Mark 2:9

2:9 Which is easier, ¹  to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up, take your stretcher, and walk’?

Mark 4:24

4:24 And he said to them, “Take care about what you hear. The measure you use will be the measure you receive, ²  and more will be added to you.

Mark 6:8

6:8 He instructed them to take nothing for the journey except a staff ³  – no bread, no bag, ⁴  no money in their belts –

Mark 13:4

13:4 “Tell us, when will these things ⁵  happen? And what will be the sign that all these things are about to take place?”

Mark 14:22

The Lord’s Supper

14:22 While they were eating, he took bread, and after giving thanks he broke it, gave it to them, and said, “Take it. This is my body.”

Mark 14:36

14:36 He said, “Abba, ⁶  Father, all things are possible for you. Take this cup ⁷  away from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”

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¹ sn Which is easier is a reflective kind of question. On the one hand to declare sins are forgiven is easier, since one does not need to see it, unlike telling a paralyzed person to walk. On the other hand, it is harder, because for it to be true one must possess the authority to forgive the sin.

² tn Grk “by [the measure] with which you measure it will be measured to you.”

³ sn Neither Matt 10:9-10 nor Luke 9:3 allow for a staff. It might be that Matthew and Luke mean not taking an extra staff, or that the expression is merely rhetorical for “traveling light,” which has been rendered in two slightly different ways.

⁴ tn Or “no traveler’s bag”; or possibly “no beggar’s bag” (L&N 6.145; BDAG 811 s.v. πήρα).

⁵ sn Both references to these things are plural, so more than the temple’s destruction is in view. The question may presuppose that such a catastrophe signals the end.

⁶ tn The word means “Father” in Aramaic.

⁷ sn This cup alludes to the wrath of God that Jesus would experience (in the form of suffering and death) for us. See Ps 11:6; 75:8-9; Isa 51:17, 19, 22 for this figure.