⚠ Mark names two villages where Matthew's parallel names only one. Here the company is already at “Bethphage AND Bethany” when the two disciples are sent (v1); Matthew's version of the same moment has them arrive only “at Bethphage” (21:1, already on these pages). Luke's telling (19:29, not yet on these pages) also names both villages, in the same order as Mark. The detail matters for the itinerary: Bethany, not Bethphage, is where this chapter's own narrative keeps returning each evening (v11, v12).

⭐ Bethphage's own name is Aramaic for “house of unripe figs,” and Mark does not remark on it. Beth paggē — see the Bethphage entry — and the village this chapter departs from on its way toward a fig tree found with nothing on it at all sits, unremarked, one clause into the chapter. This translation states the etymology once, in the encyclopedia entry, rather than asserting that Mark intends the pun; the coincidence of geography and story is there for a reader to notice or not.

⚠ “On which no one has ever yet sat” (v2) is the qualification the Old Testament attaches to an animal set apart for a holy task, not an incidental detail about a young colt. The red cow of Numbers 19:2 (already on these pages) must be one “upon which never came a yoke”; an animal already put to ordinary use could not be used for this one. Mark does not quote Numbers 19 — the connection is a pattern, not a citation — but the logic is the same: a beast entering Jerusalem under this rider has never carried anyone else.

The coded exchange — a prearranged answer that gets a stranger's animal released on the spot — is told with no explanation of how Jesus knew the colt, the door and the bystanders' question in advance. The library reports what the text says and declines to supply the missing mechanism (foreknowledge, a prior arrangement with an unnamed disciple in the village, or something else); Mark simply narrates the prediction and its fulfillment two verses apart with no comment on the gap between them.

⭐ Mark's crowd does not call Jesus “Son of David” here — it blesses the kingdom instead. Where Matthew's parallel has the crowd cry “Hosanna to the Son of David” (21:9, already on these pages, the title Matthew's own chapter-20 note had been tracking), Mark's shout is “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David” (v10) — a blessing aimed at a coming order, not a title spoken to the man riding into it. Nothing in Mark's own version of this scene calls Jesus “Son of David” out loud; that title is used of him earlier in this Gospel only by blind Bartimaeus (10:47–48, already on these pages), a beggar by the roadside, not the crowd entering the city with him.

⚠ The greenery on the road is described three different ways across three Gospels, and none of them says “palm.” Here the crowd spreads stibadas cut “from the FIELDS” (v8, ek tōn agrōn) — a general word for cut greenery or rushes, not specifically tree branches. Matthew's parallel has kladous, branches, cut “from the TREES” (21:8, already on these pages) — a different source and a more specific word. Only John names the plant outright: ta baia tōn phoinikōn, “the palm branches” (12:13, not yet on these pages) — which is where “Palm Sunday” gets its name, from neither of the two Synoptic accounts that this library has reached so far.

Hosanna and its source are covered in full at the dictionary entry, anchored at Matthew 21:9's identical cry: a plea, “save, please,” out of Psalm 118:25, and the crowd's next line quotes the following verse of the same psalm.

⭐ Mark's own ending to the entry has no incident in it at all, and that absence is the chapter's whole architecture. Here Jesus enters the temple, “looked around at everything,” and — because the hour was already late — simply leaves for Bethany (v11), with no cleansing, no confrontation, nothing. Matthew's parallel has no such pause: his crowd's Hosanna is immediately followed by the whole city being shaken, then Jesus entering the temple and driving out the sellers THE SAME DAY (21:10–13, already on these pages), and only afterward does he go out to Bethany to lodge for the night (21:17). Mark spreads across TWO days precisely what Matthew compresses into one: a reconnaissance visit that ends in nothing (day one, this verse), and the cleansing itself only on day two (v15) — with the fig tree's curse and its discovery wrapped around the temple scene like a frame, the literary technique commentators call Mark's “sandwich” and this chapter is its clearest example in the whole Gospel.

⭐ In every other miracle the Gospels record, the thing Jesus acts on is healed, fed, calmed or raised; here the fig tree itself is the target, and it alone is destroyed rather than restored. Matthew's own note on his parallel scene calls it outright “the only destructive miracle in the Gospels” (21:18–22, already on these pages) — and traces the same standing prophetic image this chapter leans on without naming: a fruitless fig tree as a figure for Israel's own fruitlessness (Jeremiah 8:13, Hosea 9:10, Micah 7:1, none yet on these pages). (The drowned pigs of the Gerasene demoniac, Mark 5:1–20, already on these pages, are collateral damage from a different miracle whose actual object — the man — is healed, not the herd.) And Mark's own narrator supplies the awkward detail that makes the act look unreasonable. “It was not the season for figs” (v13) is Mark's own aside, spoken in the narrator's voice, not Jesus's — the text itself concedes the tree had a legitimate excuse before the curse lands anyway. This is genuinely disputed ground, and the library reports the readings rather than choosing: (1) a fig tree in full leaf this early in spring would ordinarily also be carrying paggim, small green early figs that appear on the bare branches before or with the leaves and are edible, if not yet ripe — so a tree showing leaves with nothing at all, not even the early fruit, is a tree that will bear nothing worth having all year, and the curse names what the leaves had already promised and failed to deliver; (2) Mark's own clause is read by some as meaning only that it was not yet the season for the tree's LATE, fully ripe crop, leaving the early-fruit question aside entirely. Both readings are argued in the commentaries; this translation adopts neither as settled.

