#8 UNDERSTANDING THE BLEEDING WOMAN + Dr. James Sedlacek

Hello, hello, welcome to Biblically Speaking. My name is Cassian Bellino and I'm your host.

In this podcast, we talk about the Bible in simple terms with experts, PhDs, and scholarly theologians to make understanding

God easier. These conversations have transformed my relationship with Christ and understanding of religion.

Now I'm sharing these recorded conversations with you. On this podcast, we talk about the facts, the history, and the translations to make the

Bible make sense, so we can get to know God, our Creator, better. Welcome to Biblically Speaking.

I'm your host, Cassian Bellino, and if you are listening in, I'm so glad that you're here. This is a space where we get to learn what church couldn't teach us, and by talking through experts, we will get to know

God on a historical, scientific, personal, and contextual level. And most of all, that's going to be happening this week, because what we do is we sit down with a crowd favorite,

Dr. James Sedlicek, who is just, I don't know how to say it, but like a genius, a biblical scholar, somebody with a

PhD for both, and an MDiv for both the Old Testament and the New Testament, which is lacking in understanding the whole

Bible, if you're going to understand the Jewish and the Christian perspective. Well, we've got him. We've got the expert that knows both sides, so it's always going to be a fulfilling conversation with him.

This is the third time we've had him on the podcast, and honestly, not the last. Today, the goal was to go over one simple verse.

Let's talk about the woman who stopped bleeding when she touched the edge of his coat. And from a face value perspective of being a

Christian Anglo -Saxon Western 21st century believer seems pretty straightforward.

And the verse itself is like maybe five lines, depending on which gospel you're reading, but maybe you're getting bored because it's like, why are we talking about the sun's wearing?

Let me tell you, this verse goes so deep. It has references to the Old Testament, to prophecies.

It's got specifics that are alluding to translations that only pick up if you're working with,

I don't know, an expert in the Old Testament, New Testament, Hebrew, and Greek, which is what we got. So, you had a good episode.

It's a long one, but it's definitely worth it to listen up until the very end. Truly, his facts do not stop or slow down.

When I set out to do this podcast, which if this is a first time listening for you, the goal of this podcast was for me to understand the

Bible from a historical factual level, which is unfortunately not what

I was getting when I went to church. Church was sermons. It was community. It was understanding the overall lessons of Jesus.

Maybe you've been to church and that's what you got. And I got the same thing at Bible study, community, feelings.

What was I being called to? What was I being tested with? But for me, if I'm going to know and love a living

God, I've got to know and love who he is as a person. And if I have to love you as a person,

I need to know more about you just on a facts based level. What did you go through? What was it like?

What were the hardships of the society that you grew up in? How was the geopolitical climate really like affecting who you are as a person?

And when you kind of take in all the facts that impacted a person when they were growing up, and then you look at what they did as a person, and let's just say you're talking about a specific person named

Jesus who healed people and led them to see and did miracles. I mean, that's already pretty cool, but understanding how it all played out beyond my feelings and beyond what

I'm supposed to take away with. Now I know and love a really dope person, and I'm getting to know the

Bible, and that's just a textbook that just has so much overlap and meaning.

Of course, my faith is deepening, and I wasn't able to get this level of understanding anywhere.

I know what I needed, and it was to sit down with experts, and so that's what

I do. Once you commit to God's plan, they just kind of fall into your lap, and I've been running into and bumping elbows with experts, rabbis, pastors, and just getting them on here and asking them questions, which is exactly what we do today.

We look at one excerpt, one passage, and really dive into what's actually being said here, because from my eyes,

I'm not seeing much. I'm seeing a pretty straightforward passage about a miracle. Let's just simplify it down to that, but it's so much more than that, and we get that because we talk with experts.

This is mostly for my enrichment, and if you're tuning in and you're deciding to also learn, I am so glad that you're here.

I'm so glad that you share the same curiosity and passion for this. I'm so glad that you're willing to learn on a very basic level.

I am an entry -level Christian. As curious and confused and passionate as I am, we're starting at the bottom here.

I am in no way an expert in any form, and that's kind of the point, is I want the experts to speak and me to learn and listen.

That's really kind of the crux of the entire show, and especially today's episode.

