which would henceforth require the utmost faith on the part of Jairus had now come. But into that, which was to pass within the house, no stranger must intrude. Even of the Apostles only those, who now for the first time became, and henceforth continued, the innermost circle, [4 Those who believe in an 'antiPetrine' tendency in the Gospel by St. Luke must find it difficult to account for the prominence given to him in the Third Gospel.] might witness, without present danger to themselves or others, what was about to take place. How Jesus dismissed the multitude, or else kept them at bay, or where He parted from all his disciples except Peter, James, and John,
does not clearly appear, and, indeed, is of no importance. He may have left the nine Apostles with the people, or outside the house, or parted from them in the courtyard of Jairus' house before he entered the inner apartments. [5 I confess myself unable to see any real discrepancy between the accounts of St. Mark and St. Luke, such as Strauss, Keim, and others have tried to establish. In St. Mark it is: 'He suffered no man man to accompany Him' (whither?); in St. Luke: 'He suffered not any man to enter in with Him.]
Within, 'the tumult' and weeping, the wail of the mourners, real or hired, and the melancholy sound of the mourning flutes [1 They are specially called 'flutes for the dead' (B. Mez. vi. 1):] sad preparation for, and pageantry of, an Eastern funeral, broke with dismal discord on the majestic calm of assured victory over death, with which Jesus had entered the house of mourning. But even so He would tell it them, as so often in like circumstances He tells it to us, that the damsel was not dead, but only sleeping. The Rabbis also frequently have the expression 'to sleep' (demarkh , or, when the sleep is overpowering and oppressive), instead of'to die.' It may well have been that Jesus made us of this word of double meaning in some such manner as this: Talyetha dimkhath, 'the maiden sleepeth.' And they understood Him well in their own way, yet understood Him not at all.
As so many of those who now hear this word, they to whom it was then spoken, in their coarse realism, laughed Him to scorn. For did they not verily know that she had actually died, even before the messengers had been despatched to prevent the needless trouble of His coming? Yet even this their scorn served a higher purpose. For it showed these two things: that to the certain belief of those in the house the maiden was really dead, and that the Gospel-writers regarded the raising of the dead as not only beyond the ordinary range of Messianic activity, but as something miraculous even among the miracles of Christ. And this also is evidential, at least so far as to prove that the writers recorded the event not lightly, but with full knowledge of the demand which it makes on our faith.
The first thing to be done by Christ was to 'put out' the mourners, whose proper place this house no longer was, and who by their conduct had proved themselves unfit to be witnesses of Christ's great manifestation. The impression which the narrative leaves on the mind is, that all this while the father of the maiden was stupefied, passive, rather than active in the matter. The great fear, which had come upon him when the messengers apprised him of his only child's death, seemed still to numb his faith. He followed Christ without taking any part in what happened; he witnessed the pagneantry of the approaching obsequies in his house without interfering; he heard the scorn which Christ's majestic declaration of the victory over death provoked, without checking it. The fire of his faith was that of'dimly burning flax.' [a Is. xlii. 3.] But 'He will not quench' it.
He now led the father and the mother into the chamber where the dead maiden lay, followed by the three Apostles, witnesses of His chiefest working and of His utmost earthly glory, but also of His inmost sufferings. Without doubt or hesitation He took her by the hand and spoke only these two words: Talyetha Qum [Kum] ( [1 The reading which accordingly seems best is that adopted by Westcott and Hort, . The Aramaic or Rabbinic for maiden is either Talyetha or Talyutha ( ). In the second Targum on Esther ii. 7, 8, the reading is (Talutha), where Levy conjectures the reading (Talitha) or else Talyetha. The latter seems also the proper equivalent of. While the reading 'Talitha' is very uncertain. As regards the second word, qum [pronounced kum],
most writers have, without difficulty, shown that it should be qumi, not qum. Nevertheless, the same command is spelt in the Talmud (as it is pronounced in the Syriac) when a woman is addressed. In Shabb. 110 b, the command qum, as addressed to a woman suffering from a bloody flux, occurs not less than seven times in that one page ().]), Maiden, arise! 'And straightway the damsel arose.' But the great astonishment which came upon them, as well as the 'strait charge' that no man should know it, are further evidence, if such were required, how little their faith had been prepared for that which in its weakness was granted to it. And thus Jesus, as He had formerly corrected in the woman that weakness of faith which came through very excess, so now in the Ruler of the Synagogue the weakness which was by failure. And so 'He hath done all things well: He maketh even the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak.' [a St. Mark vii. 37.]
