight: it carries the event beyond the place where it happened. The same announcement-root appears in words for a messenger and for good news, showing how a spoken report can send others toward what they have not yet seen.
ALSO GROWS
angelos: Messenger
ἄγγελος
The feeders become messengers of the event, carrying it into the city and countryside.
euangelion: Good news, an announcement
εὐαγγέλιον
This related word highlights the force of an announcement: news travels and summons a response, even when the event itself is unsettling.
ἔφυγον
ephygon
GROWS FROM
φεύγω
pheugō
To flee or escape; the related stem is φευγ-.
“fled” in this verse is ephygon. Flight is the first response, but it does not make the event disappear. The same root gives language for flight itself and for a fugitive, placing the witnesses in motion before they become the ones who tell the story.
ALSO GROWS
phygē: Flight
φυγή
The report begins with an escape from the scene; movement becomes the passage by which the event spreads.
phygas: Fugitive
φυγάς
This branch names one who flees, making the feeders’ first response part of the story that reaches others.
ἰδεῖν
idein
GROWS FROM
ἰδ-/ϝιδ- (*weid-)
To see or perceive; the Greek word belongs to a family historically linking seeing with knowing.
“see” in this verse is idein. They come not only to look but to find out what has happened. The Greek word’s deeper family links seeing with knowing, so the crowd’s arrival turns a spreading report into direct perception.
ALSO GROWS
oida: I know
οἶδα
Its connection with the same historical root ties knowing to having seen; the crowd seeks its own knowledge of the event.
idea: Form, appearance
ἰδέα
This branch keeps the sense of what can be seen or recognized as the crowd tries to grasp what has taken place.
THE PATTERN
An encounter becomes public witness when those who have seen it carry the report outward and invite others to see.
Come and hear, all you who stand in awe of God, and I will recount what he has done for my living soul.Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Is this not the Anointed One?For we cannot keep from speaking what we have perceived and heard.THE THREAD
For we cannot keep from speaking what we have perceived and heard.In Mark, people flee, tell what happened, and draw others out to see it; Acts gives the same movement in compressed form: seeing and hearing become speech. What is witnessed does not stay with the first witnesses, it travels through their telling.
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