Mark 1:17-27

17 And Jesus said to them, Come after me, and I will make you become fishers of men;

18 and straightway leaving their trawl-nets ^[a] they followed him.

19 And going on thence a little, he saw James the [son] of Zebedee, and John his brother, and these [were] in the ship repairing the trawl-nets;

20 and straightway he called them; and leaving their father Zebedee in the ship with the hired servants, they went away after him.

21 And they go into Capernaum. And straightway on the sabbath he entered into the synagogue and taught.

22 And they were astonished at his doctrine, for he taught them as having authority, and not as the scribes.

23 And there was in their synagogue a man [possessed] by ^[b] an unclean spirit, and he cried out

24 saying, Eh! ^[c] what have we to do with thee, Jesus, Nazarene? ^[d] Art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art, the holy one of God.

25 And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace and come out of him.

26 And the unclean spirit, having torn him, and uttered a cry with a loud voice, came out of him.

27 And all were amazed, so that they questioned together among themselves, saying, What is this? what new doctrine is this? for with authority he commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.

Mark 1:17-27 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO MARK

This is the title of the book, the subject of which is the Gospel; a joyful account of the ministry, miracles, actions, and sufferings of Christ: the writer of it was not one of the twelve apostles, but an evangelist; the same with John Mark, or John, whose surname was Mark: John was his Hebrew name, and Mark his Gentile name, Ac 12:12,25, and was Barnabas's sister's son, Col 4:10, his mother's name was Mary, Ac 12:12. The Apostle Peter calls him his son, 1Pe 5:13, if he is the same; and he is thought to have wrote his Gospel from him {a}, and by his order, and which was afterwards examined and approved by him {b} it is said to have been wrote originally in Latin, or in the Roman tongue: so say the Arabic and Persic versions at the beginning of it, and the Syriac version says the same at the end: but of this there is no evidence, any more, nor so much, as of Matthew's writing his Gospel in Hebrew. The old Latin copy of this, is a version from the Greek; it is most likely that it was originally written in Greek, as the rest of the New Testament.

{a} Papias apud Euseb. Hist. l. 3. c. 39. Tertull. adv. Marcion. l. 4. c. 5. {b} Hieron. Catalog. Script. Eccles. p. 91. sect. 18.

Footnotes

• [a]. See Note, Matt. 4.20.
• [b]. En: see Matt. 3.11, Note c. Not merely he had one, but he was completely under its power, characterized by it.
• [c]. The imperative of the verb 'to let alone,' but used as an interjection, as a cry of dissatisfaction.
• [d]. The force of 'Nazarene' here is simply, I apprehend, 'of Nazareth.' The word is different from that translated 'Nazaraean' in Matt. 2.23 and elsewhere.