The etymology of Bethphage — “house of unripe figs” — sits one scene before this one without comment from the text; Song of Songs 2:13 (not yet on these pages) uses the same word, pag, for the green fruit a fig tree puts out before its leaves are done unfolding, the very thing this tree, fully leaved, has none of.

⚠ Matthew's version of this same miracle removes both the excuse and the wait. Matthew has no “it was not the season for figs” clause at all (21:19, already on these pages) — the tree simply has leaves and nothing else, no reason given either way. And where Mark's tree is cursed one morning and found withered the NEXT (v20), Matthew's withers at once (parachrēma), with the disciples marveling on the spot, “How did the fig tree wither so quickly?” (21:20) — the same two-stage miracle this chapter tells across a full day, compressed by Matthew into a single instant.

“Answering, he said to it” (v14, apokritheis eipen) uses the Gospels' ordinary formula for replying to a question — addressed here to a tree that has asked nothing. The phrasing is formulaic rather than literal: Jesus is answering what the tree's bare leaves already said about it, not a spoken question.

⭐ The quotation is spliced from two prophets, and Mark alone keeps the half of it that names who the house was supposed to be for. “My house will be called a house of prayer FOR ALL THE NATIONS” (v17) quotes Isaiah 56:7 (not yet on these pages) in full, including the phrase pasin tois ethnesin; Matthew's version of the identical accusation stops at “a house of prayer,” with no “for all the nations” at all (21:13, already on these pages). The money-changers and the dove-sellers were doing business in the temple's OUTER court, the one place a non-Jewish worshiper was permitted to pray at all — so the commerce Jesus overturns was crowding out the one function of the temple Isaiah's own verse names. “Den of robbers” completes the sentence from Jeremiah 7:11 (not yet on these pages); the dictionary entry, already anchored at Matthew's own use of the same charge, lays out why “robbers” names a hideout for violent men rather than a complaint about prices.

⚠ “He would not allow anyone to carry a vessel through the temple” (v16) has no parallel in either Matthew's or Luke's account of this same scene. Matthew's version of the cleansing (21:12, already on these pages) lists the selling, the buying, the overturned tables and the dove-sellers' seats — and stops there, with no mention of blocking foot traffic. The detail matches a real, separately attested norm for the Temple Mount: the Mishnah forbids using the Temple Mount “as a shortcut” and forbids entering it with a walking stick, sandals, a money-belt or dust-covered feet (Berakhot 9:5) — a purity rule about the precinct's dignity, not a novel prohibition Jesus is inventing on the spot. Mark's Jesus is enforcing an existing norm the temple authorities themselves were failing to keep, on top of driving out the specific trade.

The restraint on the chief priests and scribes is named plainly: not conscience, but crowd size. “They feared him, because the whole crowd was astounded at his teaching” (v18) — the plot to destroy him begins here, and its stated obstacle is popularity, the same obstacle that will force the arrest itself into the night, away from the crowds (14:1–2, not yet on these pages).

“Whenever evening came, they went out of the city” (v19) uses an iterative construction (hotan with a past tense) that reads more like a repeated pattern than a single evening — consistent with the Bethany-and-back rhythm this whole chapter keeps: entered and left once already (v11), and about to make the trip a third time (v27).

⚠ “From the roots” (v20, ek rhizōn) is a detail Mark alone adds to the discovery scene, naming a total, not a partial, death. A tree withered from the roots cannot recover by putting out new leaves from an undamaged trunk; the curse of “never again, forever” (v14) has reached all the way down. Peter's “remembering” (v21, anamnēstheis) implies the group walked past the tree the evening before without anyone remarking on it — the curse itself passed unnoticed until its result was found the next morning.

⭐ “Have faith OF God” (v22, pistin theou) is a genitive the Greek does not settle which way to take, and eleven of the thirteen shelf versions checked resolve it the same way. KJV, ASV, both NWT editions, both TNM editions, NIV, TLB, RV 1909, RV60 and NVI all read it as an objective genitive — faith directed AT God, “have faith in God” — and that is almost certainly the right sense here: Greek idiom regularly uses a bare genitive this way, and “have the faith belonging to God” (a subjective genitive, God's own faithfulness, the reading argued for a different Greek phrase, pistis Christou, in Paul's letters) does not fit naturally as the object of “have.” ⚠ The two exceptions are both older, more formally literal versions: Geneva and the Douay-Rheims both print “have THE FAITH OF GOD,” keeping the bare genitive exactly rather than resolving it. Worth noting anyway: Matthew's version of this same saying has no theou at all — “if you have faith and do not doubt” (21:21, already on these pages) — so the genitive that raises the question is Mark's own addition, not shared by the parallel.

