WHEN JESUS HAD again crossed over by boat to the other side of the lake, a large crowd gathered around him while he was by the lake. 22Then one of the synagogue rulers, named Jairus, came there. Seeing Jesus, he fell at his feet 23and pleaded earnestly with him, “My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live.” 24So Jesus went with him.
A large crowd followed and pressed around him. 25And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. 26She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. 27When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” 29Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.
30At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?”
31“You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’”
32But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. 33Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. 34He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”
35While Jesus was still speaking, some men came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue ruler. “Your daughter is dead,” they said. “Why bother the teacher any more?”
36Ignoring what they said, Jesus told the synagogue ruler, “Don’t be afraid; just believe.”
37He did not let anyone follow him except Peter, James and John the brother of James. 38When they came to the home of the synagogue ruler, Jesus saw a commotion, with people crying and wailing loudly. 39He went in and said to them, “Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep.” 40But they laughed at him.
After he put them all out, he took the child’s father and mother and the disciples who were with him, and went in where the child was. 41He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha koum!” (which means, “Little girl, I say to you, get up!”). 42Immediately the girl stood up and walked around (she was twelve years old). At this they were completely astonished. 43He gave strict orders not to let anyone know about this, and told them to give her something to eat.
Original Meaning
AFTER JESUS RETURNS from across the lake, an official of a synagogue immediately waylays him. Except for the disciples, he is one of the few characters in this Gospel who is given a name—Jairus. He falls before Jesus’ feet and desperately begs him to come to his home to lay hands on his daughter that she might be healed and live (5:22–23), just as the Gerasenes had begged him to leave their shores. Jesus agrees, but the rush to the girl’s side is interrupted by an anonymous woman. She is so desperate to be healed from her hemorrhaging that she sneaks up to touch Jesus’ garments in hopes that it will restore her to health.
The suffering of the woman for twelve years stresses her great need and why she is so compelled to seek Jesus’ help (see 9:21; Luke 13:11; Acts 3:2, 9:33; 14:8). The text does not specify the nature of her loss of blood, but one can presume it was related to uterine bleeding, which would make her ritually unclean (see Lev. 15:25–33).1 One should not confuse her problem with the regular menstrual cycle, a normal part of life. Her perpetual bleeding is abnormal, which makes it far more serious for her. The woman’s impurity is transmissible to others until the problem is cured. Anyone who has contact with her by lying in her bed, sitting in her chair, or touching her becomes unclean and is required to bathe and to launder clothing.2 Her discharge of blood causes her to be discharged from society because it makes her a major bearer of impurity as a person with a flux.3 She is therefore similar to the leper as one suffering from cultic uncleanness and is excluded from normal social relations.4
This woman suffers physically, living every day with the signs of our decaying mortality as the blood essential for life drains from her body.5 She suffers socially and psychologically, knowing that she is a contaminant. Her plight is compounded because she has become impoverished after wasting her living on the fruitless cure of physicians.6 Their failure underscores that Jesus can succeed when others sources of healing have failed, and it costs nothing except a bold faith. Jesus has just exorcised a demon from a man that no one could control; now he heals a woman that no physician can cure and restores to life a girl when all hope is gone.
The woman refuses to accept this disease as her lot in life and boldly takes matters into her own hands by touching Jesus’ garment (mentioned four times in 5:27, 28, 30, 31). She is not the first to do so. Earlier Mark tells us that many who suffered diseases pushed forward to touch him (3:10); and in 6:56, he reports that people beg him to let them touch the hem of his cloak, and all who touch him are healed.7 The difference is that this woman slinks up from behind so that she will not be observed and hopes that she can slink back into the anonymity of the large crowd without anyone knowing of her unlawful contact. When she touches Jesus, immediately her fountain of blood stops. But just as immediately Jesus knows that power has gone forth from him, and he mystifies the disciples by asking who in the throng pushing around him has touched him.8 The disciples respond as the straight men, saying in effect, “How are we supposed to know? Everybody is touching you.” But only one was healed, and she is seized by fear.
