Jesus Says Tear It Down
What if I told you Jesus doesn’t hold up the widow who gave everything she had as a shining example of spiritual devotion?
I’m sure she was lovely, but it’s really hugely missing the point of that story. But it’s not our fault we’ve been missing it. This section is a great example of how the verse and chapter divisions we have inherited (they were added centuries after it was written, by the way) can do a lot to impact how we read and sometimes completely make us miss the point of what’s going on.
Normally, I’ve seen these verses taught as if they are two or even three separate sections. Here are the supposed, separate takeaways:
Don’t be vain or greedy like those people.
Look at this dedicated widow who gives everything she has to the religious establishment! Be like her!
Jesus does some fortunetelling, either to predict his own death if he’s using the temple to symbolize his own body or to predict the Roman invasion a few decades in advance, mostly to show off his fortunetelling skills and prove he’s God.
Now, take a look for yourself at what it says when you actually read it all together:
38 During his teaching, he said, “Watch out for the Bible scholars who want to walk around in fancy robes, to receive elaborate greetings of respect in the marketplace, 39 the seats reserved for important attendees in synagogues, and seats reserved for important people at the table during dinners. 40 They are the ones who devour widows’ property and pretentiously offer lengthy prayers. These people will receive a decision in excess.”
41 Then, sitting down in front of the donation box, he began to watch how the crowd deposited coins into the donation box. Many wealthy people deposited many coins. 42 When one poor widow came, she deposited two lepta, which is equivalent to a quadrans.
43 Jesus called his students over and said to them, “Honestly, I’m telling you, this poor widow deposited more into the offering box than all the others who deposited 44 because they all deposited from their excess, but she deposited everything she had from her poverty, the entirety of what she had to live on.”
1 As he was leaving the sacred grounds, one of his students said to him, “Teacher, look where these stones came from and where these buildings came from!”
2 Jesus said to him, “Do you see these grand buildings? There is not a single stone here that will be left upon another, that will not be torn apart.”
What connections do you make when you read it together?
Here’s what I started to think about. It mentions “devour widows’ property” in verse 40, and then—what d’you know—it includes an anecdote about them receiving “everything she had” from a widow. I don’t think that’s coincidence.
So, that explains why I read verses 38 to 44 together, but why the first two verses of chapter 13? They don’t seem to have anything to do with it, right?
Well, here’s where my translation decisions start coming into play. Stay with me (or skim if you want!) as I get into a little of the more technical stuff, but I’ll come back to why it matters. I promise!
Pay attention to the word describing the stones and buildings. Most translations render 13:1 something like this:
“Teacher, look at these tremendous stones and buildings!” (NET)
“Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!” (NIV)
“Teacher, behold what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!” (NASB)
“Look, Teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!” (ESV)
“Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” (NRSV)
“Master, see what manner of stones and what buildings are here!” (KJV)
And here it is in the Liberation and Inclusion Translation:
“Teacher, look where these stones came from and where these buildings came from!”
Interestingly (and I’ve been surprised to see this a lot), the King James Version is actually the one that is closest to the Greek here.
The word potapoi (ποταποὶ) isn’t an exclamation of admiration. It’s not saying how great they are, whether as large or as impressive.
It’s asking about what their origin is. In this case, it’s a rhetorical question, pointing out exactly where they came from.
According to The Cambridge Greek Lexicon (2021), potapoi (singular is potapos) means “(1. of persons or things, esp. in an inquiry about national or civic identity) of what origin, where from? [. . .] 2. (of persons or things) of what kind?)”
(By the way, it lists references from ancient literature to provide sources, and the only source it lists for the second definition is the New Testament. Whenever I see that, I tread carefully. That tells me that it’s basing it solely on how people have understood that word to be used in the New Testament, and I don’t want to get trapped in a feedback loop of circular reasoning.)
So, coming back to the point of all this, it’s not Jesus’ students admiring the architecture. It’s them commenting on having just witnessed who paid for it: people like the widow who gave “everything she had” to the people Jesus just said were known to “devour widows’ property.”
The money and resources to build an extravagant temple doesn’t just materialize out of thin air. It’s the devout and trusting, regular—often poor—people who pay for it. What’s more, in this case, King Herod did major renovations and additions to the temple as his own ego-boosting project, paid for by predatory taxes on the regular folks.
The Bible scholars, priests, and Sadducees were particularly cozy with Herod and Rome. Why wouldn’t they be? They were making a lot of money and accumulating a lot of status and power within that system.
Mark 13:1-2 are not just a random two verses disconnected from their context. They are the concluding statements of the anecdote starting in the previous chapter, showing the students getting Jesus’ subversive message and Jesus speaking plainly and forcefully against the status quo that used the poor to supply the rich and powerful with their riches and power.
What parallels do you see in our own context? What is a better takeaway than “we should all give everything we have” in donations to the church?
