He came to Bethsaida. They brought a blind man to him, and begged him to touch him.
Parallel Translations
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He came to Bethsaida. They brought a blind man to him, and begged him to touch him.
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And he came to Bethsaida and they brought a blynde man vnto him and desyred him to touche him.
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And hee came to Bethsaida, and they brought a blinde man vnto him, and desired him to touch him.
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Cross-references (12)
Passages linked to Mark 8:22 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Matthew 11:21 “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon which were done in you, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.
- Mark 6:45 Immediately he made his disciples get into the boat, and to go ahead to the other side, to Bethsaida, while he himself sent the multitude away.
- Luke 10:13 “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon which were done in you, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes.
- Matthew 8:15 He touched her hand, and the fever left her. She got up and served him.
- Matthew 9:29 Then he touched their eyes, saying, “According to your faith be it done to you.”
- Mark 2:3 Four people came, carrying a paralytic to him.
- John 1:44 Now Philip was from Bethsaida, of the city of Andrew and Peter.
- John 12:21 These, therefore, came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida of Galilee, and asked him, saying, “Sir, we want to see Jesus.”
- Matthew 8:3 Jesus stretched out his hand, and touched him, saying, “I want to. Be made clean.” Immediately his leprosy was cleansed.
- Mark 5:27-29 having heard the things concerning Jesus, came up behind him in the crowd, and touched his clothes. For she said, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be made well.” Immediately the flow of her blood was dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction.
- Mark 6:55-56 and ran around that whole region, and began to bring those who were sick, on their mats, to where they heard he was. Wherever he entered, into villages, or into cities, or into the country, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might just touch the fringe of his garment; and as many as touched him were made well.
- Luke 9:10 The apostles, when they had returned, told him what things they had done. He took them and withdrew apart to a desert region of a city called Bethsaida.
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Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain A true image of our regeneration, which Christ separating…
A true image of our regeneration, which Christ separating us from the world, worketh and accomplisheth by little and little in us.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain 22 And he cometh to Bethsaida; and they bring…
22 And he cometh to Bethsaida; and they bring a blind man unto him, and besought him to touch him.
Ver. 22. And they bring a blind man unto him] This is another of those miracles mentioned by St Mark only. See Mar 7:32.
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.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain This miracle is only mentioned by Mark particularly, possibly…
This miracle is only mentioned by Mark particularly, possibly because of two singularities in it:
1. With reference to the signs he used.
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2. With reference to the gradual cure.
Our Saviour sometimes used some signs in his miraculous operations, sometimes he used none, but by the word of his power alone healed them; in the signs he used, to let the people understand there was nothing in them, he often varied; sometimes he laid his hands upon them, sometimes he took them by the hand, sometimes he used one sign, sometimes another. Here:
1. He takes the blind man by the hand.
2. He leads him out of the town, the inhabitants being not worthy to see a miracle: it was one of the cities upbraided by our Saviour for their impenitency and unbelief; Mat 11:21.
3. He spit on his eyes: so Mar 7:33.
4. Then he twice put his hands on him.
Christ was wont to heal at once; here he healeth by degrees; so as the healing of this blind man was a true pattern of his healing spiritual blindness, which usually is done gradually, but perfected at last as this bodily cure was.
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William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain Here we have recorded a special miracle wrought by…
Here we have recorded a special miracle wrought by our Saviour at Bethsaida, in curing a blind man brought unto him.
Where observe, 1. What evident proof the Pharisees had of Christ’s divine power and godhead: he had before caused the deaf to hear, the dumb to speak, and the lame to walk; now he makes the blind to see; yet did the Pharisees obstinately resist all means of their conviction, and continued in their opposition to truth, to their inevitable and unutterable condemnation.
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Observe, 2. The wonderful humility, the great condescension of Jesus Christ towards this blind man; He took him by the hand, and led him, himself. A great evidence of his condescending humility, and of his goodness and mercy; shewing how ready and willing he was to help and heal him; see here a singular pattern of humility and condescending grace and mercy in our dear Redeemer, in that he vouchsafed with his own hands to take and lead a poor blind man through the streets of Bethsaida, in the sight of all the people. Let us learn of him, who was thus meek, and lovely in heart.
Observe, 3. Our Lord leads the blind man out of the town before he heals him, not in the town where all the people might take notice of it. Thereby teaching us to avoid all shews of ambition, all appearance of vain-glory; in what we do. Even as Christ sought not his own glory, but the glory of him that sent him.
Observe, 4. The manner of the cure wrought upon this blind man; it was gradual, and by degrees; not instantaneous, and at once: he had first a dark, dim, and obscure sight, afterwards a clear, and a perfect sight. Christ thereby, gave evidence of his absolute and omnipotent power, that he was not tied to any particular means, or manner, or order of working; but wrought his miracles variously, as he saw to be most fit for the glory of God, and the benefit of his people.
Observe lastly, The charge, given by our Saviour not to publish this miracle in the town of Bethsaida; a place where Christ had so often preached, and wrought so many miracles; but the inhabitants had obstinately and contemptuously undervalued and despised both his doctrine and miracles; therefore we read, Mat 11:21 that our Saviour denounced a woe against Bethsaida, assuring her, that it would be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon than for her. The higher a people rise under the means, the lower they fall if they miscarry. Such a people as have been nearest to conversion, being not converted, shall have the greatest condemnation when they are judged.
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Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain This cure is related only by this evangelist, and…
This cure is related only by this evangelist, and there is something singular in the circumstances.
I. Here is a blind man brought to Christ by his friends, with a desire that he would touch him, Mar 8:22. Here appears the faith of those that brought him - they doubted not but that one touch of Christ's hand would recover him his sight; but the man himself showed not that earnestness for, or expectation of, a cure that other blind men did. If those that are spiritually blind, do not pray for themselves, yet let their friends and relations pray for them, that Christ would be pleased to touch them.
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II. Here is Christ leading this blind man, Mar 8:23. He did not bid his friends lead him, but (which bespeaks his wonderful condescension) he himself took him by the hand, and led him, to teach us to be as Job was, eyes to the blind, Job 29:15. Never had poor blind man such a Leader. He led him out of the town. Had he herein only designed privacy, he might have led him into a house, into an inner chamber, and have cured him there; but he intended hereby to upbraid Bethsaida with the mighty works that had in vain been done in her (Mat 11:21), and was telling her, in effect, she was unworthy to have any more done within her walls. Perhaps Christ took the blind man out of the town, that he might have a larger prospect in the open fields, to try his sight with, than he could have in the close streets.
III. Here is the cure of the blind man, by that blessed Oculist, who came into the world to preach the recovering of sight to the blind (Luk 4:18), and to give what he preached. In this cure we may observe, 1. That Christ used a sign; he spat on his eyes (spat into them, so some), and put his hand upon him. He could have cured him, as he did others, with a word speaking, but thus he was pleased to assist his faith which was very weak, and to help him against his unbelief. And this spittle signified the eye-salve wherewith Christ anoints the eyes of those that are spiritually blind, Rev 3:18. 2. That the cure was wrought gradually, which was not usual in Christ's miracles. He asked him if he saw aught, Mar 8:23. Let him tell what condition his sight was in, for the satisfaction of those about him. And he looked up; so far he recovered his sight, that he could open his eyes, and he said, I see men as trees walking; he could not distinguish men from trees, otherwise than he could discern them to move. He had some glimmerings of sight, and betwixt him and the sky could perceive a man erect like a tree, but could not discern the form thereof, Job 4:16. But, 3. It was soon completed; Christ never doeth his work by the halves, nor leaves it till he can say, It is finished. He put his hands again upon his eyes, to disperse the remaining darkness, and then bade him look up again, and he saw every man clearly, Mar 8:25. Now Christ took this way, (1.) Because he would not tie himself to a method, but would show with what liberty he acted in all he did. He did not cure by rote, as I may say, and in a road, but varied as he thought fit. Providence gains the same end in different ways, that men may attend its motions with an implicit faith. (2.) Because it should be to the patient according to his faith; and perhaps this man's faith was at first very weak, but afterward gathered strength, and accordingly his cure was. Not that Christ always went by this rule, but thus he would sometimes put a rebuke upon those who came to him, doubting. (3.) Thus Christ would show how, and in what method, those are healed by his grace, who by nature are spiritually blind; at first, their knowledge is confused, they see men as trees walking; but, like the light of the morning, it shines more and more to the perfect day, and then they see all things clearly, Pro 4:18. Let us enquire then, if we see aught of those things which faith is the substance and evidence of; and if through grace we see any thing of them, we may hope that we shall see yet more and more, for Jesus Christ will perfect for ever those that are sanctified.
IV. The directions Christ gave the man he had cured, not to tell it to any in the town of Bethsaida, nor so much as to go into the town, where probably there were some expecting him to come back, who had seen Christ lead him out of the town, but, having been eyewitnesses of so many miracles, had not so much as the curiosity to follow him: let not those be gratified with the sight of him when he was cured, who would not show so much respect to Christ as to go a step out of the town, to see this cure wrought. Christ doth not forbid him to tell it to others, but he must not tell it to any in the town. Slighting Christ's favours is forfeiting them; and Christ will make those know the worth of their privileges by the want of them, that would not know them otherwise. Bethsaida, in the day of her visitation, would not know the things that belonged to her peace, and now they are hid from her eyes. They will not see, and therefore shall not see.
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John Gill 1763 · Public Domain And he cometh to Bethsaida,.... The city of Andrew,…
And he cometh to Bethsaida,.... The city of Andrew, Peter, and Philip, Joh 1:44; a fishing town, which was situated by the sea of Galilee. Beza's ancient copy, and the Gothic version, wrongly read "Bethany". The Vulgate Latin, Arabic, and Ethiopic versions read, "they came"; Christ, and his twelve apostles, who landed at this place:
and they bring a blind man unto him; for Christ had been here before, and was known by the inhabitants of the place; who, as soon as they heard of his arrival, and knowing what miracles were done by him, brought a poor blind man, of their town, to him, to be cured by him:
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and besought him to touch him; having heard of, or seen cures performed by him this way. This man is an emblem of such who are spiritually blind: he had no natural sight at all; he could see nothing; he had not the least glimmering of any thing, until he was touched by Christ: so men, in a state of nature, are quite dark, even darkness itself, until they are made light by the Lord: they have no sight, nor sense of themselves, of their sinful, lost, and dangerous estate and condition they are in; they know not because they are blind, that they are wretched, and poor, and miserable, and naked: they have no sight of Christ, neither of the glory of his person, nor of the fulness of his grace, nor of the nature, necessity, and suitableness of his salvation: they are quite blind as to any saving knowledge of God in Christ, the way of life and peace by him, and the work of the Spirit of God upon the soul; or with regard to any spiritual experience of the power of Gospel truths, or views of the glories of another world: and as this man seemed to be unconcerned himself about the cure of his blindness, only his friends were affected with his case, and brought him to Christ, and solicited a cure, so it is with unregenerate men, they are insensible of their case, and so thoughtless of it, and unaffected with it, and do not, of themselves, seek for a deliverance out of it; nor do they make use of means for that purpose; but it becomes their friends, relations, and acquaintance, that are spiritual, who know their case, and their need of Christ, and his grace, to bring them to him under the means, and pray unto him, that he would put forth the mighty power of his grace upon them, and give them spiritual sight to see in what a lost condition they are, and their need of him.
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Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 22. They bring a blind man unto him]…
Verse 22. They bring a blind man unto him] Christ went about to do good, and wherever he came he found some good to be done; and so should we, if we had a proper measure of the same zeal and love for the welfare of the bodies and souls of men.
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Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Mar 8:22-26. And he cometh to Bethsaida — Where…
Mar 8:22-26. And he cometh to Bethsaida — Where he had done many mighty works, without their producing the desired effect, the people remaining in impenitence and unbelief, Mat 11:21. The following miracle, it may be observed, is recorded by Mark only; a plain proof that he is not to be considered as a mere abridger of Matthew. And they bring him a blind man, and besought him to touch him — Here appears the faith of those that brought him; they doubted not but one touch of Christ’s hand would restore his sight; but the man himself did not show that earnest desire for, or expectation of, a cure, that many others did. He took and led him out of the town — Declaring hereby, that those of Bethsaida, who had seen so many miracles in vain, were unworthy to behold this: for had our Lord herein only designed privacy, he might have led him into a house, or into an inner chamber, and have cured him there. And when he had spit on his eyes, &c. — Our Lord could have cured this man, as he did some others, with a word’s speaking, but he was pleased thus to use signs, as he did on some other occasions, probably with a view to assist the man’s faith, which it seems was very weak; it was evident, however, that the signs which he used had no natural tendency to effect a cure, nor indeed had any of the signs which our Lord ever used on such occasions: He asked him if he saw aught, &c. — Jesus did not, as on other occasions of a like nature, impart the faculty of sight to this blind man all at once, but by degrees: for the man at first saw things obscurely, and could not distinguish men from trees, otherwise than that he could discern them to move. His expression may be easily accounted for, on supposition that he was not born blind, but had lost his sight by some accident; for if that was the case, he might have retained the idea both of men and trees. By a second imposition of Christ’s hands he received a clear sight of every object in view. Our Lord’s intention in this might be to make it evident that in his cures he was not confined to one method of operation, but could dispense them in what manner he pleased. In the mean time, though the cure was performed by degrees, it was accomplished in so small a space of time, as to make it evident that it was not produced by any natural efficacy of our Lord’s spittle or touch, but merely by the exertion of his miraculous power. Christ perhaps intended, by restoring the man’s sight gradually, to signify in what way those who are by nature spiritually blind, are generally healed by his grace. At first, their knowledge of divine things is indistinct, obscure, and confused; they see men as trees walking; but afterward, by a second or third imposition of the Saviour’s hands, a further degree of spiritual discernment is communicated, and they see all things clearly. Their light, like that of the morning, shines more and more unto the perfect day. Let us, then, inquire if we have any sight of, or acquaintance with, those things of which faith is the evidence; and if, through grace, we have any true knowledge of them, we may hope that it will increase more and more, till we are fully translated out of our natural darkness of ignorance and folly, into the marvellous light of truth and wisdom. And he sent him away, saying, Neither go into the town — Where probably some who had seen Christ lead him out of the town, were expecting to see him return; but who, having been eye-witnesses of so many miracles, had not so much as the curiosity to follow him. Such therefore were not to be gratified with the sight of him when he was cured, that would not show so much respect to Christ as to go a step out of the town to see the cure wrought. Nor tell it to any in the town — Christ does not forbid him to tell it to others, but he must not tell it to any of the inhabitants of Bethsaida. Observe, reader, the slighting of Christ’s favours is forfeiting them; and he will make those know the worth of their privileges by the want of them, that would not know them otherwise. Bethsaida, in the day of her visitation, would not know the things that belonged to her peace, and therefore they are now hid from her eyes.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain To Bethsaida - See the notes at Mat 11:21.
