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Mark6:53–56

Jesus Heals at Gennesaret

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Mark 6:53–56 — Jesus Heals at Gennesaret. Each verse below carries the full apparatus: the Berean Standard Bible, the vocalized original (tap any word), and a parsed breakdown of every term transcribed from the interlinear. Synthesized commentary, canonical threads, and the reading of Christ gather at the end, over the whole unit.

53

When they had crossed over, they landed at Gennesaret and moored the boat.

Berean Standard Bible · CC0

Greek — tap a word ↓

Kai diaperasantes ēlthon epi tēn gēn eis Gennēsaret kai prosōrmisthēsan

Word by word10 · parsed
ΚαὶKaiWhenG2532
√ καί — and, also, even, so then, too, etcConjunction
διαπεράσαντεςdiaperasantesthey had crossed overG1276
√ διαπεράω — to cross entirelyVerbAorist Participle ActiveNominative Masculine Plural
diaperao: to cross entirely over A rare verb (6 verses). In Mark it appears at 5:21 and here, both times bracketing a crossing that ends in a crowd pressing for healing. The aorist participle subordinates the whole storm-walk narrative of 6:45 to 6:52 to what now follows: the sea is behind them, and the chapter turns from the failure of the disciples' understanding to the desperate clarity of the crowds.
ἦλθονēlthonthey landedG2064
√ ἔρχομαι — to come or go (in a great variety of applications, literally and figuratively)VerbAorist Indicative Active3rd Person Plural
ἐπὶepi. . .G1909
√ ἐπί — properly, meaning superimposition (of time, place, order, etcPreposition
τὴνtēn. . .G3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleAccusative Feminine Singular
γῆνgēn. . .G1093
√ γῆ — soilNounAccusative Feminine Singular
εἰςeisatG1519
√ εἰς — to or into (indicating the point reached or entered), of place, time, or (figuratively) purpose (result, etcPreposition
ΓεννησαρὲτGennēsaretGennesaretG1082
√ Γεννησαρέτ — Gennesaret (iNounAccusative Feminine Singular
Gennesaret: the plain on the north-west shore Cambridge notes that the land of Gennesaret is mentioned only here and at Matthew 14:34; the lexeme occurs in just 3 verses in all, the third being Luke 5:1, which applies the name to the lake rather than the plain. Cambridge identifies the place with the modern el-Ghuweir, a crescent plain about three miles by one, more than 500 feet below sea level and almost tropical in climate, and says Josephus speaks of it as if it were an earthly paradise; Gill cites Josephus for its excellent spring. Pulpit records Cornelius a Lapide's gloss that the name means "a fertile garden." The setting is agricultural abundance, and Mark places a harvest of healings in it.
καὶkaiandG2532
√ καί — and, also, even, so then, too, etcConjunction
προσωρμίσθησανprosōrmisthēsanmoored [the boat]G4358
√ προσορμίζω — to moor to, iVerbAorist Indicative Passive3rd Person Plural
prosormizo: to moor to, to bring to anchor A hapax legomenon in the New Testament, and passive. Gill records that the Syriac and Persic versions omit the clause and the Arabic reads "and they cast anchors," which is an honest early witness to how hard the verb was to render. Mark, who has no interest in seamanship for its own sake, keeps a mariner's word: the memory behind the sentence is somebody's, and it is specific.
54

As soon as they got out of the boat, the people recognized Jesus

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Greek — tap a word ↓

kai euthys autōn exelthontōn ek tou ploiou epignontes auton

Word by word9 · parsed
καὶkaiG2532
√ καί — and, also, even, so then, too, etcConjunction
εὐθὺςeuthysAs soon asG2112
√ εὐθέως — directly, iAdverb
euthys: straightway, immediately Mark's most characteristic word. Its placement here is telling: the disciples' slowness has just been diagnosed ("their heart was hardened," 6:52, on which Barnes insists the sense is dullness of perception rather than hostility), and now the crowd is euthys. Those who understand least about the loaves move fastest toward the healer.
αὐτῶνautōntheyG846
√ αὐτός — the reflexive pronoun self, used (alone or in the comparative G1438 (ἑαυτοῦ)) of the third person , and (with the proper personal pronoun) of the other personsPersonal / Possessive PronounGenitive Masculine 3rd Person Plural
ἐξελθόντωνexelthontōngotG1831
√ ἐξέρχομαι — to issue (literally or figuratively)VerbAorist Participle ActiveGenitive Masculine Plural
exerchomai: to issue, to come out Aorist participle in the genitive, agreeing with αὐτῶν to form a genitive absolute: the construction Greek uses to file an event away as background. The disciples' disembarking is therefore grammatically detached, a circumstance and not the subject. JFB registers the effect when he has to add a gloss to the English: "that is, the people did." Mark has quietly handed the verse to the crowd before the crowd is even named.
ἐκekout ofG1537
√ ἐκ — literal or figurativePreposition
τοῦtoutheG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleGenitive Neuter Singular
πλοίουploiouboatG4143
√ πλοῖον — a sailer, iNounGenitive Neuter Singular
ἐπιγνόντεςepignontes[the people] recognizedG1921
√ ἐπιγινώσκω — to know upon some mark, iVerbAorist Participle ActiveNominative Masculine Plural
epiginosko: to know upon a mark, to recognize The compound carries the force of identifying someone already known. Barnes grounds it in memory: they "recollected" Jesus because he had been there before and worked miracles. Cambridge adds the hour, that "the dawn had now broken," tying this recognition to the night crossing just ended. Note the irony Mark builds: in the boat, at night, the disciples took him for a phantom (6:49); on the shore, at dawn, strangers know him at once.
αὐτὸνauton[Jesus]G846
√ αὐτός — the reflexive pronoun self, used (alone or in the comparative G1438 (ἑαυτοῦ)) of the third person , and (with the proper personal pronoun) of the other personsPersonal / Possessive PronounAccusative Masculine 3rd Person Singular
A bare pronoun where the reader expects a name.
55

