⚠ The base Greek text this translation works from names no questioner at all — not “Pharisees,” just “they.” All thirteen versions on both shelves supply a subject: NWT 1984 opens “Pharisees now approached”; NIV opens “Some Pharisees came”; KJV reads “the Pharisees came to him”; ASV reads “there came unto him Pharisees”; and the Spanish TNM 1987 reads «se le acercaron unos fariseos». The earlier manuscripts this translation follows have none of that — the verse simply says “they questioned him, testing him,” and the reader supplies the Pharisees from the previous chapter’s own crowd. This translation keeps the anonymous “they” rather than importing the name.

⚠ Jesus’s first move is a legal distinction the Pharisees’ own question blurs. Asked what Moses commanded (v3, eneteilato), the answer that comes back is what Moses permitted (v4, epetrepsen) — a certificate of divorce, not an order to divorce. ⭐ Mark keeps the two verbs as distinct as Matthew already kept them at the identical question. The sklērokardia dictionary entry, anchored at Matthew 19:8 (already on these pages), makes exactly this point about that Gospel’s own telling of the same exchange: Moses did not COMMAND the certificate, he PERMITTED it, “for your sklērokardia” — a provision described as a concession to a condition, not the ideal itself. Mark’s version of the question and answer runs the identical two Greek verbs in the identical order.

⚠ The answer reaches past Moses entirely, to two texts already on these pages. “He made them male and female” (v6) quotes Genesis 1:27 almost verbatim; “a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife” (v7) quotes Genesis 2:24 just as closely.

⚠ The Greek names no subject for “made them,” and the shelf splits over whether to supply one. Eight of the thirteen versions on both shelves insert “God” explicitly: KJV reads “God made them male and female”, and NIV, GNV and DRB all name God the same way; on the Spanish shelf, the RV 1909, RV60, NVI and TNM 2019 all do too. NWT 1984 keeps it impersonal instead, “he made them male and female”; ASV avoids naming a subject too, in its own inverted word order, “male and female made he them”; and the Spanish TNM 1987 matches them, «Él los hizo macho y hembra». Per this project’s own standing rule to follow the NWT/ASV pairing on the merits where either is tighter to the source, this translation keeps “he,” leaving the reader to supply God from the Genesis citation itself, exactly as the unmarked Greek does.

⭐ “The two” in v8 is not in the Hebrew Jesus is quoting. Genesis 2:24’s own Hebrew reads only “and they will become one flesh” — no numeral. The Brenton Septuagint's Greek text of the same verse adds hoi duo, “the two” — “καὶ ἔσονται οἱ δύο εἰς σάρκα μίαν,” word for word what Mark prints — and that is the text Jesus quotes here; Genesis’s Hebrew narrator never counts the couple, but the Greek translation Jesus is using already had. The argument itself works by DATE, not by rule-counting: the created order (“from the beginning of creation”) is set against Moses’ later concession, so that the older text overrules the newer permission.

⚠ Mark’s version of this teaching carries no exception at all. Matthew’s parallel to this same question twice adds a clause permitting divorce for porneia — sexual immorality — a word and a debate already laid out in full on these pages (Matthew 19:9). Mark has no such word anywhere in this chapter; “whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her” (v11) is stated without qualification, and Luke’s own version of the saying (16:18, not yet on these pages) is unqualified too. This page reports the divergence and does not try to harmonize Mark’s absolute into Matthew’s exception, or Matthew’s exception out of existence.

“What therefore God has yoked together, let no man separate” (v9) is the source, almost word for word, of the line still spoken at weddings four centuries after the King James rendered it “put asunder.”

⚠ Privately, in the house, the teaching is extended in a direction Jewish law of the period did not recognize. Under the Mosaic provision just discussed, only a husband could issue a certificate of divorce (v4) — a wife had no such right. Mark’s v12 grants her one anyway: “if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery,” using the identical verb apolyō for both directions. Roman law, unlike the Jewish law the Pharisees were just citing, did allow a wife to initiate divorce — which is often read as the reason Mark, writing for a largely Gentile, Roman-facing audience, states the teaching in a form his own readers could actually act on, where Matthew’s parallel (19:9, already on these pages) addresses only the husband’s side. This page reports the pattern; what it implies about Mark’s audience is inference, not something the text states.

The house-and-private-instruction shape is now a settled pattern in this Gospel: a public exchange in the crowd is followed by a fuller, harder version given to the disciples alone, the same shape the parable teaching and the earlier hand-washing controversy both already followed on these pages.

