Mark 10:32–34 (NA28)
32Ἦσαν δὲ ἐν τῇ ὁδῷ ἀναβαίνοντες εἰς Ἱεροσόλυμα, καὶ ἦν προάγων αὐτοὺς ὁ Ἰησοῦς, καὶ ἐθαμβοῦντο, οἱ δὲ ἀκολουθοῦντες ἐφοβοῦντο. καὶ παραλαβὼν πάλιν τοὺς δώδεκα ἤρξατο αὐτοῖς λέγειν τὰ μέλλοντα αὐτῷ συμβαίνειν
33ὅτι ἰδοὺ ἀναβαίνομεν εἰς Ἱεροσόλυμα, καὶ ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου παραδοθήσεται τοῖς ἀρχιερεῦσιν καὶ τοῖς γραμματεῦσιν, καὶ κατακρινοῦσιν αὐτὸν θανάτῳ καὶ παραδώσουσιν αὐτὸν τοῖς ἔθνεσιν
34καὶ ἐμπαίξουσιν αὐτῷ καὶ ἐμπτύσουσιν αὐτῷ καὶ μαστιγώσουσιν αὐτὸν καὶ ἀποκτενοῦσιν, καὶ μετὰ τρεῖς ἡμέρας ἀναστήσεται.
Translation
Lexham English Bible
Commentary
Old Testament Theology, Vol1.
Divine Surrender
“Surrender” or “deliver up” or “hand over” (paradidōmi) is a key verb in the Gospel story.31 Initially it expresses good news: everything has been handed over to Jesus by his Father (Mt 11:27). But it is the handing over of John that triggers the beginning of Jesus’ ministry (Mk 1:14). Jesus comes to see that his exercise of that ministry will eventually lead to his own being handed over to human beings for execution (Mk 9:31)—to his people’s own leaders, and by them to Gentiles (Mk 10:33; cf. Mk 14:18, 21). So he is handed over to the chief priests by Judas (Mk 14:10–11, 41–44), by them to Pilate (Mk 15:1, 10), and by Pilate to the executioners (Mk 15:15). The disciples are to expect that this will be the pattern of their own experience (Mk 13:9–12; cf. Acts 8:3; 12:4; 15:26; 22:4; 27:1; 28:17). They will achieve things for God by following Jesus actively, but they will also achieve things for God by letting events happen to them (cf. 2 Cor 4:11).
No one can evade a share in responsibility for Jesus’ death. Jesus himself does not refer to the people but to its leadership, the “elders, leading priests, and scholars” who form the community’s governing body, the Sanhedrin. But the Jerusalem crowd as a whole eventually wants Jesus killed and agrees with Pilate that it will bear responsibility for his death (Mt 27:25). Jesus’ disciples share in responsibility, too, betraying him and abandoning him. Ordinary foreigners, in the persons of the governor’s soldiers, indulge in quite unnecessary humiliation of him. The foreign governor himself lacks the courage to make the morally right decision or the skill to manipulate the crowd to make it for him. And/or more paradoxically, he fails to recognize that Jesus is a genuine threat to the empire, so that politically it would be quite the right decision to execute him—but this is not the reason he does so. And/or he fails to recognize that it would be better to keep him alive because a dead hero is more of a problem than a live hero, and/or because a resurrected hero is even more of a problem, and/or because acquittal might even suggest the empire’s submission to Jesus and mean it finds a new future for itself. In a way he does the right thing for the wrong reason and also the wrong thing for the wrong reason.
Jesus’ surrender or betrayal to human hands (Mk 9:31) suggests we should not make too much of whose hands crucify him (e.g., whether they are Jewish or Gentile). The clash between Jesus and his killers is not merely a clash with either the Jewish people or the Roman Empire. They stand for humanity. Everyone is guilty. It is as well that Jesus asks his Father to forgive them on the grounds that they do not know what they are doing (Lk 23:34). Peter later makes clear that such mercy extends to the people’s rulers as well as the people themselves: they had surrendered God’s servant, “rejected the holy and righteous one” and “killed the source of life,” but they had not recognized that this was what they were doing (Acts 3:13–17).
Peter also expresses the point thus: Jesus, “handed over by the fixed purpose and foreknowledge of God—you crucified and killed by means of lawless people” (Acts 2:23).