A number of things could have caused her alarm. She may have felt guilt for violating Jewish purity regulations as one who, with cultic uncleanness, has dared to touch Jesus. Readers know, however, that Jesus has never shied away from ceremonial uncleanness and that his power can overcome it and reverse it. The woman may have been concerned that she has illegitimately stolen power from Jesus and fears that her plague might have passed on to him in some way. She may have expected a scolding instead of a blessing—but Mark connects her fear to knowing what has happened to her (5:33). Because she has experienced healing from Jesus’ amazing power, she is conscious of his power and fears, much as the disciples feared earlier on the lake when they witnessed his power over the storm (4:41). Like the ruler of the synagogue, she now prostrates herself before him.
Why does Jesus call attention to what she has done? Has she not suffered enough public embarrassment? Could he not let her go in peace with a silent wink? The public embarrassment caused by singling her out signifies his individual care for her. He will not allow her to slip away and remain anonymous. He forces the issue so that when she leaves healed, she will leave knowing that the one who healed her knows her and cares for her. She is a person who is worth taking time with and addressing.
It turns out that the healing does not come free. Jesus forces her to step out on faith and be identified. It will not bankrupt her as the physicians had done, but she must publicly acknowledge her debt to Jesus, that he is the source of her healing. When she does, he blesses her and announces that her faith has made her well. Faith, then—not any magical properties in Jesus’ clothing—accomplishes her healing and saving.9 He restores her as a daughter of Israel and tells her to go in peace (Judg. 18:6; 1 Sam. 1:17; 2 Sam. 15:9; Acts 16:36).10 This is not simply a word of dismissal. The Hebrew term for peace that forms the background for the New Testament concept of peace is shalom. It covers wholeness, well-being, prosperity, security, friendship, and salvation.11 Jesus bestows this peace on her (see Matt. 10:13; Acts 10:36).
Meanwhile, the distraught father has been left to cool his heels. One can only guess what he must be thinking about this delay. One usually finds it difficult to rejoice with those who receive good news (salvation and health) when one is worried to death over one’s own bad news. Was Jairus chafing as Jesus took time for this woman: “Why is he dawdling? I was in line first; take care of my problem first.” Jairus is no more needy than this nameless woman, and he can learn something from this woman’s faith and be better prepared for the raising of his daughter.12
He too must publicly demonstrate his trust in Jesus as the worst possible news comes. The bearers of the bad tidings do not mince words: “Your daughter is dead.… Why bother the teacher any more?” Meier comments: “The subliminal message here is that Jesus is only a teacher, and death marks the limit of whatever power he may have.”13 Just as the woman overcame her fear with her faith, so Jairus is told, “Don’t be afraid; just believe [i.e., keep on believing].” He had shown faith in coming to Jesus in the first place, now he must continue. But how can faith endure in the face of death, particularly when it hovers over one’s cherished child? Both the woman and Jairus reveal that faith is something that trusts in the midst of hopelessness.
Jairus obeys because he leads Jesus to his house, but his faith is again challenged by the grievous chorus of those already assembled to mourn the little girl’s death. They do not have the faith of the woman and would undermine the faith of the father. Jesus’ announcement that the girl is not dead but only sleeping meets with laughter and jeering. They are not crazy; they know when someone has died. Of course she is dead. Jesus, however, can transform a deadly storm into a great calm, a ferocious brute into a calm and gentle man, death into a calm sleep, and the laughter of scorn into the laughter of joy. Their skepticism puts them outside. There will be no miracles for the scornful throng.
In private, with only the parents and Peter, James, and John, Jesus grasps the little girl’s hand to raise her up, saying “Talitha koum.” The translation from this bit of Aramaic, “Little girl … get up!” makes it clear for the listener that Jesus does not utter some mysterious mumbo jumbo but an ordinary phrase.14 Perhaps the tradition retained it as the word of Jesus that raised the girl from death. The offer of food shows that the child is really alive and not a disembodied spirit (Luke 24:39–43). The command to secrecy reveals that Jesus is not interested in turning jeers into cheers. He has consistently avoided publicity and now responds only to those with faith. One cannot fully understand the life-giving power of God until after the resurrection of Jesus.
