Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Mark 8:17
And when Jesus knew [it,] he saith unto them, Why reason ye, because ye have no bread? perceive ye not yet, neither understand? have ye your heart yet hardened?
17. yet hardened ] as on the former occasion, the walking on the sea (Mar 6:52).
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
17. have ye your heart yethardened?How strong an expression to use of true-hearteddisciples! See on Mr 6:52.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
And when Jesus knew it,…. As he did immediately, by his omniscience; for as he knew the thoughts and reasonings of the Scribes and Pharisees, Mt 9:4, so he did those of his own disciples:
he saith unto them, why reason ye because ye have no bread? or imagine that I have given you this caution on that account; or are distressed because this is your case, as if you should be reduced to great difficulties, by reason of your forgetfulness and negligence:
perceive ye not yet, neither understand? the meaning of the parabolical expressions, which he had used them to; or his power in providing food for them, and supporting a great number of persons with very little food, of which they had some very late instances:
have ye your heart yet hardened? as after the first miracle; see Mr 6:52, for it might have been expected, that by a second miracle of the loaves, their understandings would have been more enlightened, and their faith increased, and that they would have relinquished their gross notions, their anxieties, doubts, and unbelief.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Mark here (vv. 17-20) gives six keen questions of Jesus while Mt 16:8-11 gives as four that really include the six of Mark running some together. The questions reveal the disappointment of Jesus at the intellectual dulness of his pupils. The questions concern the intellect (, from , , comprehend), the heart in a
hardened state (, perfect passive predicate participle as in Mr 6:52, which see), the eyes, the ears, the memory of both the feeding of the five thousand and the four thousand here sharply distinguished even to the two kinds of baskets (, ). The disciples did recall the number of baskets left over in each instance, twelve and seven. Jesus “administers a sharp rebuke for their preoccupation with mere temporalities, as if there were nothing higher to be thought of than bread” (Bruce). “For the time the Twelve are way-side hearers, with hearts like a beaten path, into which the higher truths cannot sink so as to germinate” (Bruce).
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
1) “And when Jesus knew it, He said unto them,” (kai gnous legei echete) “And knowing what they were reasoning, He inquired or quizzed them,” in a chiding or reproving manner, with grief at their dullness.
2) ”Why reason ye, because ye have no bread?” (ti dialogizesthe hoti artous ochete) “Why are you all reasoning and inquiring among yourselves because you have not loaves of bread?” Their own carnality kept them from seeing the moral applications of His warning against Pharisees and Herodians, Mar 8:15, Mat 16:6.
3) “Perceive ye not yet, neither understand?” (oupo noeite oude suniete) “Do you all not understand or even realize what I meant?” by the leaven of the Pharisees, and of the Herodians, after all you have seen and heard of them?
4) “Have ye your heart yet hardened?” (peporornenen echete ten kardian humon) ”Have your hearts been hardened,” Mar 6:52. Or do you all have hearts that have already been hardened? Or emotions unstirred by the continuing sign-seekers, Mar 8:11? So that the Word I speak can not germinate in your own carnal minds?
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
(17) Have ye your heart yet hardened?The question is peculiar to St. Mark, as are also the two first questions in Mar. 8:18. The expression of indignant astonishment is characteristically more vivid and emphatic in St. Marks report.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
‘And Jesus perceiving it says to them, “Why do you reason because you have no bread? Do you not perceive, nor understand? Have you your heart hardened? Having eyes do you not see, and having ears do you not hear? And do you not remember? When I broke the five loaves among the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?” They say to him, “Twelve”. “And when the seven among the four thousand , how many basketfuls of broken pieces did you take up?” And they say to him, “Seven”. And he said to them, “Do you not yet understand?” ’
Jesus was clearly a little exasperated at their failure to think along spiritual lines. He could not think why they were so taken up with a shortage of physical bread when He had proved Himself able to be the provider of more than sufficient. Were they blind and deaf? Let them consider the twelve and seven baskets that were left over (He made them say the numbers) which had indicated sufficiency of spiritual provision for Israel and for the world. Did they really think then that He was concerned about their receiving physical bread (that is provision for their needs) from the Pharisees and Herod?
