Mark 6:30-7:23

Good News Translation

Jesus Feeds Five Thousand^(A)

³⁰ The apostles returned and met with Jesus, and told him all they had done and taught. ³¹ There were so many people coming and going that Jesus and his disciples didn't even have time to eat. So he said to them, “Let us go off by ourselves to some place where we will be alone and you can rest a while.” ³² So they started out in a boat by themselves to a lonely place.

³³ Many people, however, saw them leave and knew at once who they were; so they went from all the towns and ran ahead by land and arrived at the place ahead of Jesus and his disciples. ^34 (B)When Jesus got out of the boat, he saw this large crowd, and his heart was filled with pity for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began to teach them many things. ³⁵ When it was getting late, his disciples came to him and said, “It is already very late, and this is a lonely place. ³⁶ Send the people away, and let them go to the nearby farms and villages in order to buy themselves something to eat.”

³⁷ “You yourselves give them something to eat,” Jesus answered.

They asked, “Do you want us to go and spend two hundred silver coins^[a] on bread in order to feed them?”

³⁸ So Jesus asked them, “How much bread do you have? Go and see.”

When they found out, they told him, “Five loaves and also two fish.”

³⁹ Jesus then told his disciples to make all the people divide into groups and sit down on the green grass. ⁴⁰ So the people sat down in rows, in groups of a hundred and groups of fifty. ⁴¹ Then Jesus took the five loaves and the two fish, looked up to heaven, and gave thanks to God. He broke the loaves and gave them to his disciples to distribute to the people. He also divided the two fish among them all. ⁴² Everyone ate and had enough. ⁴³ Then the disciples took up twelve baskets full of what was left of the bread and the fish. ⁴⁴ The number of men who were fed was five thousand.

Jesus Walks on the Water^(C)

⁴⁵ At once Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and go ahead of him to Bethsaida, on the other side of the lake, while he sent the crowd away. ⁴⁶ After saying good-bye to the people, he went away to a hill to pray. ⁴⁷ When evening came, the boat was in the middle of the lake, while Jesus was alone on land. ⁴⁸ He saw that his disciples were straining at the oars, because they were rowing against the wind; so sometime between three and six o'clock in the morning, he came to them, walking on the water. He was going to pass them by,^{[b] 49} but they saw him walking on the water. “It's a ghost!” they thought, and screamed. ⁵⁰ They were all terrified when they saw him.

Jesus spoke to them at once, “Courage!” he said. “It is I. Don't be afraid!” ⁵¹ Then he got into the boat with them, and the wind died down. The disciples were completely amazed, ⁵² because they had not understood the real meaning of the feeding of the five thousand; their minds could not grasp it.

Jesus Heals the Sick in Gennesaret^(D)

⁵³ They crossed the lake and came to land at Gennesaret, where they tied up the boat. ⁵⁴ As they left the boat, people recognized Jesus at once. ⁵⁵ So they ran throughout the whole region; and wherever they heard he was, they brought to him the sick lying on their mats. ⁵⁶ And everywhere Jesus went, to villages, towns, or farms, people would take their sick to the marketplaces and beg him to let the sick at least touch the edge of his cloak. And all who touched it were made well.

The Teaching of the Ancestors^(E)

7 Some Pharisees and teachers of the Law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus. ² They noticed that some of his disciples were eating their food with hands that were ritually unclean—that is, they had not washed them in the way the Pharisees said people should.

(³ For the Pharisees, as well as the rest of the Jews, follow the teaching they received from their ancestors: they do not eat unless they wash their hands in the proper way; ⁴ nor do they eat anything that comes from the market unless they wash it first.^[c] And they follow many other rules which they have received, such as the proper way to wash cups, pots, copper bowls, and beds.^[d])

⁵ So the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law asked Jesus, “Why is it that your disciples do not follow the teaching handed down by our ancestors, but instead eat with ritually unclean hands?”

^6 (F)Jesus answered them, “How right Isaiah was when he prophesied about you! You are hypocrites, just as he wrote:

⁸ “You put aside God's command and obey human teachings.”

⁹ And Jesus continued, “You have a clever way of rejecting God's law in order to uphold your own teaching. ^10 (G)For Moses commanded, ‘Respect your father and your mother,’ and, ‘If you curse your father or your mother, you are to be put to death.’ ¹¹ But you teach that if people have something they could use to help their father or mother, but say, ‘This is Corban’ (which means, it belongs to God), ¹² they are excused from helping their father or mother. ¹³ In this way the teaching you pass on to others cancels out the word of God. And there are many other things like this that you do.”

The Things That Make a Person Unclean^(H)

¹⁴ Then Jesus called the crowd to him once more and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand. ¹⁵ There is nothing that goes into you from the outside which can make you ritually unclean. Rather, it is what comes out of you that makes you unclean.” ^16 [e]

¹⁷ When he left the crowd and went into the house, his disciples asked him to explain this saying. ¹⁸ “You are no more intelligent than the others,” Jesus said to them. “Don't you understand? Nothing that goes into you from the outside can really make you unclean, ¹⁹ because it does not go into your heart but into your stomach and then goes on out of the body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared that all foods are fit to be eaten.)

²⁰ And he went on to say, “It is what comes out of you that makes you unclean. ²¹ For from the inside, from your heart, come the evil ideas which lead you to do immoral things, to rob, kill, ²² commit adultery, be greedy, and do all sorts of evil things; deceit, indecency, jealousy, slander, pride, and folly— ²³ all these evil things come from inside you and make you unclean.”