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Mar_7:31-37. A narrative peculiar to Mark. Matthew, at Mar_15:30-31—here foregoing details, of which he has already related many—only states in general that Jesus, having after the occurrence with the Canaanitish woman returned to the lake, healed many sick, among whom there were also deaf persons. Mark has preserved a special incident from the evangelic tradition, and did not coin it himself (Hilgenfeld).
πάλιν ἐξελθών ] his reference to ἀπῆλθεν εἰς , Mar_7:24.
διὰ Σιδῶνος ] (see the critical remarks): He turned Himself therefore from the region of Tyre first in a northern direction, and went through Sidon (we cannot tell what may have been the more immediate inducement to take this route) in order to return thence to the lake. If we should take Σιδῶνος not of the city, but of the region of Sidon ( Σιδονία , Hom. Od. xiii. 285; Ewald, Lange also and Lichtenstein), the analogy of Τύρου would be opposed to us, as indeed both names always designate the cities themselves.
ἀνὰ μέσον τῶν ὁρίων τ . Δεκαπόλεως ] He came (as he journeyed) through the midst (Mat_13:25; 1Co_6:5; Rev_7:17) of the regions belonging to Decapolis, so that He thus from Sidon arrived at the Sea of Galilee, not on this side, but on the farther side of Jordan (comp. on Mat_4:25), and there the subsequent cure, and then the feeding the multitude, Mar_8:1, occurred, Mar_8:10.
Mar_7:32. κωφὸν μογιλάλον ] is erroneously interpreted: a deaf man with a difficulty of utterance (see Beza, Grotius, Maldonatus, de Wette, Bleek, and many others). Although, according to its composition and according to Aëtius in Beck. Anecd. p. 100, 22, μογιλάλος means speaking with difficulty, it corresponds in the LXX. to the àÄìÌÅí , dumb. See Isa_35:6. Comp. Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, Exo_4:11. Hence it is to be understood as: a deaf-mute (Vulgate, Luther, Calovius, and many others, including Ewald), which is also confirmed by ἀλάλους , Mar_7:37, and is not refuted by ἐλάλει ὀρθῶς , Mar_7:35. The reading μογγιλάλον , speaking hollowly (B** E F H L X Γ Δ , Matthaei), is accordingly excluded of itself as inappropriate (comp. also Mar_7:35).
Mar_7:33. The question why Jesus took aside the sick man apart from the people, cannot without arbitrariness be otherwise answered than to the effect that He adopted this measure for the sake of an entirely undisturbed rapport between Himself and the sick man, such as must have appeared to Him requisite, in the very case of this sick man, to the efficacy of the spittle and of the touch. Other explanations resorted to are purely fanciful, such as: that Jesus wished to make no parade (Victor Antiochenus, Theophylact, Euthymius Zigabenus, and many others); that in this region, which was not purely Jewish, He wished to avoid attracting dangerous attention (Lange); that He did not wish to foster the superstition of the spectators (Reinhard, Opusc. II. p. 140). De Wette conjectures that the circumstance belongs to the element of mystery, with which Mark invests the healings. But it is just in respect of the two cases of the application of spittle (here and at Mar_8:23) that he relates the withdrawing from the crowd; an inclination to the mysterious would have betrayed itself also in the presenting of the many other miracles. According to Baur, Mark wished to direct the attention of his readers to this precise kind of miraculous cure. This would amount to a fiction in a physiological interest. The spittle[108] (like the oil in Mar_6:13) is to be regarded as the vehicle of the miraculous power. Comp. on Joh_9:6. It is not, however, to be supposed that Jesus wished in any wise to veil the marvellous element of the cures (Lange, L. J. II. 1, p. 282), which would amount to untruthfulness, and would widely differ from the enveloping of the truth in parable.
πτύσας ] namely, on the tongue of the patient;[109] this was previous to the touching of the tongue (comp. Mar_1:41, Mar_8:22, Mar_10:13), which was done with the fingers, and not the mode of the touching itself.
