Mark 12:44 Fun

Mark 12:44 records Jesus’s observation after seeing a poor woman put her last penny into the offering box for the Temple. You know the verse:

NIV: They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.

While the translation captures the sentiment, it loses all the verse’s wordplay and style. The verbs don’t mean “gave” and “put.” They are the same verb, one Jesus uses frequently in a light-hearted way, one that has several double meanings, even when accurately translated into English. Their two clauses also follow a parallel construction which is somewhat captured by the NIV but not other translations.

Both of these verbs are also the “punchlines,” of their clauses. But they cannot be translated into English that way, unless to sound like Yoda we want.

The punchline for the whole verse is the humorous exaggeration at the end, which is explained rather than translated. Except for the word order, this is what Jesus’s listeners heard: