and the best seats in the synagogues, and the best places at feasts:
World English Bible
This verse is examined in more than one Scripture Analysis section. Each lens is shown on its own terms, in the section's own words; GEBible reaches no verdict of its own.
Show this verse in
Show this verse in
Showing
WEB World English Bible Public Domain ✓
and the best seats in the synagogues, and the best places at feasts:
World English Bible
Questions where the Bible appears to say two different things, with the passages on each side set together.
Romans 13:1-6 commands universal submission to governing authorities on the grounds that they are ordained by God, are God's ministers, and punish only evildoers — resistance to them is resistance to God's ordinance and incurs damnation. Multiple narrative threads contradict this directly: the Hebrew midwives are blessed for disobeying Pharaoh (Exodus 1:17, 20), Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego defy Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 3:16-18), Daniel defies Darius (Daniel 6:7-10), and the New Testament itself describes righteous figures — Jesus, Daniel, the prophets — being executed or persecuted by the very rulers Romans 13 claims punish only the evil.
Critical scholarship: Widely regarded as a genuine contradiction.
The proposed answers and sources for each reading are on the question page.
Each section sets the viewpoints side by side; you weigh the evidence. Here, "critical scholarship" means academic study, not a value judgment. How this is built →
Within each section, grouped by shared field or question type — not a cross-section comparison.
This citation refers to this GEBible page — the verse and the analysis gathered here. To cite the underlying scholarship, cite those sources directly.
"Mark 12:39 — Scripture Analysis" GEBible, https://gebible.app/analysis/verse/mark/12/39?version=WEB (retrieved 26 August 2026).