Mark 7 — Greek text and reception
Each card preserves the Greek reading and its textual and reception notes. This source provides a Greek study edition; Hebrew counterparts and Hebrew–Greek classifications are not supplied.
Mark 7
Tradition, defilement, and mercy beyond Galilee
Verse 7:1
Greek–English Translation
The Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Him.
Textual and Reception Notes
Verse 7:2
Greek–English Translation
They saw that some of His disciples were eating their bread with common hands—that is, unwashed.
Textual and Reception Notes
Verse 7:3
Greek–English Translation
For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands with the fist, holding to the tradition of the elders.
Textual and Reception Notes
Text: Pygmē literally denotes a fist. The precise washing gesture intended is uncertain; 'with the fist' preserves the expression without inventing a detailed ritual procedure. The generalization is the narrator's wording.
Verse 7:4
Greek–English Translation
On returning from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash themselves. There are many other things they received to observe: washings of cups, xestes vessels, copper vessels, and couches.
Textual and Reception Notes
Text and selective apparatus: Xestēs names an ancient vessel associated with a liquid measure; no fixed modern volume is imposed. 'And couches' is present in the selected text. SBLGNT's apparatus records it in Treg, RP, and NA28 and absent in WH and NIV's reconstructed Greek text.
Verse 7:5
Greek–English Translation
The Pharisees and the scribes asked Him, “Why do Your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with common hands?”
Textual and Reception Notes
Verse 7:6
Greek–English Translation
He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied well about you hypocrites, as it is written: ‘This people honors Me with its lips, but their heart is far from Me.
Textual and Reception Notes
Verse 7:7
Greek–English Translation
In vain do they worship Me, teaching human commandments as teachings.’
Textual and Reception Notes
Verse 7:8
Greek–English Translation
You abandon God's commandment and hold to human tradition.”
Textual and Reception Notes
Verse 7:9
Greek–English Translation
He said to them, “You set aside God's commandment very well indeed, so that you may keep your tradition!
Textual and Reception Notes
Verse 7:10
Greek–English Translation
For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Let whoever speaks evil of father or mother surely die.’
Textual and Reception Notes
Verse 7:11
Greek–English Translation
But you say, ‘If a person says to his father or mother, “Whatever benefit you might receive from me is Corban”—that is, a gift—’
Textual and Reception Notes
Text: Mark provides his own explanation of Corban as 'gift.' The vow's practical effect follows in 7:12–13; no extra legal formula is substituted for the narrated wording.
Verse 7:12
Greek–English Translation
you no longer allow him to do anything for his father or mother,
Textual and Reception Notes
Verse 7:13
Greek–English Translation
making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. You do many similar things.”
Textual and Reception Notes
Verse 7:14
Greek–English Translation
Calling the crowd to Him again, He said to them, “Listen to Me, all of you, and understand.
Textual and Reception Notes
Verse 7:15
Greek–English Translation
There is nothing outside a person that, by entering him, can defile him. Rather, the things coming out of a person are what defile the person.”
Textual and Reception Notes
Verse 7:16
Greek–English Translation
[Editorial absence: this verse number has no text in the SBLGNT main text.]
Textual and Reception Notes
Numbering and selective apparatus: Conventional Mark 7:16 is absent from the selected main text. At 7:15 the edition apparatus records an added hearing exhortation in Treg and RP. This notice is editorial, not a translated verse.
Verse 7:17
Greek–English Translation
When He entered a house away from the crowd, His disciples asked Him about the parable.
Textual and Reception Notes
Verse 7:18
Greek–English Translation
He said to them, “Are you also so lacking in understanding? Do you not grasp that everything entering a person from outside cannot defile him,
Textual and Reception Notes
Verse 7:19
Greek–English Translation
because it does not enter his heart but his stomach, and goes out into the latrine?”—thus cleansing all foods.
Textual and Reception Notes
Text and selective apparatus: The masculine participle katharizōn follows the edition's closing question and is taken here as a narrative comment connected with Jesus' teaching. The apparatus records neuter katharizon in RP. The translation retains 'cleansing'; 'declaring' is an interpretive clarification, not a separate Greek verb.
Verse 7:20
Greek–English Translation
He said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles the person.
Textual and Reception Notes
Verse 7:21
Greek–English Translation
For from within, out of people's hearts, come evil reasonings, acts of sexual immorality, thefts, murders,
Textual and Reception Notes
Verse 7:22
Greek–English Translation
adulteries, acts of greed, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, an evil eye, slander, arrogance, foolishness.
Textual and Reception Notes
Text: 'An evil eye' retains the source's bodily idiom, commonly associated with envy or grudging ill will. The image is not replaced by one narrowed explanation.
Verse 7:23
Greek–English Translation
All these evil things come out from within and defile the person.”
Textual and Reception Notes
Verse 7:24
Greek–English Translation
He rose from there and went away into the territory of Tyre. He entered a house and wanted no one to know, but He could not remain hidden.
Textual and Reception Notes
Verse 7:25
Greek–English Translation
Immediately a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard about Him, came, and fell at His feet.
Textual and Reception Notes
Verse 7:26
Greek–English Translation
The woman was Greek, Syrophoenician by birth. She asked Him to cast the demon out of her daughter.
Textual and Reception Notes
Verse 7:27
Greek–English Translation
He said to her, “Let the children first be satisfied, for it is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the little dogs.”
Textual and Reception Notes
Text: Kynaria is diminutive, rendered 'little dogs'; the contrast in the saying is preserved. 'First' is also retained because it bears on the sequence of the image.
Verse 7:28
Greek–English Translation
She answered and said to Him, “Lord, even the little dogs under the table eat some of the children's crumbs.”
Textual and Reception Notes
Verse 7:29
Greek–English Translation
He said to her, “Because of this word, go; the demon has gone out of your daughter.”
Textual and Reception Notes
Verse 7:30
Greek–English Translation
She went home and found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.
Textual and Reception Notes
Verse 7:31
Greek–English Translation
Leaving the territory of Tyre again, He came through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, through the middle of the territory of the Decapolis.
Textual and Reception Notes
Verse 7:32
Greek–English Translation
They brought Him a man who was deaf and had difficulty speaking, and begged Him to lay His hand on him.
Textual and Reception Notes
Verse 7:33
Greek–English Translation
Taking him aside privately, away from the crowd, He put His fingers into his ears, spat, and touched his tongue.
Textual and Reception Notes
Verse 7:34
Greek–English Translation
Looking up to heaven, He sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.”
Textual and Reception Notes
Saints reception: Ambrose, On the Mysteries 1.3–4, explicitly recalls Ephphatha and the healing of the deaf man when explaining the rite of opening in Christian initiation. This is sacramental reception of the episode, kept distinct from the narrative itself. [AMB-MYST]
Verse 7:35
Greek–English Translation
His ears were opened, the bond of his tongue was loosened, and he spoke correctly.
Textual and Reception Notes
Verse 7:36
Greek–English Translation
He ordered them to tell no one. But the more He ordered them, the more abundantly they proclaimed it.
Textual and Reception Notes
Verse 7:37
Greek–English Translation
They were astonished beyond measure, saying, “He has done everything well! He even makes the deaf hear and the speechless speak.”
Textual and Reception Notes