Luke 8:52-56

The following scene, Luke 8:52-53, took place at the entrance of the sick chamber. The πάντες, all, are the servants, neighbours, relations, and professional mourners (αὐληταί, Matthew) assembled in the vestibule, who also wanted to make their way into the chamber. Olshausen, Neander, and others infer from Jesus' words, that the child was simply in a lethargy; but this explanation is incompatible with the expression εἰδότες, knowing well, Luke 8:53. If this had been the idea of the writer, he would have employed the word δοκοῦντες, believing that...On the rest of the verse, see Luke 7:14. By the words, “ She is not dead, but sleepeth,” Jesus means that, in the order of things over which He presides, death is death no longer, but assumes the character of a temporary slumber (John 11:11, explained by Luke 8:14). Baur maintains that Luke means, Luke 8:53, that the apostles also joined in the laugh against Jesus, and that it is with this in view that the evangelist has chosen the general term all (Luke 8:52; Evang. p. 458). In this case it would be necessary to include amongst the πάντες the father and mother!!

The words, having put them all out, in the T. R., are a gloss derived from Mark and Matthew. It has arisen in this way: Mark expressly mentions two separate dismissals, one of the crowd and nine apostles at the entrance of the house, and another of the people belonging to the house not admitted into the chamber of the dead (Luke 8:40). As in Luke the word enter (Luke 8:51) had been wrongly referred to the first of these acts, it was thought necessary to mention here the second, at first in the margin, and afterwards in the text, in accordance with the parallel passages.

The command to give the child something to eat (Luke 8:55) is related by Luke alone. It shows the perfect calmness of the Lord when performing the most wonderful work. He acts like a physician who has just felt the pulse of his patient, and gives instructions respecting his diet for the day.

Mark, who is fond of local colouring, has preserved the Aramaean form of the words of Jesus, also the graphic detail, immediately the child began to walk about. In these features of the narrative we recognise the account of an eye-witness, in whose ear the voice of Jesus still sounds, and who still sees the child that had been brought to life again moving about. Matthew omits all details. The fact itself simply is all that has any bearing on the Messianic demonstration, which is his object. Thus each follows his own path while presenting the common substratum of fact as tradition had preserved it. On the prohibition of Jesus, Luke 8:56, see on Luke 5:14 and Luke 8:39.

According to Volkmar, the woman with an issue would be only the personification of the believing Jews, in whom their rabbis (the physicians of Luke 8:43) had been unable to effect a moral cure, but whom Jesus will save after having healed the heathen (the return from Gadara); and the daughter of Jairus represents the dead Judaism of the synagogue, which the gospel alone can restore to life. Keim acknowledges the insufficiency of symbolism to explain such narratives. He admits the cure of the woman as a fact, but maintains that she herself, by her faith, was the sole contributor towards it. In the resurrection of the daughter of Jairus, he sees either a myth, modelled after the type of the resurrection of the Shunammite widow's son by Elisha (a return to Strauss), or a natural awaking from a lethargy (a return to Paulus). But is not the local colouring quite as decided in this narrative as in that of the possessed of Gadara, of which Keim on this ground maintains the historical truth? And as to an awakening from a lethargy, what has he to reply to Zeller? (See p. 342, note.)