Luke 8:43

43. See note.

43. ἐν ῥύσει αἵματος. The ἐν indicates her condition: comp. ἐν ἐξουσίᾳ, Luke 4:36; ἐν περιτομῇ, Romans 4:10.

ἰατροῖς. The dativus commodi, ‘upon physicians.’ The more classical construction would be the εἰς ἰατροὺς of the Rec[183] but it is probably a correction.

[183] Rec. The Textus Receptus.

προσαναλώσασα ὅλον τὸν βίον. Literally, ‘having in addition spent’ her whole means of livelihood.

ἀπ' οὐδενὸς θεραπευθῆναι. St Luke, perhaps with a fellow-feeling for physicians, does not add the severer comment of St Mark, that the physicians had only made her worse (Luke 5:26). The Talmudic receipts for the cure of this disease were specially futile,—such as to set the sufferer in a place where two ways meet, with a cup of wine in her hand, and let some one come behind and frighten her, and say, Arise from thy flux; or “dig seven ditches, burn in them some cuttings of vines not four years old, and let her sit in them in succession, with a cup of wine in her hand, while at each remove some one says to her, Arise from thy flux.” (Lightfoot, Hor. Hebr. ad loc.)