What Does Mark 7:19 Mean?
Because it does not enter his heart, but into his belly, and goes out into the drain, cleansing all foods?
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
Because it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging all meats?THE KEY
What passes through the body is not what reaches the heart, and its exit is described with the language of cleansing.
THE MEANING
Food enters the belly and leaves by the draught; it does not enter the heart. The verse distinguishes bodily passage from the inward center, describing that passage as a purging of all foods.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A particular food, by entering the body, makes the heart unclean.
THE ROOT
καθαρίζον
katharizōn
GROWS FROM
καθαρ-
kathar-
clean, make clean
The participle translated “purging” belongs to the same Greek word family as “clean” and “cleansing.” The line holds bodily expulsion and cleanness together: food passes through the belly and out.
ALSO GROWS
katharos: clean, pure
καθαρός
This related word makes the cleansing sense of “purging” visible within the same word family.
katharismos: cleansing, purification
καθαρισμός
This branch names the act of cleansing, echoing the verse’s description of food passing through and out.
καρδία
kardia
GROWS FROM
καρδ-
kard-
heart, the inner center
Kardia names the heart, which the verse distinguishes from the belly: food enters one place but does not reach the other. Its branches keep the heart as the inward site of condition and knowing.
ALSO GROWS
sklērokardia: hardness of heart
σκληροκαρδία
This compound uses the same heart word for an inward condition, showing what the verse sets apart from bodily digestion.
kardiognōstēs: knower of hearts
καρδιογνώστης
This word presents the heart as an inward place that can be known, not merely a bodily passage.
THE PATTERN
What enters the body does not determine the heart’s cleanness; the decisive concern is the inward condition and what is called clean.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steady breath within me.There is nothing from outside a man, entering into him, that can make him common. But the things coming out of a man, those are the things that make the man common.Do not, for the sake of food, unbuild the work of God. All things are clean indeed, but it is evil for the man who eats through a stumbling.THE THREAD
And the voice spoke to him again the second time, What God has cleansed, do not make common.The Greek verb translated “purging” here shares the root καθαρ- (kathar-, clean) with “cleansed” in Acts 10:15. That shared root brings the language of cleansing into view in both verses.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us