Mark 9:42-50

Maintaining Identity and Purpose

Mark 9:42-50 – Nurturing the Community’s Faith

The location of this passage within the narrative may serve to indicate how it is to be interpreted. It is clearly embedded in a series of passages reflecting interactions and attitudes within the community. It is not a commentary on private conversion.

Jesus was concerned with the danger of members of the community leading others into loss of faith in the Kingdom message. The word rendered as cause to stumble is literally translated as “scandalise”. It was used first in the interpretation of Jesus’ parable of the seed (where it was translated as “fall away”) and referred to those who lost faith in face of trouble or persecution (4:17). It was then used of the townspeople of Nazareth who did not open in faith to the person and message of Jesus (6:3). It would figure again in the disciples’ loss of faith on the occasion of Jesus’ pending arrest (14:27).

Given the context, the following comments about the body’s different limbs and organs are better interpreted metaphorically as referring to the community’s members. (The metaphor was not uncommon in secular literature and had also been used by St Paul in some of his letters to the Churches).

If the passage is interpreted metaphorically, Jesus was referring to the need to isolate from the community known or potential apostates. In the situation of extreme pressure (supposed in the previous response to John) where the community was in danger of breaking up, severe measures were to be adopted to protect its integrity and perseverance in faith.

Gehenna in the Jewish Mind

To modern Christians the word “hell” carries fairly clear theological overtones. Its impact on the Jewish mind (and presumably on Jesus himself) was more instinctively emotional than rational. In many translations, the word "hell" translated the Hebrew “Gehenna” – a valley just outside the walls of Jerusalem. It had previously been the site of pagan temples built by idolatrous Jewish kings and their pagan wives, where infant sacrifice had been practised. When these temples were eventually destroyed, the valley became the rubbish tip of the city where fires were continually smouldering and waste decaying. It stirred spontaneous memories of horror and of utter revulsion, and was seen as a place of defilement and ritual uncleanness. It came to symbolise any experience of utter degradation. 

In the context Jesus was not expressly teaching about hell or the nature of hell (the fire that never goes out ... where their worms never die and the fire is never quenched). His language was metaphorical and the phrases were lifted directly from Isaiah (who had no clear knowledge of any afterlife other than the somewhat shadowy Sheol [p.105]).

Jesus’ choice of language was not to frighten people into proper behaviour by means of future threats. That approach would serve only to reinforce moral development at an infant stage. Rather, he was adopting the common apocalyptical technique of using highly graphic and emotionally engaging language to focus attention and to highlight a present reality that would otherwise run the danger of being casually dismissed, in this case the real horror of life lived other than with Kingdom values.

Mark then added three comments of Jesus that to modern ears are quite puzzling. Salt has a variety of effects: as well as adding taste to food, it can be also destructive of soil and harmful to health To make sense of Jesus’ comments it is helpful to understand the uses for salt referred to in Jewish literature.

(a)

The comment may have been suggested by the immediately previous reference to fire. Salt had been connected with burning in a brief passage in Exodus:

It seems that the salt collected locally assisted the burning process and contributed to the effect of the incense. Jesus may have been teaching that the community of disciples would indeed be subjected to severe pressure and persecution (fire), and that the effect of this pressure would be to perfect their faith and purify and clarify their commitment (salted).

This interpretation of the connection of salt with purification is supported by an otherwise baffling reference in the prophecies of Ezekiel:

(b) 

In this comment of Jesus, the reference seems to be to what the modern reader is already familiar with, the capacity of salt to add taste to food. In that case, Jesus would have been saying that a community that had lost its faith in the Kingdom vision had lost its very purpose, and was consequently without identity. (Apparently much of the salt mined in Palestine was corrupted with other minerals that over time could chemically interact and render the salt useless.) Individual members who had previously had faith but under persecution had lost it were no longer effectively members of the community. They had lost their saltiness.

(c)

In the biblical literature salt was also frequently associated with the idea of covenant relationship between God and Israel. The Book of Leviticus directed the Israelites thus:

The use of salt in reference to the covenant relationship is complemented by its use in other contexts where it sometimes carried the more general sense of mutual trust and support: 

In directing the disciples to have salt in yourselves it would seem that Jesus was requiring the members of the community to relate closely in mutual trust and support.

Given the severity of the response in the previous comments of Jesus - to excise from the community those who might compromise its faithfulness and identity - this further remark may have served as a balance. It reflected the priority of maintaining peace within the community, and possibly contained the invitation to the constant offer of reconciliation to offenders.

Next >> Mark 10:1-12