Mark 7:31-8:10, Jesus Among the Gentiles

Perhaps you are wondering why we spent a couple posts on God’s love for the Gentiles, even as He sent His Son to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.  The reason is that in our journey through Mark’s Gospel we have come to some stories that took place in Gentiles areas.  The woman with the demon-possessed daughter was Syro-Phoenician, from the area of Tyre and Sidon (7:24-26); the deaf-mute (7:31-37) was in the region of the Decapolis (lit. Ten Cities), east of the Sea of Galilee, a predominantly Gentile area; and the feeding of the 4000 occurred in this area, and has Gentile references that differentiate it from the feeding of the 5000.  Here is a map showing these areas.  In today’s post let’s consider the deaf-mute and the miraculous feeding.

·     7:31-37: Jesus heals a deaf-mute.  The story is not difficult.  As is always the case, Jesus doesn’t heal in the same way twice.  He put His fingers in his ears, He spat, perhaps wetting His finger, before He touched the mans tongue.  I said that no two stories is alike.  But we should note that, that quite often Jesus touched those He healed, something that the serious Jew would find objectionable.  You didn’t have such connection with “handicapped” people.  Then Jesus called out to His Father, “Be opened!”  The healing was immediate, complete, and astonishing.

·       8:1-10: Jesus feeds the 4000.  If you compare this story with the feeding of the 5000 (Mark 6:30-44), there are several similarities.  Jesus was moved by compassion for the hungry people (6:34; 8:2).  Jesus put His disciples on the spot of not being able to feed the crowd (6:37; 8:4).  Jesus worked with a small amount of food (6:38; 8:5).  Jesus blessed the food (6:41; 8:7).  And Jesus involved His disciples (6:41; 8:6).  But the locations were different, one on the predominantly Jewish side of Galilee (6:31,45) as opposed to the east side (7:31).  We are not saying the crowd on the east side was Gentile.  There may have been some, but the miracle was for the benefit of Jesus’ disciples.  We know this from the baskets used to pick up the “left-overs,” the Jewish kophinos in 6:43 and the smaller Gentile spuris in 8:8.  And the number of baskets is significant: 12 which goes to the 12 sons of Jacob and tribes of Israel as to the 7 which goes to the days of creation of all things. 

If you think we are making something big out of something small, come back for the next post and you will see that Jesus was teaching the Twelve, and is teaching us, an incredibly important message in all this.  It is not about feeding physically hungry people.  It is about taking the gospel to the Jew first, and then the Gentiles!