Mark 5

Mark 5 gathers three powerful acts of Jesus. He frees a man held by a legion of demons, heals a woman who had bled for twelve years, and raises a twelve-year-old girl from death. In each case Jesus meets what people could not fix, and He answers with authority, mercy and a call to trust Him.

Mark 5:1

Jesus and His disciples cross the Sea of Galilee to its eastern shore. This is mostly non-Jewish country, outside the usual ground of His ministry. The crossing leads Him straight toward a man nobody else could help.

Mark 5:2

The moment Jesus steps from the boat, a man comes out of the tombs to meet Him. The spirit controlling him is called unclean. Tombs and the region itself would have felt deeply unclean to a Jew, yet Jesus walks right into it.

BSA: unclean (“impure”): The spirit is out of step with God’s holiness, and its touch defiles and ruins a person.

Greek: ἀκαθάρτῳ (akathartō, G169) — “not clean, impure.” This is the word for what is unfit to come near God. Mark uses it again and again for evil spirits. It shows that the conflict is about holiness, not only about sickness.

Mark 5:3-4

The man lived among the dead, cut off from everyone. People had tried chains and shackles, but he tore them apart. The crowd’s strength, rules and tools had all failed. These verses set the stage: this need was beyond any human cure.

Mark 5:5

Day and night the man screamed in the tombs and hills and hurt himself with sharp stones. Mark paints a life of torment with no rest. The evil that held him was not gentle. It destroyed him from the inside.

BSA: cutting himself (“severely, with self-inflicted wounds”): He was deliberately wounding his own body, which shows how cruelly the spirits treated their host.

Mark 5:6-7

The man runs to Jesus and kneels, yet the cry that comes out is the demons’ own. They know who He is: Son of the Most High God. They also fear Him, and beg not to be tormented. Even evil spirits must bow to Jesus’ authority.

BSA: torture (“torment, cause severe pain”): The spirits dread the judgment that Jesus’ presence brings upon them.

See also: Mark 1:24; James 2:19.

Mark 5:8

Mark explains the outcry. Jesus had already commanded the spirit to come out. The demons were not attacking Him. They were reacting to a command they could not resist.

Mark 5:9-10

Jesus asks the name and learns it is Legion, because they are many. The man was held by a crowd of evil spirits, not one. They plead not to be sent out of that region. Jesus is fully in charge of the exchange.

BSA: Legion (“a large group, multitude”): The name pictures a great, organized host working together against one man.

Greek: Λεγιών (Legiōn, G3003) — “a Roman army unit of thousands of soldiers.” The word came from the Roman army, which every listener knew. It suggests an overwhelming force, yet one word from Jesus overcame it.

Mark 5:11-13

The demons ask to enter a large herd of pigs, and Jesus permits it. The herd then rushes into the sea. The passage raises hard questions, and Mark does not answer them all. It plainly shows that the demons can do only what Jesus allows, and that one human life matters more than any herd.

BSA: permission (“allowed them to proceed”): The demons could not move without Jesus’ leave, showing how limited their power is.

See also: Matthew 12:12.

Mark 5:14-15

The herdsmen spread the news, and the townspeople come out. They find the once-wild man sitting quietly, dressed, and thinking clearly. Instead of rejoicing, they are afraid. A change this complete showed a power they could not control.

BSA: right mind (“sane, with a sound understanding”): Jesus restored his whole thinking, not only his behavior.

Greek: σωφρονοῦντα (sōphronounta, G4993) — “being of sound mind, self-controlled.” The word describes a calm, well-ordered mind. It is the opposite of the raving he had known for years.

Mark 5:16-17

Eyewitnesses retell what happened to the man and to the pigs. The people then ask Jesus to leave. They feared the cost of His presence more than they valued the man’s freedom. Sadly, one can see great mercy and still turn it away.

Mark 5:18-19

The healed man wants to stay with Jesus. Jesus gives him a different calling: go home and tell what the Lord has done and the mercy shown to him. His testimony does not need a platform. It starts with the people who know him best.

BSA: mercy (“compassion, pity”): His freedom came from Jesus’ tender pity, not from anything he had earned.

Greek: ἠλέησέν (ēleēsen, G1653) — “He had mercy on you.” This is the word for compassion that acts toward someone in need. Jesus names mercy as the heart of the story.

Mark 5:20

The man goes and tells the whole Decapolis, a region of ten Gentile cities. Notice that Jesus said the Lord had acted, and the man proclaims what Jesus had done. To him they were one and the same. Everyone is amazed.

BSA: proclaim (“preach, publish, herald”): He spoke publicly, like a herald announcing a king’s deeds.

Mark 5:21-23

Back on the western shore, a crowd gathers. Jairus, a respected synagogue leader, falls at Jesus’ feet. His little daughter is dying. His plea is simple: come, lay Your hands on her, and she will live. Position and pride mean nothing when a child is dying.

BSA: healed (“made whole, restored to health”): He asked for complete restoration, not just relief from the illness.

