A physical affliction with social consequences

“Now there was a woman…”(verse 25).  It’s not the beginning of the story, but it’s the best place to start.  This woman has been hemorrhaging, bleeding, probably vaginally, for 12 years.  Today we think, “No, thank you!” for medical reasons, but in first century Jewish culture it was an even bigger deal for spiritual and social ones.  You see, Leviticus, the third book of the Torah, defines rules concerning the loss of liquids that were believed to contain life, including blood and semen (Leviticus 15). Those who released these fluids, as well as the things or people they touched, were considered “unclean” for specified lengths of time. When the flow ended, the individual involved performed a purification ritual and rejoined society. The problem for the woman we meet today, though, is that her time of uncleanness hasn’t ended for 12 years, so there’s no purification ritual, and there’s no rejoining society.  

There’s more to this story, though. Even putting these purification laws aside, ancient people, or at least ancient men, were pretty freaked out by vaginal bleeding.  Pliny the Elder was a Roman historian born approximately ten years before Jesus died.  Written at about the same time as the Gospel of Mark, the encyclopedia where he recorded much of the knowledge of his time says this about menstrual blood:

“Hardly can there be found a thing more monstrous than is that fluxe and course of theirs.  For if during the time of this their sickness they happen to approch or goe over a vessel of wine, bee it never so new, it will presently soure…Yron and steele presently take rust, yea, and brasse likewise, with a filthie, strong, and poysoned stinke, if they lay but hand thereupon.  If dogs chance to tast of women’s fleures, they runne mad therewith; and if they bite any thing afterwards, they leave behind them such a venome, that the wounds are incurable.” (Pliny 7.64-65).

In addition, an ancient Jewish text states that “if a menstruating woman touches a man, she can make him impotent” (Swanson 274).

To be clear, I’m not suggesting this woman is just having a ridiculously long period.  She’s unhealthy.  In the context of how others see her, though, being ill only makes her more repellant. 

Scholars are actually surprisingly all over the place trying to decide what exactly these uncleanness laws and general fear mean for the woman (Branch 2; Haber 175-176; Marcus).  To me, the answer to how much this bleeding affects her life is right there in the text.  She’s exhausted herself and her life savings to put an end to her misery (verse 26).  No one does that to solve a mere inconvenience.  How hard she’s tried to fix her situation shows how desperate and alone she is.

A little literary psychoanalysis

The people and things our woman touches become unclean, so she’s separated herself from others.  Or perhaps others have separated themselves from her.  Most of the time, women regulated themselves when it was their time of the month,  but this woman no longer has the luxury of privacy (Swanson 274).   She’s been single for 12 years.  We know this because the money she’s spent is her own, not her husband’s or father’s, which in a patriarchal society means she actually has no husband or father.  She was either never married or he divorced her when the bleeding didn’t stop.  She’s also been to many doctors.  It’s safe to assume from these details that in her small village, word about her condition has gotten around.  If, perhaps, she hasn’t done a good enough job separating herself, others have done it for her.    

So, what does twelve years of being shunned and separated from other people do to a person?  Well, physically, loneliness “heightens health risks as much as smoking 15 cigarettes a day” (Novotney 32).  Between that and probable anemia, this woman is truly struggling.  Emotionally, she’s probably dealing with depression or anxiety, or both.  Maybe she can’t sleep, or has no desire to eat.  She’s already binged everything good on both Netflix and Hulu.  Wait.  Sorry.  Personal flashback. Most of us have more perspective on what an isolated life feels like now, don’t we?

Her self-esteem must be affected, especially if she believes as her neighbors do, that there’s good reason for her separation.  Does she feel monstrous?  Unworthy of love?  Afflicted by God?  Afterall, the reason for her isolation is some mysterious thing happening at her very core.  If her uncleanness is enough to make other people avoid her, how does she imagine a holy God sees her?  Assuming she’s a Jewish woman, her trust in a God who has been faithful to her people over centuries should bring comfort, but the laws of her religion are now effectively destroying her. 

Miraculously, she hasn’t given up.  She has “endured much under many physicians,” living a cycle of hope and disappointment for perhaps half her life.  She’s pretty remarkable, really, but now she’s at the end of her rope, no better, and broke (verse 26).

Back to the beginning

Let’s go to verse 21.  Jesus and his disciples have just gotten out of the boat and a crowd immediately swarms them.  They know Jesus has healed people, and they want front row seats to whatever he’s going to do today.  Enter Jairus, the synagogue leader, with a repeated plea to save his dying daughter (verse 23).  Jesus agrees, and off they go, with the crowd following behind.

