Mark 7:31-37 And again, departing from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, he came to the sea of Galilee, through the middle of the coasts of Decapolis.… I. THE DEAF MUTE HEALED. 1. A difference of reading. According to the common text we learn that our Lord, "departing from the coasts [borders] of Tyre and Sidon, came unto the Sea of Galilee, through the midst of the coasts [borders] of Decapolis; but according to the best critical authorities "through Sidon" must be substituted for "and Sidon;" and then the sentence reads as it stands in the Revised Version: "Again he went out from the borders of Type, and came through Sidon unto the Sea of Galilee, through the midst of the borders of Decapolis. This reading is unquestionably the more difficult, but exceedingly interesting, as it shows the extent of our Lord's tour through those Gentile lands. Proceeding twenty miles northward from Tyre, he came to Sidon, the great seat of Phoenician worship and of the idols Baal and Astarte; and then passing along the foot of Lebanon, and crossing the Leontes or Litany, the largest river of Syria, he came to the sources of the Jordan, whence he descended along the eastern bank into the region of Decapolis. The probable object of this detour was to gain privacy, instruct more thoroughly his disciples, escape his enemies, and visit the many towns and villages dotting this rotate. 2. An interesting though practically unimportant question. Was the subject of this miracle deaf, with an impediment in his speech, or both deaf and dumb; in other words, a deaf mute? If he was deaf and had (1) only an impediment in his speech, he had not been born deaf, for in that case he would have been destitute of speech altogether. He may have become deaf in early childhood, before the organs of speech attained their full development; or he may have been deaf for such a length of time that, through long disuse, his tongue had lost its power; or disease may have supervened, and inflammation or ulceration tied the lingual nerve. Whatever the cause of this impediment was - whether it was occasioned by rigidity of the membrane arising from long desuetude, or whether it was produced by the diseased state of the muscles, or whether it was the result of early deafness - the impediment was so great that it differed little from the entire absence of the power of articulation. This poor man was thus little, if at all, better than a deaf mute. But (2) several reasons induce the belief that this man was actually dumb as well as deaf. Among these we may mention the statement at ver. 37, where the Jews, who witnessed this miracle, said, "He maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb (ἀλάλους) to speak;" and the word μοφιλάλος is used in the LXX. Version of Isaiah 35:6 in the signification of dumb; also, in a reference by St. Matthew to this same journey of our Lord, and to the miracles performed at that time, the evangelist mentions the dumb speaking, (κωφοὺς λαλοῦντας). It may be observed that, while κωφὸς, meaning" dull" or "blunt," may be applied to either hearing or speech, the meaning of the word in St. Mark is always "deaf," though the usual meaning of it is "dumb," being synonymous with ἄφωνος in the classics. 3. Nature of this privation. This affliction was twofold. Two Organs were virtually wanting, two senses were sealed, two channels of communication with the external world were closed. The case of this person, if not actually identical with that of a man deaf and dumb, is illustrative of it. And oh, how great this double privation! How difficult for those, whom God has blessed with the free use of all their bodily organs, to appreciate the privation of one who is deaf and dumb! These twin calamities are, it is true, physiologically reducible to one. They stand related as cause and effect. Deafness at birth, or loss of hearing soon after, usually involves dumbness. Deafness is the radical defect, dumbness is its natural result. This man is said to be κωφὸς, which expresses the primitive want; while μογιλάλος (the root is μογ equivalent to μεγ as in μοχ(θος, labour, equivalent to something great laid (θε) on one) expresses the natural and necessary consequence - the great obstacle to speech. This latter word, therefore, is wrongly rendered "stammering," and rather denotes one unable to utter articulate words. Hearing, like sight, and as much as sight, is an inborn faculty; but speaking is a learnt art. Man of himself can utter sounds, and that is all, but not speak words. The latter he learns by hearing; but how can he learn without hearing, and how can he hear if he is born deaf? Further, in deafness the organ is wanting or defective; in dumbness the organ is present, but it might as well be absent, as it is disabled and incapable of use. When the ear is stopped, silence seals the tongue. But, though the cause may thus be one, the calamity affects two senses, and debars the use of both. 4. Extent of this privation. On due consideration, it will be found that these "children of silence," as they have been called, are doomed to as severe deprivations as any to be found in the whole catalogue of human woes. By nature they are excluded from all those pleasures which the ear drinks in and the tongue gives out. Nor do we refer merely or mainly to the melody of sweet sounds - to the thrilling tones of harmony, to the witching spell of minstrelsy, to the rapturous delights of music, as it is heard from the birds that make the woodland vocal with their notes, or from the itinerant musicians that stay for a few moments' space the step of the man of business, or cheer the spirit of the downcast; or as it swells in the concert, or sweeps so grandly in the oratorio, or is wafted aloft from a thousand voices on the open air of heaven. The deaf are excluded from other joys more homely, but not less hearty. They are shut out from the pleasant voice of childish prattle, from domestic or friendly converse, from intellectual interchange of thought, from literary amusement, scientific research, or political