They brought to him one who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech. They begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him aside from the multitude, privately, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat, and touched his tongue. Looking up to heaven, he sighed, and said to him, “Ephphatha!” that is, “Be opened!” Immediately his ears were opened, and the impediment of his tongue was released, and he spoke clearly.
Show the surrounding paragraph
Mark 7:32-35 sits inside this longer paragraph.
Again he departed from the borders of Tyre and Sidon, and came to the sea of Galilee, through the middle of the region of Decapolis. They brought to him one who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech. They begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him aside from the multitude, privately, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat, and touched his tongue. Looking up to heaven, he sighed, and said to him, “Ephphatha!” that is, “Be opened!” Immediately his ears were opened, and the impediment of his tongue was released, and he spoke clearly. He commanded them that they should tell no one, but the more he commanded them, so much the more widely they proclaimed it. They were astonished beyond measure, saying, “He has done all things well. He makes even the deaf hear, and the mute speak!”
Parallel Translations
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They brought to him one who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech. They begged him to lay his hand on him.
He took him aside from the multitude, privately, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat, and touched his tongue.
Looking up to heaven, he sighed, and said to him, “Ephphatha!” that is, “Be opened!”
Immediately his ears were opened, and the impediment of his tongue was released, and he spoke clearly.
-
And they brought vnto him one that was deffe and stambred in his speche and prayde him to laye his honde apon him.
And he toke him asyde from the people and put his fyngers in his eares and dyd spyt and touched his tounge
and loked vp to heven and sygthed and sayde vnto him: ephatha that is to saye be openned.
And streyght waye his eares were openned and the stringe of his tounge was loosed and he spake playne.
Show all 3 translations
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And they brought vnto him one that was deafe and stambered in his speache, and prayed him to put his hand vpon him.
Then hee tooke him aside from the multitude, and put his fingers in his eares, and did spit, and touched his tongue.
And looking vp to heauen, hee sighed, and said vnto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened.
And straightway his eares were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and hee spake plaine.
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Cross-references (32)
- Mark 8:23 (v33) He took hold of the blind man by the hand, and brought him out of the village. When he had spat on his eyes, and laid his hands on him, he…
- John 11:41 (v34) So they took away the stone from the place where the dead man was lying. Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, “Father, I thank you that you…
- Mark 5:41 (v34) Taking the child by the hand, he said to her, “Talitha cumi!” which means, being interpreted, “Girl, I tell you, get up!”
- Luke 11:14 (v32) He was casting out a demon, and it was mute. When the demon had gone out, the mute man spoke; and the multitudes marveled.
- John 9:6-7 (v33) When he had said this, he spat on the ground, made mud with the saliva, anointed the blind man’s eyes with the mud, and said to him, “Go,…
Show all 32 cross-references
- Mark 5:40 (v33) They ridiculed him. But he, having put them all out, took the father of the child, her mother, and those who were with him, and went in…
- Mark 6:41 (v34) He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, he blessed and broke the loaves, and he gave to his disciples to set…
- John 11:33 (v34) When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews weeping who came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled,
- Acts 9:34 (v34) Peter said to him, “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you. Get up and make your bed!” Immediately he arose.
- Acts 9:40 (v34) Peter sent them all out, and knelt down and prayed. Turning to the body, he said, “Tabitha, get up!” She opened her eyes, and when she saw…
- Isaiah 35:5-6 (v35) Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the ears of the deaf will be unstopped. Then the lame man will leap like a deer, and the…
- Mark 5:23 (v32) and begged him much, saying, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Please come and lay your hands on her, that she may be made…
- 1 Kings 17:19-22 (v33) He said to her, “Give me your son.” He took him out of her bosom, and carried him up into the room where he stayed, and laid him on his own…
- Matthew 9:32-33 (v32) As they went out, behold, a mute man who was demon possessed was brought to him. When the demon was cast out, the mute man spoke. The…
- Mark 8:12 (v34) He sighed deeply in his spirit, and said, “Why does this generation seek a sign? Most certainly I tell you, no sign will be given to this…
- John 11:43 (v34) When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”
- 2 Kings 4:33-34 (v33) He went in therefore, and shut the door on them both, and prayed to Yahweh. He went up, and lay on the child, and put his mouth on his…
- Psalms 33:9 (v35) For he spoke, and it was done. He commanded, and it stood firm.
- Isaiah 32:3-4 (v35) The eyes of those who see will not be dim, and the ears of those who hear will listen. The heart of the rash will understand knowledge, and…
- Isaiah 53:3 (v34) He was despised and rejected by men, a man of suffering and acquainted with disease. He was despised as one from whom men hide their face;…
- Matthew 11:5 (v35) the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news…
- Mark 1:41 (v34) Being moved with compassion, he stretched out his hand, and touched him, and said to him, “I want to. Be made clean.”
- Mark 2:12 (v35) He arose, and immediately took up the mat, and went out in front of them all; so that they were all amazed, and glorified God, saying, “We…
- Luke 7:14 (v34) He came near and touched the coffin, and the bearers stood still. He said, “Young man, I tell you, arise!”
- Luke 18:42 (v34) Jesus said to him, “Receive your sight. Your faith has healed you.”
- John 17:1 (v34) Jesus said these things, then lifting up his eyes to heaven, he said, “Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may also…
- 2 Kings 4:4-6 (v33) Go in and shut the door on you and on your sons, and pour oil into all those containers; and set aside those which are full.” So she went…
- Mark 15:34 (v34) At the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” which is, being interpreted, “My God, my God, why…
- John 11:35 (v34) Jesus wept.
- Luke 19:41 (v34) When he came near, he saw the city and wept over it,
- John 11:38 (v34) Jesus therefore, again groaning in himself, came to the tomb. Now it was a cave, and a stone lay against it.
- Hebrews 4:15 (v34) For we don’t have a high priest who can’t be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but one who has been in all points tempted like…
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this passage (17 sources)
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John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv32–35 32 And they bring unto him one that was…
32 And they bring unto him one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech; and they beseech him to put his hand upon him.
Ver. 32. One that was deaf] None of the evangelists have this story but only Saint Mark.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv32–35 And he took him aside from the multitude,.... To…
And he took him aside from the multitude,.... To shun all appearance of ostentation and vain glory:
and put his fingers into his ears; the finger of his right hand into his left ear, and the finger of his left hand into his right ear:
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and he spit and touched his tongue; that is, either he spit upon his tongue, for so the Vulgate Latin renders it, "spitting he touched his tongue"; and the Persic version thus, "he cast his spittle on his tongue"; or rather, he spit on his finger, and touched his tongue with it. These actions were not done as means of healing, or as having any natural virtue, or tendency in them, to effect a cure; but to show the power of Christ, that by the mere touch of his finger, and by the spittle of his mouth, as well as by laying on of hands, as was desired, and by a word speaking, he could at once remove this, or any such disorder. The taking this man aside from the multitude, is an emblem of the Lord's separating his people from the rest of the world, when he calls them by his grace; for as they are distinguished from others, in the choice of them in Christ, and in redemption by him; so in the effectual calling, they are bid to come out from among them, and by the power of divine grace, they are brought out from among them, and give up themselves to Christ, and to his churches: and Christ's putting his fingers into the ears of this man, represents the exertion of his power, and his removing by the finger of his Spirit, the obstructions of spiritual hearing; or rather, the planting of the spiritual ear, or forming a principle ot spiritual nearing in the soul: and his touching his tongue with the spittle of his mouth, may lead us to observe the application of his word, through the efficacy of his grace, as a means of loosing his tongue and opening his lips to show forth his praise.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv33–34 He put his fingers into his ears - Perhaps…
He put his fingers into his ears - Perhaps intending to teach us, that we are not to prescribe to him (as they who brought this man attempted to do) but to expect his blessing by whatsoever means he pleases: even though there should be no proportion or resemblance between the means used, and the benefit to be conveyed thereby.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv32–35 Verse 32. They bring unto him one that was…
Verse 32. They bring unto him one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech] Though from the letter of the text, it does not appear that this man was absolutely deprived of speech; for μογιλαλος literally signifies, one that cannot speak plainly - a stammerer; yet it is certain also that the word means a dumb person; and it is likely that the person in question was dumb, because he was deaf; and it is generally found that he who is totally deaf is dumb also. Almost all the versions understand the word thus: and the concluding words seem to confirm this - He maketh both the deaf to hear, and the DUMB, κωφους, to speak.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv32–35 They bring - That is, his friends brought, or…
They bring - That is, his friends brought, or the people brought.
One that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech - Not entirely mute, but who spoke indistinctly or with difficulty. His deafness might not have been of long standing, and his speech, therefore, not entirely ruined.
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To put his hand upon him - That is, to cure him. Blessings were commonly imparted by laying on the hands.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv32, 34 Dumb.[2] The Greek signifies one that speaks little, or…
Dumb.[2] The Greek signifies one that speaks little, or with difficulty. (Witham) --- The besought him. In the Greek it is, they beseech him, which agrees so well with they bring, that we have every reason to believe that this was the original reading.
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[BIBLIOGRAPHY]
Mutum, dumb; Greek, mogilalon, qui parum loquitur.