If you're ready to learn today, get out a notepad, get out your Bible. This is going to really take a very small verse to the next level, and I'm just so glad you're here.

Thanks for listening. Also, shout out to everyone that just joined us. There was a big bunch of people that just started following, and I'm so glad and happy that you're here.

I can't wait to hear more thoughts, and keep giving me feedback, and keep giving me comments. Just a little change in the podcast is now we're kind of everywhere.

We're on TikTok. We're on YouTube. I finally figured out how to host the podcast on other platforms, so if you can't use

Spotify, we've got, I don't know, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio. I think that's it, but now it's just more accessible, so if you couldn't hear it before, maybe now you can, and I'm just really glad that you're listening.

If maybe you wanted to share it with some people, there was a group of people that DMed me from East Africa that said, we don't have

Spotify. Can you put it on YouTube? Now we're on YouTube, and now you get to see the full video, and you get to see my horrible reactions, but whatever.

I'm glad that you're here. I hope you listen. Hope you enjoy, and see ya. All right, hello,

Dr. Sedlicek. How are you? Good. How are you, Cassian? I'm so good.

So good after this week. Congratulations on going viral. Yes, I saw that.

I'm really excited just to talk with you to pick up where we left off last time, which you painted such a beautiful historical story of just how

Christianity has descended from the diaspora of Jewishness, just from, you know, different rulers at the time, and then the translations of going from Hebrew to Greek.

But the original purpose of the last call was to talk about a very specific verse, and as we just prepared before this call, it spans across three separate

Gospels. But I want to talk today about the verse where the

Jewish woman touches the hem of Jesus' cloak, and why that's so important. And you, as a scholar, are alluding to there is a lot of Jewishness influence in that, and when we read that as a

Christian, you know, I read it as a woman has such good faith that she touches just the hem of his coat, and something that has been plaguing her for 12 years suddenly just stops, in a very non -medical but life -changing type of way.

That is immense faith, and just such a life -changing moment for her. And even Jesus is in a crowd,

Jesus is like basically getting mobbed at this point, and yet he feels the power run out from him. He knows that something has changed, and he allows her to identify herself.

So we'll read the verse in a second, but before we jump into it, let's kind of do a little bit of a preface.

So I know you as the master of history and the master of translations, but where do your studies lie when it comes to understanding these types of verses in this

Gospel specifically? One of the first questions I asked myself when

I read a New Testament document, okay I've got that idea in my head after I read it, is that an idea that it would be fair that a first century

Jew would have if they read it? If it's not, I need to do more research and study on that verse.

Like you question if this was like your Christian 2024 mind, or if this was... And Western as well.

And Western. Okay, so walk me through that. What does the Western mind say when you read that type of verse, and what does your

Jewish mind, let's call it that, what does that say? Yes, so well, let's read the verse first.

At least read it in one of the Gospels. I'll read it in Matthew, because it's kind of succinct there, and then we can branch out into Luke, which provides a lot more detail.

Okay. So Matthew 9, 20 to 22, and it's just three verses,

And behold, a woman who had suffered from a discharge of blood for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment.

For she said to herself, If I only touch his garment, I will be made well. Jesus turned, and seeing her, he said,

Take heart, daughter, your faith has made you well. And instantly the woman was made well.

In my circle of Christians, this verse is often taken to mean that if something's wrong with my body, all

I need to do is blast some faith in the general direction of God, and I'm gonna be healed.

Looking at Christian theology a little bit broader, we have a sort of thing that has happened, especially in the

American sector, and especially a little more broader sometimes in the Western world, where we have this literalism that comes in through reading the text, but also these instant expectations, but we haven't thought that we fully understand the text yet.

We just thought, oh, okay, all it was was she had faith and Jesus even commented on her faith, so that's all that was needed for this to happen.

That was the whole story. And the other thing that I'm always reminded of is, we find this statement in John's Gospel, there were many things that Jesus did and said, and there's not enough books to put them all in.

We cannot record everything. So what we have in our Gospels, all four of them, is just a special selection of what things were, and when they're creating these documents for the consumption of the first century readers, they didn't have to explain every detail for them to understand what they meant.