⭐ Jesus is “indignant” here (v14, ēganaktēsen) at disciples keeping people away from him — and this chapter uses the identical verb a second time, of the disciples themselves. When James and John ask for the seats of honor, “the ten… began to be indignant” at them (v41, aganaktein) — the same root, the same intensity, aimed now at each other rather than at an outsider. One indignation defends little children’s access to Jesus; the other defends two brothers’ head start on everyone else. The chapter does not comment on the contrast; it simply uses the same word twice and lets the two scenes answer each other.

⚠ “Began blessing them” (v16) is a compound this Gospel has not reached for before. The ordinary verb for blessing, eulogeō, is what Jesus already used over the loaves at the feeding of the five thousand (6:41, already on these pages). Here Mark adds the intensifying prefix kata-: kateulogei, a fervent or thorough blessing, rather than the plain verb he already had on hand. The children get more of the word than the bread did.

Little children brought “so that he might touch them” (v13) and a man kneeling to ask about eternal life (v17, the very next scene) sit side by side on purpose: one approaches with nothing to offer and is welcomed; the other approaches with everything to offer and, within a few verses, has nothing left he is willing to give.

⚠ Matthew’s version of this same conversation rewrites its opening question to avoid the very thing Mark’s wording invites. Here the man calls Jesus “Good Teacher” and Jesus answers, “Why do you call ME good? No one is good except one — God” (vv17–18) — a question that can sound, on one reading, like Jesus declining a title. Matthew’s telling of the identical exchange changes both halves: the man asks what GOOD THING he should do, and Jesus answers, “Why do you ask me about THE GOOD? One there is who is good” (Matthew 19:16–17, already on these pages) — a question about an abstract quality rather than about Jesus’s own person. Luke’s version of the scene (18:18–19, not yet on these pages) keeps Mark’s wording almost exactly, “Good Teacher… why do you call me good?” This page reports the divergence and the reading it has invited without settling what, if anything, Jesus meant by it.

⚠ Mark’s commandment list adds one the Ten Commandments never state and drops one Matthew’s parallel supplies. Alongside murder, adultery, theft and false witness, Mark’s Jesus adds “Do not defraud” (v19, mē aplosterēsēs) — a command with no Decalogue slot of its own, closer to Leviticus 19:13’s ban on withholding a hired man’s wages overnight than to anything at Sinai. Matthew’s list of the same commandments (19:18–19) has no such line, and instead closes with “love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18) — which Mark’s version of this conversation does not quote at all. Two Gospels citing the same law code, reaching for two different verses out of it.

⚠ “Jesus, looking at him, loved him” (v21) has no parallel in either other telling of this scene. Matthew’s account moves straight from the man’s claim to have kept the commandments to Jesus’s answer, no comment on his feeling toward the man at all; Luke’s does the same. This is one of a small number of places in this Gospel where the narrator states what Jesus felt rather than simply what he did or said — and it is stated about a man who, within two verses, walks away from him. Mark also alone has the man run up and kneel (v17, gonypetēsas) before asking his question, a detail Matthew and Luke both omit.

⚠ Mark states the man’s shortfall as a quantity; Matthew states it as a condition. Here Jesus says simply, “One thing you lack” (v21) — a single missing item, named and specific. Matthew’s Jesus instead says, “If you want to be teleios, complete” (19:21, already on these pages) — a conditional path toward a stated goal rather than a lack being pointed out. Mark also gives the man’s reaction TWO verbs where Matthew gives one: he “grew gloomy” (stygnasas, a word Mark uses nowhere else) at the saying, and THEN went away grieving (lypoumenos, the word Matthew’s account uses alone). Neither Gospel says the man’s name; the “rich young RULER” of popular memory is a composite — “young” (neaniskos) is Matthew’s word (19:20, already on these pages) and “ruler” (archōn) is Luke’s (18:18, not yet on these pages); Mark supplies only “many possessions.”

⚠ All three Synoptic Gospels tell this saying, and all three reach for a different word for the needle’s eye. Mark writes tēs trymalias tēs rhaphidos — trymalia is simply a hole or a crevice, so the phrase reads literally “the hole of the needle.” Matthew’s parallel (19:24, already on these pages) instead pairs rhaphis with trypēma, a related but distinct word for a bored or drilled opening. Luke’s version (18:25, not yet on these pages) drops rhaphis altogether and uses belonē — a surgeon’s needle rather than a tailor’s, a detail later tradition has connected to Luke’s own identification as “the beloved physician” (Colossians 4:14, not yet on these pages), though that connection is reported here rather than asserted as the reason. Three tellings of one saying, and not one of them copies another’s vocabulary for its central image.