====================
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v32 4. The Healing of the Deaf and Dumb Man.…
4. The Healing of the Deaf and Dumb Man. Mar_7:32-37
(Parallel: Mat_15:29-31)
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32And they bring unto him one that was deaf,14 and had an impediment in his speech 33[a stammerer]; and they beseech him to put his hand upon him. And he took him aside from the multitude, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spit, and touched his 34tongue: And, looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that Isaiah , 35 Be opened. And straightway15 his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain. 36And he charged them that they should tell no man: but the more he16 charged them, so much the more a great deal they published it; 37And were beyond measure astonished, saying, He hath done all things well: he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
See on Matthew.—The healing of the deaf and dumb man on the east side of the Jordan is a narrative peculiar to Mark. In regard to time it is closely connected with the two foregoing events: occurring at the termination of the Lord’s travels towards Phœnicia and through Decapolis back to the eastern border of the Sea of Galilee (Gaulonitis). Mark shows, in his account of the miracles, a preference for those healings in which the gradual process of the cure, as connected with the instrument and the development of it, is vividly presented. Thus, in his account, the daughter of the Syrophenician woman lies exhausted upon her bed after her deliverance. Thus, he represents Jesus as commanding them to give the daughter of Jairus something to eat. And he alone records the healing of the blind man at Bethsaida—a process which was gradual, and performed in two stages. And here he alone communicates a narrative in which the miraculous act of the Lord is closely connected with the application of the saliva.
Mar_7:32. A deaf man, who could not well speak.—Meyer opposes this translation: “κωφὸν μογιλάλον is wrongly translated, a deaf man difficult of speech (see Beza, Maldonatus, De Wette).—Μογιλάλος, although it seems in its formation to be hard of speech, corresponds in the Septuagint to the Hebrew אִלֵּם, dumb. See Isa_35:5, &c. Hence it is a deaf and dumb man (Vulgate, Luther, Calovius, Ewald), which is also confirmed by ἀλάλους.” Since μογιλάλος does literally mean one who speaks with difficulty,—and it is said of this one, that after his cure he spoke ὀρθῶς (not simply he spoke),—the meaning of the words is sufficiently established. With deafness there is connected a disturbance of the organs of speech, or a general perversion of speech.
Mar_7:33. Aside from the multitude.—Wherefore? 1. He would make no display (Theophylact); He would not nourish superstition (Reinhard); He would have an undisturbed relation between Himself and the sick man (Meyer). This last is the weakest reason; for we might for the same reason except the same thing elsewhere. Rather we may assume that the district of Decapolis was something like the region of Tyre and Sidon: it was not a purely Jewish land. Here it was necessary, especially in this time of crisis, that He should avoid a publicity which might bring together the Gentiles in crowds, excite superstition as much as faith, and create in the minds of the Jews a prejudice against Him. In an analogous manner the Lord acted in the case of the blind man of eastern Bethsaida: He led him altogether out of the village. In both cases, however, we must remember that it was a susceptibility of faith which was to be gradually awakened. See the Doctrinal Reflections.—And put His fingers.—A similar circumstantial procedure we have in the healing of the blind man, Mark 8. “But we are not to assume that Jesus desired in any sense to conceal the miraculous element in the cures (Lange, Leben Jesu, ii. 1, p. 282), which would amount to untruth.” Meyer. But, upon this principle, the disguise thrown over the evangelical truths of the Gospel through the employment of parables, would amount to untruthfulness.
And He spit.—Spitting, He touched His tongue. Meyer thinks that the touching was the direct spitting upon the tongue. But as the touching (ἅπτεσθαι) is elsewhere an application of the hand, it may be assumed that He moistened His finger and touched therewith the man’s tongue. Saliva used in healing: here; Mar_8:23; Joh_9:6. De Wette: Saliva was in antiquity a remedy for the eyes (Plin. H. N. 28, 7; Tacit. Hist. 4, 21; Sueton. Vesp. Cp. 7; Tanchuma, f. 10, 2; Sanhed., f. 101, 1; Hieros. Sotah, f. 16, 4; Vajikra Rabba, f. 175, 2. Comp. Wetstein and Lightfoot, ad Joh. ix. 6). Meyer: “The saliva is, like the oil (Mar_6:13), to be regarded as a conductor of the miraculous power.” Yet it was not applied in the cure of the ear, but only in the healing of the tongue here, as Mark 8 in the healing of the eyes. Wherefore then was this distinction? Probably because the saliva was better suited to be a symbolical medium for the awakening of faith, and it was never wont to be applied to the ear.
Mar_7:34. Looking up to heaven, He sighed.—Manifestly the sighing of prayer. How much more easily He seemed to accomplish His healing on other occasions! Or was deafness, in its spiritual significance, much worse than blindness and possession; and did the Lord intend to signify that? We assume, 1. that in this half-heathen district, more imperfect and disturbed forms of faith presented themselves to Him, which made the healing on His part more of a conflict; and 2. that in this half-heathen district, where they generally believed in demigods and magic, He desired to make more definitely prominent His own dependence on God the Father. For the like reason—that is, because the Pharisees had blasphemed the source of His miraculous power—He accomplished the raising of Lazarus before the Jews from Jerusalem in connection with a loud prayer to the Father; and in healing the man born blind, John 9, He joined with Himself in the work the temple-fountain Siloam, the holy spring of the priests. 3. Since the Lord could not influence the deaf man by word, it was necessary that He should influence Him by a strongly speaking sign.—Mark everywhere sets a special mark on the sighing of the Lord, as also upon His manner of looking: comp. Mar_8:12. Meyer remarks, and rightly, that this sigh was at the same time a sigh of painful sympathy.—Ephphatha.—An Aramæan word, in the Imperative: Be thou opened. Related, though not identical, is the Hebrew פָּתַח, in the Imper. Niphal.
Mar_7:35. And the string of His tongue was loosed.—Thus he did not merely speak with difficulty on account of his being dumb, as Olshausen supposes.
Mar_7:36. But the more He charged them.—The stronger His prohibition was, the more it enkindled a desire to spread the report of the miracle.
Ver: 37. He hath done all things well; that is, in the healing.—Thence they draw the conclusion: As well the deaf, He hath, &c.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. Nothing is more instructive and full of significance than the prudence of our Lord in respect to the publication of His miracles, as soon as He had entered the borders of the land where there were closer relations with heathenism, and the people were more infected by heathen views:—the history of the woman of Canaan, the present narrative, and the healing of the blind man in eastern Bethsaida, all illustrate this. The reason was, that Christ would have a monotheistic faith, which traces all up to God the Father as the final source, and that He would not suffer His divine power of healing to be mingled and debased with superstitious and magical notions. This holy prudence will explain many and great restraints upon the full influence of Christianity in the heathen or heathen-Christian world, down to the present day.
2. We may compare the doxology of this people, Mar_7:37, with the doxologies of Mar_1:27; Mar_2:12; Mar_3:11, &c. Matthew explains: They glorified the God of Israel.
3. It must be particularly observed here also, that Jesus could affect this deaf and dumb man only through His glance, His immediate revelation, His signs, and manner of action. So far this instance stands alone; for the youth who was deaf and dumb through possession, Mar_9:25, suffered not through the sealing up of his organs, but through the perversion and violence done to his soul. So also the possessed who was dumb, Mat_9:32; and the demoniac who was blind and dumb, Mat_12:22.
4. Our Christian institutions for the deaf and dumb are an abiding monument of that miraculous healing in the mountains: the natural development of the miraculous act of our Lord. The healing of the deaf and dumb by signs, was a type of the instruction of the deaf and dumb.
5. The Romish rite of baptism relies especially on this miraculous history, because it exhibits the use of several symbolical elements: 1. Separation from the multitude: dedication of Christ in baptism. 2. The baptizing priest touches, with an Ephphatha, the ears of the infant; 3. moistens its nostrils with saliva; 4. lays salt in its mouth. The Christian Church should do all this in a real manner, and not in a symbolical. As the symbol for it, and at the same time the reality of it, Christ instituted simple baptism.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
Sufferers to be brought to Jesus.—The healing of the deaf and dumb; or, the double disease and the double cure in their reciprocal connection. 1. The connection between deafness and the inability to speak: a. in physical things; b. in spiritual. 2. Right speaking conditioned by right hearing: in natural life, in spiritual things.—He who does not persevere to the end in hearing aright will surely cease by degrees to speak aright.—The true obedience is of eminently quick and sure hearing.—The education of the deaf and dumb man in faith: 1. He must yield himself up to be led by the strange Wonder-worker, who can only speak to him by looks, into the wilderness; 2. he must see His signs, especially the signs of His prayer and His sighing; 3. he must hear his word of power, that he may have his hearing and be able also to speak.—The holy care of the Lord in all His wonderful works, aiming ever at the glory of God’s name.—How the wonder-working majesty of Jesus is concealed in His humility.—Christ, as He went on His way, opposed and avoided with the same decided earnestness the heathenism which deified men and the world, and the Judaism which deified the letter and ceremonial observances.—Christ had to struggle as well with superstition as with unbelief, to exalt both into faith.—All Christ’s miracles were to the honor of God: 1. All His miracles were miracles of prayer, dependence on God, and strict union with His Father; 2. all His miracles were distinguished, not only in their reason and their end, but also in their form and manner, from the magical works of the heathen world.—Christ ever conceals the thousands of His miracles by the disguise of an unpretending medium.—Christ in His whole being full of saving power.—The sighing of Christ and of His Spirit (Rom_8:26) over the sin and the misery of humanity and the creature.—The sympathy of Christ.—Guilt and innocence in the popular proclamation of Christ’s works.—The words of His astonished people: He hath done all things well: 1. In its human limitation; 2. in its higher significance.—Concerning redemption as concerning the creation, the word holds good, The Lord hath done all things well (Gen_1:31): 1. in the whole, 2. in the details.