For us, coming to these texts with a Western mindset, a 21st century mindset, and even an

American mindset that's been influenced by name -it -claim -it kind of theologies, we need to be a little bit suspicious that our quick, easy read of that text missed the point.

And so myself, I always do this to myself when I read a text, I say to myself, is that something a first century

Jew could have got by reading that, or by being exposed to that content? Or would they have understood something different?

And would they have already known, because they culturally knew this, the right background information to get the complete picture, or we're missing it because we don't have the background?

This is why we're on this call, because I could ask myself that and I wouldn't know the answer. All I know is my

American 21st century mind, which is why I think we missed the point of the Bible in a lot of ways.

But let's understand what that Jew, at that moment in time, when they heard that for the first time, maybe after it happened, where did that register?

How did that register? Why was it actually significant in even only three lines? And I mean, if we read it in Mark and Luke, it's a bit more details, but did you want to make another point?

Because I want to talk about what happened before this and how we even got there, but I don't want to skip over any points if you're gonna make them.

Yeah, I will be making more points on this, but it's okay if we go back and look at what's happening before this as well.

That's fine. Okay. The other thing I will say, just before we do that, is there's a question

I always ask people, and I get wide ranges of answers on this. What was it that she had faith in when she reached out and touched this garment?

And the most common answer I get, she had faith she was gonna get healed. Did she know about anything

Jesus had done before that moment? That's where it gets interesting, and to develop that question further, we have to go look in our

Hebrew Bible for the answers. Okay, okay, we will.

All right. Which, this is actually a kind of a good segue, because we will come back to that and what the Hebrew Bible would have said that she would have had faith in, but it's just absolutely wild to me.

The chronology of what happened prior to this is that Jesus, at this point, had just come up on a boat.

I'm just gonna give you the TLDR, my version. Jesus comes up on a boat. He comes up to a tomb.

I'm envisioning super scary graveyard, maybe something enclosed. I don't know what tombs looked like back in the day, but I feel like it's underground, and it's dark, and it's scary, and it had been known in the community that there was a possessed, like, gosh,

I think of the movie Split, with that guy who had multiple personalities, and one of his personalities was a monster, with super strength, just tearing chains off.

No one could keep him down, and he had so many demons in him. They called him Legion, like a

Legion army. That's how many demons were inside of him. So super strength, super dark, just experience as a whole, and then

Jesus comes face -to -face with him, because he comes up on him, and this man recognizes God in him, starts screaming at him, tears himself free, and let me see if it's in Mark.

Oops, I'm going way too far. As Jesus was getting into the boat, verse 1? Yep, 5 -1.

Oh my gosh, you're right. Yeah, verse 1. They went across the lake to the region of the Gerenesis.

Oh my gosh. That's a word. There's the word Gerasene in some manuscripts, and Gaterine in other manuscripts.

That word is, it's spelled two different ways in the manuscripts. It refers to the region on the, basically from three o 'clock position to six o 'clock position, on the edge of Lake Gennesaret, or what is often called the

Sea of Galilee. So if you imagine it's a clock, the lake, from three o 'clock to six o 'clock on that lake was a

Gasserines, or the Gerasenes, sorry. The difference is whether it's being given a

Hebrew name or an Aramaic name, and then a Latinate ending added to it.

So that's why it's spelled both ways in different Greek manuscripts. So this region was also called

Decapolis, the region of ten cities, ten Greek cities, and so they were still there in Jesus's day with a large

Greek population. Got it. Okay, so they come up to this area on a boat, the possessed man sees him, and then from a distance he shouts at the top of his voice, what do you want from me

Jesus, son of the Most High God, in God's name don't torture me. So at that point a demon has recognized that he's the son of God, he says please don't send me back into the abyss.

We talked about this on our demonic episode with Dr. Christopher Carr, and he essentially doesn't want to be sent back to hell, but instead

Jesus sends him to a flock of pigs, and those pigs run off a cliff, or they drown themselves. So I just think the point of bringing that up is his disciples have just seen this.

So they have seen this miracle take place, they've seen the recognition of a demon, but then after that a man comes up to Jesus and says hey, you clearly know how to heal people, could you come save my daughter, she's dying.

