Mark

1. MINISTRY IN GALILEE (1:1–8:26)

A. Preparation for ministry (1:1–13). 1:1. The first verse of Mark summarizes the content of the Gospel. “The beginning” recalls the opening words of Genesis, implying that in the gospel of Jesus Christ a new creation is at hand. “Beginning” should probably be understood as the first in terms of “source” or “essence.” Mark’s Gospel thus intends to set forth the essence of God’s redemptive work in Jesus Christ. The word “gospel,” or “good news” (cf. 1 Sm 31:9; 2 Sm 1:20; 1 Ch 10:9), means the story of salvation in Jesus. For Mark, the advent of Jesus is “good news” because it fulfills God’s promise of release from sin and oppression and the proclamation of peace foretold by the prophet Isaiah (Is 52:7; 61:1–3).

The name Jesus in Hebrew (Yehoshua) means “God is salvation”; the name Christ—Greek for “Messiah”—is not a personal name but a title meaning “God’s anointed.” With reference to Jesus, “Christ” refers to the eschatological fulfillment of the kingly office of King David (2 Sm 7; Ps 2). The final term in Mark’s opening line is “Son of God,” which is the most important and most complete title for Jesus in Mark, signifying the full deity of Jesus the Messiah. Thus, in his opening line, Mark announces that the essence of the good news of God’s redemptive intrusion in the world is not a doctrine, teaching, or law, but a person, Jesus of Nazareth.

1:2–3. Mark begins with a quotation from the OT, which is actually a collage of three texts: 1:2 comes from Ex 23:20 and Mal 3:1; and 1:3 comes from Is 40:3. The whole is attributed to Isaiah evidently because the verse 3 is the defining element. In Ex 23:20, 23, the “messenger” is a divine messenger of the Lord, but here it applies to John, thus indicating his divinely ordained purpose. The references to “you” and “the Lord” here refer to Jesus, whom Mark depicts as fulfilling the role of God. Thus, Mark indicates that John the Baptist is the divinely appointed messenger of the Lord who heralds the advent of God himself appearing in Jesus of Nazareth. Mark’s commencement of his Gospel with this OT quotation signals that the mission of Jesus is not understandable apart from the OT. The good news is not separate from God’s work in Israel but a completion of it.

1:4–6. John the Baptist is immediately introduced in 1:4, but John’s person and work are more restricted in Mark than in the other Gospels. Mark limits John’s appearance to the single purpose of prefiguring Jesus. (See the definition “Baptism” in Luke.) Repentance, which must result in “fruit” (Mt 3:8; Lk 3:8), is the single prerequisite necessary to prepare for the imminent in-breaking of God.

Mark specifies that the inhabitants of Judea and Jerusalem, both centers of Jewish leadership and authority, were going out to John (1:5). John’s camel-hair garment and leather belt (1:6), as unusual in his day as they would be in ours, signified the dress of a prophet (Zch 13:4), and specifically of Elijah (2 Kg 1:8). In the OT, Elijah was more than the forerunner of the Messiah; he was the forerunner of the day of the Lord (Mal 3:1).

1:7–8. The in-breaking of God’s kingdom is signified in 1:7 by John’s reference to Jesus as the More Powerful One. In first-century Judaism, untying sandals and washing feet were duties of slaves; the assumption of this role by John signifies his humility and subordination in relation to Jesus. John’s baptism in water was intended to symbolize Jesus’s baptism in the Holy Spirit (1:8). In the OT, bestowal of the Spirit belonged exclusively to God. John’s attributing of this function to Jesus again signifies that Jesus comes in the power and prerogative of God.

1:9–11. According to the early church (Ac 1:21–22), the event that inaugurated Jesus’s ministry and endowed it with saving significance was his baptism. It is with this event that Mark commences the story of Jesus. Mark’s wording (1:9) portrays Jesus as the undisputed subject of the event, with John serving as mediator. Arising from the water, Jesus experiences three things that Jews associated with the advent of God’s eschatological kingdom (1:10–11): (1) the tearing apart of the sky (at the advent of the Messiah, the long-awaited Spirit would return [Is 64:1]; the Greek word for “tear” appears again in Mark only at the tearing of the temple curtain at the crucifixion); (2) the descent of the Spirit; and (3) the voice from heaven acknowledging Jesus to be God’s beloved Son. The three heavenly signs designate the baptism as the inaugural event of Jesus’s ministry, in which he is empowered by God’s Spirit to speak and act not simply for God but as God.

1:12–13. Immediately after the baptism, the Spirit literally “drove” Jesus out into the wilderness (1:12). The same Spirit who descended on Jesus at the baptism has an appointment for him with God’s adversary to determine whether Jesus will use his divine Sonship for his own advantage or in obedience to God’s saving purpose for the world. Jesus’s forty-day trial in the wilderness (1:13) may reflect God’s testing of Israel in the wilderness for forty years (Dt 8:2). The wilderness plays an important role in the OT, not only in the wilderness wandering after the exodus, but also in the prophets, as a place of Israel’s refreshment with God and refinement for obedience to his call.

B. Summary of Jesus’s message (1:14–15). The commencement of Jesus’s public ministry in Galilee is announced in connection with the arrest of John the Baptist (1:14). The same Greek word (paradidōmi, “hand over”) for John being “arrested” will later be used for the handing over of the Son of Man (9:31; 10:33) and of Christian disciples (13:9, 11–12). This signifies that Jesus will proclaim the gospel, as it was proclaimed by John, in the face of adversity and suffering. “Good news” is thus costly news.

At Jesus’s baptism, the voice of the Father (Mk 1:11) combines three key OT images to describe Jesus and his mission: the Suffering Servant (Is 42:1; 49:3), royal Sonship (Ps 2:7; Ex 4:22–23), and the beloved Son (Gn 22:2, 12, 16).

The long-awaited eschatological era and the kingdom of God are fulfilled in Jesus’s person and ministry (1:15). God’s kingdom is the reign that God introduces in Jesus, and into which people enter by repentance and faith. Repentance and faith are active responses to the kingdom of God as proclaimed by Jesus.

C. Galilean ministry (1:16–7:23). 1:16–20. The call of the first four disciples—Peter, Andrew, James, and John—occurs on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee (1:16, 19). The sea is a picturesque lake seven miles wide and thirteen miles long; it is surrounded by hills and lies seven hundred feet below sea level.

Unlike other rabbis, who called students to learn torah, Jesus enters into the world of the disciples and calls them to himself (1:17). What they need to know they will learn as they follow him. In order to “fish for people”—that is, to participate in the mission of spreading the kingdom of God—the fishermen must leave their nets and even families and follow Jesus (1:18, 20). Each fisherman must respond personally to the call of Jesus, but in so doing he enters into a new fellowship of others who also hear and obey the summons of Christ.

A gazelle grazes in the Judean Wilderness. John the Baptist ministers in the desolate and barren wilderness of Judea (Mk 1:4–6), and Jesus is led there by the Spirit after his baptism (Mk 1:12–13).

1:21–28. The first act of Jesus’s public ministry is an exorcism, in which the More Powerful One (1:7) exercises the divine authority he received at baptism to prevail over the dominion of Satan (see 3:27). Although Jesus was raised in Nazareth, he chooses Capernaum (1:21), situated on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee on the Via Maris (the main trade route leading from the Mediterranean to Damascus), as his base of operations. The population of Capernaum at the time was largely (though not entirely) Jewish.

On the Sabbath, Jesus teaches in the synagogue, the Jewish assembly hall for teaching torah (1:21). The authority with which Jesus teaches surpasses even that of the scribes, who are torah experts (1:22). Rather than noting the specific content of Jesus’s preaching, Mark stresses the unique authority with which Jesus teaches.

The plea of the demoniac, “What do you have to do with us?” (1:24a), occurs a dozen times in Scripture, normally indicating that the two parties have nothing in common. As a member of the spiritual realm, the demon recognizes Jesus’s divine nature (1:24b). The story begins and ends with the amazement of the crowd at Jesus’s authority, which supersedes that of the scribes (1:22) and rescues a man from the grip of Satan (1:27). Jesus teaches and heals with one and the same authority. [Messianic Secret]

1:29–34. “As soon as” (1:29) contributes to the sense of urgency: the time is at hand (1:15) for the authority of God’s Son to bear witness to the gospel. Close to the synagogue is Peter’s house, where Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law of a fever (1:30–31). The Greek word for “serve” (1:31) is diakoneō, from which “deacon” is derived. Mark’s use of this word to describe Peter’s mother-in-law serving the company following her healing may have been included to remind the members of the church in Rome to which he is writing to use the gifts, health, and opportunities God gives each believer to serve the Christian community in tangible ways. What Jesus has done to one person in healing Peter’s mother-in-law he now does to the whole community (1:32–34a).

After sunset on Saturday, Sabbath prohibitions against work and travel ceased, and Capernaum shows up en masse with people suffering from a host of physical and demonic maladies. Mark closes the day’s activities in Capernaum with a reference to Jesus’s forbidding the demons to speak (1:34b). This unexpected command seems to contradict Jesus’s mission to proclaim and promote the kingdom of God, but it serves a greater purpose until his identity will be fully revealed on the cross.

1:35–39. Mark next describes Jesus’s itinerant ministry among the small villages along the northwest quadrant of the Sea of Galilee. General summaries like this remind readers of the broad reach and expanse of Jesus’s ministry. Jesus was more than a private teacher and healer: he was a public figure in Galilee. This is the first of three times when Jesus seeks solitude in order to pray (1:35; see also 6:46; 14:32–39), each of which is set within a context of either implied or expressed opposition. Here Peter and other, unnamed disciples pursue Jesus and seek to control his movements (1:36–37). The effect, whether intended or not, would prevent Jesus from fulfilling his wider ministry. In 8:32–33 Peter will pose a greater hindrance to Jesus’s ministry. Jesus resists the intrusion of the disciples by reasserting his mission: to proclaim the gospel among the Jewish synagogues and to confront demonic oppression (1:38–39).

1:40–45. Jesus is then approached by a man with leprosy (1:40). In desperation, this leper breaks the fifty-pace buffer zone (Lk 17:12) to reach Jesus. Jesus responds not by reviling him but by declaring his desire to cleanse him (1:41). In touching the leper, Jesus demonstrates the power of “divine contagion” to heal disease contagion. Jesus sternly commands the cleansed leper to remain silent and to present himself to a priest, whose function it was to render a certificate of healing, thus allowing the leper to resume normal life (1:43–44). The leper, however, “spread[s] the news,” and as a consequence Jesus needs to remain “out in deserted places” (1:45). Jesus and the leper, in other words, have traded places!

2:1–5. In the next section (2:1–3:6), Mark narrates five stories in which Jesus exercises his unique authority as the Son of God. In each story, Jesus supersedes the authority of the law and rabbinic custom, and in each he incurs the opposition of Jewish leaders, especially the Pharisees and scribes. These five encounters demonstrate that Jesus is not the captive of any social or religious party; rather, he offers a word of both judgment and redemption to them all.

The first story (2:1–12) begins ostensibly as a healing story of four men who bring a paralytic to Jesus. So many people gather to hear Jesus “speaking the word to them” that there is no room inside or outside the house (2:2). Finding the door to the house blocked by the crowd, the resourceful foursome digs through the mud plaster and thatch roof common to Palestinian dwellings and lowers the mat with the paralytic down to Jesus (2:3–4). The determination of the four friends, like that of the leper in the preceding story, illustrates that genuine faith (mentioned here in 2:5a for the first time in Mark) overcomes obstacles to get to Jesus. Just as intercessory prayer is efficacious for others, so here the faith of the four porters plays a role in the forgiveness of the paralytic’s sins (2:5b).

In the Sea of Galilee area, extended families built their living compounds around an open-air courtyard called an insula (island). This was likely the type of house in which Jesus was speaking when the paralytic was lowered through the roof to Jesus. That scene is depicted here.

2:6–12. Mention of forgiveness of sins shifts the story abruptly from the paralytic to the scribes (2:6). Offended by Jesus’s pronouncement of forgiveness, the scribes accuse Jesus of blasphemy, for only God can forgive sins (2:7; cf. Ex 34:6–7; Ps 103:3; Is 43:25; Mc 7:18). Desiring the onlookers to know that “the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” (2:10), Jesus provides evidence of forgiveness of sins (which cannot be verified) by healing the paralytic (which can be verified) (2:11–12). As in 1:21–28, the authority of Jesus in both spiritual and physical realms is the same authority. In the Gospels, “Son of Man” occurs only from the mouth of Jesus, as a self-designation (2:10). The title refers to his humiliation, authority, and exaltation in fulfillment of God’s ordained way. [Jesus as the Son of Man]

2:13–17. Mark 2:13 describes Jesus teaching beside the Sea of Galilee. “Teaching” indicates the essential role that instruction plays in Jesus’s ministry, and the large crowds that attend it indicate the public nature of the gospel.

The Roman tax system functioned, in part, by renegade Jews like Levi receiving a franchise to collect taxes in set regions (2:14). Whatever amount a tax collector obtained in addition to the contracted sum was his to keep. The Roman system of taxation thus attracted unscrupulous individuals. That Jesus would call as a disciple a tax collector was no less offensive than his touching of a leper (1:40–45).

This story repeats and reinforces the truth of 2:1–12: there he forgave sins; here he demonstrates forgiveness of sinners by eating with them (2:15). The scandal of Jesus’s eating with tax collectors (2:16) consists in the fact that he does not make moral repentance a precondition of his acceptance and love of sinners.

2:18–22. That Jesus’s disciples do not follow the examples of the disciples of John the Baptist and the disciples of the Pharisees, both of whom were considered morally and ritually exemplary, is a further cause of offense to his contemporaries (2:18). Although fasting was technically required of Jews only on the Day of Atonement (Lv 16:29–30), Pharisees typically fasted every Monday and Thursday. The Pharisees understood true religion to consist of fasting (i.e., what is not done), whereas in this story Jesus understands it as feasting (i.e., what is done).

Indeed, Jesus depicts himself as the groom at a wedding feast (2:19–20). While the bridegroom is present, fasting should be suspended, although it may be resumed when the bridegroom is taken away from them. The significance of Jesus as the bridegroom is conveyed in two crisp metaphors or parables about a new patch that shrinks and tears an old garment (2:21), and new wine that bursts old wineskins (2:22). Jesus is like the new patch and new wine: he cannot be merely integrated or appended to existing structures, including Judaism, torah, and synagogue. Like new wine, Jesus requires new “wineskins” of transformed hearts and transformed communities, such as the church.

In the OT, God is often considered the bridegroom and husband of Israel (Is 5:1; 54:5–6; 62:4–5; Ezk 16:6–8; Hs 2:19). When Jesus identifies himself as the bridegroom (Mk 2:19–20), this imagery implies his divine nature.

2:23–28. Of the two observances most characteristic of Judaism, circumcision and Sabbath, the latter is the more important and the subject of the fourth conflict narrative (2:23). The Sabbath commandment forbids Jews (as well as their slaves and animals) from beginning any work that would extend over the Sabbath—from sunset Friday to sunset Saturday—or from doing any work on the Sabbath that was not absolutely necessary (“necessary” work referred to work that preserved life).

When Jesus and the disciples walk through a field and eat grain, the Pharisees accuse them of “doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath” (2:24). The putative infractions are either traveling or harvesting, or both. In defense, Jesus appeals to the precedent of when David and his companions ate from the twelve loaves of altar bread intended for the priests (2:25–26; see 1 Sm 21:1–6; cf. Ex 40:23; Lv 24:5–9). The appeal to David hints at Jesus’s messianic status, for David was both Israel’s greatest king and precursor of the Messiah (2 Sm 7:11–14; Ps 110:1).

In 2:27 Jesus clarifies the relationship of human life to Sabbath: people are not made for Sabbath rules, but rather the Sabbath is intended to bless and enhance human life. Jesus grounds this teaching in his own authority as the Son of Man. In declaring that “the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath” (2:28), Jesus once again puts himself unambiguously in the place of God.

