Matthew 9:18-26 – A Woman with a Hemorrhage Healed; a Young Girl Raised from the Dead

BIBLE TEXT

Matthew 9:18-26

SUMMARY

Jesus’ power to heal in response to faith is illustrated when a woman from the crowd is healed by simply touching the fringe of his robe. Jesus raises the daughter of a synagogue leader from the dead.

ANALYSIS

This miracle story, like its model in Mark, is actually two stories which have been sandwiched together, with the story of the healing of the woman with a hemorrhage surrounded by the two parts of the story of the raising of the daughter of a synagogue ruler. In Matthew’s arrangement this story stands as the first member of the third set of miracles stories in chapters 8 and 9 (see comments on 8:23-27).

Matthew has essentially retained this story in the same version as Mark, perhaps because the themes of Jesus as healing “Savior” (three times in 9:21-22; the word translated “made well” is actually the same word as “save” in the original Greek), “faith” (9:22), and Jesus’ power to heal even death (9:25) fit so well with Matthean themes. Matthew has, however, edited the story in a way that would seem to indicate some concern about the picture of Jesus and the disciples presented by the story in Mark. First, whereas in Mark’s story the fact that the ruler’s daughter is only seriously ill might raise questions about Jesus’ seeming delay in coming to her aid, in Matthew’s story the ruler pleads on behalf of a daughter who is already dead. The hint of reproof of Jesus in the disciples’ response to Jesus’ question “Who touched me?” (Mark 5:31) is erased by its removal from the story. The result is that the two stories focus ever more clearly on Jesus’ power in the two miracles themselves-the healing of the woman and the raising of the young woman from the dead-and the faith in Jesus as Savior that accompanies them.