And so now a whole crowd of people is coming with Jesus to watch Jesus heal this man's daughter. They're all rushing, they're probably panicking because their daughter or their niece or their sister or their friend is about to die, the disciples are going with them, and then in this mob of people heading to this dying girl is when we get to the

Jewish woman that touches the edge of his cloak. So what did she have her faith in? Because I don't think she was there with legions.

I don't think she just saw that. Yeah, there's a little bit of traveling around that happens here.

Jesus goes to the region of the Gadarenes, but in Mark 5 on down to about verse 17, the

Gadarenes want him to leave after this miracle. They beg him to leave. So he goes out of their coast.

They were terrified because they had never seen a human form of an individual walk up to somebody with demon -possessed situation and just command the demons around and get them to do something and watch the man become stable and of a sound mind.

They had never seen that happen, so they were terrified. I kind of want to talk a little bit about, we mentioned this earlier, but the issue of clean and unclean coming from the

Jewish perspective. First of all, this region has become unclean because first thing you have to ask yourself is, why are there pigs inside Israel?

Pigs are an unclean animal and this is supposed to be a

Jewish area, but the reason that they're there is because of the Greek settlers that are located here.

They brought pigs with them and had pigs. So from the Jewish perspective, that was an unclean thing to have, just wandering about.

Because I live in Hawaii, we've got chickens everywhere. It doesn't matter if I'm in an apartment building or a farm. Yes, and so it's a good question to ask, why are there even pigs in the surrounding stories?

But if we remember that this is a Gentile population, this is a Greek population, then that explains the pigs.

They had pigs. And when the other thing to remember is that a demon is also associated with unclean spirits.

So there are holy spirits and there are unclean spirits. We don't read about any other type.

Technically you could have, because clean and unclean are one scale of something being clean or unclean, and holy and common is the other scale.

Common just means it's ordinary and it's not set apart for a special purpose, but holy it is. Would evil be on that scale then?

Would it be holy, common, evil? No. Holy and common is just one scale that an item could have.

For example, I could have a cup that's common. I can use it for coffee. I can use it for tea.

I can use it for water. It doesn't matter. But if I have a holy cup, I can only use it for certain things, like a set -apart cup.

So think about the cups in the temple. They were holy. They were set apart for the rituals of the temple and nothing else, which was why

Belteshazzar got himself in trouble when he used those goblets of gold for his drunken party in the

Book of Daniel. He violated the holy status of those cups.

So an item is either common and anyone can use it for anything, or it's holy. It's set apart for what

God wants out of it, and only what God wants from it. The other distinction, clean and unclean, is a prerequisite.

Before an item can be made holy, it first has to be converted from unclean to clean. So sin and all of the things of evil are on that scale on the unclean side.

So things have to be made clean before they can be made holy. So every time something was desecrated in history, they had to clean it with the right cleansing rituals before they could sanctify it back to its purpose for what

God wanted it to do. And so sin belongs on the unclean end of the clean and unclean spectrum.

But other things are unclean, too, if you are Jewish. Certain foods are unclean, and certain diseases are unclean, certain things that disrupt community are unclean, and so when an uncleanness is detected, it needs cleaned before it can be made holy.

So we see this kind of thing with temple artifacts. We also see this with individuals who are trying to become pure before God.

They get their act cleaned up before they become set apart to be God's prophet. Think about Isaiah and his first moment before he's a prophet, things like that.

You get the act of cleaning. And even priests, before they went up to do the sacrifice and the atonement, they would do cleansing rituals before they consecrated themselves, that's the setting apart part, to their duties for that week.

So there was a cleansing before there was a consecration or a setting apart. So there's two scales that we see, and it's interesting to me that you don't have common clean spirits, and you don't have holy unclean.

Right, you don't have holy unclean. If you have an unclean spirit, it is already common and unclean.

If you have a holy spirit, it's already clean to be holy. So that's the difference between, for example, a good angel would be would be called a holy one from on high.

So they're not unclean. They're also not common. They would be clean and holy for that.

And of course in Christian theology we have the Holy Spirit that in the New Testament as well also is not unclean.

It is also not common. It would be it would be both clean and holy. So you really only have two categories of spirits.

I see, but could you be common clean and common unclean? Or if you're a common, you're officially unclean?

If you're common, you could be clean. A human can do that, for example.

