What Does Mark 7:22 Mean?
adulteries, grasping for more, wickedness, bait, unbridled excess, an evil eye, blasphemy, puffing up, foolishness.
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
Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness:THE KEY
“Wickedness” and “an evil eye” share the same Greek word-family, binding harmful acts to a way of seeing.
THE MEANING
These names trace several ways harm takes shape in you: taking, grasping for more, hiding intent, and begrudging another’s good. The list shows that what rises within can shape both what you do and how you see.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that harm only comes from outside you gives way: this verse names patterns that arise from within.
THE ROOT
πονηρία
ponēria
GROWS FROM
πονηρ-
ponēr-
Harmful, bad, wicked
“wickedness / an evil eye” in this verse is ponēria. English gives “wickedness” and “evil” separate sounds, but Greek repeats the same word-family. The evil eye can describe an envious or begrudging way of seeing, so the list links inner harm with a gaze that resents another’s good.
ALSO GROWS
ponēria: Wickedness or harmfulness
πονηρία
This is the list’s first form from the ponēr- family; the same stem returns in “evil eye.”
ponēros: Bad or harmful; in the phrase, “evil”
πονηρός
It describes the eye in “an evil eye,” showing that the gaze and wickedness share a word-family.
πλεονεξία
pleonexia
GROWS FROM
πλέον + ἔχω (pleon + echō)
Having more; wanting to have more
“grasping for more” in this verse is pleonexia. The word carries the sense of reaching for more than one has. Listed beside thefts and deceit, it reveals how grasping can extend into taking from others or dealing with them unfairly.
ALSO GROWS
pleonektēs: One who wants more
πλεονέκτης
The same word-family names the person shaped by the appetite for more.
pleonekteō: To seek gain at another’s expense
πλεονεκτέω
This branch shows how wanting more can become exploitation.
THE PATTERN
What rises from within takes visible form in how you handle another’s good.
Above every watch you keep, guard your heart, for from it flow the springs of life.Then craving, when it has conceived, gives birth to falling short; and falling short, when it is full-grown, bears death.Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with what is mine? Is your eye sore because I am good?THE THREAD
Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with what is mine? Is your eye sore because I am good?Matthew uses the same Greek phrase, “evil eye,” as Mark. The question links that gaze to resentment at generosity, opening Mark’s list to show how harm can begin in begrudging another’s good.
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