3:1–6. Each of the five conflict stories in 2:1–3:6 portrays Jesus’s sovereign authority as superseding all other authorities in order to introduce God’s kingdom to needy, alienated, and sinful people. In this final conflict story, all eyes are trained on Jesus to see if he will heal on the Sabbath. A shriveled hand is not life threatening and does not qualify as an exception to Jewish Sabbath rules (3:1–2). Mark places this story immediately after 2:27–28 in order to demonstrate Jesus’s revolutionary teaching of doing—not refraining from—God’s work on the Sabbath (3:4).

Before healing the man, Jesus asks a two-part question (3:4). The first part, about doing good or evil, refers to healing the man; but the second, about saving life or killing, cannot refer to the man, since a shriveled hand is not fatal. The second part refers, rather, to the intentions of the Jewish religious leaders with regard to Jesus. Grieved and indignant about their hardness of heart, Jesus commands the man to stretch forth his hand (3:5). Only in exposing his malady to Jesus is he healed. But Jesus is thereby jeopardized (3:6). Thus, early in his ministry, the shadow of the cross falls on Jesus.

3:7–12. In another narrative summary (see also 1:35–39), Mark notifies readers of the wide geographical extent and ethnic diversity of Jesus’s ministry (3:7–8). The audience comes from Jewish (Galilee, Judea, and Jerusalem), mixed Jewish-Gentile (Idumea and beyond the Jordan), and Gentile (Tyre, Sidon) regions.

The Geographical Extent of Jesus’s Ministry

A boat is made ready for Jesus as a refuge from the size and press of the crowd (3:9). The accent falls on the demons who, as spiritual forces, become the second party in addition to God to recognize Jesus’s divine Sonship (3:11). By their subjection, the demons demonstrate Jesus’s sovereignty over them.

3:13–19. From his entourage Jesus chooses twelve men to follow him as formal apprentices or apostles. The number twelve, not a common number in Judaism, suggests that the twelve apostles reconstitute the twelve tribes of Israel. Jesus issues the call from a mountain (mountains were sites of divine revelation in Israel) and summons the Twelve to himself (3:13). Jesus calls the Twelve first to be with him, then to proclaim the gospel, and finally to cast out demons—that is, to oppose evil and demonic forces (3:14–15). Apostleship thus entails the whole person—the relational, verbal, and behavioral.

All lists of the apostles in the NT give preeminence to Peter, James, and John as an inner circle among the Twelve (3:16–17). The Twelve were representative of the common and diverse extremes (e.g., a tax collector and a Zealot) in first-century Judaism (3:18). The inclusion of the name of Judas, Jesus’s betrayer (3:19), reminds readers that the original Twelve were not a perfect fellowship; indeed, the worst betrayer came from within the chosen rank of Jesus’s apostles.

3:20–21. The narrative in 3:20–35 is the first of Mark’s signature “sandwich” units, in which a seemingly unrelated story is shoehorned into the middle of another story. The middle story determines the meaning of the flanking halves and succeeds in making an entirely new point of the A1-B-A2 sequence. Mark begins (A1, 3:20–21) and ends (A2, 3:31–35) the narrative with Jesus in a house surrounded by family and followers, into which he inserts the B-story of Jesus and Beelzebul (3:22–30).

The story begins with a house so besieged by a crowd that Jesus and the disciples are “not even able to eat” (3:20). Evidently believing that Jesus is on a collision course with the Jewish religious establishment, his friends and followers conclude that Jesus is “out of his mind” (3:21) and attempt to “restrain him.”

3:22–30. Leaving this episode momentarily in abeyance, Mark inserts the accusation of the scribes that Jesus is in league with Satan (3:22). “Beelzebul” equates Satan with the pagan god Baal, who was detested in Israel. The contemptuous epithet, apparently meaning “Baal the prince,” or “Baal’s dominion,” insinuates that Jesus derives his power to cast out demons from the archdemon himself.

Jesus responds with a threefold refutation. Mark 3:23–26 appeals to logic: since the ministry of Jesus is diametrically opposed to Satan, if what the scribes say is true, then Satan is clearly working against himself and hastening his own downfall. Mark 3:27 refutes the accusation in a terse but trenchant parable: Jesus is the More Powerful One (1:7), who plunders the strong man’s (Satan’s) “house” and makes his possessions (those oppressed by Satan) his own. Finally, in 3:28–29 Jesus issues a solemn warning against blaspheming the work of God’s Holy Spirit. The key to understanding this admonition is Mark’s editorial insertion (3:30). Anyone who can call the ministry of Jesus evil can no longer judge between good and evil. Such a sin is eternal because loss of ability to differentiate between good and evil entails also the loss of ability to repent of evil.

3:31–35. Mark concludes the sandwich in 3:31–35 by completing the episode of Jesus and his followers that he introduced in verses 20–21. The whole sandwich is devoted to the theme of insiders and outsiders. Jesus’s mother and brothers stand outside seeking him (3:31–32); that is, they intend to assert a claim on him. Ironically, those who would be expected to be on the inside (his own family and the Jewish religious establishment represented in the scribes) misjudge Jesus and remain outsiders. For Mark, there are only two positions in relation to Jesus: those who stand on the outside with false assumptions, or those unnamed and unexpected disciples “sitting in a circle around [Jesus] . . . [who do] the will of God,” who are his true “brother and sister and mother” (3:34–35).

4:1–9. Chapter 4, on parables, and chapter 13, on eschatology, are the only two chapters in Mark devoted entirely to Jesus’s teaching. The parable of the sower (4:1–20) is another A1-B-A2 sandwich construction, in which Jesus’s teaching on the mystery of the kingdom of God (4:10–12) divides the parable of the sower (4:1–9) and its explanation (4:13–20).

The parable discourse takes place in the familiar context of Jesus’s teaching alongside the Sea of Galilee (4:1). Jewish rabbis did not typically teach in parables, but parables were the preferred form of Jesus’s public teaching. He employs ordinary experiences to illustrate various aspects of the kingdom of God. Jesus’s parables usually have a single main point, and like stained glass windows in a cathedral, they reveal their brilliance only when hearers enter “into” the narrative. The summons to “listen” or “hear” begins and ends the parable of the sower (4:3, 9), by which Jesus teaches that active involvement or heeding is the way to engage a parable. A sower scatters seed widely on unpromising terrain in hopes of a harvest. Three-quarters of the seed is lost to hardpan, rocks, thorns, and parched ground (4:4–7).

In Jesus’s parable in Mk 4, a farmer broadcasts handfuls of seed. This photograph shows a Palestinian farmer sowing seeds using this method.

© Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, [LC-DIG-matpc-02971].

Despite these adversities, some seed lands on good soil, and the parable ends, surprisingly, with an extraordinary harvest of “thirty, sixty, and a hundred times” the number of seeds sown (4:8). The harvest is no mere human harvest, in fact, but a metaphor of the kingdom of God: despite the opposition of religious leaders, fickle crowds, and obstinate disciples, the harvest of Jesus’s ministry will be extraordinary.

4:10–12. The rationale for speaking in parables constitutes the B-part of the sandwich. In a private setting, Jesus teaches that the gospel is presented differently to different audiences (4:10–11). To insiders, Jesus proclaims the mystery of God’s kingdom openly. “Secret” means the truth of God that is available only as a revelation of God.

On the one hand, insiders consist of the disciples and the others “around him” (4:10; cf. 3:34)—that is, those who are in fellowship with Jesus and who do God’s will. “Those outside,” on the other hand, are taught in parables (4:11). Surprisingly, parables hide the meaning of the kingdom from outsiders rather than open it to them (4:12). Parables, like the kingdom of God itself, cannot be understood by those who hear casually or carelessly from the outside but are understood only by those who hear in faith and fellowship with Jesus and in obedience to God’s will.

4:13–20. Verses 13–20 complete the sandwich by returning to the parable of the sower. So important is this parable, in fact, that it contains the key to understanding all parables (4:13). Its explanation focuses on false and correct ways of hearing and responding to the gospel, which is represented by the seed. The seed that is eaten by birds, or falls on rocky soil, or is choked by thorns represents false ways (4:15–16, 18). In each of these instances, the gospel is given only a brief, superficial, even careless hearing. As a result, it is lost.

The people who represent good soil, by contrast, attend to the gospel with earnest and ongoing engagement. The mark of a true disciple, an insider, is to “hear the word, welcome it, and produce fruit” (4:20). Those who genuinely hear and receive the mystery of the kingdom of God will, by the grace of its generative power, produce a harvest beyond belief.

4:21–25. Mark includes three additional, shorter parables in the parable medley of chapter 4 (4:21–34); the first is about an oil lamp on a stand. In the OT, a lamp can be a metaphor for God (2 Sm 22:29) or the Messiah (2 Kg 8:19; Ps 132:17). The wording of 4:21 implies that Jesus is the lamp of God who has come to bring light and revelation (e.g., Jn 1:5; 8:12). True, the lamp may appear hidden or insignificant, in the same way that Jesus, the gospel, and the kingdom of God at first may seem hidden or inconsequential (4:22). Nevertheless, God brings to light what is hidden, and he does so once again by the admonition to hear (4:23–24a). Those who hear, like the insiders of 4:11, will receive the kingdom of God in greater measure, and those who do not will lose it altogether (4:24b–25).

4:26–29. The final two parables once again liken the kingdom of God to seeds, the first parable focusing on the process of growth. A farmer plants a seed and then goes about life as usual (4:26–27a). The seed grows imperceptibly, and even the farmer “doesn’t know how” (4:27b). The seed possesses a power of generation independent of the farmer, who can be absent and even ignorant, yet the seed grows (4:28). Humanity, likewise, goes about business as usual, but the kingdom of God is present and growing, even if small and unobserved. The kingdom is not dependent on human activity; indeed, apart from sowing, the only human activity noted in this parable is waiting in confidence that, in God’s time and power, the gospel will grow into a fruitful harvest (4:29).

4:30–32. The final parable stresses the contrast between the insignificant beginning and inconceivable end of a mustard seed. The OT celebrates the mighty cedar as a symbol of God’s power and splendor (Ps 80:10; Zch 11:2; Jr 22:23). Jesus, however, likens the kingdom of God to a mustard seed, so small that it is practically invisible (4:30–31). From insignificance and obscurity, God’s kingdom grows into a bush or tree that provides refuge for “the birds of the sky”—which may imply the inclusion of all the nations in God’s coming kingdom (4:32).

4:33–34. Mark’s concluding explanation of parables in verses 33–34 resembles verses 10–12 and resumes the theme of insiders-outsiders. Jesus speaks “many parables like these,” of which the parables of chapter 4 are but a sampling (4:33a). In parables, Jesus speaks as the outsiders are “able to understand” (4:33b). But in private, Jesus, who is himself the living parable of God, explains everything to insiders, his disciples (4:34).

4:35–41. Mark now places two stories adjacent to one another, each interpreting the other (4:35–5:20). The first (4:35–41) describes a storm on the Sea of Galilee, the fury of which threatens to sink the boat. The following story (5:1–20) describes a demon-possessed man. Both stories display Jesus’s power to rescue lives from the chaos of both nature and human nature.

The story of Jesus calming the wind and the waves (Mk 4:35–41) is recounted in a way that recalls the storms of Jnh 1 and Ps 107:23–32.

The first account is replete with details reminiscent of eyewitness experience. The Sea of Galilee is surrounded by steep hills and mountains, and the confluence of cold air from Mount Hermon to the north and hot air rising from the sea can produce squalls of hurricane force. As Jesus and the disciples proceed eastward across the lake, their boat is seized by such a storm (4:35–37). Fearing death, the disciples rouse Jesus from sleep in the stern and reproach him (4:38). Jesus then rebukes the wind and the sea (4:39). The Greek words for “rebuke,” “silence,” and “be still” frequently occur in Hellenistic exorcism accounts. By describing the quelling of the storm in the language of exorcism, Mark portrays Jesus as the Strong One (1:7; 3:27) who vanquishes Satan and evil forces.

This first-century fishing vessel, discovered in 1986 along the Sea of Galilee, is an example of the fishing boats used by Jesus’s disciples (Mk 4:35–41). The hull and structure represent thesize and design of the fishing boats that were used on the Sea of Galilee during the time of Jesus and are mentioned in the Gospels.

© Baker Publishing Group and Dr. James C. Martin. Kibbutz Ginosar.

At the word of Jesus, calm replaces chaos. Ironically, the disciples are more terrified by the power of Jesus than by the terror of the storm (4:41). “Who then is this?” they ask. This is the question not only before the disciples but also before Mark’s readers: will their experience of Jesus lead to faith (4:40) or to fear and doubt?

5:1–10. The calming of a natural storm is immediately followed with an account of the calming of a violent storm in human nature (5:1–20). The encounter takes places on the east side of the lake in the Decapolis, although the exact location is disputed in the Greek textual tradition (5:1; see the CSB footnote). Decapolis (literally “Ten Cities”) was a loose description for the Gentile region east of the Jordan River consisting of showcase cities of pagan culture that were intended to surpass Jewish settlements west of the Jordan. The wretchedness of the demoniac, who even in life is consigned to the place of the dead, is described in more graphic detail in 5:2–5 than in either Mt 8:28 or Lk 8:27. From a Jewish perspective, everything in 5:1–20 reeks of uncleanness: Jesus meets a man with an unclean spirit living among unclean tombs surrounded by unclean herds of swine, all in unclean Gentile Decapolis.

A legion in the Roman army consisted of nearly six thousand soldiers; the attribution of “Legion” to the demoniac may suggest that his demonic oppression rivals the force and domination of the Roman army in the Decapolis (5:9). The superhuman strength and explosive terror of the demoniac are no contest for the Son of God, however, whom the demoniac recognizes in Jesus, and to whom he pleads for clemency (5:7). The demons acquiesce to Jesus’s superior authority but beg not to be banished from the region (5:10). There is a measure of grace even in Jesus’s judgment of Satan’s minions, for he consents to their plea.

5:11–20. Entering a herd of swine, the demons trigger a stampede down a cliff, causing some two thousand pigs to drown in the lake (5:11–13). The moral question posed by the undeserved loss of the livestock is not considered in the story. Evidently, for Jesus (and Mark) the rescue and restoration of one human being is more important than even a large-scale economic catastrophe. The exercise of Jesus’s miraculous power restores the demoniac to his “right mind” (5:15), just as it restored the lake to order and calm in the previous story; but it also results in fear among the inhabitants of the region, as it did earlier among the disciples.

The miraculous exorcism does not lead those in the Decapolis to believe; rather, it leads them to expel Jesus (5:17). Jesus refuses the demoniac’s request to follow him (5:18), perhaps because a Gentile would have been a stumbling block in Jesus’s mission to Israel. Jesus, however, sends the man to announce “how much the Lord has done” for him (5:19), which is always the heart of human testimony to the divine. In so doing, the healed demoniac becomes the first missionary to the Gentiles (5:20).

5:21–24. The next healing story (5:21–43) is another example of Mark’s sandwich technique, in which the story of the healing of Jairus’s daughter (5:21–24, 35–43) is interrupted by that of the woman with a hemorrhage (5:25–34). Having crossed the lake, Jesus and the disciples disembark on the western (Jewish) shore (5:21). A synagogue leader named Jairus emerges from the crowd and begs Jesus to heal his daughter, who is deathly ill (5:22–23). In going with Jairus (5:24), Jesus fulfills his mission declared in 1:38, “This is why I have come.”

5:25–34. While Mark’s Gospel is the shortest of the four, his stories are usually recounted in fuller detail. This is particularly true of his portrayal of human need. Mark’s account of the woman’s futile attempts to receive medical help and her desperate effort to reach Jesus (5:26–27) are omitted in Matthew and Luke. The description of the woman’s recovery—the Greek word translated “affliction” (5:29) combines both physical affliction and shame—conveys that the woman’s prospects for health were no better than the little girl’s prospects for life.

