What Does Mark 5:20 Mean?
And he went away and began to herald in Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and all marveled.
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 he departed, and began to publish in Decapolis how great things Jesus had done for him: and all men did marvel.THE KEY
A life changed by Jesus becomes the voice that carries wonder outward.
THE MEANING
You are not only where Jesus’ work takes place; you are also a voice through which it reaches farther. When what has been done for you is spoken aloud, others encounter it with wonder.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that what changes in you must stay private to matter. Here, a personal deliverance becomes public testimony without losing its intimacy.
THE ROOT
ἐθαύμαζον
ethaumazon
GROWS FROM
θαυμ-
θαυμ- (thaum-): wonder, marvel.
“marvel” in this verse is ethaumazon. The verb describes the people’s continuing response as the story travels: they are left marveling. The same root appears in both the wonder itself and what is marvelous, so the telling carries the deed into other people’s experience as wonder.
ALSO GROWS
thauma: A wonder, a marvel.
θαῦμα
This noun names the wonder that the people experience as they hear what Jesus has done.
thaumastos: Wonderful, marvelous.
θαυμαστός
This branch describes what awakens wonder, linking the people’s response to the remarkable work they hear about.
יֵשׁוּעַ
Yeshua
GROWS FROM
ישע
ישע (y-sh-ʿ): deliver from constriction into spaciousness.
The Greek form Ἰησοῦς (Iēsous, Jesus) represents the Hebrew name יֵשׁוּעַ (Yeshua, deliverance). The verse points to the name’s nature through what Jesus has done for him: deliverance becomes a story that can move beyond the person who received it.
ALSO GROWS
yeshuah: Deliverance.
יְשׁוּעָה
This noun shares the root letters and names the kind of act the verse says Jesus has done for him.
hoshia: He delivered, brought to safety.
הוֹשִׁיעַ
This verb shares the root letters and gives the name’s deliverance a concrete form: someone is brought out of what held him.
ἐποίησεν
epoiēsen
GROWS FROM
ποιε-
ποιε- (poie-): do, make, bring about.
The wonder is tied to what has actually been done for him. The root also gives words for a work made and for a doer, keeping the testimony grounded in an act rather than an idea.
ALSO GROWS
poiēma: A thing made, a work.
ποίημα
The word shares the ποιε- family and highlights the tangible work behind the man’s testimony.
poiētēs: A maker, a doer.
ποιητής
This branch shares the root and keeps attention on the one who brings an act about.
THE PATTERN
What deliverance does for a person becomes testimony that carries its source into a wider circle.
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?But you are a chosen lineage, a royal priesthood, a set-apart nation, a people made his own, so that you may tell out the excellences of the one who called you out of darkness into his wondrous light.THE THREAD
But Jesus did not allow him, and said to him, "Go to your house, to your own, and tell them how great things the Lord has done for you, and has had compassion on you."Both verses use ποιέω (poieō, do or make) for what the Lord has done for him. In verse 19, he is told to tell it; in verse 20, that telling spreads through the Decapolis.
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