The Ruler's Daughter and the Woman
18 While he told these things to them, behold, a ruler came and worshiped him, saying, “My daughter has just died, but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.” 19 Jesus got up and followed him, as did his disciples. 20 Behold, a woman who had a discharge of blood for twelve years came behind him, and touched the fringe of his garment; 21 for she said within herself, “If I just touch his garment, I will be made well.” 22 But Jesus, turning around and seeing her, said, “Daughter, cheer up! Your faith has made you well.” And the woman was made well from that hour. 23 When Jesus came into the ruler’s house and saw the flute players and the crowd in noisy disorder, 24 he said to them, “Make room, because the girl isn’t dead, but sleeping.” They were ridiculing him. 25 But when the crowd was sent out, he entered in, took her by the hand, and the girl arose. 26 The report of this went out into all that land.
Two healings interleaved, told at a third of the earlier account's length — and the girl's death is called sleep.
While he told these things to them, behold, a ruler came and worshiped him, saying, “My daughter has just died, but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.”
The interleaved pair is told at length in the earlier Gospel Mark 5:21–43 — Jairus named, the daughter dying rather than dead, the twelve years of doctors, the crowd pressing, who touched my clothes?, the messengers with the news, and the Aramaic talitha cumi at the bedside. Matthew's account is a third of the length and keeps the structure while dropping nearly all of it.
One difference is often noticed: here the father reports the girl as already dead, while the earlier telling has her dying and the death reported en route. Matthew regularly compresses two stages of an account into one; the outcome, the delay caused by the woman, and the raising are the same in both.
for she said within herself, “If I just touch his garment, I will be made well.”
The woman's condition made her ceremonially unclean and made anyone she touched unclean too Leviticus 15:25–27, which is why she comes from behind and says it only to herself. Twelve years of that is twelve years outside ordinary human contact.
What she touches is the fringe of his garment — the tassel the law required on the corners of a garment as a reminder of the commandments Numbers 15:38–39. She reaches, as it were, for the law itself, and the traffic runs the way it ran with the leper: she is made clean rather than him unclean.
But Jesus, turning around and seeing her, said, “Daughter, cheer up! Your faith has made you well.” And the woman was made well from that hour.
He turns and speaks to her, which is the whole point of the delay. A woman who wanted to take her healing invisibly is given a public word and a name — daughter, the only person in the Gospels he addresses that way.
he said to them, “Make room, because the girl isn’t dead, but sleeping.” They were ridiculing him.
The mourners' laughter establishes that she was genuinely dead; professional flute players had been engaged, and these people knew a corpse when they saw one. Calling death sleep is not a denial of the fact but a statement about its permanence — the same word used of Lazarus, with the disciples' misunderstanding corrected in so many words John 11:11–14, and used by Paul of the Christian dead awaiting the resurrection 1 Thessalonians 4:13–14. What is asserted is that this condition is one he can end, as sleep ends.
But when the crowd was sent out, he entered in, took her by the hand, and the girl arose.
No formula and no struggle. A hand taken, and a child on her feet.
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