In the well-known story of the Bleeding Woman in Mark 5, we come across a portion of scripture that is particularly difficult to translate into English, and thus, because it’s so difficult we miss a wonderful gem of Biblical truth. I’d like briefly to look at that gem. Mark 5:25-27, in my translation, says this:
“And a woman, being in a flow of blood for 12 years, and suffering much under many doctors and spending all she had and not in any way healing but rather into a worse state COMING, and hearing about Jesus, COMING in the crowd behind, she touched His garment.”
If you pay close attention to the grammar you’ll notice that this is a run-on sentence (not a sign of bad, but GOOD style in ancient Greek!) and that the verb that “she touched” comes as a conclusion to the whole build up. All we read in verses 25,6 are all background to her touching his garment.
But there’s something else interesting about the grammar. I’ve put “COMING” in all caps, because it’s something that I think Mark wants us to pay attention to. First, the phrasing is awkward. Mark could have very easily said that “she BECAME worse” using the verb γινομαι. Or, as Mark’s style would seem to prefer, he could have said something like “she had worse” since Mark uses the verb “to have” ἐχω as the most common verb to tie to a word for an ailment or disease or just the term used in this passage as a generalized term for suffering. So, not only do we have this long train of participles[1], but we have an awkward construction with a verb that isn’t a great fit.
Why?
Because I think Mark wants you to connect and contrast the woman’s faith in doctors that caused her to come into “a worse” with her coming to Jesus and putting faith in Him. When she trusted doctors she “was coming into worse” but when she “was coming to Jesus” she was healed. No, it’s not perfectly symmetrical, they way we think it should be. It doesn’t follow our ideas of how to write because it doesn’t come from our ideas – it comes from a Hebrew context.
So, instead of insisting that this text follow our ideas of how writing should work, why don’t we read what Mark wanted to say. Because the point isn’t to contrast the kind of action that takes place but to contrast Jesus with “worse”! She didn’t profit from doctors, she came into worse, but when she came unto Jesus, she got better. She spent all she had for the doctors; she spent nothing with Jesus. Doctors brought her to worse; bringing herself to Jesus made her better.
So, the whole point Mark is making is that you can come unto Jesus or you can come unto “worse”.
And I think our culture needs to hear this message. We’re spending everything we have on the doctors: politicians; media; “experts”; academics; and yes, even pastors. We’re spending everything we have and we aren’t getting any better. All this foolish faith in men is not making us better, but rather causing us to get worse. Because politicians aren’t the solution. And they really, at the heart of it, aren’t the problem. The problem in our society is that we don’t love and serve Jesus with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. Only as we come unto him will we find answers to our problems. The spin doctors can’t save you; just go ahead, now and try ‘em – they’ll fail you.
The doctors can’t make you better, but the Great Physician can.
A Footnote:
[1] Technically they’re past participles but I chose to translate with the present tense to point out more clearly that they are participles and so they would all have the same ending.