Lange Commentary - Mark 8:22 - 8:26

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Lange Commentary - Mark 8:22 - 8:26


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

2. The Blind Man in Eastern Bethsaida. Mar_8:22-26

      22And he cometh to Bethsaida; and they bring a blind man unto him, and besought him to touch him. 23And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town; and when he had spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon him, he asked him if he saw aught. 24And he looked up, and said, I see [the] men as trees, walking. 25After that he put his hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up: and he was restored, and saw every man clearly. 26And he sent him away to his house [home], saying, Neither go into the town, nor tell it to any in the town.

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

Mark alone records this history of Christ’s healing miracles during the time of His final mountain-travels along the Gaulonite range, on the eastern side of the Jordan and the Sea of Galilee. The remembrances of Peter preserved for us these special treasures, belonging to a time so preëminently memorable to him and his spiritual development. But we have too often observed the peculiar feeling of Mark for the gradual, natural, progressive development of the kingdom of God (see his record of the parables, and the final miracles), not to perceive that this period of the ministry and work of Jesus would strongly rivet his attention.

Mar_8:22. To Bethsaida.—It is evident that the Bethsaida of the western coast, in Galilee (Joh_12:21), is not here meant, as Theophylact and others have supposed; but, as Grotius rightly perceived, it was Bethsaida Julias, which lay upon the north-eastern coast of the Sea of Tiberias. Reland was the first to indicate that there were two Bethsaidas. Josephus tells us (Antiq. 18, 2, 1), that the tetrarch Philip, who ruled only in the eastern part of Galilee, made the village of Bethsaida into a town, and named it Julias, after the daughter of Augustus. (See also De Bell. Judges 11, 9, 1; and Jerome on Matthew 16) According to Pliny (Hist. Nat. Mar_5:15), Julias was situated on the farther coast of the Sea of Galilee; according to Josephus, on the Jordan, 120 stadia above its junction with the Sea. Pococke thought the ruins of Taluy, on the east side of the Jordan, marked the ancient Julias; Seetzen thought the same of a little village, Tellanihje; and Robinson, the ruins of Et-Tell. According to Luk_9:10, the first miraculous feeding also took place in a desert place near this same Bethsaida. See Von Raumer, Palœstina, p. 109. Bethsaida lay in the way from the sea towards Cæsarea Philippi, in the higher mountain-range, a district to which Jesus subsequently returned.—A blind man.—What follows shows that he was not born blind, but had become so. He had evidently seen men and trees aforetime.

Mar_8:23. And led him out of the town.—Here the separation from all others is still more effectual than in the case of the healing of the deaf and dumb man, Mar_7:33. In addition to the motive already mentioned for performing His works as much as possible in retirement, viz., that He might insure His own decease in Jerusalem, we may assume that there was also a pedagogic element that influenced Him on the present occasion. The deaf and dumb man could not hear His voice, but only see His signs; this blind man could not see Him, he could only hear Him speak and feel His hand. Thus it was a test and a discipline of his faith, when he was led into solitude: a test and exercise which probably was still much needed by him.—And when He had spit on his eyes.—See the notes on Mar_7:33 and John 9.

Mar_8:24. I see men.—Expression of joy.—As trees; that is, I see men walking, large and unformed as trees. A distinct figure of an indistinct, twilight beholding. It was the first stage of healing. According to Euthymius Zigabenus, He healed the man by degrees, because his faith was weak, and the gradual experience of recovered sight would lead him to a higher degree of faith. In relation to this, we may observe the strikingly passive bearing of this blind man, as of the deaf and dumb man before: with this we may compare the passiveness of the impotent man at Bethesda, John 5. According to Olshausen, a too rapid process of recovery might have been injurious, and the gradual cure had regard to the eyes themselves. But this and the preceding notion we leave to the reader’s consideration; they may have a certain degree of force. But if we combine all the traits of this and the foregoing history, we see that Jesus designedly repressed the fame of His miraculous works in a district where He was seeking an asylum of perfect retirement, in order to settle everything with His disciples; at a time, too, when, for their sake and His own, absolute solitude was essentially necessary with reference to the decision of the future, But the symbolical significance of these miraculous dealings—as bringing the divine power into gradual contact and contest with human nature—was more expressly brought out for the instruction of His disciples than in most of His miracles of healing.—The persons who appeared to the half-seeing man were probably his companions, and other sympathizing people, who looked on in restless motion.

Mar_8:26. To his house.—He did not belong to Bethsaida, and he must go immediately from the place to his own home—not even to the village to which he had already come. Indeed, he was not to mention it to any one belonging to that village, and whom he might meet in the way. This explanation of the last expression [“any in the town”] is not, as Meyer terms it, an invention to meet the difficulty; it is the obvious and only natural meaning of the expression. Even the man’s companions should i find him recovered and seeing, only when they reached home; that is, if they were not permitted to be present at the healing.