and ran through that whole region, carrying the sick on mats to wherever they heard He was.

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Greek — tap a word ↓

periedramon ekeinēn holēn tēn chōran kai ērxanto peripherein tous kakōs echontas epi tois krabattois hopou ēkouon hoti estin

Word by word18 · parsed
περιέδραμονperiedramon[and] ran throughG4063
√ περιτρέχω — to run around, iVerbAorist Indicative Active3rd Person Plural
peritrecho: to run around, to scour A compound of peri (around) and trecho (to run), so the motion is circuit rather than line, and the aorist is punctiliar: one burst of running that fans out over the whole plain. Mark's geography here is small (Cambridge measures the crescent at about three miles by one) and this single verb fills it edge to edge. Gill reads the mechanics of it: some ran themselves, others sent messengers into all parts of it, on every side.
ἐκείνηνekeinēnthatG1565
√ ἐκεῖνος — that one (or (neuter) thing)Demonstrative PronounAccusative Feminine Singular
ὅληνholēnwholeG3650
√ ὅλος — "whole" or "all", iAdjectiveAccusative Feminine Singular
τὴνtēnG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleAccusative Feminine Singular
χώρανchōranregionG5561
√ χώρα — room, iNounAccusative Feminine Singular
καὶkaiG2532
√ καί — and, also, even, so then, too, etcConjunction
ἤρξαντοērxantovvvG756
√ ἄρχομαι — to commence (in order of time)VerbAorist Indicative Middle3rd Person Plural
archomai: to begin An inceptive aorist middle. What begins here does not end within the unit; v. 56 continues it in the imperfect. Ellicott's observation on v. 56, that the Greek tense implies "an event frequently recurring," applies backward to this verb too.
περιφέρεινperiphereincarryingG4064
√ περιφέρω — to convey around, iVerbPresent Infinitive Active
periphero: to convey around Rare (3 verses). The other two uses are Pauline and metaphorical: 2 Corinthians 4:10, always carrying around in the body the dying of Jesus, and Ephesians 4:14, carried about by every wind of doctrine. Mark's is the literal, physical sense, and it is the only place in the New Testament where what is carried around is a human body on a pallet toward a healer.
τοὺςtoustheG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleAccusative Masculine Plural
κακῶςkakōssickG2560
√ κακῶς — badly (physically or morally)Adverb
kakos: badly, ill (adverb) Not a diagnosis but a condition: these people are having it badly. Paired with the participle of echo it is Mark's standing idiom for the ill (1:32, 1:34, 2:17).
ἔχονταςechontas. . .G2192
√ ἔχω — to hold (used in very various applications, literally or figuratively, direct or remoteVerbPresent Participle ActiveAccusative Masculine Plural
ἐπὶepionG1909
√ ἐπί — properly, meaning superimposition (of time, place, order, etcPreposition
τοῖςtoisG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleDative Masculine Plural
κραβάττοιςkrabattoismatsG2895
√ κράββατος — a mattressNounDative Masculine Plural
krabbatos: a mattress, a pallet Strong's gives "a mattress": a colloquial word for a poor man's bedroll rather than a bed (11 verses). Mark uses it for the paralytic lowered through the roof (2:4, 2:11 to 12) and Luke for the sick laid in the streets for Peter's shadow (Acts 5:15). The vocabulary is deliberate: these are not litters of the wealthy but the bedding of people who cannot walk and own little.
ὅπουhopouto whereverG3699
√ ὅπου — what(-ever) where, iAdverb
ἤκουονēkouonthey heardG191
√ ἀκούω — to hear (in various senses)VerbImperfect Indicative Active3rd Person Plural
Imperfect of continuous hearing: the rumor of his location keeps arriving and keeps being acted on.
ὅτιhotiG3754
√ ὅτι — demonstrative, that (sometimes redundant)Conjunction
ἐστίνestinHe wasG1510
√ εἰμί — I exist (used only when emphatic)VerbPresent Indicative Active3rd Person Singular
eimi: he is A present indicative retained inside indirect discourse, so the crowd's own words survive in the narration: he is there. The whole sentence's motion, the running, the carrying, the listening, is aimed at that present tense.
56

And wherever He went—villages and towns and countrysides—they laid the sick in the marketplaces and begged Him just to let them touch the fringe of His cloak. And all who touched Him were healed.