Mark 5:24

Jesus goes with Jairus at once, and the crowd presses in on every side. The scene is crowded and urgent, and it sets up an interruption on the way.

Mark 5:25-26

A woman has bled for twelve years. She has suffered under many doctors, spent everything, and grown worse. Under the law her condition also kept her ritually unclean and apart from others. She had reached the end of all human help.

See also: Leviticus 15:25.

Mark 5:27-28

She had heard about Jesus, and what she heard became hope. She reached through the crowd to touch only His cloak. She kept telling herself that this alone would heal her. Her faith was quiet, but it was real and it moved her to act.

Mark 5:29

At once the bleeding stopped, and she knew in her body she was well. Years of suffering ended in a moment. Jesus’ power does what no physician could do.

BSA: affliction (“plague, disease, whip-like scourge”): Her illness is pictured as a lash that had been striking her for twelve years.

Greek: μάστιγος (mastigos, G3148) — “whip, scourge.” The Greek calls her illness a whip. It pictures years of constant painful blows, now at last ended.

Mark 5:30

Jesus knows that power has gone out from Him and asks who touched Him. This was not an accident or a trick of magic. Healing flowed from Him in answer to faith, and He wanted to meet the person behind the touch.

BSA: power (“miraculous ability, divine strength”): The healing came from God’s own strength at work in Jesus.

Greek: δύναμιν (dynamin, G1411) — “power, ability.” This is the word behind our English word dynamite. It means real, active strength, and Jesus felt it go out of Him.

Mark 5:31-32

The disciples think the question is foolish in such a crowd. Jesus keeps looking around anyway. Many brushed against Him, but only one touched Him in faith. He wanted to find her.

Mark 5:33

The woman comes forward shaking, falls before Jesus, and tells Him everything. She had hoped to slip away unnoticed. Jesus brings her into the open so that she is healed in body and also received and known.

BSA: trembling (“shaking, quaking”): She felt the awe of having been touched by God’s power.

Mark 5:34

Jesus calls her Daughter, a tender word for someone shut out for twelve years. He tells her that her faith has healed her, and sends her away in peace. He gives her wholeness and a place among God’s people.

BSA: faith (“trust, confidence in God”): Her faith was trust in Jesus himself, shown by reaching out to Him.

Greek: σέσωκέν (sesōken, G4982) — “has saved, has made whole.” The same word can mean heal or save. Jesus gives her more than a cured body: she is made whole.

Mark 5:35-36

Word comes that the girl has died, and there seems no reason to trouble the Teacher further. Jesus hears and says to Jairus, Do not be afraid; just believe. He speaks to a father at the very edge of despair.

BSA: believe (“trust, have faith”): Jesus asks Jairus to place his trust in Him even when the situation looks hopeless.

Greek: πίστευε (pisteue, G4100) — “keep believing, go on trusting.” The form of the verb suggests continuing trust. Jairus is asked to keep trusting through the whole ordeal, not just once.

See also: Luke 8:50.

Mark 5:37

Jesus lets only Peter, James and John come with Him. These three are with Him on other key occasions too. A quiet room, not a crowd, is where this miracle will happen.

See also: Mark 9:2.

Mark 5:38-39

At the house there is loud weeping and wailing. Jesus says the child is not dead but asleep. He does not deny she has died. He speaks as the One who will wake her as easily as one wakes a sleeper.

BSA: asleep (“resting, in a state of temporary unconsciousness”): Jesus calls her death temporary, because He is about to wake her.

Greek: καθεύδει (katheudei, G2518) — “she is sleeping.” This is the plain word for ordinary sleep. Jesus uses it for death because for Him it can be undone with a word.

See also: John 11:11.

Mark 5:40

The mourners laugh at Him, so Jesus sends them outside. He takes the parents and His three disciples into the room. Faith is not found in scorn, and He works where there is trust.

BSA: laughed at Him (“to scorn, in ridicule”): They mocked the idea that death could be reversed.

Mark 5:41

Jesus takes the girl by the hand and speaks in the everyday language of the home: Talitha koum! He commands her to get up. Mark keeps the Aramaic and then translates it. The words are gentle, but death has no power against them.

BSA: get up (“arise, stand up, be raised”): The command is the same word used elsewhere of rising from the dead.

Greek: Ταλιθα κουμ (Talitha koum, G5008) — “Little girl, get up.” Mark keeps Jesus’ own Aramaic words. It is as if the first witnesses remembered exactly the sound of that moment.

Mark 5:42

The girl gets up at once and walks about. Mark mentions she is twelve, the same number of years the woman had suffered. Everyone is completely astonished. Jesus has done what only God can do: given life back.

Mark 5:43

Jesus strictly orders that this be kept quiet and tells them to feed her. Even in so great a moment He thinks of her plain, everyday need. His power is joined to care.

BSA: something to eat (“in order to strengthen her, to nourish her”): Her real life needed real food, and Jesus took care of that too.