Jesus knew and God knew that the Jewish leaders would reject Jesus and that the nomikoi (law experts) would use the anomoi (lawless ones) to get rid of him. And God made that part of the plan, so that one could even speak of Jesus’ destiny as fixed before the world’s founding (1 Peter 1:20). Humanly speaking, Jesus’ rejection was designed to frustrate God’s purpose, but God had already seen how to make it part of the way whereby to bring about a renewing of Israel and a revelation to the world. The people act “in ignorance” in having Jesus killed, but this is God’s way of fulfilling the expectation announced through the prophets, that the Anointed would suffer (Acts 3:17–18). Foreign and Jewish leaders and ordinary people unite against Jesus “to do whatever your hand and plan had predetermined should happen” (Acts 4:27–28). “Not comprehending him, or the words of the prophets that are read every sabbath, they fulfilled them by condemning him” (Acts 13:27).
Each of Jesus’ statements about suffering ends with the declaration that he will be raised on the third day. There is no but introducing this last clause. The statements are not warnings followed by promises, negatives followed by positives. The whole sequence of events forms one coherent whole that Jesus initiates. At the same time, the declarations about suffering, death and resurrection are also linked by the passive nature of the experience Jesus expects. Events will begin with Jesus’ one initiative: he will go up to Jerusalem. There he will be surrendered, mocked, flogged, crucified, killed and raised. Although he initiates the sequence of events, he then surrenders control of them, overtly to human beings, but covertly to God. When he says “the Son of Man must undergo great suffering” (Mk 8:31) he indicates an awareness that this is the direction in which God’s will points. There are human agents of his surrender, but some allusions mention none, and given that he eventually asks why God has abandoned him, it seems that the hidden agent of his being handed over in, for example, Mark 9:31 is also God, who “did not spare his own son but delivered him up for us all” (Rom 8:32).
Goldingay, J. (2003). Old Testament Theology: Israel’s Gospel (Vol. 1, pp. 830–832). IVP Academic.
UBS Handbook Mark
Mark 10:32
Text Instead of hoi de ‘but those’ before akolothountes ‘(who) were following’ of most modern editions of the Greek text, Textus Receptus and Kilpatrick have kai ‘and.’ Thus the meaning is changed to … ‘and following (they were afraid) ‘.
Exegesis There is general agreement that the subject of ‘they were going up to Jerusalem’ is ‘Jesus and his disciples’; that the subject of ‘they were amazed’ is ‘the disciples’; and that ‘but those (others who were following were afraid’ refers to people other than the disciples.
Most of the words of this verse have already been dealt with: for anabainō ‘go up’ cf. 1:10; proagō ‘precede,’ ‘go ahead’ cf. 6:45; thambeomai ‘be amazed’ cf. 1:27; akoloutheō ‘follow’ (here in a physical sense) cf. 1:18; phobeomai ‘be afraid’ cf. 4:41; paralambanō ‘take along,’ ‘take aside’ cf. 4:36; hoi dōdeka ‘the Twelve’ cf. 3:16.
ēsan de en tē hodō anabainontes eis Ierosoluma ‘they were on the road going up to Jerusalem’: it is probable (with RSV) that ēsan ‘they were’ is the main verb, and anabainontes ‘going up’ is an independent participle, modifying ‘they.’
en tē hodō (cf. 8:3, 27) ‘in the road,’ ‘on the journey.’
anabainontes eis Ierosoluma ‘going up to Jerusalem’ cf. ‘those who came down from Jerusalem’ in 3:22.
ta mellonta autō sumbainein ‘the things that were to happen to him.’
mellō (13:4) ‘about to be (or, happen) ‘, ‘coming,’ ‘future’: the verb denotes something in the future which is about to take place; often, however (as here), more than mere time is implied: there is the quality of “compulsion, necessity or certainty” (Abbott-Smith), so that the participial form to mellon does not mean simply the thing that will happen (in the future)’ but ‘something that must take place,’ ‘something that is bound to happen.’ Cf. Arndt & Gingrich 1.c.d: “an action that necessarily follows a divine decree, is destined, must, will certainly.”
sumbainō (only here in Mark) ‘happen,’ ‘come about.’
Translation Were on the road must often be rendered ‘traveling on the road:
They must be so translated as to identify Jesus and those with him, not the immediately preceding third person plural ‘the many’ of verse 31, or those who will receive the hundredfold. Accordingly, one may translate ‘Jesus and those with him were journeying along.’