No, what He had done with the loaves had symbolised spiritual provision as well as physical provision, provision for the hearts of men. Had they not realised then Who and What this showed Him to be, and what it demonstrated that He had come to do? Had they not recognised that His main aim had been to offer men spiritual food, and that that was what He was talking about, the need to avoid the wrong ‘spiritual food’? Did they not realise that he was referring to the danger of being misled by Pharisaic teaching with its resulting hypocrisy and Herodian teaching with its resulting worldliness. The problem was that their thoughts and their hearts were in the wrong place, and their minds taken up with the wrong things. He longed that they would recognise in Him the One Who was spiritually all-sufficient, and that they would think along spiritual lines, recognising in Him the Bread of life and the true Coming One, the Great Physician Who had come to make men whole.
So here we are emphatically reminded that in spite of all that they have seen they are still lacking in understanding. They are blind and deaf and even ‘hardened’. The word is strong. Their problem is not only one of obtuseness but one of an unwillingness to face the truth of what kind of Messiah He had come to be. It is no accident that this comes after the healing of the deaf and dumb man by uniquely special means, which had been intended to indicate men’s deafness, and comes before the healing of the blind man, also by special means, which will indicate men’s blindness. They too would need to be ‘healed’ before they could ‘hear’ and ‘see’.
Note that in these words the two feedings are referred to clearly as separate events, and the numbers and types of baskets are both distinguished.
A Pause For Thought.
If we were to take what Mark has written literally, and assume it was chronological, it would suggest that having covered a fairly short period of ministry up to this point, first in Galilee and then in Gentile territory, Jesus will, within a short period, having prepared His disciples and preached a little in Judaea, arrive in Jerusalem to die. But we know from John’s Gospel that that was not so.
For we know from John that His ministry covered a minimum of two years, and probably more, for three Passovers are mentioned by him (Joh 2:13; Joh 6:4; Joh 11:55) and there are good grounds for thinking that there was at least one more. Mark to some extent actually supports this for Mar 2:23 (plucking of grain) compared with Mar 6:9 (green grass) suggest at least a year has passed, and Mar 14:1 (the Passover – at the same time of the year) requires another year.
But the fact is that Mark, as we have noted previously, selects his subjects with a view to presenting Who Jesus is rather than in order to give an indication of exact chronology. He is to some extent, but not completely, like a writer who builds up a life story by having chapters on different themes, building up to the final chapter that way rather than chronologically, although having said that there is unquestionably a certain chronological framework. It would probably also be a mistake to assume that apart from a brief ministry in Judea (Mar 10:1), all Jesus’ ministry has ceased at this point. Indeed we must remember that between the incident at Caesarea Philippi (Luk 9:18-27) and the preparation for the final Passover (Luk 22:7) Luke contains an abundance of teaching and indications of visits to Jerusalem and its environs (Luk 10:38-42; Luk 13:34 with Mat 23:37-39).
Thus we must accept the message that Mark conveys but not get caught up in the chronology. His themes of the beginning of the proclamation of the drawing near of the Kingly Rule of God (chapter 1), His presentation of the king (Mar 2:1 to Mar 3:6), His appointment of Apostles and successful ministry throughout Galilee (Mar 3:7 to Mar 7:23), His continued ministry in mixed Jewish-Gentile territory (Mar 7:24 to Mar 8:26), together with the growth of opposition revealed throughout, which have led up to this point, are to be seen as a thematic historical survey rather than as a strictly chronological life story. And his narrative will continue to be such, as we come across a review of His teaching to His disciples (Mar 8:27 to Mar 10:45), which is interspersed with and followed by the journey to Jerusalem (Mar 10:32 to Mar 11:11). So the aim is to convey the story of His life thematically, with only a general idea of chronology as He moves towards the cross. As Luke puts it, his face was now set towards Jerusalem.
