{"id":107493,"date":"2026-09-09T16:07:20","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T20:07:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/?p=107493"},"modified":"2026-09-09T16:07:20","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T20:07:20","slug":"did-jesus-praise-the-widows-mite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/what-jesus-teaches\/did-jesus-praise-the-widows-mite\/","title":{"rendered":"Did Jesus Praise the Widow&#8217;s Mite? Read the Verse Before"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='booster-block booster-read-block'>\n                <div class=\"twp-read-time\">\n                \t<i class=\"booster-icon twp-clock\"><\/i> <span>Read Time:<\/span>11 Minute, 12 Second                <\/div>\n\n            <\/div><p>You know the sermon. A poor widow drops two tiny coins into the temple collection, and the preacher leans in: <em>she gave everything she had<\/em>. Then the offering comes round, and something in your chest tightens, because you already know exactly how little is left in your account this week.<\/p>\n\n<p>So here is a fair question: did Jesus praise the widow&#8217;s mite? Almost every sermon on this story begins at Mark 12:41. Mark did not begin there. Two verses earlier, Jesus says something about religious leaders and widows that changes the temperature of the entire scene \u2014 and once you have read it, you cannot un-read it.<\/p>\n\n<h2>The Sentence That Comes Two Verses Earlier<\/h2>\n\n<p>Mark 12 has Jesus teaching in the temple. Just before the widow appears, He warns the crowd about the religious professionals standing around them:<\/p>\n\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Beware of the scribes, which love to go in long clothing, and love salutations in the marketplaces, And the chief seats in the synagogues, and the uppermost rooms at feasts: Which devour widows&#8217; houses, and for a pretence make long prayers: these shall receive greater damnation.&#8221; (Mark 12:38-40)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Devour widows&#8217; houses. That is the accusation. Respected men, well dressed, praying at length in public \u2014 and living off the homes of women who had nobody left to protect them.<\/p>\n\n<p>Now read the very next line. &#8220;And Jesus sat over against the treasury, and beheld how the people cast money into the treasury: and many that were rich cast in much&#8221; (Mark 12:41).<\/p>\n\n<p>He finishes accusing a religious system of eating widows alive. Then He sits down and watches a widow hand that same system the last of what she had.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"convertkit-form wp-block-convertkit-form\" style=\"\"><script async data-uid=\"884942602c\" src=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.kit.com\/884942602c\/index.js\" data-jetpack-boost=\"ignore\" data-no-defer=\"1\" data-no-optimize=\"1\" nowprocket><\/script><\/div>\n\n\n<h2>Did Jesus Praise the Widow&#8217;s Mite, or Grieve Over Her?<\/h2>\n\n<p>Here is what the text says she did. &#8220;And there came a certain poor widow, and she threw in two mites, which make a farthing&#8221; (Mark 12:42). A mite translates the Greek word <em>lepton<\/em> \u2014 the smallest coin in circulation in that time and place. The two of them together came to a tiny fraction of a single day&#8217;s wage.<\/p>\n\n<p>And here is what Jesus said about it:<\/p>\n\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Verily I say unto you, That this poor widow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the treasury: For all they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living.&#8221; (Mark 12:43-44)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Read it slowly, and notice what is missing.<\/p>\n\n<p>Jesus states a fact about her. He never tells anyone to copy her. There is no &#8220;Go, and do thou likewise&#8221; here \u2014 the instruction He gives at the end of the Good Samaritan story in Luke 10:37. He calls the disciples over to look, and what He points out is that this woman has just given away everything she had left to live on.<\/p>\n\n<p>Then Mark keeps going. And this is the part that almost never gets read aloud with the rest:<\/p>\n\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;And as he went out of the temple, one of his disciples saith unto him, Master, see what manner of stones and what buildings are here! And Jesus answering said unto him, Seest thou these great buildings? there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.&#8221; (Mark 13:1-2)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p>She gave her last coin to the building. He walked straight outside and said the building was coming down. Roman forces destroyed the Jerusalem temple in AD 70, roughly forty years later.<\/p>\n\n<h2>Jesus Had Already Made This Exact Complaint Once Before<\/h2>\n\n<p>This is the detail that convinced me the order is not an accident, and it sits five chapters earlier.<\/p>\n\n<p>In Mark 7, Jesus takes on a religious rule called Corban. People could declare their money dedicated to God as a gift \u2014 and then use that declaration as the reason they could not help their own ageing parents.<\/p>\n\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;But ye say, If a man shall say to his father or mother, It is Corban, that is to say, a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; he shall be free: And ye suffer him no more to do ought for his father or his mother; Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye.