6. THE RAISING OF JAIRUS DAUGHTER.

MATT. ix. 18, 19, 23-26; MARK V. 22, 24, 35-43; LUKE viii. 41, 42, 49-56.

HIS miracle is by St. Mark and St. Luke made im

THIS

mediately to follow our Lord's return from that eastern side of the lake, which He had quitted when the inhabitants, guiltily at strife with their own good, had besought Him to depart out of their coasts (Matt. viii. 34). By St. Matthew other events, the curing of the paralytic, his own calling, and some discourses with the Pharisees, are inserted between. Yet of these only the latter (ix. 10-17) the best harmonists find really to have here their proper place. While He spake these things unto them, behold, there came a certain ruler, and worshipped Him.' The two later Evangelists record his name, 'Jairus,' and more accurately define his office; he was one of the rulers of the synagogue,' all which St. Matthew, who has his eye only on the main fact, and to whom all its accessories seem indifferent, passes over. The synagogue, we can hardly doubt, was that of Capernaum, where now Jesus was (Matt. ix. 1); the man therefore most probably made afterwards a part of that deputation which came to the Lord pleading for the heathen centurion (Luke vii. 3);

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1 In Matthew simply ἄρχων, which is explained in Mark εἷς τῶν ἀρχισυναγώγων, in Luke ἄρχων τῆς συναγωγῆς. Many synagogues had but one of these (Luke xiii. 14), the name itself indicating as much; yet it is plain from this and other passages, as Acts xiii. 15, that a synagogue often had many of these 'rulers. Probably those described as ToÙÇ Övтaç Twν 'Iovdai...v πрúтоυs, whom St. Paul summoned at Rome (Acts xxviii. 17), were such 'chiefs of the synagogue' (see Vitringa, De Synagogå, pp. 584, sqq.).

the elders of the Jews' there being identical with the rulers of the synagogue' here.

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But he who may have pleaded then for another, presents himself now pleading for his own; for he comes saying, 'My daughter is even now dead; but come and lay thy hand upon her, and she shall live.'. Thus St. Matthew; but the other Evangelists with an important variation: My little daughter lieth at the point of death" (Mark v. 23): 'He had one only daughter, about twelve years of age, and she lay a dying' (Luke viii. 42). This, which the after history shows to have been more exactly the fact, is not hard to reconcile with the statement in St. Matthew. When the father left his child, she was at the last gasp; he knew not whether to regard her now as alive or dead; he only knew that life was ebbing so fast when he quitted her side, that she could scarcely be living still; 2 and yet, having no certain notices of her death, he was perplexed whether to speak of her as departed or not, and thus at one moment would express himself in one language, at the next in another. Strange that a circumstance like this, so drawn from the life, so testifying to the reality of the things recorded, should be urged by some as a contradiction between one Gospel and another.

That Lord upon whose ear the tidings of woe might never fall in vain, at once arose and followed him, and so did his disciples.' The crowd which had been listening to

1 'Eoxáτws exεi in extremis esse; one of the frequent Latinisms of St. Mark; which do something to corroborate the old tradition that this Gospel was written originally at Rome, and for Roman readers. So ikavòv ποιῆσαι=satisfacere (xv. 15), σπεκουλάτωρ (vi. 27), φραγελλίω (XV. 15), λεγεών (V. 9, 15), πραιτώριον (xv. 16), κήνσος (xii. 14), κεντυρίων (XV. 39), rodpávτns (xii. 42), dnváptov (vi. 37; xiv. 5), géorns (vii. 4, 8), and others. The use of diminutives, such as the Ovyárpiov here, is also characteristic of this Evangelist; thus κοράσιον (ν. 41), κυνάρια (vii. 27), ἰχθύδια (iii. 7), ὠτάριον (xiv. 47).

2 Bengel : Ita dixit ex conjecturâ. Augustine (De Cons. Evang. ii. 28): Ita enim desperaverat, ut potius eam vellet reviviscere, non credens vivam posse inveniri, quam morientem reliquerat. But Theophylact, not, I think, rightly : 'Ην αὐξάνων την συμφορὰν, ὡς εἰς ἔλεον ἑλκύσαι τὸν Χριστόν.

his teaching, followed also, curious and eager to see what the Lord would do or would fail to do. The miracle of the healing of the woman with the issue of blood found place upon the way, but will naturally be better treated apart; being, as it is, entirely separable from this history, though not altogether without its bearing upon it; for the delay, the words which passed between the Lord and his disciples, and then between Him and the woman, must all have been a sore trial to the agonized father, now when every moment was precious, when death was shaking the last few sands in the hour-glass of his daughter's life, a trial in its kind similar to that with which the sisters of Lazarus were tried, when they beheld their beloved brother drawing ever nigher to the grave, and the Lord tarried notwithstanding. But sore as the trial must have been, we detect no signs of impatience on his part, and this no doubt was laid to his account. While the Lord was yet speaking to the woman, there came from the ruler of the synagogue's house certain which said, Thy daughter is dead : why troublest thou the Master any further?' St. Luke mentions but one, probably the especial bearer of the message, whom others went along with, as it is common for men in their thirst for excitement to have a kind of pleasure in being the bearers even of evil tidings. What hope of effectual help from Christ they may before have entertained, had now perished. They who, perhaps, had faith enough to believe that He could fan the last expiring spark of life into a flame, yet had not the stronger faith to anticipate the harder thing, that He could rekindle that spark of life, after it had been quenched altogether. Perhaps the father's hope would have perished too, and no

