GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
Mark 10:5
Sclerosis
There’s a comedic story about a man who went to his physician complaining of an illness. According to the story, the physician listened to the patient describe all his symptoms. Then the physician asked the patient whether he had ever had this illness before. The patient answered that he experienced the illness before, to which the physician replied, “Well, you’ve got it again.”
According to Mark, some Pharisees—serious religious practitioners—came to Jesus asking him if it was legal for a man to divorce his wife. Then Jesus asked them what Moses had written. They said Moses wrote that a man could write a certificate of divorce and send his wife away. “But Jesus said to them, ‘Because of your hard hearts, he wrote this commandment to you.’” (Mark 10:5)
Readers have wondered whether Jesus referred to the hard hearts of his Pharisaic audience or to the hard hearts of the readers to whom Moses wrote. A third possibility is that Jesus referred to both audiences. The trouble with both audiences was their hardheartedness. The word Mark used is “sklerokardia” (σκληροκαρδία), a compound of “skleros,” meaning hard (the root of the English word sclerosis), and “kardia,” meaning heart (the root of cardiac). The need for Moses’ law arose from the hardhearted way some men treated their wives, sending them away at will. Moses stopped that practice by requiring a process. The husband had to obtain a divorce decree before he could send his wife away. Jesus was also referring to hardheartedness as the reason the Pharisees were testing him, trying to lead him to say something for which they could indict him.
Lexically, there are two definitions of sclerosis: a gradual hardening of tissue and a hardness of the mind. Mark’s use of the word sklerokardia refers to another kind of hardness: hardness of the heart toward the Father. As one should seek to avoid physical hardness of the heart, so one should seek to avoid spiritual hardheartedness toward the Father.
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