Starke:—Where Jesus goes in and out, there is nought but blessing.—Canstein:—When we look at the deaf and dumb, it should make us reverence all the more the glorious gifts of hearing and speech, and determine to use both prudently to the glory of God.—Zeisius:—Most people can both hear and speak; but how great and how common is spiritual deafness and dumbness!—Luther:—Christ begins His cure with the ears, and acts in accordance with nature; since from hearing speaking comes: ἀκοή begets ὑπακοήν.—Lange:—Let us seek silence.—A Christian should often sigh over spiritual and bodily misery.—The ears should be open for God, but shut to the devil and the world.—It is a sign that the tongue has been loosened by Christ, when the words become holy, and the new song is sung to His glory out of a new heart.—Quesnel:—The humility of the benefactor, and the thankfulness of him who has received the benefit, may contend without damaging peace in the heart.—Wondering at God’s works is well; but it should never end there.—Nova Bibl. Tub.:—God doeth all things well, not only in healing and binding up, but also in smiting and wounding.—Zeisius:—As Satan damages and ruins everything, so, on the contrary, Christ repairs all things.—Braune:—The Lord guides all His own in various ways, every one in his own; but the goal for all is the great salvation longed for.—Jesus speaks the right language of signs to the deaf and dumb.—Gerlach:—The words, “He hath done all things well,” seem to express an anticipation of the new creation.—Jesus finds His glory in the deaf ears of hardened sinners, and in the speechless or restrained tongues of unthankful, earthly-minded unbelievers. Even from among them He takes many into solitude with Him: His creating hand touches the sealed ear and the idle tongue, His high-priestly intercession groans to the Father for them, and often His Ephphatha opens the ear and looses the bonds of their tongue, so that they may speak plainly.—Lisco:—The turning of the eyes of Jesus towards heaven should teach us to expect our help from thence, and thither to direct our thanksgivings.—Schleiermacher:—That love which could manifest itself so mightily in the Redeemer is among us in our benevolent institutions. But if we ask what has driven men to think upon this, we can say no more than that it is the selfsame Spirit of love who is for ever striving to meet and overcome all the woes and sufferings of humanity.—What a great and wonderful word is this “Be opened,” which the Redeemer was ever speaking throughout His whole manifestation, and the influences of which have never ceased, but will go on until the whole race of mankind have come to the hearing and knowledge of His salvation, and their tongues shall be loosed to the praise of the Most High!—Heubner:—The significance of the healing of the deaf and dumb (in its spiritual application): 1. The person of the wretched one; 2. the leading him to Jesus; 3. the action of our Lord; 4. His looking up to heaven and sighing; 5. His work; 6. His prohibition (the conversion of a sinner should not be boastfully trumpeted to the world; it should exert its influence silently).—Christ the only Physician who can repair the mischiefs in God’s creation.—How much knowledge of God may come through the senses.—Bauer:—How many are still deaf and dumb towards the kingdom of God!
Klefeker:—Even in the sufferings of His creature man, God finds His glory.—Reinhard:—How we, as Christians, should sanctify to our own good the defects, infirmities, and sicknesses of our bodies.—Huffell:—The Christian’s look to heaven.—Reinhard:—The quiet unostentatious zeal with which Christians should do good.—Thiess:—The deaf and dumb man is a type of us.—Couard:—He took him out of the crowd apart.—Bomhard:—The Ephphatha of our Redeemer: 1. A word of omnipotence and grace; 2. great and glorious in its effect; 3. it is uttered to all of us; 4. it is vain for many; 5. it proves its virtue on believers, ever more beautifully and abundantly; 6. it will one day abolish for ever all our fetters.—Rautenberg:—He hath done all things well: 1. Praise of His perfection—wonder; 2. praise of His benevolence—thanksgiving; 3. praise of His glory—adoration.
Footnotes:
[14][Mar_7:32.—After κωφόν, Lachmann and Tischendorf, after B., D., Δ., Versions, have καί.—Ed.]
[15]Mar_7:35.—Εὐθέως is wanting here in B., D., L., Δ., Versions, Lachmann, Tischendorf. Instead of διηνοίχθησαν, Lachmann and Tischendorf, after B., D., Δ., read ἠνοίγησαν.
[16][Mar_7:36.—Αὐτός is wanting in A., B., L., Δ., Vulgate, Laehmann, Tischendorf.—Ed.)
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv32–35 § 68. — HEALING DEAFNESS AND IMPEDIMENT, Mar_7:31-37.
§ 68. — HEALING DEAFNESS AND IMPEDIMENT, Mar_7:31-37.
32. One that was deaf — That had become so since his birth and learning to speak. An impediment in his speech — A defect of utterance, as some think, which had grown upon him from not hearing his own voice, as is often the case. It was more probably a tongue tie in addition to his deafness, as appears by the description of the cure in Mar_7:35.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv32–34 32. one that was deaf] The healing of this…
32. one that was deaf] The healing of this man, on the east side of the Jordan, is related only by St Mark.
and had an impediment] The word thus rendered does not imply that he was a mute, as some have thought, but that with his deafness was connected a disturbance of the organs of speech, so that he could make no intelligible sounds. Tyndale renders it “one that was deffe and stambred in hys speche.”
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they beseech him] This is one of the few instances where the friends of the sufferer brought the sick man to Christ. We have already met with another instance in the case of the paralytic borne of four (Mar_2:3-5), and shall meet with another in the case of the blind man of Bethsaida in Mar_8:22-26.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv32–35 (32) They bring unto him one that was deaf.—The…
(32) They bring unto him one that was deaf.—The narrative that follows is peculiar to St. Mark. The locality is not named, but was probably somewhere near the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee.
Had an impediment in his speech.—The English rendering is quite accurate, but it may be noted that the word which St. Mark uses stands for “dumb” in the Greek version of Isa_35:6, and may therefore have been used by him to connect the miracle which he describes with that prophecy.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv32–34 They bring unto him one that was deaf, and…
They bring unto him one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech (pwfo mogilalon). The radical sense of kwfov (from koptw) is "blunt" or "dull;" and so it is used to represent both deafness and dumbness. But in St. Mark it means deafness as distinguished from dumbness. (see Mar_9:25) This patient, however, was not alalov absolutely, but mogilalov , i.e. he spoke with difficulty. Long-continued deafness is apt to produce imperfect utterance.
Deaf and dumb.
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Christ"s acts of healing were very often performed while He was passing from place to place. This occurred on his way from the borders of Tyre and Sidon to the eastern side of the Lake of Galilee. His life was like a river, which not only, when it reaches the sea, bears mighty fleets on its bosom, but carries blessings all along its course through secluded pastures and quiet corn-fields. The case of this man was one of physical infirmity and not of demoniac possession. He was deaf, and had an infirmity in his speech. In considering the spiritual significance of a miracle, we must not overlook or underrate the physical blessing. Such an act of healing as this is the germ whence innumerable good works have come. Institutions for the deaf, hospitals for the sick, homes for the crippled, are the smiling harvest arising from this scud-sowing; and the signs by which the deaf and dumb are now taught find their principle in the signs which our Lord, in loving condescension, used in dealing with this afflicted man. The spirit of Christ reigns over and blesses the bodies of men still. If we have the use of all our faculties, and know nothing of the irritability of the deaf, the loneliness of the blind, and the agony of the dumb, let us not only be thankful, but let us remember our responsibility for their use, lest we fall into condemnation because we close our ears against the truth and refuse to move our lips in prayer. Let us also learn to cultivate pity for those who are not so richly endowed, allowing for the irritability of those who can only partly hear, and the cynicism to which the dumb and blind are tempted, and seeking to become eyes to the blind and cars to the deaf. "Be merciful, as your Father in heaven is merciful." Be pitiful and gentle, as he who sighed over and then blessed the sufferer. The spiritual significance of this act of healing is the more important, because deafness to God"s voice and dumbness in his praise are more general, and less manifest to others than the physical privations which are their counterparts. In this light regard the sufferer and observe
I THAT HE WAS DESTITUTE OF TWO OF OUR NOBLEST FACULTIES. In those days there existed none of the mitigations of such distress with which we are familiar, and which are the products of patient and skillful training. He could not hear his children"s voices, nor the cry of warning, nor the whisper of love. All that transpired in the synagogue was but dumb-show to him. He could not take refuge from loneliness in reading, as we can do. His wants he could not articulately express. when we see a child as yet unable to talk we are glad that his wants are limited, simple, well known, and easily supplied. But this sufferer had the thoughts and feelings of a man, yet could not utter them. In our congregations, and outside them, multitudes fail to hear God"s voice. The preacher speaks of sin, but there is no consciousness of it stirred in their hearts; he proclaims free pardon, yet there is no sense of grateful acceptance. Voices around are eloquent of the Father"s love to a Christian, but by these they are unheard. Meanwhile their voices are inarticulate on God"s side. If a word of warning ought to be spoken, if the cause of Christ is to be defended, if there are vices which a God of sobriety and purity would destroy, these are dumb, or are as men who have an impediment in their speech.
II THAT THESE FACULTIES WERE MUTUALLY DEPENDENT. He was not absolutely dumb, but was inarticulate in utterance; therefore, after his cure, it is said "he spake plain." It is true he had some physical defect, for we read, "the string of his tongue was loosed;" but it is evident that he could not speak aright, partly because he could not hear perversion of speech being a general accompaniment of total deafness, for a deaf person cannot detect and alter his mal-pronunciations. There is a connection in spiritual life between the similar faculties of the soul. If we try to teach others, we must be taught of God. The ears must be opened before the mouth speaks plainly, and unless they be, the fluent talker is but a poor stammerer in spiritual utterance. Right speaking is conditioned by right hearing. If, therefore, the habit of evil or foolish talk has been acquired, it is not enough to vow that it shall be broken off, for it is "out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaketh." The fountain wants change, not the channel. Such a one must give up light reading for a time of earnest reflection, must keep clear of vain and idle companionships, and, above all, cultivate fellowship with God, the Source of all wise and holy thought.
III THAT HE WAS BROUGHT TO THE TRUE PHYSICIAN. Satan is the great destroyer and damager, and Christ is the great Repairer and Redeemer. Let us bring our friends to him by counsel, by sympathy, and by prayer.