As was the case with leprosy, a protracted menstruation problem left a woman unclean throughout its duration. Like the leper (1:40), the woman risks defiling Jesus with her uncleanness, in the desperate hope of being healed (5:27–28). Although it was a serious violation of Jewish law for her to approach Jesus in her state, Mark portrays her act as a sign of faith. Immediately she is healed from her long-incurable disease (5:29). Like the man in 3:1–6, in bringing her infirmity to Jesus she is healed.

The woman’s intent to touch Jesus is rivaled by Jesus’s desire, despite the disciples’ remonstrations, to know who touched him (5:30–32). Not content simply to dispatch a miracle, Jesus wants to encounter the woman. Jesus’s tender response overcomes the woman’s fear of social ostracism (5:34). The Greek word for “save” (sōzō) means both “to save” and “to heal”—both senses are appropriate in this instance.

5:35–43. The drama now intensifies as the interruption, so profitable to the woman, has cost the life of Jairus’s daughter. “Why bother the teacher anymore?” ask Jairus’s servants (5:35). In the Greek, Mark’s description of Jesus’s response is masterful. The word parakouō can mean (1) to overhear something not intended for one’s ears, (2) to ignore, or (3) to discount the truth of something (see the CSB footnote). All three meanings apply to Jesus’s response (5:36). In direct address to Jairus, Jesus bids him to demonstrate trust, as the hemorrhaging woman has just done (5:34). If Jairus can trust Jesus as the woman trusted Jesus, he need not fear.

Arriving at Jairus’s house, Jesus allows only Peter, James, and John, his inner circle of disciples, and the girl’s parents to accompany him into her room (5:37, 40b). Jesus’s figurative reference to the girl’s death as her being “asleep” is met with scorn by the professional mourners (5:39–40a). Upon Jesus’s command to “get up,” the girl arises immediately, to the amazement of all present (5:41–42).

By sandwiching the story of the hemorrhaging woman into the story of Jairus and his daughter, Mark shows that Jairus, a man of reputation and respect, must learn the meaning of faith from an unnamed woman whose only identification is her shame. Faith means trusting in Jesus when all human hopes have been exhausted.

6:1–6. The itinerant ministry of Jesus and his disciples in Galilee includes a visit to Jesus’s hometown of Nazareth, some twenty-five miles to the southwest of Capernaum (6:1). First-century Nazareth lacked both distinction and importance. It was an obscure hamlet of earthen dwellings cut into sixty acres of rocky hillside, with a population of no more than five hundred peasants. The reference to Jesus as a “carpenter” (6:3) is not overtly demeaning, for the majority of the people in Nazareth practiced occupations in the same social category. “The son of Mary” (6:3), however, is disrespectful, and may even insinuate illegitimacy, for in Judaism a son was regularly identified in relation to his father, even if deceased. Of Jesus’s four named brothers, only James and Jude are mentioned again in the NT. According to Jewish custom, Jesus’s sisters are unnamed and unnumbered, probably because they have married into other family units.

Surprisingly, Jesus is not a celebrity in Nazareth as he is elsewhere in Galilee, but people were “offended by him” (or, he was a “stumbling block,” 6:3). This repeats Mark’s insider-outsider motif: those we should expect to believe in Jesus do not, and those we should not expect to believe in him do. The return to Nazareth ends with Jesus “amazed at their unbelief” (6:6). The greatest hindrance to faith is not sinfulness but hardness of heart. [The Family of Jesus]

6:7–13. Mark now develops the theme of discipleship by means of another sandwich unit (6:7–30), in which the mission of the Twelve (6:7–13, 30) is divided by the martyrdom of John the Baptist (6:14–29). By sandwiching the death of John between the sending and return of the Twelve, Mark signifies that those who heed Jesus’s summons to mission must be prepared for the ultimate witness of martyrdom.

Jesus summons and sends the disciples into mission (6:7a) with the same authority by which he himself ministers, and with which he commissioned them as apostles (3:13–14). Mention that Jesus “gave them authority over unclean spirits” (6:7b) confirms that Jesus’s disciples, like their master himself, are sent into the world to confront evil. The mission of the Twelve is not their own but is an extension of Jesus’s ministry. The disciples are sent out with only staff, sandals, belt, and tunic (6:8–9). They are sent not in plenty but in need, thus ensuring both their dependence on their Lord and their receptivity to others.

The command to remain where they are received (6:10) teaches that trust in the Jesus who sends them into mission includes trust in those whom he has designated to meet their needs. The command to shake the dust off their feet when they are not received (6:11) is tantamount to declaring a Jewish village heathen, since Jews were required to shake themselves free of dust when returning from Gentile regions, lest they pollute the Holy Land. The missionary outreach of the Twelve, like the ministry of Jesus, consists of the proclamation of repentance, exorcisms, and healings (6:12–13).

6:14–29. Before Mark reports the return of the Twelve in 6:30, he inserts the account of the martyrdom of John the Baptist. Mark reported John’s imprisonment in 1:14, and now in a flashback he recounts John’s death. Jesus’s fame reaches King Herod, who fears that he is a reincarnation of John the Baptist, whom he beheaded (6:14–16). “King Herod” was Herod Antipas, the son of Herod the Great, ruler of Galilee and Perea from 4 BC until AD 39. Herodias, the wife of Antipas’s half brother Herod Philip (not the tetrarch Philip of Lk 3:1), was actually the granddaughter of Herod the Great and thus a niece of Antipas. The opinion of Antipas that Jesus is Elijah or the Baptist returned to life or one of the ancient prophets (6:15) is widespread and is later voiced by Jesus’s own disciples (8:28). John’s arrest is due to Antipas’s fears of John’s influence on the people, as well as John’s denunciation of the treacherous marriage between Antipas and Herodias (6:17–18).

There are only two stories in the Gospel of Mark that are neither from nor about Jesus. Both, however, are about John the Baptist, and both foreshadow Jesus. The first, in Mk 1:2–8, foreshadows Jesus’s ministry, and the second, in Mk 6:14–29, foreshadows his death.

A tentative ruler whose actions were influenced by others, Herod Antipas cannot risk allowing John to remain at large, nor can he bring himself to eliminate him (6:20). Herodias, cunning and calculating, emerges as the prime mover in the story by exploiting Antipas’s impotence and by sacrificing the honor of her daughter in order to eliminate the Baptist (6:19, 21). The daughter inflames the celebrities, officials, and leaders of Galilee with an explicit dance at Antipas’s birthday banquet (6:22). Desiring to impress his glittering guests, Antipas promises the girl “up to half my kingdom” (6:23)—a promise that Rome would not possibly allow. At the order of Herodias, the girl requests the head of John (6:24–25). John—who is not granted a word in the story—meets his end by a cold sword wielded by petty functionaries at the command of a treacherous ruler who seeks to please the crowd (6:26–28).

6:30. By appending the return of the Twelve to the death of John in 6:30, Mark signals that, in following Jesus, one must reckon with the fate of John, as Jesus will teach in 8:34.

6:31–38. Following Herod’s banquet, Mark reports on a banquet of Jesus (6:31–44). The banquet of Herod was in a palace; Jesus’s is in the open. Herod invited important people; Jesus receives all people. Herod bolstered his own reputation; Jesus ministers to peoples’ hunger and needs. So memorable is Jesus’s banquet that it is the only miracle recorded in all four Gospels.

After the return of the Twelve, and in fulfillment of the first prerequisite of apostleship (3:14), Jesus summons the Twelve away from the pursuit of the crowd to be with him in rest and solitude (6:31–32). The crowd anticipates their retreat, however, and precedes them to the destination (6:33). Despite the invasiveness of the crowd, Jesus looks on them with compassion and teaches the people (6:34). Given the remoteness of the region, lateness of the hour, and size of the crowd, the disciples recommend dismissing the crowd to the surrounding villages for provisions (6:35–36). Rather than accepting this reasonable solution, Jesus intensifies the impending crisis by ordering, “You give them something to eat” (6:37). The disciples look beyond themselves to solve the problem, whereas Jesus looks among them for the solution (6:38).

A mosaic of loaves and fishes, recalling the feeding of the five thousand (Mk 6:30–44), from the floor of a Byzantine church excavated on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee, near Capernaum

6:39–44. Despite the obvious inadequacy of the five loaves and two fish, Jesus orders the crowd to sit in groups of hundreds and fifties (6:39–40), perhaps in imitation of Moses’s similar command to the Israelites in the wilderness (Ex 18:25; Nm 31:14). The prayer with which Jesus receives and multiplies the bread and fish (6:41a) is similar to his prayer over the bread and wine at the institution of the Lord’s Supper (14:22). In utilizing the Twelve to dispense the bread, Jesus ministers to the crowd through the disciples (6:41b). Like the harvest in the parable of the sower (4:9, 20), the feeding of the five thousand results in a miracle of abundance (6:42), with twelve basketfuls remaining (6:43).

The story betrays hints of a revolutionary fervor among the wilderness crowd and the hope that Jesus might be a military Messiah against Rome (see also Jn 6:15). This is further supported by the reference to five thousand men (6:44; cf. Mt 14:21). Jesus, however, refuses the populist and militant sentiments of the crowd, and like Moses, who oversaw the collection of manna in the wilderness, feeds the crowd with the multiplication of bread and fish as a foreshadowing of the eschatological banquet of God.

6:45–52. Jesus quickly compels the disciples to sail to Bethsaida (the northeast shore of the lake, 6:45), to prevent them from becoming swept up in the crowd’s fervor. He then repairs to the hills to pray (6:46; cf. 1:35; 14:35–39). From the hills, Jesus spies the disciples alone in the storm-tossed boat at night (6:48a). In the early morning hours, Jesus walks to the disciples on the water (6:48b). Readers are assured it is not an optical illusion, for the disciples “all saw him” (6:49–50).

The reference to Jesus wanting to “pass by them” (6:48) signals a self-revelation of God, recalling God “tread[ing]” on the water (Jb 9:8), or “passing by” Moses (Ex 33:22) and Elijah (1 Kg 19:11) on Mount Sinai. “It is I” (6:50) is identical with God’s self-disclosure to Moses in Ex 3:14, and may further evince Jesus’s divinity. As in earlier calming of storms in nature (4:41) and in human nature (5:15), the revelation of Jesus’s person and exhibition of his power causes fear, misunderstanding, and even hardness of heart in the disciples (6:49–50, 52). Mark reminds readers, however, that following Jesus is measured not by perfect or complete understanding but by being in the boat with him.

6:53–56. Chapter 6 concludes with a summary report (see also 1:35–39; 3:7–12) of Jesus healing throngs of needy people on the west side of the lake. “Gennesaret,” the only proper noun in the account, refers to a densely populated region between Capernaum and Tiberias (6:53). In a flurry of commotion, nameless and faceless people who are identified only by their need and desperation swarm to Jesus from town and countryside simply to “touch just the end of his robe” (6:55–56). The accent in the account remains on the blessings of Jesus’s physical touch, for there is no mention of faith, discipleship, or understanding of Jesus’s saving purpose.

7:1–5. Jesus’s confrontation with the Pharisees and scribes over the question of uncleanness (7:1–23) marks the end of his ministry in Galilee, which began in 1:14. Henceforth in Mark, Jesus will reappear in Galilee only intermittently (8:11; 9:33). The Pharisees and scribes, last seen in chapter 3, come from Jerusalem (7:1), the primary center of opposition to Jesus.

The issue of ritual purity is at stake in this conflict discourse. In accusing Jesus and the disciples of eating with unclean hands (7:2, 5), the Pharisees are concerned not primarily with hygiene but with ritual and ceremonial observances instituted to maintain Jewish distinctiveness over against Gentile culture. The “tradition of the elders” (7:3–4) refers to the unwritten oral tradition, which the Pharisees believed to be equally authoritative with the written torah. The parenthetical explanation of their observances, which would be unnecessary if Mark were writing for Jews, is one indication of a Gentile audience.

7:6–13. Quoting Is 29:13 in Mk 7:6b–7, Jesus accuses the Pharisees and scribes of cloaking evil intentions with pleasing words. The charge of “hypocrite” (7:6a) implies the same, for “hypocrite” translates the Greek word for a theater performer and designates an actor who wears various masks to impersonate different roles. Pharisees affirmed that the written laws of torah declared what God required but that the oral tradition was necessary to determine how to fulfill God’s requirements. Unfortunately, the focus on the how shifted attention away from the original intent of the law and onto an array of peripheral observances. Jesus declares that the “tradition of the elders” (7:3) does not clarify torah but actually skews its meaning, resulting in “invalidating” the commandments of God and replacing them with mere human traditions (7:8–9, 13).

The instance of corban (a Hebrew word meaning “offering”) in 7:11–13 is a case in point. The fifth commandment requires honor of father and mother (7:10; see Ex 20:12), but the ritual of corban allowed Israelites to take money that would otherwise be used for support of parents and dedicate it to God by investing it in the temple. Similar to deferred giving today, corban allowed people to retain possession over their property, proceeds, or interest during their own lifetime, after which the money became temple property. The result was the evading of an explicit commandment—thereby the defrauding of one’s parents—in the name of a higher obligation to God. Corban—and the many practices like it (7:13)—was a glaring distortion of the law, which actually prevented a person from fulfilling the law.

7:14–23. Summoning the crowds, Jesus commands them to hear, for hearing leads to understanding (7:14; cf. Mk 4). Uncleanness is essentially related not to external matters—foods, objects, customs, regulations, rituals, and rites—but to the inner intentions of heart and mind. The latter defile a person, and it was on account of them, rather than external observances, that torah was instituted (7:15). The importance of this teaching is reinforced by private instruction (7:17), where the disciples commonly receive revelation from Jesus. Once again, the disciples are uncomprehending (7:18a). Jesus illustrates the point by food, which comes not from within but from without and simply passes through the body (7:18b–19).

Mark adds his own parenthetical remark at the end of 7:19, assuring readers that Jesus therefore “declared all foods clean.” Christians, in other words, are free from kosher laws. What they are not free from is the real source and nature of “uncleanness”: what comes out of a person, from the “heart” (the depth and center of human personality) (7:20–22). None of these behaviors and attitudes is the result of an external cause that can be regulated by the oral tradition (7:23). Goodness—or evil—originates within the will of humanity, and the law was given by God to change the will, the intent, of the heart.

D. Jesus travels to Gentile regions (7:24–8:9). 7:24–30. The story of a Gentile who was a “true Israelite” is the first of three stories in 7:24–8:9 in which Jesus extends his ministry to Gentile regions. Tyre epitomized a long history of antagonism to Israel. Mark does not specify why Jesus goes to Tyre, although he says that Jesus hopes to evade detection (7:24). It is not difficult to imagine that Jesus quit Galilee to escape the intrigues of the Pharisees (3:6; 7:1–23) and the ire of Herod Antipas, who killed John the Baptist (6:14–30).

A Gentile woman who belongs to the infamous pagans of Syria Phoenicia seeks out Jesus, begging him to relieve her daughter of a demon (7:25–26). Although Jews often spoke of Gentiles as “dogs,” Jesus did not normally regard people in such stereotypes (7:27). If the woman presumed that in coming to Tyre Jesus was forsaking his ministry to Israel in favor of a mission to the Gentiles, Jesus may have employed this blunt stereotype to remind her that Jews, despite their opposition, retained priority in his mission. (See 1:2–3, which affirms that the gospel comes from Israel, and that Gentiles participate in the gospel only insofar as they are engrafted into salvation history in Israel; cf. Rm 11:11–32.) Jesus reminds the woman that there is no place for Gentile pride or arrogance over disobedient Israel (see Rm 11:18–21). The woman’s reply (7:28) shows her understanding and acceptance of Israel’s privilege. Indeed, this Gentile woman understands Jesus’s mission better than most Jews, including his own disciples.