Berean Standard Bible · CC0

Greek — tap a word ↓

kai hopou an eiseporeueto eis kōmas ē eis poleis ē eis agrous etithesan tous asthenountas en tais agorais kai parekaloun auton hina kan hapsōntai tou kraspedou autou tou himatiou kai hosoi an hēpsanto autou esōzonto

Word by word35 · parsed
καὶkaiAndG2532
√ καί — and, also, even, so then, too, etcConjunction
ὅπουhopouwhereverG3699
√ ὅπου — what(-ever) where, iAdverb
ἂνan. . .G302
√ ἄν — (what-, where-, wither-, who-)soeverParticle
εἰσεπορεύετοeiseporeuetoHe wentG1531
√ εἰσπορεύομαι — to enter (literally or figuratively)VerbImperfect Indicative Middle or Passive3rd Person Singular
eisporeuomai: to enter in Imperfect, middle or passive, paired with ὅπου ἂν (wherever, with the indefinite particle). The construction is iterative: this is not one visit but a pattern of entering, repeated across a whole itinerary. Mark has compressed weeks into one sentence.
εἰςeis. . .G1519
√ εἰς — to or into (indicating the point reached or entered), of place, time, or (figuratively) purpose (result, etcPreposition
κώμαςkōmasvillagesG2968
√ κώμη — a hamlet (as if laid down)NounAccusative Feminine Plural
ἢē[and]G2228
√ ἤ — disjunctive, orConjunction
εἰςeisG1519
√ εἰς — to or into (indicating the point reached or entered), of place, time, or (figuratively) purpose (result, etcPreposition
πόλειςpoleistownsG4172
√ πόλις — a town (properly, with walls, of greater or less size)NounAccusative Feminine Plural
ἢē[and]G2228
√ ἤ — disjunctive, orConjunction
εἰςeisG1519
√ εἰς — to or into (indicating the point reached or entered), of place, time, or (figuratively) purpose (result, etcPreposition
ἀγροὺςagrouscountrysidesG68
√ ἀγρός — a field (as a drive for cattle)NounAccusative Masculine Plural
agros: a field, a farmstead Ellicott: "Better, as before in Mark 6:36, farms or hamlets. The three words form almost an exhaustive list of the various grades of aggregate human habitations." Villages, walled towns, open farmland: Mark is saying there was no grade of settlement the healing did not reach.
ἐτίθεσανetithesanthey laidG5087
√ τίθημι — to place (in the widest application, literally and figurativelyVerbImperfect Indicative Active3rd Person Plural
tithemi: to place, to lay down Imperfect, they kept laying them. The same verb governs the sick laid in the streets at Acts 5:15, where the crowds lay them out for Peter's shadow to fall on them. It is the verb of deliberate placement in a path someone is expected to walk.
τοὺςtoustheG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleAccusative Masculine Plural
ἀσθενοῦνταςasthenountassickG770
√ ἀσθενέω — to be feeble (in any sense)VerbPresent Participle ActiveAccusative Masculine Plural
astheneo: to be without strength, feeble Present participle: the condition is ongoing, not a label. Mark distinguishes it from kakos echontas a verse earlier; between the two words the unit covers both those who are faring badly and those who have no strength left at all.
ἐνeninG1722
√ ἐν — "in," at, (up-)on, by, etcPreposition
ταῖςtaistheG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleDative Feminine Plural
ἀγοραῖςagoraismarketplacesG58
√ ἀγορά — probably akin to G1453 (ἐγείρω))NounDative Feminine Plural
agora: a market-place Both Ellicott and Pulpit correct the older "streets" to "market-places" (Gill: "or 'markets', in any public places"). The agora is the civic center, the place of buying, judging and gathering. The sick are not hidden at the edge of town but laid out in the middle of public life, which is itself a reversal of how the unclean were normally handled.
καὶkaiandG2532
√ καί — and, also, even, so then, too, etcConjunction
παρεκάλουνparekalounbeggedG3870
√ παρακαλέω — to call near, iVerbImperfect Indicative Active3rd Person Plural
parakaleo: to call near, to beseech Imperfect: they kept begging. The verb is para-kaleo, to call alongside, cognate with the noun John uses of the Paraclete. Here it is the crowd's persistent petition, and what they ask for is remarkably modest.
αὐτὸνautonHimG846
√ αὐτός — the reflexive pronoun self, used (alone or in the comparative G1438 (ἑαυτοῦ)) of the third person , and (with the proper personal pronoun) of the other personsPersonal / Possessive PronounAccusative Masculine 3rd Person Singular
ἵναhinaG2443
√ ἵνα — compare G3588 (ὁ))Conjunction
κἂνkanjustG2579
√ κἄν — and (or even) ifAdverb
kan: even if, if only The concessive crasis that measures the size of the request: not his hands, not his word, only the hem. Cambridge reads it as a practical accommodation to numbers, that the crowds "seemed almost too large for Him to be able to heal them singly by laying His hands upon them."
ἅψωνταιhapsōntaito let them touchG680
√ ἅπτομαι — properly, to attach oneself to, iVerbAorist Subjunctive Middle3rd Person Plural
τοῦtoutheG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleGenitive Neuter Singular
κρασπέδουkraspedoufringeG2899
√ κράσπεδον — a margin, iNounGenitive Neuter Singular
kraspedon: a border, a fringe, a tassel Rare (5 verses). In the Septuagint this is the word for the commanded tassel of Numbers 15:38 to 39, worn on the corners of the garment so that Israel would remember and do all the commandments. Two of its five New Testament occurrences are the hemorrhaging woman (Matthew 9:20; Luke 8:44) and one is the Pharisees who enlarge theirs (Matthew 23:5). The same object is a memorial of obedience, an object of display, and a point of contact for healing power.
αὐτοῦautouof HisG846
√ αὐτός — the reflexive pronoun self, used (alone or in the comparative G1438 (ἑαυτοῦ)) of the third person , and (with the proper personal pronoun) of the other personsPersonal / Possessive PronounGenitive Masculine 3rd Person Singular
τοῦtouG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleGenitive Neuter Singular
ἱματίουhimatioucloakG2440
√ ἱμάτιον — a dress (inner or outer)NounGenitive Neuter Singular
himation: an outer garment Pulpit: the outer robe worn over the tunic, the garment whose four corners carry the tassels.
καὶkaiAndG2532
√ καί — and, also, even, so then, too, etcConjunction
ὅσοιhosoiallG3745
√ ὅσος — as (much, great, long, etcPersonal / Relative PronounNominative Masculine Plural
ἂνanwhoG302
√ ἄν — (what-, where-, wither-, who-)soeverParticle
ἥψαντοhēpsantotouchedG680
√ ἅπτομαι — properly, to attach oneself to, iVerbAorist Indicative Middle3rd Person Plural
haptomai: to attach oneself to, to touch Aorist middle, and the middle voice matters: they lay hold for themselves. The grammatical ambiguity of the following αὐτοῦ (him, or it, the fringe) is old: Pulpit records it and judges "the difference is of little importance" because faith, not the object, is what carried the healing; Geneva simply marks the alternative in the margin without deciding it.
αὐτοῦautouHimG846
√ αὐτός — the reflexive pronoun self, used (alone or in the comparative G1438 (ἑαυτοῦ)) of the third person , and (with the proper personal pronoun) of the other personsPersonal / Possessive PronounGenitive Masculine 3rd Person Singular
ἐσῴζοντοesōzontowere healedG4982
√ σώζω — to save, iVerbImperfect Indicative Middle or Passive3rd Person Plural
sozo: to save, to make whole Imperfect, middle or passive, with no named agent: they were being saved, again and again. The passive leaves the healer's work unstated, which is precisely Poole's point, that the power was not in the cloth but in the virtue going out from Christ. Mark will use this same verb of the woman with the flow of blood (5:28, 5:34) and of eternal salvation (8:35, 13:13); the unit ends on a word the reader cannot keep inside the body.