Mar_7:34 f. ἐστέναξε ] Euthymius Zigabenus well says: ἐπικαμτόμενος τοῖς πάθεσι τοῦ ἀνθρώπου (comp. Grotius and Fritzsche). Certainly (see ἀναβλ . εἰς τ . οὐρανόν ) it was a sigh of prayer (de Wette and many others), and yet a sigh: on account of painful sympathy. Comp. Mar_8:12, also Mar_3:5. It is reading between the lines to say, with Lange, that in this half-heathen region duller forms of faith rendered His work difficult for Him; or with Hofmann (Schriftbew. II. 2, p. 352), that He saw in the deaf-mute an image of His people incapable of the hearing of faith and of the utterance of confession (comp. Erasmus, Paraphr.).
ἐφφαθά ] ܐܷܠܦܳܬܚܳ, imperative Ethpael.
διανοίχθητι ] be opened, namely, in respect of the closed ears and the bound tongue. See what follows.
ΑἹ ἈΚΟΑΊ ] the ears, as often in classic use (Eur. Phoen. 1494; Luc. Philop. 1; Herodian, iv. 5. 3; comp. 2Ma_15:39).
ἐλύθη κ . τ . λ .] The tongue, with which one cannot speak, is conceived as bound (comp. the classical ΣΤΌΜΑ ΛΎΕΙΝ , ΓΛΏΣΣΑς ΛΎΕΙΝ , and see Wetstein), therefore the expression does not justify the supposition of any other cause of the dumbness beside the deafness.
ὈΡΘῶς ] consequently, no longer venting itself in inarticulate, irregular, stuttering sounds, as deaf-mutes attempt to do, but rightly, quite regularly and normally.
Mar_7:36. αὐτοῖς ] to those present, to whom He now returned with the man that was cured.
ΑὐΤΌς ] and the subsequent ΑὐΤΟΊ (see the critical remarks) correspond to one another: He on His part … they on their part.
ὅσον … μᾶλλον περισσότερον ] however much He enjoined (forbade) them, still far more they published it. They exceeded the degree of the prohibition by the yet far greater degree in which they made it known. So transported were they by the miracle, that the prohibition only heightened their zeal, and they prosecuted the ΚΗΡΎΣΣΕΙΝ with still greater energy than if He had not interdicted it to them. As to this prohibition without result generally, comp. on Mar_5:43.
ΜᾶΛΛΟΝ [110]] along with another comparative, strengthens the latter. See on Php_1:23; Hermann, ad Viger. p. 719 f.; Stallbaum, ad Phaed. p. 79 E; Pflugk, ad Hecub. 377.
Mar_7:37. καλῶς πάντα πεποίηκε ] Let ΠΕΠΟΊΗΚΕ be distinguished from the subsequent ΠΟΙΕῖ . The former relates to the miraculous cure at that time, which has taken place and is now accomplished (perfect); and καὶ (even) τοὺς κωφοὺς ποιεῖ κ . τ . λ . is the general judgment deduced from this concrete case. In this judgment, however, the generic plurals κωφούς , ἀλάλους are quite in their place, and do not prove (in opposition to Köstlin, p. 347) that a source of which Mark here availed himself contained several cures of deaf and dumb people.
τ . ἀλάλ . λαλ .] the speechless to speak. On ἄλαλος , comp. Plut. Mor. p. 438 B; Psa_37:14; Psa_38:13.
[108] According to Baur, there is betrayed in the narrative of the πτύειν , as also at Mar_6:13, “the more material notion of miracle in a later age.” But it cannot at all be shown that the later age had a more material conception of the miracles of Jesus.
[109] As in Mar_8:23 He spits into the eyes of the blind man. It is not therefore to be conceived that Jesus spat on His own fingers and so applied His spittle to the tongue of the sick man (Lange, Bleek, and older commentators), for this Mark would certainly in his graphic manner have said.
[110] Here in the sense of “only all the more.” See Stallb. ad Plat. Rep. iii. p. 397 A; Nägelsbach’s note on the Iliad, cd. 3, p. 227.