A further interesting point may also be considered here before we move on. As has often been pointed out, from Mar 6:30 – Mar 8:26 we have partly parallel themes. In Mar 6:30 to Mar 7:31 we have the miraculous feeding of a crowd (Mar 6:35-44), the crossing of the sea (Mar 6:45-56), dispute with the Pharisees (Mar 7:1-23), incident about bread (Mar 7:24-30), and an unusual healing (Mar 7:31-37). Interestingly this is then followed by a miraculous feeding of a crowd (Mar 8:1-9), a crossing of the sea (Mar 8:10), a dispute with the Pharisees (Mar 8:11-13), an incident about bread (leaven) (Mar 8:14-21), and an unusual healing (Mar 8:22-26). This is clearly not accidental and is an example of Mark’s thematic approach (compare the introduction on Mar 3:13-19 a).
We must not, however, exaggerate the similarity. The two feedings are different in many ways. The climactic crossings of the sea (and Jesus regularly crossed the sea) are also very different, with one depicting a major and life threatening incident, while the other depicts just a simple if laborious crossing The disputes with the Pharisees are of a totally different nature, and one is long while the other is brief. The incidents about bread are totally different in both significance and content, while the two miracles, although portrayed similarly in outline, are also very different. In other words the similarities are the deliberate work of Mark, while the differences demonstrate that they are not just repetitions of the same incidents.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
The reproof of Christ:
v. 17. And when Jesus knew it, He saith unto them, Why reason ye because ye have no bread? Perceive ye not yet, neither understand? Have ye your heart yet hardened?
v. 18. Having eyes, see ye not, and having ears, hear ye not, and do ye not remember?
v. 19. When I brake the five loaves among five thousand, how many baskets full of fragments took ye up? They say unto Him, Twelve.
v. 20. And when the seven among the four thousand, how many baskets full of fragments took ye up? And they said, Seven.
v. 21. And He said unto them, How is it that ye do not understand?
Jesus had been busy with His thoughts, but His attention was now directed to His disciples by their whispering and consulting. And, without inquiring, by virtue of His omniscience, He knew the matter of their dispute and their conclusion. That was a worse blow than the enmity of the Pharisees. He gives utterance to a sharp reprimand in the form of a bitter complaint: Why are you consulting together about loaves which you have not? Not yet do you know or understand? Yet have you a heart that is calloused? Having eyes you see not, and having ears you hear not, and do not remember? It was lack of faith, lack of trust in Him, which was evident in the case of the disciples, as if there were nothing higher to be thought of than bread. They were almost on a level with the Jews to whom the Lord had applied the word of Isaiah concerning the hardness of their hearts. But, after all, it was only weakness, and not malice, in their case. And so the Lord uses a gentler tone in reminding them of the two great miracles of feeding which they had witnessed. He comes to their assistance by catechizing them on these exhibitions of divine power, to see whether they had taken proper note of all incidents. This they had remembered and answered correctly. And now He again urges them to consider the matter once more, very carefully, and see whether they could not reach the right conclusion. And this time they understood what He had referred to and what He wanted to teach, Mat 16:12.
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
Mar 8:17. Heart yet hardened? Still insensible. Heylin.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
17 And when Jesus knew it , he saith unto them, Why reason ye, because ye have no bread? perceive ye not yet, neither understand? have ye your heart yet hardened?
Ver. 17. Perceive ye not yet ] Christ reckons upon our time, and looks for improvement of our talents.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Mar 8:17 . : He does notice, however, and administers a sharp rebuke for their preoccupation with mere temporalities, as if there were nothing higher to be thought of than bread . , in a hardened state; the word stands in an emphatic position. For the time the Twelve are wayside hearers, with hearts like a beaten path, into which the higher truths cannot sink so as to germinate.
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
Mark
THE PATIENT TEACHER, AND THE SLOW SCHOLARS
Mar 8:17 – Mar 8:18
How different were the thoughts of Christ and of His disciples, as they sat together in the boat, making their way across the lake! He was pursuing a train of sad reflections which, the moment before their embarkation, had caused Him to sigh deeply in His spirit and say, ‘Why doth this generation seek after a sign?’ Absorbed in thought, He spoke, ‘Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees,’ who had been asking that question.
So meditated and spoke Jesus in the stern, and amidships the disciples’ thoughts were only concerned about the negligent omission, very excusable in the hurry of embarkation, by which they had forgotten to lay in a fresh supply of provisions, and had set sail with but one loaf left in the boat. So taken up were they with this petty trouble that they twisted the Master’s words as they fell from His lips, and thought that He was rebuking them for what they were rebuking themselves for. So apt are we to interpret others’ sayings by the thoughts uppermost in our own minds.
And then our Lord poured out this altogether unusual-perhaps I may say unique-hail of questions which indicate how deeply moved from His ordinary calm He was by this strange slowness of apprehension on the part of His disciples. There is no other instance that I can recall in the whole Gospels, with the exception of Gethsemane, where our Lord’s words seem to indicate such agitation of the windless sea of His spirit as this rapid succession of rebuking interrogations. They give a glimpse into the depths of His mind, showing us what He generally kept sacredly shut up, and let us see how deeply He was touched and pained by the slowness of apprehension of His servants.
Let us look at these questions as suggesting to us two things-the grieved Teacher and the slow scholars.
I. The grieved Teacher.
Christ felt that; and I do not think we half enough realise how large an element in the sorrows of the Man of Sorrows, and of the grief with which He was acquainted, was His necessary association with people who, He felt, did not in the least degree understand Him, however truly, blindly, and almost animally, they might love Him. It was His disciples’ misconception that stung him most. If I might so say, He calculated upon being misunderstood by Pharisees and outsiders, but that these followers who had been gathered round about Him all these months, and had been the subjects of His sedulous toil, should blurt out such words as these which precede the question of my text, cut deep into that loving heart. It was not only the pain of being misunderstood, but also the pain of feeling that the people who cared most for Him did not understand Him, and were so hard to drag up to the level where they could even catch a glimpse of His meaning, that struck His heart with almost a kind of despair; and, as I said, made Him pour out this rain of questions.
And what do the questions suggest? Not only emotion very unusual in Him, yet truly human, and showing Him to be our Brother; but they suggest three distinct types of emotion, all of them dashed with pain.
‘Why reason ye? Having eyes, see ye not? Do ye not remember?’ That speaks of His astonishment. Do not start at the word, or suppose that it in any degree contradicts the lofty beliefs that I suppose most of us have with regard to the Deity of our Lord and Saviour. We find in another place in the Gospels, not by inference as here, but in plain words, the ascription to Him of wonder; ‘He marvelled at their unbelief.’ And we read of a more blessed kind of surprise as having once been His, when He wondered at the faith of the heathen centurion. But here His astonishment is that after all these years of toil, and of sympathy, and of discipleship, and of listening and trying to get hold of His meaning, His disciples were so far away from any understanding of what He was driving at. He had to learn by experience the depths of men’s stupidity and ignorance. And although He was the Word of God made flesh, we recognise here the token of a true brother in that He was capable not only of the physical feelings of weariness, and hunger, and thirst, and pain, but that He, too, had that emotion which only a limited understanding can have-the emotion of wonder. And it was drawn out by His disciples’ denseness and inertness.
Ah! dear friends, does He not wonder at us? One of the prophets says, ‘Be astonished, O heavens!’ And be sure of this, that the manhood of Jesus Christ is not now so lifted up above what it was upon earth as that that same sensation-twin-sister to yours and mine-of surprise, does not sometimes visit Him when He looks down upon us; and has to say to us-as, alas! He has to say-what He once said to one of the Twelve, ‘Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip?’ Is not the same question coming to us? Why is it that we do not understand? Wonder, then, is the first emotion that is expressed in this question. There is another one: Pain. And there again I fall back not upon inference, but upon plain words of another part of the Gospels. ‘He looked round upon them with anger, being grieved at the hardness of their hearts.’ It seems daring to venture to say that the exalted and glorified humanity of Jesus Christ to-day is, in any measure, capable of feeling analogous to that; but it will not seem so daring if you remember the solemn charge of one of the Apostles, ‘Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God.’ It is Christ’s disciples that pain Him most. ‘They vexed His Holy Spirit, therefore He fought against them.’ Brethren, let us look into our own hearts and our own lives, and ask ourselves if there is not something there that gives a pang even to the heart of the glorified Master, and makes Him sigh deeply within Himself? May I add one more emotion which seems to me to be unmistakably expressed by this rapid fusilade of questions? That is indignation. Again I fall back upon plain words: ‘He looked round about upon them with anger, being grieved.’ The two things were braided together in His heart, and did not conflict with each other There were infinite sorrow, infinite pity, and real displeasure. You must take all notions of passion and of malignity, and of desire to do harm to the subject, out of the conception of anger as applied to God or to Christ who is the revelation of God. But it seems to me that it is a maimed Christ that we put before the world unless we say that in the Love there lie the possibilities of Wrath. ‘Behold the Lion of the tribe of Judah, and I beheld, and lo! a Lamb!’ Wrath and gentleness are in Him inseparably united, neither of them limiting nor making impossible the other.
