The Hard Sayings: Mark 9:43
If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out.
This article is part of a series explaining the sayings of Jesus that are hard to understand. This list was put together by the Lord's Library. To see the list of hard verses, explained and awaiting explanation, go to this page.
Rediscovering Jesus's Words is a reader-supported publication, but between now and Christmas, all new posts will be free to everyone. To receive new posts in email and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
This verse starts like Matthew 5:30, (see its article here), but it is spoken in a very different context. The version in Matthew is part of the Sermon on the Mount. Here, Jesus is speaking to a crowd of followers, including the apostles, toward the end of his ministry. This verse appears after a few verses talking about children. The verse before is about the punishment for causing children to stumble.
This is how Mark 9:43 is translated in modern English Bibles:
NIV: If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out.
The words in boldface are those that are discussed in this article.
The "you" here is singular. This indicates that Jesus addressed an individual instead of all his listeners. That individual is likely to have been the one who brought up this topic even though that person is not recorded in the Bible.
The earlier article on Matthew 5:30 explains the humorous connection of the beginning of this verse to an quote from Moses, but rather than go through that story again, let us look at how this verse changes. These changes are unlikely to be a difference in how people remember or recorded these verses. Parallel verses like these often demonstrate how Jesus improves upon or repurposes his sayings as he repeated them over time and in different situations.
Both versions start with the humorous image of a hand causing a stumble. The verb refers to putting a stumbling block before someone so that they trip. In English, we would simply say, "trips you up." See the article on this verb here. This Greek verb for “stumble” is found only in the Bible. The use of this word itself signals that the verse is not meant to be completely serious. This ties this verse to the previous one, Mark 9:42, in which Jesus also used this verb to describe causing children to stumble.
Entering Life
This is where this verse becomes different from what Jesus said in Matthew 5:30. In the Matthew verse, he used lighthearted language about tossing the hand away, but here he talks about “entering into life.”
The word translated as “entering” means both “going in” and “coming in,” but has a special meaning of “coming into one’s mind,” that is, having an idea pop into one’s head. The word’s root has the primary meaning of “start” (see this article). This verb has the sense of beginning to do something. Here, that sense is beginning to get into “life.”
This starting into "life" is not being born. This Greek word means a "living" like we use “a living” in the phrase, “making a living.” The word also means "substance", "existence," and "property." Jesus also uses this “life” occasionally to mean existence beyond physical life so this has a feeling of referring to starting into the next life or the next phase of life, which fits better than “making a living.”
"Maimed" is a Greek word Jesus only uses here. It means "club-footed", "deformed", "crooked," and "crippled." This maiming is specific: cutting off a hand. The maimed were the beggars of Jesus’s time. Healthy people did not beg, but those who were maimed did because they couldn’t make a living otherwise. But Jesus is saying here that the maimed can make the kind of living that he is talking about even though they cannot perform most of the types of work done by people in his era.
Going to Hell
The Greek word translated as “go,” means to depart and go away. It specifically means “to depart from life.” This verb is the final word, the punchline, of the Matthew version. The problem is that the word translated as “hell” is the proper name of a valley just outside Jerusalem called Gehenna (see this article). This was the name of a place, a perpetually burning trash dump in a small valley, the valley of Hinnom, outside and below the walls of Jerusalem. Jesus always uses this trash dump as an analogy for getting rid of the worthless, an important part of his teaching. Using this word instead of another word that is translated as “hell,” hades (see this article) which more clearly refers to an afterlife. His main interest here is the “fire” in this valley.
The final phrase is not anything like the English translation, "where the fire never goes out." It is an adjective meaning “unquenchable” preceded by a definite article, which makes it act like a noun, "the unquenchable one." This describes a feature of the trash dump, its constantly burning fire. Being tripped up leads “into the Gehenna” and then “into the fire” there, “the unquenchable one.” The image is one of stumbling into the fire. The sense is that this fire is big and its coals are hot and deep enough to burn all the worthless things thrown into it.
When Jesus spoke this verse, his listeners heard:
And when that hand of yours trips you up, chop it off. It is good, your entering maimed into this life instead of having those two hands to depart into the Gehenna, into that fire, the unquenchable one.
This verse is a setup for the final line in this section of verses, after getting rid of a hand, a foot, and an eye. Jesus says in Mark 9:49:
NIV: Everyone will be salted with fire.
This says “everyone.” Everyone has a bad hand, eye, or foot. Either those bad parts go into the fire or our whole bodies do. Either way, they are “salted.” However, being salted is a good thing, it means being purified and preserved. For Jesus, “fire” had many positive aspects (see this article). His main view is that the fire is a good thing. Like salt, it both prepares food food and preserves it. Both salt and fire are judged by their effects on other things. Fire can burn worthless things up, to destroy them, like our worthless parts or worthless lives, but it can prepare them, make them better like fire tempers the steel of blades.
The point is that the fire is needed for us all.