Though this line seems like a simple introduction to the next verse it is much more than that. In a sense, it is a summary of the entire lesson in his criticism of the Pharisees.

Christ uses the combination of the Greek words for “hearing” and “understanding” in several verses that I have studied (Mar 4:12 quoting Isiah, Mat 13:23 and Mat 13:19 explaining the parable of the sower). In all of these verses, he discusses a specific problem. People can hear the same words and not agree on their meaning.

The term translated here as “understand” means literally “come together.” It carries the implicit idea of sharing a common understanding. Christ’s goal was bringing everyone together to a common ground of shared understanding.

The context here, of course, is that the Pharisees offered their own interpretations of religious law and that these interpretations turned the common understanding of the words of Moses upside down. Christ directly condemns this twisting of the words, accusing religious leaders of doing this simply to increase their own power over regular people.

Christ is championing the common understanding of the people. He foresees that his words will be available to all people directly, without having to be channeled through religious leaders. In a sense, this looks toward the printing press and the wrestling of the Bible from those who wished to control its meaning by virtue of their position as religious leaders.

Christ’s goal wasn’t to enlighten a chosen few among the elite priests but to enlighten the general population.

“Harken” is from akouô (akouo), which means “hear of,” “hear tell of,” “what one actually hears,” “know by hearsay,” “listen to,” “give ear to,” “hear and understand,” and “understand.”

“Understand” is from suniêmi (suniemi), which means “bring together,” “come together in agreement,” and, metaphorically, “to perceive” “to hear,” “to take notice of” and “to understand.”

Continuing Christ’s theme that religious leaders can cancel God’s intent by how they interpret it, the point of this verse is that leaders teach both in word and deed. It is not just their teaching, but, in this case, how people see them serving their own self-interest. Christ often repeats statements to emphasize the three overlapping realms–physical, mental, and emotional–in which we live. In this case, he touches on all three: “words” are the mental realm, but transmission of orders is the emotional (social) realm, and “doing” is the physical realm.

The general sense here is that people torture logic, that is, God’s logos, to justify what they want in terms of social power and physical gratification.

“Making…of none effect” is from akuroô (akuroo), which means “to cancel,” “to set aside,” and “render powerless.”

“Tradition” is from paradosis (paradosis), which means “handing down,” “transmission,” “that which is handed down,” and “the transmission of orders.” This specifically includes legends, traditions, and doctrines but it is not specific about the quality of what is handed down, only that it has been passed down.

“You have delivered” is from paradidômi (paradidomi), which means “to give over to another,” “to transmit,” “to hand down,” “to grant,” “to teach,” and “to bestow.”

“Many” is from polus, which means “many (in number),” “great (in size or power or worth),” and “large (of space).” As an adverb is means “far,” “very much,” “a great way,” and “long.”

“Such” is from toioutos (toioutos), which means “such as this,” “so great a thing,” “”such a condition,” “such a reason,” “and suchlike.”

“Like things” is from paromoios (paromoios), which means “closely resembling,” and “nearly equal.”

“Do you” is from poieô ( poieo), which means “to make,” “to produce,” “to create,” “to bring into existence,” “to bring about,” “to cause,” “to render,” “to consider,” “to prepare,” “to make ready,” and “to do.”

Christ’s message here is that the religious leaders tolerated someone in the community who violated the commandment of honoring their father and their mother if they gave their property as a gift to the temple. They should have shunned such a person, but didn’t.

If the original KJV seems a little convoluted in saying that, it seems to be because the original translators have a problem with a specific word. I know nothing of ancient Greek except a little I learned in high school and what I have picked up over the years studying the Greek of Christ’s words, so I am in no position to criticize the scholars who translated the NT into English in the KJV, but it sometimes feels like they tied themselves into knots because they wanted certain words to mean certain things even when they really didn’t.

In this case, the problem word is, as it so often is, aphiêmi, which is the basis for all references of “forgiving sin” in the NT. However, it actually has the meaning, as you can see below, of getting rid of something, letting it go, sending it away. When Christ referred to “forgiving sin” he was really telling us to let go of our own mistakes and the mistakes of others and to get past them (another meaning of aphiêmi). This has much more the sense of not dwelling on the past and especially of letting go and leaving behind than any sense of absolution that the word “forgive” carries.

The idea of “suffering” the sins of another is very closely connected to the idea of “forgiving” their sins, at least in the older English of the KJV, but you see how maintain that idea forces the translators to mistranslate another word, in this case, oudeis. Here they translate it as “ought” when it actually means “naught” and “nothing.” It is a negative world and has no sense at all of obligation.

“You suffer” is from aphiêmi (aphiemi), which means “to let fall,” “to send away,” “to let loose,” “to get rid of,” “to leave alone,” “to pass by,” “to permit,” and “to send forth from oneself.” This is the same word that is translated as “leave” and “forgive” in the New Testament.

“No more” is from ouketi (ouketi), which means “no more,” “no longer,” “no further” and generally, “not now.”

“Ought” is from oudeis, (oudeis) which means “no one,” “not one,” “nothing,” “naught,” “good for naught,” and “no matter.”

“To do” is from poieô ( poieo), which means “to make,” “to produce,” “to create,” “to bring into existence,” “to bring about,” “to cause,” “to render,” “to consider,” “to prepare,” “to make ready,” and “to do.”

The original here is a really convoluted translation with some poorly chosen words. The religious leaders taught people that if they declared all their property as a religious offering, they didn’t have to use it to support their parents. My guess is that while they were alive, they could live off that property but that it went to the temple upon their death. Think of this as the era’s version of declaring your business a non-profit corporation to avoid paying taxes only in this era, you wanted to get out of supporting your dependents because back in these primitive times that was thought of as a personal responsibility rather than the taxpayer’s obligation.

“Gift” is from dôron (doron) which means “gift,” “present,” and specifically a “votive gift” or “offering” to a god. The simpler term without the sense of a votive offering is “dorea.”

First “say” is from legô (lego) is used to describe what the scribes “say.” It means literally “pick up,” but it used to mean “recount,” “tell over,” “say,” “speak,” “teach,” and “command.”

The second “say”is epo (epo) which is from epos meaning “word.” It is used like we might say “give someone the word.”

“Out” is from ek, which means “out of,” “away from,” “from,” or “by.”

“You might be profited by me” is from ophellô (opheleo), which means “to own,” “to pay,” and “to be bound to render.” This is the verb form of ôpheleia, which means “help,” “aid,” and “succor” as well as “profit,” “advantage,” or “gain from war.”

Christ combines two old testament verses here, Deu 5:16 and Exd 21:17. His purpose is to offer a contrast of ideas, in this case, life versus death. Christ contrasts the honor due your parents for giving you life with the deadly effects of speaking evil of your parents. This contrast is typical of Christ’s teaching of the Old testament.

In the Greek, there is an odd correspondence between the verbs used for “honor” and “die.” The former means “value” and the later can also mean “to accomplish” in the sense of finishing a task. In the Greek, I am left with the sense that those who speak evil of their parents are honoring the accomplishment of death over the accomplishment of life. This wordplay only works in Greek.

However, there is similar contrast in the original Hebrew, which is interesting as well. The term for “honor” means “to be heavy.” Here the contrast that is brought to mind is between the heaviness of birth and the heaviness of death.

On the continuing theme of the mistranslation of “good” and “evil” in the NT, here we see one of the rare references to the Greek word that actually does mean “evil,” kakos, which appears in the compound, kakologeô, to speak evil. As we like to point out, despite the fondness of the English translators for the word “evil,” the Greek of the NT seldom uses this Greek term that means “evil.” The term usually translated as “evil” actually is closer in meaning to “worthless,”
base,” and “second-rate.”

(Note: The Greek and Hebrew versions of “die the death” are a little different and, interestingly, the English translation here is closer to the Hebrew, something we don’t see very often. The Hebrew phrase repeats the verb muwth with its infinitive, meaning something like “kill dead” while the Greek version from the Septuagint uses to different verbs and is closer to “make dead,” but the ideas are the same. As I have pointed out elsewhere, Christ was raised in Egypt, where Alexandria was the center of Jewish culture and where the Septuagint was written a few centuries before Christ. If he taught in Greek as well as Aramaic, he would have quoted from the Septuagint version, but, of course, the authors of the New Testament might also have referred to the Septuagint in translating Christ’s words from Aramaic as well. )

“Honour” is from the Greek timaô , (timao) which means “to revere,” “to honor,” and “to value.” In the original Hebrew, it is from kabad, which means “to be heavy,” “to be rich,” and “to be honored.” Though the Greek word doesn’t have the same sense of “weight” as the Hebrew, weight is often connected in Greek with value. In a commodity based society, value and weight were the same. We say that we give “weight” to an arguments in the same sense that the ancients would give “weight” to the rules of a leader or a God.

