Mar 12:3 And they caught [him], and beat him...
Mar 12:3 And they caught [him], and beat him, and sent [him] away empty.
Alternative: And they received him, and skinned him, and sent him away empty-handed.
Wordplay: This verse is a play on the words in the previous verse but we cannot tell because one of the key Greek words are translated so differently. This verse is very amusing if you can imagine how Christ told it. Christ tells of the vineyard owner sending a slave to "receive" a payment. Instead, the man is received, tortured, and sent back without anything. Imagine how Christ told it with the accent of these repeated words. Reverses the verbs "send" (apostellô) and "receive" (apostellô) from the previous verse, it makes the hopes of the vineyard owner ironic.
Hidden meaning: This is the typical series of three in Christ's common symbolic pattern of three plus one. The three verbs represent the three key aspects of this event. "Receive" represents the mental aspect. "Beaten" is the physical aspect. "Sent away" is the emotional/relationship aspect. For obvious reason, this event doesn't have a spiritual aspect.
Thematically and Linguistically Related Verse(s): Mat 21:35 is the parallel verse from Matthew but this is one of those rare occasions where the related verses are very different.
Vocabulary:
"They caught him" is from lambanô (lambano) which means "to take," "to receive," "to apprehend with the senses," and "to seize." It is also specifically used to mean seized with emotion.
"Beat" is from derô, which means "to flay" or "to skin" someone, though in later use it came to mean "to cudgel" or "to thrash."
"Sent away" is from apostellô (apostello), which means "to send off," "to send away," or "to dispatch." It is our source of the word "apostle."
"Empty" is from kenos (kenos), which means "empty," "fruitless," "void," "ineffectual," "to no purpose," "destitute," "empty-handed," "devoid of wit," "vain," and "pretentious."