intelligence. From all these sources of information, instruction, and enjoyment they are by nature shut out. And here we come to the worst phase of their condition - the blank it leaves the mind. When sound is shut cut, a chief entrance of knowledge is barred. The exclusion of sound is the exclusion of all that knowledge and of all that multitude of ideas that sounds convey or suggest to the mind. 5. Contrast between the respective privations of the deaf and blind. We deeply commiserate the condition of the blind, from whom the fair face of nature is shrouded in darkness, whose eyes are never gladdened by the light of the sun by day or of the moon and stars by night, from whom the beauty of the human countenance and the loveliness of the landscape scenery are alike hidden, while "the shadow of death" rests "upon their eyelids." And yet the deaf mute is in a worse condition than even they. You can talk with that blind man, and tell him many things. He has an ear to hear, and learns much from your lips. You can read to him, and he listens, to the lessons of heavenly, wisdom, or human philosophy, or every-day experience, which you thus communicate. He is entertained at the same time that he lays up a store of useful knowledge. Not so the deaf mute; he is unimproved by all you say or read. Your speech does not instruct him, for he cannot hear. Books are useless to him, for he cannot read because he is ignorant of sounds made visible. He learns not, for thus the key of knowledge is taken away. Deaf mutes are, therefore, shrouded in deeper than midnight gloom; they grope in a "darkness that may be felt." Thus one of the great inlets of knowledge is taken away; one of the main sources of enjoyment is hermetically sealed; one of the chief links that bind men in social intercourse is snapped; one of the silken bands that unite men in intercommunion is severed. Thus the deaf mute stands apart, and in lonely isolation from his fellow-men; thus one of the sweetest streams of human-happiness is frozen up. We have thus looked at the condition of the deaf mute of our own day, as closely resembling, if not quite the same with, that of the man that was brought to our Lord, as it is here written, "They bring unto him one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech." II. THE SIGNS WHICH THE SAVIOUR USED. 1. What these signs were. After taking him aside, he "put his fingers into his ears, and he spit, and touched his tongue." These signs which he employed did in no way contribute to the cure he effected, and yet they were significant of what he was about to do. They were far from meaningless manoeuvres or purposeless displays of power. They were no empty make-believes. Our Lord meant to arrest the man's attention and excite his expectations. He did so with the impotent man when he said, "Wilt thou be made whole?" He did so with the blind men when he asked them, "What will ye that I should do unto you?" and when he added, "Believe ye that I am able to do this?" He does the same in the case before us. But as this man knew nothing of the language of sounds, our Lord addressed him in the language of signs. He touched the parts affected to apprise him of his intention to reach the seats of the infirmities and remove the maladies. He put his fingers into the ears to signify that he would take away the obstructions that were therein, and open up the way for sound to enter - that he would penetrate every opposing barrier, and bestow a new acoustic power. He touched the tongue with moisture from his own mouth to lubricate the stiffened member, to loosen whatever impediment confined its and restore its agility of motion. Thus by signs he gave the man some indication of what he meant to do. But by these signs he taught him another lesson. The second lesson was one of faith in our Lord himself as the Author of his recovery, as the Source from which healing power flowed, and as able to do all and accomplish all fully and perfectly which he had signified. A third thing, perhaps, he meant to convey was that he sanctions the use of those means which he himself appoints. Here the means are all his own. His own fingers he inserted into the deaf man's ears; with his own saliva he moistened his tongue. The power of healing is all his own. He can work without means, or against means, or by means; he here directs to the use of means, but only such means as he himself devises. These he sanctions, these he consecrates, sanctifies, and crowns with success. Further, our Lord adapts his sirens to the source of the ailment, and accomplishes a perfect cure. It might seem sufficient to insert his finger into the deaf ear without touching the tongue with saliva; and likewise, in the account of the cure, it might be thought enough to say "his ears were opened," without adding that "the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain." The touching and consequent opening of the ear would undoubtedly have reached the origin of the ailment, and cured the defect at its source; but there would not have been a complete cure. The sufferer would only have been put into the condition of one learning to speak; but the cure, in the very mode of it, was meant to save him this trouble, and to secure to him the ability to speak at once. Hence it is not only said of him ἐλάλει, "he spake," that is, had now the power of speaking, but the term ὀρθῶς is subjoined, from which we learn that, without any loss of time, and without any process of educating the ear, he spake correctly and normally, as if he had been accustomed to do so from his youth, and not as one exercising a power just bestowed. The distinction between the sense of hearing and the organ of heating in this passage is noticeable: the former is ακοὴ, and the latter ω΅τα. 2. Symbolic actions. Another and a different symbolic action follows the signs we have been considering. The Saviour turned his eyes to heaven. By this time the Saviour had familiarized the sufferer to the use of signs, and accustomed him to the language which they conveyed. He guards him against any