Mark 7.31-37 • Matthew 15.29-31.
After Jesus
Matthew 15.29-31 KWL - 29 Leaving there, Jesus went along the Galilean lake, went up a hill, and sat there.
- 30 A crowd of many came to Jesus, having among them
- the maimed, the mute, the blind, the disabled, and many other unwell people.
- They deposited them at Jesus’s feet, and he treated them—
- 31 so the crowd was amazed to see the mute speaking,
- the maimed made whole, the disabled walking, the blind seeing.
- They glorified Israel’s God.
Y’see, quacks and witch doctors tend to claim their expertise is in curing people of the things we can’t visibly see. If you have an illness, any type of cancer but skin cancer, stomach upset, pain, or anything where they could claim to cure you—and nobody can actually see they cured nothing—they’d claim this was their area of expertise, treat you, and charge you. But if you go to them with your hand mangled in a cart accident… well, they got nothing. They barely knew how to set broken bones.
Whereas Jesus can cure everything. And charges nothing.
So that’s Matthew. But Mark zooms in on one specific case of curing a deafmute, and here’s that story.
Mark 7.31-37 KWL - 31 Jesus left the Tyrian border again, traveled through Sidon,
- then to the Galilean lake on the Dekapolitan border.
- 32 The people brought Jesus a deafmute—well, with a speech impediment—
- and asked him for help, so he might put his hand on him.
- 33 Taking him away from the crowd by himself, Jesus put his fingers in his own ears,
- spat, touched his own tongue, 34 and groaned while looking into the heavens.
- Jesus told him, “הפתח!” (happatákh, i.e. “Open up!”)
- 35 His hearing opened up, and the bond on his mouth quickly broke; he spoke clearly.
- 36 Jesus commanded him to tell no one—and many similar commands.
- But he proclaimed Jesus all the more.
- 37 People were completely astounded, saying, “He does everything well!
- He makes deafmutes hear, and the speechless speak!”
I’ll briefly mention the geography in verse 31: Sidon is north of Tyre, and the Dekapolis is south; Jesus wasn’t traveling in a straight line. It’s like saying he went from San Francisco to San Jose through Portland. He was traveling all over, preaching his gospel in gentile provinces.
He ended up in the Dekapolis, a province of 10 Syrian Greek communities in northern Israel, east of the lake. You remember he’d been there before: He took his students there for a break, and wound up