Mark 10:46

Passing through Jericho. Blind Bartimæus

46. And they came Leaving behind them the upland pastures of Peræa, the little company travelled along the road which led down to the sunken channel of the Jordan, and the luxuriant "district" of Jericho.

to Jericho This ancient stronghold of the Canaanites, taken by Joshua (Mark 2:6), founded for the second time under Hiel the Bethelite (1 Kings 16:34), visited by Elisha and Elijah before the latter "went up by a whirlwind into heaven" (2 Kings 2:4-15) was still in the days of Christ surrounded by towers and castles. Two of them lay in ruins since the time of Pompeius, but "Kypros, the last fortress built by Herod the Great, who had called it after his mother, rose white in the sun on the south of the town.… The great palace of Herod, in the far-famed groves of palms, had been plundered and burnt down in the tumults that followed his death, but in its place a still grander structure, built by Archelaus, had arisen amidst still finer gardens, and more copious and delightful streams. A grand theatre and spacious circus, built by Herod, scandalized the Jews, while a great stone aqueduct of eleven arches brought a copious supply of water to the city, and the Roman military road ran through it. Geikie's Life and Words of Christ, ii. p. 385.

as he went It is most probable that at the entrance of Jericho He met one of the sufferers, who having learnt from the crowd that He was passing, joined the other sufferer, whom the Saviour encountered as He was going outof the city on the following morning. (Comp. Luke 18:35; Matthew 20:29-30.)

a great number of pilgrims accompanied our Lord, who had come from Peræa and Galilee, and met at this central point to go up to the Passover, at Jerusalem.

Bartimæus The patronymic is made into a proper name after the analogy of Bartholomew and others. The true reading seems to be the son of Timæus, Bartimæus, a blind man, "This account of him hints that he was a personage well known to Christians in St Mark's time as a monument of the Lord's miracle, as was probably also Simon the Leper; and the designation -son of Timæus" would distinguish him, not merely from the father but also from other sons." Lange. As in the case of the Gadarene demoniacs, he was probably better known, and hence his case is more particularly recorded. "All the roads leading to Jerusalem, like the Temple itself, were much frequented at the time of the feasts, by beggars, who reaped a special harvest from the charity of the pilgrims."