those who devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense make long prayers. These will receive greater condemnation.”
World English Bible
Mark 12:40
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.
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WEB World English Bible Public Domain ✓ - Modern English
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- F35 Family 35 New Testament Wilbur Pickering's Byzantine-priority New Testament, with text-critical commentary notes · CC BY-SA 4.0
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Examined in Scripture Analysis
Contradictions (1)
Questions where the Bible appears to say two different things, with the passages on each side set together.
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Should you obey your rulers?
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.
More on this question
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 →
Other verses examined for the same kind of question or claim
Within each section, grouped by shared field or question type — not a cross-section comparison.
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This citation refers to this GEBible page — the verse and the analysis gathered here. To cite the underlying scholarship, cite those sources directly.
"Mark 12:40 — Scripture Analysis" GEBible, https://gebible.app/analysis/verse/mark/12/40?version=WEB (retrieved 26 August 2026).