misinterpretation of the fore-mentioned signs. He turns his mind from those signs, as though by themselves they were in any way conducive to his cure. He raises his thoughts to heaven, to remind him that all relief was to be looked for from thence; that the blessing which made the means effectual came from above; that every good gift and every perfect boon is from above, coming down from the Father of lights;" that the power to cure in this case was Divine; and that, as the Lord from heaven, he himself had brought that power down to earth. While, on the one hand, he showed that the power emanated from himself, he, on the other hand, acknowledged the Father who had sent him to put forth such power. While he was manifesting by certain signs or one kind of symbolic action that power proceeded from his own person, he was proving by another kind that in that person divinity was shrined; that "it pleased the Father that in him" - the Son - "should all fullness dwell; "that "all power in heaven and on earth" was entrusted to his hands. He was indicating, moreover, the unity of purpose and of plan that subsisted between the Father and the Son; that he was doing the will of the Father, and accomplishing the work with which he had been commissioned. "The Father," he said, "worketh hitherto, and I work;" "It is my meat and my drink to do the will of him that sent me." He sought thereby the Father's glory, as he himself said, "Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him;" and again he says, "I have glorified thee on earth: I have finished the work that thou gavest me to do." Thus here and now, as always) he sets forth his mediatorial dependence on the Father, and the eye he had to his praise: "My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me;" "He that speaketh of himself seeketh his own glory; but he that seeketh his glory that sent him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is in him." 3. Duty of imitating the Master. As it was with the Master, so in measure is it with the disciple still. Ever and anon we must turn our eyes to heaven. While our hands are duly employed in the daily occupations of our calling upon earth, our hearts must mount upward on the wings of faith, in praise for mercies received and in prayer for the blessing to be bestowed: "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth." Otherwise our most strenuous efforts will be frustrated, our most fondly cherished hopes blasted, and our highest aspirations doomed to disappointment; for "except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain." While we thus lean on an Almighty arm, and depend for everything on God, we must have a single eye to his praise, ever keeping his glory as our chief end in view, and ever seeking from himself grace and strength and steady purpose to do his will. "To do thy will! take delight, O thou my God that art; Yea, that most holy Law of thine I have within my heart." 4. The significance of the Saviour's sigh. "He sighed;" and no wonder, when he thought of the ruin that sin had wrought, and of the wreck which man had in consequence become. The Saviour sighed when he looked abroad on suffering humanity, when he reflected on the miseries of a fallen race, and when especially he contemplated the living example of that misery that then stood before him. He sighed in sympathy with our sufferings, "for we have not an High Priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities." Blessed be God for such "a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God." He sighed in sorrow for our sins. In them he saw the cause of all; in them he saw the bad and bitter fountain-head; in them he saw the fruitful source of so much woe; in them he saw that fearful thing that darkened heaven above us, opened hell beneath us, and cursed the earth on which we tread; in them he saw that fell infection that has disordered, in a certain sense and to a certain extent, all the members of the body and all the faculties of the soul, so that "the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint;" in them he saw the prolific germ of all those "ills that flesh is heir to," and of all those pangs that make the heart of humanity ache: for "by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin," and not only death, but with it all our woe; in them he saw, too, the grievous load he was himself one day to bear, when he" bare our sins in his own body on the tree," so that it has been truly as tersely said - "With pitying eyes, the Prince of peace Beheld our helpless grief; He saw, and oh! amazing love! He came to our relief." He sighed when he thought of the works of the devil and his malice against man, and how human weakness had given him power to deform the body by disease, and deface the image of the Creator in the soul of his creature. Perhaps, too, he sighed when, as has been shrewdly suggested by an old divine, he saw the new temptation to sin that the man's renewed powers would expose him to - the evil things the ear would hear, the idle things the tongue would speak, the wicked things in which both organs might be made instrumental. "Therefore," said the psalmist, "I Will take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my tongue: I will keep my mouth with a bridle, while the wicked are before me." The explanation of the Saviour's sigh by a German writer on the miracles, though ingenious, is not sufficiently comprehensive, when he traces its cause to" the closed ear of the world" of which the deaf man was the symbol," which does not perceive his Word, and therefore does not receive it;" and thinks his view commended, if not confirmed, by St. Mark's numerous exhortations to spiritual hearing by maxim, parable, and symbol. The maxim is, "If any man have ears to hear, let him hear;" and connected with it is the parable of the earth's producing fruit after the reception of the seed, or salvation attained by right hearing of the word, while the present symbol corroborates the same truth. "The deaf may hear the Saviour's voice, The fettered tongue its chain may