What Does Mark 6:40 Mean?
And they fell back in garden plots, by hundreds and by fifties.
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 they sat down in ranks, by hundreds, and by fifties.THE KEY
Mark’s Greek pictures the crowd as garden beds repeated across the grass, an image of order that the English word “ranks” conceals.
THE MEANING
The people are arranged in groups of hundreds and fifties, so the multitude takes a shape that can be seen and served. What first looks like one vast crowd becomes distinct groups resting on the grass.
THE ROOT
πρασιαὶ πρασιαὶ
prasiai prasiai
GROWS FROM
πρασιά
prasia
A garden bed or plot, often arranged in rows.
“garden plots” in this verse is prasiai prasiai. The Greek word means garden beds or plots, and Mark repeats it: bed after bed. “Ranks” preserves the order but loses the image of a green field laid out in cultivated plots.
ALSO GROWS
prasia: Garden bed or plot.
πρασιά
The singular form reveals the image beneath “rank”: each group is pictured as a plot in the field.
prasiai prasiai: Garden beds, garden beds; the repeated plural form in this verse.
πρασιαὶ πρασιαὶ
The repetition presents the arrangement group after group, making the crowd’s order visible.
THE PATTERN
A multitude becomes workable when it is given a clear shape of smaller groups.
And he commanded them to make all recline in companies upon the green grass.Moreover, you shall look out from all the people for men of strength, who stand in awe of God, men of truth, who hate plunder; and set such over them as rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens.Let all things become well shaped, and in rank.THE THREAD
And he commanded them to make all recline in companies upon the green grass.The previous verse places the people in companies on green grass; this verse pictures those groups as garden beds, bed after bed. Together, the verses make the crowd look like a field arranged into plots.
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