“Curse” is from kakologeô (kakologeo), which means “revile” and “abuse.” It is a compound of the word that means “bad” and “evil” kakos (kakos) and the word logos (logos), which means “word,” “computation,” “reckoning,” and “value.”

“Die” is from teleutaô (teleutao), which means “to bring to pass,” “to accomplish,” “to finish,” “to die,” “to end a life,” and “to make an end to life.” The word in Hebew is from muwth, which means “to die” and “to kill.”

“Death” is from thanatos (thanatos), which means “death” “a death sentence,” and “a corpse.” However, the word could be a form of the verb, thanatoô, which is the future passive of the verb meaning “to be put to death,” “to be made dead.” The word in Hebew is from muwth, which means “to die” and “to kill.”

When Christ seems to repeat a phrase, he never does so frivolously. He does it because it is easy to miss his meaning. My response is to look more closely at the Greek to see what I am missing.

In this case, what I found is that the word translated as “traditions” actually has a much most specific meaning in this context. The word doesn’t mean “tradition” exactly. It means “to transmit,” to “hand down” or “pass on” something, like legends or traditions are handed down from one generation to the next. However, in this context, it has a more specific meaning, referring specifically to the transmission of orders and the transmission of authority from one generation to the next.

What religious leaders are protecting is their ability to acts as the middlemen between God and their followers. Christ saw these middlemen as making God’s message ineffective because what they emphasize is their power as priests rather than God’s will. Hence, we have “house-keeping” tasks such as washing the dishes, taking precedence over more important matters.

In this discussion, it was the Pharisees who started this topic, condemning Christ’s followers for not washing their hands as “handed down from the elders.”

“Full well” is from kalos (kalos), which means “beautiful,” “good,” “of fine quality,” “noble,” and “honorable.” It is most often translated as “good” juxtaposed with “evil” in the New Testament, but the two ideas are closer to “wonderful” and “worthless,” “noble” and “base.”

“Reject” is from atheteô (atheteo), which means “to deny,” “to disprove,” “to cancel,” “to render ineffective,” and to :break faith with.”

“You may keep” is from têreô (tereo), which means “to watch over,” “to guard,” “to take care of,” “to give heed to,” “to keep,” and “to observe.”

“Tradition” is from paradosis (paradosis), which means “handing down,” “transmission,” “that which is handed down,” and “the transmission of orders.” This specifically includes legends, traditions, and doctrines but it is not specific about the quality of what is handed down, only that it has been passed down.

In reading Christ’s words in Greek, the concept of the “forgiveness of sin” that is emphasized in translation seems to disappear. The term that gets translated as “forgiveness” (aphiêmi) is not necessarily a good thing, like “mercy” for example. The term means simply “letting go,” which can be good and also can be bad. This verse is an example of “letting go” as being a bad thing. Here, he condemns people for letting go of the God’s orders.

Christ saw a serious conflict between “God’s command” and “human tradition.” The theme of many of his encounters with religious leaders is that they enforced a number of traditions in order to maintain their power over people, especially their power to criticize others. This lead to a meaningless formalism in religion. Something we see happening in every faith. Indeed, as Christ indicated, formalizing religion is a human tradition not the command of God.

Here, Christ trivializes these formal religious traditions, equating them to washing dishes and other tasks that have no inherent meaning.

“Laying aside” is from aphiêmi (aphiemi), which means “to let fall,” “to send away,” “to let loose,” “to get rid of,” “to leave alone,” “to pass by,” “to permit,” and “to send forth from oneself.” This is the same word that is translated as “leave” and “forgive” in the New Testament.

“Commandment” is from entolê (entole)which means “injunction,” “order,” and “command.”