break; But the deaf heart, the dumb by choice, The laggard soul, that will not wake, The guilt that scorns to be forgiven - These baffle e'en the spells of Heaven: In thought of these, his brows benign Not e'en in healing cloudless shine. The correct explanation, while not exclusive of this view, is inclusive of much more. 5. The single word spoken by the Saviour. "Ephphatha," that is, "Be opened," was the single utterance after the heavenward look and inward sigh. The root of this word is the Hebrew pathach, to open; from a similar Syriae root comes ethpatach, the imperative of the passive conjugation Ethpael; then, by assimilation of theta and aspiration, we get ephphatha. And no sooner had he spoken that word than its omnific power appeared. The dull ear was endowed with a power it had never known before, or to which it had been long a stranger. The hindrance that prevented the free passage of the air, or deadened its undulations, was removed; the defect in its organism was remedied. The pleasure of drinking in sweet sounds and of listening to the music of human speech came with all the freshness of a new faculty. The man felt as though he had found himself in a new world, or had entered on a new and improved existence, or had risen many steps higher in the scale of being. And so, in truth, he had. But this was not all; the tongue was freed completely and at once from whatever it was that had fettered it, the impediment was quite gone, and the articulation was, notwithstanding the long disease, immediately perfect. He could now tell to all around the happy change he had undergone - the perfect nature of the cure, the pleasure that filled his soul, the gratitude that glowed in his heart and which then flowed from his lips. 6. The cure a cause of adoring wonder. Here we must admire, and, while we admire, adore, the power of Christ, for it is the power of God. Nothing short of Almighty power could have accomplished this wonder-work of mercy, for "Who hath made man's mouth? or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I the Lord?" And none, surely, save the Lord could thus unmake what sin and Satan had marred, removing all deficiencies, and renewing the afflicted with more than original powers. Here, too, we trace distinct proofs of his Messiahship. Blind as the multitude so frequently were, they could not shut their eyes on this fact.; they were so astonished that they could not help admitting it. They said, "He maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak;" they evidently had an eye to the words of the prophet, and the works he predicted the Messiah would do, when he said, "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." III. PRACTICAL INSTRUCTION. 1. Inferences. This miracle, like others of our Lord's miracles, warrants three inferences: (1) his superhuman power, and by consequence his Divine commission; (2) a glorious coming day foreshadowed, when all physical disabilities shall be finally and for ever removed; and (3) what is of personal and practical importance, the inference of the Saviour's ability to do for the soul what he so often and so effectually did for the body. The impediments of the body are but dim shadows of the worse impediments of the soul. By nature the ear is deaf to the Divine commands, the tongue dumb when it should celebrate his praise; while the heart is hard, the affections frozen, the mind shrouded in darkness - the man in a state of isolation, without fellowship with God or communion with the saints. Christ says, "Ephphatha," and oh, what a change ensues! The ear is opened to hear God's Word, the heart, like Lydia's, to receive his grace, the tongue untied to praise his name and call upon him in prayer. 2. His due need of praise. In view of all this we must join with the multitude and say," He hath done all things well." It was well for the man that was healed, because in his case it was next to life from the dead; it was well for his relations, for their trouble was all but over; it was well for his friends, because their enjoyment of him and pleasure with him were unspeakably increased; it was well for mankind, that the Son of man had authority to exercise such power upon earth; it was well for each of us, because herein we have an earnest of what he will do for the soul, a pledge of the renovation of soul and body, an assurance of the future and final perfection of both. He did all things well, for he "did no iniquity, neither was guile found in his mouth;" he did all things well, for he went about continually, doing good. More particularly, he did all things well, for whatever he did he did largely and liberally, modestly and humbly, generously, graciously, gratuitously, and yet gloriously. Like the first creation, when God saw everything that he had made, "behold, it was very good;" so, when the works of Christ are contemplated, the concurrent testimony of heaven and earth will be, that "he hath done all things well." Saints on earth will say it, for they are the trophies of his mercy, the triumphs of his grace, the memorials of his goodness, and the monuments of his power; saints in heaven will say it, adding, He opened our ears by his power, our hearts by his spirit, our tongues by his grace; he washed us from our sins in his blood, making us kings and priests unto God. Multitudes when he was on earth said it; multitudes yet unborn will say it. We ourselves are entitled to say it, for his healing power has reached us; he has removed our maladies, renewed our souls, made us to delight in his Word and rejoice in his love. "He speaks, and, listening to his voice, New life the dead receive; The mournful, broken hearts rejoice, The humble peer believe. "Hear him, ye deaf; his praise, ye dumb, Your loosened tongues employ; Ye blind, behold your Saviour come; And leap, ye lame, for joy." J.J.G. Parallel Verses KJV: And again, departing from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, he came unto the sea of Galilee, through the midst of the coasts of Decapolis. |
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