Mark 7:31-37
One Word: Be Opened
31Then Jesus left the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee and into the region of the Decapolis.
32Some people brought to Him a man who was deaf and hardly able to speak, and they begged Jesus to place His hand on him.
33So Jesus took him aside privately, away from the crowd, and put His fingers into the man’s ears. Then He spit and touched the man’s tongue.
34And looking up to heaven, He sighed deeply and said to him, “Ephphatha!” (which means, “Be opened!”).
35Immediately the man’s ears were opened and his tongue was released, and he began to speak plainly.
36Jesus ordered them not to tell anyone. But the more He ordered them, the more widely they proclaimed it.
37The people were utterly astonished and said, “He has done all things well! He makes even the deaf hear and the mute speak!”
Berean Standard Bible
Mark opens with a route, and the route is doing something. Jesus leaves Tyre, goes north through Sidon, comes down to the Sea of Galilee, and ends up in the region of the Decapolis. It is a long way round, and it keeps him in Gentile country the whole time.
The Decapolis is not a new place in this book. It is where the man from the tombs went, after Jesus told him to go home and say what God had done for him. Last time Jesus was in that region, a town asked him to leave. This time people from that region bring him a man and beg him to help. Mark sets the name down in both places and says nothing about the join.
The man is deaf and can hardly speak. What Jesus does with him first is a decision, and it costs something.
So Jesus took him aside privately, away from the crowd, and put His fingers into the man's ears. Then He spit and touched the man's tongue.
None of that is fumbling. A man who cannot hear a word of what is happening around him is being told, in the only language open to him, what is about to happen, and to which part of him. Fingers in the ears: this. A touch on the tongue: and this. Then Jesus looks up, which says where it is coming from, and sighs, and a sigh needs no translation.
A healing in front of the crowd would have convinced more people, and the crowd was right there. He walked the man out of it instead.
Ephphatha! (which means, Be opened!)
Mark keeps the sound of the word before he gives its meaning, the way he does with Talitha koum over a dead girl at 5:41, with Abba in the garden at 14:36, and with Eloi, Eloi from the cross at 15:34.
The man's ears open, his tongue is released, and he starts to speak plainly. Jesus orders the people there to tell nobody, and Mark says that the more he ordered it the more widely they spread it, which is close to comedy and is also the pattern of this entire book.
Then the crowd says something larger than they know.
He has done all things well! He makes even the deaf hear and the mute speak!
Isaiah had written that when God came to rescue his people, the ears of the deaf would be unstopped and the mute tongue would shout for joy. These are Gentiles, in Gentile country, reaching for the language of a promise about the day God arrives. Mark never tells us whether they understood what they had said. He writes it down and carries on.
How We Know
The crowd's reaction in verse 37 reaches for a specific promise. Isaiah 35:5-6 says that then the eyes of the blind will be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped, and the mute tongue will shout for joy. Mark's wording is not identical, but the two conditions named in verse 37 are the two Isaiah names, in the same order.
That correspondence supports a crowd reacting inside their own scriptures rather than merely being impressed.
Verse 34 preserves the word Jesus used, Ephphatha, and then translates it, which Mark also does at 5:41, at 14:36 and at 15:34.
Questions
1 Who is the hardest person in your life to make yourself understood by, and what do you do about it?
AnswerA small child, a grandparent who is losing their hearing, somebody who speaks another language, somebody who has stopped listening. Say how much trouble you normally go to, honestly, before we look at how much trouble Jesus goes to here.
2 Trace where Jesus travels in verse 31. What kind of country is he in?
AnswerFrom Tyre, north through Sidon, down to the Sea of Galilee, and into the Decapolis. It is a long way round, and it is Gentile territory the whole way.
3 Why might he have used his hands the way he did?
AnswerThe man could not hear him. Fingers to the ears, a touch on the tongue, a look upward and a sigh add up to an explanation given in the only language the man had.
4 The crowd says he makes the deaf hear and the mute speak. Where do those words come from?
AnswerIsaiah, who wrote that when God came to rescue his people the ears of the deaf would be unstopped and the mute tongue would shout for joy. Mark does not tell us whether the crowd knew whose words they were using.
What This Means for Us
He took the man away from the crowd first. It would have gone further as a public event, and this is a book where crowds matter and news travels fast, and he walked him out of it anyway, so that whatever happened between them happened where nobody could watch.
There is a kind of helping that is mostly about the helper. It gets mentioned afterward. It happens where it can be seen. So do one thing this week that nobody will find out about, and treat the person you do it for as somebody worth explaining things to.
Prayer
Father, thank you for taking a man away from the crowd and speaking to him in the only language he had. You have never once treated anybody as too much trouble. Make us people who help quietly, and who bother to be understood. Amen.