Matthew 9:18-29: A hemorrhaging woman is healed and Jesus raises a dead girl
Hover over the references to see the Biblical text
Matthew 9:18-29 (Parallel in Mark 5:25–34 and Luke 8:43–48)
Uncleanness
I've been staring at these two interlocked narratives for days now. Possibly a couple of weeks. I kept wondering why all three Gospels that include them kept the hemorrhaging woman's healing nested in the ruler's daughter narrative—neither is essential to the other. And yet, there they are, intimately woven together.
The most obvious reason for this might seem to be that it represents the actual order of the events. It is worth noting, however, that ancient historiographies were not as bound to the chronological as modern historians are. Case in point, in Matthew's Gospel the ruler comes to Jesus presumably while Jesus is still at Matthew's house, but in Mark and Luke's accounts he comes to Jesus while Jesus is still at the shore of the lake having just returned from delivering the Gerasene demoniac (of whom there are two in Matthew 8:28-34 but only one in Mark 5:1-20 and Luke 8:26-39). Neither the change in the specifics of location and chronology nor the count of the demoniacs are problematic if you understand ancient histographies (if you are concerned about these, I recommend Craig Keener's commentary on Matthew 8-9, which addresses at least the latter). So, bearing in mind that chronological ordering may take a backseat to presenting events in a way that emphasizes their truth or relevance without making them inaccurate with regard to the key features, I kept wondering why these two stories had been kept together in all three Gospel accounts.
On Friday morning, I think I finally saw a thematic reason for this. Both stories have to do with extreme social impropriety with regard to uncleanness. Both the hemorrhaging woman and the dead child were considered literally untouchable.
If you've heard even a couple of sermons on the woman's healing, you have likely heard that she would have been unmarried, without children, rejected by family and friends, and impoverished. Pushing her way through the crowd to get to Jesus was completely unacceptable behavior. In fact, in a video by Jordan Seng that I watched recently, he makes the claim that she could have been killed for that behavior. She was very, very unclean, and her behavior was absolutely unacceptable.
The dead girl, too, was unclean. The law laid out in Numbers 19:11-13 makes it clear that failure to follow the proper cleansing practices after touching a human corpse would result in being permanently cut off from all other Israelites. So, good Jews knew not to touch corpses unless it was absolutely unavoidable. This means that the ruler's request to Jesus in verse 18 was horrendously inappropriate: "My daughter has just died ... come and put your hand on her."
For both people, the certainty that Jesus could undo their terrible situation was enough to move them to risk everything. The ruler could have forever lost his social status. The woman was risking her life. And Jesus doesn't flinch, doesn't even bring up the topic of cleanness. In the earlier story where Jesus touched the unclean leper, Jesus initiates it. It's all him. But in these two stories, uncleanness is thrust at Jesus, and he could not care less. He is not offended, not slighted, shows not even the slightest distaste, and that is—I think—the reason these two miracles are presented together. They are a commentary on Jesus opinion of the value of individuals. No matter how unclean they may have been, it was no barrier for him.
Faith
"Take heart, daughter," Jesus said, "your faith has healed you." In Matthew's Gospel, that's all Jesus says to the woman. Taken absolutely literally and very restrictively, this would mean the woman's faith—and that alone—resulted in her healing, which is to say that Jesus had no part in the healing and was merely a bystander. However, that extreme of a view is not supported by Matthew's narrative. Matthew orders the details of the event so that her healing does not come until (1)after she touches Jesus and (2)after he turns, (3)sees her, and (4)addresses her, telling her to take heart and that her faith has resulted in healing, and only then (5)is she healed. The delay between her faith and action and her actual healing, coming as it does after Jesus announces it, has Jesus directly involved in the healing in Matthew's account.
So, while Jesus clearly identifies the vital role of faith in the woman's healing, I don't see the verse supporting the idea that it is the exclusive prerequisite for healing—that it is all that is needed and is, therefore, the root of the problem any time healing does not happen. After all, Jesus never sent anyone away telling them to come back for their healing when they had more or better faith. Of course, that reasoning only takes you so far if you accept the idea that the ministry of healing is no longer something Jesus does, but it something believers do under the Great Commission. Basically, what I'm saying is that I'm still thinking about the role of faith in miraculous healing.
Σοζο (healed/saved)
It is fairly well know these days that the Greek word translated here as healed (and used by both Jesus and the woman) is σοζο, which has a broader range of meaning that just physical healing. Indeed, it extends semantically to encompass salvation. Contextually, it seems to me to mean bringing the woman back into a whole life, which would extend beyond her physical condition and include her social standing as well. The contrast between the ruler and the woman places emphasis on their social standing (he at one end of the social scale and she at the other), so I think interpreting the range of σοζο in the narrative as extending that far is warranted. Moving beyond that and including salvation in the sense we mean it as Christians, however, is not supported by the direct context. At least, I don't see it there.
