Mark 7:20

Greek (Tischendorf 8th ed.)

English Translation

He said, "That which proceeds out of the man, that defiles the man.

World English Bible · Public Domain

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κοινοῖ

koinóō

G2840

“to make common”

Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular

Appears 14× in the Greek New Testament
First appears at Matthew 15:11

Full Thayer's Definition

Origin: from G2839

TDNT: 16:29,4

1. to make common a. to make (Levitically) unclean, render unhallowed, defile, profane b. to declare or count unclean

About this verse

These counts appear in no published source. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged text and Lemma’s own curated glosses. What Lemma adds →

12: words
9: distinct lemmas
Gospels: section

Notable vocabulary

The rarest word here is κοινοῖ to make common G2840 — appearing just 14 times in the whole Greek New Testament.

Shared distinctive vocabulary

κοινοῖ to make common G2840 occurs in 11 verses of the Greek New Testament. Also found in:

Repetition

Words recur within this verse:

ἀνθρώπου human being G444 ×2
τὸ the G3588 ×3

Cross-references

Topical passages linked to Mark 7:20 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.

James 3:6 And the tongue is a fire. The world of iniquity among our members is the tongue, which defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of nature, and is set on fire by Gehenna.
James 1:14–15 But each one is tempted, when he is drawn away by his own lust, and enticed.
James 4:1 Where do wars and fightings among you come from? Don't they come from your pleasures that war in your members?
Mark 7:15 There is nothing from outside of the man, that going into him can defile him; but the things which proceed out of the man are those that defile the man.
Matthew 12:34–37 You offspring of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.
Psalms 41:6 If he comes to see me, he speaks falsehood. His heart gathers iniquity to itself. When he goes abroad, he tells it.
Micah 2:1 Woe to those who devise iniquity And work evil on their beds! When the morning is light, they practice it, Because it is in the power of their hand.
Hebrews 7:6 but he whose genealogy is not counted from them has taken tithes of Abraham, and has blessed him who has the promises.

Cross-references courtesy of OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0).

Commentary

Notes on Mark 7:20 from classic Christian and Jewish commentators (each source and its license shown beneath its notes). The classic Christian expositions comment on the surrounding passage and are grouped to its opening verse, so a note may address several verses; the Jewish commentaries on the Tanakh (Rashi and others) are per-verse, so they appear only where the commentator wrote on this verse.

Lemma curates 59 commentaries, every one of them public domain or Creative Commons licensed, each selected and text-cleaned for this edition rather than reprinted as found. About our sources →

Tyndale Open Study Notes

Tyndale Open Resources

7:20-22 These verses summarize thirteen things that truly defile a person. These actions and vices all come from the heart.

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Expositor's Greek Testament

ed. W. Robertson Nicoll

Mar 7:20 . ἔλεγεν δὲ : the use of this phrase here favours the view that καθαρίζων , etc., is an interpolated remark of the evangelist (Field).

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

John Gill's Exposition

For from within, out of the heart of man,.... The inside of man is very bad, his inward part is not only wicked, but wickedness itself, yea, very wickedness, Psa 5:9, in him dwells no good thing naturally, his heart is wicked, and desperately so; it is full of evil; and out of the abundance of it, proceed the evil things hereafter mentioned; all its powers and faculties are vitiated, there is no place clean; the understanding and judgment are dreadfully corrupted; the mind and conscience are defiled; the affections are inordinate; not only the thought, but every imagination of the thought of the heart is evil, and that continually: what good thing therefore, can come out of such a Nazareth as this? Nothing, but what follows: for from hence

proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders; which several things are related in Mat_. 15:19 see the note on Mat 15:19; only the order here is a little different; "murders", which are here mentioned last, are there put after "evil thoughts".