The Region around Galilee

7:31–37. A second story further expands the ministry of Jesus to the Gentiles. From Tyre, Jesus travels twenty miles north to Sidon, then southeast to the Gentile Decapolis east of the Sea of Galilee, following a horseshoe circuit of one hundred rugged miles (7:31). In the Decapolis a “deaf man who had difficulty speaking” (7:32) is brought to Jesus for healing (cf. Is 35:6). The removal of the man from the crowd may be Jesus’s way of indicating his personal importance to him (7:33a). Spittle, like other body excretions, normally fell under the category of defilements in Judaism, but in holy persons spittle was often considered a healing agent. The “tradition of the elders” (7:3) forbade Jews from contacting unclean objects or persons, but in his intimate contact with this man by touch and spittle, Jesus demonstrates his embrace of Gentiles (7:33b).

The empathy of Jesus’s prayer (7:34) and the concrete description of the healing in Greek suggest release from demonic bondage as well as physical healing. The response to his command to silence (7:36)—the only such command to Gentiles in Mark—indicates that Jews and Gentiles were both equally prone to disobey Jesus. The concluding chorus (7:37) recalls Gn 1:31, reminding readers that the Son’s work in redemption, like the Father’s in creation, is good.

The description of the deaf man’s speech and hearing defects in Mk 7:32 recalls Is 35:6. The healing of the deaf man is a fulfillment of Is 35, in which the glory of the Lord anoints the desert wastelands of Lebanon (the regions of Tyre and Sidon) with joy. The eschatological redeemer of Zion promised to the Gentiles in Is 35 is none other than Jesus.

8:1–9. This section closes with a third story about Jesus’s ministry to the Gentiles, the feeding of the four thousand. On the Gentile, east side of the Sea of Galilee—perhaps in the vicinity of the healing of the demoniac (5:1–20)—Jesus attracts a large crowd that remains with him for three days (8:1–2). The type of “compassion” (8:2) Jesus feels for the persevering crowd is deep and powerful. Jesus does not want to dismiss the vulnerable multitude in the desolate region, and the disciples, sensing an impending crisis, ask where bread could be found for such a crowd in such a place (8:3–4). It may seem odd that the disciples, having witnessed the earlier feeding of the five thousand, would ask such a question. However, it is not unusual for even mature believers (and the disciples are not yet mature) to doubt the power of God after having experienced it.

It is possible that Mark regards the seven loaves of bread (8:5) as a symbol of the seven Gentile nations of the OT (e.g., Dt 7:1); if so, the Gentile nations are not displaced or destroyed but fed by Jesus. Although the feeding of the four thousand is similar to the feeding of the five thousand (6:31–44), the second feeding differs specifically in the size of the crowd (four thousand people in 8:9 rather than five thousand men in 6:44), and especially in the prominence of Jesus, who here perceives the impending crisis (8:2–3) and personally seats the crowd (8:6). The feeding of the four thousand shows Jesus’s compassion for Gentiles in the wilderness, as the feeding of the five thousand shows his compassion for Jews in the wilderness.

Jesus’s compassion for the poor and hungry demonstrates God’s concern for the poor emphasized in much of the OT (e.g., Dt 10:18; Pr 19:17; Is 10:1–2).

E. Opposition from Pharisees and disciples (8:10–26). 8:10–13. Following the feeding of the four thousand, Jesus and the disciples cross to the west side of the Sea of Galilee, landing at Dalmanutha (8:10), the location of which is uncertain. The implication of the story, however, is that it was either near to or identical with Magadan (Mt 15:39), about three miles north of Tiberias. At Dalmanutha the Pharisees ask Jesus for “a sign from heaven” (8:11)—that is, for outward and compelling proof of his authority. Several words in 8:11–12 indicate the antagonism of the Pharisees. For Mark, the demand for a sign is an undisguised indication of unbelief. Jesus solemnly declares that unbelief will not be honored by a sign; he will not grant by empirical means what can be granted only by faith and trust. Jesus resolutely “left them” (8:13).

8:14–21. The lack of understanding that Jesus encountered in Dalmanutha now accompanies him in the boat among his disciples, who have only one loaf of bread with them on the voyage (8:14). Leaven ferments in dough, causing it to rise. In Jesus’s warning (8:15), the “leaven” appears to signify the disbelief of the Pharisees and Herod fermenting among the disciples. The disciples, however, uncomprehending of Jesus’s metaphor, remain fixed on “bread” (8:16). In an attempt to overcome the disciples’ obtuseness, Jesus presses them with several rhetorical questions (8:17–18). Jesus inquires whether the lessons of both miraculous feedings have been lost on the disciples (8:19–21). The conversation about bread in the boat marks a low point in the disciples’ understanding of Jesus and his ministry.

8:22–26. Mark is fond of juxtaposing two stories to demonstrate a relationship between them (e.g., 4:35–41 // 5:1–20). The placement of the healing of a blind man in Bethsaida (8:22–26) immediately following the conversation about bread in the boat (8:14–21) is another such example. In Bethsaida, a blind man is brought to Jesus (8:22). As with the healing of the deaf-mute in the Decapolis (7:31–37), Jesus conducts the man outside the village (to separate him from its unbelief [6:45]?), applies spittle to his eyes, and places his hands on him (8:23). Both acts enhance the personal nature of the encounter.

Jesus’s question (“Do you see anything?” 8:23) echoes the pleading question to the disciples in the previous story “Do you have eyes and not see?” (8:18). The healing of the blind man of Bethsaida is the only miracle in the Gospels that proceeds in stages (8:23–25). Mark’s inclusion of the story immediately following the failure of the disciples to understand signifies that faith is a process. Like the blind man, the disciples can also be made to see and understand, but not on their own. The ability to see, both physically and spiritually, is made possible by the repeated touch of Jesus.

2. JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM (8:27–16:20)

A. Peter’s confession at Caesarea Philippi and the transfiguration (8:27–9:29). The Caesarea Philippi declaration (8:27–30) is like a continental divide in the Gospel of Mark. Prior to Caesarea Philippi, Jesus repeatedly crisscrosses the Sea of Galilee; thereafter he sets his face to Jerusalem. In the first half of the Gospel, Jesus teaches the masses in Galilee, casts out demons, and forbids people from announcing his identity; thereafter he primarily instructs the disciples, with no further exorcisms (apart from 9:29) or commands to silence. The first half of the Gospel takes Jesus outside Israel to Tyre, Sidon, and the Decapolis; the second half takes him to its heart in Jerusalem. Both halves conclude with christological confessions, the first with a Jewish confession of Peter that Jesus is the Messiah (8:29), the second with a confession of the Gentile centurion that Jesus is the Son of God (15:39).

8:27–30. From Bethsaida, Jesus sets out with the disciples to Caesarea Philippi, twenty-five miles to the north at the foot of Mount Hermon (8:27a). In this region, which at the time was rife with competing religious claims, Jesus for the first time solicits from his disciples a claim about his identity (8:27b). The disciples repeat the popular opinion earlier voiced by Antipas (6:14–15) that Jesus is John the Baptist, Elijah, or one of the prophets (8:28). Great as these figures were, they are inadequate analogies, for they imply that Jesus is merely a reappearance of something that happened before. Identifying Jesus with preexistent categories is like pouring “new wine into old wineskins” (2:22). Not content with the opinions of others, Jesus presses the disciples for a personal confession (8:29a). Peter insightfully and courageously declares, “You are the Messiah” (8:29b). In the OT, “messiah” is an epithet of one who could come as a future Davidic king (2 Sm 7; Ps 2) to establish God’s reign on earth. By the first century, however, the concept of messiah had increasingly assumed military expectations.

8:31–33. In declaring Jesus “Messiah,” Peter supplies the right answer, but he has the wrong understanding. Rejecting Peter’s militant messianic understanding, Jesus teaches them that the Son of Man will “suffer many things and be rejected . . . , be killed, and rise after three days” (8:31). Jesus’s teaching is so contrary to the disciples’ expectations that he will repeat it three times (see also 9:31; 10:33–34) “on the road” to Jerusalem (8:27).

Mount Hermon, the highest peak in the Anti-Lebanon Mountains, is a likely location for the “high mountain” (Mk 9:2) on which Jesus is transfigured. Mount Hermon rises more than nine thousand feet above sea level and is situated just to the northeast of Caesarea Philippi, where Peter days before confessed that Jesus is the Christ.

At last the disciples understand—and Peter “began to rebuke [Jesus]” (8:32). They did not connect the primary figure in the OT associated with suffering—the Suffering Servant of Isaiah (42; 49; 51; 52–53)—with the Messiah. However, so essential is humiliation and suffering to the mission of Jesus that to attempt to divert Jesus from it—as Peter does—is thinking about “human concerns,” not “God’s concerns” (8:33). To judge the work of God in any other light than the perspective of God is to become an “adversary” to God, which is the Hebrew meaning of “Satan” (1 Kg 11:14).

8:34–38. The subject then shifts from Christology to discipleship. For Mark, these are two sides of the same coin. A proper confession of Jesus is inevitably also a confession of what believers must become. In 8:34, Jesus teaches that discipleship consists of following him, denying self, and taking up one’s cross. In Jesus’s day the cross was a hated instrument of cruelty, suffering, dehumanization, and shame. Reserved for the lowest social classes, the cross was the extreme terror apparatus of the Roman totalitarian state. The image of the cross signifies a total claim on the disciple’s allegiance and a total relinquishment of his or her resources to Jesus.

This truth is reinforced in the verses that follow. To lose one’s life for the gospel is, ironically, to save it (8:35); to gain the whole world at the cost of one’s life would be a fatal bargain, for what could one give to regain one’s life (8:36–37)? Concluding his solemn address to the disciples in the prophetic imagery of an “adulterous and sinful generation” (8:38; cf. Is 57:3–13; Ezk 16:32–41; Hs 2:2–6), Jesus warns that whoever is ashamed of the way of the cross in this life will be looked on with equal shame by the Son of Man in the world to come.

9:1. Mark concludes his climactic discourse on Christology and discipleship with a saying of Jesus that the kingdom of God will come in power in the lifetimes of “some standing here” (9:1). Mark strategically places this saying between the prediction of Jesus’s death in 8:31 and the account of his transfiguration (9:2–13), which anticipates his resurrection. Seeing “the kingdom of God come in power” (9:1) must therefore be understood to refer to the resurrection of Jesus from the dead—which Jesus’s hearers would indeed live to see.

9:2–8. The reference “after six days” (9:2a) opening the transfiguration narrative (9:2–13) is unusual since Mark rarely gives specific time delimitations. The “six days” links the transfiguration to Peter’s confession, giving the disciples divine confirmation of Jesus’s way to the cross. Peter, James, and John appear elsewhere as Jesus’s inner circle (5:37; 13:3; 14:33). The “high mountain” (9:2a) probably refers to Mount Hermon; the glorification of Jesus on its summit, however, doubtless also recalls the epiphany of God to Moses on Mount Sinai (Ex 34:35). The Greek word for “transfigured” (9:2b) means to “change” or “transform,” in this instance into dazzling light.

The appearance of the figures of Elijah and Moses, who epitomize the OT prophets and law, signifies that the law and prophets lead to and are fulfilled in Jesus (9:4). Peter’s desire to erect three shelters (9:5) recalls the tabernacle in the wilderness erected to the glory of God (Ex 40:34–36). The cloud that envelops the disciples, momentarily revealing the glory of Jesus as God incarnate (9:7), recalls the presence and glory of God that enveloped the tabernacle (Ex 24:15–16; 40:34–36).

Mark 9:7 repeats the divine words from the baptism of Jesus (1:11), though here they are directed to the disciples. “Listen to him” (9:7) designates Jesus as the prophet who would follow Moses (see Dt 18:15–18), and it assures the bewildered disciples that Jesus’s prediction of his suffering and death in Jerusalem (8:31) is not a mistake but God’s providential will for him. The transfiguration does not end with Jesus escaping to heaven with Elijah and Moses; instead, Jesus remains “with [the disciples]” (9:8) on the journey to Jerusalem.

The prophet Elijah was reputed to have been taken bodily into heaven without dying (2 Kg 2:11), from where he would return as a herald of the great and terrible day of the Lord (Mal 3:1; 4:5–6).

9:9–13. On the descent from the mountain, Jesus commands the disciples to be silent for the final time, admonishing them to banish thoughts of messianic triumphalism and not to mention the transfiguration until the resurrection of the Son of Man (9:9). The disciples’ puzzlement (9:10) is a further sign of their blindness (8:14–21), for among the Pharisees the doctrine of the resurrection had been an article of faith for two centuries.

The disciples’ question about Elijah (9:11), suggesting that Elijah’s return to restore all things (Mal 4:5–6) should obviate the need for the Son of Man to suffer, indicates further resistance to the idea of suffering. Elijah will restore all things, affirms Jesus, but not before “the Son of Man must suffer many things and be treated with contempt” (9:12). This latter reference is an apparent allusion to the suffering of the servant of the Lord in Is 53:3. The fate of “Elijah” here (9:13) refers to the fate of John the Baptist (see Mt 17:13). The suffering of Isaiah’s servant of the Lord and the fate of Elijah concur that the triumphant day of the Lord can be purchased only by the suffering of the Son of Man.

9:14–24. In the second-to-last miracle story in Mark (9:14–29), a desperate father struggles for the life of his son and the existence of his faith. While Jesus and Peter, James, and John were on the mountain, a man brought his son who “has a spirit” (9:17) to the remaining disciples for healing (9:18). The description of the boy’s condition (9:18, 20–22) suggests he has epilepsy (cf. Mt 17:15), but Mark understands it in this instance to be demonically instigated. The disciples’ inability to heal the boy is another instance of their inadequacies when Jesus is not with them (see also 6:48). Jesus does not chastise the disciples, for inability is not a fault. His exasperation at the crowd (9:19), however, implies more serious problems of misunderstanding and hardness of heart. In recounting the boy’s condition, the father declares what is in his own heart.

At the sight of Jesus, the malevolent spirit convulses the boy (9:20). So inseparable is the father’s desperation from his son’s condition that he begs Jesus for help and compassion “on us” (9:22). The problem is not one of God’s unwillingness or inability but one of human disbelief (9:23). True faith stands in the gap between the promise of God and the weakness of the flesh. In complete vulnerability, the father brings both his faith and weakness to Jesus (9:24).

9:25–29. Seeing the crowd converge and not wanting to make a display of his power, Jesus rebukes the spirit and commands it to leave the boy (9:25). The encounter with Jesus seems to leave things worse than before, with the deathlike condition of the boy (9:26). Here too the father must trust Jesus rather than immediate and apparent circumstances. Stretching forth his hand, Jesus “raised [the boy], and he stood up” (9:27). This description echoes the raising of Jairus’s daughter from the dead (5:41), emphasizing the miraculous authority of Jesus.

Disappointed in their inability to heal the boy, the disciples ask Jesus privately why they couldn’t drive out the demon (9:28). Jesus directs the disciples to the necessity of prayer (9:29). Indeed, the very inadequacy of the disciples must drive them to prayer; for prayer is God’s gift to the disciples in facing situations beyond their abilities.

B. On the road to Jerusalem (9:30–10:52). As Jesus and the disciples are “on the road” (8:27; 10:32) from Caesarea Philippi to Jerusalem—a distance of two hundred miles as the crow flies—Mark includes four brief narratives on humility and suffering (9:30–50), each of which illustrates and reinforces Jesus’s call to self-denial and cross bearing (8:31–38).

