Passage

Mark 7.19

Book: Mark · ASV / WEB / KJV / YLT

Immediate context (±2 verses)

ASV

17. And when he was entered into the house from the multitude, his disciples asked of him the parable. 18. And he saith unto them, Are ye so without understanding also? Perceive ye not, that whatsoever from without goeth into the man, it cannot defile him;

19. because it goeth not into his heart, but into his belly, and goeth out into the draught? This he said, making all meats clean.

And he said, That which proceedeth out of the man, that defileth the man. 21. For from within, out of the heart of men, evil thoughts proceed, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, (Mark 7:17-21, ASV)

WEB

17. When he had entered into a house away from the multitude, his disciples asked him about the parable. 18. He said to them, “Are you also without understanding? Don’t you perceive that whatever goes into the man from outside can’t defile him,

19. because it doesn’t go into his heart, but into his stomach, then into the latrine, thus purifying all foods ?”

He said, “That which proceeds out of the man, that defiles the man. 21. For from within, out of the hearts of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, sexual sins, murders, thefts, (Mark 7:17-21, WEB)

KJV

17. And when he was entered into the house from the people, his disciples asked him concerning the parable. 18. And he saith unto them, Are ye so without understanding also? Do ye not perceive, that whatsoever thing from without entereth into the man, it cannot defile him;

19. Because it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging all meats?

And he said, That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man. 21. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, (Mark 7:17-21, KJV)

YLT

17. And when he entered into a house from the multitude, his disciples were questioning him about the simile, 18. and he saith to them, 'So also ye are without understanding! Do ye not perceive that nothing from without entering into the man is able to defile him?

19. because it doth not enter into his heart, but into the belly, and into the drain it doth go out, purifying all the meats.'

And he said, 'That which is coming out from the man, that doth defile the man; 21. for from within, out of the heart of men, the evil reasonings do come forth, adulteries, whoredoms, murders, (Mark 7:17-21, YLT)

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Setting

Speaker: Jesus, teaching the crowd and then explaining privately to the disciples; the final clause is Mark's own comment
Audience: Pharisees and scribes from Jerusalem in the dispute (7:1-13), then the crowd (7:14), then the disciples in the house (7:17)
Location: Galilee, following a delegation sent from Jerusalem
Time period: During the Galilean ministry, before the journey to Tyre and Sidon that immediately follows

The clause and its grammar

The dispute in Mark 7 begins over handwashing, a matter of the elders' tradition rather than of written Torah, and Jesus widens it into a principle: nothing entering a person from outside can defile him, because it goes to the stomach rather than the heart.

Then Mark adds four words that changed the practice of the early church: katharizōn panta ta brōmata, cleansing all foods.

The grammar decides the meaning, and it is decisive. Katharizōn is a masculine nominative singular participle. It cannot agree with aphedrōna (latrine) or with the neuter brōmata, and it does not agree with anything in the immediately preceding clause about the digestive process. It reaches back to legei, "he says", in verse 18. The subject is Jesus, and Mark is telling the reader what Jesus's saying accomplished.

The Byzantine textual tradition reads the neuter katharizon, which yields the alternative sense that the digestive process purges the food, and this is what the KJV reflects with "purging all meats". The masculine reading is supported by the earliest and most weighty witnesses and is adopted in the modern critical text. It is worth noting the variant openly rather than being caught by it, since Torah-observant interlocutors frequently raise it.

The four public-domain translations above preserve the older rendering, so this is a case where the translation on the page does not carry the reading the grammar supports. That is a reason to work from the Greek here rather than from the English column.

Theological reading

What the verse does not say. It does not say that the Mosaic dietary law was mistaken, or that it never applied. Mark's parenthesis is an observation about a change of administration, not a verdict that the earlier one was wrong. The framework for that distinction is at Theocratic Context of Mosaic Law and Mosaic Law.

What it does say. The locus of defilement has moved from the boundary of the body to the heart. Jesus's list in verses 21-22, evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, envy, slander, pride, folly, is an interior catalogue, and the point of the whole discourse is that purity is an ethical rather than a ritual category. This is continuous with the prophets rather than a break from them (Isaiah 1:11-17, Micah 6:6-8), which is why Jesus quotes Isaiah 29:13 in verse 6.

The narrative consequence. Mark's parenthesis makes intelligible what happens in Acts 10, where Peter is shown a sheet of unclean animals and told to kill and eat, and where he concludes not that a diet has changed but that he must not call any person common or unclean (Acts 10:28). The dietary ruling and the Gentile mission are the same ruling. Paul applies it in Romans 14:14, that nothing is unclean of itself, and in Colossians 2:16-17, where food and festival are shadows of what has come.

Patristic reception. The clause was read as the abrogation of the ceremonial dietary code from early on, and it stands behind the fourth-century consensus that the ritual law's function was pedagogical and typological. The distinction drawn in the tradition between the moral law's permanence and the ceremonial law's fulfilment is not imposed on this text; it is one of the places the distinction comes from.

Notes

This verse is the single most-used text in disputes with Torah-observant movements, Hebrew Israelite groups, and Sabbatarian traditions, and the argument almost always turns on the participle rather than on theology. Two practical points.

First, lead with the grammar and be precise about it. The claim is not that a translation says so but that a masculine participle cannot agree with a neuter noun, which is checkable by anyone with an interlinear and does not depend on trusting a commentator.

Second, concede the textual variant before it is raised. The Byzantine reading exists, the KJV reflects it, and pretending otherwise damages credibility with an interlocutor who has looked it up. The reply is that the masculine reading has the better manuscript support and that Acts 10 and Romans 14 show the early church operating on that understanding regardless of how the participle is parsed.

See also Mark 7.18-19 for the wider unit and Old Covenant for the administrative frame.

Key words

Theologically-loaded Greek or Hebrew words in this verse may have entries in the lexicon. Curated to roughly 100 contested terms across the corpus, not every word; see Lexicon Roadmap.

G1607 - ekporeuomai, ekporeuomai, Strong's G1607
G2588 - kardia, kardia, Strong's G2588
G3956 - pas, pas, Strong's G3956

Quoted in

Arguments and defeaters:

Concepts:

Passages:

Acts 10

Why these four translations

ris3n chose ASV, WEB, KJV, and YLT for two reasons together. They are the most literal English translations available (formal-equivalence: word-for-word renderings that preserve the Hebrew and Greek grammar rather than smoothing it into modern dynamic-equivalence idiom). And they are in the public domain in the United States, which means fair-use quotation at any length requires no publisher license. Modern licensed translations (NASB95, ESV, NIV) restrict volume of quotation under their copyright terms, so they are not used at stub-level coverage here. NASB95 appears only on hand-curated rich passage hubs under Lockman Foundation's fair-use allowance.

The four:

ASV (American Standard Version, 1901). The basis of the modern critical-text English tradition.
WEB (World English Bible, contemporary). Public-domain revision in the ASV line, in current English.
KJV (King James Version, 1611). Reformation-era, Textus Receptus base.
YLT (Young's Literal Translation, Robert Young, 1862). Hyper-literal preservation of Hebrew and Greek grammar; useful for word-study work even where English reads stiff.

See Bibles for the full per-translation history, translators, textual basis, strengths, and weaknesses.