38-30. The Opening of the Eyes of Two Blind Men Near Jericho

30. The Opening of the Eyes of Two Blind Men Near Jericho Mat 20:29-34; Mark 10:40-52; Luk 18:35-43 The adjusting of the several records of this miracle has put the ingenuity of Scripture harmonists to the stretch. St. Matthew commences his report of it as follows: “And as they departed from Jericho, a great multitude followed Him. And behold, two blind men, sitting by the wayside, when they heard that Jesus passed by, cried out, saying, Have mercy on us, O Lord, Thou Son of David.” Thus, according to him, the Lord is departing from Jericho, and the petitioners are two. St. Luke appears at first sight to contradict both these facts, for he makes the cure to have taken place at his coming nigh to the city, and the healed to have been but one; while St. Mark occupies a middle place, holding in part by one of his fellow Evangelists, in part by the other. He, with St. Luke, names but one whose eyes were opened; but consents with St. Matthew in placing the miracle, not at the entering into, but the going out from, Jericho; so that the three narratives curiously cross and interlace one another. To escape all difficulties of this kind there is of course the ready expedient always at hand, that the sacred historians are recording different events, and that therefore there is nothing to reconcile. But in fact we do not thus evade, we only exchange, our embarrassment. Accepting this solution, we must believe that twice, or rather thrice, in the immediate neighbourhood of Jericho, our Lord was besought in almost the same words by blind beggars on the wayside for mercy;—that on all three occasions there was a multitude accompanying Him, who sought to silence the vociferations of the claimants, but only caused them to cry the more;—that in each case Jesus stood still and demanded what they wanted;—that in each case they made the same reply in very nearly the same words;—and a great deal more.^[1] All this is so unnatural, so improbable, so unlike anything in actual life, so unlike the infinite variety which the Gospel incidents present, that for myself I should prefer almost any explanation to this. The three apparently discordant accounts of this miracle, no one of them entirely agreeing with any other, can at once be reduced to two by that rule, which in all reconciliations of parallel histories must be applied, namely, that the silence of one narrator is in itself no contradiction of the statement of another; thus St. Mark^[2] and St. Luke, making mention of one blind man, do not contradict St. Matthew, who mentions two. There remains only the difficulty that by one Evangelist the healing is placed at the Lord’s entering into the city, by the others at his going out. This is no sufficient ground to justify a duplication of the fact; and Bengel, as I must needs believe, with his usual happy tact, has selected the right reconciliation of the difficulty;^[3] namely, that one cried to Him as He drew near to the city,^[4] whom yet He cured not then, but on the morrow at his going out of the city cured him together with the other, to whom in the mean while he had joined himself. St. Matthew will then relate by prolepsis, as is not uncommon with all historians, the whole of the event where he first introduces it, rather than, by cutting it in two halves, and deferring the conclusion, preserve a more painful accuracy, yet lose the effect which the complete narrative related at a breath would possess. In the cry with which these blind men sought to attract the pity of Christ there lay on their part a recognition of his dignity as the Messiah; for this name, “Son of David,” was the popular designation of the great expected Prophet. There was therefore upon their part a double confession of faith; a confession first that He could heal them, and secondly, not merely as a prophet from God, but as the Prophet, as the one at whose coming the eyes of the blind should be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped (Isa 35:5; Isa 29:18). In the case of the man blind from his birth (John 9) we have the same confessions, but following, and not preceding, the cure, and with intervals between; so that first he acknowledges Him as a prophet (ver. 17), and only later as the Christ (ver. 38). Here the explanation has been sometimes found of what follows: “The multitude rebuked them, because they would not hold their peace” It grudged to hear given to Jesus titles of honour, which it was not itself prepared to accord Him.^[5] We should then have here a parallel to Luk 19:39; only that there the Pharisees would have Christ Himself to rebuke those that were glorifying Him, while here the multitude take the rebuking into their own hands. Yet this explanation will hardly stand. It was quite in the spirit of the envious malignant Pharisees to be vexed with those Messianic salutations: “Blessed be the King, that cometh in the name of the Lord;” but these well-meaning multitudes, rude and for the most part spiritually undeveloped as no doubt they were, were exempt from such spiritual malignities. We meet rather among them a sympathy in the main with the Lord and with his work. While others said that his miracles were wrought in the power of Beelzebub, they glorified God because of them. And here, too, I cannot doubt but that out of an intention of honouring Christ they sought to silence these suppliants. He may have been teaching as He went, and they would not have Him interrupted by ill-timed and unmannerly clamours. But the voices of these suppliants are not to be stifled so. On the contrary, “they cried the more, saying, Have mercy on us, O Lord, Thou Son of David.” Many admirable homiletic applications of this portion of the history have been made. Is there not here, it has been often asked, the story of innumerable souls? When any is first in earnest about his salvation, and begins to cry that his eyes may be opened, that he may walk in his light who has the light of life, begins to despise the world and the objects which other men desire, he will find infinite hindrances, and these not from professed enemies of the Gospel of Christ, but from such as seem, like this multitude, to be with Jesus and on his side. Even they will endeavour to stop his mouth, and to hinder any earnest crying to the Lord.^[6] And then, with a picture from the life, Augustine makes further application in the same line, of what follows, when Jesus, arrested as ever by the cry of need, “stood still, and commanded him to be called. And they called the blind man, saying unto him, Be of good comfort, arise; He calleth thee.” This too, he observes, repeats itself continually in the life of God’s saints. If a man will only despise these obstacles from a world which calls itself Christian, and overcome them; if, despite of all opposers, he will go on, until Christ is evidently and plainly with him, then the very same who at the first reprehended, will in the end applaud; they who at first exclaimed, “He is mad,” will end with exclaiming, “He is a saint.”^[7]

