The Cure of the Paralytic

Mark 2:1-12
And again he entered into Capernaum after some days; and it was noised that he was in the house.…

I. THE POPULARITY OF OUR LORD. After the cure of the leper, recorded at the close of the preceding chapter, our Lord, to avoid tumult or undue excitement on the part of the people, or an unseasonable precipitation of his plans, retired to and remained some short time in unfrequented places; but the crowds kept resorting (ἤρχοντο, imperfect) to him from all directions. After an interval of some days (δι ἡμερῶν) it was reported that he was back in Capernaum - that, having previously arrived (εἰς), he was now in the house. But what house? Some say Peter's; others, as Euthymius, that it was simply a house (εἰς οϊκόν τινα); better perhaps understand it indefinitely of a house which he used as an inn or place of temporary abode, or to which as a sort of home he usually resorted. The expression may thus, in a certain sense, be equivalent to the German zu Hause.

II. STRANGE METHOD OF APPROACH, Again multitudes flocked to him; the humble dwelling was soon filled to overflowing, and still the crowd pressed on towards the door - even the parts next to it became so thronged that they could no longer contain or afford them room. As was his wont, he was speaking, perhaps conversationally (ἐλάλει) the word, that is, of the kingdom or of his doctrine unto them. Just then a novel and curious incident added a new feature to the scene. On the outskirt of the crowd four men appeared, bearing a pallet between them, as St. Mark informs us - one at each corner probably; and on it lay a helpless invalid. But so intently were all eyes fixed on, or all necks stretched out towards, the great Teacher that the crowd paid no attention to the invalid and his bearers, or at least showed no disposition to make way for them. But, wherever there is a strong will, there is sure to be a way. They were not to be deterred from their purpose, nor to be kept back from him whose presence they sought. They mount the fiat roof of the house, whether by steps outside or otherwise. They remove a sufficient portion of the roof, or, as it is literally, they unroof the roof, digging out the tiling overlaid with earth, and so let down the couch on which the sick of the palsy lay, "into the midst before Jesus," as we learn from St. Luke.

III. ITS FEASIBILITY. The objections of infidel writers, who have shown much ignorance and wasted much strength in attacking the plan resorted to in bringing the paralytic into the presence of the Saviour, are sufficiently and satisfactorily refuted by the following plain statements of facts in 'The Land and the Book': - "Those (houses) of Capernaum, as is evident from the ruins, were, like those of modern villages in the same region, low, very low, with fiat roofs, reached by a stairway from the yard or court... Those who carried the paralytic... ascended to the roof, removed so much of it as was necessary, and let down their patient through the aperture. Examine one of these houses, and you will see at once that the thing is natural, and easy to be accomplished. The roof is only a few feet high, and by stooping down, and holding the comers of the couch - merely a thickly padded quilt, as at present in this region - they could let down the sick man without any apparatus of ropes or cords to assist them... The whole affair was the extemporaneous device of plain peasants, accustomed to open their roofs, and let down grain, straw, and other articles, as they still do in this country... The materials now employed are beams about three feet apart, across which short sticks are arranged close together, and covered with the thickly matted thorn bush called bellan. Over this is spread a coat of stiff mortar, and then comes the marl or earth that makes the roof. Now, it is easy to remove any part of this without injuring the rest They had merely to scrape back the earth from a portion of the roof over the lewan, take up the thorns and the short sticks, and let down the couch between the beams at the very feet of Jesus. The end achieved, they could speedily restore the roof as it was before. I have the impression, however," Dr. Thomson goes on to say, "that the covering at least of the lewan was not made of earth, but of materials more easily taken up. It may have been merely of coarse matting, like the walls and roofs of Turkman huts; or it may have been made of boards, or even stone slabs (and such I have seen), that could be quickly removed. All that is necessary, however, for us to know is, that the roof was fiat, low, easily reached, and easily opened, so as to let down the couch of the sick man; and all these points are rendered intelligible by an acquaintance with modern houses in the villages of Palestine." The frequency and force with which this portion of the miracle has been assailed must be our apology for quoting the above somewhat long extract.

IV. THE EVIDENCE OF THEIR FAITH. The evangelist Matthew informs us that Jesus saw their faith, but makes no mention of the circumstances just referred to, which arc so fully related by St. Luke, and with such particularity and minuteness of detail by St. Mark. The singularity of the effort which they made to reach the Saviour afforded ocular demonstration of their belief in his power to help and heal. The faith thus manifested was not restricted to the invalid, nor to those that bore him. It was shared by both alike. They would not have engaged in the friendly office unless they had had faith in the probable result, nor would they have undertaken it against the will or wish of the invalid; neither would he have consented to allow himself to be conveyed, as he did, without believing in the power of him from whom he hoped relief.