9:30–32. The journey (9:30) may have been advised by the continued opposition of Antipas and the Jewish authorities, but above all because Jesus determined to journey to Jerusalem (see Lk 9:51, 53). On the way, Jesus gives the second and shortest of three passion predictions (9:31; see also 8:31; 10:33–34). In the second prediction, Jesus attributes his death not to the Jewish leaders, as in the first, but to all humanity. Moreover, “is going to be betrayed” is in the passive voice, which was a common way for Jews to avoid using the name of God. This implies that Jesus’s impending suffering in Jerusalem is a fulfillment of the divine will. Ironically, when the word of God is decisively spoken, the human response—and here from those with the greatest opportunity to understand—remains one of ignorance and fear (9:32).

9:33–37. The second of the four stories takes place in Capernaum, Jesus’s base of operations in the first half of Mark (9:33a). Alone with the disciples, Jesus asks what they talked about on the way (9:33b). They meet his question with embarrassed silence, for they were arguing who was the greatest (9:34). The placement of this story after the second passion prediction accentuates the contrast between Jesus and the disciples: he embraces humility, they argue who is greatest; he surrenders his life in service, they desire recognition and distinction. The second passion prediction is thus followed by a second misunderstanding.

In sitting and summoning, Jesus assumes the role and authority of a rabbi (9:35). Jesus redefines greatness in terms of giving rather than getting, and no vocation affords the opportunity of giving more than that of a servant. Worldly greatness is reserved for the gifted few, but in the kingdom of God anyone can be great because anyone can serve. Service is the primary way for believers to imitate and fulfill the mission of Jesus (10:43–45). Jesus then embraces a child and commands the disciples, as he teaches in Mt 25:40, to embrace “the least” (9:36–37).

9:38–41. The third narrative of the four reminds the disciples to judge others not by their own standards but by Jesus’s generosity. As a member of Jesus’s inner circle, John the son of Zebedee takes an elitist attitude toward an unnamed exorcist. Failing to learn the object lesson of the previous story, John regards his call as one of entitlement and exclusion; indeed, he speaks of following us rather than following Jesus (9:38). Ironically, John wants the exorcist to stop doing what he and the other disciples could not do (9:28). Jesus is more generous than the disciples (9:39–40). Faith no larger than a mustard seed is acceptable (4:30–32), as is a little child (9:36–37). Even a cup of cold water given in Christ’s name will not go unrewarded (9:41). Jesus receives what is done to a follower of Jesus as done to himself.

9:42–50. The final of the four narratives on humility and suffering is a graphic warning against causing others to sin. Mark 9:42 asserts the inestimable value of the small and insignificant. Not causing “one of these little ones . . . to fall away” refers to those “who believe in me”—that is, to disciples. Whatever is done to a follower of Jesus, whether good (9:41) or bad (9:42), is done to Jesus. Mark 9:43–48 shifts the focus from jeopardizing others to endangering self. The instruction to cut off hands or feet or gouge out eyes is not a command to literal physical mutilation. Like the millstone of 9:42, these are metaphors that are exaggerated for effect: let nothing—not even things as dear as hands, feet, and eyes—prevent you from entering the kingdom of God. The concluding references to fire and salt (9:50)—both of which accompanied temple sacrifices (Lv 1:1–17; 2:13)—are further metaphors of the trials and cost of discipleship.

10:1–12. Chapter 10 entails the call to discipleship in three fundamental aspects of life: marriage (10:1–12), children (10:13–16), and possessions (10:17–31).

Near the end of the journey from the north and before entering Jerusalem, Jesus teaches in Perea (10:1). There the Pharisees question him about divorce. However, their question of whether it is lawful for a man to divorce his wife (10:2) is a “test”; indeed, it is a trap, for Jewish law unambiguously permitted divorce (Dt 24:1–3). The only question was on what grounds. Opinions varied widely, from conservative rabbis who permitted divorce on the sole ground of adultery to liberal rabbis who allowed divorce for any reason. In posing the question, the Pharisees desire both to maintain an easy divorce policy and to catch Jesus in violation of torah. Jesus asks what Moses (i.e., the law) commands (10:3). The Pharisees promptly quote from Dt 24:1–3 (10:4). The law permits divorce, maintains Jesus, only as a concession to human sin rather than as a true picture of God’s will (10:5).

The Pharisees focus on exceptions to marriage; Jesus focuses on how to fulfill God’s intentions for it. Going behind the authority of torah, Jesus cites the first and fundamental teaching on marriage in Genesis (10:6–8): at creation God ordained marriage to be a union of a man and a woman (Gn 1:27) who become inseparably one (Gn 2:24). Unlike the Pharisees, who stacked the deck of divorce in favor of the male, Jesus portrays male and female as created mutually equal—and mutually responsible in the marriage union. The Pharisees considered the man the lord of marriage, but Jesus says God is the lord of marriage (10:9). The mutual responsibility for marriage is accentuated in 10:10–12, when Jesus teaches the disciples in private that, in suing for divorce and contracting a second marriage thereafter, both men and women are guilty of adultery.

10:13–16. The next fundamental aspect of life to be addressed is children. When some children are brought to Jesus, the disciples rebuke them (10:13). “Rebuke,” normally reserved in Mark for exorcisms (1:25; 9:25; cf. 3:12), is a strong denunciation, implying an attitude toward children that the disciples earlier (9:38) displayed toward an independent exorcist. Seeing their exclusivism, Jesus is “indignant” (10:14)—the only passage in the Gospels apart from 1:41 where the anger of Jesus is so sharply aroused.

Jesus’s attitude toward children is remarkable in the ancient world. In Jewish and Roman societies, childhood was regarded not with tenderness but as an unavoidable interim between birth and adulthood. In blessing and embracing children (10:16), Jesus is not acknowledging their innocence or purity—that would imply their acceptance is based on some virtue. Rather, children are blessed for what they lack—size, power, and sophistication. Having nothing to bring to Jesus, they have everything to receive from him by grace. Neediness—not merit—is the prerequisite to entering the kingdom of God (10:15).

10:17–22. In the third discussion of what is fundamental to life (10:17–31), the possessions and social standing of the rich man are a striking contrast with the deficiencies of the children in the previous story. The rich man who approaches Jesus appears eager and receptive; he is the first person in Mark to ask to inherit eternal life, and he receives a clearer picture of the kingdom than anyone yet in Mark. Ironically, however, he turns away. Jesus deflects the address “good teacher” (10:17–18) perhaps because, like rabbis in general, he wishes to avoid possible blasphemy, but more likely because he wishes to redirect the man’s thoughts to the commandments. To the prohibitions of murder, adultery, theft, false testimony, and dishonoring parents, Jesus adds a commandment, not found in the Ten Commandments, against defrauding—perhaps because wealth is often gained at the expense of the poor (10:19).

Jesus does not challenge the truthfulness of the rich man’s claim that he has kept the commandments (10:20). It is often imagined that if the law were perfectly kept, one would gain eternal life. To a man who has, in fact, kept the law, Jesus declares one thing is required (10:21). Jesus offers himself as a substitute for the man’s possessions. The man’s full adherence to the law, good as it is, is no substitute for knowing and following Jesus. This offer, however, the man cannot accept. Standing on his own merits, he is self-confident; but when he is called to give up his security and follow Jesus, he is dismayed and turns away (10:22).

10:23–31. Possessions pose a problem for the disciples as well as for the rich man, for Jesus “looked around” and twice warns, “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God” (10:23–25). The famous statement in 10:25 about a camel going through the eye of a needle is humorous, to be sure, but also deadly earnest. The explanation that “the eye of a needle” refers to a small Jerusalem gate through which camels might enter by kneeling (implying that the rich may enter the kingdom if they humble themselves) is anachronistic, for that gate lay nine centuries in the future when Jesus spoke. The intended offense of the analogy is not lost on the disciples, who, nearly as shocked as the rich man (10:22), ask, “Then who can be saved?” (10:26).

Jesus’s words do not comfort the disciples but convict them of their utter insufficiency before God. This, at last, is the right frame of mind. Only where things are no longer possible may the disciples receive all things from God (10:27). Peter asks whether the sacrifices the disciples have made to follow Jesus are then worthless (10:28). They have given up homes, families, and fields (10:29), their most essential relationships and allegiances. Jesus assures them that when all has been forsaken for him, he will return all a hundredfold—though not without trials—in this life, and he will give them eternal life in the world to come (10:30). Discipleship entails a deep irony: the “first will be last, and the last first” (10:31).

10:32–34. The final passion prediction is the most explicit of the three, with many predictions fulfilled in chapters 14–15. Jewish leaders are responsible for Jesus’s death in the first prediction (8:31); Gentiles in the second (9:31); but both Jews and Gentiles (10:33–34) in the third prediction.

Discipleship is always following Jesus “on the road, going up to Jerusalem” (10:32). Nowhere else does Mark speak of Jesus “walking ahead of the them” except to his suffering and death. Peter has just boasted of having “left everything and followed” Jesus (10:28), but on the actual road to Jerusalem he and the disciples are reluctant and afraid.

10:35–45. The failure of the disciples to understand the way of Jesus is exposed with acid clarity in 10:35–37, where, immediately following Jesus’s announcement of his impending humiliation, James and John ask for fame. James and John think of God’s kingdom in terms of benefits. Jesus, however, speaks of the costs of participating in it in terms of a “cup” and “baptism” (10:38), both metaphors of suffering. The brothers assure Jesus of their willingness to bear the costs of discipleship (10:39). Despite their assurance, Jesus declares that the rewards of glory are hidden in the eternal purpose of God (10:40). Disciples are to follow Jesus not because of future rewards but because they wish to be with Jesus—wherever he leads.

The other disciples are “indignant” with James and John for their request of special honor, perhaps because they secretly have hoped for it themselves (10:41). The dissension among the Twelve becomes the pretext for one of Jesus’s most important lessons and self-revelations. Earthly rulers and officials, says Jesus, “act as tyrants” (10:42)—and usually with severity. “It is not so among you” (10:43a) means, this is not the way the kingdom of God works. Repeating the lesson of 9:35, Jesus solemnly declares that the preeminent value of God’s kingdom is not power, prestige, or authority but service (10:43b–44). The idea of a “slave” being “first” was as paradoxical as the idea of a camel going through the eye of a needle (10:25).

Disciples must practice service rather than authority because it is Jesus’s posture (10:45). Jesus calls disciples not to an ethical system but to the very pattern of the incarnation (1:3). A servant is preeminent because a servant gives, and giving is the essence of God, who gave his Son for the sins of the world. In describing the Son of Man as giving his life “as a ransom for many,” Jesus appropriates the description of the servant of the Lord in Is 53:10–11. [Jesus the Servant]

In the OT, the prophets use the image of the cup to represent God’s wrath that wicked nations will drink (e.g., Is 51:17–23; Jr 25:15–17, 28). This usage also stands behind the “cup” that Jesus must drink, which refers to his death (Mk 10:38–39; 14:36; Jn 18:11). On the cross, Jesus as the substitute for sinners bears God’s wrath.

10:46–52. The healing of a blind man in Jericho concludes the journey to Jerusalem. Bartimaeus is the only person healed in the Synoptic Gospels who is named, and by concluding with a comment that he “began to follow Jesus on the road” (10:52), Mark designates him a model disciple. As Jesus, the disciples, and a large crowd leave Jericho, a blind beggar cries out to Jesus for mercy (10:47). What Bartimaeus lacks in eyesight he makes up for in insight. “Son of David” recalls the hopes of a promised deliverer like David (2 Sm 7:11–14), thus indicating that Bartimaeus associates messianic expectations with Jesus.

Refusing to be silenced by the crowd, Bartimaeus repeats the cry (10:48). Unlike the crowd, Jesus does not treat Bartimaeus as an annoying problem. He stops, summons him, and restores his dignity by asking, “What do you want me to do for you?” (10:49–51). It is the same question Jesus asked James and John in 10:36, but whereas they asked for superhuman glory, Bartimaeus simply asks for human eyesight. Jesus restores his sight with warm assurance: “Go, your faith has saved [sōzō] you” (10:52). The Greek word sōzō, which means both “save” and “heal,” is doubly appropriate here, for the encounter with Jesus has changed Bartimaeus from a beggar beside the road to a disciple “on the road.”

The Mount of Olives viewed from the Temple Mount. Jesus’s route would take him over the Mount of Olives, which would have offered an expansive view of the temple and the city of Jerusalem.

C. Stories of conflict in the temple in Jerusalem (11:1–13:37). Mark 11–16 is commonly called the passion narrative, the account of Jesus’s suffering and death in Jerusalem. In devoting fully one-third of his narrative to the final week of Jesus’s life, Mark indicates its importance for understanding Jesus and the gospel. All the material in Mk 11–13—and most of 14–15—is oriented around the focal point of the temple. Mark presents Jesus as neither a preserver nor a reformer of the temple, however, but as its replacement. The locus Dei—the dwelling place of God in the world—is no longer (and will never again be) the Jerusalem temple but Jesus himself.

11:1–11. Jesus begins his final week by making his way to the temple in Jerusalem. The Roman road in Jesus’s day ran along the spine of the mountain flank that led from Jericho up to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, and from there down either to Bethany or to Jerusalem (11:1). The Mount of Olives runs on a north–south axis east of Jerusalem, and its summit affords a breathtaking view of the city. From the summit of the Mount of Olives, Jesus sends two unnamed disciples to an unnamed village (Bethany?) to fetch a “colt” (the young of either a horse or a donkey) on which to ride into Jerusalem (11:2). Jesus may have known about the colt because of his connections in Bethany (see Jn 11–12). The reference to “the Lord ” needing the colt (11:3) and to the riding of an unbroken animal both suggest Jesus’s divine authority. The preparation for the entry into Jerusalem demonstrates Jesus’s precise foreknowledge and sovereignty over subsequent events.

Once the colt has been procured, the way is strewn with cloaks and branches as Jesus rides into Jerusalem (11:4–8). “Hosanna” (11:9) is a transliterated Hebrew word meaning, “Save, I pray.” “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” is a quotation from Ps 118:25–26, where it refers not to the Messiah but to pilgrims entering Jerusalem. “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David” (11:10, not a Scripture quotation) insinuates messianic overtones, however. Triumphal processions were common throughout the ancient Near East as a means for rulers to exhibit their prowess and subjugate populations through displays of military might. This narrative is traditionally and rightly designated the triumphal entry, as it is described in Mt 21:1–11 and Jn 12:12–19. Mark’s narrative is scarcely triumphal, however, for the crowds vanish, Jesus enters the temple alone, and having looked around briefly, he returns to Bethany (11:11). This is the first of Mark’s clues that the temple is not the habitation of God’s Son.

In the OT, the Mount of Olives is associated with the coming of the Messiah and the final judgment (Ezk 11:23; Zch 14:4).

11:12–14. The cursing of the fig tree (11:12–25) often offends readers because Jesus curses a tree for not producing fruit out of season. The fig tree story is another of Mark’s sandwich units, however, in which the cursing (11:12–14) and withering (11:20–26) of the tree is interrupted by the cleansing of the temple (11:15–19). The splicing of the two stories together signifies that the fate of the unfruitful fig tree foreshadows God’s judgment on the unfruitful temple.

Walking the roughly two miles from Bethany to Jerusalem (11:12), Jesus sees a fig tree in leaf and approaches it in hopes of finding figs to eat. Fig trees produce immature green figs before coming to leaf, and once foliage appears one expects to find branches loaded with figs, which, though not mature, are edible (Hs 9:10; Sg 2:13). The statement, “It was not the season for figs” (11:13), must mean not the season for ripe figs. More important than botany, however, is the theological symbolism of the story. The fig tree is often a symbol of God’s judgment in the OT, and here as in the prophetic tradition (Is 34:4; Jr 8:13; Hs 2:12; Jl 1:7; Mc 7:1) the curse of the fig tree (11:14) symbolizes God’s judgment on the temple.