How Jesus conveyed Himself away, whether through another entrance into the house, or by 'the road of the roofs,' we are not told. But assuredly, He must have avoided the multitude. Presently we find Him far from Capernaum. Probably He had left it immediately on quitting the house of Jairus. But what of that multitude? The tidings must have speedily reached them, that the daughter of the Synagogue-Ruler was not dead. Yet it had been straitly charged that none of them should be informed, how it had come to pass that she lived. They were then with this intended mystery before them. She was not dead: thus much was certain. The Christ had, ere leaving that chamber, given command that meat should be brought her; and, as that direction must have been carried out by one of the attendants, this would become immediately known to all that household. Had she then not really died, but only been sleeping? Did Christ's words of double meaning refer to literal sleep? Here then was another Parable of twofold different bearing: to them that had hearts to understand, and to them who understood not. In any case, their former scorn had been misplaced; in any case, the Teacher of Nazareth was far other than all the Rabbis. In what Name, and by what Power, did He come and act? Who was He really? Had they but known of the 'Talyetha Qum,' and how these two words had burst open the two-leaved doors of death and Hades! Nay, but it would have only ended in utter excitement and complete misunderstanding, to the final impossibility of the carrying out of Christ's Mission. For, the full as well as the true knowledge, that He was the Son of God, could only come after His contest and suffering. And our faith also in Him is first of the suffering Saviour, and then of the Son of God. Thus was it also from the first. It was through what He did for them that they learned Who He was. Had it been otherwise, the full blaze of the Sun's glory would have so dazzled them, that they could not have seen the Cross.
Yet to all time has this question engaged the minds of men: Was the maiden really dead, or did she only sleep? With it this other and kindred one is connected: Was the healing of the woman miraculous, or only caused by the influence of mind over body, such as is not unfrequently witnessed, and such as explains modern so-called miraculous cures, where only superstition perceives supernatural agency? But these very words 'Influence of mind over body,' with which we are so familiar, are they not, so to speak, symbolic and typical? Do they not point to the possibility, and, beyond it, to the fact of such influence of the God-Man, of the command which he wielded over the body? May not command of soul over body be part of unfallen Man's original inheritance; all most fully realised in the Perfect Man, the God-Man, to Whom has been given the absolute rule of all things, and Who has it in virtue of His Nature? These are only dim feelings after possible higher truths.
No one who carefully reads this history can doubt, that the Evangelists, at least, viewed this healing as a real miracle, and intended to tell it as such. Even the statement of Christ, that by the forthgoing of Power He knew the moment when the woman touched the hem of His garment, would render impossible the view of certain critics (Keim and others), that the cure was the effect of natural causes: expectation acting through the imagination on the nervous system, and so producing the physical results. But even so, and while these writers reiterate certain old cavils [1 We cannot call the trivial objections urged other than 'cavils.'] propounded by Strauss, and by him often derived from the ancient armoury of our own Deists (such as Woolston), they admit being so impressed with the 'simple,' 'natural,' and 'life-like' cast of the narrative, that they contend for its historic truth. But the great leader of negativism, Strauss, has shown that any natural explanation of the event is opposed to the whole tenour of the narrative, indeed of the Gospel-history; so that the alternative is its simple acceptance or its rejection. Strauss boldly decides for the latter, but in so doing is met by the obvious objection, that his denial does not rest on any historical foundation. We can understand, how a legend could gather around historical facts and embellish them, but not how a narrative so entirely without precedent in the Old Testament, and so opposed, not only to the common Messianic expectation, but to Jewish thought, could have been invented to glorify a Jewish Messiah. [1 According to Eusebius (Hist. Eccl. vii. 18) there was a statue in Paneas in commemoration of this event, which was said to have been erected by this woman to Christ.]
As regards the restoration to life of Jairus' daughter, there is a like difference in the negative school (between Keim and Strauss). One party insists that the maiden only seemed, but was not really dead, a view open also to this objection, that it is manifestly impossible by such devices to account for the raising of the young man at Nain, or that of Lazarus. On the other hand, Strauss treats the whole as a myth. It is well, that in this case, he should have condescended to argument in support of his view, appealing to the expectancy created by like miracles