IV THAT HE LEFT HIMSELF IS THE LORD"S HANDS. Friends asked the Lord to lay his hands on the sufferer, probably because they had seen him do this before. But Christ was divinely free, was far broader in method than their expectations, and he took him by the hand not to cure him by that touch, but to lead him apart; and with this Stranger the helpless man was satisfied trustfully to go. Let us leave our Lord to do with us and with our dear ones as seems good to him. Though he may deal with us differently from his dealing with others, his choice is wisest and best. A.R.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv32, 33, 35 32. One that was deaf, and had an impediment…
32. One that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech. Probably had not been born deaf, as he was not dumb.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v33 Mar 7:33 - Mar 7:34.
Mark
THE PATTERN OF SERVICE
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Mar 7:33 - Mar 7:34.
For what reason was there this unwonted slowness in Christ’s healing works? For what reason was there this unusual emotion ere He spoke the word which cleansed? As to the former question, a partial answer may perhaps be that our Lord is here on half-heathen ground, where aids to faith were much needed, and His power had to be veiled that it might be beheld. Hence the miracle is a process rather than an act; and, advancing as it does by distinct stages, is conformed in appearance to men’s works of mercy, which have to adapt means to ends, and creep to their goal by persevering toil. As to the latter, we know not why the sight of this one poor sufferer should have struck so strongly on the ever-tremulous chords of Christ’s pitying heart; but we do know that it was the vision brought before His spirit by this single instance of the world’s griefs and sicknesses-in which mass, however, the special case before Him was by no means lost-that raised His eyes to heaven in mute appeal, and forced the groan from His breast.
The ‘missionary spirit’ is but one aspect of the Christian spirit. We shall only strengthen the former as we invigorate the latter. Harm has been done, both to ourselves and to that great cause, by seeking to stimulate compassion and efforts for heathen lands by the use of other excitements, which have tended to vitiate even the emotions they have aroused, and are apt to fail as when we need them most. It may therefore be profitable if we turn to Christ’s own manner of working, and His own emotions in His merciful deeds, set forth in this remarkable narrative, as containing lessons for us in our missionary and evangelistic work. I must necessarily omit more than a passing reference to the slow process of healing which this miracle exhibits. But that, too, has its teaching for us, who are so often tempted to think ourselves badly used, unless the fruit of our toil grows up, like Jonah’s gourd, before our eyes. If our Lord was content to reach His end of blessing step by step, we may well accept ‘patient continuance in well-doing’ as the condition indispensable to reaping in due season.
But there are other thoughts still more needful which suggest themselves. Those minute details which this Evangelist ever delights to give of our Lord’s gestures, words, looks, and emotions, not only add graphic force to the narrative but are precious glimpses into the very heart of Christ. That fixed gaze into heaven, that groan which neither the glories seen above nor the conscious power to heal could stifle, that most gentle touch, as if removing material obstacles from the deaf ears, and moistening the stiff tongue that it might move more freely in the parched mouth, that word of authority which could not be wanting even when His working seemed likest a servant’s, do surely carry large lessons for us. The condition of all service, the cost of feeling at which our work must be done, the need that the helpers should identify themselves with the sufferers, and the victorious power of Christ’s word over all deaf ears-these are the thoughts which I desire to connect with our text and to commend to your meditation now.
I. We have here set forth, in the Lord’s heavenward look, the foundation and condition of all true work for God.
The profound questions which are involved in the fact that, as man, Christ held communion with God in the exercise of faith and aspiration, the same in kind as ours, do not concern us here. I speak to those who believe that Jesus is for us the perfect example of complete manhood, and who therefore believe that He is ‘the leader of faith,’ the head of the long processions of those who in every age have trusted in God and been ‘lightened.’ But, perhaps, though that conviction holds its place in our creeds, it has not been as completely incorporated with our thoughts as it should have been. There has, no doubt, been a tendency, operating in much of our evangelical teaching, and in the common stream of orthodox opinion, to except, half unconsciously, the exercises of the religious life from the sphere of Christ’s example, and we need to be reminded that Scripture presents His vow, ‘I will put my trust in Him,’ as the crowning proof of His brotherhood, and that the prints of His kneeling limbs have left their impressions where we kneel before the throne. True, the relation of the Son to the Father involves more than communion-namely, unity. But if we follow the teaching of the Bible, we shall not presume that the latter excludes the former, but understand that the unity is the foundation of perfect communion, and the communion the manifestation, so far as it can be manifested, of the unspeakable unity. The solemn words which shine like stars-starlike in that their height above us shrinks their magnitude and dims their brightness, and in that they are points of radiance partially disclosing, and separated by, abysses of unlighted infinitude-tell us that in the order of eternity, before creatures were, there was communion, for ‘the Word was with God,’ and there was unity, for ‘the Word was God.’ And in the records of the life manifested on earth the consciousness of unity loftily utters itself in the unfathomable declaration, ‘I and my Father are one’; whilst the consciousness of communion, dependent like ours on harmony of will and true obedience, breathes peacefully in the witness which He leaves to Himself: ‘The Father has not left Me alone, for I do always the things that please Him.’
We are fully warranted, then, in supposing that that wistful gaze to heaven means, and may be taken to symbolise, our Lord’s conscious direction of thought and spirit to God as He wrought His work of mercy. There are two distinctions to be noted between His communion with God and ours before we can apply the lesson to ourselves. His heavenward look was not the renewal of interrupted fellowship, but rather, as a man standing firmly on firm rock may yet lift his foot to plant it again where it was before, and settle himself in his attitude before he strikes with all his might; so we may say Christ fixes Himself where He always stood, and grasps anew the hand that He always held, before He does the deed of power. The communion that had never been broken was renewed; how much more the need that in our work for God the renewal of the-alas! too sadly sundered-fellowship should ever precede and always accompany our efforts! And again, Christ’s fellowship was with the Father, while ours must be with the Father through the Son. The communion to which we are called is with Jesus Christ, in whom we find God.
The manner of that intercourse, and the various discipline of ourselves with a view to its perfecting which Christian prudence prescribes, need not concern us here. As for the latter, let us not forget that a wholesome and wide-reaching self-denial cannot be dispensed with. Hands that are full of gilded toys and glass beads cannot grasp durable riches, and eyes that have been accustomed to glaring lights see only darkness when they look up to the violet heaven with all its stars. As to the former, every part of our nature above the simply animal is capable of God, and the communion ought to include our whole being. Christ is truth for the understanding, authority for the will, love for the heart, certainty for the hope, fruition for all the desires, and for the conscience at once cleansing and law. Fellowship with Him is no indolent passiveness, nor the luxurious exercise of certain emotions, but the contact of the whole nature with its sole adequate object and rightful Lord.
Such intercourse, brethren, lies at the foundation of all work for God. It is the condition of all our power. It is the measure of all our success. Without it we may seem to realise the externals of prosperity, but it will be all illusion. With it we may perchance seem to ‘spend our strength for nought’; but heaven has its surprises; and those who toiled, nor left their hold of their Lord in all their work, will have to say at last with wonder, as they see the results of their poor efforts, ‘Who hath begotten me these? behold, I was left alone; these, where had they been?’
Consider in few words the manifold ways in which the indispensable prerequisite of all right effort for Christ may be shown to be communion with Christ.
The heavenward look is the renewal of our own vision of the calm verities in which we trust, the recourse for ourselves to the realities which we desire that others should see. And what is equal in persuasive power to the simple utterance of one’s own intense conviction? He only will infuse his own religion into other minds, whose religion is not a set of hard dogmas, but is fused by the heat of personal experience into a river of living fire. It will flow then, not otherwise. The only claim which the hearts of men will listen to, in those who would win them to spiritual beliefs, is that ancient one: ‘That which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, declare we unto you.’ Mightier than all arguments, than all ‘proofs of the truth of the Christian religion,’ and penetrating into a sphere deeper than that of the understanding, is the simple proclamation, ‘We have found the Messias.’ If we would give sight to the blind, we must ourselves be gazing into heaven. Only when we testify of that which we see, as one might who, standing in a beleaguered city, discerned on the horizon the filmy dust-cloud through which the spearheads of the deliverers flashed at intervals, shall we win any to gaze with us till they too behold and know themselves set free.
The heavenward look draws new strength from the source of all our might. In our work, dear brethren, contemplating as it ought to do exclusively spiritual results, what we do depends largely on what we are, and what we are depends on what we receive, and what we receive depends on the depth and constancy of our communion with God. ‘The help which is done upon earth He doeth it all Himself.’ We and our organisations are but the channels through which this might is poured; and if we choke the bed with turbid masses of drift and heavy rocks of earthly thoughts, or build from bank to bank thick dams of worldliness compact with slime of sin, how shall the full tide flow through us for the healing of the salt and barren places? Will it not leave its former course silted up with sand, and cut for itself new outlets, while the useless quays that once rang with busy life stand silent, and ‘the cities are solitary that were full of people’? We are
‘The trumpet at Thy lips, the clarion
Full of Thy cry, sonorous with Thy breath.’
Let us see to it that by fellowship with Christ we keep the passage clear, and become recipients of the inspiration which shall thrill our else-silent spirits into the blast of loud alarum and the ringing proclamation of the true King.
The heavenward look will guard us from the temptations which surround all our service, and the distractions which lay waste our lives. It is habitual communion with Christ that alone will give the persistency that makes systematic, continuous efforts for Him possible, and yet will keep systematic work from degenerating, as it ever tends to do, into mechanical work. There is no greater virtue in irregular desultory service than in systematised labour. The one is not freer from besetting temptations than the other, only the temptations are of different sorts. Machinery saves manual toil, and multiplies force. But we may have too heavy machinery for what engineers call the boiler power,-too many wheels and shafts for the steam we have to drive them with. What we want is not less organisation, or other sorts of it, but more force. Any organisation will do if we have God’s Spirit breathing through it. None will be better than so much old iron if we have not.