&#8221; (Mark 7:11-13)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Same book. Same target. A religious system talking ordinary people into surrendering money they genuinely needed, and calling it devotion. By the time Mark&#8217;s readers reach chapter 12, they have already been shown that Jesus does not treat &#8220;but she gave it all to God&#8221; as automatically good news.<\/p>\n\n<h2>Where the Scholars Actually Land<\/h2>\n\n<p>Honest answer: this is unsettled, and anyone who tells you it is settled is overstating in one direction or the other.<\/p>\n\n<p>In 1982 the biblical scholar Addison Wright published a paper in the <em>Catholic Biblical Quarterly<\/em> titled &#8220;The Widow&#8217;s Mites: Praise or Lament? \u2014 A Matter of Context.&#8221; He argued for lament: that Jesus is not applauding the widow so much as grieving over a system, and a value system, that taught her to hand over her last coin. Quentin Quesnell read the scene in a similar direction, as a rejection of the wrongdoers rather than an endorsement of her.<\/p>\n\n<p>Plenty of scholars are not persuaded. Elizabeth Struthers Malbon has described Wright&#8217;s reading as more ingenious than convincing. And the argument is still running today \u2014 a 2023 paper in the <em>Tyndale Bulletin<\/em> by Jeremy Otten argued from the structure of the passage that Mark placed the widow&#8217;s mites exactly where he wanted them, as the climax of the section rather than as its victim.<\/p>\n\n<p>So: not settled. Which means what you can say with real confidence is narrower \u2014 and, it turns out, far more useful.<\/p>\n\n<h2>What Nobody Disputes<\/h2>\n\n<p>Set the debate down for a minute. Three things in this passage are not in dispute at all, and they are the three that matter on an ordinary Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n<p><strong>First: the sequence is really there.<\/strong> Mark put the warning about devouring widows&#8217; houses immediately before the widow, and the temple&#8217;s destruction immediately after. You do not need a scholar&#8217;s permission to notice that. You only need to start reading two verses earlier than the sermon started.<\/p>\n\n<p><strong>Second: Jesus never asked her for it.<\/strong> Not once in the passage does He tell her, or anyone listening, to give like that. Whatever else is happening in that courtyard, the pressure she was under did not come from Him.<\/p>\n\n<p><strong>Third \u2014 and this is the one worth carrying out of here:<\/strong> out of everyone in that courtyard, the wealthy and the scribes in their long robes and the whole moving crowd, one person saw her. Jesus was sitting down, watching. And the only person He called His disciples over to look at was the one nobody else was counting.<\/p>\n\n<blockquote><p><strong>The building got her coins. God got her. Only one of them was still standing forty years later.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p>That is the turn, and it is quieter than the argument. The story has been used for a long time to ask people for money. Read in the order Mark actually wrote it, it does something closer to the opposite \u2014 it puts God&#8217;s full attention on the person the system had already overlooked. There is a warmer, complementary reading of the very same moment worth sitting with too: <a href=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/what-jesus-teaches\/widows-mite-meaning\/\">what Jesus was actually watching for at that treasury<\/a>, which was never the size of the coins.<\/p>\n\n<p>And if you have ever given out of fear \u2014 because a message left you feeling that holding anything back meant holding out on God \u2014 this passage is not a rebuke of you. It may be the nearest thing to relief in the Gospels. The one person in the story who never once put that pressure on her is Jesus. If that fear is familiar, this is the same knot underneath <a href=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/bible-resources\/bible-answers\/tithing-while-in-debt\/\">tithing while in debt<\/a>, and it is worth untying honestly rather than just giving harder.<\/p>\n\n<p>One more thing, said plainly, because a story like this can curdle into cynicism fast: none of this makes generosity suspect. Scripture is full of glad, free, open-handed giving, and Jesus commends it warmly and often. What this passage puts a question mark over is not giving. It is pressure dressed up as devotion \u2014 and the difference between the two is simply whether you were free to say no. If you want to dig further into how a passage changes when you read what surrounds it, our free <a href=\"https:\/\/chatgpt.com\/g\/g-6RiO699jI-bible-answers-ask-any-question-about-the-bible\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Bible Answers<\/a> assistant will walk through any passage with you \u2014 it opens free in ChatGPT.<\/p>\n\n<h2>Actions to Take Today<\/h2>\n\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Read Mark 12:38 straight through to Mark 13:2 in one sitting.<\/strong> It takes about two minutes. Do not stop at verse 44 \u2014 keep going into the next chapter, and notice where Jesus walks and what He says when He gets there.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Before your next gift, ask one honest question: could I say no?<\/strong> If the answer is yes, then give gladly and freely \u2014 that is the whole point. If the answer is no, if fear or somebody&#8217;s disappointment is doing the deciding, that is worth naming before you give rather than resenting afterwards.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Find one person nobody is counting, and count them.<\/strong> Someone whose work or grief or effort is going unnoticed this week. Send them one message today that says you saw it. That is the thing Jesus did in this passage.