To Bethsaida - See the notes at Mat 11:21.
And they bring a blind man unto him - The healing of the blind man of Bethsaida is recorded only by Mark.
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Besought him to touch him - That is, to heal him, for they believed that his touch would restore his sight.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain 2. The Blind Man in Eastern Bethsaida. Mar_8:22-26
2. The Blind Man in Eastern Bethsaida. Mar_8:22-26
22And he cometh10 to Bethsaida; and they bring a blind man unto him, and besought him to touch him. 23And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town; and when he had spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon him, he asked him if he saw aught. 24And he looked up, and said, I see [the] men as trees, walking.11 25After that he put his hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up: and he was restored, and saw12 every man clearly. 26And he sent him away to his house [home], saying, Neither go into the town, nor tell it to any in the town.13
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EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Mark alone records this history of Christ’s healing miracles during the time of His final mountain-travels along the Gaulonite range, on the eastern side of the Jordan and the Sea of Galilee. The remembrances of Peter preserved for us these special treasures, belonging to a time so preëminently memorable to him and his spiritual development. But we have too often observed the peculiar feeling of Mark for the gradual, natural, progressive development of the kingdom of God (see his record of the parables, and the final miracles), not to perceive that this period of the ministry and work of Jesus would strongly rivet his attention.
Mar_8:22. To Bethsaida.—It is evident that the Bethsaida of the western coast, in Galilee (Joh_12:21), is not here meant, as Theophylact and others have supposed; but, as Grotius rightly perceived, it was Bethsaida Julias, which lay upon the north-eastern coast of the Sea of Tiberias. Reland was the first to indicate that there were two Bethsaidas. Josephus tells us (Antiq. 18, 2, 1), that the tetrarch Philip, who ruled only in the eastern part of Galilee, made the village of Bethsaida into a town, and named it Julias, after the daughter of Augustus. (See also De Bell. Judges 11, 9, 1; and Jerome on Matthew 16) According to Pliny (Hist. Nat. Mar_5:15), Julias was situated on the farther coast of the Sea of Galilee; according to Josephus, on the Jordan, 120 stadia above its junction with the Sea. Pococke thought the ruins of Taluy, on the east side of the Jordan, marked the ancient Julias; Seetzen thought the same of a little village, Tellanihje; and Robinson, the ruins of Et-Tell. According to Luk_9:10, the first miraculous feeding also took place in a desert place near this same Bethsaida. See Von Raumer, Palœstina, p. 109. Bethsaida lay in the way from the sea towards Cæsarea Philippi, in the higher mountain-range, a district to which Jesus subsequently returned.—A blind man.—What follows shows that he was not born blind, but had become so. He had evidently seen men and trees aforetime.
Mar_8:23. And led him out of the town.—Here the separation from all others is still more effectual than in the case of the healing of the deaf and dumb man, Mar_7:33. In addition to the motive already mentioned for performing His works as much as possible in retirement, viz., that He might insure His own decease in Jerusalem, we may assume that there was also a pedagogic element that influenced Him on the present occasion. The deaf and dumb man could not hear His voice, but only see His signs; this blind man could not see Him, he could only hear Him speak and feel His hand. Thus it was a test and a discipline of his faith, when he was led into solitude: a test and exercise which probably was still much needed by him.—And when He had spit on his eyes.—See the notes on Mar_7:33 and John 9.
Mar_8:24. I see men.—Expression of joy.—As trees; that is, I see men walking, large and unformed as trees. A distinct figure of an indistinct, twilight beholding. It was the first stage of healing. According to Euthymius Zigabenus, He healed the man by degrees, because his faith was weak, and the gradual experience of recovered sight would lead him to a higher degree of faith. In relation to this, we may observe the strikingly passive bearing of this blind man, as of the deaf and dumb man before: with this we may compare the passiveness of the impotent man at Bethesda, John 5. According to Olshausen, a too rapid process of recovery might have been injurious, and the gradual cure had regard to the eyes themselves. But this and the preceding notion we leave to the reader’s consideration; they may have a certain degree of force. But if we combine all the traits of this and the foregoing history, we see that Jesus designedly repressed the fame of His miraculous works in a district where He was seeking an asylum of perfect retirement, in order to settle everything with His disciples; at a time, too, when, for their sake and His own, absolute solitude was essentially necessary with reference to the decision of the future, But the symbolical significance of these miraculous dealings—as bringing the divine power into gradual contact and contest with human nature—was more expressly brought out for the instruction of His disciples than in most of His miracles of healing.—The persons who appeared to the half-seeing man were probably his companions, and other sympathizing people, who looked on in restless motion.
Mar_8:26. To his house.—He did not belong to Bethsaida, and he must go immediately from the place to his own home—not even to the village to which he had already come. Indeed, he was not to mention it to any one belonging to that village, and whom he might meet in the way. This explanation of the last expression [“any in the town”] is not, as Meyer terms it, an invention to meet the difficulty; it is the obvious and only natural meaning of the expression. Even the man’s companions should i find him recovered and seeing, only when they reached home; that is, if they were not permitted to be present at the healing.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. Christ sought with His disciples the deepest solitude among the mountains. His feeling was that of an anticipation of His death, and all things in the signs of the times said, Set Thine house, Thy Church, in order! In this journey the people who brought the blind man interrupted Him, and there seemed danger of His way being embarrassed. It is true that this did not hinder His healing the man, but He healed him in the most undemonstrative and hidden manner. The secrecy of the performance was paralleled by the extraordinary care with which He sent the blind man to his own house, under a prohibition to speak to any man in the neighborhood concerning the miracle. The blind man, however, was not merely a means to an end; his own spiritual edification was in question also. Since his faith was weak, his spiritual state required the protection of solitude: only in the profoundest silence could the blessing of his experience ripen into perfection. But, thirdly, we must not forget the Lord’s reference to those who surrounded the blind man. They asked that He would touch him. To this demand for an instant act, followed by an instant influence, the Lord opposed His own slow and circumstantial method of procedure. So also in the case of the deaf and dumb man of the same country: they asked Him that He would lay His hand upon the man. And if in this district of indistinct, half-heathen notions there was any idea arising of a magical influence on the part of Christ, His wisdom dispersed these foolish imaginations. He made prominent, 1. the religious aspect of the Acts , 2. the struggle in His own spirit connected with its performance.
2. This present narrative illustrates how Christ performed His miracles in the most absolute self-renunciation (at the most unseasonable time); with the most profound humility (without any desire for honor among men); and with the most supreme wisdom and confidence.
3. The healing of the blind man at Bethsaida, like some other similar miracles, was especially fitted and intended to exhibit the harmony of miracle with nature, the natural elements in the miracle, the gradual entrance of the divine power into the old nature, and its issues in the new nature.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
The Lord, deeply occupied with thoughts of His cross and of His death, does not repel as an interruption the cry of the wretched.—The festal season of the Prophet’s miracles is passing away, because the season of the high-priestly miraculous sufferings is drawing near.—The healing of the blind man at Bethsaida a testimony of the heavenly wisdom of the Lord: 1. In respect to Himself; 2. in respect to the blind man: he should not first see the multitudes of starers in the street, but the Lord in His solitary glory, and thus would he be taught more fully the lesson of faith; 3. in respect to the people around; 4. in respect to the disciples.—Abundant as was the inward life of Christ, His acts are equally abundant in their forms.—Christ, in performing His miracles, avoided a fixed and uniform manner, in order to obviate all the idle, superstitious notions of a magical influence.—How the mind, contemplating the same unchanging fundamental forms, has a tendency to become mechanical in its views.—As the wonderworking power of Christ’s hand wrought in many fleeting forms of action, so also the fundamental forms of the ministerial work of the Church, in teaching, worship, and life, should be moulded, moved, and inspired by the life of the Divine Spirit.—The education of the blind man into faith.—The gradual return of the blind man’s sight, a type of the gradual illumination of the soul.—Even the spiritually awakened see at first men as trees, unformed, without definite distinction.—I see men as trees. This represents, as it may be viewed, different conditions of the spiritual life: 1. It is a happy state, if it is the first stage towards clearly seeing in perfect knowledge; 2. it is a gloomy and uncertain state, if the Christian should remain in it; 3. worst of all, if through his own guilt he should return to this stage, falling into the new blindness of despair.—The blessed experience of the first believing look: a strengthening of faith, which becomes the transition to perfect sight.—Go not into the town: a solemn word concerning Bethsaida.—Bethsaida the modern city of the world, with an imperial name, and Bethsaida the town of the fishermen: the bright and the dark side.—How Jesus avoids the fame of His works, in order that He may seek in the shame of His sufferings His highest honor and glory.
Starke:—Christ’s gifts within us change with times.—Canstein:—A weak and slight beginning is yet a beginning; and in God’s methods a little is intended to become gradually greater.—Quesnel:—The cure of spiritual blindness is only begun on earth; it will be fully accomplished only in heaven.—Osiander:—God often turns away our misfortune, and mends our unhappiness, by slow degrees: have patience!—Solitude and silence after conversion is much safer than much talk and running about.—We should let the truth take firm root in us, before we speak much about it.—The converted man must take care not to turn round again to the world.—Canstein:—Fearful judgment, when God reckons a man, or a city, or a land, no longer worthy of the knowledge of His word and works.
Gerlach:—The gradualness of the operation is often our first inward assurance of the certainty of the change.—Rieger:—Do not despise slight means [referring to the application of spittle].—Braune:—Men must be ever known, not as trees, as perishable plants, but as rational creatures, called to eternal glory.—First of all, however, the blind man came to know Jesus aright: to know Him clearly is eternal life.
Schleiermacher:—The cure of the blind man in its resemblance to the next section: 1. The withdrawing to a place apart (special reasons for this in both cases respectively); 2. the gradual work (men as trees; obscure views concerning Christ); 3. the Redeemer’s care as to what men say of Him; 4. the sight restored, and the confession of Peter.
Footnotes:
[10]Mar_8:22.—The Plural, ἔρχονται, after B., C., D. Lachmann, Tischendorf, [Meyer.]
[11]Mar_8:24.—The beautiful reading: βλέπω τοὺς ἀνθρώπους, ὅτι ὡς δένδρα ὁρῶ περιπατοῦντας is adopted by Meyer, Lachmann, Tischendorf, following [A., B., C.*, E., F., G., K., L., M., Δ., Gothic, Theophylact, Euthymius. (D. and most of the Versions have the Received Text).]
[12]Mar_8:25.—Tischendorf, [Meyer,] διέβλεψεν, after B., C.*, L., Δ., &c.
[13]Mar_8:26.—The Received Text and Lachmann follow Cod. A. Tischendorf, following B., L., Coptic, omits the clause μηδὲ εἰς … κώμῃ.
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 § 72. — GRADUAL CURING OF THE BLIND MAN,…
§ 72. — GRADUAL CURING OF THE BLIND MAN, Mar_8:22-26.
This miracle is related by Mark alone.
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22. A blind man — It is clear from Mar_8:24 that he had not been born blind. Besought him to touch him — There was evidently no doubt on their part that a touch from our Lord would do the deed.
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 22–26. The Blind Man in Eastern Bethsaida
22–26. The Blind Man in Eastern Bethsaida
22. Bethsaida] i. e. Bethsaida Julias, which lay upon the northeastern coast of the Sea of Tiberias.
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 (22) And he cometh to Bethsaida.—This miracle also is…
(22) And he cometh to Bethsaida.—This miracle also is recorded by St. Mark only. Judging by the localities named previously, Dalmanutha (Mar_8:10), the passage across the lake (Mar_8:13), and afterwards “the villages of Cæsarea Philippi (Mar_8:27), it is probable that this was the Bethsaida on the northeastern shore of the Sea of Galilee.
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 This miracle is recorded by St. Mark alone. And…
This miracle is recorded by St. Mark alone. And he cometh to Bethsaida. A better reading is ercontai for ercetai , they come unto Bethsaida. Which Beth-saida? It seems most probable that it was Bethsaida Julias. This Bethsaida was in the tetrarchy of Philip, who improved and adorned it, and named it Julias, in honor of the emperor"s daughter Julia. A reference to Ver. 27 seems to make it quite clear that it must have been this Bethsaida, and not the Galilean Bethsaida on the other side of the lake. It is not surprising that there should have been, adjoining this great lake, more than one place called Beth-saida, i.e. the "place of fish." And they bring a blind man unto him, and besought (parakalousin) literally, beseech him to touch him. St. Mark is fond of the graphic present. There is here, as at Mar_7:32, something almost like dictating the mode of cure. They seem to have imagined that the healing virtue could not go forth from Christ except by actual contact.
Vers. 22-26. Sight for the blind.
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Every form of human privation, suffering, and infirmity which came under the notice of Christ elicited his compassion and his healing mercy, and every such disorder was treated by him as a symptom of the moral malady which afflicts mankind. The diversity of his miracles of healing may serve to represent his power and willingness to restore our sinful humanity, afflicted with many and various ills, to spiritual soundness and health. In this miracle we observe
I A SYMBOL OF THE SPIRITUAL BLINDNESS OF HUMANITY. The blind man of Bethsaida may not have been born blind; but his sightless state was well known, and excited the commiseration of his neighbors and acquaintances, who led him to the great Healer and Enlightener of men, that he might touch and cure him. He is an emblem of this humanity, darkened in understanding, incapable of discerning truth, blind to moral beauty, to heavenly glory.
II A SYMBOL OF SALVATION BY DIVINE CONTACT. Jesus treated this man in a way appropriate to his condition and infirmity. He appealed to the sense of touch, for there was no sense of sight to which to appeal. He led the blind man by the hand, took him apart, spat on his eyes, laid his hands upon him. All this was to make the patient feel that the Divine Physician was there, was interested in him, was working for his cure. It was to reveal his own presence and to call forth the sufferer"s faith. And there is no salvation for any by merely hearing or reading about Jesus Christ. The spiritually blind cannot experience his illuminating power except by coming to him in faith. If he enter the heart, reveal his truth and love and power, come into immediate contact with the springs of the spiritual nature and life, then the mind, before insensible to the light of Heaven, begins to appreciate the great realities of being the nature, the character, the will, of a holy God and Father.
III A SYMBOL OF THE PROGRESSIVE CHARACTER OF SPIRITUAL ENLIGHTENMENT. The most noticeable feature of this miracle is the way in which the cure was wrought gradually and progressively. Why Jesus did not effect the result at once does not appear. It may have been to teach us how difficult and slow is the process of human illumination, even by the gospel and the Spirit of God. As at first the man saw human figures, which appeared like trees, hut moved, so that even his half-recovered vision judged them men; so those to whom the light of the gospel first comes often discern but dimly those spiritual facts and relations which time and experience and Divine teaching will render more vivid and distinct. It is not to be expected that young Christians or recent converts shall understand all such truth as is comparatively clear to the mature and instructed. God"s ways herein are like his ways in other departments of his government; order and progression are characteristics of his reign.
IV A SYMBOL OF THE POWER OF CHRIST TO EFFECT COMPLETE ILLUMINATION. After the further application of the wonder-working hands of Jesus, it is recorded that the blind man "was restored, and saw all things clearly." So in God"s light we shall see light. He hath "shined into our hearts." We shall "see God." The vision shall brighten here; and it shall be more than bright-it shall he glorious hereafter.
Vers. 22-26. Restoring the blind to sight.
Illustration of Christ"s
I WISDOM. He rebuked a vulgar curiosity, and perhaps baffled a Pharisaic intrigue. His privacy, so needful for bodily rest and spiritual preparation for the great conflict he felt to be impending, was thus preserved; and the course of teaching and working upon which he had entered was not seriously disturbed. The subject of the miracle was himself preserved from undue excitement with its attendant dangers. And shall we not suppose that a deeper and more spiritual understanding may have arisen between the Saviour and the recipient of his mercy during those solemn and deeply moving experiences which preceded his recovery? His deep, unbroken attention was secured as he felt the Saviour"s touch and listened to his voice. By leading him away he tested and exercised his faith. By emphasizing the stages of recovery he made it clear to the man himself that it was no accidental occurrence, but a deliberate cure. And in the means used so evidently inadequate to produce such a result he showed how supernatural the power that was being exercised. The questions asked encouraged the man to put forth his own power as he received it, and thus to co-operate in the curative process. The final injunction to silence and home-going present the incident as a deep personal experience in the mind of the man, and as an evangelic message to those who were most likely to receive it in simplicity and gratitude.
II MERCY. Although the shadow of death was falling upon the soul of Jesus, he was full of the instinct and will to save. There is scarcely any appreciable pause in his work; and retirement is not inactivity, but quieter, deeper, and more continuous, because more naturally prompted, action. Each case of distress as it arises receives his deliberate and careful attention. His diagnosis of the blind man"s state must have been perfect. It was impaired original power that had to be restored, and the treatment corresponded to this fact. The interest of the Saviour in the case is as great as that of the saved. The sinister ends of those who brought the blind man, or watched to see what would be done, did not prevent him showing the mercy required. When the bodily cure had been completed, the spiritual welfare of the recovered one was carefully provided for. The aim is complete salvation in every sense of the word. What Christ does he will do perfectly.
III JUDGMENT. Unworthy men were debarred from seeing the wonders of his saving power. They might have perverted the privilege to an evil end, and so injured themselves and the cause of Christ; so they were shut out. It is a fearful sentence against a place or a person when the spectacle of the Lord"s saving grace is denied, and the things that make for peace are hidden from view. M.
Vers. 22-26. The Saviour"s method in dealing with individual souls.
I ISOLATES FROM DISTURBING INFLUENCES. The gossips and scheming politicians of the town of Bethsaida. Notoriety. The sense of importance. By his dealings with the sinner in conviction and repentance, he spiritually removes him to his own retirement. He is first brought to be with Christ, that by-and-by he may be in him.
II HE ENCOURAGES AND CONFIRMS FAITH. By leading the blind man away, although as yet a stranger to him. By personal contact and operation, and by kindly words, the inner free-will and power of the patient were evoked. The means and the gradual working out of the cure were a demonstration of the Power by whom the miracle was wrought. The gradual realization of spiritual power in those being saved is a crucial evidence of Divine grace, and encourages belief in the ultimate accomplishment of a complete salvation.
III HE EXACTS IMPLICIT OBEDIENCE. This was the highest exercise of a spiritual kind he had demanded. It was but a phase of the faith already called forth obedience of faith." Having won the trust and confidence of his people, he proves and perfects that by directing the fulfillment of duties the reason for which may not be apparent. It is sufficient that he has commanded. The first use of the restored vision is to avoid those upon whom he had formerly depended a hard task! The life Christ"s people are bidden to lead may not commend itself to their judgment or desire, but it is best for their spiritual interests; and if Christ is to be a complete Saviour, he must be an absolute and unquestioned Lord. M.
Vers. 22-26. Curing spiritual blindness.
I DELIVERANCE FROM BLIND GUIDES.
II TRANSFER OF CONFIDENCE TO THE TRUE GUIDE.
III REVELATION OF THE INVISIBLE POWER OF GOD.
IV EXERCISING THE SOUL"S NEWLY ACQUIRED POWERS OF SPIRITUAL VISION,
V GIVING SPIRITUAL DIRECTION FOR THE FUTURE. M.
Vers. 22-25. The blind man of Bethsaida.
The variety of method adopted by our Lord in his acts of healing finds a striking illustration in the contrast presented between the cure of this blind man and that of Bartimaeus. The sight of the latter was instantaneously and perfectly restored, but it was otherwise with the former. If, as we believe, Christ"s miracles were symbols of spiritual experiences, we must expect variety in these also; and we see them in the contrast existing between the sudden transformation of a profligate, and the religious life of one who from a child has known the Scriptures, and loved the things that are excellent. For the further elucidation of such truth, consider
I THE SUBJECT OF THIS MIRACULOUS CURE.
1. He was a blind man. Although light blazed around him, to him it was as darkness, and objects which appeared to others real and near were unperceived by him. Hence we often, and properly, speak of "moral blindness" or "spiritual blindness," by which we mean, that he who suffers that privation is incapable of discerning the moral or spiritual truths which are obvious to others. And the faculty which he lacks is something distinct from, although not independent of, mental perception. In other words, a man must have brains to understand spiritual truth; but he needs something more a faculty of soul, to which St. Paul alludes when he says, "Spiritual things are spiritually discerned;" "The God of this world hath blinded the eyes of them that believe not.
2. He was brought by his friends to the Lord. Unlike him, they could see. They knew better than he did what he lost by his blindness. They could find their way to the place where Jesus was, and see his face. Another blind man could not have led him thither. It becomes parents, teachers, and friends, who are rejoicing in God"s light, to bring others by pleading and by prayer to Jesus" feet.
3. He was willing to confide in the unseen Saviour. When Jesus took him by the hand, he did not withdraw it. In this wonderful Stranger, of whom he had heard so much, he had implicit confidence. His touch meant a blessing. How often, by our wilfulness and unbelief, we lose what by trustful waiting we might receive!
II THE METHOD OF THIS MIRACULOUS CURE.
1. Jesus led him apart. He wished to have him alone. Separation, secrecy, solitude, often precede the reception of blessing from Christ. He takes us away from the multitude by illness, in worship, etc.
2. Jesus gave him glimmerings of light (see ver. 24). H e saw slightly and indistinctly. His companions, who had been left at a little distance, appeared to him to be moving, but seemed vague, large, formless, like trees waving in the wind. Perhaps this cure was gradually wrought because the man"s faith was weak, and the slight change already experienced would strengthen his expectation, and make him ready for a fuller blessing. It is at least a beautiful type of the gradual illumination of the soul with light. Lydia was an example of this.
3. Jesus by repeated touch gave him perfect sight (ver. 25). He leaves nothing incomplete. He is "the Author and the Finisher of faith." The imperfect vision of earth will be followed by the perfect vision of heaven. A.R.
Vers. 22-26. The gradual healing of the blind man.
In each of the many cases of healing there were, doubtless, peculiarities of incident of great interest to the healed, if not to us. But of only a few have we the details. Perhaps where we have them they have their more important relation to us than to the subjects of the healing themselves. In this case, as in others, the compassion of friends is called into play. "They bring to him a blind man, and beseech him to touch him." Not without service to us all is this little feature preserved. How may we who have proved his power to heal learn here the duty, the propriety, the encouragement to bring to Jesus, by kindly, leading hands, those who see not their way to him. Gently Jesus took the hand of the blind man in his, and led him away from the crowd, "out of the village itself a judgment to this Bethsaida. But oh, how beauteous a picture Jesus leading the blind! This is itself a homily. Singular to us appear the actions of Christ, both here and elsewhere. But why did he "spit on his eyes"? That he should work gradually and through the medium of outward signs was very becoming, if only to identify himself with the miracle. But who shall tell the thoughts they stirred in the hearts of the healed, for every one of whom Jesus cared! There was no need of spittle even to loosen the gummed eyelids, though such loosening may have been necessary, and needed no wasting of power by the doing it miraculously. Nor was there any absolute need of the touch of the hand; no, nor even at any time of the word. His will was enough. But he who chose to use his word or his touch or his breath here identifies himself with the miracle by the spittle. The progressive character of the work stands in contrast to the somewhat hasty "touch him." As there is no mention of faith (so generally commended where found) on the part of the blind man, it may have been but small, if there were any. Perhaps this may afford some reason why the healing was not instantaneous. It may have responded to the growing faith of the recipient a seeing far more important even than beholding men and trees. Would no virtue come from the touch of that leading hand? Were no words spoken to awaken faith? Was there a Lydian spirit in the man "whose" eyes "the Lord" so gently "opened"? We may not know. But to us the miracle is a type of many healings in our suffering, blind world, where faith and hope have need to be roused into activity by some measure of healing some sign. And it may be that here the full trust of that half-hoping heart was gained by the very lingering of the light on the threshold of those half-opened eyes. "For thou wouldst have us linger still Upon the verge of good or ill, That on thy guiding hand unseen Our undivided hearts may lean.
Certainly we may learn, in the midst of the variety of the Lord"s ways of working:
1. That it may please him to use many means to accomplish that which by a word, a touch, a look or without he could instantly effect.
2. That it may equally please him to detain hope till it is made strong by tried faith the faith that is as severely tried by time as by fire.
3. That it may as truly please him to draw out the heart"s love by its sense of dependence upon him. So is it by all those slow but beautiful processes of nature, which are the Lord"s hands for ministering to us bread and wine.
4. And most assuredly may we learn not to despise the Lord"s work while it is in process. For what seems to us to be but imperfectness of work or tardiness of method, may be his kind and gentle and instructive way of leading us to see things in their perfectness even "all things clearly. G.
Vers. 22-26. The blind man.
I "THE KNOWLEDGE OF CHRIST AWAKENS FAITH IN THOSE WHO ARE BROUGHT TO HIM BY THE FAITH OF OTHERS.
II "BENEFITS ARE RECEIVED ACCORDING TO THE MEASURE OF FAITH IN HIM" (J. H. Godwin). J.
Vers. 27-30. Jesus the Messiah.
I SOME MISTAKEN IDENTIFICATIONS OF JESUS. John Baptist; Elijah; a prophet; Jeremiah, according to Matthew. There was some truth here. They recognized the prophetic inspiration and power of Jesus. Truth in feeling, error in thought; Jesus was the greatest of the prophets, not reproducing his predecessors, but going beyond them. God hath spoken by his Son. (Heb 1)
II A TRUE IDENTIFICATION. Peter"s, "Thou art the Messiah," i.e. the Anointed of God. (cf. Mat_16:13-20) The Messiah includes Prophet, Priest, and King within his person and functions.
III THE ACCEPTANCE OF THE IDENTIFICATION BY JESUS.
1. It is implicitly accepted here, as explicitly in Mat_16:9. Jesus claims to be Prince and Saviour of his people and mankind.
2. Yet it must not be made known. Probably the statement, "The Prophet Jesus is the Messiah," noised abroad, would have produced a false impression. When by his death all hopes of an earthly kingdom had been destroyed, it would not be so. "Only with a knowledge of his character would the statement at any time be beneficial; and from this it would receive the best and surest confirmation" (J. H. Godwin). J.
Vers. 31-38. Unwelcome prophecies.
I PLAIN TRUTHS SELDOM WELCOME. He now spoke of suffering, rejection, even murder, at the hands of a conspiracy. The veil was drawn aside; at last it was seen what the Messiahship of Jesus meant. The same thing had before been expressed parabolically. (Joh_2:19 Joh_3:14 Joh_6:51)
II THE FLATTERY OF FRIENDSHIP. The honest-hearted Peter is endeared to us. He is so human; his feelings always on the right side, his intelligence often confused. How true his heart here! how wrong his thought! Suffering and death seem an evil to him, as to most of us. Not so to Christ. The mere suggestion that the real is to be preferred to the ideal, mere life to duty, self-interest to the kingdom of God, he spurns from him as the suggestion of a dark spirit.
III SELF-RENUNCIATION. "Let him renounce himself!" says Christ to the recruit for his army, the would-be citizen of his kingdom. Deep words: the meaning behind them it requires a life to learn.
1. The resolve of egotism must end in failure. To determine to save one"s life is to cast it away; to cast away one"s life for the sake of the ideal is to save it. Christianity is the kingdom of the ideal.
2. In the spiritual sphere there is no real loss. Life is one, and is not in the abundance of the things possessed." It cannot be "priced," nor bartered away. It is the man"s very self.
3. To disavow our ideal is to incur eternal shame. There are the ideals of comfort, of luxury; the ideals of society; the ideals of God, of the spirit. We must take our choice. We may make a choice of the lower which shall exclude the higher, or of the higher which shall include all of worth on the lower. There is no other rule than "Seek first the kingdom of God!" If we are ashamed to be true to our ideal, the time will come when we shall be put to shame in the presence of it. To disavow greatness when it comes to us under the guise of obscurity, this is to ensure our being disavowed of greatness when it appears in its true and heavenly glory. J.
Vers. 22-26. The healing of a blind man at Bethsaida.
