What Does Mark 7:10 Mean?
For Moses said, Give weight to your father and your mother, and, Whoever speaks evil of father or mother, let him end in death.
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
For Moses said, Honour thy father and thy mother; and, Whoso curseth father or mother, let him die the death:THE KEY
The Greek makes the contrast sharp: honoring assigns worth, while cursing is speaking harm, and the verse places that speech under death.
THE MEANING
This verse places parental honor before you as an act of recognizing worth, and it names cursing a father or mother as speech that carries a death sentence. The line leaves the violence of that consequence in full view: contempt here is answered with death.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that contemptuous words toward a parent are harmless venting is undone here: the verse treats that speech as grave enough to warrant death.
THE ROOT
τίμα
tima
GROWS FROM
τιμ-
Assign value or price; esteem as worthy.
“give weight to” in this verse is tima. The command’s “honor” is grounded in assigning value, so the action is more than a respectful title: it recognizes the parent’s worth. Set beside the speech of cursing in the same sentence, honor becomes the opposite movement, giving regard rather than voicing harm.
ALSO GROWS
timē: Value, price, honor.
τιμή
This noun shows the worth carried inside the command to honor.
timios: Valuable, precious, honored.
τίμιος
This branch makes the idea of honor concrete as recognizing someone as worthy and precious.
κακολογῶν
kakologōn
GROWS FROM
κακολογ-
Speak badly or abusively of someone.
“speaks evil of” in this verse is kakologōn. The word translated “curseth” here means speaking evil of someone: the condemnation falls on hostile speech, not only on an inward feeling. Beside the language of worth in “honour,” it exposes the verse’s contrast between recognizing a parent and using words against them.
ALSO GROWS
kakologeō: To speak evil of or revile.
κακολογέω
This verb names the harmful speech the verse places beside the command to honor.
kakologia: Evil-speaking, abusive speech.
κακολογία
This noun gathers the act into a category of speech, bringing the verse’s focus on spoken contempt into view.
מֹשֶׁה
Mosheh
GROWS FROM
משׁה
Draw out, especially from water.
The name Moses is linked in Exodus 2:10 to being drawn out of the water. Here the verse names him as the voice carrying the command, placing a drawn-out life beside a sentence that threatens death for cursing a parent.
ALSO GROWS
māshāh: To draw out.
מָשָׁה
Exodus 2:10 uses this verb when Moses is drawn from the water.
Mosheh: Moses, the name linked to being drawn out.
מֹשֶׁה
The name carries the drawing-out image into Mark’s citation of Moses’ command.
THE PATTERN
Scripture links honoring parents with life, while treating cursing them as a matter of death.
Give weight to your father and your mother, that your days may lengthen upon the ground which the LORD your God gives you.For everyone who curses his father or his mother shall surely die. He has cursed his father or his mother; his blood is upon him.Give weight to your father and your mother, which is the first commandment with promise.THE THREAD
For God commanded, saying, Honor your father and mother, and, Whoever speaks evil of father or mother, let him end in death.Matthew 15:4 repeats the same Greek pair found here: τίμα (tima, honor or assign worth) and κακολογῶν (kakologōn, speaking evil of). Their shared wording shows the two passages placing recognition of a parent’s worth against speech that harms them, with the death sentence in view.
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