What Does Mark 8:3 Mean?
And if I send them away unfed to their own homes, they will go slack along the way, for some of them have come from far.
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 if I send them away fasting to their own houses, they will faint by the way: for divers of them came from far.THE KEY
The Greek words for “send away” and “faint” share the root λύω (lyō, “loosen”), joining dismissal to the body’s giving way.
THE MEANING
Your hunger and the distance you have traveled matter to whether you can make it home. Sent onward while fasting, you can lose strength along the road. The verse sees the journey as something borne by a body, not an idea.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Release alone is not always care: someone sent onward hungry may be too weak to finish the road.
THE ROOT
ἀπολύσω
apolýsō
GROWS FROM
λύω
lyō
To loosen, untie, or release.
“send them away” in this verse is apolýsō. “Send away” is ἀπολύσω (apolýsō), built on λύω (lyō, “loosen”); “faint” is ἐκλυθήσονται (eklythḗsontai), from ἐκλύω (eklýō, “loosen out; grow weary”). The shared seed joins dismissal to the body’s giving way: a person can be released from the table yet left too depleted for the road.
ALSO GROWS
apolýō: To release, dismiss, or send away.
ἀπολύω
This is the verb for sending the people home; its root links that release to the weakening named later in the verse.
eklýō: To loosen out; to grow weary or faint.
ἐκλύω
This is the verb behind “they will faint,” showing how a long road and an empty body can come undone together.
lyō: To loosen, untie, or release.
λύω
The base verb carries the shared image beneath both sending away and losing strength.
THE PATTERN
Care attends to bodily need before a person is sent back onto a difficult road.
And the messenger of the LORD turned back a second time, and touched him, and said, "Rise and eat, for the road is too great for you."Each man ate the bread of the mighty ones; he sent them provision to the full.So I urge you to take food, for this is for your deliverance, for not one hair from the head of any of you will perish.THE THREAD
Then Jesus called his disciples to himself and said, My insides turn toward the crowd, for they have remained with me now three days and have nothing to eat; and I will not send them away unfed, lest they come unstrung on the road.Matthew repeats the same pair: ἀπολύω (apolýō, “send away”) and ἐκλύω (eklýō, “grow faint”). Their shared root λύω (lyō, “loosen”) links dismissal to the body’s weakening when the road is long and the people are hungry.
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