Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Ruler's Daughter and the Woman
Matthew 9:18-26
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.” · WEB
Two healings interleaved, told at a third of the earlier account's length — and the girl's death is called sleep.
"My daughter has just died, but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live" Matthew 9:18.
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.
"If I just touch his garment, I will be made well" Matthew 9:21.
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.
"Daughter, cheer up! Your faith has made you well" Matthew 9:22.
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.
"Make room, because the girl isn't dead, but sleeping." They were ridiculing him Matthew 9:24.
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.
He entered in, took her by the hand, and the girl arose Matthew 9:25.
No formula and no struggle. A hand taken, and a child on her feet.
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