Hooker notes the irony in Jesus’ order. He tells the parents not to let anyone know about what has happened, yet he insisted that the woman come forward out of the crowd. She had endeavored to be healed in complete secrecy, but Jesus did not allow her to keep her recovery to herself. The difference is that proof that the woman’s affliction had been cured “could not be openly demonstrated or cause wonder.” The crowd may not know her case history and can only take her word for it that she is healed. The revival of the child is another matter. A funeral interrupted by the sudden appearance of the corpse frisking about alive and well would make headlines, but witnesses of the cure are told to keep the news secret.15 This incident starkly contrasts with the raising of Lazarus in the Gospel of John. Jesus deliberately dallies when news comes that his friend is ill and allows time for him to die, be buried, and the body to begin to decompose (John 11:1–46). The delay makes the miracle all the more marvelous.16
It is unlikely that “Jesus wants to delay the discovery so as to get away from the large crowd that have been crushing him (5:24, 31),” as some contend.17 He did not say to the gathered mourners that he would raise her from the dead but that she was not dead, only sleeping. He does not want it broadcast that he has raised her from death. The reasons are twofold. (1) The timing is not right for belief in the miracle of resurrection. It must wait until Jesus is himself raised from the dead (9:9). One must see the whole picture of Jesus’ ministry and death. Now, he only keeps death at bay, and the parents and their daughter receive a temporary reprieve. Jesus will bring complete release from the jaws of death through his own death and resurrection. (2) There is a danger that he will be known only as a miracle worker, a magician-healer who can do wonders. People will lose sight of the big picture and how all that he does is tied to the proclamation of the kingdom of God.
Bridging Contexts
IN BRIDGING THE contexts, one should take careful note of three issues. (1) For the second time Mark uses his “sandwiching” technique,18 and we must see the message that the two stories reveal when viewed in stereo. (2) We should note the purity issues that surface in each healing. (3) Jesus has great success in these two cases, but we know that illness and death are a normal part of life. Jesus’ power does not make us immune to them. The interpreter must stress that raising the little girl from death points forward to the time when God will finally loosen the vise grip of death on all who are in Christ.
(1) The episode of the raising of a synagogue leader’s twelve-year-old daughter wraps around the healing of the woman suffering from a hemorrhage for twelve years. While the second episode allows time to pass for the death of the girl to occur, the two accounts are thematically parallel. Their point is more compelling and clear when they are interpreted in association with each other, as Mark intended. One must therefore resist the temptation to detach these accounts from one another and to read them separately.
The two main characters interacting with Jesus here occupy opposite ends of the economic, social, and religious spectrum. Jairus is a male, a leader of the synagogue. As a man of distinction, he has a name. Jairus has honor and can openly approach Jesus with a direct request, though he shows the greatest deference. By contrast, the woman is nameless, and her complaint renders her ritually unclean. She is walking pollution. Her malady therefore separates her from the community and makes her unfit to enter the synagogue, let alone the temple. She has no honor and must slink about and approach Jesus from behind, thinking that she must purloin her healing.
Moreover, Jairus has a large household and is thus a man of means. The careworn woman has become destitute because of her medical bills. Her complaint makes childbearing hopeless and marriage next to impossible.19 The only thing that these two persons share in common is that they both have heard about Jesus, they desperately desire healing, and they have run out of options.
Jairus gains Jesus’ attention first by prostrating himself before him and begging him to come with him to touch his “little daughter.” Though he is a respected religious leader, he is no different from the leper who came to Jesus kneeling and beseeching Jesus (1:40). The woman is no different from the leper as a source of uncleanness and takes matters into her own hands by stealthily touching Jesus’ cloak from behind without asking his leave. Both Jairus and the woman believe that contact with Jesus is sufficient for healing (5:23, “Put your hands on her”; 5:28; “If I just touch his clothes”).
Dovetailing the stories of two such dissimilar individuals reveals that being male, being ritually pure, holding a high religious office, or being a man of means provide no advantage in approaching Jesus. Being female, impure, dishonored, and destitute are no barrier to receiving help. God always takes the side of those who have been denied rights and privileges, the oppressed and poor. In God’s kingdom the nobodies become somebody. In other words, the only thing that avails with God and Jesus is one’s faith. Health, wholeness, and salvation are not extended to just the lucky few who already have so much of everything else. But neither does Jesus set the lowly over against the lofty. Faith enables all, honored and dishonored, clean and unclean, to tap into the merciful power of Jesus that brings both healing and salvation. All are equals before Jesus. One should also note that Jairus is a member of the Jewish establishment that seems on the whole to be hostile to Jesus. His rank as a leader in a hostile institution does not disqualify him from Jesus’ care because he is willing to lay aside whatever social status he has by humbling himself before Jesus in a desperate plea for help.