So here we have a self-revelation, as by one glimpse into a great chamber, of the deep heart of Christ, the great Teacher, moved to astonishment, grief, and indignation.
II. Now let me say a word about the slow scholars.
There is, first, His scholars’ stolid insensibility, which moves Him to anger, to astonishment, and to grief. ‘Are your hearts yet hardened?’ by which is meant, not hardened in the sense of being suddenly and stiffly set in antagonism to Him, but simply in the sense of being-may I use the word?-so pachydermatous, so thick-skinned, that nothing can go through them. They showed it is a dull, stolid insensibility, and it marks some of us professing Christians, on whom promises and invitations and revelations of truth all fall with equal ineffectiveness, and from whom they glide off with equal rapidity. You may rain upon a black basalt rock to all eternity, and nothing will grow upon it. All the drops will run down the polished sides, and a quarter of an inch below the surface it will be as dry as it was before the first drop fell. And here are we Christian ministers, talk-talk-talking, week in and week out; and here is Christ, by His providences and by His word, speaking far more loudly than any of us; and it all falls with absolute impotence on hosts of people that call themselves Christians. Ah! brethren, it is not only unbelievers who have their hearts hardened. Orthodox professors are often guilty of the same. If I might alter the metaphor, many of us have waterproofed our minds, and the ingredients of the mixture by which we have waterproofed them are our knowledge of ‘the plan of salvation,’ our connection with a Christian community, our membership in a church, our obedience to the formalisms of the devout life. All these have only made a non-transmitting medium interposed between ourselves and the concentrated electric energy that ever flashes from Jesus Christ. Our hardened hearts, with their stolid insensibility, amaze our Master, and no wonder that they do.
But that is not all. There is not only what I have ventured to call stolid insensibility, but, as a result of it, there is the not using the capacities that we have. ‘Having eyes, see ye not? Having ears, hear ye not?’ We are not like children that cannot, but like careless, untrained schoolboys that will not, learn. We have the capacity, and it is our own fault that we are dunces in the school, and at the bottom of the class. Use the power that you have, and ‘unto him that hath shall be given, and he shall have in abundance.’ There are fishes in the caverns of North America that have lived so long in the dark, underground channels, that the present generation of them has no eyes. We are doing our best to deprive ourselves of our capacities of beholding by refusing to use them. ‘Having eyes, see ye not?’ Our non-use of the powers we have amazes and grieves our Master.
Further, the reason why there are this stolid insensibility and this non-use of capacity lies here: ‘Ye reason about the bread.’ The absorption of our minds and efforts and time with material things, that perish with the using, come in between us and our apprehension of Christ’s teaching. Ah! brethren, it is not only the rich man that is swallowed up with the present world; the poor man may be so as really. All of us, by reason of the absolute necessities of our lives, are in danger of getting our hearts so filled and crowded with the things that are ‘seen and temporal’ that we have no time, nor room, for the things that are ‘unseen and eternal.’ I do not need to elaborate that point. We all know that it is there that our danger, in various forms, lies. If you in the bows of the ship are reasoning about bread, you will misunderstand Christ in the stern warning against ‘the leaven of the Pharisees.’