11:15–19. In the central, B-part of the sandwich, Mark turns to the clearing of the temple. The Court of the Gentiles, where animals were sold for sacrifice and currency exchanged for the Tyrian shekel (made of pure metal and with no image), is the setting of 11:15–19. Quoting Is 56:7, Jesus overturns the tables of animal sellers and money changers in order to make the temple a place of prayer “for all nations” (11:15–17). The commercial interests associated with the Jewish sacrificial system have deprived the “nations” (or “Gentiles”) of the one place where non-Jews could worship. The Messiah was popularly expected to “cleanse” the temple of Gentiles and restore it for exclusive Jewish rites and rituals. Jesus does not “cleanse” and restore the sacrificial system of the temple, however; he clears it for the Gentiles. [Herod’s Temple]

The chief priests and scribes—the two groups responsible for oversight of the temple—fully understand Jesus’s intent and begin “looking for a way to kill him” (11:18; see also 3:6). Jesus then abandons the temple to go “out of the city” (11:19)—a second reminder (see 11:11) that the temple is not the habitation of God’s Son.

11:20–26. Mark completes the sandwich with the note that the next day the fig tree was “withered from the roots” (11:20–21). Something “withered from the roots” cannot be revived. That expression, which recalls the seed in the parable of the sower that had no depth of soil (4:6), signifies that the new covenant in Jesus’s blood (14:24) has replaced the blood of animal sacrifices and that by his resurrection from the dead Jesus will raise a new temple not made by human hands (14:58).

The saying in 11:23–25 is appended to the fig tree–temple sandwich in order to remind readers that Jesus, and not the temple, is the object of the believer’s faith and prayer, and that faith and prayer make possible forgiveness, which is the epitome of the gospel.

11:27–33. From 11:27 through the end of chapter 12, Mark reports a series of controversies and conflicts between Jesus and the Sanhedrin, a judicatory body composed of chief priests, elders (both Pharisees and Sadducees), and scribes. As this series opens, a delegation of the Sanhedrin confronts Jesus in the temple with the question about his authority (11:27–28). They are evidently recalling Jesus’s presumption to forgive sins (2:10), supersession of torah and Sabbath (2:23–3:6), acceptance of sinners and tax collectors (2:16), disruption of temple operations (11:15–19), and other challenges to their authority. Their question recognizes that no one possesses authority on his own to do what Jesus does. Such authority comes only from God—and herein is the trap of the Sanhedrin’s question. If Jesus claims such authority, he can be charged with blasphemy, which in Judaism was a capital offense.

Jesus meets their question with a counterquestion (11:29–30). This is not a diversionary tactic but an attempt to direct the Sanhedrin to the proper answer. At John’s baptism Jesus was declared God’s Son and endowed with God’s Spirit to do “these things.” A decision about John can open a door to a decision about Jesus. The Sanhedrin weighs the political consequences before them and answers evasively (11:31–33). Their reply is not entirely true. They are, rather, unwilling to commit, and to those unwilling to commit, Jesus is unwilling to reveal himself.

12:1–12. The parable of the vineyard retells the history of Israel in the well-known imagery of a vineyard (e.g., Is 5:1–7), though it is adapted to the widespread system of absentee landownership in first-century Palestine. The parable depicts the central purpose of Israel’s history as leading to the landowner’s beloved son (12:6), and Israel’s failure to receive the son as grounds for its judgment. Tenant farmers are entrusted with the oversight of a vineyard, but when the owner sends servants to collect his produce, the farmers maltreat some and kill others (12:1–5). In a final act of outrage, the farmers kill the owner’s beloved son and throw his body to the birds, thinking the vineyard will be theirs (12:6–8). After every conceivable overture of clemency, the landowner intervenes and takes vengeance on the tenant farmers (12:9).

The landowner in the parable represents God. His judgment falls not on the vineyard (Jews/Israel), however, but on the “tenant farmers,” or leaders of Israel, who in Jesus’s day were the members of the Sanhedrin. Supreme place in the parable is accorded the “beloved son” (12:6; see 1:11; 9:7). The son is sent by the father, but unlike the servants, the son is the “heir” (12:7): he goes as the father’s representative, with the father’s authority, to the father’s property, to collect the father’s due. The “beloved son” unmistakably highlights Jesus’s consummate role in the history of Israel.

Despite the schemes of the tenant farmers, the vineyard is not destroyed; it is God’s possession, and it will be given to “others” (12:9), which may refer to Gentiles. The concluding quotation, from Ps 118:22–23, ends with the assurance that “this came about from the Lord and is wonderful in our eyes” (12:10–11). God’s providence, in other words, has overseen the intrigues of the farmers, even the rejection and death of the son, and through them—as in the parable of the sower (4:3–9)—brings about a harvest beyond compare. The parable concludes in 12:12 with the religious leaders conniving to do to Jesus what the farmers did to the beloved son.

Jesus concludes the parable of the vineyard owner with a quotation from Ps 118:22–23 about a rejected stone that later becomes a cornerstone (Mk 12:10–11). This text plays an important role in the NT as an explanation for Jewish rejection of the gospel (Lk 20:17; Ac 4:11; Rm 9:33; 1 Pt 2:6–8).

12:13–17. All the stories in 11:27–12:44 portray the opposition of the Sanhedrin to Jesus. The chief priests, along with scribes and elders, challenged Jesus in 11:27–33, and beginning in 12:13 the remaining constituents of the Sanhedrin—the Pharisees (12:13–17), Sadducees (12:18–27), and scribes (12:28–34)—challenge Jesus as well.

The Pharisees are sent “to trap [Jesus] in his words” (12:13), and they begin by flattery (12:14a). The Herodians’ coalition with the Pharisees, with whom they shared little in common, was surely based more on a common enemy in Jesus than on common values (see 3:6). The imperial poll tax (12:14b) was the required payment of a denarius (the average daily wage), stamped with the impression of Tiberius Caesar (Roman emperor AD 14–37). The question of the Pharisees and Herodians is designed to ensnare Jesus however he answers: support for taxation will discredit him in the eyes of the people, who detest Roman occupation; refusal to pay will invite Roman retaliation for insurrection.

In a brilliant repartee, Jesus grants that the image and inscription are Caesar’s; therefore, the coin belongs to Caesar (12:15–17a). This answer acknowledges the legitimacy of human government. Jesus then adds, “And [give] to God the things that are God’s” (12:17b). This answer—which has not been asked of Jesus—indicates that their political question cannot be answered without answering the more fundamental theological question. Political and civil duties cannot be properly rendered until the ultimate claim of God is acknowledged. Humanity, which bears God’s image (Gn 1:26), belongs to God.

12:18–27. Following the test of the Pharisees comes Mark’s lone challenge to Jesus from the Sadducees. The Sadducees, who denied the resurrection of the dead (because it is not attested in the Torah), intend to discredit Jesus by devising an ingenious test case of a woman lawfully married to seven brothers (12:18–22). The idea is based on the custom of levirate marriage (Gn 38:8; Dt 25:5–6), whereby a man was obligated to marry a childless widow of his deceased brother in order to preserve the honor, name, and property of the deceased brother—and prevent the widow from marrying a Gentile. Assuming that resurrected existence is a mere extension of earthly life, the Sadducees reason that a woman who was married to seven husbands sequentially on earth could not be married to them simultaneously in heaven (12:23).

In a summary rejection of their premise, Jesus declares the whole artifice is false (12:24). This is a bold indictment, for torah and power were the two strong suits of the Sadducees. The resurrected life, continues Jesus, is not a prolongation of earthly life but an entirely new dimension of existence (cf. 1 Co 15:40–44), like the life of “angels in heaven” (12:25). Indeed, even torah—which the Sadducees accept as given by God—presumes the resurrection of the dead, for the promise that he is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (12:26; see Ex 3:6) was not temporal (i.e., ended by death) but eternal (12:27).

12:28–34. The final test of Jesus from the constituents of the Sanhedrin comes from a scribe. Scribes were torah experts of great erudition who both advised the Sanhedrin and enjoyed legendary reputations and privileges. The scribe asks Jesus which commandment comes before everything and is incumbent on everyone (12:28). Jesus answers by quoting the Shema (12:29–30), the quintessential summary of the torah in Dt 6:4–5 recited morning and evening by every pious Jew. The Shema commands believers to love God with heart, soul, and strength, but here Jesus adds a fourth command, to love God “with all your mind” (12:30). The scribe asked for only one commandment, but as in his earlier response to the Pharisees and Herodians (12:17), Jesus appends a second (12:31; see Lv 19:18). Both of these commandments form a unity, encompassing the one will of God in a single commandment, greater than everything else.

In Mark’s Gospel, this is Jesus’s only encounter with a nonadversarial scribe. His response in 12:32–33 indicates that this scribe—and perhaps not he alone—understands love to supersede “burnt offerings and sacrifices.” As torah authorities, scribes presumed to speak the final word in religious matters. It is Jesus, however, who passes final judgment on the scribe (12:34a). The scribe’s nearness to the kingdom is due not to his knowledge of torah but to his proximity to Jesus.

Jesus has survived interrogation from the Sanhedrin (11:27–33), Pharisees (12:13–17), Sadducees (12:18–27), and scribes (12:28–34)—and prevailed over them (12:34b).

12:35–37. Now Jesus asks the question of the day. As in the parable of the vineyard (12:1–12), Jesus chooses to raise the question of sonship at the heart of Israel and before the authorities of Israel (12:35). The issue of identity, which Jesus raised privately on the way to Caesarea Philippi, he now raises publicly in the precincts of the temple. Behind Jesus’s question lay the common assumption that the Messiah would be a descendant of King David. Jesus challenges this assumption by quoting Ps 110:1 (12:36). If David was the author of this psalm, and if “Lord” refers to God and “my Lord” to the Messiah, then the Messiah is not David’s descendant but his Lord and master. “How then can [the Messiah] be [David’s] son?” asks Jesus (12:37). The Messiah is not an extension of David but his superior—not the fruit of David but the root of David (Rv 22:16). The Messiah is not David’s son, after all; he is God’s Son!

12:38–44. In the final episode of Jesus’s public teaching, Mark contrasts scribes, in their “long robes” and seats of honor (12:38–39), and a “poor widow” of no honor (12:42). The ostentation of scribes and their temptation to use their prestige for self-advancement fall under Jesus’s judgment (12:40). By contrast, Jesus praises a widow who deposits a mere pittance—“two tiny coins” (12:42)—into the temple treasury. In addition to being a place of worship, the temple functioned as a sacred bank by collecting and storing dues, taxes, donations of money and precious objects, and individual wealth. The “temple treasury” (12:41) was located in the Court of the Women, where Jews (including men, women, and children) were allowed, but not Gentiles.

In contrast to the well-to-do scribes and crowds, the widow (12:43), declares Jesus, “put more into the treasury” because she gave out of her need, not out of her surplus. For Jesus, the value of a gift is not the amount given but the cost to the giver. The reference to the sacrifice of “everything she had” (12:44) is a fitting final word for Jesus’s public ministry, for the widow gave what all disciples must give in obeying the call to “follow me” (1:17).

13:1–2. The discourse in Mk 13 is often called the Olivet Discourse because it takes place on the Mount of Olives (13:3). The organizing theme of this discourse is eschatology, in which future events, including some as distant as the second coming of the Son of Man, are prefigured by the destruction of the temple and fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. Mark divides Jesus’s teaching into two time frames. Events identified by “these things” (13:4, 29, 30; cf. 13:2, 8) relate to the immediate future and the destruction of the temple. Events identified by “those days” (or “that day,” 13:17, 19–20, 24, 32) concern the distant future and the second coming of the Son of Man. These two designations result in the following outline: A1, the end of temple and the fall of Jerusalem (13:1–13); B1, tribulation and the second coming of the Son of Man (13:14–27); A2, the end of the temple and the fall of Jerusalem (13:28–31).

The scribes who want “the best seats” and “places of honor” and yet “devour widows’ houses” (Mk 12:38–40) fall under Jesus’s judgment, in the same way that false prophets have fallen under the prophets’ judgment in the OT (Is 10:2; Am 2:1–16; Mc 3:1–12).

Like the farewell discourses of major biblical figures (Jacob, Gn 49; Moses, Dt 32–33; Joshua, Jos 23; Samuel, 1 Sm 12; Paul, Ac 20), Mk 13 attributes to Jesus a final discourse that constitutes the longest block of teaching in Mark’s Gospel.

Chapter 13 opens as Jesus leaves the temple. Jesus’s disciples draw his attention to the magnificence of the temple’s stones and buildings (13:1). He warns the disciples not to be misled by its grandeur, for it will be like the “fig tree withered from the roots” (11:20): “Not one stone will be left upon another” (13:2).

13:3–13. Jesus delivers his discourse while sitting on the Mount of Olives, “across from the temple” (13:3), which is symbolic as well as literal, for the chapter concludes Mk 11–13 (all of which is set in the temple) with the pronouncement of Jesus’s judgment on the temple and prediction of its destruction. The Mount of Olives earlier commenced Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem (11:1). Now, sitting in authority on its summit, Jesus warns the disciples of two impending dangers.

First, the disciples are to “watch out” (13:5) and “be on [their] guard” (13:9) against false teachers and messiahs. Such people will work “sign[s]” (13:4—the word is used negatively here; cf. 8:11–12); indeed, they “will come in [Jesus’s] name” (13:6), but they nevertheless “deceive” and lead astray. The first and gravest future danger is not external but internal, inside the household of faith.

Model of the first-century Jerusalem temple

© Baker Publishing Group and Dr. James C. Martin. Courtesy of the Israel Museum. Collection of the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, and courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority, exhibited at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

Second, disciples are warned of external dangers—wars, natural calamities, famine—that will affect all people (13:5–8). Despite the severity of these disasters, they neither impede the spread of God’s reign nor signal the end (13:7). They indeed subject the church to adversity, for believers will be accused, arrested, tried, and beaten (13:9–11). Most distressing, believers will be betrayed, hated, and even killed by fellow believers and family members (13:13). Despite these hardships, however, “the gospel [will] be preached to all nations” (13:10). Adversity will afford believers opportunities to declare their faith before authorities, and they need not be anxious about doing so, for the Holy Spirit will speak through them (13:11). In Jesus’s depiction of the future, adversity is not an abnormality but the norm of Christian existence. The believer who “endures to the end will be saved” (13:13).

13:14–27. In 13:14 Jesus mentions a specific calamity that appears to prefigure the end times. “Abomination of desolation” (see Dn 9:27; 11:31; 12:11) describes the outrage of the Seleucid king Antiochus IV, who in 168 BC erected an altar to Zeus in the Jerusalem temple and sacrificed a sow on it. For Jesus, the “abomination” of Antiochus IV was a prefigurement of a blasphemous antichrist who in the end time would do a scandalous deed before the return of the Son of Man in judgment and glory. Scholars often regard the destruction of the temple by Titus in AD 70 as the realization of the “abomination,” for some details in 13:14–18 recall the siege and destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. If this is correct, Mark warns readers (“let the reader understand,” 13:14) that the catastrophic fall of Jerusalem in AD 70 is a foreshadowing of the disasters that will take place at the end of time, when “the man of lawlessness” will appear (2 Th 2:3–4), a blasphemous antichrist who will do horrors and outrages before the return of the Lord. [The Destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70]

“Those . . . days” (13:19)—referring to the end time—will be so dire and unprecedented that unless God intervenes and shortens them, “no one [will] be saved” (13:20). The last days will see many false prophets and messiahs perform many wonders and attract many followers (13:21–22). The true disciple knows these deceptions in advance and is not distracted from faithful obedience to the Lord (13:23). In “those days” (13:24), earthly calamities will be mirrored by celestial portents—the darkening of sun and moon and shaking of stars and planets (13:24–25)—all foretold in the OT prophets. Then the Son of Man, though now subjected to suffer in Jerusalem (8:31; 9:31; 10:33–34) and destined to be crucified as a common criminal (Php 2:8), will come “in clouds with great power and glory” (13:26). Jesus, who is now Son of God in humility, will be revealed as Son of God in power (Rm 1:3–4) by fulfilling the prophecy of Dn 7:13 and by vindicating the elect at the final judgment. The great assurance of the second coming is that the Creator and Redeemer of all will condemn evil, end suffering, and gather his “elect” to himself (13:27).

