What Does Mark 5:17 Mean?
And they began to plead with him to go away from their borders.
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 began to pray him to depart out of their coasts.THE KEY
The man is free, while the region asks the one who freed him to leave.
THE MEANING
A person can be restored while the surrounding community still asks the source of that restoration to leave. The request places a limit around the change they are willing to receive.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that witnessing deliverance means a community will automatically welcome the one who brings it.
THE ROOT
ὁρίων
horiōn
GROWS FROM
ὅρος
horos
ὅρος (horos) means a boundary or limit; ὅριον (horion) means a bounded district or territory.
“borders” in this verse is horiōn. English “coasts” can sound like a shoreline, but the Greek points to the limits of a territory. Their appeal asks Jesus to leave the bounds of their world.
ALSO GROWS
horizō: define or mark out a boundary
ὁρίζω
This branch makes the boundary in “coasts” active: a limit is being drawn around where Jesus may remain.
aphorizō: separate or set apart
ἀφορίζω
This related word shows how a boundary can divide one space or group from another; here the appeal draws a line between the region and Jesus.
THE PATTERN
When God’s presence unsettles a chosen order, people may seek distance from it instead of yielding that order.
And they came and urged them, and led them out, and asked them to go out of the city.From that time many of his disciples turned back, and walked with him no more.And the LORD said to Samuel, Hear and respond to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not spurned you, but they have spurned me, that I should not reign over them.THE THREAD
And he made from one blood every nation of humankind to settle upon all the face of the earth, marking out their fitted seasons and setting the boundary stones of their dwelling.Mark’s “coasts” translates ὅριον (horion), a bounded territory; Acts uses the related word ὁροθεσία (horothesia) for the bounds of human habitation. The shared root makes the boundary more than geography: the region’s limits exist within boundaries God sets.
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