This story only appears in Matthew.
The blind men appear quite determined. It seems there were no crowds around Jesus in the story, so I think Jesus chose to ignore them at first, since He normally responded immediately when people brought requests to him. After dealing with that first disappointment, the blind men had to struggle with the poor quality of roads in the first century to keep up with Jesus. And to follow Him right into a house would have taken some boldness. Then they answered with a direct “Yes, Lord” when Jesus asked them if they believed He was able to heal them. What gave them this strong conviction that Jesus was the man to heal them? What made them so sure of something as unlikely as a miraculous healing?
It seems that they believed not only that Jesus was the Messiah, but also that curing blindness was part of the Messiah's role.
Their title for Jesus “Son of David” is interesting. In Matthew it occurs 10 times. In the other gospels it occurs 7 times, but there are no new incidents. These texts show that the term Son of David was used regularly to refer to the anticipated Messiah. In two of those cases, healing of blindness was involved. There's even a crowd in Matt 12:23 that thought Jesus might be this son of David when he healed a case of blindness and demon-possession. As well, a similar incident to this one in Matt 9 occurs in , where, again, blind men appeal to Jesus as Son of David for mercy.
Thus there was a view of the Messiah broader than the more frequently acknowledged political aspirations, one that involved individual healing such as restoration of sight. Jesus encouraged this broader view. He read from in announcing His mission in Capernaum ():
The messianic nature of this passage is indicated by the word anointed. The Hebrew word in Isaiah 61:1 is מָשַׁח, the root of the word messiah. Similarly, the word in LXX is ἔχρισεν, the root of the synonym Christ. However the original Hebrew does not have recovery of sight to the blind. That is in the LXX, replacing in the Hebrew the words opening the prison for the bound. In Luke the similar phase to set at liberty the oppressed is added.
So, where in the Hebrew Bible where does this idea of the Messiah healing blindness come from? I've found these passages:
| The Creator keeps truth, executes justice, feeds hungry, restores sight, etc... |
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| The fields of Lebanon will be restored to fruitfulness, the deaf will hear, the blind will see ... |
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| Behold, your God will come with vengeance, ... the eyes of the blind shall be opened, the ears of the deaf opened | |
| “I the Lord will give thee for a covenant of the people, a light to the gentiles, to open the blind eyes...” |
I assume that these blind men had heard sermons on the passages where God promises to heal blindness, and had cherished the hope of the Messiah healing them. Maybe the emphasis that Jesus put on healing blindness at the start of His mission in Luke 4 had become well known.
By Jesus' time the term Son of David had become a common term for the Messiah. Why did that happen? The reference to David the warrior king who defeated the Philistines must have been a pleasant thought to people chafing under Roman rule. The idea in Luke 4:18 / Isaiah 61:1 of the Spirit of the Lord being upon someone appointed by God to restore justice occurred in the messianic prophecy of , where the subject is referred to as “a rod out of the stem of Jesse”. David is even mentioned by name in other prophecies of the restoration of justice: , , , , . The exact phrase “Son of David” doesn't occur in the prophetic books, but its use in New Testament times follows easily from those passages in the Old Testament.
Why did Jesus question them about their faith? It seems obvious that they believed - they addressed Him by a messianic title to ask for “mercy”, they followed him through the street, and kept after Him even when He had gone into a house; there was a popular belief that the Messiah would perform miraculous healings including restoration of sight. Then, after asking them about this key fact, Jesus simply takes them at their word when they claim to have faith, since He healed them without further ado. The whole exchange is so predictable that it seems redundant.
Jesus asked this either for the benefit of the blind men themselves, or for onlookers. I'm inclined to think it was for the blind men. The passage doesn't mention any crowd; the blind men were able to follow Him into the house; and after healing them, Jesus told them not to tell anyone about it, which it would be strange to say with a crowd of on-lookers. Compare the healing of blind men in , where there was a crowd, and the blind men in that case didn't try to approach Jesus. In that case, with a crowd looking on, Jesus asked them a different question, still obvious, but perhaps less personal: “What do you want me to do for you?”.
One likely reason is that Jesus wanted to use this memorable point in their lives to help them keep their faith strong. They would relive the healing and tell it to people, and each time this exercise of their faith would come to mind. The fact that Jesus touched their eyes as He healed them adds to it: the sense of touch would be heightened in blind people, so their memories of the event would be all the more vivid.
As Jesus performed the healing He said “Let it happen to you according to your trust” (JNT). Thus both before and during the healing, Jesus addressed their faith. He must have seen their faith as a delicate plant. For a while the hope of healing had probably kept them praying earnestly and staying close to God, but in the years to follow this healing they could easily start taking God's intervention on their behalf for granted.