“Hold” is from krateô(krateo), which means “to rule,” “to hold sway,” “to be the lord and master,” “to conquer,” “to prevail over,” “to get the upper hand,” “to seize,” “to control,” and “to command.”

“Tradition” is from paradosis (paradosis), which means “handing down,” “transmission,” “that which is handed down,” and “the transmission of orders.” This specifically includes legends, traditions, and doctrines but it is not specific about the quality of what is handed down, only that it has been passed down.

“Washing” is from baptismos (baptismos), which means “dipping in water,” and “immersion.”

“Pots” is from xestês (xestes), which means a “measurement of about a pint,” a “pitcher,” or a “cup.”

“Cup” is from potêrion(poterion), which means “a drinking-cup,” “a wine-cup,” “a jar,” and “a receptacle” for offerings in the temple.

“Many” is from polus, which means “many (in number),” “great (in size or power or worth),” and “large (of space).” As an adverb is means “far,” “very much,” “a great way,” and “long.”

“Other” is from allos (allos), which means “another.”

“Such” is from toioutos (toioutos), which means “such as this,” “so great a thing,” “”such a condition,” “such a reason,” “and suchlike.”

“Like things” is from paromoios (paromoios), which means “closely resembling,” and “nearly equal.”

“You do” is from poieô ( poieo), which means “to make,” “to produce,” “to create,” “to bring into existence,” “to bring about,” “to cause,” “to render,” “to consider,” “to prepare,” “to make ready,” and “to do.”

This is one of the most unusual translations in the KJV because it ignores the line in Isaiah 29:13 that Christ is quoting. That line is translated in the OT of KJV from the Hebrew as “their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men.” If you look at the Greek, you can see how it can be translated the same. The word translated as “worship” primarily means “fear.” The word translated as “in vain” also means “falsely” so we easily get “but falsely do they fear me, teaching [my] instructions like human orders.” The translation of the full verse of Isaiah, which is quoted in here and in the previous verse (and that we saw before in Matt 15:7-9 in the same Greek) is:

Wherefore the Lord said, Forasmuch as this people draw near [me] with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men:

The point is that religious leaders tend to teach the fear of God rather than the love of God. They think of God’s instruction as human laws, which we must obey out of fear of punishment. They don’t see them as instructions given to us out of love and a desire for us to have the best lives possible. God is a father offering advice and direction out of love not a policeman or judge threatening us with the law. This is very much in line with Christ’s teaching that the Sabbath was made for men, not men for the Sabbath.

In other words, God.s instructions are not like the orders of a ruler. They are explanations of how the world works, that is, the universal rule. In a sense, they are the laws of nature. We cannot violate them without suffering the consequences any more than we can walk off a cliff without tangling with the law of gravity. God’s instructions are about the nature of things not meaningless lines in the sand that he is forbidding us to cross. The commandments exist not to deprive us of pleasures but to enable us to have better lives.

“In vain” is from the Greek matên (maten)which means “in vain,” “fruitless,” “at random,” “idly,” and “falsely.”

“Do they worship” is from sebomai (sebomai), which means “full of awe,” “feel fear” or “feel shame,” before God, “fear to do,” and “worship”. In Hebrew, the sense of fear is more direct. The single word, yir’ah, which means “fear,” “awe,” or “fear of God.” In the original Hebrew, this line is translated in KJV as saying, that the fear of God comes from the teaching of men, not from God. The Greek could and should be translated this way as well.

“Teaching” is from didaskô (didasko), which means “to teach,” “to instruct,” “to indicate,” “to explain,” and “to give sign of.”

“Doctrines” is from didaskalia (disaskalia) which means “teachings,” “instruction,” “elucidation,” and “official instruction.”

“Commandments” is from entalma, which means “to order). The Greek, entalma, only appears here and is not a standard word in Greek. It is translated as a local form of entolê which means “injunction,” “order,” and “command.”

“Of men” is from anthropos , which means “men,” people,” and “humanity.”