The verse-by-verse work is done. What follows gathers the whole unit. All three layers below are machine-generated (⚙). Weigh them; they have no authority.

⚙

Grand Commentary — the unit, read whole

synthesis · verify

AI synthesis — woven from the public-domain voices above and the original text; generated and fallible.

i. The landing: a nautical word and a fertile plain — 6:53

Mark ends the night of the storm with two technical details and a place name. προσωρμίσθησαν is, as JFB records, "a nautical phrase, nowhere else used in the New Testament," and it is passive: the boat was brought to its mooring. Before it stands διαπεράσαντες, a rare verb of crossing entirely through (6 verses), and between them Pulpit notes the doubled preposition, "they came to the land unto Gennesaret." Cambridge fixes the place: the modern el-Ghuweir, a crescent plain about three miles by one, more than 500 feet below sea level and nearly tropical, which Josephus describes as an earthly paradise; Pulpit passes on Cornelius a Lapide's reading of the name as "a fertile garden." Gill, reasoning from Josephus and John 6:17, places Capernaum inside that plain. ⚙ The frame is worth holding: Mark has just shown the disciples failing to read the loaves (6:52, on which Barnes insists that the hardening of the heart means dullness of perception and not hostility), and he now sets the next scene in the most fertile ground in Galilee. The harvest that follows is not gathered by the twelve.