I SEVERAL MIRACLES OF A SIMILAR KIND. The miracle here recorded was performed at Bethsaida Julias, or the northern Bethsaida, on the route from the north-east shore of the lake to Caesarea Philippi. It is related by St. Mark alone. The peculiarity of this miracle of restoring sight to the blind is the circumstance of its being wrought at twice; that is to say, the cure was progressive or gradual. In the ninth chapter of St. John"s Gospel we have the account of a like miracle of opening the eyes of a blind man; but one peculiarity of the miracle there recorded consists in the fact that the man on whom the miracle was performed had been born blind. There is again the opening of the eyes of two blind men near Jericho, recorded in St. Matthew, (Mt 20) one of whom only is mentioned by St. Mark (Mr 10) and by St. Luke, (Lu 18) and called by the patronymic Bartimaeus, or the son of Timaeus. There is also the record of another similar miracle in the ninth chapter of St. Matthew, when our Lord, after putting their faith to the test, cured two blind men in the house whither they had followed him. Besides these specially recorded cases, we have several references of a general kind to our Lord"s healing of the blind. The great number of instances of this kind is accounted for by the fact that blindness is a disease much more common in the East than in the lands of the West, while several causes have been assigned for that prevalence, such as the small particles of dust and sand impinging on the eye, and persons sleeping in the open air at night.
II THE CONDITION OF THIS MAN. This man was blind, but, as we shall see, he had not been born blind he was not blind from birth. He had become blind from accident or disease. At all events, he was destitute of that most valuable sense, the sense of sight. He had been long a stranger to the beauties of nature. "The light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to see the sun;" but that sun, that light, those beauties, those bright colors, those lovely forms that appear in the heaven above, in the earth beneath, in the waters round the earth all, all had long been to him a blank. He was in that state which Milton, in the days of his blindness, so poetically and pathetically deplores"Thus with the year Seasons return; but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of ev"n or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer"s rose, Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine; But cloud instead and ever-during dark Surrounds me, from the!cheerful ways of men Cut off! and, for the book of knowledge fair. Presented with a universal blank Of nature"s works, to me expunged and rased, And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.
We know not whether this blind man had wife or child. It is probable he had; and, if so, when he rose in the morning his wife ministered unto him, his children clung to his knees and kissed him while he blessed them. They led him forth to the street or elsewhere out of doors. He could feel them, but could not behold them. Their smiles, their tears, their bright eyes, and sweet faces were to him unknown and by him unseen. All the region round Bethsaida was charming the glancing waters of the lake, the lovely flowers of the Galilean hills, were a sight worth seeing; but what were all these to this blind man? The district might as well have been dark and dismal, bleak and black; at any rate, a blank, a night without moon or star, midnight with its darkness visible, even "darkness that might be felt.
III PECULIARITY IN THE MODE OF CURE. Here the peculiarity is twofold:
1. Jesus took him by the hand and led him out of the town.
2. The cure was effected progressively, or at twice. What reason can we assign for the former peculiarity? Why did he conduct him outside the town? Several reasons have been assigned. Some say that our Lord thereby meant to intimate the unworthiness, through unbelief, of the inhabitants of this town, or rather village (kwmh), and his consequent dissatisfaction with them; this, of course, is a mere conjecture. Others suppose, with more apparent reason, that, as the process of cure in this case was more than usually protracted, our Lord led the man out of the town in order to be free from interruption or any obstruction on the part of the crowd, just as in the preceding chapter he is said to have taken the deaf mute aside from the multitude. Bengel, with his usual ingenuity, conjectures the cause to be the Saviour"s intention that, when the blind recovered sight, his eyes might rest on the more cheerful aspect of the sky and of the works of God in nature that is, in the country than of the works of man in the town. The thought is a beautiful one, but only the product of a fertile imagination. Of two remaining reasons, which have been suggested with considerable plausibility, one is the avoidance of witnesses on account of the somewhat disagreeable application of spittle, or saliva, to the person of the invalid, exactly as in the case of the deaf mute already referred to; and the other is that our Lord, by varying the mode of cure, "sometimes doing more, sometimes less, and sometimes nothing," signified his freedom from any fixed form of gesture or manipulation. Some, again, reject with regard to the saliva all these, holding that our Lord meant to graft the supernatural on the natural, the saliva being an ordinary medical application in such cases. We are rather inclined to adopt the view of variation, for the purpose of proving independence of any specific or stereotyped mode in such miraculous performance. With respect to the progressiveness of the cure a similar diversity of opinion prevails. Theophylact attributes it to the imperfect faith of the blind man himself, and of those who brought him to the Saviour; others imagine that on a sudden recovery of sight the man would have been unable to distinguish objects from each other. But to this latter, which proceeds on the assumption of his being born blind, it is sufficient to reply
(1) that this man had not been born blind, as is implied in the word apokatestayh he was restored to or reinstated in his once normal condition; and
(2) he was able to discriminate trees from men, so that he must have seen both before this blindness supervened. Before Berkeley"s time visual distance was traced to an original law of our constitution, and considered an original perception; but the bishop proved, as is very generally admitted, that our information on this subject of the distance of objects is acquired by experience and association; while, if we judge of the distance of objects solely from the visible impressions on the retina, we fall into great mistakes. The case, too, of Cheselden, who had been born blind, appeared to confirm the theory of Berkeley, for when couched he at first had no correct notions of distances, but supposed all objects to touch and to be in close contact with the eye. It was gradually he corrected his visible by his tangible impressions, and gained a correct understanding of the situation of the objects that surrounded him, as well as of their shape and size. Had the blind man in this passage been thus born blind, we could readily concede the necessity of a gradual operation first to get his eyes opened, and secondly to gain correct notions of the objects about him. No gradual miracle of this sort was required in the case of this man, because he had originally possessed the sense of sight and lost it. The true cause appears to be either an evidence on the part of the Saviour that he is not tied down to any particular mode of operation, but manifests his mercy in divers manners, according to his sovereign good pleasure; or, if this theory be not accepted, the cause may be assigned to the symbolic nature of the miracle, as exhibiting the gradual recovery of spiritual eyesight, the removal of spiritual blindness being, for the most part and with some rare exceptions, gradual and progressive.
IV EXPLANATION OF TERMS WITH DIFFERENCES OF READING.
1. Our Lord led the blind man out, having taken him by the hand, which is a very expressive action, for it is a guide which the blind, whether physically or spiritually, so much need; and this is just the kind of guide here mentioned a Divine and therefore infallible Guide. This guidance is expressed in the received text by exhgagen , though some critical editors prefer exhnegken , equivalent to "conveyed out;" while in both the phrase "out of" is strongly expressed by the preposition in composition with the verb and the separate exw .
2. The reading of the common text is properly rendered, "I see men as trees, walking;" that is to say, he saw men, but so indistinctly and at first apparently motionless, that they seemed more like trees; but then he saw them walking, and so discriminated them from trees. The expression is rather abrupt, but most accurate in describing the three stages indicated. The reading of the critical editions is different, and is rightly represented by the following rendering: behold men, because as trees I see them walking." Even according to this reading the expression is abrupt, as significant of sudden and joyful surprise; as if he said, "I see men not much differing in shape and form from trees; but I know they are men, and not trees, for I see them in motion.
3. Succeeding this is the expression, he "made him look up," not "see again a signification of the word quite admissible, yet not in accord with the sense here; but for this whole phrase Tischendorf Tregelles and Alford read diebleqen , "he saw clearly," that very instant (aorist); then, after restoration, he saw all things or all persons plainly rather, continued looking on (eneblepen , imperfect, instead of enebleqe , aorist) all things with clear vision.
4. The word thlaugwv , from thle , at a distance, and augh , equivalent to "bright light," "radiance," and in the plural "beams of the sun," signifies generally "far-shining" or "far-seen;" but here, from shining in the distance, "far-sightedly," "clearly," "plainly.
5. An important distinction is made between omma and ofyalmov in this passage, the latter being the organ of sight, and as such used by prose-writers, the former or more poetic word being here the sense or inner power of seeing; and so the latter is the instrument employed by the former.
V The spitting and the application of the hands denote, according to Theophylact, word and work; they rather denote the former the virtue proceeding from the Saviour, which restored the extinct sense of sight, the latter the rectification of the organ. Just as in the case of the person born blind, who was couched for blindness, the recovery here also was gradual; so with the spiritually blind we proceed gradually from one degree of light to another, from grace to grace, and from strength to strength. When the spiritually blind recover sight, they discern many things before shrouded in darkness, but not all things, nor even those many things with perfect clearness, or in their correct relations or relative proportions. We need the hand of Jesus to touch our eyes many a time before our spiritual eyesight is perfected; that sight, by the gentle touch of our loving, living Saviour, goes on improving till our dying day. We are in the hand of our Saviour just as this blind man; and as he led him forth, fully restored his sight, and sent him away frown his old associations, so we must give ourselves up to his guidance, depend on him entirely for full restoration of sight and other spiritual powers, turn our back on old sinful courses or companions, and go with our Lord whithersoever he leads us. The following! context exemplifies the gradual recovery of spiritual sight in those who identified Jesus with John, or Elias, or a prophet, and in the disciples who acknowledged him to be the Christ. The former had a glimmering of the truth; the latter saw its full-orbed clearness. The former only saw "men like trees, walking;" the latter saw it in this particular with perfect plainness. J.J.G.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain And He cometh to Bethsaida; and they bring a…
Mar_8:22-26
And He cometh to Bethsaida; and they bring a blind man unto Him.
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Blindness common in the East
Blindness was and is more common in Egypt and Syria than in any other part of the world. The glare of light, the dust which is produced by a dry season, extending from May to November, in which rain rarely falls, and the fruit of the newly ripe fig, all tend to produce inflammation of the eyes, and this, when severe or repeated, produces blindness. One-tenth of the population of Joppa today are blind. In a neighbouring town, Lydda, a traveller, probably exaggerating, said every other person was blind of one or both eyes. In Cairo, a city of 250,000 inhabitants, there are 4,000 blind. Accordingly, this was one of the commonest ills which the Saviour had to treat. (R. Glover.)
Sight for the blind
I. A symbol of the spiritual blindness of humanity.
II. A symbol of salvation by Divine contact.
III. A symbol of the progressive character of spiritual enlightenment.
IV. A symbol of the power of Christ to effect complete illumination. (J. R. Thomson, M. A.)
Christs method of dealing with individual souls
I. He isolates from disturbing influences. First with Christ, that afterwards he may be in Him.
II. He encourages and confirms faith. Personal contact and operation, and kindly words, evoking patients inner freewill and power.
III. He exacts implicit obedience. The first use of the restored vision is to avoid those upon whom the man had formerly depended-a hard task! The life Christs people are bidden to lead may not commend itself to their judgment or desire, but it is best for their spiritual interests; and if Christ is to be a complete Saviour, He must be an absolute and unquestioned Lord. (A. F. Muir, M. A.)
Curing spiritual blindness
I. Deliverance from blind guides.
II. Transfer of confidence to the true Guide.
III. Revelation of the invisible power of God.
IV. Exercising the souls newly acquired powers of spiritual vision.
V. Giving spiritual direction for the future. (A. F. Muir, M. A.)
Earnestness and knowledge the parents of faith
The only progressed cure recorded in the New Testament. Why was it not instantaneous like the rest? Nothing our Lord did or left undone was without meaning; so there must have been a reason for this. That reason cannot have been in Christ. He was no respecter of persons; His tender sympathy yearned over this sufferer as tenderly as over the rest. It must be traced, then, to the man himself and his fellow citizens. It the tone of morality had been higher in Bethsaida, if public opinion had been more upright, if the collective example of the citizens had been better, the probability is that the man would not have been so criminal. Now, what was wrong?
I. Want of faith. Why was there a lack of faith?
1. Because there was a lack of earnestness. Distinct evidence of this. His friends bring him to Christ, and from the fact that he does not speak except to answer a question, we infer that he was not particularly anxious to be brought. No such eagerness as in the case of Bartimaeus.
2. Because there was a want of knowledge. This man was an inhabitant of Bethsaida Julius, which was within easy walking distance of most of Christs great works. The people living there had heard His wonderful words of life; and surely if those who could see, and who therefore, were without excuse, had realized their privileges and acted up to them they might have taught this man; but they had not done so. They had not rejoiced in the good news from God; they had not realized that the promised Messiah had come; they had not hastened to be His witnesses to their neighbours. If they had done so, they would have brought home to the mind of this poor blind man such a sense of the power and love of Jesus Christ, that he would not have hesitated for one moment to believe that Christ was well able to restore him at once to perfect vision. And because they were so unworthy Christ sends the man to his house, saying, Neither go into the town, etc. His fellow citizens were not worthy to hear the story of the great work which God had wrought in him. We must not cast our pearls before swine, or give hat which is holy to the dogs. This man himself was the monument of their spiritual shortcomings; and if in the first hour of his faith in Christ and his own personal experience of the power of Christ, he had returned to his cold-blooded, indifferent, cynical neighbours, they might have quenched the little flame of grateful love which was springing up in his heart. (Hugh Price Hughes.)
Significant actions
The profound and saintly Bengel calls our attention here to this touching spectacle, that significant fact-that Christ did not command his friends to lead him out of the town, but He led him out Himself. Oh, what a spectacle for men and angels-the Divine Son of God tenderly taking the hand of this poor blind beggar, and leading him out of the town Himself! And why did He lead him out of the town, away from the noise and confusion and preoccupation of town life? Surely it was because solitude and silence are great teachers of earnestness. He needed to be alone with himself and with his great want. It has been well said by a great teacher of our own time, that solitude in the sense of being often alone, is essential to any depth of meditation and character; and at present there is very little meditation and depth of character in this man. It is necessary that he should be alone awhile, that he might realize the meaning of these things-his great need and the love of God. And then it is also very significant that, instead of speaking a word to him as usual, He moistens His finger and places it upon the sightless eyeball of the blind, in order that by palpable evidence He might bring home to this man that He is about to bestow upon him a supreme blessing. But, so far, the efforts of Christ are not entirely successful; for, after He had put His hands upon him, He asked him if he could see, and he looked up, and said, I see men as trees-I can see better than I ever saw before, but so vaguely, so dimly, the outline is so indistinct, that I confess I cannot distinguish between the men and the trees at the side of the road, except by the fact that the men are moving. Now, you will observe that Christ did not abandon His work when it was half done. Indeed, He asked the man whether he could see, in order to bring home to him the fact that he could see a little, and that so far hope might spring up within him; but, at the same time, that he might also bring home to him the fact that he could see only very little. And then Christ put His hands upon his eyes a second time, and after that second touch he saw clearly. (Hugh Price Hughes.)
