Bible Study series: Mark 5:35-43. Jesus performs the greatest miracle– a resurrection. He is putting things right. The final accomplishment of this will happen in a twinkling of an eye, at his Second Coming.
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Let’s begin.
Scripture: Mark 5:35-43
35 While he was still speaking, they came from the synagogue ruler’s household, saying, “Your daughter has died. Why bother the teacher anymore?” 36 But Jesus, ignoring the spoken message, said to the synagogue ruler, “Don’t fear, only believe!” 37 He did not allow anyone to accompany him except Peter, James, and John (James’s brother). 38 They went into the synagogue ruler’s home and observed a big commotion and weeping and loud wailing. 39 Going in, he said to them, “Why are you distraught and weeping? The child has not died but is sleeping.” 40 They laughed him to scorn. But he shooed everyone outside and took the child’s father and mother and those with him and entered where the child was. 41 Taking the child’s hand, he said to her, “Talitha koum!” (This is interpreted as “Little girl,” I say to you, “arise!”) 42 Instantly the little girl stood up and walked around (for she was twelve years old). They were really, really stunned. 43 He gave them strict orders that no one should know this. Then he said to give her something to eat. (Mark 5:35-43)
A bad report had come. And now a worse report than before is delivered, because she had been dying. She wasn’t dead yet. There was still hope. Then the ultimate bad report arrived. She was dead. Stop the whole plea and procession. He no longer needs to come to Jairus’s house. No more hope.
Maybe Jairus said to himself that if that unclean woman had not interfered, then Jesus would have been to his house already. But Jesus had a call and mission. He was going to his house to heal her (vv. 23-24b).
Jesus ignored or paid no attention to the bad report. The verb is the standard one for hear or listen, and Mark adds a prefix to it that means the opposite. So these translations are apt: “paid no attention” or “ignored” or “did not heed” or “did not listen to” in the sense of knocking him off from his mission. He countered the spoken message with faith. “Don’t fear!” That’s a command with the standard verb for fear, and here it means the fear that paralyzes you and stops your faith. But Jesus told him not to fear. That’s exactly what those with the gift of healing must do. They must speak words of faith after the doctor speaks (accurate) words of science. Natural and medical facts do not have the last word. God does.
“believe”: the verb means to “believe, be convinced of something.” The command could be translated as “Just believe.” See v. 34 for a deeper look at believing.
37:
The Inner Three; Peter, James, and John. I wonder how the other nine felt about being left out? What about Peter’s brother Andrew? In any case, these three are about learn by modeling how to heal the sick and raise the dead. Recall that Peter raised Dorcas-Tabitha from the dead (Acts 9:36-43) in much the same way Jesus raised this girl from the dead (see comments at vv. 41-42, below).
38-39:
Were the weepers and mourners in the house—no doubt a big house to host all the people who were there? Mark says that when they got to the house the crowd was outside weeping and wailing and then some were emoting inside the house too. Luke assumes that the readers would guess that the crowd would be outside too, in his version. It is not good to allow in doubters and skeptics and those who don’t have faith.
Sleeping is a common metaphor for death (John 11:11-14; 1 Cor. 15:21; 1 Thess. 4:13-14). Jesus was about to interrupt the girl’s temporary pause in her mortal life (Strauss, p. 234).
40:
Jesus was about to teach the crowd a lesson by speaking words of irony, a deeper truth. Yes, the girl really was dead, but it is as if she were sleeping, as far as his limitless perspective was concerned. To them, she really was dead. To him, she was only asleep. This means that Jesus gave them hope. But rather than celebrate, they ridiculed, because they were operating according to what they saw. The Greek word for ridiculed has a sharp edge to it, implying “scorned, mocked him.” They used their own eyes and tested her breath and concluded, correctly, that she was dead. But Jesus sized up the true and higher situation—he was the resurrection and the life (John 11:17-27)—and concluded that this raising her from the dead was easy for him. She was merely sleeping. Now all he had to do was wake her up. So the lesson he was teaching the crowd was that nothing is impossible with God. He didn’t defend himself or give a theology lesson. He acted. He healed her. That quieted the mockery.
