Mark 8:22-26

6. HEALING THE BLIND MAN OF BETHSAIDA 8:22-26

TEXT 8:22-26

And they come unto Bethsaida. And they bring to him a blind man, and beseech him to touch him. And they took hold of the blind man by the hand, and brought him out of the village; and when he had spit on his eyes, and laid his hands upon him, he asked him, Seest thou aught? And he looked up, and said, I see men; for I behold them as trees, walking. Then again he laid his hands upon his eyes; and he looked stedfastly, and was restored, and saw all things clearly. And he sent him away to his home, saying, Do not even enter into the village.

THOUGHT QUESTIONS 8:22-26

394.

Please locate Bethsaida on the map.

395.

Who brought the blind man to Jesus?

396.

What is meant by the word beseech?

397.

Why lead the blind man out of the village?

398.

Did Jesus actually spit upon the eyes of the blind man? for what purpose?

399.

Is this an example of a progressive healing? Discuss.

400.

There must have been some purpose in the two stages of the healingwhat was it?

401.

Did the blind man have faith in order to be healed?

402.

Why send the man who was healed away?

COMMENT

TIMESummer A.D. 29.
PLACEBethsaida Julias, on the east bank of the Jordan River where it flows into the Lake of Galilee.
PARALLEL ACCOUNTSonly in Mark.

OUTLINE1. A blind man brought to Jesus, Mark 8:22. Mark 8:2. The blind man led out of the city for healing, Mark 8:23 a. Mark 8:3. Two stages of healing, Mark 8:23 b - Mark 8:25. Mark 8:4. Sent home, Mark 8:26.

ANALYSIS

I.

A BLIND MAN BROUGHT TO JESUS, Mark 8:22.

1.

They were in Bethsaida Julias.

2.

An urgent request made for healing.

II.

THE BLIND MAN LED OUT OF THE CITY FOR HEALING, Mark 8:23 a.

1.

Jesus led him by the hand.

2.

Away from the multitude so the healing would teach the lesson intended.

III.

TWO STAGES OF HEALING, Mark 8:23 b - Mark 8:25.

1.

Spat on his eyes and laid his hands upon him.

2.

Asked: Do you see anything?

3.

He looked up and saw the disciples in an indistinct manner.

4.

Jesus laid his hands upon his eyeshe looked intently and saw clearly.

IV.

SENT HOME, Mark 8:26.

1.

He was not from Bethsaida.

2.

He was refused permission to return to Bethsaidasent directly home.

EXPANATORY NOTES

I.

A BLIND MAN BROUGHT TO JESUS.

Mark 8:22. Mark here records a miracle not given in the other gospels, one of the very few passages entirely peculiar to him. His reason for inserting it cannot be merely that it followed the dialogue above recorded (Mark 8:14-21); for he often omits multitudes of miracles in writing of the periods to which they belong. So far as his design can be conjectured, it was probably to illustrate and exemplify still further our Lord's variety of method in the working of his cures, by stating a case (perhaps the only one) in which the cure was gradual. He cometh, or, according to the older manuscripts, they come, i.e. Jesus and his company, the twelve apostles and perhaps some others who attended him from place to place. To (or into) Bethsaida, or, as a few copies have it, Bethany, an obvious error of transcription, probably occasioned by the resemblance of the names, both which are compounded with the Hebrew beth (a house or place.) Bethsaida is supposed by some to be the town so called in Galilee, the birthplace of Andrew and Peter (John 1:44); but the best interpreters and highest geographical authorities understand it of Bethsaida in Perea, on the north-east shore of the lake in a solitude near which (or belonging to it) the five thousand were fed. This Bethsaida was distinguished from the other by its Greek or Roman name, Julias, which it bore in honour of a daughter of Augustus. They, indefinitely, some men, certain persons, otherwise unknown; or more specifically, the man's relatives, friends, neighbours. A blind (man), not one born blind (as in John 9:1), for he knew the shape of trees (see below, on Mark 8:24), but blinded by disease or accident. Besought, in Greek beseech, the graphic or descriptive present being still continued. To touch him, literally, that he would (or still more closely, so that, in order that, he might) touch him. These words in the original rather state the motive than the substance of the prayer, a nicety of form without effect upon the meaning yet entitled to attention as an illustration of the difference of idiom. This specific prayer is not a sign of strong but rather of deficient or contracted faith, assuming contact to be necessary to the cure, an error which our Saviour did not think it necessary in the present instance either to reprove or correct.

