What Does Mark 5:7 Mean?
And he cried out with a loud voice and said, "What have I to do with you, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I bind you by God, that you do not torment me."
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 cried with a loud voice, and said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the most high God? I adjure thee by God, that thou torment me not.THE KEY
The voice names Jesus as the Most High, yet “torment” belongs to a Greek word family linked with the touchstone: recognition feels like exposure to the speaker.
THE MEANING
The voice recognizes Jesus’ rank and immediately pleads for distance and exemption from torment. It invokes God while resisting the one it addresses, so accurate naming and trust do not collapse into the same thing. The verse lets the reader hear fear speak plainly in the presence of authority.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the assumption that correct religious language proves trust: the speaker names Jesus accurately and still recoils from his presence.
THE ROOT
βασανίζω
basanizō
GROWS FROM
βασαν-
basan-
The Greek word family carries the sense of testing and torment, and is linked with the touchstone used to test material.
In Greek, βασανίζω (basanizō, to torment or test) belongs to a family linked with βάσανος (básanos, touchstone; torture). That echo lets the plea carry more than fear of pain: it sounds like fear of being brought under a test that reveals what is there.
ALSO GROWS
básanos: Touchstone; also torture or torment.
βάσανος
The touchstone tests what is real; the word’s association with torment lets the plea suggest fear of exposure through ordeal.
basanistēs: Torturer or tormentor.
βασανιστής
This related word names the one who inflicts the ordeal, showing how the word family joins testing with the experience of torment.
ὑψίστου
hypsistou
GROWS FROM
ὑψ-
hyps-
Height or elevation.
By calling Jesus the Son of the Most High God, the voice grants him the highest rank in its own words. Its next words are still resistance; recognition does not itself become welcome.
ALSO GROWS
hypsos: Height or high place.
ὕψος
The title’s image is one of elevation: Jesus is named above the powers the voice fears.
hypsoō: To lift up or exalt.
ὑψόω
This related verb makes the title’s upward language active: to name the Most High is to place Jesus above every rival claim.
THE PATTERN
Encounter with divine authority draws a creature’s hidden condition into speech.
Then I said, Woe is me! I am cut off, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I settle in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.Saying, "Leave us be. What is there between us and you, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to make us perish? I know who you are, the Set-Apart One of God."You trust that there is one God; you do well. The demons also trust, and shudder.THE THREAD
And they cried out, saying, What is there between us and you, Jesus, Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the season?Matthew uses the same βασανίζω (basanizō, torment) word family and adds “before the time.” That phrase makes the fear sound like dread of an appointed ordeal, opening the plea in Mark beyond a simple request to avoid pain.
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