“he shooed them outside”: no doubt the three men helped “facilitate” the crowd or expelled them. It was aggressive action: “Now people! Just back away from the house. You aren’t allowed in! And you inside, shoo, shoo! Let the Teacher handle this!” Crowd control is important, too. Apparently this crowd did not have much faith, unlike the crowd in Mark 2:10, who touched the Lord, and they were healed. This crowd on this day was a distraction. Crowds are fickle. Don’t listen to them.
The child’s mother is mentioned for the first time. She may have gone outside to greet the Lord and the three disciples. But the parents have ultimate authority over the twelve-year-old, so they had to be in their own house with their only child.
See your situation from a God’s-eye view. Have faith. Don’t doubt or fear. Your perspective and ability are limited. God’s perspective is infinite and his power to heal when his Son is on the scene speaking words of faith is strong.
Jesus took decisive action and shooed them out—or his disciples did. The Greek could be translated as “expelled.”
41-42:
Now Jesus initiates action because he knew the results.
First, he took her by the hand. That act takes faith in his Father, who was about to work a miracle.
“Talitha koum”: it is an Aramaic term, which Mark conveniently translates for his Greek readers. Please don’t turn it into a magical formula or incantation.
“arise”: it could be translated simply as “get up!”
This process will be repeated in 9:27: “grasping,” “raising,” “getting up” (Strauss’s comment on 9:27).
In a related episode, Peter will raise Tabitha-Dorcas from the dead, and he shooed the weepers and mourners out of the room (Acts 9:36-43). Peter too will also command the girl to get up, and she will. He learned from his Lord and was in fact filled with the Spirit of the Lord (Acts 2:1-4), who empowered him to work the same miracle. But the Father through his Son actually worked the miracle by the power of the Spirit.
Other accounts of resurrections (resuscitations) are recorded in the OT. In contrast to Jesus, who moved with more authority, Elijah stretched himself over a boy and raised him from the dead (1 Kings 17:21), and Elisha touched a child with his staff and then later lay over him (2 Kings 4:31, 34-35).
Second, Jesus issued a command and took the girl by the hand to get her up. You have to take action and help people move towards faith. And don’t hesitate to speak to the person or to the disease. In Luke’s version, Jesus called out. Even professional grammarians, so reserved in their comments, add these nuggets:
The verb here [phōneō] could either be used in the sense of ‘to speak with considerable volume or loudness’ … or ‘to communicate directly or indirectly to someone who is presumably at a distance, in order to tell such a person to come.’ On the one hand, the former fits with the notion that the girl is ‘sleeping (v. 52) and needs to be roused from her sleep’ … On the other hand, the context also suggests that Jesus is summoning the girl back from death. (Culy, Parsons, Stigall, Luke: Handbook the Greek Text, [Baylor UP, 2010] p. 294)
That’s profound. In other words, Jesus used a loud voice to rouse her from “sleep” or to call her back from the dead. He spoke into the Other World and ordered her back home into her body. Wow. A deep lesson there.
Third, while he took her hand and called out, her spirit returned to her. It had been absent from her body. Where was it while she was dead? We don’t know for sure, but it was probably heading towards God.
What Happens to Children after They Die?
Fourth, he ordered those in the household to give her something to eat (v. 43). Apparently he perceived she needed strength. She had not eaten for a time. Dying does that to someone!
This girl’s “resurrection” is not the same as Jesus’s resurrection, for his body was transformed and glorified. Her body simply recovered from the dead and when she was older she died, like everyone else of her generation. So we should call it a “resuscitation” from the dead.