II.

THE BLIND MAN LED OUT OF THE CITY FOR HEALING.

Mark 8:23 b. And taking, laying hold upon, the hand of the blind (man), which in the order of the words in the original, although the construction in the version is grammatical and justified by usage; the sense of course remains the same in either case. He led him forth out (or outside) of the village, a term applied with considerable latitude to towns of every size. Out is twice expressed in Greek, once by the compound verb, and once by the adverbial preposition. The reason of this movement has been variously conjectured; some supposing an intention to express displeasure towards the people of the town for reasons now unknown; others a desire to be uninterrupted in the process which was more than commonly protracted. But these and other explanations, which need not be stated, assume that Mark intended to describe this and the following proceedings on our Lord's part as having a distinct significance, whereas he rather means to show how far he was from following a fixed routine, or countenancing the idea that a certain outward form was necessary to the curative effect. Against this error he provided by sometimes doing more, sometimes less, sometimes nothing, in the way of gesture or manipulation, and of all these methods we have instances recorded in the book before us.

III.

TWO STAGES OF HEALING.

Mark 8:23 b - Mark 8:25. Having spit on (or rather into) his eyes, which some regard as a medicinal appliance, healing virtue being ascribed to the human saliva by Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny, and in various dicta of the Talmud. Others find a symbolical meaning in the transfer of something from the person of the healer to the person of the healed. But the necessity of these conjectures is precluded by the view of the matter just suggested. And putting (laying or imposing) hands upon him, as had been requested by his friends (Mark 8:22). Asked; interrogated, questioned. If he saw (literally, sees, another instance of the graphic present) ought, an old word, not yet wholly obsolete, for anything. This pause, as it were, in the midst of the cure, to ask him as to its effect, is so unlike the usual immediate restoration, that it may be confidently reckoned as at least one reason for Mark's giving a detailed account of this case.

And looking up, raising his eyes, trying to use them. The particle with which the Greek verb is compounded sometimes denotes upward motion, sometimes repetition. Hence the verb itself may either mean to look up or to see again, but the latter, though preferred by some interpreters, is a less natural anticipation of what follows in the next verse. The sensations of the blind man, on his first attempt to see again, are strangely but expressively described in his own language, the peculiarity of which, however, is exaggerated to the English reader by an equivocal construction, quite unknown to the original, and only partially removed by careful punctuation in the version. It is probably one of the most common and inveterate misapprehensions of a scriptural expression, that the participle walking here agrees with trees, and that the blind man intended to describe his partially restored sight by saying that the men around him were like walking trees. But in Greek there is and can be no such ambiguity, the concord being there determined, not by the position of the words, which is far more free and discretionary than with us, but by their form or termination, which distinguishes their gender and requires walking to agree with men, and trees to be taken by itself without any qualifying epithet. The word men also has the article which shows it to mean not men in general, but the men who were passing or at hand, perhaps the twelve apostles; for although he led him out of town, it is not said that they were unaccompanied, or that the place to which he brought him was a solitude. This meaning therefore of the clause, according to the common or received text, is, I see the men walking about as trees, i.e. undefined in form and figure. Except by their motions, which were those of men, he could not distinguish them from trees. It is remarkable however that the oldest manuscripts almost without exception have another reading, which appears to give the patient's words more fully. I behold men because as trees I see (them) walking. This is an awkward sentence, it is true, but not on that account less likely to have been pronounced on this occasion, while its very awkwardness may possibly have led to its abbreviation in the later copies. The weight of manuscript authority in favour of this reading is confirmed by its internal fitness, as a broken expression of surprise and joy, beginning with a sudden exclamation, I see the men! then qualifying or explaining it by adding, because (that is, at least), as trees I see (them) walking.

