Mark 9:30-32
They Were Afraid to Ask
30Going on from there, they passed through Galilee. But Jesus did not want anyone to know,
31because He was teaching His disciples. He told them, “The Son of Man will be delivered into the hands of men. They will kill Him, and after three days He will rise.”
32But they did not understand this statement, and they were afraid to ask Him about it.
Berean Standard Bible
Three verses, and they are quiet ones. Jesus and the Twelve are traveling through Galilee, which is home ground, the country where he had been drawing crowds since chapter one, and Mark says he did not want anybody to know they were there.
Then Mark gives the reason for the empty road. He was teaching his disciples. Whatever is going on now matters more to him than a crowd does, and so he has traded public work for twelve men and a long walk. What he teaches them on that walk is short.
The Son of Man will be delivered into the hands of men. They will kill Him, and after three days He will rise.
He has said this to them once before, and the wording has shifted since then. The first time he told them he would be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, which names the men responsible and lets you picture their faces. Nobody is named here. Delivered into the hands of men, by somebody, and the vagueness of it is worse than the list was.
Mark ends the three verses with a sentence about the Twelve rather than about Jesus.
But they did not understand this statement, and they were afraid to ask Him about it.
Both halves are true at once, and the second one explains why the first one lasted. They could have asked. He was standing right there, on an empty road, with nobody else in earshot, and he had arranged the entire trip so that a conversation like this one could happen. They had asked him about parables before. They had asked him why they could not drive the spirit out of the boy. Here they said nothing at all, and Mark tells us the reason was fear.
Fear of the answer, most likely. When you half suspect what a sentence means, and you would rather it not mean that, leaving it alone begins to look like wisdom.
At 9:34 Mark says they had been arguing about which of them was the greatest. That is the pattern of this whole stretch of the book. He tells them he is going to die and they answer with something about themselves, he says it again and they argue about rank, and when he says it a third time two of them will ask for the best seats in the kingdom.
How We Know
This is the second of three. Mark 8:31 says the Son of Man must suffer, be rejected, be killed, and rise after three days. Verse 31 here repeats it shorter and adds delivered into the hands of men. Mark 10:33-34 adds the destination, the chief priests and scribes, the Gentiles, the mocking, the spitting and the flogging.
Each one is more specific than the last, and each is followed immediately by the disciples doing something that shows they have not taken it in.
That pattern, three times across three chapters, supports a writer arranging the material to a design rather than reporting each incident on its own.
Questions
1 Jesus crossed Galilee without letting anyone know he was there. Mark tells us why. What was the reason?
AnswerHe was teaching his disciples. He had been working with crowds since the first chapter of the book, and he gave that up for twelve men and a quiet road.
2 He has told them this once already. What is different about the way he says it this time?
AnswerThe first time he named the men responsible: elders, chief priests, scribes. This time nobody is named at all. He will be delivered into the hands of men, handed over, by somebody.
3 Is there a question you have never actually put to God, because you think you already know how the answer would go?
AnswerMost people at a table have one. The disciples had a whole road to ask on and used it to say nothing. Not asking let them keep the suspicion instead of getting an answer.
4 What had they been arguing about on the way, right after hearing that he is going to be killed?
AnswerWhich of them was the greatest. He tells them three times that he is going to die, and every time they come back with something about themselves.
What This Means for Us
They did not ask because they did not want the answer.
Most of us know that feeling from the inside. There are questions we never put to God, not because we could not, but because we have a suspicion about how they would go, and not asking lets us keep the suspicion instead of the answer. It works for a while. It also leaves you walking down a road arguing about who is most important, because the real conversation has nowhere to go.
He had cleared the road for that conversation and he wanted to have it. So ask him the one you have been avoiding, tonight, out loud, where somebody else can hear you.
Prayer
Father, there are things we have not asked you because we think we know what you would say. Thank you for making room for the question anyway. Give us the nerve to ask it, and the honesty to sit with the answer. Amen.