(2) In both of these stories, Jesus has the power to overcome the defilement of ceremonial uncleanness (bleeding and death) and to reverse it. The Jewish laws concerning impurity sought to prevent it from infringing on the realm of God’s holiness. Jesus’ ministry shows that God’s holiness is unaffected by human impurity when it comes in contact with it. Throughout the Gospel of Mark, Jesus’ connection with what is unclean does not render him unclean. Quite the reverse, Jesus purges the impurity. He touches a leper and cleanses him. He ventures into tomb areas and drives out a legion of demons into a herd of pigs. He is touched by one with a hemorrhage, and she is made whole. He touches a dead girl and brings her to life. Jesus does not need to purify himself from the pollution of a person with a flux or from contact with a dead body (Hag. 2:13); he overcomes it.
True, we may have difficulty in conveying this important idea in our culture, which does not make such distinctions between clean and unclean. We do, however, treat some diseases as respectable and some as not respectable. For example, we attach no blame to someone who suffers a heart attack. But we may regard someone who has contacted a venereal disease quite differently. We perhaps can recapture the original impact of this account if we try to think of equivalent characters with whom we are more familiar. The synagogue ruler would be someone well-bred, well-groomed, well-respected, and well-heeled. The woman would be just the opposite, one who would cause others to wrinkle their noses and curl their lips. She is someone who is at the mercy of those who make the rules and the money. She suffers from a disease that others judge to be degrading and that makes her life a misery. Attempting to translate these characters into their modern counterparts allows one to raise telling questions. Should Jesus bother stopping for a woman like this when he may endanger the life of one who is more worthy? Can the love and power of Jesus overcome anything, no matter how contemptible?
(3) These accounts raise a third issue: Jesus’ triumph over death. The good news that is proclaimed in this section is that in Jesus’ presence storms subside, demons beat a retreat, infirmities are put right, and death loses its hold. In 5:39, Jesus declares the girl’s death to be merely sleep. This is not some cagey medical diagnosis, a comforting euphemism, or a general eschatological hope. He calls it sleep because he “wills in this particular case to make death as impermanent as sleep by raising the girl to life.”20 At the same time, however, one must also be sensitive to the reality that no matter how genuine or desperate the faith, all are not healed or saved from death. One must look beyond the moment of suffering to the eternal significance of Jesus’ power. That power is related to the kingdom of God, which is present but which is yet to be fully manifest. In the meantime we will suffer from maladies and death. Our faith is in God’s power to conquer death, not simply to restore things as they were. We can face the tragedies of everyday existence with confident faith that God is not through with us.
Contemporary Significance
VANSTONE DESCRIBES THE effects of Jesus’ ministry well:
As He moves about He leaves behind him a trail of transformed scenes and changed situations—fishermen no longer at their nets, sick people restored to health, critics confounded, a storm stilled, hunger assuaged, a dead girl raised to life. Jesus’ presence is an active and instantly transforming presence: He is never the mere observer of the scene or the one who waits upon events but always the transformer of the scene and the initiator of events.21
The healings in these two scenes show that one appropriates Jesus’ power through faith. An act of faith can make a person well. The synagogue official and the woman do not come to faith after they are healed; they had a prior faith that led to their healing.22 One gets further insight into what faith entails by examining these two models of faith.
(1) Faith opens the door to the power of God. Faith transfers divine power to those who are utterly powerless. It saves: “Your faith has healed [lit., saved] you” (5:34). Faith can be imperfect; it can be bold; it can be halting; it can be brave; it can be laced with fear and trepidation. What counts for it to be effective is for it to be directed rightly to Jesus and God (11:22). What saved this father’s daughter and this woman was that their faith was directed toward Jesus.
(2) Faith shows persistence in overcoming any obstacles. The woman works her way through the crowd and overcomes any sense of shame she might have had or fear that she might somehow contaminate Jesus or others by reaching out to touch him. The synagogue official must disregard the sad announcement of his daughter’s death and ignore the laughter of the mourners. He must trust Jesus’ verdict that she is only sleeping, against all evidence to the contrary. Faith then steps forward in the midst of an intimidating crowd despite fear and trembling and acknowledges Jesus’ power to heal. Faith goes forward in the face of mocking laughter and refuses to give in to fear and scorn.
