Mark never names the town. “His patris” (v1) — hometown, fatherland — is left for the reader to supply from Mark 1:9's opening line, ‘Nazareth of Galilee’; Luke will say the word outright (4:16, not yet on these pages) where Mark simply assumes it.

⚠ “Is not this the carpenter?” (v3) names Jesus's own trade directly — the parallel scene in Matthew asks instead ‘is not this the carpenter's son?’ (Matthew 13:55, already on these pages), pointing at Joseph's trade rather than Jesus's. Mark's harder reading — Jesus himself at the bench — is also the one an early scribe would have the most obvious reason to soften, which is the usual argument for keeping it. “Son of Mary” is unusual too: sons in this world are named for their fathers, and no Gospel names Joseph as still living once Jesus's public work begins.

The town's whole complaint is familiarity — they can list the trade, the mother, all four brothers by name, the sisters ‘here with us.’ ⚠ What stops them is not doubt about the miracles but certainty about the man.

“He was not able” (v5) is blunt in a way Matthew's retelling is not: Matthew's parallel reads ‘he did not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief’ (13:58, already on these pages) — a choice not made, where Mark states a plain incapacity. Both Matthew's own shelf versions keep the same split at 13:58: NIV and NWT there render the verb as a simple negative, ‘did not do,’ while nothing on Mark's own English shelf below softens this verse's ‘could not.’ Whatever is happening here, this Gospel does not present it as Jesus choosing not to act.

Jesus is amazed at their unbelief (v6) — the same verb, thaumazō, this Gospel elsewhere reserves for something worth remarking on. Mark does not soften this either: it sits beside the miracle-shortage without comment, one household's astonishment answered by another's.

“Two by two” (v7) doubles the number the way Hebrew narrative doubles a word for distribution rather than emphasis (‘two and two’, not ‘very two’) — the identical construction this chapter uses twice more for the crowd at the feeding, ‘group by group’ and ‘row by row’ (vv39–40, below). Mark reaches for the same distributive doubling three times in one chapter, for a very different kind of dividing each time.

⚠ Mark allows a staff and sandals; Matthew's version of this same sending forbids both. ‘No bag for the road, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff’ (Matthew 10:10, already on these pages) is stricter than ‘nothing… except a staff only… wear sandals’ (vv8–9) — two Gospels reporting the same commission with opposite answers on two concrete items. Neither this translation nor the shelf resolves it; both readings are printed exactly as their own Greek states them.

The shaken-off dust (v11) is a testimony against a town, not merely a farewell — the same gesture turned outward, on Israelite towns instead of the more familiar direction. ⚠ The KJV adds a full sentence here that the earliest manuscripts do not have — ‘It shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city’ — a line imported wholesale from the parallel sending in Matthew 10:15, present in the later Byzantine text this translation's own apparatus records but absent from the earlier witness DRB follows, and from this translation.

Anointing with oil (v13) is the one detail in this commission with no instruction behind it in vv8–11 — Jesus tells them what to carry and where to stay, and never mentions oil, yet they use it anyway. The same practice reappears later in the New Testament, at the elders' bedside in James 5:14 (not yet on these pages) — a sick believer anointed with oil in Jesus's name.

⚠ Mark calls him “King” Herod (v14); Rome's own paperwork did not. Antipas was a tetrarch, not a king — a rank down, and Matthew's parallel gets the title right: ‘Herod the tetrarch’ (Matthew 14:1, already on these pages). Whether this is Mark writing loosely, or reporting how a court that flattered him actually spoke, the text does not say; either way this translation keeps Mark's own word rather than quietly correcting it to the accurate one.

⚠ “His name” (v14) is genuinely ambiguous in the Greek — grammatically it could point back to Herod, the sentence's own subject, as easily as to Jesus. NWT and NIV both resolve it by inserting ‘[Jesus]’ / ‘Jesus’ outright; KJV, ASV, and DRB all leave the bare pronoun standing, letting the reader do the same work the Greek requires. Context makes Jesus the far likelier referent — the whole verse turns on what people are saying about HIM — so this translation reads it that way without inserting the name the Greek itself withholds.

The chapter's whole account of John's death is a flashback: Herod hears the rumors first (v14), and only then does Mark step back — ‘for Herod himself had sent…’ (v17) — to explain an arrest that happened earlier. ⚠ His brother's name is the New Testament's own unresolved family knot. Mark and Matthew both call him “Philip” (v17); Josephus's account of the identical marriage names Herodias's first husband simply “Herod,” a private citizen, and never uses the name Philip for him at all. This translation reports the Gospel's own reading rather than harmonizing it — the full tangle, including the OTHER Philip this family also produced, is at the Herodias entry.

Herod, hearing John gladly, is described as “greatly perplexed” (v20) in the earliest manuscripts — a real textual fork, not a translation choice: the later Byzantine text reads instead ‘he did many things,’ the same three consonants rearranged into an entirely different king. ⚠ A wavering Herod, unable to decide what to do with a man he fears and admires, is also the harder reading — the one a copyist has an obvious reason to replace with something tidier.

⚠ The Greek itself forks at the girl's own identity, exactly where the story turns strangest. This translation follows the reading ‘the daughter of Herodias herself’ (v22) — a granddaughter, not Herod's own child — but the earliest and most demanding manuscripts read instead ‘his own daughter, Herodias,’ making the dancing girl Herod's daughter by name. Neither this translation nor the shelf resolves which is original; both readings are attested in the same family of texts this project follows for the New Testament, and the harder one is left named rather than quietly smoothed away. Mark never gives her a name at all — tradition, not this Gospel, calls her Salome.

