Mark 5 explained: Freedom, Healing and a Raised Girl

A man no one could hold (vv. 1-10)

Jesus lands on the lake's eastern shore, mostly non-Jewish land, and meets a man living among graves, places Jewish law treated as unclean. His name 'Legion', a Roman army unit of thousands of soldiers, shows how overpowered he was, and some scholars also hear a jab at Roman occupation.

The spirits and the pigs (vv. 11-13)

Jewish law called pigs unclean, so a large herd confirms this is non-Jewish territory. The story gives no reason for the loss of about two thousand animals, and interpreters have long disagreed about why Jesus allowed it.

The town asks Jesus to leave (vv. 14-20)

The locals found the man calm and dressed, yet they were afraid and asked Jesus to leave, perhaps unsettled by the power at work and the loss of their herd. Jesus sent him home to tell his own people instead, and he spread the news through the Decapolis, a group of ten Greek-style cities.

A father begs for help (vv. 21-24)

Back on the Jewish side of the lake, Jairus, a respected leader of the local synagogue, falls at Jesus' feet. He asks Jesus to lay hands on his dying daughter, a common way healers prayed for the sick.

The woman who touched his cloak (vv. 25-34)

Under Jewish law her constant bleeding made her ritually unclean, cutting her off from worship and normal contact for twelve years, and doctors had taken all her money. Jesus has her come forward and calls her 'daughter', which many readers take as restoring her standing among people as well as her health.

The girl raised (vv. 35-43)

Mourners were already wailing when Jesus called her only 'asleep', and Mark keeps his actual Aramaic words, meaning 'Little girl, I say to you, get up!' Why Jesus orders silence is a recurring puzzle in Mark that scholars explain differently, while the request for food shows she is fully alive.

Key verse: Mark 5:36

Where Christians differ

Christians differ on whether the first story describes literal possession by evil spirits or a severe illness that people of that time described in the language of demons.

Something to think about

Why might people feel uneasy rather than relieved when something they cannot explain changes a person's life?