(3) Faith is embodied in action. Faith is something that can be seen, like the men digging through a roof to bring their friend to Jesus. It kneels, begs, and reaches out to touch. Belief about Jesus does not bring healing, but faith in Jesus that takes action does. Neither the man nor the woman identify Jesus as the Messiah or even as a prophet. They are unclear precisely who he is, but they believe that he has the power to heal and are willing to put their faith to the test. A rabbinic tradition interprets Exodus 14:22 to mean that only after the Israelites had gone into the sea up to their nostrils did the waters divide and expose dry ground (Exod. Rab. 21:10). This interpretation accurately captures what faith is all about. It does not wait to see if the waters will divide and then step out. It steps out, trusting God to do what is needed.
We should note a major problem in applying this text today. The woman’s faith that she would be cured if she could just touch Jesus’ garment smacks of magic. Aune writes: “The ideas expressed in the story of the woman’s healing do not border on magic, they are of the essence of Greco-Roman magical notions.”23 Such an imperfect faith may make us uncomfortable. It may remind us of modern-day miracle mongers who invite supporters to put their hands on the TV set or to send them money for strips of healing cloth or vials of holy oil. What may strike us as superstition, however, Jesus calls faith. He interprets her action as something based on trust. This means that one does not need sophisticated intellectual and theological clarity before one can access Jesus’ transforming power.
The personal encounter is vital, however, for anything really significant to happen—for faith to become real faith. In the Hellenistic world, the power to heal was viewed as impersonal, and magic ventured to manipulate these forces for personal advantage. When Jesus forces the woman to shed her anonymity in the crowd and publicly acknowledge her cure, it becomes a transforming personal encounter, not just a get-healed-quick scheme. One cannot secretly hold to faith. Faith requires public testing. The woman’s faith is directed toward God who is manifested in a person, Jesus, who speaks with gentle affection to her and cares for her as an individual. One needs to be tolerant of faith that we may judge to be primitive, but one also needs to lead it to direct meeting with Jesus and to a deeper level.
(4) Faith is impelled by desperation that Jesus is sufficient to meet whatever need one has. The ruler and the woman did not take their plight stoically but desperately sought healing from Jesus. The woman refused to grin and bear it. One student of this text draws a strange conclusion: She applauds that Jesus broke through purity barriers and social barriers but comments that Jesus should have accepted “the woman as she was, even if she was bleeding. If that had happened, I would call it a true miracle.”24 One wonders how the woman in the account would have reacted to this comment. The problem for her was not simply a patriarchal system that treated those with a flow of blood as impure.25 She was physically ill and needed healing. She forces her way to Jesus, confident that he will provide a cure for her disease. She serves as a model for people who are shy, ashamed, or afraid to come boldly to Jesus for healing. Desperation drives one to him. Martin Luther once remarked that his insight into God’s grace came to him while he was “on the toilet” (auff diser cloaca). George points out that the phrase was a common metaphor for being in a state of utter helplessness and dependence on God.
Where else are we more vulnerable, more easily embarrassed…? Yet is it precisely in a state of such vulnerability—when we are reduced to humility, when, like beggars, we can only cast ourselves on the mercy of another—that the yearning for grace is answered in the assurance of God’s inescapable nearness.26
Evil, sickness, and the death of little children continue to exist in our world. Not every touch heals, and those with faith still hear the dreaded word from the doctor, “Your little girl is dead.” This passage does not offer any explanation for why a loving God allows evil to continue to exist or why the inexplicable still occurs. It does affirm that God is on the side of those who suffer and are stricken by grief. A miracle does not occur in every disastrous situation, but it does not lessen God’s power to save. The miracle of the healing of emotional pain is no less miraculous. If God intervened in every situation, we would never have to exercise faith. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego expressed the only kind of faith that carries us through any and all tragedy when they declared to their tormentor (Dan. 3:17–18):
“If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”
The little girl is spared death for now but has not been given a total reprieve. The woman has been healed for now, but she will face new ailments as she grows older. Faith, however, is able to hold on in the face of death, knowing that God has conquered death in the resurrection of Christ. George recalls one of the lowest points of Luther’s life: His beloved daughter Magdalena, barely fourteen years of age, was stricken with the plague.
Brokenhearted he knelt beside her bed and begged God to release her from the pain. When she had died and the carpenters were nailing down the lid of her coffin, Luther screamed out, “Hammer away! On doomsday she’ll rise again.”27