“Up to half of my kingdom” (v23) is a stock royal extravagance, not a legal offer — Antipas held no kingdom to divide, only a tetrarchy Rome could revoke on a whim, which it eventually did. The line between the daughter's request (v24, ‘the head of John the Baptizer’) and her own demand a verse later (v25, ‘at once… on a platter’) is one this Gospel draws without comment: the mother supplies the target, the girl supplies the theater.

The returning Twelve are called apostles (v30) — the same title Mark gave them once before, in the act of appointing them (3:14, already on these pages: ‘whom he also named apostles’). This is the first time the narration itself uses the word for them doing anything, rather than simply reporting that the name was given.

“Like sheep without a shepherd” (v34) is Moses's own image at his life's end, asking Jehovah for a successor so the congregation would not become exactly this (Numbers 27:17, already on these pages). Mark puts the identical picture in Jesus's own compassion for a crowd that has just run ahead of him on foot — the request from one leader for a shepherd answered, chapters and testaments later, by the shepherd himself arriving anyway.

The doubling this chapter has already used for the sent Twelve returns twice more here: the crowd sits “group by group” (symposia symposia, v39) and then in “rows like garden plots” (prasiai prasiai, v40) — two different Greek words, both doubled the same Semitic way, describing the same seated crowd from two different angles: by table, then by the shape it makes on a hillside. ⚠ Prasiai is literally garden beds, the word choosing to describe rows of reclining people as if seen from above, growing.

Two hundred denarii (v37) is roughly two hundred days' ordinary wages — a denarius is what a laborer earns in a single day elsewhere in this translation (Matthew 20:2, already on these pages) — which is the disciples' own arithmetic for why buying bread for this crowd is not a serious plan.

“He took… he blessed… he broke… and gave” (v41) is the same fourfold sequence this Gospel's own Last Supper will use of bread in an upper room (14:22, not yet on these pages) — planted here, first, over five loaves on open grass, long before either the disciples or the reader has any reason to notice the shape repeating.

Twelve baskets left over (v43) from twelve men's crowd, five thousand men fed by a boy's-day of food — Matthew's parallel spells out what Mark leaves as bare arithmetic: ‘besides women and children’ (Matthew 14:21, already on these pages). Mark's own count, “five thousand men” (v44, andres, not the generic word for people), is exact about exactly one part of the crowd.

⚠ Bethsaida (v45) and Gennesaret (v53) sit on opposite shores of the same lake — a genuine, long-noted geography crux, not a translation choice. Jesus sends the boat toward Bethsaida on the eastern/northern shore; it lands instead at Gennesaret to the west. This translation reports the discrepancy rather than resolving it — proposed answers range from a wind-blown detour to a second, lesser-known Bethsaida on the western shore, and the Gospel itself supplies no explanation.

The disciples are “tormented” at the oars (v48, basanizomenous) — the identical verb the unclean spirit used of itself two chapters ago, begging Jesus, ‘do not torment me’ (5:7, already on these pages). Mark does not remark on the echo: the word that once named a demon's fear of Jesus now names the disciples' own struggle against a contrary wind, moments before the same Jesus arrives calmly on top of the water causing it.

“He meant to pass them by” (v48) is a strange detail for a Gospel to leave standing — Jesus apparently intends to walk past his own struggling disciples rather than join them, until their cry stops him. The phrase echoes the language used of God's own passing appearances to Moses and Elijah, though this translation does not press an Old Testament chapter not currently on these pages into service to prove it.

⚠ “I am” (v50) is left bare on purpose. The Greek, egō eimi, is ordinary self-identification in context — frightened men who think they see a ghost are being told, plainly, that it is only their teacher — and all seven English shelf versions read it exactly that way, verbatim — NWT, NIV, KJV, ASV, TLB, GNV, and DRB all print ‘it is I.’ But it is also the identical Greek phrase this Gospel's own John will put in Jesus's mouth without any storm to explain it away — ‘before Abraham was, I am’ (John 8:58, already on these pages) — and the Spanish shelf splits down the middle at this exact verse: RV 1909 and RV60 both keep the same bare word order, “yo soy”, while TNM and NVI both reorder it to “soy yo.” This translation keeps the same two words in both places and lets the reader carry the question from one scene to the other, rather than deciding it here on the disciples' behalf.

⚠ Their hearts were “hardened” (v52) — the identical word, and the identical verb root, Mark has already used of the Pharisees watching Jesus heal a withered hand in a synagogue (3:5, already on these pages: ‘grieved… at the hardening of their heart’). There the word marked the opposition plotting against him; here, two chapters and one miraculous feeding later, Mark turns the same diagnosis on the Twelve who have just watched him do it. The Gospel does not soften the comparison by choosing a gentler word for its own inner circle.

This closing summary compresses an entire region's response into four verses — recognition (v54), a countryside run on foot (v55), and a single repeated request wherever he goes (v56) — the fastest-moving passage in a Gospel already known for its speed.

“Even the fringe of his garment” (v56) is not a new detail invented here — it is the whole countryside now asking, openly and in numbers, for exactly what one woman asked for privately two chapters ago: ‘if I touch even his garments, I will be made well’ (5:28, already on these pages). What was one woman's quiet, ashamed hope, told and retold by everyone who saw it happen, has become an entire region's open practice.

“Made well” (v56, sōzō) is this Gospel's own word for both healing and salvation, used of the bleeding woman in the identical chapter this passage echoes (‘your faith has made you well,’ 5:34, already on these pages). Mark closes an already fast chapter on the word doing both jobs at once, exactly as it has throughout.