We are ever apt to trust to our work, to do it without a distinct recurrence at each moment to the principles on which it rests, and the motives by which it should be actuated,-to become so absorbed in details that we forget the purpose which alone gives them meaning, to over-estimate the external aspects of it, to lose sight of the solemn truths which make it so grand, and to think of it as commonplace because it is common, as ordinary because it is familiar. And from these most real dangers, which beset us all, there is no refuge but the frequent, the habitual, gaze into the open heavens, which will show us again the realities of things, and bring to our spirits, dwarfed even by habits of goodness, the renewal of former motives by the vision of Jesus Christ.
Such constant communion will further surround us with an atmosphere through which none of the many influences which threaten our Christian life and our Christian work can penetrate. As the diver in his bell sits dry at the bottom of the sea, and draws a pure air from the free heavens far above him, and is parted from that murderous waste of green death that clings so closely round the translucent crystal walls which keep him safe; so we, enclosed in God, shall repel from ourselves all that would overflow to destroy us and our work, and may by His grace lay deeper than the waters some courses in the great building that shall one day rise, stately and many-mansioned, from out of the conquered waves. For ourselves, and for all that we do for Him, living communion with God is the means of power and peace, of security and success.
It was never more needful than now. Feverish activity rules in all spheres of life. The iron wheels of the car which bears the modern idol of material progress whirl fast, and crush remorselessly all who cannot keep up the pace. Christian effort is multiplied and systematised beyond all precedent. And all these facts make calm fellowship with God hard to compass. The measure of the difficulty is the measure of the need. I, for my part, believe that there are few Christian duties more neglected than that of meditation, the very name of which has fallen of late into comparative disuse, that augurs ill for the frequency of the thing. We are so busy thinking, discussing, defending, inquiring; or preaching, and teaching, and working, that we have no time and no leisure of heart for quiet contemplation, without which the exercise of the intellect upon Christ’s truth will not feed, and busy activity in Christ’s cause may starve, the soul. There are few things which the Church of this day in all its parts needs more than to obey the invitation, ‘Come ye yourselves apart into a lonely place, and rest a while.’
Christ has set us the example. Let our prayers ascend as His did, and in our measure the answers which came to Him will not fail us. For us, too, ‘praying, the heavens’ shall be ‘opened,’ and the peace-bringing spirit fall dove-like on our meek hearts. For us, too, when the shadow of our cross lies black and gaunt upon our paths, and our souls are troubled, communion with heaven will bring the assurance, audible to our ears at least, that God will glorify Himself even in us. If, after many a weary day, we seek to hold fellowship with God as He sought it on the Mount of Olives, or among the solitudes of the midnight hills, or out in the morning freshness of the silent wilderness, like Him we shall have men gathering around us to hear us speak when we come forth from ‘the secret place of the Most High.’ If our prayer, like His, goes before our mighty deeds, the voice that first pierced the skies will penetrate the tomb, and make the dead stir in their grave-clothes. If our longing, trustful look is turned to the heavens, we shall not speak in vain on earth when we say, ‘Be opened!’
Brethren, we cannot do without the communion which our Master needed. Do we delight in what strengthened Him? Does our work rest upon the basis of inward fellowship with God which underlay His? Alas! that our Pattern should be our rebuke, and that the readiest way to force home our faults on our consciences should be the contemplation of the life which we say that we try to copy!
II. We have here pity for the evils we would remove, set forth by the Lord’s sigh.
The frequency with which this Evangelist records our Lord’s emotions on the sight of sin and sorrow has been often noticed. In his pages we read of Christ’s grief at the hardness of men’s hearts, of His marvelling because of their unbelief, of His being moved with compassion for an outcast leper and a hungry multitude, of His sighing deeply in His spirit when prejudiced hostility, assuming the appearance of candid inquiry, asked of Him a sign from heaven. All these instances of true human feeling, like His tears at the grave of Lazarus, and His weariness as He sat on the well, and His tired sleep in the stern of the little fishing-boat, and His hunger and His thirst, are very precious as aids in realising His perfect manhood; but they have a worth beyond even that. They show us how the manifold ills and evils of man’s fate and conduct appealed to the only pure heart that ever beat, and how quickly and warmly it, by reason of its purity, throbbed in sympathy with all the woe. One might have thought that in the present case the consciousness that His help was so near would have been sufficient to repress the sigh. One might have thought that the heavenward look would have stayed the tears. But neither the happiness of active benevolence, nor the knowledge of immediate cure, nor the glories above flooding His vision, could lift the burden from His labouring breast. And surely in this too, we may discern a law for all our efforts, that their worth shall be in proportion to the expense of feeling at which they are done. Men predict the harvests in Egypt by the height which the river marks on the gauge of the inundation. So many feet there represent so much fertility. Tell me the depth of a Christian man’s compassion, and I will tell you the measure of his fruitfulness.
What was it that drew that sigh from the heart of Jesus? One poor man stood before him, by no means the most sorely afflicted of the many wretched ones whom He healed. But He saw in him more than a solitary instance of physical infirmities. Did there not roll darkly before His thoughts that whole weltering sea of sorrow that moans round the world of which here is but one drop that He could dry up? Did there not rise black and solid, against the clear blue to which He had been looking, the mass of man’s sin, of which these bodily infirmities were but a poor symbol as well as a consequence? He saw, as none but He could bear to see, the miserable realities of human life. His knowledge of all that man might be, of all that the most of men were becoming, His power of contemplating in one awful aggregate the entire sum of sorrows and sins, laid upon His heart a burden which none but He has ever endured. His communion with heaven deepened the dark shadow on earth, and the eyes that looked up to God and saw Him, could not but see foulness where others suspected none, and murderous messengers of hell walking in darkness unpenetrated by mortal sight. And all that pain of clearer knowledge of the sorrowfulness of sorrow, and the sinfulness of sin, was laid upon a heart in which was no selfishness to blunt the sharp edge of the pain nor any sin to stagnate the pity that flowed from the wound. To Jesus Christ, life was a daily martyrdom before death had ‘made the sacrifice complete,’ and He ‘bore our griefs and carried our sorrows’ through many a weary hour before He ‘bare them in His own body on the tree.’ Therefore, ‘Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law’ which Christ obeyed, becomes a command for all who would draw men to Him. And true sorrow, a sharp and real sense of pain, becomes indispensable as preparation for, and accompaniment to, our work.
Mark how in us, as in our Lord, the sigh of compassion is to be connected with the look to heaven. It follows upon that gaze. The evils become more real, more terrible, by their startling contrast with the unshadowed light which lives above cloudracks and mists. It is a sharp shock to turn from the free sweep of the heavens, starry and radiant, to the sights that meet us in ‘this dim spot which men call earth.’ Thus habitual communion with God is the root of the truest and purest compassion. It does not withdraw us from our fellow feeling with our brethren, it cultivates no isolation for undisturbed beholding of God. It at once supplies a standard by which to measure the greatness of man’s godlessness, and therefore of his gloom, and a motive for laying the pain of these upon our hearts, as if they were our own. He has looked into the heavens to little purpose who has not learned how bad and how sad the world now is, and how God bends over it in pitying love.
And that same fellowship which will clear our eyes and soften our hearts, is also the one consolation which we have when our sense of ‘all the ills that flesh is heir to’ becomes deep nearly to despair. When one thinks of the real facts of human life, and tries to conceive of the frightful meanness and passion and hate and wretchedness that have been howling and shrieking and gibbering and groaning through dreary millenniums, one’s brain reels, and hope seems to be absurdity, and joy a sin against our fellows, as a feast would be in a house next door to where was a funeral. I do not wonder at settled sorrow falling upon men of vivid imagination, keen moral sense, and ordinary sensitiveness, when they brood long on the world as it is. But I do wonder at the superficial optimism which goes on with its little prophecies about human progress, and its rose-coloured pictures of human life, and sees nothing to strike it dumb for ever in men’s writhing miseries, blank failures, and hopeless end. Ah! brethren, if it were not for the heavenward look, how could we bear the sight of earth? ‘We see not yet all things put under Him.’ No! God knows, far enough off from that. Man’s folly, man’s submission to the creatures he should rule, man’s agonies, and man’s transgression, are a grim contrast to the Psalmist’s vision. If we had only earth to look to, despair of the race, expressed in settled melancholy apathy or in fierce cynicism, were the wisest attitude. But there is more within our view than earth; ‘we see Jesus’; we look to the heaven, and as we behold the true Man, we see more than ever, indeed, how far from that pattern we all are; but we can bear the thought of what men as yet have been, when we see that perfect Example of what men shall be. The root and the consolation of our sorrow for men’s evils is communion with God.
Let me remind you, too, that still more dangerous than the pity which is not based upon, and corrected by, the look to heaven, is the pity which does not issue in strenuous work. It is easy to excite people’s emotions; but it is perilous for both the operator and the subject, unless they be excited through the understanding, and pass on the impulse to the will and the practical powers. The surest way to petrify a heart is to stimulate the feelings, and give them nothing to do. They will never recover their original elasticity if they have been wantonly drawn forth thus. Coldness, hypocrisy, spurious sentimentalism, and a whole train of affectations and falsehoods follow the steps of an emotional religion, which divorces itself from active work. Pity is meant to impel to help. Let us not be content with painting sad and true pictures of men’s woes,-of the gloomy hopelessness of idolatry, for instance-but let us remember that every time our compassion is stirred, and no action ensues, our hearts are in some measure indurated, and the sincerity of our religion in some degree impaired. White-robed Pity is meant to guide the strong powers of practical help to their work. She is to them as eyes to go before them and point their tasks. They are to her as hands to execute her gentle will. Let us see to it that we rend them not apart; for idle pity is unblessed and fruitless as a sigh cast into the fragrant air, and unpitying work is more unblessed and fruitless still. Let us remember, too, that Christlike and indispensable as Pity is, she is second, and not first. Let us take heed that we preserve that order in our own minds, and in our endeavours to stimulate one another. For if we reverse it, we shall surely find the fountains of compassion drying up long before the wide stretches of thirsty land are watered, and the enterprises which we have sought to carry on by appealing to a secondary motive, languishing when there is most need for vigour. Here is the true sequence which must be observed in our missionary and evangelistic work, ‘Looking up to heaven, He sighed.’
