Mark 4:33-34 - Exposition

With many such parables; such, that is, as he had just been delivering—plain and simple illustrations which all might understand; not abstruse and difficult similitudes, but sufficiently plain for them to perceive that there was heavenly and Divine truth lying hidden beneath them, so that they might be drawn onwards through that which they did understand, to search into something hidden beneath it, which at present they did not know. But privately to his own disciples he expounded ( ἐπέλυε ) all things . This word ( ἐπιλύω ) occurs nowhere else in the Gospels. But it does occur in St. Peter's second Epistle ( 2 Peter 1:20 ), "No Scripture is of any private ( ἐπιλύσεως ) exposition, or interpretation." This suggests a connection between St. Mark's Gospel and that Epistle, and may be accepted as an auxiliary evidence, however small, as to the genuineness of the Epistle.