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. Christ sought with His disciples the deepest solitude among the mountains. His feeling was that of an anticipation of His death, and all things in the signs of the times said, Set Thine house, Thy Church, in order! In this journey the people who brought the blind man interrupted Him, and there seemed danger of His way being embarrassed. It is true that this did not hinder His healing the man, but He healed him in the most undemonstrative and hidden manner. The secrecy of the performance was paralleled by the extraordinary care with which He sent the blind man to his own house, under a prohibition to speak to any man in the neighborhood concerning the miracle. The blind man, however, was not merely a means to an end; his own spiritual edification was in question also. Since his faith was weak, his spiritual state required the protection of solitude: only in the profoundest silence could the blessing of his experience ripen into perfection. But, thirdly, we must not forget the Lord’s reference to those who surrounded the blind man. They asked that He would touch him. To this demand for an instant act, followed by an instant influence, the Lord opposed His own slow and circumstantial method of procedure. So also in the case of the deaf and dumb man of the same country: they asked Him that He would lay His hand upon the man. And if in this district of indistinct, half-heathen notions there was any idea arising of a magical influence on the part of Christ, His wisdom dispersed these foolish imaginations. He made prominent, 1. the religious aspect of the Acts , 2. the struggle in His own spirit connected with its performance.

2. This present narrative illustrates how Christ performed His miracles in the most absolute self-renunciation (at the most unseasonable time); with the most profound humility (without any desire for honor among men); and with the most supreme wisdom and confidence.

3. The healing of the blind man at Bethsaida, like some other similar miracles, was especially fitted and intended to exhibit the harmony of miracle with nature, the natural elements in the miracle, the gradual entrance of the divine power into the old nature, and its issues in the new nature.

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

The Lord, deeply occupied with thoughts of His cross and of His death, does not repel as an interruption the cry of the wretched.—The festal season of the Prophet’s miracles is passing away, because the season of the high-priestly miraculous sufferings is drawing near.—The healing of the blind man at Bethsaida a testimony of the heavenly wisdom of the Lord: 1. In respect to Himself; 2. in respect to the blind man: he should not first see the multitudes of starers in the street, but the Lord in His solitary glory, and thus would he be taught more fully the lesson of faith; 3. in respect to the people around; 4. in respect to the disciples.—Abundant as was the inward life of Christ, His acts are equally abundant in their forms.—Christ, in performing His miracles, avoided a fixed and uniform manner, in order to obviate all the idle, superstitious notions of a magical influence.—How the mind, contemplating the same unchanging fundamental forms, has a tendency to become mechanical in its views.—As the wonderworking power of Christ’s hand wrought in many fleeting forms of action, so also the fundamental forms of the ministerial work of the Church, in teaching, worship, and life, should be moulded, moved, and inspired by the life of the Divine Spirit.—The education of the blind man into faith.—The gradual return of the blind man’s sight, a type of the gradual illumination of the soul.—Even the spiritually awakened see at first men as trees, unformed, without definite distinction.—I see men as trees. This represents, as it may be viewed, different conditions of the spiritual life: 1. It is a happy state, if it is the first stage towards clearly seeing in perfect knowledge; 2. it is a gloomy and uncertain state, if the Christian should remain in it; 3. worst of all, if through his own guilt he should return to this stage, falling into the new blindness of despair.—The blessed experience of the first believing look: a strengthening of faith, which becomes the transition to perfect sight.—Go not into the town: a solemn word concerning Bethsaida.—Bethsaida the modern city of the world, with an imperial name, and Bethsaida the town of the fishermen: the bright and the dark side.—How Jesus avoids the fame of His works, in order that He may seek in the shame of His sufferings His highest honor and glory.

Starke:—Christ’s gifts within us change with times.—Canstein:—A weak and slight beginning is yet a beginning; and in God’s methods a little is intended to become gradually greater.—Quesnel:—The cure of spiritual blindness is only begun on earth; it will be fully accomplished only in heaven.—Osiander:—God often turns away our misfortune, and mends our unhappiness, by slow degrees: have patience!—Solitude and silence after conversion is much safer than much talk and running about.—We should let the truth take firm root in us, before we speak much about it.—The converted man must take care not to turn round again to the world.—Canstein:—Fearful judgment, when God reckons a man, or a city, or a land, no longer worthy of the knowledge of His word and works.

Gerlach:—The gradualness of the operation is often our first inward assurance of the certainty of the change.—Rieger:—Do not despise slight means [referring to the application of spittle].—Braune:—Men must be ever known, not as trees, as perishable plants, but as rational creatures, called to eternal glory.—First of all, however, the blind man came to know Jesus aright: to know Him clearly is eternal life.

Schleiermacher:—The cure of the blind man in its resemblance to the next section: 1. The withdrawing to a place apart (special reasons for this in both cases respectively); 2. the gradual work (men as trees; obscure views concerning Christ); 3. the Redeemer’s care as to what men say of Him; 4. the sight restored, and the confession of Peter.

Footnotes:

Mar_8:22.—The Plural, ἔñ÷ïíôáé , after B., C., D. Lachmann, Tischendorf, [Meyer.]

Mar_8:24.—The beautiful reading: âëÝðù ôïὺò ἀíèñþðïõò , ὅôé ὡò äÝíäñá ὁñῶ ðåñéðáôïῦíôáò is adopted by Meyer, Lachmann, Tischendorf, following [A., B., C.*, E., F., G., K., L., M., Ä ., Gothic, Theophylact, Euthymius. (D. and most of the Versions have the Received Text).]

Mar_8:25.—Tischendorf, [Meyer,] äéÝâëåøåí , after B., C.*, L., Ä ., &c.

Mar_8:26.—The Received Text and Lachmann follow Cod. A. Tischendorf, following B., L., Coptic, omits the clause ìçäὲ åἰò … êþìῃ .