Jesus addresses the Twelve as “children” (v24, tekna) — a term of open affection he uses only rarely for the disciples as a group, softening a saying that has just visibly alarmed them (“the disciples were amazed at his words,” the same verb, ethambounto, this Gospel will use again three verses into the next scene, v32, of the road itself).

The disciples’ own question — “then who CAN be saved?” (v26) — treats wealth as the ordinary sign of God’s favor, the assumption the whole exchange has just overturned; Jesus’s answer (v27) does not deny that the rich are hard to save, it denies that saving anyone, rich or poor, was ever a human accomplishment to begin with.

⚠ Mark’s list of what is left behind has no wife in it — Matthew’s does. Peter’s claim to have “left everything” (v28) is answered with a list — house, brothers, sisters, mother, father, children, fields (v29) — and Mark’s list has no gynaika, wife, anywhere in it. Matthew’s version of the identical promise (19:29, already on these pages) does include “wife” among what is left. The omission sits a few verses downstream of this same chapter’s own teaching on marriage (vv2–12) — worth noting beside it, though this page does not assert that the placement is deliberate.

⚠ Matthew’s version of this promise also carries a whole saying about the Twelve on thrones that Mark’s does not have at all. Immediately before the hundredfold promise, Matthew’s Jesus tells the Twelve that “in the renewal of all things… you also will sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (19:28, already on these pages). Mark moves straight from Peter’s claim to the hundredfold-and-persecutions answer, with no thrones and no tribes of Israel anywhere in this chapter.

⭐ And where Matthew’s promise ends clean, Mark’s comes with a condition attached to the reward itself. Both Gospels promise a hundredfold return “now, in this present time” (v30); Mark alone adds three words to it — meta diōgmōn, “with persecutions” — naming the cost inside the very sentence that promises the gain. Matthew’s parallel states the hundredfold and the inheritance of eternal life with no such qualifier.

“Many who are first will be last, and the last first” (v31) closes the scene on the same reversal this chapter opened with children over adults and will close with a blind beggar over a whole crowd trying to silence him.

⭐ This is the third and final passion prediction, and this Gospel promised it by number before it arrived. The closing note at 9:31 named this verse directly: “the third comes at 10:34, not yet on these pages” — it now is. All three predictions share the identical phrase meta treis hēmeras, “after three days” (8:31; 9:31; and here), where Matthew and Luke’s own parallels consistently write “on the third day” instead — a difference already flagged twice on these pages and now complete across all three of this Gospel’s own predictions.

⚠ The road itself gets a reaction no other telling of this moment records. “They were amazed, and those who followed were afraid” (v32) names two distinct groups — the Twelve amazed, a wider company of followers afraid — walking behind Jesus on the way up to Jerusalem. Matthew’s parallel (20:17, already on these pages) simply has Jesus take the twelve aside privately, with no crowd reaction recorded at all; Luke’s (18:31, not yet on these pages) does the same. Only Mark stops to describe what it looked like to be walking toward this on the road.

⚠ Mark and Luke both keep a detail Matthew’s telling of this same prediction trades for a named method of execution. Here the list is mock, spit on, flog, kill (v34) — and Luke’s version of the same list keeps “spit on” too (18:32, not yet on these pages). Matthew’s parallel drops spitting and instead states outright that the Son of Man will be “crucified” (staurōsai, 20:19, already on these pages) — the first of the three predictions in any Synoptic Gospel to name the method rather than the fact of the death.

⚠ In Mark, James and John ask for themselves; in Matthew, their mother asks for them. Here the two brothers “come up to him” and make the request in their own voice (v35). Matthew’s version of the identical scene has “the mother of the sons of Zebedee” approach with her two sons standing beside her and put the question herself — “say that these two sons of mine may sit…” (20:20–21, already on these pages). The brothers’ own answer to Jesus’s question a moment later (“we are able,” v39) is identical in both Gospels — whoever asked the favor, the two men answer for themselves once the cost is named.

⚠ The seats are requested “in your glory” here and “in your kingdom” in Matthew — and Mark’s Jesus withholds one detail Matthew’s supplies. Both Gospels have Jesus answer that the seats are “not mine to give”; Matthew’s version continues, “but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father” (20:23, already on these pages), naming the one who has prepared it. Mark’s v40 stops at “for those for whom it has been prepared” — no agent named at all.