V. NATURE OF FAITH, AS SEEN IN THIS TRANSACTION, Two things, the exact counterpart of each other, are the love of the Saviour and the faith of the sinner; they exactly and mutually correspond; the latter is the cheerful response to the former. The Saviour is waiting to be gracious; the sinner, in the exercise of faith, is ready to accept that grace. The Saviour offers the much-needed forgiveness; the sinner, by faith, stretches out his hand to receive the boon. The true nature of faith, moreover, is taught us here; it is not merely belief in a dogma, it is dependence on a person; it is not merely belief in a doctrine, it is reliance on a living Saviour; it is thus not only assent to a Divine testimony, it is trust in a Divine person. Accordingly, it is sometimes represented in Scripture as a coming to Christ; sometimes it is the receiving of Christ; again, it is a looking to Christ; also a fleeing to him for refuge. It is exhibited by other figures all of which imply not only implicit belief in what the Scriptures report of Christ, but actual trust in him as being all that Scripture represents him, and willing to do all that Scripture declares him to be able and willing to do.

VI. THE DISEASE AND ITS REMEDY. The sufferer was a paralytic, or rather, as St. Luke with his usual professional accuracy characterizes him more strictly, paralyzed or palsy-stricken (παραλελυμένος). This disease, which assumed a very aggravated form in the East, was attended with great suffering, besides leaving its victim altogether helpless. If leprosy was typical of pollution, and demoniac possession of passion, this form of disease was a type of utter prostration. The mode of cure adopted by our Lord in this case was somewhat unusual. Generally he administered relief to the body before restoring health to the soul; in the case of the paralytic the process is just the converse of this. Whether it was that sinful indulgence or evil excesses of some kind had weakened the nervous system of this man, and left him in this state of pain and prostration; or whether he felt with peculiar keenness the burden of sin pressing on his conscience or whether some expression of penitence, though unrecorded, had escaped his lips; or whether it was only deep contrition of spirit of which our Lord alone was cognizant of whichever of these it was, he first removed the soul disease. The expression, as recorded by St. Luke, is merely "man;" but both St. Matthew and St. Mark report the tenderer word of address, "son" or "child," more on the ground of affection than because of the youth of the sufferer; while St. Matthew alone adds the word of cheering, - (θάρσει), "Be of good cheer " - an expression so calculated to relieve the burthened spirit and ease the aching heart.

VII. GROUND OF ENCOURAGEMENT. But the ground of this encouragement is in the words, "Thy sins are forgiven thee; "not, observe, "be forgiven thee," for ἀφῶνται is not for ἀφέωνται, the aorist subjunctive in a precative sense, but for ἀφεῖνται, perfect indicative in an affirmative sense - have been forgiven thee. The deed, in fact, was done, the blessing was bestowed, the sins of the man were, as the word implies, dismissed - sent away like the sins of Israel on the head of the scapegoat "into a land uninhabited," never again to return or be remembered.

VIII. HOSTILE ON-LOOKERS. In that surging crowd were some cold, unsympathetic hearts; there sat or stood there men who had come, if not as spies, yet through curiosity of a calculating, critical, sceptical kind. Not only had Galilee sent its contingent of such men from every village, but; several had come all the way from the southern province, and even from its capital - an indirect evidence, by the way, of what is directly recorded by St. John of ministerial work carried on in these parts, and of attention roused by it. In the parallel portion of St. Luke where we read that "the power of the Lord was present to heal them (αὐτούς)" - that is, of course, those who sought or needed healing - there is a tolerably well-supported variant which reads the pronoun in the singular αὐτόν after א, B, L, Χ; the meaning in this case is, "the power of the Lord was in the direction of his healing," or more freely, "the power of the Lord [Jehovah] was present for his [work of] healing."

IX. A SECT AND A PROFESSION. St. Matthew and St. Mark both notice the presence of certain of the scribes. These were originally copyists, but afterwards textual critics, and subsequently expositors of the Law - in fact, the theologians of the nation. St. Luke, however, gives us the additional information that "there were Pharisees and doctors of the Law sitting by." The latter had to do with the Law of the Old Testament, just as the scribes, but in the capacity of jurists. Hence the lawyers and scribes commonly thought to have been identical. No doubt the same person might be both - a theologian and a jurist or ecclesiastical lawyer; while the Pharisees were the formalists - the religious sect that set such store by form and ceremony. The name is derived from parash, to separate, and thus signifies separatists. Now, these parties reasoned the matter out in their own minds (διαλογιζόμενοι), and were not long in coming to a conclusion that Jesus was guilty of a blasphemous assumption of an exclusively Divine attribute.