Now the spotlight pivots to the woman.  She is separate from the crowd, because of her condition, but she’s heard about Jesus.  We don’t know what she’s heard, (or maybe just overheard). Does she know that he’s healed others, including a man with a skin condition, who would have suffered from a similar “unclean” label (Mark 1:40-45)?  Does she perhaps know that Jesus proclaimed another man’s sins forgiven, something the religious experts believed only God could do (Mark 2:1-12)?  Has she heard any of his teachings repeated?  We don’t know.  Mark doesn’t tell us.  What we do know is that she sees Jesus and thinks, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well” (verse 28).  Where does this thought even come from? It’s marvelous, but it’s also unthinkable.  If she touches Jesus, she makes him unclean, or impotent (Swanson 274).  How can she decide between her own desperate need and what the rules of her religion tell her to do? How can she decide if she values herself enough to risk breaking rules she’s been raised to believe are good, but that are now crushing her? 

She decides to go for it, but in a way that will keep her anonymous: from behind.  Somehow, she gets through the crowd.  Perhaps they’re too enthralled with Jesus to take notice of her.  She touches his cloak, and is immediately healed (verse 29).  Certainly, she intends to slink away unnoticed, but Jesus knows power has gone forth from him and he wants to know who touched him.  Is anyone else skeptical about this?  Could it be that he does know who touched him, and he’s giving her the chance to come out in the open?  Perhaps he has more in mind than just her physical healing.

The whole, brave truth

It seems that the woman could have gotten away with it, but somehow “knowing what had happened to her’’ motivates her to come forward.  She responds in “fear and trembling,” falls at Jesus’ feet, and tells the whole truth (verse 33).  Don’t forget the world she’s living in.  Even in today’s world, vaginal bleeding is not something we talk about in mixed company.  In the middle of a crowd, and to the male rabbi she has just touched, this woman confesses not only her uncleanness, but also her defiance of the laws regarding that uncleanness.  These laws were put in place “for the sake of the stability of the community that reverenced God” (Swanson 274) and she publicly confesses that she, the unclean outcast, has put herself definitively ahead of that community to touch Jesus and be healed. 

Jesus, for his part, was just as familiar with the uncleanness laws as anyone else.  In addition, rabbis like him were advised not to even speak to women in public, including their wives (Branch 11). No one would have been surprised if he had been furious with her.  Imagine their astonishment when he tenderly calls her “Daughter.”  When is the last time she’s heard any term of endearment, let alone one that implies family?

Jesus doesn’t stop there, though.  He gives credit to her faith and says it has “made her well”  (verse 34).  Ok.  Time to geek out on some Greek, the original language of the New Testament.  According to Frederick Gaiser, In verse 29, the woman is “healed,” but in verses 28 and 34, the phrase “made well” is used (8).   Gaiser further explains that they seem like synonyms to us, but in Greek, they have different connotations.  “Healed” means “healed.”  But “made well” is healed, as well as “saved, rescued, and liberated.”  Notice that the woman is “healed” after she touches Jesus, but what she desires is to be “made well.”  This only happens after she tells Jesus the truth and he proclaims “your faith has made you well.”  Mark does this intentionally, indicating that Jesus isn’t just a miracle worker, he has come to bring liberation and salvation. 

So, Jesus restores the woman’s health, he names her tenderly, he praises her faith and proclaims her saved, and finally he sends her in peace.  All of this he does publicly, fully restoring her to her community.  The woman gets what she came for, her health, but Jesus, in abundant, gushing love, gives her so much more. 

Just as the woman could have sneaked away after she was healed, Jesus could have ignored her touch and kept on truckin’ to Jairus, the synagogue leader's house.  After all, he had a 12 year old to save and a desperate father to keep up with.  But he stops to find the woman, not because he is curious.  His love for her means he wants to do more than heal.  He wants to pull her fully in from the fringes where she has survived for so long.  He cares both about her next life (salvation) and her current one.  While he’s pausing for her, though, the daughter of the synagogue leader dies (verse 35), which brings us to our next topic:  The Bleeding Woman & The Genius of Mark’s Sandwich, wherein we shall finally discuss Jairus, the synagogue leader.

Works Cited

Branch, Robin G. “A study of the woman in the crowd and her desperate courage (Mark 5:21-43)” In die Skriflig/In Luce Verbi 47(1), Art. #649,  2013, 13 pages.

Gaiser, Frederick J. “In Touch with Jesus: Healing in Mark 5:21-43” Word & World, vol. 30, 2010, pp.5-15.

Haber, Susan. “A Woman’s Touch; Feminist Encounters with the Hemorrhaging Woman in Mark 5:24-34” Journal for the Study of the New Testament, vol.26, 2003, pp.171-192.

Marcus, Joel. Mark 1-8. The Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002.

Novotney, Amy. “The risks of Social Isolation”  Monitor on Psychology, vol.50, 2019.

Pliny the Elder, The Historie of the World. Commonly called, The Naturall Historie of C. Plinius Secondus  (trans. Philemon Holland) Book VII, ch. XV as found at https://penelope.uchicago.edu/holland/index.html maintained by James Eason.

Swanson, Richard W. “Moving Bodies and Translating Scripture.  Interpretation and Incarnation” Word & World, vol.31, 2011, pp. 271-278.

Notes

I really recommend Richard Swanson’s article both for its perspective on the overall narrative and for its insight into the moment when the woman touches Jesus.