What Does Mark 5:4 Mean?
For he had often been bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been pulled apart by him, and the fetters crushed to pieces; and no one had the strength to tame him.
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
Because that he had been often bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been plucked asunder by him, and the fetters broken in pieces: neither could any man tame him.THE KEY
A chain can restrain the body without giving anyone mastery over the person.
THE MEANING
You see two things held together: this man is repeatedly bound, yet no person can bring him under control. The chains are real, and so is their failure.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that enough force can make a person governable; here, repeated restraint never becomes mastery.
THE ROOT
δαμάσαι
damasai
GROWS FROM
δαμ-
To subdue, tame, or bring under control.
English gives you “tame,” but the Greek verb carries the force of subduing. The repeated bonds do not prove that anyone has gained mastery; the verse exposes the limit of that power.
ALSO GROWS
damazō: To tame or subdue.
δαμάζω
This is the verb’s dictionary form; it names the act no person in the verse can accomplish.
adamastos: Untamed, unsubdued.
ἀδάμαστος
This related form names the state of remaining beyond subduing, sharpening the limit the verse describes.
δεδέσθαι
dedesthai
GROWS FROM
δέω
deō
To bind or tie.
The verse names physical bonds separately from the act of taming: the body is bound, but human mastery remains out of reach. It holds the restraint and its failure together without suggesting the chains are unreal.
ALSO GROWS
desmos: A bond or fetter.
δεσμός
It makes the literal bond in the scene part of the same word family as “bound.”
desmōtēs: A prisoner, one who is bound.
δεσμώτης
This branch names the person through the bonds placed on them, while the verse shows that being bound does not mean being mastered.
THE PATTERN
Physical restraint can hold a person without producing inward mastery.
Is this not the fast I have chosen, to open the bonds of wickedness, to untie the cords of the yoke, to send the crushed away free, and to tear away every yoke?The one slow to flare is better than the mighty, and the one who rules his breath is better than the one who seizes a city.For every kind of beast, and of bird, and of creeping thing, and of what swims in the sea, is tamed, and has been tamed by humankind.THE THREAD
For every kind of beast, and of bird, and of creeping thing, and of what swims in the sea, is tamed, and has been tamed by humankind.James uses the Greek verb δαμάζω (damazō, “to tame or subdue”), the same word family as Mark’s δαμάσαι (damasai, “to tame”). James describes what humans can tame; Mark shows a man no human can bring under control.
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