Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Matthew · About this commentary
The Edge of His Garment
Matthew 14:34-36
34 When they had crossed over, they came to the land of Gennesaret. · WEB
They land, and a whole district carries its sick to the shore asking only to touch the hem of his robe.
When they had crossed over, they came to the land of Gennesaret. When the people of that place recognized him, they sent into all that surrounding region and brought to him all who were sick Matthew 14:34–35.
Three verses close the chapter and they are easy to read past. The scene is told in the earlier account with the same detail Mark 6:30–56, and what it records is a whole district organizing itself around a landing: recognition, messengers sent out, and every sick person in the area carried to one place.
They begged him that they might just touch the fringe of his garment. As many as touched it were made whole Matthew 14:36.
The fringe is the tassel an Israelite man wore at the corners of his outer garment, commanded in the law as a reminder to keep the commandments Numbers 15:38–39. The request is therefore for the least possible contact — not a word, not a hand laid on, not even the garment itself, but its edge.
Where the idea came from is not hard to trace: a woman in the crowd had done exactly this and had been healed and commended for it Matthew 9:20–22. What began as one desperate woman's expedient has become a district's practice, and it works. Nothing here suggests the tassel had power in it. What the passage reports is a crowd's confidence being met, at the level of confidence they had.
Set against the previous chapter the contrast is complete. In his own town, where they knew his family, he did not do many mighty works Matthew 13:58. On this shore, where they knew nothing about him except what he could do, everyone who reached him was made whole.
settled What this mark means