In and Jesus was to say “An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign”. This was demonstrated in , and . Paul expressed the same idea in . The Pharisees asked for signs, expecting to get none, as a way to keep God irrelevant and avoid facing their need for repentance. For those who believed that God is loving, this subversion of faith by the thought leaders must have weakened their faith in God's abilities. The very next story in this chapter shows the Pharisees struggling to maintain their doubt. These blind men must have been struggling against this religious cynicism to maintain their faith. So maybe these men were also at some level challenging Jesus for a sign. Their faith may not have been as settled as it appears. But Jesus was their only hope, so they took the risk of humiliation and acted on that hope.
Thus when Jesus paused to ask them if they believed, He was helping them resolve their own questions about their faith (something similar happens in : “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”). In getting them to affirm their belief in His ability to restore them physically and then miraculously doing it, He anchored in their minds the fact that God can do anything; human skepticism gets Him wrong.
Since Jesus was starting a new movement, it seems surprising for Him to tell someone not to spread the news. But looking closer, I think it is consistent with His mission. Jesus didn't want crowds following Him just on the basis of immediate benefit. In , when the crowds were growing after the feeding of the 5,000, He said (v26,29) “You seek Me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life. ... This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent”. Later in that conversation He even reduced their numbers by saying things they found offensive.
Jesus was concerned about the faith that He was producing. Just as the miracles of the Exodus didn't produce lasting faith, so showering the people of Jesus's day with food wasn't producing interest in eternal matters. Jesus was hoping that the indications that He was from God would encourage that sort of faith, but miracles can easily have a less than spiritual effect.
Generally He was compassionate with the crowds when they came (), but preferred dealing with individuals. He would interact attentively and appropriately with individuals of all different social levels and religious affiliations, whether they were asking for themselves or on behalf of others. The main purpose of Jesus' ministry was to leave a revelation of God as being involved with and loving toward us as individuals. This is to encourage us to respond to God as individuals. Jesus shows that God is very willing to reverse the effects of sin when we connect by faith with Him one to one.
This action also raises the question “If Jesus was able to heal and loved people so much, why didn't he just heal the whole world in one go?” Since God's thoughts are far beyond our thoughts (), we can not have the answer. I have tried to address this issue in “Why Suffering?”
This story only appears in Matthew, but there is a similar story in .
The casting out of a demon in this event is not remarkable for Jesus. Numerous demons were cast out in the healing sessions of both and . In the mute are one of a list of types of patients that Jesus was healing. So why is this incident included?
The two chapters since the end of the Sermon on the Mount have been devoted to the themes of faith and healing. There are 12 or so stories in those chapters, and 8 of them are healings, whereas in the 16 chapters from Matt 10 to the last supper in chapter 26 there are only a couple of healings. The detail in the healings in Matt 8 and 9 is generally about the interaction between Jesus and the people asking for healing, highlighting their faith. A (in Greek the related words πίστος and πιστεύω) reveals that those two words occur 7 times in Matt 8 and 9, then not again until Matt 14. In fact the previous story is something of a culmination in this series on faith and healing: it is the only case where those words appear twice in the same incident.
However this story of the mute, the last individual healing in this section, has no such interaction with Jesus about faith. No word from Jesus or His patient is recorded. Instead we have the Pharisees trying to discredit Jesus. There have been two earlier incidents of conflict with the Jews in Matthew 8 and 9: verse 9:3, where Jesus rebuked the scribes who thought His act of forgiving was blasphemy, and verse 9:11 where the Pharisees merely expressed dismay at the company Jesus was keeping. In that minor incident Matthew records Jesus response to them. And in where Jesus cast out a demon and the Pharisees uttered a similar slur to the one in this story, Jesus' reply occupied 6 verses. But in this story, although they directly expressed their rejection of Him, no reaction from Jesus is noted.
The reason for ending this minimal account of a healing with an unanswered negative reaction after the wonderful accounts of healing over the 2 preceding chapters is, I think, to bridge the change of theme. The preceding passages demonstrate the basics of God's care for humanity and our total dependence on Him for our lives. From this story forward, Matthew starts addressing the conflict and rejection faced by Jesus and His followers, and the task facing them in taking the Gospel to the world. It starts with Jesus sending the disciples into the villages to spread the Gospel, and expecting to be rebuffed in many of them. A representative text is , “I am sending you as sheep among wolves”. Then there are a number of accounts of contention with the Pharisees, and a number of parables about the world being divided into good and bad.
