Mark 3:5

Mark 3:5, in plain English

Jesus looked around at them with a mix of anger and deep sadness at how hard their hearts had become. Then He said to the man, 'Stretch out your hand.' The man did, and it was completely healed.

Why it's here

Jesus was both angry and heartbroken. Angry because they chose rules over a person. Heartbroken because their hearts had become so hardened they couldn't even see what they were doing.

Who's speaking

Mark reveals Jesus' raw emotions before He heals the man's hand with a single command.

Where it sits in the story

This is one of the most emotionally honest moments in the Gospels. Jesus felt anger and grief at the same time—and then He did exactly what love demanded. He healed the man anyway, right in front of everyone.

The scholarly reading

Jesus looked around (periblepsamenos) with anger (met' orgēs) and grief (syllypoumenos) at their hardness of heart (pōrōsei tēs kardias), then healed the man's hand with a word: 'Stretch out your hand' (ekteinon tēn cheira sou).

Language and setting

Mark uniquely records Jesus' anger and sorrow—one of the most emotionally transparent moments in the Gospels. The term pōrōsis ('hardness, petrification') describes a calcification of moral sensitivity.

Voice

Mark describes Jesus' emotional state and His healing command, revealing both divine indignation and divine compassion in a single moment.

Significance

Jesus' anger was not petulant but righteous: it was directed at the moral calcification that prioritized rules over people. His simultaneous grief shows that His anger was rooted in love, not contempt. The healing demonstrated that doing good cannot be postponed.

3Then Jesus said to the man with the withered hand, “Stand up among us.”

4And He asked them, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?”

5Jesus looked around at them with anger and sorrow at their hardness of heart. Then He said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out, and it was restored.

6At this, the Pharisees went out and began plotting with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.

7So Jesus withdrew with His disciples to the sea, accompanied by a large crowd from Galilee, Judea,

Read all of Mark 3 — A man with a withered hand, a crowd pressing in from every side, and twelve unlikely men called to change the world.