ii. Recognition at dawn, and a sentence that will not stop — 6:54

Verse 54 has no finite verb. A genitive absolute (ἐξελθόντων αὐτῶν) sets the disciples aside as circumstance, and a nominative participle, ἐπιγνόντες, hangs unresolved until περιέδραμον in v. 55. JFB translates the moment tightly: "immediately they recognized Him"; "that is, the people did." Barnes grounds the recognition in memory, that they "recollected" Jesus because he had been there before and worked miracles. Cambridge supplies the hour, that "the dawn had now broken." ⚙ Mark's irony is structural, not stated: hours earlier, in the dark, the men who had seen the loaves multiplied took him for a phantom and cried out (6:49); now, in first light, a shoreful of strangers knows him on sight. The Geneva note reads this against the Nazareth rejection of 6:1 to 6:6, "Christ being rejected in his own country, and suddenly arriving to those who had not looked for him," which is a genuine Markan contrast, though Geneva presses it further into doctrine than the verse does.

iii. Running, carrying, listening: the grammar of desperation — 6:55

Three verbs carry the verse and each is exact. περιέδραμον (G4063, its only New Testament occurrence) is not running through but running around, scouring a circuit; Gill reads the practice behind it, that some ran themselves and others "sent messengers into all parts of it, on every side." ἤρξαντο ... περιφέρειν opens a continuing action: they began to keep carrying around, and the rare infinitive (3 verses) is the only literal, bodily use of that verb in the New Testament. Then ἤκουον ὅτι ἐστίν, an imperfect of hearing running into a retained present, which Pulpit calls "very expressive" and reconstructs as "where they heard, He is there" (noting that the best authorities omit the ekei). JFB judges the moment historically: "At this period of our Lord's ministry the popular enthusiasm in His favor was at its height." ⚙ What Mark records is not a crowd but a relay: a rumor in the present tense, and a whole plain moving bedrolls toward it.

iv. The fringe, the market-place, and a verb that will not stay medical — 6:56

The last verse is built entirely of iteratives: ὅπου ἂν εἰσεπορεύετο (wherever he kept entering), ἐτίθεσαν (they kept laying), παρεκάλουν (they kept begging), ἐσῴζοντο (they kept being saved). Ellicott states the tense-sense plainly, that it "implies an event frequently recurring," and reads the three locations as "almost an exhaustive list of the various grades of aggregate human habitations." He and Pulpit both correct "streets" to market-places, and Gill agrees ("or 'markets', in any public places"): the sick are laid out in the civic center, not hidden. The request itself is measured by κἂν, if it were but: Cambridge reads this as accommodation to sheer numbers, too large "for Him to be able to heal them singly by laying His hands upon them"; Gill offers the alternative that they were not admitted to his person. JFB guesses at their information, that they had heard "no doubt" of the woman with the issue of blood, though he flags his own inference. Poole, commenting on the whole block, forecloses the magical reading in one stroke: "It was not their touching the hem of his garment, nor of his body, which healed these sick persons, those who had a hand in crucifying of him did both; it was the virtue that went out from Christ, upon the testification of their faith." Pulpit reaches the same place through the textual ambiguity of whether they touched him or it: "it was faith in those who touched which brought the healing virtue to the sick." ⚙ And the closing verb is ἐσῴζοντο, not a medical word but sozo, the verb Mark will use at 8:35 and 13:13 of losing and saving a life. The English "were healed" is accurate and too small.

Read under Sola Scriptura — this tool’s own fallible reading (⚙)

⚙ This is a fallible reading, offered to be tested. Mark has just spent eleven verses on twelve men who could not read a miracle they had helped distribute, and he ends the chapter on strangers who read him correctly at a glance and asked for almost nothing. The measure of their faith is not its volume but its grammar: κἂν, if it were but the fringe. They did not ask him to come, to speak, or to lay on hands. They asked to be allowed to reach the outermost thread of what he was wearing, and Mark says in the imperfect that as often as anyone did, they kept being saved. Two things follow, and I hold them together. First, the object they reached for was not neutral cloth. κρασπέδου is the word for the tassel Israel was commanded to wear on the corners of the garment so that seeing it they would remember and do all the commandments (Numbers 15:38 to 39). The sick of Gennesaret grasped at the visible sign of covenant obedience and found that it was attached to a person, and that the person was the one keeping it. Second, Poole is right that the cloth had no power in it, and he proves it the hardest possible way: the men who crucified him touched both his garment and his body. So the fringe is neither a charm nor a nothing. It is the least possible point of contact with a Person, and the text's point is the Person's willingness to be contacted at his outermost edge, in a market-place, by people with no strength, laid there by neighbors. ⚙ I would add, tentatively and as my own reading rather than the commentators': under the Torah, contact with the unclean and the sick ran one way, and defiled. Here it runs the other way and heals, and nobody in the passage is recorded as being told to stop touching him. Mark does not comment. He simply reports the direction of the flow, and leaves it.

They asked for the outermost thread of him, and the outermost thread of him was enough. (An interpretive line, not a verse.)

