The Strong Man Bound

What the Pulpit Does With It

Three readings are preached from this verse, and none of them begins where the parable begins.

The first is a prayer formula. In many Charismatic and Pentecostal churches the believer is told to bind the strong man himself — over his money, his marriage, his family line, his city — by speaking the binding aloud in the name of Jesus. The verse becomes a command the believer carries out. Yahushua never gave that command. He described what He was doing, not what His hearers were to recite.

The second reading moves the binding into the future. Dispensational teaching holds that Yahushua loosed a few captives during His ministry but never bound the devil. The real binding, it says, waits for the second coming, when an angel chains Satan for a thousand years while Messiah reigns from Jerusalem on the earth, after which the devil is released for a short season. Under that reading the parable describes an event two thousand years removed from the men who heard it.

The third reading, held in Reformed circles, places the binding at the first coming. It comes closest. But it reaches that conclusion by matching verses, and it leaves the images where it found them. The strong man, his house, his goods, and the name Beelzebub are never traced to the Scriptures the scribes themselves carried.

Every image in this answer comes from Moses, the Prophets, and the Kings. Read from there, the parable leaves no room for a binding the believer performs and no room for a binding still waiting to happen. The strong man was bound in front of the men who accused Yahushua of serving him.

The Question in the House

The parable does not open at Mark 3:27. It opens at a charge.

Yahushua had gone into a house, and the crowd pressed in so tightly that no one could eat (Mark 3:19–20). His own people went out to take hold of Him, saying He was beside Himself (Mark 3:21). Then scribes arrived from Jerusalem with a verdict already reached. They said He had Beelzebub, and that He cast out devils by the prince of the devils (Mark 3:22).

Matthew records what provoked the charge. A man blind and dumb, held by a devil, was healed so that he both spoke and saw. The people asked whether this could be the son of David (Matthew 12:22–23). That was the real question in the room. The son of David was the promised king. If He was standing in front of them, the kingdom had come.

The scribes answered the people’s question before Yahushua could. Their answer was that the power came from below. That charge governs everything that follows. The parable is His reply to men who watched Yahuah’s work and assigned it to another god.

The House of Bondage

No man can enter into a strong man’s house, and spoil his goods, except he will first bind the strong man; and then he will spoil his house. — Mark 3:27

A strong man, a house, goods, a binding, and a spoiling. None of this was new to the scribes. Isaiah had already put the question in the same shape and answered it.

Shall the prey be taken from the mighty, or the lawful captive delivered? But thus saith Yahuah, Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken away, and the prey of the terrible shall be delivered: for I will contend with him that contendeth with thee, and I will save thy children. — Isaiah 49:24–25

Isaiah’s mighty man holds captives. The question is whether anyone can take them from him. Yahuah answers that He will, and that the ones being held are His children. The goods in the strong man’s house are not money or possessions. They are people held against their will.

The house itself has a name in the law. When Yahuah spoke from Sinai, He opened the commandments by naming where Israel had been: He brought them out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage (Exodus 20:2; 13:3). Egypt was a strong man’s house. Pharaoh held Yahuah’s firstborn son and would not let him go (Exodus 4:22–23).

The strong man of Egypt was bound on one night. At Pesach Yahuah went through the land, and He named who the stroke was aimed at.

For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am Yahuah. — Exodus 12:12

Pesach was a judgment on the gods of the house before it was a release from the house. The order is the order Yahushua gave: first bind the strong man, then spoil his house. Pharaoh had refused ten times. On the night of Pesach he rose up and ordered Israel out (Exodus 12:31). That same night Israel asked of the Egyptians and carried the spoil away (Exodus 12:35–36). The binding and the spoiling came together in one night.

Only one thing separated the houses that were struck from the houses that walked out. The houses of Israel were marked with the blood of a lamb, and the stroke passed over them (Exodus 12:13). The blood on the door is how a captive left the house of bondage.

That is the likeness, and it belongs to the whole scene, not to a single noun. A house where Yahuah’s people are held. A holder who will not release them. A stronger one who breaks his hold. A people carried out of that house as spoil.

The order of the exodus matters. Yahuah did not hand Israel the commandments in Egypt as the price of leaving. He brought them out first. The law came afterward, at Sinai, as the way a freed people would walk. And the purpose of the whole rescue was named before the tabernacle was raised: a kingdom of priests, and a people Yahuah would dwell among (Exodus 19:6; 25:8). The goods carried out of the strong man’s house were carried out to become Yahuah’s house.

The strong man’s house is the house of bondage, the binding is Pesach, and the goods are the people Yahuah carries out of it.

Stronger Than He

Luke carries one more phrase. When a stronger than the strong man comes upon him, he overcomes him, takes away his armour, and divides his spoils (Luke 11:21–22). Jeremiah had already said who that stronger one is.

For Yahuah hath redeemed Jacob, and ransomed him from the hand of him that was stronger than he. — Jeremiah 31:11

Isaiah adds that the Servant would divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul unto death (Isaiah 53:12). The binding and the spoiling are Yahuah’s work, and the Servant is the one through whom He does it.

Luke also records how Yahushua named the power at work.

But if I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you. — Luke 11:20

The finger of God is an Egypt phrase. When the plague of lice came, Pharaoh’s magicians could not copy it, and they told Pharaoh what they were looking at.

Then the magicians said unto Pharaoh, This is the finger of God: and Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he hearkened not unto them; as Yahuah had said. — Exodus 8:19

Egypt’s own magicians recognized the finger of God. Israel’s scribes, holding the law in their hands, looked at the same finger and called it Beelzebub. The men of the strong man’s house conceded what the men of Yahuah’s house denied.

