Luke 8:44

came behind him, and totiched the border of his garment Rather,

approaching from behind touched the tassel of His outer robe. This is a miracle -by the way" (obiter),but, as Fuller says, "His obiteris more to the purpose than our iter"She sought to steal (as it were) a miracle of grace, and fancied that Christ's miracles were a matter of nature,not of will and purpose.Probably the intense depression produced by her disease, aggravated by the manner in which for twelve years every one had kept aloof from her and striven not to touch her, had quite crushed her spirits. By the Levitic law she had to be "put apart, and whosoever toucheth her shall be unclean" (Leviticus 15:19; Leviticus 15:25). The word translated "border" (kraspedon, Heb. tsitsith)is a tassel at each "wing" or corner of the tallith or mantle (Matthew 14:36). The Law (Numbers 15:38-40) required that it should be bound with a thread (not as in E. V. ribband)of blue, the colour of heaven, and so the type of revelation. The strict Jews to this day wear these tassels, though they are usually concealed. The Pharisees, to proclaim their orthodoxy, made them conspicuously large, Matthew 23:5. One of the four tassels hung over the shoulder at the back, and this was the one which the woman touched. (For full particulars of the Rabbinic rules about these tassels see an article by the present writer, in the Expositor,v. 219.) The quasi-sacredness of the tassels may have fostered her impulse to touch the one that hung in view.