Dear brethren! must we not all acknowledge woful failures in this regard? How much of our service, our giving, our preaching, our planning, has been carried on without one thought of the ills and godlessness we profess to be seeking to cure! If some angel’s touch could annihilate all that portion of our activity, what gaps would be left in all our subscription lists, our sermons, and our labours both at home and abroad! Annihilate, do I say? It is done already. Such work is nothing, and comes to nothing. ‘Yea, it shall not be planted; yea, it shall not be sown; and He shall also blow upon it, and it shall wither.’
The hindrances to such abiding consciousness of and pity for the world’s woes run all down to the one tap-root of all sin, selfishness. The remedies run all up to the common form of all goodness, the self-absorbing communion with Jesus Christ. And besides that mother-tincture of everything wrong, subsidiary impediments may be found in the small amounts of time and effort which any of us give to bring the facts of the world’s condition vividly before our minds. The destruction of all emotion is the indolent acquiescence in general statements which we are too lazy or busy to break up into individual cases. To talk about hundreds of millions of idolaters leaves the heart untouched. But take one soul out of all that mass, and try to feel what his life is in its pitchy darkness, broken only by lurid lights of fear and sickly gleams of hope, in its passions ungoverned by love, its remorse uncalmed by pardon, its affections feeling like the tendrils of some climbing plant for the stay they cannot find, and in the cruel blackness that swallows it up irrevocably at last. Follow it from the childhood that knows no discipline to the grave that knows no waking, and will not the solitary instance come nearer our hearts than the millions? But however that may be, the sluggishness of our imaginations, the very familiarity with the awful facts, our own feeble hold on Christ, our absorption in personal interests, the incompleteness and desultoriness of our communion with our Lord, do all concur with our natural selfishness to make a sadly large proportion of our apparent labours for God and men utterly cold and unfeeling, and therefore utterly worthless. Has the benighted world ever caused us as much pain as some trivial pecuniary loss has done? Have we ever felt the smart of the gaping wounds through which our brothers’ blood is pouring forth as much as we do the tiniest scratch on our own fingers? Does it sound to us like exaggerated rhetoric when a prophet breaks out, ‘Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep night and day!’ or when an Apostle in calmer tones declares, ‘I have great heaviness and continual sorrow of heart’? Some seeds are put to steep and swell in water, that they may be tested before sowing. The seed which we sow will not germinate unless it be saturated with our tears. And yet the sorrow must be blended with joy; for it is glad labour which is ordinarily productive labour-just as the growing time is the changeful April, and one knows not whether the promise of harvest is most sure in the clouds that drop fatness, or in the sunshine that makes their depths throb with whitest light, and touches the moist-springing blades into emeralds and diamonds. The gladness comes from the heavenward look, the pain is breathed in the deep-drawn sigh; both must be united in us if we would ‘approve ourselves as the servants of God-as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.’
III. We have here loving contact with those whom we would help set forth in the Lord’s touch.
The reasons for the variety observable in Christ’s method of communicating supernatural blessing were, probably, too closely connected with unrecorded differences in the spiritual conditions of the recipients to be distinctly traceable by us. But though we cannot tell why a particular method was employed in a given case, why now a word, and now a symbolic action, now the touch of His hand, and now the hem of His garment, appeared to be the vehicles of His power, we can discern the significance of these divers ways, and learn great lessons from them all.
His touch was sometimes obviously the result of what one may venture to call instinctive tenderness, as when He lifted the little children in His arms and laid His hands upon their heads. It was, I suppose, always the spontaneous expression of love and compassion, even when it was something more. The touch of His hand on the ghastly glossiness of the leper’s skin was, no doubt, His assertion of priestly functions, and of elevation above all laws of defilement; but what was it to the poor outcast, who for years had never felt the warm contact of flesh and blood? It always indicated that He Himself was the source of healing and life. It always expressed His identification of Himself with sorrow and sickness. So that it is in principle analogous to, and may be taken as illustrative of, that transcendent act whereby He ‘became flesh, and dwelt among us.’ Indeed, the very word by which our Lord’s taking the blind man by the hand is described in the chapter following our text, is that employed in the Epistle to the Hebrews when, dealing with the true brotherhood of Jesus, the writer says, ‘He took not hold of angels, but of the seed of Abraham He taketh hold.’ Christ’s touch is His willing contact with man’s infirmities and sins, that He may strengthen and hallow.
And the lesson is one of universal application. Wherever men would help their fellows, this is a prime requisite, that the would-be helper should come down to the level of those whom he desires to aid. If we wish to teach, we must stoop to think the scholar’s thoughts. The master who has forgotten his boyhood will have poor success. If we would lead to purer emotions, we must try to enter into the lower feelings which we labour to elevate. It is of no use to stand at the mouth of the alleys we wish to cleanse, with our skirts daintily gathered about us, and smelling-bottle in hand, to preach homilies on the virtues of cleanliness. We must go in among the filth, and handle it, if we want to have it cleared away. The degraded must feel that we do not shrink from them, or we shall do them no good. The leper, shunned by all, and ashamed of himself because everybody loathes him, hungers in his hovel for the grasp of a hand that does not care for defilement, if it can bring cleansing. Even in regard to common material helps the principle holds good. We are too apt to cast our doles to the poor like bones to a dog, and then to wonder at what we are pleased to think men’s ingratitude. A benefit may be so conferred as to hurt more than a blow; and we cannot be surprised if so-called charity which is given with contempt and a sense of superiority, should be received with a scowl, and chafe a man’s spirit like a fetter. Such gifts bless neither him who gives nor him who takes. We must put our hearts into them, if we would win hearts by them. We must be ready, like our Master, to take blind beggars by the hand, if we would bless or help them. The despair and opprobrium of our modern civilisation; the gulf growing wider and deeper between Dives and Lazarus, between Belgravia and Whitechapel; the mournful failure of legalised help, and of delegated efforts to bridge it over, the darkening ignorance, the animal sensuousness, the utter heathenism that lives in every town of England, within a stone’s-throw of Christian houses, and near enough to hear the sound of public worship-will yield to nothing but that sadly forgotten law which enjoins personal contact with the sinful and the suffering, as one chief condition of raising them from the black mire in which they welter.
But the same law has its special application in regard to the enterprise of Christian missions.
It defines the spirit in which Christian men should proclaim the Gospel. The effect of much well-meant Christian effort is simply to irritate. People are very quick to catch delicate intonations which reveal a secret sense, ‘how much better, wiser, more devout I am than these people!’ and wherever a trace of that appears in our work, the good of it is apt to be marred. We all know how hackneyed the charge of spiritual pride and Pharisaic self-complacency is, and, thank God, how unjust it often is. But averse as men may be to the truths which humble, and willing as they may be to assume that the very effort on our parts to present these to others implies a claim which they resent, we may at least learn from the threadbare calumny, what strikes men about our position, and what rouses their antagonism to us. It is allowable to be taught by our enemies, especially when it is such a lesson as this, that we must carefully divest our evangelistic work of apparent pretensions to superiority, and take our stand by the side of those to whom we speak. We cannot lecture men into the love of Christ, We can win them to it only by showing Christ’s love to them; and not the least important element in that process is the exhibition of our own love. We have a Gospel to speak of which the very heart is that the Son of God stooped to become one with the lowliest and most sinful; and how can that Gospel be spoken with power unless we too stoop like Him? We have to echo the invitation, ‘Learn of Me, for I am lowly in heart’; and how can such divine words flow from lips into which like grace has not been poured? Our theme is a Saviour who shrank from no sinner, who gladly consorted with publicans and harlots, who laid His hand on pollution, and His heart, full of God and of love, on hearts reeking with sin; and how can our message correspond with our theme if, even in delivering it, we are saying to ourselves, ‘The Temple of the Lord are we: this people which knoweth not the law is cursed’? Let us beware of the very real danger which besets us in this matter, and earnestly seek to make ourselves one with those whom we would gather into Christ, by actual familiarity with their condition, and by identification of ourselves in feeling with them, after the example of that greatest of Christian teachers who became ‘all things to all men, that by all means he might gain some’; after the higher example, which Paul followed, of that dear Lord who, being Highest, descended to the lowest, and in the days of His humiliation was not content with speaking words of power from afar, nor abhorred the contact of mortality and disease and loathsome corruption; but laid His hands upon death, and it lived; upon sickness, and it was whole; on rotting leprosy, and it was sweet as the flesh of a little child.
The same principle might be further applied to our Christian work, as affecting the form in which we should present the truth. The sympathetic identification of ourselves with those to whom we try to carry the Gospel will certainly make us wise to know how to shape our message. Seeing with their eyes, we shall be able to graduate the light. Thinking their thoughts, and having in some measure succeeded, by force of sheer community of feeling, in having, as it were, got inside their minds, we shall unconsciously, and without effort, be led to such aspects of Christ’s all-comprehensive truth as they most need. There will be no shooting over people’s heads, if we love them well enough to understand them. There will be no toothless generalities, when our interest in men keeps their actual condition and temptations clear before us. There will be no flinging fossil doctrines at them from a height, as if Christ’s blessed Gospel were, in another than the literal sense, ‘a stone of offence,’ if we have taken our place on their level. And without such sympathy, these and a thousand other weaknesses and faults will certainly vitiate much of our Christian effort.