1 Ekú, properly to flay, as oxiλa are originally the spoils, dress, or armour, stripped from the bodies of the slain; afterwards more generally, fatigare, vexare, and often with a special reference to fatiguing through the length of a journey (we should read ἐσκυλμένοι, not ἐκλελυμένοι, Matt. xix. 36); as is the meaning here: 'Why dost thou weary the Master with this tedious way?' (see Suicer, Thes. s. v.).

room have been left for this miracle, faith, the necessary condition, being wanting; if a gracious Lord had not seen the danger, and prevented his rising unbelief. As soon

as Jesus heard the word that was spoken, He saith to the ruler of the synagogue, Be not afraid, only believe.' There is something very gracious in that as soon.' The Lord spake upon the instant, leaving no room for a thought of unbelief to insinuate itself into the father's mind, much less to utter itself from his lips, but preoccupying him at once with words of encouragement and hope.'

And now He takes with Him three of his Apostles, Peter and James and John, the same three who were allowed, on more than one later occasion, to be witnesses of things withdrawn from the others. We read here for the first time of such an election within the election; and the fact of such now finding place would mark, especially when we remember the solemn significance of the other seasons of a like selection (Matt. xvii. 1, 2; xxvi. 37), that this was a new era in the life of the Lord. The work on which He was entering now was so strange and so mysterious that those three only, the flower and the crown of the apostolic band, were its fitting witnesses. The parents were present for reasons altogether different. With those, and these, and none other, 'He cometh to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and seeth the tumult, and them that wept and wailed greatly' (Mark); ' the minstrels and the people making a noise,' as the earlier Evangelist has it. There, as everywhere else, He appears calming and pacifying: 'He saith unto them, Why make ye this ado, and weep? the damsel is not dead, but sleepeth. And they laughed Him to scorn.'

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Some, and those not unbelievers, nor yet timid half beievers, who have learned to regard miracles as so much

1 Titus Bostrensis (in Cramer, Cat. in Luc.): "Iva yàp μỳ εпŋ Kai αὐτὸς, Επίσχες, οὐ χρείαν σου ἔχω, Κύριε, ἤδη γέγονε τὸ πέρας, ἀπέθανεν, ἣν προσεδοκῶμεν ὑγιαίνειν ἄπιστος γὰρ ἦν, Ἰουδαϊκὸν ἔχων φρόνημα, φθάνει ὁ Κύριος καί φησι, Μὴ φοβοῦ, παῦσον τῆς ἀπιστίας τὰ ῥήματα,

$ 'EKλEKTŴV ÉKλEKTÓTεOOL, as Clement of Alexandria calls them.

perilous ware, from which it is always an advantage when the Gospels can be a little lightened,-Olshausen, for instance,' who elsewhere has manifested no wish to explain away the wonderful works of our Lord,-have yet considered his words, common to all reports of this miracle, 'The maid is not dead, but sleepeth,' to be so explicit, that in obedience to them they have no choice but to refuse to number this among the actual raisings from the dead. They account it only a raising from a death-like swoon; though possibly a swoon from which the maiden would never have been recalled but for that life-giving touch and voice. Had this, however, been the case, Christ's word of encouragement to the father, when the tidings came that the spirit of his child was actually fled, would have certainly been different from that which actually it was. He might have bidden the father to dismiss his fear, for He, who knew all, knew that there was yet life in the child. But that 'Be not afraid, only believe,' points another way; it is an evident summoning him to a trust in the almightiness of Him, to whose help he had appealed. Then too Christ uses exactly the same language concerning Lazarus, 'Our friend Lazarus sleepeth' (John xi. 11), which He uses about this maiden; and we know that He spoke there not of a death-like swoon, but of death. When to this obvious objection Olshausen replies, that Christ explains there distinctly that He meant the sleep of death, adding presently, Lazarus is dead,' it is enough to answer that He only does so after his disciples have misapprehended his words: He would have left those words as He had spoken them, but for their error in supposing that He had spoken of natural sleep; it was only then that He exchanged

1 Origen (Con. Cels. ii. 48) has, I think, the same view of this miracle. He is observing on the absence of all prodigality in the miracles, and notes that we have but three raisings from the dead in all; mentioning this first of Jairus' daughter, he adds, περὶ ἧς οὐκ οἶδ' ὅπως εἶπεν, Οὐκ ἀπέθανεν, ἀλλὰ καθεύδει λέγων τι περὶ αὐτῆς ὃ οὐ πᾶσι τοῖς ἀπ. θανοῦσι προσῆν, but he does not express himself very plainly.