This verse is a reference to Isaiah 29:13 where there was originally a bit of contrasting wordplay that is not part of the Greek here in Mark. This contrasting wordplay is in the Greek in Mat 15:8, (analysis here) which is why I tend to think Matthew is closer to the original words. Christ loved to play on contrasting idea. It seems unlikely he would have not used such wordplay when it was in the text he was referencing. In the original Hebrew, the contrast is near (nagash) and far (rachaq), the nearness of lips that honor with the distance of the hearts. In Matthew’s version, the contrast is between near (engizô) and far (apecho, “to be absent”, porrho “at a distance”). Here in Mark, only the idea of distant and absence is preserved, not the contrasting idea of nearness.

Since we looked at the wordplay in the earlier discussion of Matthew, let us look at this verse from the perspective of Christ’s use of symbols because it is also interesting in that regard.

Christ symbols refer to three aspect of our temporal lives: the physical, mental, and emotional. Hear, lips represent the mental and hearts represent the emotion. This follows from the idea that language and ideas form our mental world while our relationships with others form our emotional world.

Christ sees all three aspect of our temporal existence as important, but he describes life as a process that starts with the physical, moves to the mental, goes to the emotional, which ends at the spiritual. Christ describes the problem of life as getting stuck in one of these areas, creating an imbalance in our lives and a lack of progress. Our lives become worth less when we get so attached to life’s physical aspects (physical pleasure) or its mental aspects (conceptual ideas) or its emotional aspects (social praise) that we cannot move on another aspect of life. Of course, the idea is to prepare for the bigger transition from the temporal to the spiritual.

However, there is also the sense in Christ’s words that our personal emotional relationships are closer to our relationship to God. We cannot really understand God with our minds. He is too far beyond us. However, we can understand God through our relationships. This is why Christ teaches the the “pure of heart” will see God. This is the same idea using the same symbol of the heart for relationships. Of course, both Greek and Hebrew use the heart symbolically as the seat of emotions, though in Greek, it is specifically the seat of the feelings (courage, love), while the belly is the seat of the lower, more base desires (sex, food).

“Hypocrites” is from hupokrites (hupokrites) which is a great example of a word that has taken its English meaning from the Bible and its religious interpretation rather than the original Greek and Christ’s original sense. The word means “one who answers,” and is used in Greek to mean “interpreter” or “actor.” Christ used it to mean that the scribes and Pharisees were just re-interpreting the law and play-acting their religion.

“Come near” is from the Greek engizô (eggizo) which means “to bring near,” “to approach,” and “to be on the point of” (doing someing). It is from the Hebrew, nagash, which means to “draw near” and “approach,” but which is also used to describe sexual intercourse. Maybe combining “make advances” and “make love” into a single word might capture it.

“Honour” is from the Greek timaô , (timao) which means “to revere,” “to honor,” and “to value.” In the original Hebrew, it is from kabad, which means “to be heavy,” “to be rich,” and “to be honored.” Though the Greek word doesn’t have the same sense of “weight” as the Hebrew, weight is often connected in Greek with value. In a commodity based society, value and weight were the same. We say that we give “weight” to an arguments in the same sense that the ancients would give “weight” to the rules of a leader or a God.

“Are far ” is from the Greek, apecho (“to be absent”) porrho (“at a distance”). The Hebrew is rachaq , which means “to be or become distant.”

I found Matthew’s Gospel was surprising consistent in terms of every chapter having a specific focus or topic. Mark is not proving to be as consistent in terms of theme. This chapter began as a discussion of society and our social interactions, but it seems to have changed. The focus has changed from society to our physical needs in the last verse. In this verse, that theme is continued, asking us simply to stop being afraid of the physical universe. What happens is art of God’s plan. We do not need to fear it. It all has purpose and meaning.

Perhaps the larger lesson here is that God is in everything: society and physical reality. If we simply accept God’s plan, we can deal with each challenge as it comes without fear or concern. Life isn’t meant to be a bowl of cherries. It is meant to challenge us so we can grow. Fear stands in the way of us learning from each setback and sadness.

“Be of good cheer” is from tharseô (tharseo), which means “fear not,” “have courage,” “have confidence,” “have no fear,” and “make bold.”

“It is” is from eimi (eisi), which means “to be,”"to exist,” “to be the case,” and “is possible.”

“Afraid” is from phobeô, (phobeo) which means “to put to flight, “terrify,” “alarm,” “to stand in awe,” and “to be afraid.”