Let me not be misunderstood when I speak of adapting our presentation of the Gospel to the wants of those to whom we carry it. That general statement may express the plainest dictate of Christian prudence or the most dangerous practical error. The one great truth of the Gospel wants no adaptation, by our handling, to any soul of man. It is fitted for all, and demands only plain, loving, earnest statement. There must be no tampering with central verities, nor any diplomatic reserve on the plea of consulting the needs of the men whom we address. Every sinful spirit needs the simple Gospel of salvation by Jesus Christ more than it needs anything else. Nor does adaptation mean deferential stretching a point to meet man’s wishes in our presentation of the truth. Their wishes have to be contravened, that their wants may be met. The truth which a man or a generation requires most is the truth which he or it likes least; and the true Christian teacher’s adaptation of his message will consist quite as much in opposing the desires and contradicting the lies, as in seeking to meet the felt wants, of the world. Nauseous medicines or sharp lancets are adapted to the sick man, quite as truly as pleasant food and soothing ointment.
But remembering all this, we still have a wide field for the operation of practical wisdom and loving common-sense, in determining the form of our message and the manner of our action. And not the least important of qualifications for solving the problems connected therewith is cheerful identification of ourselves with the thoughts and feelings of those whom we would fain draw to the love of God. Such contact with men will win their hearts, as well as soften ours, It will make them willing to hear, as well as us wise to speak. It will enrich our own lives with wide experience and multiplied interests. It will lift us out of the enchanted circle which selfishness draws around us. It will silently proclaim the Lord from whom we have learnt it. The clasp of the hand will be precious, even apart from the virtue that may flow from it, and may be to many a soul burdened with a consciousness of corruption, the dawning of belief in a love that does not shrink even from its foulness. Let us preach the Lord’s touch as the source of all cleansing. Let us imitate it in our lives, that ‘if any will not hear the word, they may without the word be won.’
IV. We have here the true healing power and the consciousness of wielding it set forth in the Lord’s authoritative word.
All the rest of His action was either the spontaneous expression of His true participation in human sorrow, or a merciful veiling of His glory that sense-bound eyes might see it the better. But the word was the utterance of His will, and that was omnipotent. The hand laid on the sick, the blind or the deaf was not even the channel of His power. The bare putting forth of His energy was all-sufficient. In these we see the loving, pitying man. In this blazes forth, yet more loving, yet more compassionate, the effulgence of manifest God. Therefore so often do we read the very syllables with which His ‘voice then shook the earth,’ vibrating through all the framework of the material universe. Therefore do the Gospels bid us listen when He rebukes the fever, and it departs; when He says to the demons ‘Go,’ and they go; when one word louder in its human articulation than the howling wind hushes the surges; when ‘Talitha cumi’ brings back the fair young spirit from dreary wanderings among the shades of death. Therefore was it a height of faith not found in Israel when the Gentile soldier, whose training had taught him the power of absolute authority, as heathenism had driven him to long for a man who should speak with the imperial sway of a god, recognised in His voice an all-commanding power. From of old, the very signature of divinity has been declared to be, ‘He spake, and it was done’; and He, the breath of whose lips could set in motion material changes, is that Eternal Word, by whom all things were made.
What unlimited consciousness of sovereign dominion sounds in that imperative from His autocratic lips! It is spoken in deaf ears, but He knows that it will be heard. He speaks as the fontal source, not as the recipient channel, of healing. He anticipates no delay, no resistance. There is neither effort nor uncertainty in the curt command. He is sure that He has power, and He is sure that the power is His own.
There is no analogy here between us and Him. Alone, fronting the whole race of man, He stands-utterer of a word which none can say after Him, possessor of unshared might, ‘and of His fulness do all we receive.’ But even from that divine authority and solitary sovereign consciousness we may gather lessons of infinite value for all Christian workers. Of His fulness we have received, and the power of the word on His lips may teach us that of His word even on ours, as the victorious certainty with which He spake His will of healing may remind us of the confidence with which it becomes us to proclaim His name.
His will was almighty then. Is it less mighty or less loving now? Does it not gather all the world in the sweep of its mighty purpose of mercy? His voice pierced then into the dull, cold ear of death, and has it become weaker since? His word spoken by Him was enough to banish the foul spirits that run riot, swine-like, in the garden of God in man’s soul, trampling down and eating up its flowers and fruitage; is the word spoken of Him less potent to cast them out? Were not all the mighty deeds which He wrought by the breath of His lips on men’s bodies prophecies of the yet mightier ones which His Will of love, and the utterance of that Will by stammering lips, may work on men’s souls? Let us not in our faintheartedness number up our failures, the deaf that will not hear, the dumb that will not speak His praise, nor unbelievingly say, ‘Christ’s own word was mighty, but the word concerning Christ is weak on our lips.’ Not so; our lips are unclean, and our words are weak, but His word-the utterance of His loving Will that men should be saved-is what it always was and always will be. We have it, brethren, to proclaim. Did our Master countenance the faithless contrast between the living force of His word when He dwelt on earth, and the feebleness of it as He speaks through His servant? If He did, what did He mean when He said, ‘He that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall he do also, and greater works than these shall he do, because I go unto the Father’? And the reflection of Christ’s triumphant consciousness of power should irradiate our spirits as we do His work, like the gleam from gazing on God’s glory which shone on the lawgiver’s stern face while he talked with men. We have everything to assure us that we cannot fail. The manifest fitness of the Gospel to be the food of all souls; the victories of nineteen centuries, which at least prove that all conditions of society, all classes of civilisation, all varieties of race, all peculiarities of individual temperament, all depths of degradation and distances of alienation, are capable of receiving the word, which, like corn, can grow in every latitude, and, though it be an exotic everywhere, can anywhere be naturalised; the firm promises of unchanging faithfulness, the universal aspect of Christ’s work, the prevalence of His continual intercession, the indwelling of His abiding Spirit, and, not least, the unerring voice of our own experience of the power of the truth to bless and save-all these are ours. In view of these, what should make us doubt? Unwavering confidence is the only attitude that corresponds to such certainties. We have a rock to build on; let us build on it with rock. Putting fear and hesitancy far from us, let us gird ourselves with the joyful strength of assured victory, striking as those who know that conquest is bound to their standard, and who through all the dust of the field see the fair vision of the final triumph. The work is done before we begin it. ‘It is finished’ was a clarion blast proclaiming that all was won when all seemed lost. Weary ages have indeed to roll away before the great voice from heaven shall declare, ‘It is done’; but all that lies between the two is but the gradual unfolding and appropriating of the results which are already secured. The ‘strong man’ is bound; what remains is but the ‘spoiling of his house.’ The head is bruised; what remains is but the dying lashing of the snaky horror’s powerless coils. ‘I send you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labour.’ The tearful sowing in the stormy winter’s day has been done by the Son of Man. For us there remains the joy of harvest-hot and hard work, indeed, but gladsome too.
Then, however languor and despondency may sometimes tempt us, thinking of slow advancement and of dying men who fade from the place of the living before the gradual light has reached their eyes, our duty is plain-to be sure that the word we carry cannot fail. You remember the old story how, when Jerusalem was in her hour of direst need, and the army of Babylon lay around her battered walls, the prophet was bid to buy ‘the field that is in Anathoth, in the country of Benjamin,’ for a sign that the transient fury of the invader would be beaten back, that Israel might again dwell safely in the land. So with us, the host of our King’s enemies comes up like a river strong and mighty; but all this world, held though it be by the usurper is still ‘Thy land, O Immanuel,’ and over it all Thy peaceful rule shall be established! Many things in this day tempt the witnesses of God to speak with doubting voice. Angry opposition, contemptuous denial, complacent assumption that a belief in old-fashioned evangelical truth is, ipso facto, a proof of mental weakness, abound. Let them not rob us of our confidence. Shame on us if we let ourselves be frightened from it by a sarcasm or a laugh! Do you fall back on all these grounds for assured reliance to which I have referred, and make the good old answer yours, ‘Why, herein is a marvellous thing, that ye know not whence He is, and yet-He hath opened mine eyes’! Trust the word which you have to speak. Speak it and work for its diffusion as if you did trust it. Do not preach it as if it were a notion of your own. In so far as it is, it will share the fate of all human conceptions of divine realities-’will have its day, and cease to be.’ Do not speak it as if it were some new nostrum for curing the ills of humanity, which might answer or might not. Speak it as if it were what it is-’the word of God which liveth and abideth for ever.’ Speak it as if you were what you are, neither its inventors nor its discoverers, but only its messengers, who have but to ‘preach the preaching which He bids’ you. And to all the widespread questionings of this day, filmy and air-filling as the gossamers of an autumn evening, to all the theories of speculation, and all the panaceas of unbelieving philanthropy, present the solid certainties of your inmost experience, and the yet more solid certainty of that all-loving name and all-sufficient work on which these repose. ‘We know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness. And we know that the Son of God is come.’ Then our proclamation, ‘This is the true God and eternal life,’ will not be in vain; and our loving entreaty, ‘Keep yourselves from idols,’ will be heard and yielded to in many a land.
The sum of the whole matter is briefly this. The root of all our efficiency in this great task to which we, unworthy, have been called, is in fellowship with Jesus Christ. ‘The branch cannot bear fruit of itself; without Me ye can do nothing.’ Living near Him, and growing like Him by gazing upon Him, His beauty will pass into our faces, His tender pity into our hearts, His loving identification of Himself with men’s pains and sins will fashion our lives; and the word which He spoke with authority and assured confidence will be strong when we speak it with like calm certainty of victory. If the Church of Christ will but draw close to her Lord till the fulness of His life and the gentleness of His pity flow into her heart and limbs, she will then be able to breathe the life which she has received into the prostrate bulk of a dead world. Only she must do as the meekest of the prophets did in a like miracle. She must not shrink from the touch of the cold clay nor the odour of incipient corruption, but lip to lip and heart to heart must lay herself upon the dead and he will live.