“And he, casting away his garment,” to the end that he might obey with the greater expedition,^[8] and without incumbrance, “rose and came to Jesus.” In this his ridding himself of all which would have been in his way, he has been used often as an example for every soul which Jesus has called, that it should in like manner lay aside every weight and every besetting sin (Mat 13:44; Mat 13:46; Php 3:7). The Lord’s question, “What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?” is, in part, an expression of his readiness to aid, a comment in act upon his own words, spoken but a little while before, “The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister” (Mat 20:28); is in part intended to evoke into livelier exercise the faith and expectation of the petitioner (Mat 9:28). The man, whose cry has been hitherto a vague indeterminate cry for mercy, now singles out the blessing which he craves, designates the channel in which he desires that this mercy may flow,^[9]and makes answer, “Lord, that I might receive my sight.” Only St. Matthew mentions the touching of the eyes which were to be restored to vision (cf. 9:29), and only St. Luke the word of power, the “Receive thy sight,” by which the cure was effected; while he and St. Mark record nearly similar words, passed over by St. Matthew: “Thy faith hath made thee whole”—”Thy faith hath saved thee.” The man, who had hitherto been tied to one place, now used aright his restored eyesight; for he used it to follow Jesus in the way, and this with the free outbreaks of a thankful heart, himself “glorifying God” and being the occasion also that “all the people, when they saw it, gave praise unto God” as well (Acts 3:8-10).

Footnotes

[1] Some in old times and new have seen themselves bound in to such a conclusion:—thus Augustine (De Cons. Evang. ii. 65), who expresses himself strongly on the matter; Lightfoot (Harmony of the N. T. sect. 69); and Greswell. On the other hand, Theophylact, Chrysostom, Maldonatus, Grotius, have with more or less confidence maintained that we have here but one and the same event.

[2] Augustine (De Cons. Evang. ii. 65): Procul dubio itaque Bartimseus iste Timaei films ex aliqua, magna felicitate dejectus, notissimae et famosissimae miserise fuit, quod non solum caecus, verum etiam mendicus sedebat. Hinc est ergo quod ipsum solum voluit commemorare Marcus, cujus illuminatio tarn claram famam huic miraculo comparavit, quam erat illius nota calamitas. Cf. Quaest. Evang. ii. 48.

[3] Bengel: Marcus unum commemorat Bartimaeum, insigniorem (x. 46), eundemque Lucas (xviii. 35) innuit, qui transponendae historise occasionem exinde habuit, quod caecorum alter, Jesu Hierichuntem intrante, in viâ, notitiam divini hujus medici acquisivit. Salvator dum apud Zacchaeum pranderet, vel pernoctaret potius, Bartimaeo caecorum alter, quern Matthaeus adjungit, interim associatus est. I observe Maldonatus had already fallen upon the same reconciliation.

[4] Grotius will have it that St. Luke’s ἐν τῷ ἐγγίζειν here does not necessarily mean, and does not here mean, When He was drawing near to, but, When He was in the neighbourhood of, —and that this nearness to the city might be, and in this case was, that of one who had just departed/raw, not of one who was now approaching to, it. But, to set aside whether the Avoids can mean this, the narrative, which fallows’, of the conversion of Zaccheus (introduced with a καὶ εἰσελθών, is wholly against the supposition that St. Luke means to signif)’ by those words that the Lord was now leaving Jericho.

