What Does Mark 6:29 Mean?
And when his disciples heard, they came and lifted up his corpse, and laid it in a tomb.
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 when his disciples heard of it, they came and took up his corpse, and laid it in a tomb.THE KEY
The word “corpse” pictures a body that has fallen; the disciples’ first answer is to lift it into a place of remembrance.
THE MEANING
When the news reaches those who knew him, they come for his body. They lift the fallen body and lay it in a tomb, whose name carries the sense of remembrance. Grief takes physical form in their care for him.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a person’s body is beyond care after death: the disciples come, carry John, and lay him to rest.
THE ROOT
πτῶμα
ptōma
GROWS FROM
πίπτω
píptō
To fall; a fallen thing.
The word translated “corpse” comes from the verb “to fall,” picturing a body that has fallen. The disciples’ response is concrete: they lift that fallen body and carry it.
ALSO GROWS
píptō: To fall or descend.
πίπτω
This is the verb from which πτῶμα comes, connecting the word for corpse with the image of a body fallen.
ptōsis: A fall or collapse.
πτῶσις
This related noun keeps the image of falling close to the verse’s word for the body they carry.
μνημεῖον
mnēmeion
GROWS FROM
μνήμη
mnēmē
Memory; remembrance.
The Greek word for tomb is related to the word for remembrance. The disciples place John’s body in a resting place whose language also carries the sense of a memorial.
ALSO GROWS
mnēmē: Memory or remembrance.
μνήμη
This related word reveals the remembrance carried in the Greek word for tomb.
mnēmoneuō: To remember or call to mind.
μνημονεύω
Its shared word-family makes remembrance a thread running through the name of the place where John is laid.
THE PATTERN
After death, those who remain honor the dead through bodily care and burial.
For his sons lifted him into the land of Canaan, and buried him in the cave of the field of Machpelah, which Abraham bought with the field for a holding of a grave of Ephron the Hittite, facing Mamre.Then they took the body of Jesus, and bound it in linen wrappings with the spices, as is the custom of the Jews to bury.And reverent men carried Stephen to his burial, and beat their breasts over him in great mourning.THE THREAD
And the women also, who had come with him from Galilee, walked closely behind, and gazed at the tomb, and at how his body was placed.Mark’s “tomb” and Luke’s “sepulchre” translate μνημεῖον (mnēmeion), a tomb or memorial, connecting burial with remembrance. Luke’s women watch where and how Jesus’ body is laid, echoing the attention given to John’s body here.
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