X. THE INTERPRETATION OF THEIR THOUGHTS. It was, "Why does this fellow thus speak blasphemies?' The "this" is contemptuous, and the" thus" implies" wickedly," or" as we have heard." If, however, we accept the text of the critical editors, Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, as well as that followed by the Revisers, it reads thus: "Why does this man thus speak? he blasphemeth." In the received text the plural denotes intensity, and is equivalent to "all this blasphemy;" or it refers to different expressions which they looked upon as blasphemous. It must be here observed that in Scripture language the word passes from the classical sense of speaking evil of or slandering a fellow-creature to the Hellenistic meaning of speaking impiously of God, or laying claim to a Divine attribute.

XI. DRIFT OF THEIR REASONING. "Who can forgive sins but one, that is, God, or God alone?" Such was the gist of their reasoning; the natural answer, of course, was that, unless in the exercise of delegated authority, or in a declarative sense, the thing transcended human power. God reserves to himself the power of pardon; Jesus, in his own name and by his own authority, claims to bestow forgiveness; therefore he blas-phemeth, thus making himself equal to God. Both their premisses were correct and strictly logical; but the conclusion drawn from them was altogether erroneous - the very reverse of the fact. It should rather have been, not "he blasphemeth," arrogating to himself a Divine attribute, but, on the contrary, "he is truly Divine," really possessing Divine power.

XII. HELPS THEM TO THE RIGHT CONCLUSION. Our Lord knew at once and well (ἐπιγνοὺς) in his spirit their secret reasonings; for, though his soul was human, his spirit was Divine; while to the query latent in their minds, he accommodates the question which he addresses to them, as though he said," Ye ask, What right have I to speak thus? I reply, What right have ye to reason thus? Which claim is easier to make - that of forgiving sins, or that of curing palsy?" But the nature of proof in each of the two cases is widely different: in the one case it is obvious, in the other it is obscure; in the one it is patent, in the other latent. But our Lord proceeds to put them in the position of coming to a correct conclusion. He gives them sufficient data to guide them: of what is cognizable by the senses he gives sensible proof; what is spiritual he leaves them to infer. "Up," he says to the paralytic, if we adopt the reading ἔγειρε, approved of by Lachmann and Tischendorf, and to be taken as a particle of excitement, like ἀγε or ἀνα, or auf in German, rather than with σεαυτὸν understood; or "Arise," if we read ἐγείρου, with Tregelles; or "Arise at once," if we adhere to ἔγειραι of the received text, though Fritzsehe affirms that the middle voice signifies "to arouse or raise some one for one's self," while the passive is "to be aroused, raised up," and so "rise." Our Lord then adds, "Take up thy bed" (κράββατον, equivalent to the Latin grabatum, and equivalent to St. Luke's κλινίδιον, little bed, or mattress or pallet - every way appropriate, as well in sense as because the latter evangelist wrote for the Greeks, as St. Mark for the Romans, at least in the first instance), "and go into thy house."

XIII. STRANGE CONTRAST. Immediately the command was obeyed, and the man, who was carried on a bed by four into the Saviour's presence was now raised up and carried his bed on his back in presence of them all. As Bengel has finely expressed it, "Sweet saying! the bed hath borne the man: now the man bore the bed."

XIV. POWER OF FORGIVENESS. Thus our Lord, by this visible, palpable, and undeniable exercise of Divine power in relieving the body, proved that he possessed the power, and not only the power but the legitimate authority (ἐξουσίαν), to restore the soul from the disease of sin.

XV. THIS POWER POSSESSED ON EARTH. Of himself he speaks as the "Son of man." This designation he applies no less than eighty times to himself; but it is only twice or thrice so applied by others, and in each instance of such application his exaltation is implied. He affirms that on earth the Son of man has power to forgive sins, how much more in heaven? In his humiliation, how much more in his exaltation? In his humiliation on earth, how much more in his glorification in heaven?

XVI. GOD GLORIFIED. NO wonder the man himself, as St. Luke tells us, glorified God! And no wonder that the multitude (οἰ ὄχλοι according to St. Matthew, according to St. Mark) all likewise united with him in giving glory to God; while all, at the same time that they glorified God, expressed their own amazement in one way or other - some (as in St. Matthew) in reference to such power given unto men; others (according to St. Luke) because of the strange things - things beyond expectation (παράδοξα) - they had just seen; and some (as we read in St. Mark) because they had never seen it on this fashion. - J.J.G.

Parallel Verses

KJV: And again he entered into Capernaum, after some days; and it was noised that he was in the house.

WEB: When he entered again into Capernaum after some days, it was heard that he was in the house.