A Modern Example
John Soper, who is on the execute board of Ridgeway Church in White Plains, New York, has a long history in the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA), an organization traditionally known for its emphasis on sanctification and healing as well as salvation. A personal account of a resuscitation miracle from Soper's days as a C&MA pastor can be found on the website of the Alliance World Fellowship, a related organization.1
It was either 1979 or 1980 when Pastor Soper was called to a hospital in Atlantic County, NJ. He had been summoned by a couple from the C&MA church plant he pastored because their daughter had suffered a seizure and was not breathing.
By the time Soper reached the hospital, the child was already dead and the flat-lined EKG machine was being unplugged. Feeling prompted by the Spirit, Pastor Soper asked if it would be alright if he prayed for the child, to which the nurse replied, "You know she's dead," but allowed him to go ahead. Soper prayed specifically for the Lord to restore the child, then he left the room and joined the parents who, through their tears, were sharing their faith with the doctor, who was a family friend.
About a minute after he joined them, the girl screamed “I want my mommy" and began crying. The girls father, who had been reluctant to share his faith prior to the event, began to tell everyone in his web of influence what had happened, and a few days later a small group was started in their home. Nearly every household in the neighborhood had one or both spouses coming to that study, and several came to Christ as a result.
I include this contemporary example only as a partial defense against the post-Enlightenment, Western tendency to discount the miracles recorded in the Gospels. For a much more considered response to that philosophy, I recommend Craig Keener's excellent two-volume work, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts .
FOOTNOTES
1. The account can be found in paragraphs 4-6 of http://awf.world/healer/ (accessed February 14, 2019). The page itself does not identify the individual recounting the event; however, another page (https://awf.world/who-jesus-is/) included a distinctive phrase used as the conclusion on the first page, and the latter page said it was "taken from the writings of John Soper, former vice president for Church Ministries." Armed with this, I searched for a John Soper in an Alliance church, and found the individual on the board of Ridgeway church. He responded to my personal email inquiring if the event was recorded by him and confirmed that it was. He was also kind enough to answer a few additional questions regarding the year, location, etc.
Matthew 9:18-29 (Parallel in Mark 5:25–34 and Luke 8:43–48)
Uncleanness
I've been staring at these two interlocked narratives for days now. Possibly a couple of weeks. I kept wondering why all three Gospels that include them kept the hemorrhaging woman's healing nested in the ruler's daughter narrative—neither is essential to the other. And yet, there they are, intimately woven together.
The most obvious reason for this might seem to be that it represents the actual order of the events. It is worth noting, however, that ancient historiographies were not as bound to the chronological as modern historians are. Case in point, in Matthew's Gospel the ruler comes to Jesus presumably while Jesus is still at Matthew's house, but in Mark and Luke's accounts he comes to Jesus while Jesus is still at the shore of the lake having just returned from delivering the Gerasene demoniac (of whom there are two in Matthew 8:28-34 but only one in Mark 5:1-20 and Luke 8:26-39). Neither the change in the specifics of location and chronology nor the count of the demoniacs are problematic if you understand ancient histographies (if you are concerned about these, I recommend Craig Keener's commentary on Matthew 8-9, which addresses at least the latter). So, bearing in mind that chronological ordering may take a backseat to presenting events in a way that emphasizes their truth or relevance without making them inaccurate with regard to the key features, I kept wondering why these two stories had been kept together in all three Gospel accounts.
On Friday morning, I think I finally saw a thematic reason for this. Both stories have to do with extreme social impropriety with regard to uncleanness. Both the hemorrhaging woman and the dead child were considered literally untouchable.
If you've heard even a couple of sermons on the woman's healing, you have likely heard that she would have been unmarried, without children, rejected by family and friends, and impoverished. Pushing her way through the crowd to get to Jesus was completely unacceptable behavior. In fact, in a video by Jordan Seng that I watched recently, he makes the claim that she could have been killed for that behavior. She was very, very unclean, and her behavior was absolutely unacceptable.
The dead girl, too, was unclean. The law laid out in Numbers 19:11-13 makes it clear that failure to follow the proper cleansing practices after touching a human corpse would result in being permanently cut off from all other Israelites. So, good Jews knew not to touch corpses unless it was absolutely unavoidable. This means that the ruler's request to Jesus in verse 18 was horrendously inappropriate: "My daughter has just died ... come and put your hand on her."
