What Does Mark 7:17 Mean?
And when he entered a house, away from the crowd, his disciples asked him about the parable.
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 he was entered into the house from the people, his disciples asked him concerning the parable.THE KEY
A parable places an image beside its meaning, and the disciples’ question reaches for what the image lets them see.
THE MEANING
When the crowd falls away, the teaching remains open to question. The verse makes room for being close to a teaching without already understanding what it reveals.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that if a teaching is clear, you should understand it without asking.
THE ROOT
παραβολή
parabolē
GROWS FROM
βάλλω
ballō
The root βάλλω (ballō, to throw or place), joined with παρά (para, beside), gives the image of placing one thing beside another.
The word pictures meaning carried by comparison: one thing is set beside another so the second can be seen through the first. Hearing the parable is not yet the same as seeing what its image places alongside the truth.
ALSO GROWS
paraballō: to put or set beside; to compare
παραβάλλω
This verb names the action compressed into “parable”: setting an image beside the meaning it opens.
bolē: a throw, casting, or placing
βολή
This branch keeps the root’s image of something placed; the parable’s comparison gives the disciples something to examine.
THE PATTERN
A puzzling word opens further when it is brought into direct asking.
Indeed, if you call out for discernment, and give your voice to discernment.And when he was alone, those around him with the twelve asked him about the parables.But if any of you is left behind in wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all without doubling and without taunting, and it will be given him.THE THREAD
And when he was alone, those around him with the twelve asked him about the parables.The same word “parable” appears in both verses, and in each the disciples ask about it when the crowd has receded. Mark 4:10 makes the movement in this verse clearer: the image invites a question about what it places beside itself.
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