Then, afterwards, or in the next place, a Greek particle often employed to separate the items in an enumeration, and intended here to mark distinctly the successive stages of the healing process, an effect secured still further by the word again, which is the next in the original though not in the translation. As if he had said, having gone thus far and partially restored the man's sight, he proceeded in the next place to impose his hands upon the eyes themselves, as he had previously done upon some other part, perhaps the head. It is possible indeed that even in the former instance he had laid his hands upon his eyes, but this is a less natural construction of the language, spitting in his eyes and laying his hands on him, where the mention of the eyes in one clause and of the person in the other, favours, though it may not peremptorily require, the former explanation. Made him, caused him, i.e. in this case both required and enabled him. Look up, or see again, the same two sense of the verb that are admissible in the verse preceeding, If the latter be adopted here, the meaning of the phrase is, that he caused him to receive his sight; if the former, that he caused him to look up, or try to see, on which he found his sight restored completely. The only objection to the first construction is that the restoration of his sight is then distinctly stated three times, whereas on the other supposition, it is only stated once, the other two expressions being then descriptive of the effort or experiment by which the patient was assured first of partial then of total restoration. He looked up once and saw men like trees; he looked up again and saw them clearly. Was restored to (reinstated in) his sound or normal state, another term implying that he was not born blind, Every (man) or all (things), as the Greek may be either masculine and singular, or neuter and plural. Another reading, found in some editions, removes the ambiguity by making it both masculine and plural, (all men), which may then be understood to mean specifically all those whom he saw before as trees (but) walking. Clearly, an expressive Greek word which originally means farsightedly, in opposition to near (or short) sight, although here, as in the classics it may have the wider secondary sense expressed in the translation and opposed to the dimness of his sight when only partially recovered.

IV.

SENT HOME.

Mark 8:26. And he sent him away into his house (or to his house), which was not in the town or village, as appears from the ensuing prohibition. The modern philologists deny that the Greek particle repeated here ever corresponds to neither ... nor in English, as expressing an alternative originally present to the speaker's mind; and one of them explains the first to mean not even, and the last nor even, -Do not even go into the village, nor so much as speak to any (person) in the village.-' The supposed inconsistency of these two precepts, or at least the superfluousness of the last, as he could not tell it in the town unless he went there, has produced no less than ten variations in the text of this clause, all intended to remove the incongruity, and therefore all to be rejected as mere glosses. This may serve to show by a remarkable example the extraordinary principle, on which the ancient copyists frequently proceeded, of deciding what the writer should have said, instead of simply telling what he did say. To this single error may be traced a large proportion of existing variations in the text of the New Testament, most of which happily have never become current, but are found exclusively in certain copies or at most in certain families or classes of manuscripts. This erroneous principle or practice is the more to be condemned as the necessity of emendation is in almost every case imaginary. In the one before us, for example, the supposed incongruity arises from the strict fidelity with which the very words of Christ (or their equivalents) are here reported just as he pronounced them, not in a rhetorical or rounded period, but in short successive clauses, the natural form of a peremptory order. The man having just been brought out of the town, though not residing there, would naturally think of going back to tell and show what had been done to him. But this our Lord, for reasons which have often been explained before, is determined to prevent by pointed positive directions, which, without a change of meaning, may be paraphrased as follows: -Go homego directly homeno, not into the town, but homenot even for an hour or a momentdo not go into the town at allnot even to tell what I have donedo not so much as speak to any person in the townbut go directly home-'. (J. A. Alexander)

FACT QUESTIONS 8:22-26

445.

Since Mark is the only gospel writer to record this miracle what is his purpose in giving it?

446.

There is some question as to which Bethsaida is involved herewhy?

447.

Who brought the blind man?

448.

Do you believe the blind man had partial sight before Jesus touched him? Discuss.

449.

What conclusion do you have for the reason of leading the blind man out of the city?

450.

Why spit into the eyes of the blind man?

451.

Why did Jesus ask the blind man if he could see?

452.

Just what did the blind man say?what did he see?

453.

After Jesus place His hands upon the blind man the second time did He make him look up or did the blind man do this of his own will?

454.

Mark 8:26 is a remarkable example of the mistake of copyistexplain.