13:28–31. Verses 28–31 return to the impending fall of Jerusalem and thus the near future. As with the fig tree (13:28), which blossoms when winter is past and summer has arrived, when “you see these things happening” (13:29)—that is, the fall of the temple (13:4)—you know that the end is near. The generation to which Jesus speaks will witness the fall of Jerusalem, which itself is a preview of the end of the world (13:30). Jesus’s statement that “heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away” (13:31) is a claim only God can make. In making this claim, Jesus assures his disciples that his words will outlive the cosmos and that the world to come is already present in his teaching.

13:32–37. The Olivet Discourse concludes on the subject of the distant future. “Concerning that day” (13:32) reintroduces the theme of the second coming of verses 14–27. Remarkably, in this, the only passage in Mark where Jesus explicitly calls himself “the Son [of God],” he confesses what he does not know and cannot do! The Son relinquishes all claims concerning the future to the Father’s plan. In the great mysteries of life, humans want signs; Jesus, however, wants only the Father. Given such mysteries, Jesus’s concluding word—five times in 13:33–37—is “Be on guard,” “Be alert,” “Watch.” When and how the end will come cannot be known, only that it will come—suddenly! Given that reality, the only sensible way to live, like a householder awaiting the uncertain time of the owner’s return (13:34), is in constant readiness.

Summary. Overall, Mark 13 warns readers against attempts at constructing timetables and deciphering signs of the second coming. Disciples are admonished to be alert and watchful (13:5, 9, 23, 33, 35, 37), for neither they (13:33, 35) nor even Jesus (13:32) knows the time of the end. Disciples are not to be led astray by even the most obvious signs (13:5–6, 21–22), for the end is not yet (13:7, 13). Discipleship is fulfilled not by predicting future events but by faithfulness in the present, especially in trials, adversity, and suffering.

D. The abandonment of Jesus in Jerusalem (14:1–72). Mark 14 and 15 rehearse the betrayal, suffering, and crucifixion of Jesus, commonly known as the “passion.” Chapter 14, the longest in the Gospel, commences the chain of events in Jesus’s abandonment, first by Judas and the chief priests, then by the Sanhedrin and all his disciples, and finally by the crowds and even the Father (15:34). The passion commences with the betrayal of Jesus by Judas, into which Mark sandwiches a story of a woman who anoints Jesus with costly ointment. The key to Mark’s sandwich construction is found in the middle episode, which in this instance is a costly sacrifice of faith for Jesus, whereas in the plot with the Sanhedrin Judas sacrifices his faith itself by the betrayal of his master.

14:1–2. The Jewish Passover was celebrated annually (Ex 12) by ritually slaughtering a year-old male lamb or goat on the afternoon of the fourteenth of Nisan (March-April). The Passover meal, eaten in family gatherings after sunset (i.e., 15 Nisan), commenced the weeklong Festival of Unleavened Bread (Ex 12:15–20). The plot of the Sanhedrin (14:1) is described with blunt realism: they intend to seek out Jesus, arrest him by guile, and kill him. Jerusalem, the only place where Passover could be celebrated, drew enormous crowds for the festival; this increased the potential of an uprising as well as the need for security precautions on the part of the Romans. The Jewish authorities hope to seize Jesus without provoking his Galilean sympathizers (14:2).

14:3–9. Mark now inserts the story of the anointing of Jesus by an unnamed woman, whose compassion stands in stark contrast to the plot of the religious authorities. It was normally a breach of etiquette for a woman to interrupt Jewish male fellowship, but Mark portrays the woman’s intrusion as an act of faith (also 5:34). Mark’s profuse description of the ointment (14:4), which amounted to the equivalent of a year’s earnings, is an attempt to convey the value of the woman’s sacrifice. Smashing the jar symbolizes the totality and irrevocability of the gift (14:3). No gift or act of generosity from either crowds or disciples approximates what this woman does. Some of those present regard the act as a “waste,” a judgment that both demeans the woman and insinuates Jesus’s unworthiness of it (14:4).

Jesus accepts the gift as “a noble thing” (14:6), for the woman “has done what she could” (14:8). Jesus earlier similarly commended the incomparably smaller gift of the poor widow in 12:44, indicating that the value of a gift consists not in amount but in giving what one is able to give. Jesus receives the anointing as a preparation for his burial, and he commemorates it because the woman somehow understands that the mystery of the gospel is revealed in Jesus’s death (14:9).

14:10–11. Mark closes the sandwich by returning to Judas. Identifying him as “one of the Twelve” (14:10) may warn readers that closeness to Jesus does not guarantee faithfulness. Mark is silent about Judas’s motives for betraying Jesus, although money played a role (14:11). Judas’s betrayal is more premeditated, but all the disciples will defect as well (14:50).

Expensive perfumed oils, like the one made from nard that the woman uses to anoint Jesus, were sealed in alabaster jars similar to the ones shown here. Jesus declares that the woman’s extravagant act is an anointing “in advance for burial” (Mk 14:8).

© Baker Publishing Group and Dr. James C. Martin. Courtesy of the Eretz Israel Museum, Tel Aviv, Israel.

14:12–16. The preparation of the Passover in 14:12–16 is reminiscent of the preparation of the entry into Jerusalem in 11:1–6; both show Jesus’s foreknowledge and governance of events as his “hour” (14:35) approaches. “The first day of Unleavened Bread” (14:12) technically began at sundown on the fifteenth of Nisan (Thursday evening), but Mark appears to place the beginning of Passover on Thursday afternoon, the fourteenth of Nisan, when Passover lambs were slaughtered in the temple. The disciples are given what appear to be undercover instructions to meet “a man carrying a jar of water” (14:13). This must locate the meeting place at or near the pool of Siloam or the Gihon Spring, the two water sources of Jerusalem. Carrying water was normally women’s (or slaves’) labor; a man carrying a water jug would have caught the eye of the disciples. Jerusalem residents customarily made spare rooms available for Passover pilgrims, and the target water bearer, perhaps in accordance with previous arrangements by Jesus, ushers the disciples to a well-appointed banquet room (14:14–16).

14:17–21. Mark sets the Last Supper (14:22–26) in another sandwich construction, placed between Jesus’s predictions of the betrayal (14:17–21) and defection (14:27–31) of the disciples. The sandwich dramatically illustrates the self-sacrifice of Jesus in contrast to the infidelity of the disciples. Reclining was the customary position of feasting in the ancient world (14:18a). The announcement of betrayal in a context of sacred feasting and intimacy is bitterly ironic (14:18b).

“One who is dipping bread in the bowl with me” (14:20) does not limit the field of suspects but expands it to include all the disciples. Jesus’s unsettling announcement provokes soul-searching—and self-justification—in the disciples (14:19). There was one traitor in the formal sense, but by dawn all the disciples will abandon Jesus, if not from greed (14:10–11), then from weakness (14:37–42), fear (14:50–52), or cowardice (14:66–72). Jesus says that the betrayal of the Son of Man is both predestined and yet a free choice for which the culprit is responsible (14:21).

14:22–26. At the centerpiece of the sandwich, Mark places the Last Supper, narrated with liturgical form and brevity. The account is built on seven Greek verbs in 14:22 (eat, take, bless, break, give, say, take), signifying the gracious activity of Jesus on behalf of the disciples. In pronouncing the bread and wine his “body” and “blood,” Jesus signifies the gift of himself, wholly and without reserve. Of the four Gospel writers, only Mark adds “and they all drank from it” (14:23). The Last Supper is a table of grace, not of merit, for the “all” who drink (14:23) and swear allegiance (14:31) also fall away (14:27) and flee (14:50).

The “blood of the covenant” (14:24) recalls Ex 24:3–8, the first covenant at Sinai, sealed with the blood of a sacrificial animal. Unlike in the first covenant, however, in the new covenant (Jr 31:31–34) the blood of Jesus is not thrown on the community but imbibed into it. The “many” in 14:24 alludes to the Suffering Servant of Isaiah, who “bore the sin of many” (Is 53:12). Jesus concludes the supper (14:25) by resuming the eschatological motif of chapter 13. The Last Supper is intended as the interim feast of believers with their Lord until his return.

An artist’s rendering of the gathering of Jesus and his disciples to celebrate a Passover meal on the eve of his arrest. Jesus connects this covenant celebration with his own “blood of the covenant” (Mk 14:24).

14:27–31. Mark closes the sandwich construction with a conversation between Jesus and Peter that recalls the theme of 14:17–21, where Jesus predicted “one of you will betray me” (14:18). Following the Passover, Jesus announces, “All of you will fall away [Gk skandalizō]” (14:27). The Greek word is used in a passive sense, implying that the disciples will not willfully defect but fall away through weakness. Jesus supports his announcement by quoting Zch 13:7. The “I” refers to God, the shepherd to Jesus, and the sheep to the disciples. This quotation repeats the paradox of 14:21: evil is used by God to fulfill his greater purpose. The Zechariah quotation (like Is 53:10) also implies that Jesus understands his impending passion in Jerusalem not as an accident but as divinely ordained.

Jesus announces that he will be reunited with the disciples after his resurrection, not in Jerusalem or the temple, but in Galilee (14:28), where their call to discipleship began (1:16). Until now, when Jesus announced his impending suffering, the disciples often responded by claiming their position and privilege. Peter protests similarly here that he will not fall away (14:29–31a), a protest echoed by all the disciples (14:31b). Despite Peter’s vociferous protests, Jesus sadly informs him that he will deny him not in a momentary lapse, but three times.

14:32–42. Following the Last Supper, Jesus goes to Gethsemane (14:32), an olive grove in the valley between the Mount of Olives and the Temple Mount where he and the disciples often gathered (Lk 22:39; Jn 18:1–2). Commanding the disciples to remain, Jesus departs a few paces in order to pray (14:34–35). This is the third time in Mark that Jesus prays (cf. 1:35; 6:46); each prayer is set in a context of crisis and decision, this being the most traumatic. According to Mark, the decision to submit to the Father’s will in Gethsemane causes Jesus greater internal suffering than does the physical crucifixion of Golgotha. The “cup” (14:35–36), reflecting apocalyptic imagery, refers not to Jesus’s arrest but to his messianic destiny. Jesus’s distress is the result not of facing his own death but of giving his life as “a ransom for many” (10:45; Is 53:12). Jesus must become the sin-bearer of all humanity, which will result in his complete alienation, even from God (15:34).

“Abba” (14:36; Aramaic “Papa”), an address of God seldom if ever used by rabbis, expresses Jesus’s consciousness of being God’s Son and his intimacy and trust with the Father. “Take this cup away from me” reveals Jesus’s human desire to avoid the cross, but his plea is finally resolved in submission to the Father’s will (14:36). Ironically, at the point where Jesus feels most distant from God’s presence, he is closest to his will. Gethsemane is the prelude to Golgotha, for in the valley below Jerusalem his soul is crucified, and on a hill above Jerusalem he will relinquish his body. The three warnings of Jesus to the disciples to “stay awake” (14:34, 37–38) reveal their failure to fulfill the Olivet Discourse (13:36–37), and they prefigure Peter’s three forthcoming denials. The admonition to the disciples in 14:38 is a reminder that trust and obedience of God are always a struggle against temptation and weakness.

14:43–52. In contrast to the intensity and pathos of Gethsemane, the arrest is narrated in resigned objectivity. As if to remind readers that disciples of Jesus can also be betrayers of Jesus, Judas is again named as “one of the Twelve” (14:43a; cf. 14:10; 3:19). Judas’s accomplices are the three constituent bodies of the Sanhedrin, now armed (14:43b). As a disciple, Judas knew Jesus’s daytime movements and nighttime lodgings, and he gives a prearranged sign to the authorities, lest in the darkness of an olive grove at night they fall upon the wrong person (14:45). Why Judas chose a kiss as his sign is unclear—although it had been similarly used at least twice in the OT (Gn 27:26; 2 Sm 20:9–10). Betrayal by an intimate act of affection, and by an epithet of respect, “Rabbi” (“my great one”), is a profound mockery (14:45).

The disciple who cuts off the ear of the servant of the high priest is often thought to be Peter (cf. Jn 18:10), but Mark simply identifies him as “one of those who stood by” (14:47). Jesus reproaches the crowd for assaulting him as a “criminal” (or “insurrectionist,” 14:48). The reference to the fulfillment of Scriptures in 14:49 must recall Is 53:12: he “was counted among the rebels.” “Then they all deserted him and ran away” is Mark’s bitter climax to the arrest (14:50). All have drunk the cup (14:23), all have pledged to die with him (14:31)—and all flee!

The young man who flees the mayhem of the arrest (14:51–52) is sometimes thought to be Mark himself. We have no certain knowledge that Mark was present in Jesus’s earthly ministry; but if he was—and if he wished to confess his own flight at the arrest—would he have expressed it so opaquely? The lack of identity of the naked man more likely invites readers to examine their own readiness to abandon Jesus (cf. Rm 3:10, 12).

14:53–54. For the third time in chapter 14 Mark employs the technique of sandwiching one story into another. The present sandwich consists of Peter’s denial (14:53–54, 66–72) divided by Jesus’s trial before the Sanhedrin (14:55–65). The theme of the sandwich is bearing witness under persecution, by contrasting Jesus’s faithful witness with Peter’s false witness.

The sandwich begins with Peter following Jesus “at a distance” (14:54). The distance will soon stretch into a denial. The focus then shifts to Jesus, who is hauled before the Sanhedrin on the heels of his arrest (14:53). The Sanhedrin normally met in the temple sanctuary, but “the high priest’s courtyard” (14:54) suggests a meeting in the private dwelling of the high priest Caiaphas, whose house lay less than a mile to the southwest of Gethsemane. Beneath the house of Caiaphas, a warren of rock-hewn chambers provided maximum security for prisoners such as Jesus.

14:55–59. The proceedings against Jesus in 14:55–65 egregiously violate Jewish jurisprudence set forth in the Mishnah. In particular, a verdict of guilty in capital cases required a second sitting the following day; both must be in the daytime, and neither on the eve of the Sabbath or a festival. A charge of blasphemy, moreover, could be sustained only if the accused cursed God publicly, resulting in death by stoning. The manifest departures from stipulated protocol suggest that the Sanhedrin proceeded in the fashion of a grand jury by hearing and condemning Jesus in a single sitting, and perhaps with less than a quorum.

In “looking for testimony against Jesus” (14:55), the Sanhedrin produces “many” false witnesses (14:56), though their testimonies disagree. The only specific accusation Mark records is that Jesus would “destroy this temple made with human hands, and in three days . . . build another not made by hands” (14:58). Given that the temple lay at the heart of Jewish worship and the power of the Sanhedrin, this was a serious charge. For Mark, the accusation again testifies that Jesus has replaced the temple as the place where humanity meets God.

14:60–65. The silence of Jesus throughout the trial (14:60–61a)—in this respect, too, John the Baptist was a forerunner of Jesus (Mk 6:14–29)—again reflects the Suffering Servant of Isaiah (Is 53:7). Jesus breaks silence only at the insistence of the high priest (14:61b). Ironically, Mark places the two most complete christological confessions from humans in the mouths of those responsible for Jesus’s death: the high priest at the trial and the centurion at the cross (15:39). Throughout Mark, Jesus has remained silent about his divine Sonship and commanded the same of others, because until his suffering he cannot rightly be known as God’s Son. Now that his execution is imminent, Jesus fully affirms, “I am [God’s Son]” (14:62). Although he is presently Son of God in humility (Rm 1:3), he will come in the future on the clouds of heaven, seated at the right hand of the Mighty One (14:62). The claim to be the messiah was not a crime in Judaism.

