Bible Study series: Mark 8:22-26. We can learn from this healing, when we pray for the sick.
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Let’s begin.
Scripture: Mark 8:22-26
22 They came to Bethsaida, and they brought to him a blind man and pleaded with him that he would touch him. 23 Taking the blind man’s hand, he brought him outside the village. And spitting on his eyes and laying hands on him, he asked him, “Do you see anything?” 24 He looked up and said, “I see people; I see them as trees walking.” 25 Then he laid hands on his eyes again, and the man looked intently and was restored and saw everything clearly. 26 He sent him to his home and said, “Do not even go into your village.” (Mark 8:22-26)
Comments:
France says Mark 8:22-10:52 reveal Jesus’ movement towards Jerusalem.
This is a remarkable pericope (pronounced puh-RIH-koh-pea and is a unit or section), for it shows that Jesus had to pray again for the compete answer for a healing. This two-stage process should encourage everyone with a healing ministry. Sometimes you have to stay with a person and pray again. Or you can tell him to come back next time and get prayer again. If so, instruct him to read the Scriptures about healing and faith. The Scriptures build up one’s faith.
I have covered in more detail Jesus’s use of spottle to heal:
Jesus Heals Blind Man in Unusual Way and in Two Stages
22:
Bethsaida was a town on the northern side of the Lake of Galilee. John 1:44 says that Philip, Peter and Andrew were originally from the town. Apparently, they later moved farther south, on the west side of the lake, to the town of Capernaum.
Jesus was about to do more than touch him.
23:
This must be the most encouraging verse for us today who believe in healing and who have prayed for healing, either for ourselves or others.
Jesus spit in Mark 7:33 and John 9:4-5. This was unusual for his ministry. No one can box God in. Also, there was a belief in the ancient world that saliva had a spiritual component to it, so Jesus was momentarily and occasionally fitting in to his culture. But please don’t build an entire healing system on spitting! Remember, the Bible was not written to us, but for us and for people of all generations, past and future, after proper interpretation and exegesis is done.
Jesus did not command the man to be healed, or at least it is not recorded. But he did interview the man. We too should not be afraid to interview the person we are praying for.
Strauss says that this two-stage healing may illustrate Peter’s partial recognition that Jesus is the Messiah. Like this blind man, he needs to be helped along, moving from one stage of understanding to the next. However, I take it as written. Jesus needed to persist in prayer. Very encouraging for me.
Commentator Lane writes that Jesus’s use of saliva is cultural, just to relate to the blind man’s “thought-world.”
The application of spittle to the eye and the laying on of hands in healing have significant parallels in Jewish practice and on the Gospels (see on Chapters 6:5; 7:33). By these actions Jesus entered the thought-world of the man and established significant contact with him. The report of the healing, however, contains three elements which are parallel in the evangelical tradition: (1) Jesus’ question if his action has been effective (“Do you see anything?”); (2) the explicit reference to only partial healing (“I can actually see people, but they look to me like trees—only their walking!”); (3) the laying on of hands a second time, resulting in complete restoration of sight (“I see everything clearly—even at a distance”). These features distinguish this incident of healing from all of the others and suggest that the man’s sight was restored only gradually and with difficulty. It is impossible to recover the larger context of the situation which would shed light on many questions prompted by these unique features (p. 285)
So Lane says, above, that Jesus entered the “thought-world” of the man, so Jesus could relate to him. And we don’t have enough information to know why the healing was gradual.
24:
“looking up”: it can be translated as “seeing again” or more literally as “re-seeing.”
The man answered honestly. If you’re in a healing ministry, don’t be afraid to ask the person you’re praying for to answer your question honestly.
“Trees walking” indicates that his eyes were seeing them blurrily. He did not see them distinctly. The fact that he used the word “trees” indicates that he had seen before. Otherwise, he would not have had the vocabulary or words to know what a tree was.
25:
So Jesus repeated the process again. He must have smeared the saliva again.
“restored”: BDAG, a thick Greek lexicon, defines the verb: (1) “To change to an earlier good state or condition, restore, reestablish” (Mark 8:25; Matt. 12:13; Mark 3:5: Luke 6:10; 22:51; Acts 1:6); (2) “to return to a former place or relationship, bring back, give back, restore” (Heb. 13:9). The first definition fits. His vision was returned to normality. He lost his vision somehow to the point of total blindness and now it was restored back to normal.
In any case, after further prayer, he saw everything clearly. He had 20-20 vision.
26:
Once again, Jesus did not want him to broadcast the healing to everyone. And it looks like the blind man obeyed and went him. Why did Jesus command him not to tell?
Why? 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 signs 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 without a loudspeaker blasting it.
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).
So couldn’t Jesus heal him instantly the first time, as he did so many others? The bottom-line answer is that we don’t know because the text is silent.
But for our part, we need to have faith. For your healing, press in to God’s power and love with faith. For a sovereign miracle, press in to God’s power and love with faith. From our limited point of view, we need faith. From God’s unlimited point of view, he acts as he wills. So we have a person’s faith and God’s sovereignty interacting in this one verse. It is difficult to sort out (for me at least).
But down here on earth, God requires us to have faith in him, and we get faith by hearing the word about Christ (Rom. 10:17). Get Scripture in you, and it will build your faith. Ask the Lord for faith. “I do believe! Help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24). That’s our part in the human-God interaction. Leave the results up to your loving and powerful Father.
Why Doesn’t Divine Healing Happen One Hundred Percent of the Time?
In any case, as noted, this pericope encourages us to keep seeking the Lord for our healing. And if you exercise a healing ministry, please pray for some people more than once. Ask questions. And if they are not healed, pray again. If they are not healed, ask them to come back next time.
GrowApp for Mark 8:22-26
1. How have you had to pray several times to get your answer to prayer? Tell your story.
RELATED
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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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