Mark 8:22-26 Completes 7:31-37 to Fulfill Isaiah 35:1-10
Mark 7:31-37 records the story of Jesus healing a deaf man who had a ‘speech impediment.’ The word translated by the ESV as ‘speech impediment’ (μογιλάλον) appears only here throughout the entire New Testament, and it only appears once in the Septuagint: Isaiah 35:6. In an exile context, Isaiah prophesies that the Lord will come to rescue his people and restore the lands again so that “they shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God” (Is. 35:2). Isaiah says that the coming of Yahweh will look like this: “The eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a dear, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy” (Is. 35:5-6). When Yahweh comes to rescue his people out of exile, the ears of the deaf and the eyes of the blind will be opened. The word for mute in Is. 35:6, μογιλάλον (LXX), is the word that appears only once in the rest of the Bible: Mark 7:32. Therefore, the biblical context informs us that the purpose of the healing in Mark 7:31-37 is to fulfill Isaiah 35. In Mark 7:35, Mark records that the man’s “ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.” This is a key sign that Yahweh has come to rescue his people out of exile. The catch is that Yahweh comes in the form of the man, Jesus.
But that is only one half of the expectation of Yahweh’s coming presented in Isaiah 35:6. The other half of the expectation is that the “eyes of the blind shall be opened” (Is. 35:5). Thus, we come to Mark 8:22-26, which is the famous double healing of the blind man. This is one of two healings of the blind in Mark (cf. 10:46-52). Mark uses language and themes to connect this story to the healing of the deaf man in 7:31-37. There are five connections to the two stories:
They brought the man to Jesus
They begged him
That he might touch him
Jesus takes the man away from the people
He spits in the healing
Jesus only spits in these two stories in all of Mark making it perhaps the most obvious connecting point between them. With all five points of overlap, it is clear that Mark wants the reader to read this story alongside of or even as the completion of the healing in 7:31-37. If this story is designed to complete 7:31-37, what is the upshot? Why does Mark do this, and what does he want the reader to see?
I think the best interpretive option is one with an eye toward canonical expectation and fulfillment of the Messiah. Mark connects these two stories together to show that they together fulfill the expectations of Isaiah 35 because the sight of the blind man being restored (8:25) fulfills Isaiah 35:5a, which completes the aim of the story-telling in Mark 7:31-37: That Yahweh has come t rescue his people, and he has come fully in the form of Jesus.
Thus, Isaiah 35:2 is finally fulfilled because when the blind man sees clearly in 8:25, he sees Yahweh God in the form of Jesus, and it looked like this: “The glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God.”
But why are the two stories separated if Mark wants the readers to read them alongside each other? Separating stories of similar content and meaning is a common writing technique in the gospels. A clear example to see is Mark 11:12-14 and 11:20-26. Those two passages are about the same thing: Jesus cursing the fig tree. But they are separated around the story of Jesus cleansing the temple. Mark’s purpose is that the two outside stories are intended to help the interpretation of the story sandwiched in the middle. If we apply this interpretive key to the two healings in Mark 7:31-37 and 8:22-26, we can see that the clear visibility of the restored blind man emphasizes the persistent blindness of the disciples (8:17-18) and the Pharisees (8:11) in the middle. Seeing signs all around them, they are not able to perceive that Jesus is Yahweh.
In this way, the restored man in Mark 8:25 makes the perfect conclusion to the first half of the book; the book of power (1:1-8:30). Throughout this whole section, Jesus has been revealing himself in multiple ways that fulfill the Old Testament prophecies about the coming of the Messiah, but no human has recognized him yet. The Pharisees are blind to his appearance (8:11), Herod and the crowds mistake him for other options (6:14-16), and the disciples are also not yet seeing him clearly (4:41). But here, at the end of the first section, we get what we have been longing for: Someone to see Jesus clearly!