Healing the blind
Men arrive at Christ by different processes: one is found by Christ Himself, another comes to Him, another is borne of four, and this blind man is led. This matters little, so long as we do come to Him. The act of bringing men to Jesus is most commendable.
1. It proves kindly feeling.
2. It shows practical faith in the power of Jesus.
3. It is thus an act of true wisdom.
4. It is exceedingly acceptable to the Lord; and is sure to prove effectual when the person himself willingly comes.
In this case there was something faulty in the bringing, since there was a measure of dictation as to the method in which the Lord should operate. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The Lord heals in His own way
We must not attempt to dictate to Him how He shall operate. While He honours faith, He does not defer to its weakness.
1. He does not consent to work in the prescribed manner.
2. He touched, but no healing came; and thus He proved that the miracle was not attached to that special form of operation.
3. He did nothing to the blind man before their eyes; but led him out of the town. He would not indulge their observation or curiosity.
4. He did not heal him instantly, as they expected.
5. He used a means never suggested or thought of by them-spit on his eyes, etc.
6. When He did put His hands on him, He did it twice, so that, even in compliance with their wish, He vindicated His own freedom.
(a) Thus He refused to foster the superstition which limited His power.
(b) Thus He used a method more suited to the case
(c) Thus He gave to the people larger instruction.
(d) Thus He displayed to the individual a more personal care. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Man cannot chose his remedy
Is the sick man the doctor, that he should choose the remedy? (Madame Swetchine.)
Symbolism of touch
In the touching of the eyes with spittle, and laying on of hands, there was no inherent efficacy. They were means and channels of grace. Christ has established a Church in the world, and an ordained ministry therein, and holy sacraments, which only through Him become healing powers in the world. He could have spoken a word to the blind man at Bethsaida and all would have been accomplished that was sought for. He could save mens souls directly by fiats of omnipotent grace, but He has chosen a Church to embody and set forth the fulness of His love toward a lost world. He has used means. (E. N. Packard.)
Analogy to spiritual cures
Doubtless we are inclined to press the analogy between the gradualness of this mans cure and the gradualness of certain restorations to spiritual life; but this seems quite unauthorized. The cure was not an ideal type of all soul cures, but an instructive illustration of occasional Divine methods. The instant the blind eyes began to see, there was a miracle practically accomplished. The instant we turn to God in repentance and faith the new life begins; and regeneration, whenever it occurs, is instantaneous. Yet, for all that, our capacity to receive the fulness of Christ is at first but small, and the light must wax stronger and stronger as we walk in it day by day. (E. N. Packard.)
The gradual miracle
Variety is one mark of Gods working, as order is another. There was a fertility of resource, and a diversity of administration, which bespoke the agency of One who from the beginning was with God and was God, the Doer of all Gods acts and the Partner of all Gods counsels. The spiritual eye is not utterly closed nor utterly darkened; but its sight is confused, its discernment of objects both misty and inaccurate.
1. It is so in reference to the things of God. We can speak but for ourselves: but who has not known what it is to say, I cannot make real to myself one single fact or one single doctrine of the Bible? I can say indeed-and I bless God even for that-Lord, to whom else can I go? where, save in the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, is there either the hope or the peradventure of healing for a case like mine? And therefore I can cling to the Christian revelation with the tenacity of a shipwrecked sailor whose one broken piece of the ship is his only possibility of escape: I can just float upon that fragment, knowing that, torn from it or washed off from it, I am lost: but if the question is, whether I really see ought; whether I can discern with the minds eye the sacred and blessed forms of a Father and a Saviour and a Comforter who are such to me; whether, when I kneel down to pray, I can feel myself to be apart with my God; whether, when I approach Christs Table, I feel myself to be His guest; whether, when I ask to be kept this day from all sin, I feel myself to be the temple of a Holy Spirit whose indwelling is my safeguard and my chief joy; then I must answer that my hold upon all these things is precarious and most feeble; that seeing I see, but scarcely perceive; that my God is too often to me like the gods of the heathen, which can neither see, nor hear, nor reward, nor punish; that I too often conduct myself towards Him as though I thought wickedly that He was even such an one as myself, equally short-sighted, equally fallible, equally vacillating, equally impotent. More especially is this the case in reference to the distinctive doctrines of Divine grace. How little do any of us grasp and handle and use the revelation of an absolute forgiveness! What can we say more, in regard to all these things, than that at best we see men as trees, walking? that we have a dim, dull, floating impression of there being something in them, rather than a clear, bold, strong apprehension of what and whom and why we have believed?
2. And if this be so in the things of God, in matters of direct revelation and of Christian faith; it is scarcely less true in reference to the things of men; to our views of life, the present life and the future, and to the relations in which we stand to those fellow beings with whom the Providence of God brings us into contact. We all profess as Christians to be looking for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. And yet, when we examine our own hearts, or observe (however remotely) the evident principles of others, we find that in reality the world that is holds us all with a very firm gripe. We cannot appreciate the comparative dimensions of things heavenly and things earthly. The subject appears to suggest two words of application. First, to those who are truly in the position which I have sought by the help of this miracle to indicate. To those who are really under the healing hand of Christ, but upon whom as yet it has been laid incompletely if not indecisively. Many persons think themselves quite healed, when they are at best but half healed. Many, having experienced a first awakening, and sought with sincerity the gift of the Divine forgiveness, rest there, and count themselves to have apprehended. The importance of going forward in the process of the healing. Secondly, and finally, a word of caution must be added to those who are too easily assuming that they are even half healed. The hand is not laid without our knowing it, nay, nor without our seeking it. Even the first act of healing is a gift above gold and precious stone: despise it not! Power out of weakness, peace out of warfare, light outer darkness, sight out of dim, groping, creeping blindness, this it is to be the subject of the first healing. (C. J. Vaughan, D. D.)
The free agency of Christ
I. It is a common weakness of faith to expect the blessing in a certain way. They besought Him to touch him.
II. While our Lord honours faith He does not defer to its weakness. He used a means never suggested by them-spit on his eyes, etc.
III. While our Lord rebukes the weakness of faith, He honours faith itself. Faith ever honours the Lord, and therefore the Lord honours it. If faith were not thus rewarded, Jesus Himself would suffer dishonour. He who has faith shall surely see; he who demands signs shall not be satisfied. Let us forever have done with prescribing methods to our Lord. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Seeing or not seeing, or men as trees walking
I. Picture the case. A person with a darkened understanding, not a man who might be pictured by a person possessed with a devil.
II. Notice the means of cure. His friends brought him to Jesus. He first received contact with Jesus. A solitary position: Jesus led the man out of the town. He was brought under ordained but despicable means. Jesus spit on his eyes. Jesus put His hands on him in the form of heavenly benediction.
III. Consider the hopeful stage. The first joyful word is-I see. His sight was very indistinct. His sight was very exaggerating. This exaggeration leads to alarm. There is to such people an utter loss of the enjoyment which comes from seeing beauty and loveliness.
IV. Notice the completion of the cure. Jesus touched His patient again. The first person he saw was Jesus. Jesus bade him look up. At last he could see every man clearly. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Seeing men as trees walking
I. An improvement upon the past. He was no longer blind-thus an immense change had taken place. There is an infinite distance between the lowest type of a Christian and the finest specimen of an unconverted soul. The most subtle animal and the barbarous savage may seem to resemble each other; but a gulf which only God can bridge separates them. Thus the most imperfect act of faith in Christ lifts a person out of the natural into the spiritual realm.
II. A state that is still unsatisfactory. Men as trees walking. Whilst an imperfect faith will save the soul, yet it will not prevent incorrect views of truth: exaggerated views; and many needless fears. Most of the theological contentions are through imperfect conceptions of truth. Two men with perfect sight would see an object alike-two with very dim sight would each see it to be different.
III. A guarantee of perfect vision. The blade is a prophecy of the ear: the morning twilight of the noonday splendour: the buds of spring of the fruit of autumn. He which hath begun a good work within, will perfect it. He is the finisher as well as the author of our faith. How strange if Christ had left the poor man thus. Now are we sons of God-therefore it doth not yet appear what we shall be. (L. Palmer.)
Three views of Christs work
I. Christs work as a salvation. The restoring of sight was a point on the brilliant line, the end of which was the salvation of mankind; so was every miracle of healing.
II. Christs work as a process. The good work was not accomplished in this case, as in others, by a word; it was done gradually. It is so in spiritual enlightenment. All good men do not see God with equal quickness or with equal clearness.
III. Christs work as a consummation. He was restored, and saw every man clearly. He will not leave His work until it be finished, if so be men beseech Him to go on to be gracious. (Dr. Parker.)
The cure of a blind man
I. A blind man brought to Christ. Their faith. If those who are spiritually blind will not pray for themselves, let others pray for them.
II. A blind man led by Christ. He did not bid his friends lead him. Never had the blind man such a leader before.
III. A blind man marvellously cured.
1. Christ used a sign.
2. The cure was wrought gradually, but-
3. It was soon completed.
He took this way because-
1. He would not be tied to any one method.
2. It should be to the patient according to his faith, which at first was very weak.
3. He would show how spiritual light shines more and more to the perfect day. (M. Henry.)
Get hold of sinners by the hand if you mean to get hold of them by the heart
Gough, the temperance orator, tells of the thrill of Joe Strattons hand laid lovingly upon his shoulder, just at the time when he was reeling on the brink of hell; and of another gentleman of high respectability, who came to his shop when he was desperately struggling to disengage himself from the coils of the serpent, and almost ready to sink down in despair; and how he took him by the hand, expressed his faith in him, and bade him play the man. Gough said, I will: and he did-as everybody knows.
The gradual healing of the blind man
I. Here we have Christ isolating the man whom He wanted to heal. Christ never sought to display His miraculous working; here He absolutely tries to hide it. This suggests the true point of view from which to look at the subject of miracles. Instead of being merely cold, logical proofs of His mission, they were all glowing with the earnestness of a loving sympathy, and came from Him at sight of sorrow as naturally as rays from the sun. A lesson about Christs character; His benevolence was without ostentation. But Christ did not invest the miracle with any of its peculiarities for His own sake only. All that is singular about it will, I think, find its best explanation in the condition and character of the subject, the man on whom it was wrought. What sort of a man was he? Well, the narrative does not tell us much, but if we use our historical imagination and our eyes we may learn something about him. First, he was a Gentile; the land in which the miracle was wrought was the half-heathen country on the east side of the Sea of Galilee. In the second place, it was other people that brought him; he does not come of his own accord. Then again, it is their prayer that is mentioned, not his-he asks nothing. And suppose he is a man of that sort, with no expectation of anything from this Rabbi, how is Christ to get at him? His eyes are shut, so cannot see the sympathy beaming in His face. There is one thing possible-to lay hold of him by the hand; and the touch, gentle, loving, firm, says this, at least: Here is a man that has some interest in me, and whether He can do anything or not for me, He is going to try something. Would not that kindle an expectation in him? And is it not in parable just exactly what Jesus Christ does for the whole world? Is not the mystery of the Incarnation and the re, caning of it wrapped up as in a germ in that little simple incident, He put out His hand and touched him? Is there not in it too a lesson for all you good-hearted Christian men and women, in all your work? We must be content to take the hands of beggars if we are to make the blind to see. How he would feel more and more at each step, I am at His mercy! What is He going to do with me? And how thus there would be kindled in his heart some beginnings of an expectation, as well as some surrendering of himself to Christs guidance! These two things, the expectation and the surrender, have in them, at all events, some faint beginnings and rude germs of the highest faith, to lead up to which is the purpose of all that Christ here does. And is not that what He does for us all? Sometimes by sorrows, sometimes by sick beds, sometimes by shutting us out from chosen spheres of activity. Ah! brethren, here is a lesson from all this-if you want Jesus Christ to give you His highest gifts and to reveal to you His fairest beauty, you must be alone with Him. He loves to deal with single souls. I was left alone, and I saw this great vision, is the law for all true beholding.
II. We have Christ stooping to a sense-bound nature by the use of material helps. The hand laid upon the eyes, the finger possibly moistened with saliva touching the ball, the pausing to question, the repeated application. They make a ladder by which his hope and confidence might climb to the apprehension of the blessing. And that points to a general principle of the Divine dealings. God stoops to a feeble faith, and gives to it outward things by which it may rise to an apprehension of spiritual realities. Is not that the meaning of the whole complicated system of Old Testament revelation? Is not that the meaning of His own Incarnation? And still further, may we not say that this is the inmost meaning and purpose of the whole frame of the material universe? It exists in order that, as a parable and a symbol, it may proclaim the things that are unseen and eternal. So in regard of all the externals of Christianity, forms of worship, ordinances, and so on-all these, in like manner, are provided in condescension to our weakness, in order that by them we may be lifted above themselves; for the purpose of the temple is to prepare for the time and place where the seer saw no temple therein. They are but the cups that carry the wine, the flowers whose chalices bear the honey, the ladder by which the soul may climb to God Himself, the rafts upon which the precious treasure may be floated into our hearts. If Christs touch and Christs saliva healed, it was not because of anything in them, but because He willed it so; and He Himself is the source of all the healing energy.