⚙

Canonical Threads — out to the whole of Scripture

cross-refs · verify

AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.

The Matthean parallel: the same landing, the same plain, the same fringe verbal / quotation: confirmed

Matthew 14:34 to 36 narrates this identical scene, and Ellicott simply cross-refers rather than repeating himself ("See Notes on Matthew 14:34-36"), as Poole and Gill do for the details. The Verifier confirms the overlap at the lexical level: the place name Γεννησαρέτ occurs in only 3 verses of the New Testament, two of which are this pair, and διαπεράω in only 6. At Matthew 14:36 the shared vocabulary continues with κράσπεδον and ἱμάτιον. This is a Greek to Greek verbal relationship inside the Synoptic tradition, not a quotation of one by the other.

Matthew 14:34 · Matthew 14:36

basis: Verifier: shared Greek lexemes G1082 Γεννησαρέτ (rare, in 3 vv) and G1276 διαπεράω (rare, in 6 vv) at Matthew 14:34, plus G2899 κράσπεδον (rare, in 5 vv), G2440 ἱμάτιον and G3870 παρακαλέω at Matthew 14:36. Both refs are New Testament Greek, so the shared Strong's numbers are a real verbal link; this is Synoptic parallel wording, not a formal quotation.

The fringe already tested: the woman with the flow of blood verbal / quotation: confirmed

Mark has already told this story once, in one person: the woman who said to herself that if she could touch even his garments she would be made well (Mark 5:28), and who touched and was healed (Mark 5:27 to 29). JFB makes the connection explicitly, suggesting the Gennesaret crowds acted "having heard, no doubt, of what the woman with the issue of blood experienced on doing so (Mr 5:25-29)," and Cambridge sends the reader to the same place ("Comp. above, Mark 5:27"). The Verifier records the lexical spine of the link: the rare κράσπεδον (5 verses) at Matthew 9:20 and Luke 8:44, and at Mark 5:28 the triad ἱμάτιον, ἅπτομαι and σώζω, the last being the very verb that closes Mark 6:56. ⚙ What was one woman's secret act in chapter 5 is, by chapter 6, an entire region's public practice.

Mark 5:28 · Matthew 9:20 · Luke 8:44

basis: Verifier: shared Greek lexemes G2899 κράσπεδον (rare, in 5 vv) at Matthew 9:20 and Luke 8:44; G2440 ἱμάτιον, G680 ἅπτομαι (in 33 vv) and G4982 σώζω (in 99 vv) at Mark 5:28. All refs are New Testament Greek, so shared Strong's numbers constitute the verbal basis; it is repeated narrative vocabulary, not a citation.

Pallets laid down and a shadow: Acts 5:15 verbal / quotation: confirmed

Luke's description of the Jerusalem crowds is built from this scene's exact materials: they carried the sick into the streets and laid them on pallets, so that if it were but Peter's shadow might fall on some of them. The Verifier finds the three-word overlap: κράββατος (the colloquial pallet, 11 verses), τίθημι (they laid), and the concessive κἄν (if it were but, 15 verses), which in Mark 6:56 measures the modesty of the request. ⚙ The reach is the same and the object is one step further out: from the hem of the garment to the shadow of a man who is not the Healer. Mark's crowds asked for the least of Christ; Luke's asked for the least of Christ's apostle, and Luke lets the reader notice the distance.

Acts 5:15

basis: Verifier: shared Greek lexemes G2895 κράββατος (in 11 vv), G5087 τίθημι (in 96 vv) and G2579 κἄν (in 15 vv). Both refs are New Testament Greek. The κράββατος + κἄν pairing is distinctive, but this is narrative echo, not quotation.

Carried around: the only literal use of a verb Paul makes theological structural / thematic: confirmed

περιφέρω occurs in only 3 New Testament verses. Here it is bodies on pallets being carried around a plain. In 2 Corinthians 4:10 Paul uses it of always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be shown in the body; in Ephesians 4:14 it describes the immature being carried about by every wind of doctrine. ⚙ Mark's is the concrete case, and the two Pauline uses divide it: one is a body carried toward life, the other a person carried by anything at all. The Verifier confirms only the shared lexeme; the thematic reading of the triad is machine synthesis and should be weighed as such.

2 Corinthians 4:10 · Ephesians 4:14

basis: Verifier: shared Greek lexeme G4064 περιφέρω (rare, in 3 vv) with both refs. The lexical link is real and rare, but the sense differs (literal bodily carriage here, metaphor in Paul), so the tier is downgraded from verbal to structural: the shared word supports a motif, not a quotation or deliberate allusion.