Going up to is generally used of traveling to Jerusalem because of the greater height of Jerusalem relative to the surrounding region, especially Jericho (see verse 45). However, at this point they were not evidently in the ascent from the Jordan valley, for the episode described as near Jericho occurs later in the chapter.
Ahead of them may actually be ‘ahead of the rest’ in some languages, for Jesus is contrasted with the disciples and the following crowd.
They, as the subject of were amazed, may be translated as ‘the disciples,’ if a more specific subject is required.
For amazed see 1:22, 27.
Taking the twelve refers to ‘going aside with the twelve disciples’ or ‘leading aside the twelve disciples’ (cf. 3:14, 4:10).
Happen to him may in some languages be translated as active, from the perspective of the person undergoing the events, e.g. ‘what he would experience.’ In other languages what would happen to is best translated as ‘what men would do to.’
Mark 10:33
Exegesis This is the third prediction of the Passion (cf. 8:31, 9:31).
Most of the words of this verse have already been dealt with: for ho huios tou anthrōpou ‘the Son of man’ cf. 2:10; paradidōmi ‘deliver up’ cf. 1:14; hoi archiereis ‘the chief priests’ cf. 8:31, hoi grammateis ‘the scribes’ cf. 1:22.
katakrinousin (14:64, 16:16) ‘they will condemn.’
tois ethnesin (10:42, 11:17, 13:8, 10) ‘to the nations,’ i.e. ‘to the Gentiles.’ The modern equivalent of this word on the lips of the Jews would be “pagans,” “heathen.” All non-Jews were considered “pagan.” In this context the specific reference is to the Roman authorities.
Translation Saying may be translated as a coordinate or independent verb of speaking, e.g. ‘and he said.…’
Behold is not a command to look, but to pay attention.
For the Son of man see 2:10, and not especially the problems of a third person referent applicable to the speaker, hence translated in some instances as ‘I the Son of man.’
Will be delivered, as a passive, would normally be shifted to the active form in many languages, but this is made difficult by the fact that the one who delivered up Jesus was Judas, and Jesus does not make this known at this time. An equivalent form of expression can, however, usually be found, e.g. ‘the Son of man will come under the control of,’ ‘will come into the hands of,’ or ‘the chief priests … will get the Son of man in their hands.’
For chief priests see 2:26 and 8:31, and for scribes see 1:22.
Condemn him to death is translatable in some instances as ‘declare, You must die’ (or ‘be killed’), depending upon the normal way of speaking about the execution of criminals.
Deliver is ‘hand him over,’ to ‘turn him over to,’ or ‘lead him to.’
Gentiles is often rendered by transliteration, but this is not very satisfactory, since it conveys no meaning. A better, but not entirely adequate, alternative is to use the local equivalent of ‘foreigners,’ e.g. ‘the people of other lands’ (Amuzgo), ‘people of other towns’ (Tzeltal), ‘people of other languages’ (Mixtec), and ‘strange peoples’ (Navajo).
Mark 10:34
Exegesis empaixousin (15:20, 31) ‘they will ridicule,’ ‘they will make fun of,’ ‘they will mock.’
emptusousin (14:65, 15:19, cf. ptuō 7:33, 8:23) ‘they will spit on.’
mastigōsousin (only here in Mark; cf. mastix 3:10, 5:29, 34) ‘they will scourge,’ ‘they will flog’: here the verb refers to the whipping given those who were condemned to death (Latin verberatio)—cf. Arndt & Gingrich I.
The other words have already been dealt with: for apokteinō ‘kill’ cf. 3:4; meta treis hēmeras ‘after three days’ cf. 8:31; anastēnai ‘to rise (from the dead)’ cf. 8:31.
Translation They refers to the Gentiles.
In some languages the equivalent of and connecting a series of events is ‘then,’ e.g. ‘they will mock him; then they will spit on him; then they will.…’
In some parts of the world spitting is regarded as a symbol of blessing, e.g. among the Shilluk. In this instance one must translate so that the people will understand that spitting among the people of ancient Palestine had a different meaning, e.g. ‘spit on him to show they hate him’ (or ‘despise him’).
Bratcher, R. G., & Nida, E. A. (1993). A handbook on the Gospel of Mark (pp. 328–330). United Bible Societies.
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