⚠ Mark pairs two images for the same coming suffering; Matthew’s version of this exchange has only one of them. Here Jesus asks whether the brothers can drink his cup AND be baptized with his baptism (v38) — two metaphors, drinking and drowning, both aimed at the same fate. Matthew’s parallel (20:22, already on these pages) asks only about the cup; the baptism clause is not there. The cup itself is the same image this Gospel will use again in Gethsemane, and the same image the dictionary’s own poterion entry already traces through Isaiah’s cup of wrath and Psalm 23’s cup of blessing.

The ten’s indignation (v41, aganaktein) is the second appearance of the verb this chapter opened with, at v14 — see that note for the pairing. Jesus’s answer names the ordinary shape of Gentile power in nearly the same words Matthew’s parallel uses: rulers who “lord it over” and “throw their weight about” (v42, katakyrieuousin / katexousiazousin) — the identical pair of verbs at Matthew 20:25 (already on these pages), one of the closer word-for-word overlaps between the two Gospels in this whole chapter.

⚠ The ladder down is measured in two ranked Greek words, not one. Whoever wants to be great becomes a diakonos, a servant who waits at table and remains free; whoever wants to be first becomes a doulos, a slave who is owned outright (vv43–44). The dictionary’s own diakonos entry, anchored at Matthew 20:26–27’s nearly identical sentence, makes the same point there: the demand does not repeat itself, it climbs — first to service, then all the way to ownership.

⭐ The chapter’s single most quoted sentence names a transaction without naming who is paid. “To give his life a ransom IN EXCHANGE FOR many” (v45, lytron anti pollōn) is one of exactly two places in the Gospels this word appears at all — here and its exact double at Matthew 20:28, already on these pages, where the dictionary’s own lytron entry lays out the preposition’s force (anti, “in place of,” not a looser “for”) and the open question the word leaves standing: a price paid, with no stated recipient, and a “many” that may mean a limited number or may be the Semitic idiom for the whole.

⭐ “The way” (hodos) has quietly structured this entire chapter, and the blind man’s last act pays it off. Jesus is “setting out on his way” when the rich man runs up (v17); the Twelve are “on the way, going up to Jerusalem” for the third passion prediction (v32); and Bartimaeus is sitting “beside the road” as Jesus leaves Jericho (v46) — the same Greek word, hodos, each time. He does not simply get healed and go home: “he followed him ON THE ROAD” (v52) — becoming, in the chapter’s last clause, the one person in it who actually walks the way Jesus has been walking since v17, at the exact point that road is about to reach Jerusalem.

⚠ Mark names this beggar; the other two tellings of the same scene do not. Matthew’s parallel has TWO unnamed blind men, both leaving Jericho, both crying “Son of David” (20:29–34, already on these pages); Luke has one unnamed blind man, and places him APPROACHING Jericho rather than leaving it (18:35, not yet on these pages) — a real geographical divergence from Mark and Matthew’s shared “going out FROM Jericho,” sometimes explained by the existence of both an Old Testament mound and a separate Herodian city nearby, so that a beggar could plausibly sit between the two; this page reports the harmonization rather than settling it. Bartimaeus is one of the only named recipients of a miracle anywhere in this Gospel, alongside Jairus (5:22, already on these pages).

⚠ Mark glosses the name the same way it glosses every Aramaic word it keeps. “Bartimaeus” is Aramaic bar, “son of,” plus the Greek name Timaeus — and Mark’s own word order puts the explanation BEFORE the name it explains, “the son of Timaeus, Bartimaeus,” exactly the pattern already used for Talitha cumi and for Ephphatha (both already on these pages): an Aramaic word kept, then translated for a Greek-speaking reader. Timaeus itself is built on timē, honor — so the beggar’s own name, translated in full, is “son of Honor.”

⚠ “Rabbouni” (v51) is one specific step more personal than the ordinary “Rabbi,” and it is said by exactly two people in the whole New Testament. See the dictionary’s rabbouni entry: a blind beggar on a road out of Jericho and, at the empty tomb, Mary Magdalene — the only two people in the Gospels recorded using this exact word for Jesus.

Throwing off his cloak (v50) before he can even see where he is going is a detail neither Matthew’s nor Luke’s telling of this scene has — a beggar’s cloak was very possibly the one thing of value he owned, spread on the ground to collect coins, and he leaves it behind without waiting to find out if the call was real.