Healing the Deaf Man with a Speech Impediment #26

The healing of the deaf man with a speech impediment is a miracle found only in the Gospel of Mark. Jesus meets a man who cannot hear and can barely speak, takes him aside, and restores both faculties with a word, “Ephphatha,” which Mark translates as “Be opened.” The event takes place in the Decapolis, east and south of the Sea of Galilee.

The Account

After leaving the region of Tyre, Jesus travels through Sidon and then back to the Sea of Galilee, passing through the territory of the Decapolis (Mark 7:31). People bring him a man who is deaf and has a speech impediment and beg Jesus to lay a hand on him (Mark 7:32). Jesus takes the man away from the crowd, in private. He puts his fingers into the man’s ears, spits, and touches the man’s tongue (Mark 7:33). Then he looks up to heaven, sighs deeply, and says, “Ephphatha,” an Aramaic word that Mark interprets for his readers as “Be opened” (Mark 7:34).

The result is immediate. The man’s ears are opened, the restraint on his tongue is released, and he speaks plainly (Mark 7:35). Jesus orders the onlookers to tell no one, but the more he insists, the more widely they spread the news (Mark 7:36). The crowd is overwhelmed with amazement and says, “He hath done all things well: he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak.” (Mark 7:37).

Setting and Context

The Decapolis was a league of ten Greek-style cities, mostly east of the Jordan, and its population was largely Gentile. That setting may explain why Mark includes the Aramaic word in a Greek-language Gospel and takes care to translate it. The miracle follows the healing of the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter, so Mark presents two acts of healing in a row on non-Jewish ground. The use of touch and saliva is a feature shared with the healing of the blind man of Bethsaida, the other Markan miracle that occurs only in his Gospel (Mark 8:22-26). Both healings also involve taking the person aside, and both are followed by a request for silence.

What It Reveals

The crowd’s words echo the prophet Isaiah’s vision of the renewal of creation, in which the ears of the deaf are unstopped and the tongue of the mute sings for joy (Isaiah 35:5-6). Mark’s audience would probably have heard that connection, and the story is often read as a sign that the promised age of restoration is arriving in Jesus’s ministry. The unusual detail of the sigh is read by many interpreters as an expression of Jesus’s compassion for human suffering, and by others as prayerful intensity before an act of power.

The repeated command to stay silent is part of what scholars call the messianic secret in Mark, where Jesus often restrains publicity about who he is until the cross and resurrection make sense of it. Some Christian traditions have also drawn on the word Ephphatha in liturgy; a rite of that name has traditionally been included in the Roman Catholic order for baptism, where the minister touches the ears and mouth and prays that they be opened to hear and proclaim God’s word.