⭐ Two verb tenses in a row make a bolder claim than most of the shelf actually prints, and the two verses split the shelf two different ways. “Believes that what he says IS HAPPENING” (v23) uses a present tense, ginetai — not “will happen,” a thing yet to come, but a thing already under way at the moment of believing it. Of the twelve shelf versions with a clean, checkable rendering here, only ASV reads “cometh to pass”, a present; the other eleven, KJV among them, move it into a future. Then v24's “believe that you HAVE RECEIVED it” is an aorist, elabete — a completed past act, not an ongoing one — and here all thirteen shelf versions split three ways rather than nearly closing ranks. Four move it into a future: Geneva reads “believe that ye shall have it”, and Douay-Rheims, RV 1909 and RV60 («recibiréis») move it the same way. Three keep a plain present with no sense of completion either way: KJV and ASV both read “believe that ye receive them”, and the TLB's paraphrase matches them, “if you believe, you have it.” The remaining six all reach, in different ways, for something closer to the Greek's own completed sense: NIV and NWT 2013 both read “have received it/them” outright; the Spanish NVI goes furthest of all, «crean que YA han recibido», “believe that you have ALREADY received”; and NWT 1984, TNM 1987 and TNM 2019 each reach for the same tension through a hedge the Greek does not have — “have faith that YOU have practically received”, «tengan fe en que pueden darse por recibidas» (“have faith that they CAN be counted as received”), and «denlas por recibidas» (“count them as received”), an imperative rather than a report.

⚠ “This mountain” is said standing on one mountain and looking at another. Jesus is on the Mount of Olives, on the road down from which the temple mount is directly visible across the Kidron valley — and a saying about a mountain being uprooted and cast into the sea, arriving immediately after a fig tree already read by many as a sign against a fruitless temple (see vv12–14's note and Matthew's own chapter-21 pairing of the two scenes), has long been read as pointing at the Temple Mount itself rather than at mountains in general. The library reports this reading rather than asserting it: Mark's own text names no mountain in particular, and “moving mountains” was already a stock rabbinic figure for the impossible, used elsewhere with no specific mountain intended at all.

The forgiveness saying (v25) is Mark's ONLY appearance of a teaching Matthew places inside the Sermon on the Mount, immediately after the Lord's Prayer — “if you do not forgive men, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:14–15, already on these pages) — word for word the same noun, paraptōmata, “trespasses,” that Matthew's explanatory verses use rather than the Lord's Prayer's own “debts” (opheilēmata, Matthew 6:12). Mark relocates the saying to a scene about a barren tree and a movable mountain, with no Sermon on the Mount anywhere in this Gospel to place it inside.

⭐ “By what authority” (v28) is almost the identical question in both Gospels that record it. Mark's en poia exousia tauta poieis; ē tis soi edōken tēn exousian tautēn hina tauta poiēs and Matthew's version of the same challenge (21:23, already on these pages) run word for word alike for most of the sentence — one of the closest verbal overlaps between the two Gospels anywhere in this whole scene. The dictionary entry for exousia is anchored at Matthew 7:29's own astonished crowd, “he taught as one having authority” — and this Gospel has an identical scene of its own, earlier than either: “he was teaching them as one having authority, and not as the scribes” (Mark 1:22, already on these pages), the SAME contrast with the scribes this chapter's authorities now embody in person, asking the question the crowd's astonishment had already answered.

⚠ Jesus answers a hostile question with a genuine dilemma, not a dodge. His counter-question about John's baptism (v30) is not a delay tactic; it is constructed so that either answer destroys the questioners. “From heaven” invites “why did you not believe him?” (v31) — John had already testified about Jesus, so believing John should have settled the very question they are asking. “From men” risks the crowd, who held John to be a genuine prophet (v32). There is no third answer available, and the text lets the reader watch them find that out in real time.

⭐ The narrator tells the reader their answer is false before they give it. Verse 32 states outright, in the narrator's own voice, why they will not say “from men” — fear of the crowd — so that when they answer “we do not know” (v33) the reader already knows the true reason is not ignorance but calculation. It is the same move this chapter already made once, at v18 (“they feared him, because the whole crowd was astounded”) — and Mark repeats it again within a chapter of this one, almost word for word, when the same authorities plot against Jesus after the parable of the tenants (“they were afraid of the crowd,” 12:12, not yet on these pages) and when they finally settle on arresting him by stealth (“not during the feast, lest there be an uproar of the people,” 14:1–2, not yet on these pages). It is one of this Gospel's real habits, not an isolated aside: Mark tells the reader exactly what the authorities are afraid of, every time, so their stated reasons and their real ones are never allowed to be confused.

This is the first of a chain of hostile questions Jesus faces in the temple courts across the chapter that follows — on tribute to Caesar, on the resurrection, on the greatest commandment — each one aimed at trapping him in his own words, and each one, like this one, ending with the questioners silenced rather than Jesus.