The last suggestion from these questions is that the cure for all that stolid insensibility, and its resulting misuse of capacity, and the absorption in daily visible things, is remembrance of His and our past-’Do ye not remember?’ It was only that same morning, or the day before at the furthest, that one of the miracles of feeding the thousands had been performed. Christ wonders, as well He might, at the short memories of the disciples who, with the baskets-full of fragments scarcely eaten yet, could worry themselves because there was only one loaf in the locker. ‘Do ye not remember, when I broke the loaves among the thousands, how many baskets took ye up? And they said, seven. And He said, How is it that ye do not understand?’ Yes, Memory is the one wing and Hope the other, that lift our heaviness from earth towards heaven. And any man who will bethink himself of what Jesus Christ has been for him, did for him on earth, and has done for him during his life, will not be so absorbed in worldly cares as that he will have no eyes to see the things unseen and eternal; and the hard, dead insensibility of his heart will melt into thankful consecration, and so he will rise nearer and nearer to intelligent apprehension of the lofty and deep things that the Incarnate Word says to him. We are here in Christ’s school, and it depends upon the place in the class that we take here where we shall be put at what schoolboys call the ‘next remove.’ If here we have indeed ‘learned of Him the truth as it is in Jesus,’ we shall be put up into the top classes yonder, and get larger and more blessed lessons in the Father’s house above.
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
knew. App-132.
Why reason ye. ? Note the Figure of speech Erotesis (App-6), emphasizing the seven questions of verses: Mar 8:17, Mar 8:18. Compare Mar 8:12 and Mar 8:21.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Mar 8:17. [ , …) The sense of the discourse moves forward by distinct interrogations, as far as to the verb , Mar 8:18, inclusive.]-, hardened) Hardening flows on from the heart to the sight, the hearing, and the memory; Mar 8:18.
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
knew: Mar 2:8, Joh 2:24, Joh 2:25, Joh 16:30, Joh 21:17, Heb 4:12, Heb 4:13, Rev 2:23
perceive: Mar 3:5, Mar 6:52, Mar 16:14, Isa 63:17, Mat 15:17, Mat 16:8, Mat 16:9, Luk 24:25, Heb 5:11, Heb 5:12
Reciprocal: Jos 7:7 – to deliver Job 33:14 – perceiveth Psa 106:7 – Our Isa 40:28 – thou not known Isa 42:19 – Who is blind Eze 12:2 – which Mat 9:4 – knowing Mat 13:13 – General Mat 13:51 – Have Mat 15:16 – General Mat 16:10 – General Mar 2:6 – and reasoning Mar 8:21 – How Mar 9:32 – were Luk 5:22 – What Joh 12:40 – that they Joh 14:5 – we know not Act 28:26 – Hearing
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
7
They had done their reasoning to themselves but Jesus knew about it and rebuked them for their dullness of heart which almost amounted to unbelief.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Mar 8:17-20. The reproofs here given and the references to the miracles, are somewhat fuller than in the parallel passage; the answers of the disciples about the fragments are preserved, the distinction between the two kinds of baskets being kept up. Notice that the last clause of Mar 8:18 should be joined with Mar 8:19.
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
Jesus strongly rebuked His disciples for their lack of spiritual understanding (cf. Isa 6:9-10; Jer 5:21; Eze 12:2). In view of the two miraculous feedings they had witnessed, they should have understood who He was. They did "remember" the facts (Mar 8:19-20), but they did not "understand" their significance (Mar 8:21). As God had provided bread abundantly for the Israelites in the wilderness, Jesus had provided bread abundantly for them in another wilderness. The conclusion should have been obvious. Jesus was the prophet that Moses predicted would follow him and supersede him. He was the divine Messiah.
"His rebuke was not because of their failure to grasp the meaning of His warning (Mar 8:15), but at their failure to understand the meaning of His presence with them." [Note: Grassmick, p. 138.]
It was extremely important that the disciples perceive who Jesus is. Without that perception they could not enter into relationship with Him that was realistic and fulfilling. Jesus’ use of questions forced them to interact with the implications of what they had heard and seen.
"In this way, Mark appears to say that being an ’insider,’ even a ’disciple,’ did not guarantee that one ’understood’ or perceived the significance of Jesus and his ministry." [Note: Guelich, p. 427.]
The incident ends with a question but no answer. Mark leaves the reader hanging. The answer is of utmost importance. Peter finally verbalized it in Mar 8:29. However the reader of this Gospel already knows the answer because of what Mark previously wrote.