And they brought young children to him, that he should touch them: and his disciples rebuked those that brought them. But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.
Mark 10:13-14 (KJV)
People were pressing toward him with children in their arms and his own disciples were turning them back. The famous sentence was spoken into that, and its first word does not mean what four centuries have made it sound like. Suffer there means allow.
Allow is the whole of it
The Greek is a form of a verb that runs through the gospels doing plain work. The King James usually renders it leave, or forgive, or let. Out of roughly a hundred and thirty verses where it stands, only thirteen get the word suffer. Underneath all of those renderings is one idea: releasing your hold.
The translators wrote suffer for permission in other places too, where nobody has ever misread it.
And another of his disciples said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father.
Matthew 8:21 (KJV)
That disciple is asking permission, not asking to be in pain. The Greek there is a different verb again, a second one that means to let a thing happen, so the King James used suffer for both of them. The verb behind the English word suffer when it means to hurt is a third word, and it is in neither passage.
The modern versions print let, or allow, or permit: let in the New International Version and the English Standard Version, permit in the New American Standard, allow in the World English Bible.
The scene is not a quiet one
Verse thirteen says the disciples rebuked the people bringing the children, and rebuked there is a strong word, the one used for sharp public correction. Then Jesus was much displeased. Mark puts the two reactions in consecutive sentences, so the reader cannot miss what caused what.
Much displeased is the mildest thing the Greek can be made to say. The verb appears seven times in the New Testament, and this is the only time it describes Jesus. The other six are ordinary human anger, spread over four scenes: the ten disciples at James and John, the chief priests in the temple, the ruler of the synagogue watching a woman get healed on a Sabbath, and the people at the table when the ointment is poured out. Six of the modern translations I checked print indignant.
The gentlest verse in the collection, then, has a flash of temper in it, and the temper is pointed at the men standing closest to him.
Of such, and not of these
Readers usually soften the next clause. Of such is the kingdom of God, says the King James, and such is the right word. The Greek means of this kind or of this sort. He is naming a category and pointing at it rather than handing the kingdom to the particular children in front of him.
The verse after makes the same move: whoever will not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will not enter it. The condition rests on how the kingdom is received, the comparison is as a little child, and being one is nowhere made the requirement.
He took them up in his arms
And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them.
Mark 10:16 (KJV)
Took up in his arms is a single Greek verb that appears twice in the entire New Testament, both times in Mark and both times with children in it. Mark could have written the ordinary word for taking. He wrote the one that means to gather into the crook of your arm. The blessing is in a tense that keeps going, so the picture is not one blessing but a stretch of them.
Luke tells the same scene and says infants, using a word he elsewhere uses for the baby in Elisabeth’s womb and the baby in the manger. Some of the children being pushed away were too young to know they were being pushed.
Mark has just finished writing something else. The paragraph directly above this one is the divorce question, where the Pharisees are trying him on a hard case and he answers what God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. Then the children arrive. Mark and Matthew both put a scene about broken households next to a scene about who gets carried to Jesus.
The soft picture is half right
Every painting of this scene gets the tenderness right, because the tenderness is there in verse sixteen, in the arms and the hands and the blessing that will not stop. The painting loses the thing that made room for it. Grown men were told off first, to their faces, and only then did anybody get through.
The warm verse, filed wrong
This was the one I reached for when a room needed softening, and I never noticed it contains a rebuke. I had it filed as a picture rather than as an event, which is a comfortable way to keep a verse and a poor way to read one.
The disciples in that scene are not villains. They were protecting a tired man’s afternoon, which is what people do for what they love, and the same instinct decides, without anybody voting on it, who is worth his time. Train up a child gets read with the same softness, and so does the fear of the Lord. The question the passage leaves standing is which people, in any given week, have already been decided about.