[5] Hilary (Comm. in Matt, in loc.): Denique eos turba objurgat, quia acerbe a caecis audiunt quod negabant, Dominum esse David Filium.

[6] Augustine (Serm. cccxlix. 5): Reprehensuri sunt nos.. quasi dilectores nostri, homines saeculares, amantes terrain, sapientes pulverem, nihil de coelo ducentes, auras liberas corde, nare carpentes: reprehensuri sunt nos procul dubio, atque dicturi, si viderint nos ista humana, ista terrena contemnere: Quid pateris ? quid insanis ? Turba ilia est contradicens, ne caecus clamet. Et aliquanti Christiani sunt, qui prohibent vivere Christiane, quia et ilia turba cum Christo ambulabat, et vociferantem hominem ad Christum ac lucem desiderantem,. ab ipsius Christi beneficio prohibebat. Sunt tales Christiani, sed vincamus illos, vivamus bene, et ipsa vita sit vox nostra ad Christum. And again, Serm. lxxxviii. 13, 14: Incipiat mundum contemnere, inopi sua distribuere, pro, nihilo habere quae homines amant, contemnat injurias,.....si quis ei abstulerit sua, non repetat; si quid alieni abstulerit, reddat quadruplum. Cum ista facere coeperit, omnes sui cognati, affines, amici commoventur. Quid insanis ? Nimius es: numquid alii non sunt Christiani ? Ista stultitia est, ista dementia est. Et caetera talia turba clamat, ne caeci clament.... Bonos Christianos, vere studiosos, volentes facere praecepta Dei, Christiani mali et tepidi prohibent. Turba ipsa quae cum Domino est prohibet clamantes, id est, prohibet bene operantes. ne perseverando sanentur. Gregory the Great gives it another turn, saying (Hom. ii. in Evang): Saepe namque dum converti ad Dominum post perpetrata vitia volumus, dum contra haec eadem exorare vitia quae perpetravimus, conamur, occurrunt cordi phantasmata peccatoruin quae fecimus, mentis nostrae aciem reverberant, confundunt anmum, et vocem nostrae deprecationis premunt.: Quae praeibant ergo, increpabant eum, ut taceret.... In se, ut suspicor, recognoscit unusqu’isque quod dicimus: quia dum ab hoc mundo animum ad Deum mutamus, dum ad orationis opus convertimur, ipsa quae prius delectabiliter gessimus, importuna postea atque gravia in oratione nostrâ toleramus. Vix eorum cogitatio manu sancti desiderii ab oculis cordis abigitur; vix eorum phantasmata per poenitentiae lamenta superantur.

[7] Augustine (Serm. lxxxviii. 17): Cum quisque Christianus coeperit bene vivere, fervere bonis operibus, mundumque contemnere, in ipsa novitate operum suorum patitur reprehensores et contradictores frigidos Christianos. Si autem perseveraverit, et eos superaverit perdurando, et non defecerit a bonis operibus; iidem ipsi jam obsequentur, qui ante prohibebant. Tamdiu enim corripiunt et perturbant et vetant, quamdiu sibi cedi posse praesumunt. Si autem victi fuerint perseverantiâ proficientium, convertunt se et dicere incipiunt, Magnus homo, sanctus homo, felix cui Deus concessit. Honorant, gratulantur, benedicunt, laudant; quomodo ilia turba quae cum Domino erant. Ipsa prohibebat ne caeci clamarent; sed postquam illi ita clamaverunt, ut mererentur audiri, et impetrare misericordiam Domini, ipsa turba rursum dicit, Vocat vos Jesus. Jam et hortatores fiunt, qui paulo ante corripiebant ut tacerent. How exactly this was the story of St. Francis of Assisi.

[8] Thus Il. ii. 185: Βῆ δὲ θέειν‚ ἀπὸ δὲ χλαῖναν βάλε: and in Phaedrus, v. fab. 2: Stringitque gladium, dein rejectâ penula; cf. Suetonius, August. 26.

[9] Gregory the Great (Horn. ii. in Evang), commenting on this request of theirs, bids us, in like manner, to concentrate our petitions on the chief thing of all: Non falsas divitias, non terrena dona, non fugitivos honores a Domino, sed lucem quaeramus: nec lucem quae loco clauditur, quae tempore finitur, quae noctium interruptione variatur, quae a nobis communiter cum pecoribus cernitur: sed lucem quaeramus, quam videre cum solis Angelis possimus, quam nec initium inchoat, nec finis angustat.