What Does Mark 9:50 Mean?
Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, with what will you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and have wholeness with one another.
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
Salt is good: but if the salt have lost his saltness, wherewith will ye season it? Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another.THE KEY
The salt within seasons the life you share, linking what each of you carries inwardly to peace between you.
THE MEANING
Salt is an inner quality whose loss leaves life unsavored, and the verse names no outside remedy for it. It joins that inward quality to the way you live with one another: peace takes shape between you. The verse undoes the belief that peace between people can be separated from what each person carries within.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that peace between people can be separated from what each person carries within.
THE ROOT
ἀρτύσετε
artusete
GROWS FROM
ἀρτυ-
arty-
To season or prepare.
The verb translated “season” appears again in Colossians 4:6, where speech is “seasoned with salt.” The shared word links the salt within to what passes between people: inner quality gives shared words their savor.
ALSO GROWS
artysis: Seasoning or preparation.
ἄρτυσις
This related noun makes explicit the act of preparing or seasoning that Mark’s verb carries.
ērtumenos: Seasoned.
ἠρτυμένος
This participle from the same verb appears in Colossians 4:6 for speech seasoned with salt.
ἅλας
halas
GROWS FROM
ἁλ-
hal-
Salt; a salty substance.
The Greek word belongs to a family that includes both salt itself and the act of salting. The verse’s question about lost saltiness turns on a quality that must remain present to affect what it touches.
ALSO GROWS
halizō: To salt or season with salt.
ἁλίζω
This verb appears in Mark 9:49, just before this verse, where everyone is said to be salted with fire.
halykos: Salty.
ἁλυκός
James 3:12 uses this related word for salt water, showing the same salt-family across another image.
εἰρηνεύετε
eirēneuete
GROWS FROM
εἰρην-
eirēn-
Peace, concord, wholeness.
The verb carries the sense of being at peace, while its family includes the noun εἰρήνη (eirēnē, peace or wholeness). Wholeness here takes shape between people, not only within a person.
ALSO GROWS
eirēnē: Peace; wholeness.
εἰρήνη
This is the related noun behind the verse’s language of peace.
eirēnopoios: Peacemaker.
εἰρηνοποιός
This related compound names one who makes peace, echoing the verse’s relational focus.
THE PATTERN
What is held inwardly gives distinctiveness and savor to what is shared.
And every drawing near of your gift you season with salt; you do not cause the salt of the covenant of your God to cease from your gift. On all your drawing near you bring salt near.You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt has gone dull, with what shall it be salted? It has no strength left for anything, except to be thrown outside and trampled underfoot by humankind.Let your word always be in favor, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you must answer each one.THE THREAD
Let your word always be in favor, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you must answer each one.Mark’s “season” and Colossians’ “seasoned” come from the same Greek verb, ἀρτύω (artyō), to season or prepare. Colossians shows one place the salt within becomes visible: in the words shared with another.
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