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n<h2>Journaling Prompts<\/h2>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Where did you first learn what giving is supposed to feel like \u2014 and who taught you that?<\/li>\n<li>Is there a verse you have only ever heard starting in the middle? What might change if you read the ten verses around it?<\/li>\n<li>When you picture God watching you give, what expression do you imagine on God&#8217;s face? Where did that picture come from, honestly?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<h2>A Prayer for When Giving Has Felt Like Pressure<\/h2>\n\n<p>God, I have given things I could not really spare, and I am not always sure whether I did it out of love or out of fear. I do not want to be cynical about generosity, and I do not want to be quietly manipulated by it either. Teach me the difference. And where I have been the one nobody was counting, thank You that You were sitting there watching the whole time. Help me give freely tomorrow \u2014 and help me be honest on the days I cannot.<\/p>\n\n<h2>One Question Worth Sitting With<\/h2>\n\n<p>Do you think Mark placed the widow&#8217;s story between those two passages deliberately \u2014 or is that just the order things happened in? Tell us what you think in the comments.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"convertkit-form wp-block-convertkit-form\" style=\"\"><script async data-uid=\"884942602c\" src=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.kit.com\/884942602c\/index.js\" data-jetpack-boost=\"ignore\" data-no-defer=\"1\" data-no-optimize=\"1\" nowprocket><\/script><\/div>\n\n\n<h2>Share This<\/h2>\n\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;Every sermon on the widow&#8217;s mite starts at verse 41. Mark started at verse 38 \u2014 with Jesus accusing religious leaders of devouring widows&#8217; houses. Two verses. Completely different story.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;She gave her last coin to the temple. Jesus walked straight outside and said the temple was coming down. Nobody preaches those two verses together.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;The one person in that courtyard who never pressured her to give was Jesus.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<h2>Common Questions About the Widow&#8217;s Mite in Context<\/h2>\n\n<p><strong>Did Jesus praise the widow&#8217;s mite?<\/strong><br>\nIn Mark 12:41-44 Jesus says the poor widow &#8220;hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the treasury,&#8221; because the wealthy gave out of their surplus while she gave everything she had to live on. Whether that statement is praise or lament is genuinely debated. Jesus never instructs anyone in the passage to imitate her, and the verses immediately before and after describe religious leaders who &#8220;devour widows&#8217; houses&#8221; and a temple that would soon be destroyed. Most Christian teaching reads the moment as praise for sacrificial giving; a minority scholarly reading, argued by Addison Wright in 1982, reads it as grief over a system that took her last coin.<\/p>\n\n<p><strong>What comes immediately before the widow&#8217;s mite story in Mark?<\/strong><br>\nMark 12:38-40, in which Jesus warns about scribes who &#8220;love to go in long clothing,&#8221; take the best seats in the synagogues, and &#8220;devour widows&#8217; houses, and for a pretence make long prayers.&#8221; The widow&#8217;s offering in Mark 12:41-44 follows immediately, with no break in the scene and no change of location.<\/p>\n\n<p><strong>What comes immediately after the widow&#8217;s mite story?<\/strong><br>\nMark 13:1-2. Jesus leaves the temple, a disciple admires the enormous stones and buildings, and Jesus replies that &#8220;there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.&#8221; Roman forces destroyed the Jerusalem temple in AD 70, roughly forty years after the scene described.<\/p>\n\n<p><strong>How much was a widow&#8217;s mite worth?<\/strong><br>\nA &#8220;mite&#8221; translates the Greek word <em>lepton<\/em>, the smallest coin in circulation in first-century Judea. Mark 12:42 notes that two of them together &#8220;make a farthing&#8221; \u2014 the King James translators&#8217; term for the small Roman coin the pair added up to. In practical terms the two coins came to a tiny fraction of a single day&#8217;s wage.<\/p>\n\n<p><strong>Does the widow&#8217;s mite story appear in more than one Gospel?<\/strong><br>\nYes, in Mark 12:41-44 and Luke 21:1-4. In both Gospels the offering is placed immediately after a warning about scribes who devour widows&#8217; houses (Mark 12:38-40; Luke 20:45-47) and immediately before Jesus predicts the temple&#8217;s destruction (Mark 13:1-2; Luke 21:5-6). 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Most sermons start at verse 41. Two verses earlier, Jesus accused the religious leaders of devouring widows&#8217; houses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":107492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_wp_convertkit_post_meta":{"form":"-1","landing_page":"0","tag":"0","restrict_content":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[3458,3543,52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bible-study","category-bible-themes","category-what-jesus-teaches"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107493"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107494,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107493\/revisions\/107494"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}