34-26. The Opening the Eyes of One Blind at Bethsaida
26. The Opening the Eyes of One Blind at Bethsaida
We have here another miracle peculiar to St. Mark. Its most important features have been treated of elsewhere. As the Lord took that other sufferer, of whom also St. Mark alone keeps a record, “aside from the multitude” (vii. 33), even so “He took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town;”[1] and in the same way with the moisture from his own mouth He effects the cure. On both these matters the reader is referred to what there has been already said. The Lord, as was so often his custom, veiling more or less the miraculous in the miracle, links on his power to forms already in use among men; working through these forms something higher than they could have produced, and clothing the supernatural in the forms of the natural. Thus did He, when He bade his disciples to anoint the sick with oil,—one of the most esteemed helps for healing in the East (Mark 6:13; Jas 5:14). Not the oil, but his word, was to heal; yet without the oil the disciples might have found it too hard to believe in the power which they were exerting,—those who through their faith should be healed, to believe in the power which should heal them. So the figs laid on Hezekiah’s boil were indeed the very remedy which a physician with only natural appliances at command would have used (Isa 38:22; cf. 2Ki 2:20-21); yet now, hiding itself behind this nature, clothing itself in the forms of this nature, an effectual work of preternatural healing went forward. The only remaining circumstance which distinguishes this miracle is the progressiveness of the cure. This, it is true, is not itself without analogies in other cures, as in that of the man blind from his birth, who only after he had been to wash in Siloam, “came seeing” (John 9:7); yet the steps of the progress are marked more plainly here than in any other instance. For, first, after the Lord “had spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon him, He asked him if he saw aught. And he looked up, and said, I see men, as trees, walking;” certain moving forms about him, but without the power of discerning their shape or magnitude,—trees he should have accounted them from their height, and men from their motion.[2] “ But the good Physician leaves not his work unfinished: “After that He put his hands again upon his eyes, [3 and made him look up; and he was restored, and saw every man clearly.”
Chrysostom and others find the reasons for this only gradual cure, in the imperfection of this blind man’s faith. Evidence of this they see in the fact, that while others in like case cried with their own voices to Jesus for the opening of their eyes, this man was brought to Him by others, himself perhaps scarcely expecting a benefit. The gracious Lord, then, who would not reject, but who could as little cure him so long as there was on his part this desperation of healing, gave to him a glimpse of the blessing, that He might kindle in him a longing for the fulness of it, that He might present to him Himself as the opener of the blind eyes. To the rest of the world, this gradual healing is a testimony of the freeness of God’s grace, which is linked to no single way of manifestation, but works in divers manners, sometimes accomplishing only little by little what at other times it brings about in a moment.[4] And certainly no symbol more suitable could be found of the steps by which He who is “the Light of the world” makes oftentimes the souls that come to Him partakers of the illumination of his grace. Not all at once are the old errors and the old confusions put to flight; not all at once do they see clearly: for a while there are many remains of their old blindness, much which for a season still hinders their vision; they see men but as trees, walking. Yet in good time Christ completes the work which He has begun; He who was “the author” is also “the finisher of their faith; “He lays his hands on them anew, and they see every man clearly.[5]
“And He sent him away to his house, saying, Neither go into the town, nor tell it to any in the town.” The first of these commands seems to contain, and in fact does contain, the second; for if he did not “go into the town,” it is certain he could not “tell it to any in the town;” but St. Mark ever loves emphatic statements of this kind, and by repetition to secure a strong impression on the minds of his readers.
Footnotes
[1] Bengel gives this as the reason why the Lord led him out into the country: Cæco visum recuperanti lætior erat aspectus cœli et operum divinorum in naturâ, quam operum humanorum in pago.
[2] In the very interesting account which Cheselden has given (Anatomy, p. 301, London, 1768) of the feelings of a child, who having been blind from his birth, was enabled to see, a curious confirmation of the truthfulness of this narrative occurs: “When he first saw, he knew not the shape of anything, nor any one thing from another, however different in shape or magnitude; but being told what things were, whose forms he before knew from feeling, he would carefully observe, that he might know them again.
[3] ] Chemnitz (Harm. Evang. 84): Manus imponit ut ostendat carnem suam esse instrumentum per quod et cum quo ipse ὁ Λόγος æternus omnia opera vivificationis perficiat.
[4] Calvin: Paulatim cæco visum restituit: quod ideo factum esse probabile est, ut documentum in hoc homine statueret liberæ sua dispensationis, nec se astrictum esse ad certam normam, quin hoc vel illo modo virtutem suam proferret. Oculos ergo cæci non statim ita illuminat ut officio suo fuugantur, sed obscurum illis confusumque intuitum instillat: deinde alterâ manuum impositione integram aciem illis reddit. Ita gratia Christi, quæ in alios repente effusa prius erat, quasi guttatim defluxit in hunc hominem.
[5] Bede: Quern uno verbo totum simul curare poterat, paulatim curat, ut magnitudinem humanæ cæcitatis ostendat, quæ vix et quasi per gradus ad lucem redeat, et gratiam suam nobis indicet, per quam singula perfectionis incrementa adjuvat.