Mocking

Mocking is the deliberate belittling of a person, or of what that person claims, by word, gesture, or physical humiliation, so that its object appears absurd, powerless, or beneath notice. The Greek vocabulary behind the concept in the places where it is named covers a range of intensity: empaizō, “to mock” or make sport of (Mark 10:34; Luke 23:11), empaiktai, “mockers” (2 Peter 3:3), and oneidizō, “to reproach” (Matthew 27:44; Mark 15:32). The text also uses the stronger verb blasphēmeō, “to blaspheme,” of the taunts thrown at Jesus on the cross (Matthew 27:39; Mark 15:29). Linguistically, mocking in Scripture is not confined to speech: it includes spitting, slapping, and the dressing of a prisoner in mock royalty (Matthew 26:67; Mark 14:65; Luke 23:11).

The passion narratives contain a notable concentration of the theme, and the text shows it aimed precisely at claims. Passersby wag their heads at the one who said he would destroy the temple (Matthew 27:39–40; Mark 15:29); onlookers call on the Christ, the King of Israel, to “come down from the cross, that we may see and believe him” (Mark 15:32); and the taunt in Matthew 27:43 throws his trust in God back at him: “He trusts in God. Let God deliver him now, if he wants him.” Mark 10:34 places mocking inside Jesus’s own prediction of his death, alongside spitting and scourging. What the accounts describe is a particular mechanism — a person’s own words turned into the instrument of his humiliation — and, notably, the words being mocked are true. The mockers come from several quarters at once: soldiers, passersby, religious officials, and the criminals crucified alongside him (Matthew 27:44; Mark 15:32; Luke 23:11).

A second form appears in Isaiah 28:15, where the speech recorded is a boast rather than a taunt: the speakers claim to have “made a covenant with death” and to have made “lies our refuge,” confident the overflowing scourge will not reach them. One way to read this is as mockery settled into a way of life — a fixed refusal to take God’s warning seriously, expressed as self-assurance rather than derision. 2 Peter 3:3 speaks of a comparable stance projected into the future: mockers “in the last days,” described as “walking after their own lusts,” characterized by appetite rather than by argument. Against both, 1 Peter 2:23 sets a deliberate counter-pattern: “When he was cursed, he didn’t curse back. When he suffered, he didn’t threaten, but committed himself to him who judges righteously.”

Christian traditions weigh these strands differently. Some read the mockery of the passion chiefly as an element of Christ’s humiliation and take 1 Peter 2:23 as the normative pattern for enduring contempt without retaliation; others treat mocking primarily as a moral category — contempt for God’s truth, exemplified by the self-secure speakers of Isaiah 28:15 and the mockers of 2 Peter 3:3 — and stress its hardening effect on those who practice it; still others focus on the mockers’ demand for a sign (Mark 15:32) as a picture of unbelief that no display would satisfy. The passages themselves do not adjudicate between these emphases, and readers in different traditions have judged the relative weight of consolation, warning, and example differently.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.