III. Lastly, we have Christ accommodating the pace of His power to the slowness of the mans faith. He was healed slowly because he believed slowly. His faith was a condition of his cure, and the measure of it determined the measure of the restoration; and the rate of the growth of his faith settled the rate of the perfecting of Christs work on him. As a rule, faith in His power to heal was a condition of Christs healing, and that mainly because our Lord would, rather have men believing than sound of body. According to your faith be it unto you. And here, as a nurse or a mother might do, He keeps step with the little steps, and goes slowly because the man goes slowly. Now, both the gradual process of illumination and the rate of that process as determined by faith, are true for us. How dim and partial a glimmer of light comes to many a soul at the outset of the Christian life! How little a new convert knows about God and self and the starry truths of His great revelation! Christian progress does not consist in seeing new things, but in seeing the old things more clearly: the same Christ, the same Cross, only more distinctly and deeply apprehended, and more closely incorporated into my very being. We do not grow away from Him, but we grow into knowledge of Him. But then let me remind you that just in the measure in which you expect blessing of any kind, illumination and purifying and help of all sorts from Jesus Christ, just in that measure will you get it. You can limit the working of Almighty power, and can determine the rate at which it shall work on you. God fills the water pots to the brim, but not beyond the brim; and if, like the woman in the Old Testament story, we stop bringing vessels, the oil will stop flowing. It is an awful thing to know that we have the power, as it were, to turn a stopcock, and so increase or diminish, or cut off altogether the supply of Gods mercy and Christs healing and cleansing love in our hearts. You will get as much of God as you want and no more. The measure of your desire is the measure of your capacity, and the measure of your capacity is the measure of Gods gift. Open thy mouth wide and I will fill it. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain CHAPTER 8:22-26 (Mar_8:22-26)
CHAPTER 8:22-26 (Mar_8:22-26)
MEN AS TREES
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"And they come unto Bethsaida. And they bring to Him a blind man, and beseech Him to touch him. And He took hold of the blind man by the hand, and brought him out of the village; and when He had spit on his eyes, and laid His hands upon him, He asked him, Seest thou aught? And he looked up, and said, I see men; for I behold them as trees, walking. Then again He laid His hands upon his eyes; and he looked stedfastly, and was restored, and saw all things clearly. And He sent him away to his home, saying, Do not even enter into the village." Mar_8:22-26 (R.V.)
WHEN the disciples arrived at Bethsaida, they were met by the friends of a blind man, who besought Him to touch him. And this gave occasion to the most remarkable by far of all the progressive and tentative miracles, in which means were employed, and the result was gradually reached. The reasons for advancing to this cure by progressive stages have been much discussed. St. Chrysostom and many others have conjectured that the blind man had but little faith, since he neither found his own way to Jesus, nor pleaded his own cause, like Bartimaeus. Others brought him, and interceded for him. This may be so, but since he was clearly a consenting party, we can infer little from details which constitutional timidity would explain, or helplessness (for the resources of the blind are very various), or the zeal of friends or of paid servants, or the mere eagerness of a crowd, pushing him forward in desire to see a marvel.
We cannot expect always to penetrate the motives which varied our Savior's mode of action; it is enough that we can pretty clearly discern some principles which led to their variety. Many of them, including all the greatest, were wrought without instrumentality and without delay, showing His unrestricted and underived power. Others were gradual, and wrought by means. These connected His "signs" with nature and the God of nature; and they could be so watched as to silence many a cavil; and they exhibited, by the very disproportion of the means, the grandeur of the Worker. In this respect the successive stages of a miracle were like the subdivisions by which a skillful architect increases the effect of a facade or an interior. In every case the means employed were such as to connect the result most intimately with the person as well as the will of Christ.
It must be repeated also, that the need of secondary agents shows itself, only as the increasing willfulness of Israel separates between Christ and the people. It is as if the first rush of generous and spontaneous power had been frozen by the chill of their ingratitude.
Jesus again, as when healing the deaf and dumb, withdraws from idle curiosity. And we read, what is very impressive when we remember that any of the disciples could have been bidden to lead the blind man, that Jesus Himself drew him by the hand out of the village. What would have been affectation in other cases was a graceful courtesy to the blind. And it reveals to us the hearty human benignity and condescension of Him Whom to see was to see the Father, that He should have clasped in His helpful hand the hand of a blind suppliant for His grace. Moistening his eyes from His own lips, and laying His hands upon him, so as to convey the utmost assurance of power actually exerted, He asked, Seest thou aught?
The answer is very striking: it is such as the knowledge of that day could scarcely have imagined; and yet it is in the closest accord with later scientific discovery. What we call the act of vision is really a two-fold process; there is in it the report of the nerves to the brain, and also an inference, drawn by the mind, which previous experience had educated to understand what that report implies. For want of such experience, an infant thinks the moon as near him as the lamp, and reaches out for it. And when Christian science does its Master's work by opening the eyes of men who have been born blind, they do not know at first what appearances belong to globes and what to flat and square objects. It is certain that every image conveyed to the brain reaches it upside down, and is corrected there. When Jesus then restored a blind man to the perfect enjoyment of effective intelligent vision, He wrought a double miracle; one which instructed the intelligence of the blind man as well as opened his eyes. This was utterly unknown to that age. But the skepticism of our century would complain that to open the eyes was not enough, and that such a miracle would have left the man perplexed; and it would refuse to accept narratives which took no account of this difficulty, but that the cavil is anticipated. The miracle now before us refutes it in advance, for it recognizes, what no spectator and no early reader of the marvel could have understood, the middle stage, when sight is gained but is still uncomprehended and ineffective. The process is shown as well as the completed work. Only by their motion could he at first distinguish living creatures from lifeless things of far greater bulk. "He looked up," (mark this picturesque detail,) "and said, I see men; for I behold them as trees, walking."
But Jesus leaves no unfinished work: "Then again laid He His hands upon his eyes, and he looked stedfastly, and was restored, and saw all things clearly."
In this narrative there is a deep significance. That vision, forfeited until grace restores it, by which we look at the things which are not seen, is not always quite restored at once. We are conscious of great perplexity, obscurity and confusion. But a real work of Christ may have begun amid much that is imperfect, much that is even erroneous. And the path of the just is often a haze and twilight at the first, yet is its light real, and one that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain 22. He cometh to Bethsaida. Near the mouth of…
22. He cometh to Bethsaida. Near the mouth of the upper Jordan into the lake. It was upon the eastern bank of the river. The account of the miracle that follows is only given by Mark. And they bring a blind man unto him. The people, not the disciples, brought him. He was brought (1) either because he could not find the way alone, or (2) because he had not faith that would induce him to go, and so was brought by the faith of his friends. This man was not born blind. He had evidently seen men and trees aforetime.
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.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain Mar_8:22-26. Peculiar to Mark. Bethsaida (= Fish-town).—There were two…
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Mar_8:22-26. Peculiar to Mark. Bethsaida (= Fish-town).—There were two places of this name:
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(1) the landing-port for Capernaum, on the western side of the lake;
(2) a village to the north-east, on which Herod Philip conferred the status of a city, naming it Julias, after the emperor’s daughter. That this latter was the Bethsaida to which our Lord now withdrew may be inferred from the indications of locality in Mar_8:10; Mar_8:13; Mar_8:27.
Mar_8:24. See R.V. “I see something confusedly and obscurely; for I see what I think must be men, and yet so dimly that they look to me like trees, only that I know that men move from their places, whereas trees do not.”
Mar_8:25-26. See R.V. for readings and renderings.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Mar_8:22-26
The blind man at Bethsaida.—This incident, recorded only by St. Mark, may be considered both in a natural and a spiritual view, under which twofold aspect there can be no doubt that all our Lord’s miracles of healing were intended to be viewed. He adopted this method to make Himself known as the Great Physician of the soul, who “forgiveth all our sins and healeth all our infirmities”; who, by the virtue which resides in Him, and which is called forth by the application of faith, removes the blindness of our understanding, the raging fever of our passions, the palsy of our spiritual affections, the lameness of our halting obedience; commands Satan and his unclean spirits to come out of us, and raises us from the death of sin unto the life of righteousness.
I. A blind man is brought to Jesus to be cured.—
1. The restoring of sight to the blind was one of the signs to be looked for in the promised Messiah (Isa_35:5); and to this evidence Christ appealed, in the first place, in His answer to the Baptist’s messengers (Mat_11:5).
2. Many remarkable instances of this kind of miracle might be referred to (see especially John 9). The present example contains some peculiarities not found elsewhere.
3. There is a moral as well as a natural blindness, to which not merely a few unfortunate persons but all mankind by nature are subject (Isa_43:8).
(1) Such were the Gentiles (Eph_4:18).
(2) Such were the Jews also, who, though they had not the same excuse of ignorance or want of light, yet were blinded by obstinate and invincible prejudice (Mar_4:12).
(3) Such are all of us by nature: born blind, and continuing so by our own fault; having no light in ourselves, and hating it when it is brought to us. Perhaps, like the Pharisees, we say we see; but this is our blindness. We see nothing as we ought to see, nothing as it really is. We see no deformity in sin, no beauty in holiness; no terrors in the law, no charms or attractions in the gospel; no weakness in ourselves, no all-sufficiency in Christ (Rev_3:17-18).
4. It was to free all mankind from these spiritual infirmities, and not to relieve a few miserable objects from their bodily pains, that the Saviour appeared (Luk_4:18).
II. Our Lord, before beginning the cure, takes His patient to a private place, apart from the multitude.—
1. No reason is given why He did this, or why, after the cure was complete, He told him not to go back into the town, etc. (Mar_8:26). Perhaps the people of Bethsaida, like those of Nazareth (Mat_13:57-58), had resisted the evidence of former miracles performed amongst them, and therefore did not deserve another. At any rate, when we read this, and when we observe His disinclination on other occasions to have His fame blazed abroad, we are reminded of the character given Him by the prophet (Isa_42:2).
2. “We also are oftentimes spiritually blind while we are in the town, i.e. this world; afterwards, being led out of the town, i.e. out of the world and its concerns, by Jesus Christ, we are healed.” He does this in a variety of ways: by afflictions, by disappointments, by the loss of friends, by a change in our situation, etc. Anything, in short, which disentangles us from the world, detaches us from our former associates and pursuits, affords an opening for serious reflexion, and a closer acquaintance with our own hearts—anything which has this effect may be considered as a merciful dispensation of Christ to our souls, a taking us by the hand and leading us out of the town, preparatory to a perfect restoration.
III. On a first exertion of His healing virtue our Lord cures the blind man only in part.—He saw objects, but not distinctly. Men and trees waved to and fro before his eyes, so that he could not distinguish one object from another.
1. This is always the case when a blind man is restored to sight by natural means; and it is necessary to obviate it by not allowing him the free use of his eyes at first, and by the gradual admission of light into the room.
2. Such was not our Lord’s usual manner. He did all things well. Those who witnessed His cures were beyond measure astonished when they saw His patients restored to the immediate and full use of their senses, without the necessity of any precautions.
3. Here, however, He departs from His usual course, and as it were puts a restraint upon the virtue which resided in Him, so as to make its effect incomplete. Perhaps, according to the faith of this poor man, so was it done to him, which, being weak at first, required nursing and rearing by a partial exhibition of the Saviour’s power.
4. At any rate the application to the spiritual recovery of sinners is much more exact than if the cure had been completed at once. When the eyes of our understanding are enlightened by the revelation of Christ, the first effect is not unlike what is here described. Our views of Divine things are very imperfect and confused. We are not all at once turned from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God. We experience at first a kind of twilight illumination, which “shineth more and more unto the perfect day.” Nor is this gradual conversion in any way derogatory to the great power of God. Was the cure of this blind man less perfect or less astonishing because it was not effected all at once? The material circumstance which constituted the miracle was this; he came, seeing no man; he went away, “seeing every man clearly.” And so with respect to our souls; the great point to be considered is, what we were, and what we are (Eph_5:8). It is not necessary that we should be able to refer to the time or place when light first flashed in upon our mind; it is enough if we can say, “One thing I know,” etc. (Joh_9:25).
IV. The same process being repeated, the patient is perfectly restored.—
1. The former trial, however unsuccessful apparently in part, had had the intended effect of raising the man’s expectations and confidence in his Physician to a proper pitch. And Jesus, seeing that he had now faith to be healed, delays no longer to complete the cure.
2. It is the same with those whom He calls out of spiritual darkness into His marvellous light. The imperfect illumination vouchsafed them at first is designed only to exercise their faith, to make them love the light and desire more of it. Having once tasted of the heavenly gift, they feel an insatiable desire to increase in the knowledge of God, and to be filled with all wisdom and spiritual understanding. To them shall more be given as they are able to receive it, until they are “stablished, strengthened, settled,” and “made perfect in every good work to do His will.”
V. The remarkable injunction with which the man is dismissed.—
1. There was the same reason (whatever that might be) for desiring him not to go into the town after his cure as for taking him out in order to cure him.
2. The eyes of our understanding being enlightened to see our lost condition as sinners and the great power of God our Saviour, we are commanded not to go back into the town, nor to tell it to any one in the town, but to go to our house.
(1) Since it was the god of this world that first blinded our minds, the folly and danger of going back into the world after conversion is evident to common sense. If we do, we run the most serious risk of being again entangled therein and overcome. Nor is it enough that we should merely abstain from returning to the world; we must not even wish to do so, or indulge longing desires after what we have renounced. They are objects altogether at variance with our newly acquired sense (1Jn_2:15-16; Luk_9:62).
(2) Still further to preserve us from worldly contamination, Christ forbids us even to tell or talk of what has happened to us, to the unspiritual. By such communications we are likely to do harm to ourselves, and no good to them. We may begin by inviting them out of the town; we may end by going back into the town with them.
(3) But although we are dissuaded from talking of these matters to the world in general, it by no means follows that we are to keep them to ourselves. On the contrary, having received such great mercies, we are to give glory to God, and at the same time be doing an inestimable service to those most dear to us, by endeavouring to open their eyes and to bring them to the knowledge and obedience of the faith. In the bosom of our own family, where we may count upon at least some measure of sympathy and attention, we are to do the work of a true friend for them and of an evangelist for Christ.
The clearing of the sight.—As in other cases, Jesus led this sufferer apart; as in other cases, He made use of certain means as well as of His word, teaching us the method and the secret of sacramental working; but, not as in other miracles, the cure is gradually wrought.
I. It was intended to teach us how God deals differently with different souls.—It is a rebuke to those who demand proofs of instantaneous conversion; it should be read with that passage which describes the growth of grace as gradual, like the growth of the grain of corn, “first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear,” which, while the man rises and sleeps night and day, grows he knoweth not how.
II. As to the particular words in which the man describes his growth.—“I see men walking, but they look like trees.” Large, indistinct, crowded, and hazy, like the mingled mass of the distant woods waving and bending in the breeze, or as when passing rapidly along we see the trees flit quickly by us in copse and hedgerow. The man had either never seen, or had long been unaccustomed to, the form of either man or tree; his was therefore an utterance doubly obscured, his eyes only partially transmitting objects which his mind only partially recognised. The man having thus truly described his half-restored condition, Jesus speaks to him a word of command: He bids him look up, and then he sees all men clearly.
III. Looking at the spiritual meaning of this description, it has been urged that it is often the case when the work of grace is beginning that people mistake the nature and proportion of things around them. Spiritual things and living truths still have much of the earthly clinging to them: and if life and movement be recognised at all, it is the dull vegetative life of mere existence, still rooted in the soil of this world, or spreading itself out in a hazy form of general indefinite goodness, not the active, personal, organic life of the regenerate man, which is part of the very life of God.