43:
Jesus then gives a seemingly odd command. So many people witnessed the results—the girl was dead; now she is alive—but he orders or instructs the parents not to tell anyone what happened. He often downplayed the miracles and his Messianic title before people outside of the twelve (Luke 4:35, 41; 5:14; 8:56; Matt. 9:30; 12:16; Mark 1:34; 3:12; 5:43; 7:36; 8:26). He wanted to teach them, not dazzle and thrill them with signs and wonders.
I believe this seemingly useless order meant three possible things, with the third one being the most likely:
First, Jesus had a conversation with Jairus on the way to his house (v. 36), in compressed form. He assured him that she would live. In an expanded conversation, not recorded here, he may have even said that he was the resurrection (John 11:25). He did not want the fuller message to get out. But this possible reason draws much from the silence of the text, so let’s be cautious with this one.
Second, he did not want the parents to reveal the details of what happened, outlined in those four actions he took raise her from the dead (vv. 41-42). As noted with Peter’s story in Acts, Jesus is the one who raised this only child from the dead. No one should believe that he can also work miracles outside of the Father’s authority, much like the seven sons of Sceva thought they could cast out demons (Acts 19:14) (though Jesus didn’t mind when someone else tried to cast out demons [Luke 9:49-50], but that was when the Lord was still ministering on earth. The man may have followed Jesus for a time and learned some things and then went out on his own).
Third, Jairus the synagogue ruler would have had enough knowledge to make the connection that raising the dead was the sign of the Messiah, and Jesus did not want this fact to be announced by an authority figure like Jairus. At this early stage in his ministry, Jesus preferred the people to just be happy with the miracle and be rebuked for laughing him to scorn.
Maybe all three reasons are possible at the same time, but the third one is the strongest.
Let’s further explore the order not to broadcast the miracle.
First, Jesus simply wanted to spread the message his way without the false expectations from noninformed people. Second, the exuberant expectation from the masses may spark an insurrection, which would hinder his message and his mission: to proclaim the kingdom of God, backed up by sings and wonders. People had to learn about his Messiahship through their thirst and hunger for the knowledge of God. They had to connect the dots. This is one of the purposes of teaching in parables. Only the hungry seekers could understand.
Let’s talk about the signs of the Messiah or the Messianic Age, to find out which dots they had to connect.
As I note in various places throughout the commentary on the Gospels, one sign of the Messianic Age was the healing of diseases and broken bodies. Is. 35 describes this age. After God comes with a vengeance to rescue his people, these things will happen:
“Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy” (Is. 35:5-6).
Is. 26:19 says of the Messianic Age: “But your dead will live, LORD, their bodies will rise—let those who dwell in the dust wake up and shout with joy” (Is. 26:19, NIV).
The phrase “in that day” refers to the age that the Messiah ushers in: “In that day the deaf will hear the words of the scroll and out of gloom and darkness the eyes will see” (Is. 29:18, NIV).
The Lord’s Chosen Servant will do many things. Here are some: “I am the LORD: I have called you in righteousness; I will take you by the hand and keep you; I will give you as a covenant for my people, a light for the nations, to open they eyes that are blind, to bring the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness” (Is. 42:6-7, ESV). Is. 42:18 connects hearing and seeing with walking in God’s ways, and deafness and blindness with national judgment. As for leprosy, Jesus referred to the time when Elijah the prophet healed Namaan the Syrian of his skin disease, and the return of Elijah was a sign that the Messiah was here (Mal. 4:5-6; Luke 9:28-36).
GrowApp for Mark 5:35-43
1. When you get a bad report—a real, live fact–what do you do? Panic and fear or “only believe”?
2. Can you hear Jesus’s words spoken to Jairus two thousand years ago speaking to you today?
RELATED
Jairus’s Daughter in Three Gospels: Do the Differences ‘DESTROY’ the Truth of the Story?
10. Eyewitness Testimony in Mark’s Gospel
2. Church Fathers and Mark’s Gospel
2. Archaeology and the Synoptic Gospels
14. Similarities among John’s Gospel and the Synoptic Gospels
1. The Historical Reliability of the Gospels: Introduction to Series
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