The Deaf Man with Stammering Tongue

S. Mark vii. 31–37

After leaving the borders of Tyre, where He had cured the Syrophenician’s daughter, our Lord proceeded to go “through Sidon,” l but whether He actually visited the ancient Phenician capital, or only set foot on Sidonian territory, we have no means of deciding. If the latter, He would turn southwards after making a slight circuit, and take the great Roman road direct to Csesarea Philippi. But if the former, He must have crossed some of the numerous passes of the mountain ranges of Libanus and Hermon into the neighbourhood of Damascus. This would take Him through some of the grandest highland scenery of Palestine; and when we recall His love of Nature, so often manifested in His teaching, it affords a strong presumption that He would not be insensible to such a consideration in the selection of His route.

We are told, moreover, that He came through “the midst 1 This is the correct text according to the oldest MSS. and versions. Cf. P. 157-

of the coasts of Decapolis,” which favours the supposition, for Damascus 1 was one of the chief of those ten allied free cities so designated by the Romans. Though situated within the tetrarchies of Philip and Antipas, they were independent of any authority but that of their provincial governor; and their populations, except so far as enterprising Jews might be tempted there for purposes of trade, were entirely heathen. On the Return from the Captivity the old possessors had been unable to re-conquer them; and the ruins of ancient monuments, among which are temples to numerous Greek divinities, testify to their Pagan worship and customs. It is important to notice this, because it involves our Lord in a larger intercourse with the heathen than is commonly supposed, and makes it by no means improbable that the group of miracles here recorded were wrought upon them, and not upon Jews.

At some stage of His journey through these parts they brought to Him “one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech.” He had not been deaf and dumb from his birth, but had lost the sense of hearing from some unrecorded cause, perhaps a fever or an accident, and this deprivation was followed in time, as usually happens, by a difficulty and indistinctness in speaking.

What our Lord’s motive was in taking him apart from the crowd is by no means obvious. With our Saviour “a moral dealing was the ultimate end of a physical cure,” and this was kept in view in the mode of working it. Possibly, then, it was a symbolical action indicating the necessity of his being separated from his own people, and brought out of heathenism. More probably it was designed to concentrate his attention upon our Lord’s Own Person, and quicken his faith to be healed. For the same reason, perhaps, He made use of those manual acts of thrusting His fingers into his ears, and touching his tongue with the spittle, because He could employ no words to strengthen his confidence. He prepared the man, so to speak, by a foretaste of what was to follow through His intervention; as an old writer has expressed it, “by forcing His fingers into the ears, and moistening the tongue, He testified that it was He by Whose hand the closed passages could be pierced, and the tongue that clave to the roof of the mouth recover its motive power.”

Then followed an upward look to heaven, as well to convince him that it was more than human aid that he was about to receive, as to express His union with the Father. A moment more and He heaved a sigh and uttered a groan of sympathy for the sorrow that is in the world, and the word of authority — a single word — Ephphatha, broke from His lips. He spake, and it was done.

If we could be quite sure that the man was a Gentile — a native of those Greek-speaking cities — the word would help to the settlement of an open question, whether our Lord usually spoke in the ordinary vernacular of the Jews, or adopted the Greek of the more educated classes. If both languages had been in familiar use by Him, the circumstances of the case would at once have suggested the adoption of Greek rather than Aramaic. It is of little consequence that He could not in either case have been heard by the man himself; the narrative clearly indicates that his friends had drawn near, and were within sound of the Speaker’s voice.

But, in whatever language, it was a word of power. “The channels of hearing” were unstopped, and, if we accept the reading of the oldest manuscript, “immediately the string of his tongue was loosed.” It is a significant change in the order of words, affording additional proof that it was not a case of congenital deafness. He needed only the restoration of the

1 There was a belief at the time in the medicinal virtue of saliva. “It is from this action of our Saviour that the Roman Catholics formed their custom of touching with spittle the ears and nostrils of the person to be baptized.” Cf. Morison, S. Mark, in loc.

2 This is the Aramaic form of the Ethpael imperative. It has been thought that the stress laid on the few Aramaic expressions, such as this, “Talitha cumi,” and “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani,” is an inference that He usually spoke Greek, but it is hardly a legitimate one.

3 aKoal, instead of cira, implies the sense rather than the actual organs of hearing. 4 The Sinaitic MS.

164 The Deaf Alan ch. vii. v. 31-37 sense of hearing, to recover the faculty of articulate speech, and “he spake plain.”

The oft-repeated charge was once more given — once more to be disregarded — “that they should tell no man.” It seems strange that after what He had done, the mere knowledge of His wishes did not insure obedience; but the instinctive and irrepressible desire, following upon the reception of any great blessing, to speak of it to others was too strong for them. It is quite possible that they misunderstood His motives, and set it down to a modest shrinking from the praise and popularity which in their eyes was so well earned; and this misconception gave them an additional impulse to do what their natural inclinations prompted, so “the more He charged them, so much the more a great deal they published it.”

S. Matthew testifies that it was not the only miracle of the kind, but that multitudes of “lame, blind, dumb, maimed, and many others,” were healed, so that the amazement of the people knew no bounds; and he concludes with an expression which goes far to confirm the belief that those upon whom the miraculous cures were wrought belonged to the heathen population. “They glorified,” he says, “the God of Israel.” It would have been wholly inappropriate if applied to Jews.

S. Mark records the exclamations in which their admiration expressed itself, and they carry us back to the utterances of the prophet ages before, and are an unconscious witness to their fulfilment, and to Christ’s claim to the Messiahship: “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped: then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing.”

Note: There is some difference in the ancient enumerations of the cities. Pliny names Scythopolis, Hippos, Gadara, Pella, Philadelphia, Gerasa, Dion, Conatha, Damascus, and Raphana (H. N. v. 18). He gives the extent of the territory at about one hundred miles long, by sixty broad.

Note: fMoyildlos is used in the LXX. for dumb, but etymologically implies merely” difficulty of speech.”

Note: This is the first occasion on which He adopted this course. The only other recorded instance is in the kindred miracle that followed shortly after. Cf. viii. 23.