IV. We notice a lesson of honesty and humility in the man’s description.—He does not claim an insight which he has not attained to. He speaks a lesson, gentle but severe, to those who, after hearing a sermon, or reading a treatise, or attending a service, or feeling an awakening of conscience, suddenly consider that they are converted, that they “can read their title clear,” that they have clear views, and so forth. The precocious child, who lectures its parents or strangers on religion; the converted prize-fighter, who suddenly turns from indulging in all kinds of brutal passions and lectures his neighbours who have been walking for years in the light on which he has persistently turned his back; the uneducated convert, who has picked up one text of Scripture, and on the strength of that ignores all that others have learned of the whole counsel of God,—all these may lay to heart the humility and truthfulness of this man.
V. And in this gradual development of the spiritual powers there is also a strong and abiding word of comfort for many a struggling Christian. Oftentimes we find those who, though they are interested and anxious, cannot obtain the steadfast gaze that they desire. Clouds drive across their spiritual firmament; now all is clear and bright for a moment; now the fierce storm or the blinding mist sweeps over them, and their light is turned to darkness. They are not, as they were once, either blind or careless; the truth has shone in upon their souls, but they cannot retain it; their conscience is tender, but their understanding is dim. Let such take courage; they are just in the condition indicated by the text—they see men walking as it were trees. You who have been not only baptised and confirmed, but have earnestly worshipped and reverently communicated, you are different, widely different, from what you were once; but widely different also from what hereafter you shall be. Christ has led you to self-examination: the result is at once to excite your thankfulness for His marvellous work, and your humiliation for your own shortcoming. But He still is standing by you,—still in His house apart from the city’s noise He is bending over you as you kneel; still to your soul His voice is speaking; still on His altar He waits for you, that again He may lay His hands upon you, again He may bid you lift up your hearts. And in His house, and through His Word, by the voice of His Church and the power of His sacraments, He will free you from the bondage and the blinding power of sin, and quicken all those faculties which have so long been paralysed or misused.—G. C. Harris.
OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Mar_8:23. Christ’s freedom in the use of means.—This case and that of the deaf and stammering man in Decapolis have many points of resemblance. In both those who brought the diseased to Jesus prescribed to Him the mode of cure. Was it for the purpose of reproving and counteracting the prejudice which connected the cure with a certain kind of manipulation on the part of the curer that Jesus in both instances went so far out of His usual course, varying the manner of His action so singularly that, out of all His miracles of healing, these two stand distinguished by the unique mode of their performance? It is certain that, had Jesus observed one uniform method of healing, the spirit of formalism and superstition, which lies so deep in our nature, would have seized upon it, and linked it inseparably with the Divine virtue that went out of Him, confounding the channel with the blessing it conveyed.—Dr. Hanna.
Christ, not means, the source of healing.—If Christ’s touch and Christ’s saliva healed, it was not because of anything in them, but because He willed it so; and He Himself is the source of all the healing energy. Therefore let us keep these externals in their proper place of subordination, and remember that in Him, not in them, lies the healing power.—A. Maclaren, D.D.
Led into solitude.—As Israel was led into the wilderness that God might “speak to her heart,” so often Christ draws us aside, if not by outward providences such as these, yet by awaking in us that solemn sense of personal responsibility and making us feel our solitude, that He may lead us to feel His all-sufficient companionship.—Ibid.
Mar_8:24-25. The man’s answer is in accord with later scientific discovery. What we call the act of vision is really a twofold process; there is in it the report of the nerves to the brain, and also an inference, drawn by the mind, which previous experience has educated to understand what that report implies. In want of such experience an infant thinks the moon as near him as the lamp, and reaches out for it. And when Christian science does its Master’s work by opening the eyes of men who have been born blind, they do not know at first what appearances belong to globes and what to flat and square objects. It is certain that every image conveyed to the brain reaches it upside-down, and is corrected there. When Jesus then restored a blind man to the perfect enjoyment of effective, intelligent vision, He wrought a double miracle, one which instructed the intelligence of the blind man as well as opened his eyes. This was utterly unknown to that age.—Dean Chadwick.
Mar_8:24. Different conditions of the spiritual life.—
1. It is a happy state, if it is the first stage towards clearly seeing in perfect knowledge.
2. It is a gloomy and uncertain state, if the Christian should remain in it.
3. Worst of all, if through his own guilt he should return to this stage, falling into the new blindness of despair.—J. P. Lange, D.D.
Man and tree.—A large part of the battle of life has been fought and gained when one has learned the difference between a man and a tree. For that is the difference between the great and the small, between mind and matter, between the eternal and the transitory, between earth and heaven.—G. Hodges.
Christian progress.—How dim and partial a glimmer of light comes to many a soul at the outset of the Christian life! How little a new convert knows about God and self and the starry truths of His great revelation! Christian progress does not consist in seeing new things, but in seeing the old things more clearly—the same Christ, the same Cross, only more distinctly and deeply apprehended, and more closely incorporated into my very being. We do not grow away from Him, but we grow into knowledge of Him.—A. Maclaren, D.D.
Mar_8:25. The restoration of sight.—In this verse the Evangelist just touches that which is the salient point in the blessing of the restoration of sight. For what is the great deprivation in blindness? It is a loss, doubtless, as the blind poet Milton sang, that not to them return, “Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, or sight of vernal bloom, or summer’s rose, or flocks and herds”—but still more, what he adds last, that they cannot see the “human face Divine.” Were it possible for a blind person to be restored to the faculty of seeing persons, though he remained blind to everything else, much more than half his deprivation would be removed. Now a great deal of that moral blindness of which the blindness of this man was the type consists in just this—that we do not see our fellow-men. We only see ourselves; we are sharp-sighted enough to our own interests, but blind to the wants and wishes of others. The love of self brings a gradual film over the moral vision, so that, reversing the process of the miracle, though at first we see every man clearly, by-and-by they are no more to us than vague shadows, as trees walking, and presently we cease to see them at all.—Bishop A. Blomfield.
Mar_8:26. A view of the miraculous.—This fact, of a miracle done in intended secrecy and shrouded in deep darkness, suggests to us the true point of view from which to look at the whole subject of miracles.
1. People say they were meant to be attestations of His Divine mission. Yes, no doubt that is true partially; but that was never the sole or even the main purpose for which they were wrought; and when anybody asked Jesus Christ to work a miracle for that purpose only, He rebuked the desire and refused to gratify it. He wrought the miracle not coldly, in order to witness to His mission, but every one of them was the token because it was the outcome of His own sympathetic heart brought into contact with human need. And instead of the miracles of Jesus Christ being cold, logical proofs of His mission, they were all glowing with the earnestness of a loving sympathy, and came from Him as naturally as rays from the sunshine at sight of sorrow.
2. The same fact carries with it, too, a lesson about His character. Is not He here doing what He tells us to do?—“Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.” All goodness “does good by stealth,” even if it does not “blush to find it fame”—and that universal mark of true benevolence marked His. He had to solve in His human life what we have to solve—the problem of keeping the narrow path between ostentation of powers and selfish concealment of faculty; and He solved it thus: “Leaving us an example that we should follow in His steps.”—A. Maclaren, D.D.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 8
Mar_8:22-25. Sight obscured by the trivial.—A silk thread stretched across the glass of the telescope will entirely cover a star, although as large as our sun. So there are some whose sight of the heavenly world is entirely obscured by what is infinitely little compared with the life of the world to come. Richardson, the blind man, used to say of his conversion, “I could never see till I was blind.” The great Earl of Chatham once went with a friend to hear Mr. Cecil preach. The sermon was on the Spirit’s agency in the hearts of believers. As they were coming from church, the great statesman confessed that he could not understand it at all, and asked his friend if he supposed that any one present did. “Why, yes,” said he, “there were many plain, unlettered women, and some children there, who understood every word of it, and heard it with joy.”
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain Mar 8:22-26. “And He comes into Bethsaida [i.e., it…
HEALING THE BLIND MAN
Mar 8:22-26. “And He comes into Bethsaida [i.e., it is Bethsaida Julias, as He did not sail toward the other Bethsaida, the birthplace of Peter, Andrew, and Philip]; and they bring to Him a blind man, and entreat Him that He may touch him. Taking the blind man by the hand, He led him off out of the village; spitting in his eyes, putting His hands on him, He asked him if he sees anything. And looking up, he continued to say, I see men like trees walking around. Then again He placed His hands on his eyes, and made him look up; and he was restored, and saw all men distinctly. And He sent him to his house, saying, Go not into the village, nor tell any one.” I find the inspired writers call this Bethsaida a “village,” and the other a city. There evidently is some unrevealed reason why Jesus led this blind man off out of the village in order to heal him, and admonished him not to go back into it. The latent idea of Divine retribution seems to linger in the narrative, our Lord doubtless having some unrevealed reason for not permitting them to witness His mighty work. The spittle used here, and the clay in Jerusalem in another case, were evidently to attract the attention of the blind men to the afflicted organism, at that moment receiving the Omnific touch. Here we have an irrefutable argument in favor of the two distinct works of grace, wrought in the restoration of spiritual eyesight. The sinner walks in Satan’s rayless midnight, like this man, without a solitary gleam of the day. In regeneration, the day dawns, and, to our infinite rapture, glows and broadens all around. O what a wonderful blessing is regeneration! Out of darkness into light which we never saw before! While the transition is unutterably glorious, causing us to leap for joy, yet it is a significant fact, amid this glorious world of life into which this new birth brings us, that cloudy streaks and segments hang about and belt around, and we are soon cognizant to the fact that we do not see all things distinctly. Fifty years ago I passed out of darkness into light; but nineteen years rolled away before I received distinct vision, and walked beneath a cloudless sky, with no shadows hanging round. During this interval, I saw men like trees walking. In my early boyhood becoming a preacher and a circuit rider, my presiding elder and bishop, the collegiate president, the doctor, the colonel, and even the captain, and especially the rich people, were great, tall trees, bending over me, ready to fall on me, and crush me into smithereens. When the Lord gloriously sanctified me, thirty- one years ago, I immediately saw that they were not trees at all, but only men, fallible like myself, my friends and sympathizers, ready to help me rather than brain me with the club of ridicule and criticism. O it is blessed and ineffably glorious to see all things distinctly! If you are not there, fly to Jesus at once, and receive the second touch.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain Mar 8:22 - Mar 8:25.
Mark
THE GRADUAL HEALING OF THE BLIND MAN
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Mar 8:22 - Mar 8:25.
This miracle, which is only recorded by the Evangelist Mark, has about it several very peculiar features. Some of these it shares with one other of our Lord’s miracles, which also is found only in this Gospel, and which occurred nearly about the same time-that miracle of healing the deaf and dumb man recorded in the previous chapter. Both of them have these points in common: that our Lord takes the sufferer apart and works His miracle in privacy; that in both there is an abundant use of the same singular means-our Lord’s touch and the saliva upon His finger; and that in both there is the urgent injunction of entire secrecy laid upon the recipient of the benefit.
But this miracle had another peculiarity in which it stands absolutely alone, and that is that the work is done in stages; that the power which at other times has but to speak and it is done, here seems to labour, and the cure comes slowly; that in the middle Christ pauses, and, like a physician trying the experiment of a drug, asks the patient if any effect is produced, and, getting the answer that some mitigation is realised, repeats the application, and perfect recovery is the result.
Now, how unlike that is to all the rest of Christ’s miraculous working we do not need to point out; but the question may arise, What is the meaning, and what the reason, and what the lessons of this unique and anomalous form of miraculous working? It is to that question that I wish to turn now; for I think that the answer will open up to us some very precious things in regard to that great Lord, the revelation of whose heart and character is the inmost and the loftiest meaning of both His words and His works.
I take these three points of peculiarity to which I have referred: the privacy, the strange and abundant use of means veiling the miraculous power, and the gradual, slow nature of the cure. I see in them these three things: Christ isolating the man that He would heal; Christ stooping to the sense-bound nature by using outward means; and Christ making His power work slowly, to keep abreast of the man’s slow faith.
I. First, then, here we have Christ isolating the man whom He wanted to heal.
Now, there may have been something about our Lord’s circumstances and purposes at the time of this miracle which accounted for the great urgency with which at this period He impressed secrecy upon all around Him. What that was it is not necessary for us to inquire here, but this is worth noticing, that in obedience to this wish, on His own part, for privacy at the time, He covers over with a veil His miraculous working, and does it quietly, as one might almost say, in a corner. He never sought to display His miraculous working; here He absolutely tries to hide it. That fact of Christ’s taking pains to conceal His miracle carries in it two great truths-first, about the purpose and nature of miracles in general, and second, about His character-as to each of which a few words may be said.
This fact, of a miracle done in intended secrecy, and shrouded in deep darkness, suggests to us the true point of view from which to look at the whole subject of miracles.
People say they were meant to be attestations of His divine mission. Yes, no doubt that is true partially; but that was never the sole nor even the main purpose for which they were wrought; and when any one asked Jesus Christ to work a miracle for that purpose only, He rebuked the desire and refused to gratify it. He wrought His miracles, not coldly, in order to witness to His mission, but every one of them was the token, because it was the outcome, of His own sympathetic heart brought into contact with human need. And instead of the miracles of Jesus Christ being cold, logical proofs of His mission, they were all glowing with the earnestness of a loving sympathy, and came from Him at sight of sorrow as naturally as rays beam out from the sun.
Then, on the other hand, the same fact carries with it, too, a lesson about His character. Is not He here doing what He tells us to do; ‘Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth’? He dares not wrap His talent in a napkin, He would be unfaithful to His mission if He hid His light under a bushel. All goodness ‘does good by stealth,’ even if it does not ‘blush to find it fame’-and that universal mark of true benevolence marked His. He had to solve in His human life what we have to solve, the problem of keeping the narrow path between ostentation of powers and selfish concealment of faculty; and He solved it thus, ‘leaving us an example that we should follow in His steps.’
But that is somewhat aside from the main purpose to which I intended to turn in these first remarks. Christ did not invest the miracle with any of its peculiarities for His own sake only. All that is singular about it, will, I think, find its best explanation in the condition and character of the subject, the man on whom it was wrought. What sort of a man was he? Well, the narrative does not tell us much, but if we use our historical imagination and our eyes we may learn something about him. First he was a Gentile; the land in which the miracle was wrought was the half-heathen country on the east side of the Sea of Galilee. In the second place, it was other people that brought him; he did not come of his own accord. Then again, it is their prayer that is mentioned, not his-he asked nothing.