The charge of “blasphemy” (14:64) was limited to equating oneself to God, which indicates the high priest fully understood Jesus’s claim to be God’s Son. The tearing of the high priest’s clothes (14:63) was a sign of profound consternation (2 Sm 1:11; 2 Kg 18:37). The mockery of, spitting on, and beating of Jesus (14:65) fulfill both the treatment of the Suffering Servant (Is 50:6) and the third passion prediction (10:33–34).

14:66–72. Mark concludes the sandwich unit by returning to Peter, who is warming himself by the fire in the courtyard of the high priest (14:66–67; cf. 14:54). Verses 66–72 focus exclusively on Peter, who alone of the participants is named. Nights in Jerusalem in March and April require the warmth of a fire, the light from which allows Peter to be identified (14:67). While Jesus undergoes a trial by the high priest, Peter undergoes one by a mere servant girl. To her accusation that he was with “the man from Nazareth,” Peter vociferously denies that he knows Jesus either in theory or practice (14:68a).

The statement that Peter “went out to the entryway” (14:68b) is both factual and symbolic, for he is now farther from Jesus. Peter is identified by his Galilean accent and again accused of association with Jesus—to which he explodes in a volley of abuse and denial (14:70–71). Peter cannot bring himself to mention the name of Jesus, but he cannot forestall the cockcrow heralding the shattering truth of his denial. Mark concludes the abandonment of Jesus in chapter 14 on the bitter note of weeping (14:72).

E. The trial and crucifixion of Jesus in Jerusalem (15:1–47). Before Pilate, as before the Sanhedrin, Jesus is portrayed as submitting in silence. The events leading to the crucifixion, and the crucifixion itself, are narrated with utmost restraint; rather than exploiting the brutality and cruelty of crucifixion, or sentimentalizing it, the Gospels accentuate the shame and mockery to which Jesus was subjected. With restrained objectivity, Mark recounts the crucifixion in order to show what Jesus’s death accomplished.

15:1–5. Following the sentence of the Sanhedrin, Jesus is transferred to Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect of Judea (ruled AD 26–37), whose consent was necessary in cases of capital punishment (15:1; cf. Jn 18:31). Pilate normally resided at Caesarea Maritima, but during festivals, when Jewish pilgrims thronged to the temple, Pilate’s presence was required in Jerusalem. While there, he resided in Herod’s palace, which is the probable site of the hearing of Jesus.

Pilate’s question in 15:2a echoes the question asked by the high priest in 14:61. In Greek it is a statement with a question implied, making Pilate also an unknowing confessor of Jesus. The political implications of the Messiah’s earthly rule (see Lk 23:2) pose a potential threat for Pilate. Jesus’s answer is neither an affirmation nor a denial (15:2b). Jesus remains silent in the face of lies, hatred, and cruelty (15:3–5).

15:6–14. Evidently harboring doubts about the necessity of Jesus’s execution, Pilate proposes releasing an insurrectionist, whose name Barabbas (in Aramaic) means “son of the father” (15:7). The real “Son of the Father” will die in place of another “son of the father,” who is a known criminal. The proposed prisoner exchange misfires, however; the crowd “came up” (15:8) in protest against Pilate to Herod’s palace, on the prominent western hill in Jerusalem. Mark explicitly states that the moving force behind Jesus’s crucifixion is no longer the scribes and Pharisees, nor the Sanhedrin, but the chief priests (15:10–11).

Pilate makes three anemic appeals for Jesus’s release (15:9, 12, 14), but his efforts are politically motivated (15:15) rather than based on moral conviction. Facing mounting uproar (15:13–14), Pilate decides that Jesus is unworthy of defending on principle or by a show of force. In the end, he stands down and consigns Jesus to crucifixion. Although the chief priests appear to have instigated events leading to the crucifixion, Pilate bears final responsibility for it, for crucifixion was a Roman punishment requiring the approval of a Roman governor.

Much of what happens to Jesus in the passion narrative was predicted by Isaiah the prophet (see Is 52:13–53:12). However, most Jews expected the Messiah to be a victorious conqueror, not a suffering servant. The concept of the Messiah suffering on a cross of shame (Heb 12:2) was scandalous, “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles” (1 Co 1:23).

15:15–20. In preparation for crucifixion, Jesus is stripped, bound to a post, and beaten an unspecified number of times with a short leather whip woven with bits of bone, metal, or stone. Flogging (15:15), or flagellation, lacerated and stripped flesh, often exposing bones and entrails. Its purpose was to shorten the duration of crucifixion, but it was so brutal that not a few prisoners died before being crucified. The mistreatment of Jesus by Pilate and the soldiers fulfills the final passion prediction (10:33–34)—the handing over (15:15), mockery (15:20), spitting (15:19), and flogging (15:15)—to the detail.

This takes place in “the palace” (praetorium; 15:16), probably Herod’s lavish residence on the western hill. In macabre sport, the “whole company” of soldiers mocks Jesus by draping him in purple (symbolizing royalty), crowning him with thorns, and lampooning Caesar’s salute, “Hail, King of the Jews!” (15:16–18). A “company” was one-tenth of a Roman legion, or about six hundred soldiers. Mockery leads to violence as they beat “him on the head with a stick” (15:19). Bespattered with blood and ridicule, the figure of Jesus recalls Isaiah’s Suffering Servant (Is 50:6).

15:21–23. One of the realities of Roman occupation most detested by Jews was compulsory service. Exercising this privilege, soldiers force an unknown passerby, Simon of Cyrene, to carry the heavy crossbeam of Jesus’s cross to the site of crucifixion (15:21). Simon’s place of origin in Cyrene (North Africa) may indicate he was a man of color. Mark may mention the names of his sons Alexander and Rufus because they were known by or members of the church in Rome to which he was writing (see Rm 16:13). Simon becomes the first person in Mark literally to take up his cross and follow Jesus (8:34).

According to Jewish and Roman custom, victims were executed outside city limits (Lv 24:14; Nm 15:35–36). Jesus is brought to a place called “Golgotha” for crucifixion (15:22). The administration of “wine mixed with myrrh” (15:23; see Ps 69:21), a primitive narcotic, was intended to deaden pain.

15:24–27. The dividing of Jesus’s garments (15:24) fulfills the same fate of the suffering righteous man in Ps 22:18. Jews reckoned time beginning with sunrise at 6 a.m., so that the “third hour” (see the CSB footnote) was nine in the morning (15:25). Roman and Jewish custom required the cause of execution to be affixed to the cross, which in this case reflects Pilate’s accusation (15:2, 9, 12, 18), “The King of the Jews” (15:26). The crucifixion of Jesus between two robbers, “one on his right and one on his left” (15:27), is remarkably similar in wording to 10:40: the two criminals, in other words, occupy the places requested by James and John!

15:29–32. The sole point at which Mark departs from the reserve of the crucifixion narrative is in emphasizing the mockery of Jesus. Nondescript bystanders shake their heads, “yelling insults” (15:29; cf. 14:55–58); the chief priests and the scribes mock him (15:31); even the robbers taunt him (15:32). Ironically, the derision of the chief priests makes them guilty of the charge of blasphemy, for which they have condemned Jesus (14:64).

The challenge to “come down now from the cross, so that we may see and believe” (15:32), yet another appeal for a sign (8:11–13), is evidence of unbelief. The taunt that Jesus “cannot save himself” (15:31) repeats the temptation in Gethsemane to avoid “this cup” of suffering (14:36). If Jesus submits to the temptation and comes down from the cross, he cannot be a “ransom for many” (10:45).

15:33–36. The crucifixion of Jesus is attended by several portents, the first being darkness (15:33). The darkness covers “the whole land,” symbolizing the universal and cosmic rejection of Jesus. Although Jesus was silent before the Sanhedrin and Pilate, he cries out from the cross the words of Ps 22:1 (15:34). His rejection by Rome, Israel, and even his own followers is so total that in his dying breath he senses separation from God.

The bystanders mistake Jesus’s cry “my God” (Aramaic eloi) for “Elijah” (Hb eliyyahu) (15:35). Elijah, who was taken bodily into heaven (2 Kg 2:11), was popularly believed to be the rescuer of righteous Jews in times of crisis. The hope is further evidence that God will not let his Righteous One die. In order to ameliorate his suffering, a mixture of sour wine and vinegar (15:36; cf. Ps 69:21) is offered to Jesus. [The Crucifixion of Jesus]

15:37–39. With utter finality, Mark reports that Jesus “breathed his last” (15:37). At his death two further portents occur that signal the climax of the Gospel. The first is the tearing of the temple curtain “from top to bottom” (15:38). Mark intends this to be a revelatory portent, for “tear” is the same word used of the tearing of the heavens at Jesus’s baptism in 1:10 (the only other time the word is used in Mark). In both tearings, Jesus is declared the Son of God (15:39). There were two curtains in the temple, a larger one before the Court of Israel and a smaller curtain before the most holy place. The term Mark uses refers throughout the NT only to the smaller curtain. If this curtain is intended, then the cross of Jesus signifies the final Day of Atonement, allowing humanity access to the heart of God.

The second portent at the crucifixion is the confession of the centurion (15:39). “Son of God” is Mark’s load-bearing christological title, which until this moment has been unconfessed by any human being. Heretofore in Mark, Jesus has commanded both demons and people to silence, for until the cross all declarations about Jesus are premature. The Son of God can be rightly known only in his suffering and death. The centurion—a Gentile in charge of the execution of Jesus—is the first person to confess Jesus as God’s Son (cf. Rm 5:10).

15:40–41. The story of Joseph of Arimathea (15:42–46) is sandwiched between the accounts of the women attending Jesus’s crucifixion and empty tomb (15:40–41, 47). The sandwich unit begins in 15:40 with the names of several women watching the crucifixion. Mary Magdalene appears in all four Gospels as the first witness of the resurrection of Jesus. “Mary,” “James the younger,” and “Joses” are probably (although not certainly) Jesus’s family members mentioned in 6:3. The names of these and the reference to “many other women” (15:41) indicate that Jesus was followed by more than the twelve apostles. Ironically, women unmentioned before now remain to the bitter end at the cross. True, they stand at a “distance,” but the distance of the women is better than the absence of the apostles.

The darkness over the land at noon during Jesus’s crucifixion (Mk 15:33) appears to express God’s eschatological judgment foretold by Amos: “In that day . . . I will make the sun go down at noon; I will darken the land in the daytime” (Am 8:9).

15:42–46. Into the report of the women’s trepidation at the cross Mark inserts the story of Joseph of Arimathea. In contrast to the women, who watch the crucifixion “from a distance” (15:40) and who are anxious, distressed, and fearful at the tomb (16:5, 8), Joseph acts with resolution and boldness in procuring the body of Jesus from Pilate and burying him honorably. The faithfulness of Joseph is thus contrasted to the fearfulness of the women.

On late Friday afternoon Joseph retrieves Jesus’s body for burial (15:42–43). Arimathea is probably the Ramathaim of 1 Sm 1:1 (see also Ramah in 1 Sm 15:34), about twenty miles northwest of Jerusalem. It took courage for a prominent member of the Sanhedrin to request from the governor the body of a man executed as an enemy of the Roman state. The description of Joseph as a man “looking forward to the kingdom of God” (15:43) indicates he was a faithful Jew and perhaps a secret believer in Jesus. The ironies of the crucifixion abound: earlier a Roman centurion who crucified Jesus confessed him as the Son of God (15:39); now a member of the Jewish council that condemned Jesus gives him an honorable burial.

Mark certifies the death of Jesus on the basis of three witnesses: Joseph (15:43), Pilate (15:44), and the centurion (15:45), two of whom have physical contact with the corpse. This grim fact is necessary and conclusive evidence that chapter 16 is about resurrection, not resuscitation. The body of Jesus is placed on a shelf cut into the side of a limestone cave, the mouth of which is sealed by a large, disk-shaped stone (15:46).

15:47. Mark completes the sandwich begun in verse 40 by returning to the story of the women in verse 47, who are once again “watching” Jesus.

F. The resurrection (16:1–8). 16:1–2. Following the Sabbath, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James (probably Jesus’s mother; see 15:40), and Salome visit the tomb of Jesus early on Sunday morning (16:1). Their ointments of oil mixed with myrrh and aloes (Jn 19:39), which they did not have time to buy or apply when Jesus was buried, are intended not for embalming (i.e., to prevent decay of the body) but to perfume the decaying corpse as an act of devotion.

The naming of the women three times in connection with Jesus’s death and resurrection (15:40, 47; 16:1) establishes the veracity of the resurrection on the basis of eyewitnesses. The names of women attest to the authenticity of the resurrection narrative, for had the early Christians fabricated the resurrection account they would scarcely have done so on the testimony of women, which was immaterial in Jewish legal proceedings. “Very early in the morning” (16:2) assures readers that the women have not mistaken the tomb in the darkness.

Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bring spices to anoint Jesus’s body (Mk 16:1), but they find the tomb empty. Jesus has likely been laid out on a shelf similar to the U-shaped ledge in this first-century Judean tomb.

16:3–8. The removal of the large stone from the tomb suggests that in all respects the resurrection of Jesus is God’s work (16:3–4). The “white robe” on the young man at the tomb, plus his knowledge of the errand of the women and the “alarm” he evokes within them, all imply an angelic being (16:5). The visit to the tomb is vintage Markan irony: the living are preoccupied with death; the angelic sentry at the tomb is a herald of life. The angel’s invitation to inspect (16:6) indicates that the tomb is empty; thus, the women are to expect not a vision or mystical experience but a meeting with the resurrected Jesus. The empty tomb does not prove the resurrection, however, for the body of Jesus could have been stolen (see Mt 27:64). Faith is the result not of a fact—even a fact as awesome as the empty tomb—but of an encounter with the resurrected Lord.

The announcement in 16:7 is both a fulfillment of 14:28 and a word of grace. Peter’s denial has not been the final word; the final word belongs to the resurrected Jesus. Mark has warned that faith is not evoked by signs, miracles, and portents (8:11–13), and that includes even the resurrection, for the sandwich unit ends in 16:8 with the women silenced by fear and fleeing in bewilderment. During Jesus’s earthly ministry, people disobeyed Jesus’s command to silence; now at the empty tomb, the women disobey the command to proclaim the resurrection!

G. Later resurrection traditions (16:9–20). The longer ending of Mark (see the article “The Endings of Mark”) reflects some circumstances and themes, such as disbelief and dramatic signs, that appear to derive from a later period of the early church and that clearly differ from the Gospel of Mark. The longer ending reflects the chief characteristics of the early church in its emphasis on belief, mission, proclamation, and the saving significance of the gospel for all creation. [The Endings of Mark]

The theme of the longer ending is the call of the disciples from unbelief (16:11, 13, 14 [2×], 16) to belief (16:16–17). The first call of Jesus comes through Mary Magdalene, the first herald of the saving faith of the gospel (16:9–11). The reference to the exorcism of seven demons comes from Lk 8:2, and Mary’s report to the despondent disciples reflects Jn 20:14, 18. The second call of Jesus comes through the story of two travelers in 16:12–13, which presupposes the walk to Emmaus (Lk 24:13–35). The third call comes from a personal appearance of Jesus to the eleven disciples in 16:14, in which Jesus upbraids the disciples for disbelieving the two earlier witnesses. Mark 16:15–16, also from Jesus, reflects the Great Commission of Mt 28:19. Salvation by faith, sealed by baptism, is ordained for “all creation.”

Salvation is accompanied by signs of power, including exorcisms, glossolalia, healings, handling of snakes, and drinking of poison (16:17–18). The last two signs are nowhere else attested in Scripture and apparently derive from later sectarian Christian practices. The first three signs, however, indicate that the early Christian proclamation was undergirded—as is true in many parts of the world today—by heavenly gifts of witness and ministry. Mark 16:19–20 concludes with the ascension of Jesus, which reflects Ac 1:9–11.