What Does Mark 6:1 Mean?
And he went out from there and came into the land of his fathers, and his disciples walked after 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
And he went out from thence, and came into his own country; and his disciples follow him.THE KEY
The disciples follow Jesus not away from his roots, but straight into them.
THE MEANING
Jesus enters the place tied to his own origins, and his disciples go with him. Here, following is movement lived alongside him, even as he returns to familiar ground.
THE ROOT
μαθηταὶ
mathētai
GROWS FROM
μανθ-
manth-
The verbal stem in μανθάνω (manthanō), meaning “learn.”
The word translated “disciples” names learners: these followers are defined by learning, not simply by proximity. In this sentence, their following is the outward movement of that learning; they go where Jesus goes.
ALSO GROWS
mathētēs: Learner, student, disciple
μαθητής
The noun names the kind of person who follows Jesus here: one who learns from him.
manthanō: To learn
μάνθανω
The verb reveals the learning held inside the identity of a disciple.
πατρίδα
patrida
GROWS FROM
πατήρ
patēr
Father; paternal origin and belonging.
“His own country” is πατρίς (patris), a place named through πατήρ (patēr), “father”: country carries the sense of paternal origin and belonging. The sentence places this rootedness beside the disciples’ movement, so belonging and following appear together.
ALSO GROWS
patēr: Father
πατήρ
This is the word behind the sense of paternal origin in πατρίς.
patria: Family, lineage, kindred
πατριά
This related word extends the root’s sense of origin into a family or line of belonging.
THE PATTERN
Following takes shape as movement in the wake of another.
And he let go of the oxen, and ran after Elijah, and said, "Let me, please, kiss my father and my mother, and then I will walk after you." And he said to him, "Go, turn back, for what have I done to you?"And straightway they let go of their nets, and followed him.If anyone serves me, let them follow me, and where I am, there my servant will also be. If anyone serves me, my Father will give them weight.THE THREAD
And straightway they let go of their nets, and followed him.Mark 1:18 uses the same verb, ἀκολουθέω (akoloutheō), “follow.” Here that same movement carries the disciples into Jesus’s own country: following is motion that travels with him.
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