You see him standing there hopeless, listless; not believing that this Jewish stranger is going to do anything for him; with his impassive blind face glowing with no entreaty to reinforce his companions’ prayers. And suppose he was a man of that sort, with no expectation of anything from this Rabbi, how was Christ to get at him? It is of no use to speak to him. His eyes are shut, so cannot see the sympathy beaming in His face. There is one thing possible-to lay hold of Him by the hand; and the touch, gentle, loving, firm, says this at least: ‘Here is a man that has some interest in me, and whether He can do anything or not for me, He is going to try something.’ Would not that kindle an expectation in him? And is it not in parable just exactly what Jesus Christ does for the whole world? Is not that act of His by which He put out His hand and seized the unbelieving limp hand of the blind man that hung by his side, the very same in principle as that by which He ‘taketh hold of the seed of Abraham,’ and is made like to His brethren? Are not the mystery of the Incarnation and the meaning of it wrapped up as in a germ in that little simple incident, ‘He put out His hand and touched him’?
Is there not in it, too, a lesson for all you good-hearted Christian men and women, in all your work? If you want to do anything for your afflicted brethren, there is only one way to do it-to come down to their level and get hold of their hands, and then there is some chance of doing them good. We must be content to take the hands of beggars if we are to make the blind to see.
And then, having thus drawn near to the man, and established in his heart some dim expectation of something coming, He gently led him away out of the little village. I wonder no painter has ever painted that, instead of repeating ad nauseam two or three scenes out of the Gospels. I wonder none of them has ever seen what a parable it is-the Christ leading the blind man out into solitude before He can say to him, ‘Behold!’ How, as they went, step by step, the poor blind eyes not telling the man where they were going, or how far away he was being taken from his friends, his conscious dependence upon this stranger would grow! How he would feel more and more at each step, ‘I am at His mercy; what is He going to do with me?’ And how thus there would be kindled in his heart some beginnings of an expectation, as well as some surrendering of himself to Christ’s guidance! These two things, the expectation and the surrender, have in them, at all events, some faint beginnings and rude germs of the highest faith, to lead up to which is the purpose of all that Christ here does.
And is not that what He does for us all? Sometimes by sorrows, sometimes by sick-beds, sometimes by shutting us out from chosen spheres of activity, sometimes by striking down the dear ones at our sides, and leaving us lonely in the desert-is He not saying to us in a thousand ways, ‘Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place’? As Israel was led into the wilderness that God might ‘speak to her heart,’ so often Christ draws us aside, if not by outward providences such as these, yet by awaking in us the solemn sense of personal responsibility and making us feel our solitude, that He may lead us to feel His all-sufficient companionship.
Ah! brethren, here is a lesson from all this-if you wish Jesus Christ to give you His highest gifts and to reveal to you His fairest beauty, you must be alone with Him. He loves to deal with single souls. Our lives, many of them, can never be outwardly alone. We are jammed up against one another in such a fashion, and the hurry and pressure of city life is so great with us all, that it is often impossible for us to secure outward secrecy and solitude. But a man maybe alone in a crowd; the heart may be gathered up into itself, and there may be a still atmosphere round about us in the shop and in the market and amongst the busy ways of men, in which we and Christ shall be alone together. Unless there be, I do not think any of us will see the King in His beauty or the far-off land. ‘I was left alone, and I saw this great vision,’ is the law for all true beholding.
So, dear brethren, try to feel how awful this earthly life of ours is in its necessary solitude; that each of us by himself must shape out his own destiny, and make his own character; that every unit of the swarms upon our streets is a unit that has to face the solemn facts of life for and by itself; that alone we live, that alone we shall die; that alone we shall have to give account of ourselves before God, and in the solitude let the hand of your heart feel for His hand that is stretched out to grasp yours, and listen to Him saying, ‘Lo! I am with you always, even to the end of the world.’ There was no dreariness in the solitude when it was Christ that ‘took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the city.’
II. We have Christ stooping to a sense-bound nature by the use of material helps.
No doubt there was something in the man, as I have said, which made it advisable that these methods should be adopted. If he were the sort of person that I have described, slow of faith, not much caring about the possibility of cure, and not having much hope that any cure would come to pass-then we can see the fitness of the means adopted: the hand laid upon the eyes, the finger, possibly moistened with saliva, touching the ball, the pausing to question, the repeated application. These make a ladder by which his hope and confidence might climb to the apprehension of the blessing. And that points to a general principle of the divine dealings. God stoops to a feeble faith, and gives to it outward things by which it may rise to an apprehension of spiritual realities.
Is not that the meaning of the whole complicated system of Old Testament revelation? Is not that the meaning of the altars, and priests, and sacrifices, and the old cumbrous apparatus of the Mosaic law? Was it not all a picture-book in which the infant eyes of the race might see in a material form deep spiritual realities? Was not that the meaning and explanation of our Lord’s parabolic teaching? He veils spiritual truth in common things that He may reveal it by common things-taking fishermen’s boats, their nets, a sower’s basket, a baker’s dough, and many another homely article, and finding in them the emblems of the loftiest truth.
Is not that the meaning of His own Incarnation? It is of no use to talk to men about God-let them see Him; no use to preach about principles-give them the facts of His life. Revelation does not consist in the setting forth of certain propositions about God, but in the exhibition of the acts of God in a human life.
‘And so the Word had breath, and wrought
With human hands the creed of creeds.’
And still further, may we not say that this is the inmost meaning and purpose of the whole frame of the material universe? It exists in order that, as a parable and a symbol, it may proclaim the things that are unseen and eternal. Its depths and heights, its splendours and its energies are all in order that through them spirits may climb to the apprehension of the ‘King, eternal, immortal, invisible,’ and the realities of His spiritual kingdom.
So in regard to all the externals of Christianity, forms of worship, ordinances, and so on-all these, in like manner, are provided in condescension to our weakness, in order that by them we may be lifted above themselves; for the purpose of the Temple is to prepare for the time and the place where the seer ‘saw no temple therein.’ They are but the cups that carry the wine, the flowers whose chalices bear the honey, the ladders by which the soul may climb to God Himself, the rafts upon which the precious treasure may be floated into our hearts.
If Christ’s touch and Christ’s saliva healed, it was not because of anything in them; but because He willed it so; and He Himself is the source of all the healing energy. Therefore, let us keep these externals in their proper place of subordination, and remember that in Him, not in them, lies the healing power; and that even Christ’s touch may become the object of superstitious regard, as it was when that poor woman came through the crowd to lay her finger on the hem of His garment, thinking that she could bear away a surreptitious blessing without the conscious outgoing of His power. He healed her because there was a spark of faith in her superstition, but she had to I earn that it was not the hem of the garment but the loving will of Christ that cured, in order that the dross of superstitious reliance on the outward vehicle might be melted away, and the pure gold of faith in His love and power might remain.
III. Lastly, we have Christ accommodating the pace of His power to the slowness of the man’s faith.
The whole story, as I have said, is unique, and especially this part of it-’He put His hands upon him, and asked him if he saw aught.’ One might have expected an answer with a little more gratitude in it, with a little more wonder in it, with a little more emotion in it. Instead of these it is almost surly, or at any rate strangely reticent-a matter-of-fact answer to the question, and there an end. As our Revised Version reads it better: ‘I see men, for I behold them as trees walking.’ Curiously accurate! A dim glimmer had come into the eye, but there is not yet distinctness of outline nor sense of magnitude, which must be acquired by practice. The eye has not yet been educated, and it was only because these blurred figures were in motion that he knew they were not trees. ‘After that He put His hands upon his eyes and made him look up,’ or, as the Revised Version has it with a better reading, ‘and he looked steadfastly,’ with an eager straining of the new faculty to make sure that he had got it, and to test its limits and its perfection. ‘And he was restored and saw all things clearly.’
Now I take it that the worthiest view of that strangely protracted process, broken up into two halves by the question that is dropped into the middle, is this, that it was determined by the man’s faith, and was meant to increase it. He was healed slowly because he believed slowly. His faith was a condition of his cure, and the measure of it determined the measure of the restoration; and the rate of the growth of his faith settled the rate of the perfecting of Christ’s work on him. As a rule, faith in His power to heal was a condition of Christ’s healing, and that mainly because our Lord would rather make men believing than sound of body. They often wanted only the outward miracle, but He wanted to make it the means of insinuating a better healing into their spirits. And so, not that there was any necessary connection between their faith and the exercise of His miraculous power, but in order that He might bless them with His best gifts, He usually worked on the principle ‘According to your faith be it unto you.’ And here, as a nurse or a mother with her child might do, He keeps step with the little steps, and goes slowly because the man goes slowly.
Now, both the gradual process of illumination and the rate of that process as determined by faith, are true for us. How dim and partial a glimmer of light comes to many a soul at the outset of the Christian life! How little a new convert knows about God and self and the starry truths of His great revelation! Christian progress does not consist in seeing new things, but in seeing the old things more clearly: the same Christ, the same Cross, only more distinctly and deeply apprehended, and more closely incorporated into my very being. We do not grow away from Him, but we grow into knowledge of Him. The first lesson that we get is the last lesson that we shall learn, and He is the ‘Alpha’ at the beginning, and the ‘Omega’ at the end of that alphabet, the letters of which make up our knowledge for earth and heaven.
But then let me remind you that just in the measure in which you expect blessing of any kind, illumination and purifying and help of all sorts from Jesus Christ, just in that measure will you get it. You can limit the working of Almighty power, and can determine the rate at which it shall work on you. God fills the water-pots ‘to the brim,’ but not beyond the brim; and if, like the woman in the Old Testament story, we stop bringing vessels, the oil will stop flowing. It is an awful thing to think that we have the power, as it were, to turn a stopcock, and so increase or diminish, or cut off altogether, the supply of God’s mercy and Christ’s healing and cleansing love in our hearts. You will get as much of God as you want and no more. The measure of your desire is the measure of your capacity, and the measure of your capacity is the measure of God’s gift. ‘Open thy mouth wide and I will fill it!’ And if your faith is heavily shod and steps slowly, His power and His grace will step slowly along with it, keeping rank and step. ‘According to your faith shall it be unto you.’
Ah! dear friends, ‘Ye are not straitened in Me, ye are straitened in yourselves.’ Desire Him to help and bless you, and He will do it. Expect Him to do it, and He will do it. Go to Him like the other blind man and say to Him-’Jesus, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me, that I may receive my sight,’ and He will lay His hand upon you, and at any rate a glimmer will come, which will grow in the measure of your humble, confident desire, until at last He takes you by the hand and leads you out of this poor little village of a world and lays His finger for a brief moment of blindness upon your eyes and asks you if you see aught. Then you will look up, and the first face that you will behold will be His, whom you saw ‘as through a glass darkly’ with your dim eyes in this twilight world.
May that be your experience and mine, through His mercy!
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain The Blind Man of Bethsaida. Mar 8:22-26
The Blind Man of Bethsaida. Mar 8:22-26
v. 22. And He cometh to Bethsaida; and they bring a blind man unto Him, and besought Him to touch him.
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v. 23. And He took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town; and when He had spit on his eyes, and put His hands upon him, He asked him if he saw aught.
v. 24. And he looked up and said, I see men as trees, walking.
v. 25. After that He put His hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up; and he was restored, and saw every man clearly.
v. 26. And He sent him away to his house, saying, Neither go into the town, nor tell it to any in the town.
This is the second miracle whose account is peculiar to Mark, and he relates it in just the same circumstantial, detailed way as the other, 7:31-36. Jesus had crossed the sea with His disciples and landed on the northeast shore. Here, on the east side of the river Jordan, just where it flows into the Sea of Galilee, was the city of Bethsaida-Julias. Philip, the tetrarch of Gaulanitis, had built this city on the site of a former village and had called it, in honor of the daughter of the emperor, Bethsaida-Julias, to distinguish it from the other Bethsaida, on the western shore of the lake. Even in this neighborhood, where the Lord had probably never been for any length of time, His fame had preceded Him. They, the relatives or friends, brought a blind man to Him, and begged Him earnestly that He should touch him, having confidence that a mere touch of His hand would make him whole, restore his sight. The Lord wanted no publicity; He had come for the purpose of being alone with His disciples. So He took the blind man’s hand and led him out of the village or city. Probably only His disciples were present. Having moistened the dead eyes with some spittle, He laid His hands on him, on his eyes, and then asked him whether he could see. The eyesight had been restored to some extent, so that the blind man could now see objects in indistinct, blurred outlines. But a second laying on of hands corrected this defect, enabling him to see things clearly, since he was now restored to the proper use of his sight. He could see all things sharply defined and standing out clearly. The miracle had returned the full use of his dead members to him. The reason for this gradual healing, that the blind man first looked up in the tentative manner peculiar to the blind, then saw things through a mist, and finally was fully restored, is not indicated. It should impress upon all Christian the great value of the sense of sight and of all senses, so that they appreciate and use them properly, never forgetting to give thanks to the Giver of all good gifts for them. In order to avoid a sensation, Jesus did not permit the man to return to his house, nor even to go into the city. He wanted to continue the work for which He had left Galilee.
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 Connecting Statement:
Connecting Statement:
When Jesus and his disciples get out of their boat at Bethsaida, Jesus heals a blind man.
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Bethsaida
This is a town on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee. See how you translated the name of this town in Mark 6:45. (See: How to Translate Names)
to touch him
It may be helpful to state why they wanted Jesus to touch the man. AT: "to touch him in order to heal him" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
When he had spit on his eyes ... he asked him
"When Jesus had spit on the man's eyes ... Jesus asked the man"
translationWords
beg
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 8:22-26 Earlier, Jesus and the disciples set out unsuccessfully…
8:22-26 Earlier, Jesus and the disciples set out unsuccessfully for Bethsaida (6:45); here, they arrive, and Jesus heals a blind man. Only Mark has this two-part healing; it might connect with the opening of the disciples’ spiritual eyes in the next account (8:27-38). • John 1:44 identifies Bethsaida as the home of Peter, Andrew, James, and John (see also John 12:21). This small fishing village, although technically part of Gaulanitis, was generally considered part of Galilee (John 12:21). It was relocated and given status as a city by Philip the Tetrarch (Josephus, Antiquities 18.2.1).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.