The tassel on the corner: Numbers 15 and Deuteronomy 22 behind the κράσπεδον structural / thematic: confirmed

The noun the sick reach for, κρασπέδου, is the standard Greek term for the commanded tassel worn on the four corners of an Israelite's outer garment, so that seeing it Israel would remember and do all the LORD's commandments (Numbers 15:38 to 39; Deuteronomy 22:12). Ellicott corrects "border" to "the hem, or fringe," and Pulpit identifies the garment as "the outer robe worn over the tunic," which is the garment that carries them. The same noun appears at Matthew 23:5, where the Pharisees enlarge their tassels to be seen. ⚙ Mark does not cite the law, and none of this unit's voices makes the Torah connection; the reading is inference from the vocabulary. But if it holds, then the object grasped in the market-places of Gennesaret is the visible badge of covenant obedience, and it is attached to the one person keeping the covenant.

Numbers 15:38 · Deuteronomy 22:12 · Matthew 23:5

basis: Cross-Testament: Numbers and Deuteronomy are Hebrew, Mark is Greek, so no shared Strong's number is possible and the link cannot be tiered verbal. The basis is the referent of the object itself (G2899 κράσπεδον, rare, in 5 vv, is the standard Greek term for the commanded tassel) plus the intra-Greek link to Matthew 23:5 that the Verifier does record. No quotation is claimed; no voice in this unit attests the Torah connection.

Healing in his wings: Malachi 4:2 and the robe of Zechariah 8:23 typological

⚙ A figural reading, offered with its weakness stated. Malachi 4:2 promises that for those who fear the Name the sun of righteousness shall rise "with healing in his wings," and the Hebrew kanaph means both a wing and the corner of a garment, the very corner on which Numbers 15 puts the tassel. Zechariah 8:23 pictures ten men from the nations taking hold of the robe-corner of one Jew and asking to go with him, because they have heard that God is with him. Mark 6:56 reports a whole region taking hold of the corner of one Jew's garment and, in the imperfect, being saved. The verbal pivot lives in Hebrew and cannot be carried across to Mark's Greek; what can be said is that the same object and the same gesture appear in all three. Cambridge notes that soon after this the Bread of Life discourse follows at Capernaum (John 6:22 to 65), which sets this scene at the hinge of the Galilean ministry.

Malachi 4:2 · Zechariah 8:23

basis: Cross-Testament Hebrew to Greek: no shared Strong's number exists or could exist, so no verbal tier is possible. The recorded basis is a shared object (the garment corner, Hebrew kanaph) and a shared gesture of grasping it for deliverance. The kanaph wordplay is a feature of the Hebrew only; it is not present in Mark's κράσπεδον. Novel as applied here: no voice in this unit attests it.

Healing by contact alone: the bones of Elisha typological

⚙ 2 Kings 13:21 records a dead man thrown into Elisha's grave who revives on touching the prophet's bones. It is the one Old Testament episode where life passes by bare contact with a man of God, with no word spoken, no prayer, and no act of will on the healer's part. Mark 6:56 is the New Testament's largest-scale instance of healing by contact alone. The two are not linked by vocabulary and cannot be: the texts are in different languages, and Mark neither cites nor alludes to Elisha here. The comparison is offered as a pattern only, and Poole's warning stands over it, that the power is never in the material but in "the virtue that went out from Christ, upon the testification of their faith."

2 Kings 13:21

basis: Cross-Testament Hebrew to Greek: shared Strong's numbers are impossible, so the link cannot be verbal. Basis is a shared pattern (life or healing transmitted by physical contact with a prophet or his remains, without word or gesture). No quotation, allusion or citation is claimed; unattested by any voice in this unit, and offered as a figural comparison only.

⚙Christ in the Unittypology · verify

AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.

The contact that runs the wrong way ancient/widely-held

Under the law, contact with the sick, the leprous and the discharging ran one direction: uncleanness moved outward and the toucher was defiled (Leviticus 15). In Gennesaret the sick are laid in the market-places, the most public ground in a town, and a whole region reaches for the corner of one man's garment, and Mark says in the imperfect that they kept being saved. ✦ The commentators guard the mechanism rather than the direction. Poole: "It was not their touching the hem of his garment, nor of his body, which healed these sick persons, those who had a hand in crucifying of him did both; it was the virtue that went out from Christ, upon the testification of their faith." Pulpit reaches the same conclusion from the textual ambiguity of "him" or "it": "it was faith in those who touched which brought the healing virtue to the sick." That power goes out from Christ to the believing toucher is the ancient and widely-held reading, recorded here by Poole and Pulpit and presupposed by JFB, Cambridge and Gill. ⚙ The further observation, that the direction of contagion has been reversed and that no one is told to stop touching him, is my own extension and should be tested against the text rather than received.

Mark 5:30 · Leviticus 15:7

The tassel of the one who kept the commandments novel

⚙ The object grasped is κρασπέδου, the tassel Israel was commanded to wear on the corners of the garment as a memorial, so that looking at it they would remember all the commandments of the LORD and do them (Numbers 15:39). By Matthew 23:5 the same object had become a means of display. In Mark 6:56 the dying of a whole plain lay hold of that badge of covenant obedience, and what it is fastened to is a Person. If the tassel means remember and do, then the one wearing it in this scene is the only one in Scripture of whom the memorial could be said without qualification, and the power that heals through it is his, not the fabric's. This is a reading from the vocabulary; Ellicott and Pulpit establish the object ("the hem, or fringe"; "the outer robe worn over the tunic"), but no voice in this unit draws the Torah line, so the connection is ⚙ machine synthesis.