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Trapp's Complete Commentary

John Trapp

20 And he said, That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man.

Ver. 20. That defileth the man] Far worse than any out-house. Sin is the devil’s excrement.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The Pulpit Commentary

Vers. 20-23. From within, out of the heart of men; that is, from the reason and the will, of which the heart is the symbol and the labouratory. For the heart ministers the vital fore to the intellect to enable it to understand, and to the will to enable it to live, although the seat of the intellect is in the brain. St. Mark"s enumeration of evil things is in a somewhat different order from that of St. Matthew; and he adds to St. Matthew"s list (afrosunh ), foolishness, showing how all evil terminates in the loss of all moral and intellectual illumination. All these evil things proceed from within: and defile the man. Dr. Morison, in his admirable commentary on St. Mark, well observes here that "these things have an inward origin, and are vomited forth from the crater of the heart or soul;" and further on he says, "In a little sphere of things, and as regards acts, though not as regards substances or essences, men may be spoken of as creators. Men, that is to say, are the efficient causes of their own choices. If they were not, they would not be really free. If it was not so, there would be no real responsibility." St. Matthew (Mat_15:20) adds here, "But to eat with unwashen hands defileth not the man." This is the end and scope of the parable, which is to show that unwashen hands and unclean meats defile not a man, but only an impure and depraved will. It seems almost needless to observe that our Lord does not condemn the washing of the hands before meats as a thing in itself in any way wrong. All nations approve of ablutions as tending to cleanliness and health. "Dant famuli manibus lymphas, Cereremque canistris Expediunt, tousisque ferunt mantelia villis. (Virgil, "Aeneid," 1:701, 702.)

"It was thought sordid and mean to sit down to meals with unwashen hands. Whence not the clergy only, but the people, washed their hands before prayer." The moral of all is this, how carefully is the heart to be guarded, instructed, and adorned, seeing that it is the instrument and labouratory of all evil and all good, of all vice and all virtue! "Keep thy heart with all diligent," so that nothing may enter therein and nothing go out therefore and you not be conscious of it, and your reason may not approve; "for out of it are the issues of life."

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

unfoldingWord translationNotes

Door43 World Missions Community

He said

"Jesus said"

It is that which comes out of the person that defiles him

"What defiles a person is what comes out of him"

sensuality

not controlling one's lustful desires

come from within

Here the word "within" describes a person's heart. AT: "come from within a person's heart" or "come from within a person's thoughts" (See: Ellipsis)

out of the heart, proceed evil thoughts

Here "heart" is a metonym for a person's inner being or mind. AT: "out of the inner being, come evil thoughts" or "out of the mind, come evil thoughts" (See: Metonymy)

translationWords

defile

heart

evil

sexual immorality

adultery

envy

deceive

slander

proud

fool

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges

20. ἔλεγεν δέ. The Lord’s words are resumed after the interjected remark of the Evangelist.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

International Critical Commentary

20. τὸ ἐκ τ. ἀνθρῶπου ἐκπορευόμεν, ἐκεῖνο κοινοῖ—what cometh out of the man, that defileth the man. Coming out is used here to denote the spiritual, as entering in is to denote the material. Spiritual things can defile the man, and these only, not such material articles as food. And of course, this means that the real man is the spiritual part, and that defilement of the physical part does not extend to the spiritual part, which constitutes the real man. That can be reached only by spiritual things akin to itself. This principle, that spiritual and spiritual go together, and that the material cannot penetrate the spiritual, which is impervious to it, is needed in the interpretation of Christianity, as well as in the reform of Judaism.

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Lesson kit

Teaching starters — assembled from the data on this page, not authored interpretation. Every prompt links to the verse data it draws on. Edit before teaching.

Mark, in the Gospels, opens this verse with 12 words (9 distinct Greek lemmas). Its most distinctive word is koinóō (“to make common”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.

Discussion questions

The word koinóō carries the sense “to make common.” How does it shape the verse?
Matthew 15:11 shares the word «to make common» with this verse. How do the two illuminate each other?
“human being” occurs 2× in this one verse. What is the effect of the repetition?
These translations render this verse differently. What is at stake in choosing one wording over another?
Reading how Tyndale Open Study Notes and Expositor's Greek Testament read this verse, where do the two commentators agree and where do they part?

Things to notice

These translations choose different wording for 9 words in this verse.
“human being” occurs 2× in this single verse.
9 distinct Greek lemmas span 12 words in this verse.