The finger is Yahuah’s. Yahushua does not claim the power as His own; He names its owner, and nothing in the passage makes the Son a second source of the same power.

Then He drew the conclusion Himself. The kingdom had come upon them. Not near, not postponed, not waiting on a future age. Upon them, in the room, with the freed man standing there.

The binding was happening in front of the scribes, and Yahushua called it the arrival of the kingdom.

Ekron in Jerusalem

The name Baal-zebub appears in one story in the Hebrew Scriptures. Ahaziah, king in Samaria, fell through a lattice in his upper room and lay sick. He sent messengers to ask Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron, a Philistine city, whether he would recover (2 Kings 1:2).

But the angel of Yahuah said to Elijah the Tishbite, Arise, go up to meet the messengers of the king of Samaria, and say unto them, Is it not because there is not a God in Israel, that ye go to enquire of Baalzebub the god of Ekron? — 2 Kings 1:3

Ahaziah was king of the northern kingdom — the half of Israel that had torn itself away from the house of David (1 Kings 12:16–20). He ruled a divided house, and in his trouble he sent to a Philistine god. Elijah’s word was that he would never come down from that bed, and he did not (2 Kings 1:4, 17). The divided kingdom he ruled did not stand either. Assyria carried it away (2 Kings 17:6, 18).

That is the Hebrew Scripture behind Mark 3:23–26. A kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. A house divided against itself cannot stand. The scribes heard those words with Samaria behind them. They were not hearing a proverb. They were hearing the history of the house that sent to Ekron.

The charge turns back on the men who made it. Satan was not divided; the house of Israel was. The leaders in Jerusalem stood where Ahaziah had stood — looking at trouble Yahuah alone could answer and reaching for the god of Ekron to explain it. Elijah had asked whether there was no God in Israel. The scribes, faced with Yahuah’s finger, gave Ahaziah’s answer.

In the Greek text of the gospels the name is written Beelzeboul, and its ending is the Hebrew zebul (H2073), a lofty dwelling — the word Solomon used for the house he built for Yahuah (1 Kings 8:13). Yahushua took up the house language Himself: if they called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more those of his household (Matthew 10:25). The scribes named the master of Yahuah’s house after the god of Ekron.

Mark closes the scene by naming the danger and its cause. Every sin and blasphemy can be forgiven except blasphemy against the Spirit, because they said He has an unclean spirit (Mark 3:28–30). The sin is defined by its occasion. It is calling Yahuah’s work the work of a foreign god with the evidence standing in plain view.

The divided house in this parable was never Satan’s; it was the house of Israel that sent to Ekron.

Bound Now

The binding has its own picture in the Prophets. Isaiah saw Yahuah deal with the powers on high and the kings of the earth, and saw them shut away.

And it shall come to pass in that day, that Yahuah shall punish the host of the high ones that are on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth. And they shall be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in the prison, and after many days shall they be visited. — Isaiah 24:21–22

Gathered, cast into a pit, shut in prison, visited after many days. Revelation 20 draws the same picture: the dragon laid hold of, bound, cast into the pit, shut up and sealed, then loosed a little season at the end (Revelation 20:1–3). That is one binding told twice — once by Isaiah ahead of time and once by John in vision. Yahushua told the scribes when it happened. It happened when the stronger one entered the house.

The binding also has a date, and it is the same night as Egypt’s. Yahushua died at Pesach, at the hour the lambs were slain. In the days just before, He said that now the prince of this world would be cast out (John 12:31). The first Pesach judged the gods of Egypt and emptied the house of bondage. This Pesach judged the strong man of Mark 3 and opened his house the same way. That is why Isaiah ties the dividing of the spoil to the Servant pouring out his soul unto death (Isaiah 53:12). The scribes watched the binding begin in the casting out of devils. Pesach sealed it, and the house has been emptying ever since.

The strongest objection is that the devil is plainly still at work. Peter calls him a roaring lion walking about (1 Peter 5:8). But a bound strong man still breathes, and he can still roar. Revelation names the purpose of the binding, and it is narrow: that he should deceive the nations no more (Revelation 20:3). Before the first coming the nations sat in darkness and Israel alone held the law. After it, the nations came out of the house in numbers, exactly as Isaiah 49 said when it made the Servant a light to the Gentiles (Isaiah 49:6). Bound means the house can be emptied. It does not mean its master has gone quiet.

The futurist reading takes a binding Yahushua said was underway and moves it past His return. Having pushed the binding into the future, it needs a thousand-year kingdom on the earth to hold it and a release at the end to close it out. One misreading props up the next. Yahushua offered the scribes no future kingdom to wait for. He told them the kingdom had come upon them, and He proved it with a freed man standing in the room.

The prayer-formula reading fails the same test from the other side. It makes the believer the stronger man. In that teaching the goods are the believer’s lost blessings — money, health, destiny — recovered from the devil’s house. In the parable the goods are the people themselves. Isaiah gives the binding to Yahuah alone: I will contend with him that contendeth with thee. The believer is not the one who binds. He is the goods that were carried out.

Put together, the parable says this. The strong man’s house is the house of bondage. The goods are Yahuah’s people held inside it. The stronger one is Yahuah, working by His own finger through His Son. The binding began at the first coming in plain sight of the men who accused Him, and it was sealed at Pesach, when the Lamb Yahuah provided was offered up and the strong man was judged as the gods of Egypt had been. The people carried out are carried out to become Yahuah’s dwelling, and they walk afterward by the law He gave a freed people at Sinai.

The scribes did not lack evidence. Egypt’s magicians had less and saw more. The danger in this parable is not to the strong man; he is already bound. The danger is to the house that watches Yahuah empty the prison and calls it Ekron.