Raising Jairus's Daughter #11

Raising Jairus’s daughter is the account of Jesus bringing back to life the twelve-year-old daughter of a synagogue leader named Jairus. It is recorded in Mark 5:21-43, Matthew 9:18-26, and Luke 8:40-56, and in each Gospel it is interrupted by the healing of a woman with a long-term illness.

The Account

A crowd gathered around Jesus by the lake when Jairus, one of the synagogue leaders, came and fell at his feet, begging him to come lay his hands on his little daughter, who was dying (Mark 5:22-23). Jesus went with him, but was delayed when a woman touched his cloak and was healed. While he was still speaking to her, messengers arrived from Jairus’s house saying the girl had died and there was no reason to trouble the Teacher further.

Overhearing this, Jesus told Jairus, “Be not afraid, only believe” (Mark 5:36). He allowed only Peter, James, and John to go with him, and at the house he found people weeping and wailing. He said the child was not dead but sleeping, and they laughed at him. He put them all outside, took the girl’s parents and the three disciples into the room, took her by the hand, and said in Aramaic, “Talitha cumi,” which Mark translates as “Damsel, I say unto thee, arise.” She got up at once and walked. Jesus told them to give her something to eat and strictly ordered that no one be told (Mark 5:41-43).

Setting and Context

The three accounts differ slightly. Matthew, more compact, has the ruler say that his daughter “has just died,” so Jesus goes to raise her rather than to heal her (Matthew 9:18). Mark and Luke have her still alive when Jairus first asks, and report her death on the way. Mark and Luke both name the girl’s age as twelve, and Luke calls her his only daughter (Luke 8:42). Matthew mentions flute players and a noisy crowd (Matthew 9:23), reflecting the professional mourning customs of the day. A synagogue leader was a respected community figure responsible for the running of services, so his coming to Jesus in public, kneeling, is notable.

Mark records the Aramaic words spoken, one of several places where the Gospel preserves Jesus’s own language, and takes care to give the translation.

What It Reveals

Jesus’s phrase “sleeping” is not a denial that she died, since the mourners understand it as death and laugh at it, but a way of saying that for him death is not final. The setting alongside the healing of the woman with the twelve-year illness shows two people, one very young and one long-suffering, whose faith is met with restoration. The instruction “only believe” is central, and it comes at the moment when belief seems impossible. Many Christians read the account as a foreshadowing of Jesus’s own resurrection and of the raising of the dead, and as evidence of his authority over death itself. It joins the accounts of the widow’s son at Nain and of Lazarus as the three times the Gospels record Jesus raising someone from death.