Numbers 15:38-39 · Matthew 23:5

ἐσῴζοντο: the word that will not stay a medical word ancient/widely-held

The unit ends on ἐσῴζοντο, imperfect of sozo, to save, to deliver, to make whole. ✦ Ellicott notes only the tense ("an event frequently recurring"), and Gill the scope ("of whatsoever sickness, or disease, they were afflicted with"). ⚙ But Mark's own use of this verb elsewhere refuses to stay inside the body: whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it (8:35); who then can be saved (10:26); the one who endures to the end will be saved (13:13); and at the cross, he saved others, himself he cannot save (15:31). Poole presses the same movement pastorally, that the charity shown to the body is exceeded by "that charity, which is showed to people's souls, inviting them to Christ that they may be spiritually healed," and Henry, bluntly, that it is "sad to think how much more most care about their bodies than about their souls." The bodies healed at Gennesaret were healed and died. The verb that records it is the verb of the resurrection, and Mark, who never explains, simply leaves it in place at the end of the chapter. The double sense of sozo is the ancient and widely-held apostolic reading; the reading of this particular ending as deliberate foreshadowing is ⚙ mine.

Mark 8:35 · Mark 10:26 · Mark 15:31

Apparatus & Provenance

The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain (CC0). Hebrew/Greek text, transliteration, morphology and Strong’s are transcribed from the Berean interlinear (CC0) + Strong’s lexicons (PD); the literal renderings, divergence notes, word notes and all synthesis are this tool’s own work (⚙) — fallible; verify them.

Named voices, quoted verbatim from public-domain works:

  • Albert Barnes, Notes on the Bible (1834)
  • Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, — (1880s)
  • Charles Ellicott, Commentary for English Readers (1878)
  • Geneva Study Bible, Marginal Notes (1599)
  • Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory (1871)
  • John Gill, Exposition of the Entire Bible (1746–63)
  • Matthew Henry, Concise Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706)
  • Matthew Poole, Annotations upon the Holy Bible (1685)
  • The Pulpit Commentary, Spence & Exell, eds. (1880s)

Text and sources. The English base is the BSB (CC0); the word-by-word data, Strong's numbers and parsings are the Berean interlinear as supplied in the brief. All ✦ commentary is verbatim public-domain text, quoted as contiguous spans and named by author. Nothing marked ⚙ is sourced; it is this tool's fallible synthesis and is offered to be tested.

What is uncertain in this unit. (1) Mark 6:54 has no finite verb: the nominative participle ἐπιγνόντες is left hanging until περιέδραμον in v. 55. The verse division, not the Greek, creates the sentence break that English translations must repair. (2) At v. 55 Pulpit records that "the best authorities omit ἐκεῖ," so the fuller reading "where they heard, He is there" reflects a longer text than the critical editions carry; the brief's interlinear does not include it. (3) At v. 56 the pronoun αὐτοῦ after "touched" is genuinely ambiguous between "him" and "it" (the fringe); Geneva marks it in the margin ("Or the hem of his garment") and Pulpit and Gill both note it. Pulpit judges the difference "of little importance," and this synthesis follows him without pretending the ambiguity is resolved. (4) Gill reports that the mooring clause of v. 53 is omitted in the Syriac and Persic versions and that the Arabic reads "and they cast anchors," which is early evidence of difficulty with the hapax προσωρμίσθησαν.

What the voices do and do not cover. Matthew Henry's note here is a single block comment on Mark 6:45 to 56 and is not verse-specific; Poole's and Pulpit's entries likewise cover 53 to 56 (and 54 to 56) as units, so excerpts from them appear under the verse where the brief files the entry rather than the verse they discuss. Ellicott, Poole and Barnes cross-refer much of this passage to their notes on Matthew 14 and Matthew 9, which are not in this brief and have not been consulted. Barnes's entry at v. 53 in fact comments on Mark 6:52 (the hardened heart) rather than on the landing; it is cited here only for that prior verse's sense and is not used as a voice.

Thread tiers. The three cross-Testament threads (Numbers and Deuteronomy, Malachi and Zechariah, 2 Kings) cannot carry a verbal tier: shared Strong's numbers are impossible between Hebrew and Greek texts, and each basis states this. The Malachi kanaph wordplay exists only in the Hebrew and does not transfer to Mark's κράσπεδον; that thread is marked typological and novel. The περιφέρω thread was downgraded from verbal to structural because the rare shared lexeme carries a different sense in Mark than in Paul. No formal Old Testament quotation occurs in this unit.

✦ = human, public-domain source, quoted and named. ⚙ = machine synthesis, to be verified. Flagged cross-references are left visible on purpose — the verifier working in the open. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)