For both people, the certainty that Jesus could undo their terrible situation was enough to move them to risk everything. The ruler could have forever lost his social status. The woman was risking her life. And Jesus doesn't flinch, doesn't even bring up the topic of cleanness. In the earlier story where Jesus touched the unclean leper, Jesus initiates it. It's all him. But in these two stories, uncleanness is thrust at Jesus, and he could not care less. He is not offended, not slighted, shows not even the slightest distaste, and that is—I think—the reason these two miracles are presented together. They are a commentary on Jesus opinion of the value of individuals. No matter how unclean they may have been, it was no barrier for him.
Faith
"Take heart, daughter," Jesus said, "your faith has healed you." In Matthew's Gospel, that's all Jesus says to the woman. Taken absolutely literally and very restrictively, this would mean the woman's faith—and that alone—resulted in her healing, which is to say that Jesus had no part in the healing and was merely a bystander. However, that extreme of a view is not supported by Matthew's narrative. Matthew orders the details of the event so that her healing does not come until (1)after she touches Jesus and (2)after he turns, (3)sees her, and (4)addresses her, telling her to take heart and that her faith has resulted in healing, and only then (5)is she healed. The delay between her faith and action and her actual healing, coming as it does after Jesus announces it, has Jesus directly involved in the healing in Matthew's account.
So, while Jesus clearly identifies the vital role of faith in the woman's healing, I don't see the verse supporting the idea that it is the exclusive prerequisite for healing—that it is all that is needed and is, therefore, the root of the problem any time healing does not happen. After all, Jesus never sent anyone away telling them to come back for their healing when they had more or better faith. Of course, that reasoning only takes you so far if you accept the idea that the ministry of healing is no longer something Jesus does, but it something believers do under the Great Commission. Basically, what I'm saying is that I'm still thinking about the role of faith in miraculous healing.
Σοζο (healed/saved)
It is fairly well know these days that the Greek word translated here as healed (and used by both Jesus and the woman) is σοζο, which has a broader range of meaning that just physical healing. Indeed, it extends semantically to encompass salvation. Contextually, it seems to me to mean bringing the woman back into a whole life, which would extend beyond her physical condition and include her social standing as well. The contrast between the ruler and the woman places emphasis on their social standing (he at one end of the social scale and she at the other), so I think interpreting the range of σοζο in the narrative as extending that far is warranted. Moving beyond that and including salvation in the sense we mean it as Christians, however, is not supported by the direct context. At least, I don't see it there.
A Modern Example
John Soper, who is on the execute board of Ridgeway Church in White Plains, New York, has a long history in the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA), an organization traditionally known for its emphasis on sanctification and healing as well as salvation. A personal account of a resuscitation miracle from Soper's days as a C&MA pastor can be found on the website of the Alliance World Fellowship, a related organization.1
It was either 1979 or 1980 when Pastor Soper was called to a hospital in Atlantic County, NJ. He had been summoned by a couple from the C&MA church plant he pastored because their daughter had suffered a seizure and was not breathing.
By the time Soper reached the hospital, the child was already dead and the flat-lined EKG machine was being unplugged. Feeling prompted by the Spirit, Pastor Soper asked if it would be alright if he prayed for the child, to which the nurse replied, "You know she's dead," but allowed him to go ahead. Soper prayed specifically for the Lord to restore the child, then he left the room and joined the parents who, through their tears, were sharing their faith with the doctor, who was a family friend.
About a minute after he joined them, the girl screamed “I want my mommy" and began crying. The girls father, who had been reluctant to share his faith prior to the event, began to tell everyone in his web of influence what had happened, and a few days later a small group was started in their home. Nearly every household in the neighborhood had one or both spouses coming to that study, and several came to Christ as a result.
I include this contemporary example only as a partial defense against the post-Enlightenment, Western tendency to discount the miracles recorded in the Gospels. For a much more considered response to that philosophy, I recommend Craig Keener's excellent two-volume work, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts .
FOOTNOTES
1. The account can be found in paragraphs 4-6 of http://awf.world/healer/ (accessed February 14, 2019). The page itself does not identify the individual recounting the event; however, another page (https://awf.world/who-jesus-is/) included a distinctive phrase used as the conclusion on the first page, and the latter page said it was "taken from the writings of John Soper, former vice president for Church Ministries." Armed with this, I searched for a John Soper in an Alliance church, and found the individual on the board of Ridgeway church. He responded to my personal email inquiring if the event was recorded by him and confirmed that it was. He was also kind enough to answer a few additional questions regarding the year, location, etc.
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