In this story the conflict comes from the doctrinal leaders. They knew the Bible and theoretically promoted a God-fearing life, but here they are found to be trying to discredit the very source of their authority by either lying or at least putting the worst possible construction on His actions.
This passage has echoes in the other Gospels: In Jesus feels compassion because the crowds are like sheep with no shepherd; is almost identical to verses 37 and 38; is another instance of Jesus using the harvest analogy.
An intriguing fact about this passage, especially after the observation from the preceding passage that the theme changes at this point, is the way it echoes the verses that lead into the sermon on the mount, . In fact 4:23 is word for word the same as 9:35 except that where 4:23 has “all of Galilee”, 9:35 has “all the cities and villages”. These passages in Matt 4 and Matt 9 are summaries of Jesus' ministry, serving as parentheses around the Sermon on the Mount and the healing stories. The chapters between are full of travelling, preaching and healing. Though Jesus does not enter synagogues in Matt 5-9, He does in where He heals a man with a withered hand, and again in where His teaching amazes people. I don't think it's significant that teaching in synagogues isn't mentioned in Matt 5-9. It must have been so regular an occurrence that it didn't rate a mention, as suggests. Similarly, mentions Jesus visiting cities and villages and teaching and I assume it is understood that the teaching took place synagogues.
The sentence summarizing Jesus' ministry, verse 35, has the Greek word for all (πᾶς) three times in quick succession: all the cities; healing every disease and every weakness. This thoroughness shows Jesus' love of humanity in 2 ways - first the determination to cover the whole of the population accessible; He didn't stay in His familiar territory, but went looking for people who would respond to His message; then by healing every type of disease, without prejudice, He showed His concern for each individual, whatever his or her needs.
Matthew frequently mentions the theme of the universal, non-discriminatory nature of Jesus' healing. This is further enhanced by the range of people whose requests or needs were answered by Jesus. Running through the healings in Matt 8-9, the players are: a leper, a Roman centurion asking on behalf of his servant, Peter's mother-in-law, Gergesene demoniacs, a paralytic brought by his friends, a synagogue official asking on behalf of his daughter, a woman who'd been bleeding for 12 years, blind beggars, and a mute demoniac. After Matt 9 only a couple of healings are recorded, but the healing requested by a Syrophoenician woman in adds another class of humanity to Jesus' purview.
Another impressive aspect of Jesus' ministry is the lack of compassion-fatigue. He could be emotionally drained, but would still deal well with the crowds. When Jesus was upset by the death of John the Baptist, he tried to escape the crowds to spend some time alone. But when the crowds found Him, He still dealt with them compassionately: , more clearly in the parallel passage . Jesus was aware of His own needs - a few verses later He is seeking solitude again (), but again He doesn't get a full rest; instead He comes out at about 10 p.m. walking on the waves to rescue the disciples.
In Jesus the compassion goes to the core. It is so thoroughly part of His nature to take others into account, to identify the greatest needs in His vicinity and among His friends that even under extreme stress His heart has room for anyone He could help. This was dramatically demonstrated during the last few hours of His life, when He restored Malchus's ear, gave the “daughters of Jerusalem speech” (), prayed for the forgiveness of his executioners, and asked John to look after His mother. Jesus' life thus puts flesh on the principle that “God is love” (ὁ θεὸς ἀγάπη ἐστίν, ).
Why does Jesus tell his disciples - the apostles - that they should pray for other people to be sent into the field? This is surprising, especially because the next passage is about those same disciples being sent out to do the work. In He tells them to pray the same prayer as part of the act of sending the 70 out.
Jesus was about to give them the ability to do some of the miracles that He was amazing the people with. That would make them feel like super-men. Since they had enjoyed the privilege of being with Jesus and were the advance guard of His movement, the apostles were at risk of thinking of themselves as on an equal footing with Jesus, as if they were a kind of aristocracy of the work, and they would have wanted to retain control of the movement. By asking them to pray for workers Jesus is saying that they alone would not be enough. Jesus highlights the bigger task, and points them to the Father, who is really in control of the work. So, even though the apostles had the honour of being the co-founders of Christianity, Jesus directs their minds away from that, instead putting their work in the larger context, to help them retain their humility.
In this Jesus was also pointing to His own example. He could have done anything He chose, including spreading the Gospel single-handedly. His choice to hand over the work to fallible human beings is breath-taking in its risk and condescension. But Jesus is sharing with us the joy of working with souls, as He expressed in .