What Does Mark 7:18 Mean?
And he said to them, So you also are unable to bring it together? Do you not perceive that whatever enters a man from outside cannot make him common?
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 saith unto them, Are ye so without understanding also? Do ye not perceive, that whatsoever thing from without entereth into the man, it cannot defile him;THE KEY
The verb translated “defile” means “make common,” so the verse asks what can make a person common, and says that what enters from outside cannot do it.
THE MEANING
Jesus names a confusion that remains easy to carry: what enters the body from outside does not by itself make the person unclean. The verse distinguishes what is received from what comes from within, which the following lines identify as the source of what defiles.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that contact with something external can, by itself, make the inner person unclean.
THE ROOT
κοινῶσαι
koinōsai
GROWS FROM
κοινός
koinos
Common, shared, or ordinary; the verb means to make common, hence to treat as profane or defiled.
“make common” in this verse is koinōsai. English “defile” can sound like an outside impurity clinging to a person, but the Greek verb carries the sense of making someone common. Mark repeats this verb in verse 23, where what comes from within defiles the person, so the same word frames the contrast between what enters and what emerges.
ALSO GROWS
koinos: Common, shared, ordinary
κοινός
This adjective gives the verb its basic sense: to defile is to make common.
koinōnia: Sharing in common
κοινωνία
The shared stem appears in a word for participation and sharing, keeping “common” at the center of the word family.
koinōneō: Share, participate
κοινωνέω
This related verb also carries the sense of having something in common, echoing the root beneath “defile.”
THE PATTERN
What comes from within reveals a person’s inner source more deeply than what merely enters from outside.
Above every watch you keep, guard your heart, for from it flow the springs of life.A good human brings out good from the good treasure of the heart, and an evil human brings out evil from the evil treasure of the heart, for from the overflow of the heart his mouth speaks.All these evil things come from within and make the man common.THE THREAD
All these evil things come from within and make the man common.The same Greek verb, κοινόω (koinoō), meaning “make common,” appears here: what enters from outside cannot make the person common, while what comes from within does. Its repetition makes the contrast visible in the very word translated “defile.”
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