The pattern for our work, dear brethren, is before us in the Lord’s look, His sigh, His touch, His word. If we take Him for the example, and Him for the motive, Him for the strength, Him for the theme, Him for the reward, of our service, we may venture to look to Him as the prophecy of our success, and to be sure that when our own faint hearts or an unbelieving world question the wisdom of our enterprise or the worth of our efforts, we may answer as He did, ‘Go and show again those things which ye do hear and see; the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the Gospel preached unto them.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. W. McGarvey 1914 · Public Domain On v32 J. W. McGarvey's The Fourfold Gospel [LXIX. Deaf Stammerer…
J. W. McGarvey's The Fourfold Gospel [LXIX. Deaf Stammerer Healed].
LXIX. THE DEAF STAMMERER HEALED AND FOUR THOUSAND FED. aMATT. XV. 30-39; bMARK VII. 32-VIII. 9.
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b32 And they bring unto him one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech [The man had evidently learned to speak before he lost his hearing. Some think that defective hearing had caused the impediment in his speech, but Mar_7:35 suggests that he was tongue-tied]; and they beseech him to put his hand upon him. 33 And he took him aside from the multitude privately, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat, and touched his tongue [He separated him from the crowd to avoid publicity (see Gen_1:31]; he maketh even the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak. [These were the people who had asked Jesus to depart from their coast on account of the loss of their swine. A complete change in their feelings had taken place since that day.] a30 And there came unto him great multitudes, having with them the lame, blind, dumb, maimed, and many others, and they cast them down at his feet; and he healed them [We have here an instance of the common difference between the narratives of Matthew and Mark. Where Matthew is wont to mention the healing of multitudes, Mark picks out one of the most remarkable cases and describes it minutely. The hasty action of those who brought in the sick and returned to bring in others is indicated by the way in which they cast down their burdens at Jesus' feet]: 31; insomuch that the multitude wondered, when they saw the dumb speaking, the maimed whole, the lame walking, and the blind seeing: and they glorified the God of Israel [The people whom Jesus healed were Jews, but daily intercourse with the heathen of Decapolis had tended to cool their religious ardor. The works of Jesus revived this ardor and caused them to praise the God whose prophet they esteemed Jesus to be.] a32 And b1 In those days [i. e., while Christ was in Decapolis], when there was again a great multitude, and they had nothing to eat, aJesus called his disciples unto him, and said, bsaith, unto [404] them, 2 I have compassion on the multitude, because they continue with me now three days, and have nothing to eat: aAnd I would not send them away fasting, lest haply they faint on the way. b3 and if I send them away fasting to their home, they will faint on the way: for some of them are come from far. [When the five thousand had been caught in similar circumstances, the apostles had come with suggestions to Jesus, but now, being taught by experience, they keep silence and let Jesus manage as he will. The multitude had not been three days without food, but it had been with Jesus three days and was now without food.] 4 And his { athe disciples say unto banswered him, Whence shall one be able to fill these men with bread here in a desert place? aWhence should we have so many loaves in a desert place as to fill so great a multitude? [It seems strange that the apostles should ask such a question after having assisted in feeding the five thousand. But the failure to expect a miracle, despite previous experience, was a common occurrence in the history of Israel and of the twelve ( Num_11:21-23, Psa_78:19, Psa_78:20). In this case the failure of the apostles to expect miraculous relief suggests that they had probably often been hungry and had long since ceased to look for supernatural relief in such cases. Their disbelief here is so similar to their disbelief in the first instance that it, with a few other minor details, has led rationalistic commentators to confound the miracle with the feeding of the five thousand. But the words of Jesus forbid this-- Mat_16:9, Mat_16:10, Mar_8:19, Mar_8:20.] 34 And Jesus said unto them, b5 And he asked them, How many loaves have ye? And they said, Seven. aand a few small fishes. 35 And he commanded bcommandeth the multitude to sit down on the ground [they were on the bleak mountain, and not in the grassy plain of Butaiha]: and he took the seven loaves aand the fishes; and he gave thanks, band having given thanks, he brake, and gave to his athe disciples, and the disciples to the multitude. [405] { bto set before them; and they set them before the multitude. 7 And they had a few small fishes: and having blessed them, he commanded to set these also before them. a37 And they all ate, and were filled: and they took up that which remained over of the broken pieces, seven baskets full. 38 And they that did eat were babout afour thousand men, besides women and children. 39 And he sent away the multitudes.
[FFG 403-406]
J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v33 The healing:
The healing:
v. 33. And He took him aside from the multitude, and put His: fingers into his ears, and He spit, and touched his tongue;
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v. 34. and looking up to heaven, He sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened.
v. 35. And straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain.
v. 36. And He charged them that they should tell no man; but the more He charged them, so much the more a great deal they published it;
v. 37. and were beyond measure astonished, saying, He hath done all things well: He maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak.
Mark gives a very circumstantial account of the healing, relating every detail, to let the healing sympathy and power of the Lord stand out all the more beautifully. For reasons which are not divulged, Jesus withdrew the sick man from the crowd. Due to his malady, the poor man was cut off almost entirely from communication with his fellow-men and had to be taken by the hand. This act of Jesus, whom the man could see, served to awaken his attention, to make him mark closely all that Jesus did with him, for only through signs could Jesus communicate with him. The Lord then put one finger of His right hand into one of the man’s ears, and one of the left hand into the other. The deafness was the most deep-seated evil; by touching the atrophied organs, the Lord transmitted to them His healing power. He next moistened His finger at His mouth and touched the tongue of the sick man. The tongue and the inner ears were the diseased organs. "He refers especially to these two members, ears and tongue; for the kingdom of Christ is based upon the Word, which cannot otherwise be grasped or understood but through these two members, ears and tongue, and it reigns only through the Word and faith in the hearts of men. The ears take hold of the Word, and the heart believes it; but the tongue speaks and confesses, as the heart believes. Therefore if the tongue and the ears are removed, there is no noticeable difference between the kingdom of Christ and the world... With us, thanks to God, the tongue has gotten so far that we speak plainly, for there are everywhere pious people that hear the Word of God with desire. But aside from this there is also great ingratitude and terrible contempt for the Word of God, yea, secret persecution and secret suffering... That is an indication that the Word of God is despised and that people are secretly hostile to it; as we see that things usually go: where the Word is openly persecuted, there it insists on being; but where it is free and in open use, there people do not want it. " After these preparatory acts Jesus looked up to heaven and sighed. He felt the deepest sympathy for the unfortunate sufferer; His miracles never degenerated into a mere business. Incidentally, we see that the works of healing meant a great mental strain for Christ. And at last He spoke the Aramaic word: Ephphatha, which Mark translates for his readers: Be opened. The result: The hearings, the instruments of hearing, the ears, were opened, were put into commission again, and the fetters that bound his tongue were loosed; whereas he could formerly merely make sounds, he could now articulate distinctly and speak plainly. "The phrase used by Mark is one often used, in the magical texts, and shows that the writer of the gospel supposed that in this miracle demoniac fetters were broken and a work of Satan undone."
Here also the sequel was much as in other cases: Jesus impressed upon them that they should not tell of the miracle. He did not want to be drawn into another ministry of healing. But they did just the opposite: so much the more, a great deal (double comparative), superabundantly, they proclaimed the miracle. For beyond all description they were astonished, in the highest degree they were overwhelmed, saying: Well has He made everything. It seems that they had not only this miracle in mind, but the former one as well, which by Christ’s own arrangement had been published so widely. "Therefore let us remember, and take heed of, this miracle, and follow the example of the pious people that praise Christ the Lord here that He had made all things well, that He makes the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak. This He does, as stated before, forever within the Christian Church, by means of the Sacraments and through the public Word, that the ears of the deaf are opened, and that the dumb are made to speak. Through these means, and through nothing else, the Holy Spirit wants to perform His work in us. Mark that well and cling to it with greater diligence; for that is the nearest and surest way that our ears may be opened and our tongues loosed, and we be saved. May our dear Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, grant us this!"
Summary.Jesus answers an attack of the Pharisees concerning ceremonial washing, denounces them for their disregard of the Word of God, explains moral cleanness, heals the daughter of the Syrophoenician woman, and opens the ears of the deaf-mute.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On v33 He took him
He took him
"Jesus took the man"
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he put his fingers into his ears
Jesus is putting his own fingers in the man's ears.
after spitting, he touched his tongue
Jesus spits and then touches the man's tongue.
after spitting
It may be helpful to state that Jesus spit on his fingers. AT: "after spitting on his fingers" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
looked up to heaven
This means that he looked up toward the sky, which is associated with the place where God lives.
Ephphatha
Here the author refers to something by an Aramaic word. This word should be copied as is into your language using your alphabet. (See: Copy or Borrow Words)
he sighed
This means that he groaned or that he let out a long deep breath that could be heard. It probably shows Jesus' sympathy for the man.
said to him
"said to the man"
his ears were opened
This means he was able to hear. AT: "his ears were opened and he was able to hear" or "he was able to hear"
his tongue was released
This can be stated in active form. AT: "Jesus took away what prevented his tongue from speaking" or "Jesus loosened his tongue" (See: Active or Passive)
translationWords
heaven
Jesus
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv33–34 7:33 The healing was performed privately (7:33; see 5:40-43;…
7:33 The healing was performed privately (7:33; see 5:40-43; 8:23) to prevent the spread of messianic fervor (see 3:11-12; cp. John 6:15). • Jesus also used saliva in a healing at Mark 8:23, where he spit on a man’s eyes in curing his blindness. The medicinal use of saliva in ancient times is well documented.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.