Mark 5:35-43
The Girl Is Only Sleeping
35While He was still speaking, messengers from the house of Jairus arrived and said, “Your daughter is dead; why bother the Teacher anymore?”
36But Jesus overheard their conversation and said to Jairus, “Do not be afraid; just believe.”
37And He did not allow anyone to accompany Him except Peter, James, and John the brother of James.
38When they arrived at the house of the synagogue leader, Jesus saw the commotion and the people weeping and wailing loudly.
39He went inside and asked, “Why all this commotion and weeping? The child is not dead, but asleep.”
40And they laughed at Him. After He had put them all outside, He took the child’s father and mother and His own companions, and went in to see the child.
41Taking her by the hand, Jesus said, “Talitha koum!” which means, “Little girl, I say to you, get up!”
42Immediately the girl got up and began to walk around (she was twelve years old). And at once they were utterly astounded.
43Then Jesus gave strict orders that no one should know about this, and He told them to give her something to eat.
Berean Standard Bible
Jesus is still speaking to the woman when messengers from the house push through the crowd to find Jairus. What they tell him and what he hears back come one on top of the other, with nothing in between.
“Your daughter is dead; why bother the Teacher anymore?” But Jesus overheard their conversation and said to Jairus, “Do not be afraid; just believe.”
The messengers are not being cruel. They are being reasonable, which is harder to argue with. There was a class of trouble this teacher could do something about, death sat outside it, and they had all just stood there and watched him stop for somebody else while the time ran out. Jairus never gets the chance to answer them, which may be the kindest thing in the paragraph.
He takes Peter and James and John with him and nobody else, and by the time they reach the house it is already loud. Weeping and wailing, out where the street can hear it.
“Why all this commotion and weeping? The child is not dead, but asleep.”
And they laugh at him. Mark leaves that in. A house full of people in the middle of real grief, laughing at a man who has just said something they know for a fact is untrue, because they had seen her and they knew.
He puts them all outside, takes the father and the mother and the three men, and goes in to the child. Then he takes her hand. Mark has him take Simon's mother-in-law by the hand when she was down with a fever, and reach out and lay a hand on a man whose skin nobody else would touch. Now a dead child. Under the law, touching a body made a person unclean, and once again it runs the wrong way.
Then two words, kept in the language they were spoken in. Talitha koum, and Mark stops and turns it over for readers who did not have the language: little girl, I say to you, get up. Somebody remembered how it sounded.
She gets up and walks about, and Mark adds, almost as an afterthought, that she was twelve years old. The woman in the crowd had been bleeding for twelve years. For as long as one of them had been losing her life the other had been living hers, and Mark sets both numbers down and makes nothing of it.
Then the last verse, and it is about as ordinary as a sentence gets. He told them to give her something to eat.
How We Know
Mark 5:41 keeps the words in the language they were spoken in. Talitha koum is Aramaic, and Mark writes it out and then translates it for readers who did not speak it.
He does it here, with Ephphatha at 7:34, with Abba in the garden at 14:36, and with Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani from the cross at 15:34. Each one is carried across in the words used rather than in Greek alone.
That supports Mark working from material that reached him in Aramaic. It does not establish what happened in the room, and Mark's Gospel is a Greek document throughout.
Questions
1 When one of us is frightened, what actually helps?
AnswerWhatever we come up with, look at what Jesus does not do here. He does not tell Jairus the fear is silly, or that the news is wrong, or that he should have believed harder earlier. He tells him the next thing to do, and then he walks to the house with him and goes inside.
2 What news arrives, and what do the messengers suggest doing about it?
AnswerThat the girl has died, and that there is no point troubling Jesus any further. They were not being unkind. They were being sensible about what they thought was possible.
3 Why did the people in the house laugh at him?
AnswerBecause they knew she was dead. They had seen her. When he said she was only sleeping they were certain he was wrong, and they said so out loud.
4 The girl was twelve. Where else in this chapter does that number turn up?
AnswerThe woman in the crowd had been bleeding for twelve years. Mark sets both numbers down and never says a word about the pair of them. For exactly as long as one of them had been losing her life, the other had been living hers.
What This Means for Us
He said do not be afraid, just believe, to a man whose daughter had just died. From anybody else it is cruelty, and the rest of the chapter settles which it is here.
He did not tell Jairus the fear was silly, or that the messengers had it wrong, or that he should have believed harder earlier. He gave him the next thing to do, and then he went into the house with him and stayed.
So the next time somebody here is frightened, do not argue them out of it. Go with them, sit down, say the next true thing, and stay. Then think about their dinner, because after raising a dead girl he thought about hers.
Prayer
Father, thank you for taking a dead child by the hand, and then thinking about whether she had eaten. Nothing is too big for you and nothing is too small. When we are afraid, come into the house with us. Amen.