Yeah, it's possible to be common and clean. It's not possible to be holy and unclean.

That's the impossible situation on those two scales. Okay. And just kind of on a different topic now that we brought out clean and unclean, this is also often overlooked in New Testament theology.

How does holy and clean interrelate? They're not always the same thing because it's two different scales that are coming to us from the

Hebrew Bible. The clean and unclean distinction and the holy. A lot of New Testament commentators just think, well, clean and holy is the same thing, and unclean and common is the same thing.

They're not the same thing. They're two different scales, and so that sometimes happens.

I had no idea that these adjectives were so... I didn't even know that these adjectives were so important.

Yeah, they're very rigid distinctions in the Hebrew Bible, and within a

Jewish mind in the first century, they're going to be pretty rigid distinctions. Because of the way our

New Testaments are sometimes translated, but more so the way that our New Testament theologies are written, sometimes these distinctions are blurred, and when it relates to atonement theory and Christian life and things like that, sometimes they get just kind of lumped into one basket, and it destroys the distinctiveness of the

Jewishness that has gone into the thinking in the New Testament when we do that.

But that's another topic, really. It sounds like, just to finish up that thought, what was part of the divergence of those schools of thought that kind of contributed towards the

Jewish Christians, the hardcore Jewish, the hardcore Christians, the Christian Jews, was those distinctions on the beliefs and maybe how rigid they were being in those.

But yeah, let's tie it back to the cleanliness, uncleanliness, and common and holiness of this man.

And still with the demon in the Gadarene area, the demon is unclean because the demon is an unclean spirit, and the people in the village have gotten tired of dealing with this man's antics, so they've banned him.

They've even tried to lock him down, and he doesn't stay locked down, he breaks the chains and goes out. But where does he go to sleep?

He goes to the cemetery, and this is also a place of uncleanness, because to touch the dead or things of the dead or the dust from the dead is to make yourself unclean.

So the fact that he comes charging right out of the cemetery with his shackles burst, running at Jesus, most of his disciples would think, he's going to make our rabbi unclean.

He's going to pollute him. That would be the first thing that they would think. But here's where Jesus shows that, yes, that's the typical thing, the things that are unclean can taint the things that are clean, but he was the ruler over clean and unclean, and his presence was enough to dispel the unclean.

And this is what we see in this interaction between Jesus and the demoniac, and of course

Jesus has authority to cast out the demons, but where do they go? He doesn't send them back into the abyss, but he sends them into the unclean animals.

So unclean spirits go to the unclean animals and they are gone. So in one movement, he not only cleanses the demons from the area, but also the unclean animals from the area, which probably upset the economy for the

Greek section there, and probably is one factor in why they wanted him to leave. So what you just said was, so that he not only dispelled, he was untouched by an unclean spirit that came towards him, so if the uncleanliness never spread to a holy person or a clean person like Jesus, not only did it not affect him, but he was able to take away the uncleanliness and the commonness of this possessed man, put it into another unclean common pigs, a herd of pigs, and then once they drowned themselves basically get rid of it.

So that town specifically, as terrifying as it's going to be just in a human experience level, he did a great thing by dispelling so much uncleanliness for that region of Gentiles.

Yes, and they ask him to leave right at the end of Mark 5 .16, and I think it's a comment, the text only says that they asked him to leave because they were afraid, but I think also the economic dent they're going to have because they lost all their pigs is going to be part of it too.

So many human problems, you know, like they were scared and then they lost their food and they're like, I don't know, reap of harvest for the year, but at the end of the day, like such good was done in that moment.

Yes. There's a sermon in that somewhere. Yes, I think a lot of Jesus's interactions are coming into contact with the unclean, not being affected by it, which most people would be.

It was normal if a priest, a holy priest, came into contact with the dead, he would be unclean for a certain amount of days, he would have to ritually cleanse himself and then re -consecrate himself to the task of his priestliness before he could go back to his job.

But here Jesus is not affected by that. He's greater than the forces of evil and uncleanness, and he's able to dispel it, and that's kind of the surprise.

And it's one of the things that caused consternation among the the rigid folks that want to maintain human cleanliness religiously, like the

Pharisees. They were very focused on this kind of thing, and some of these things really irritate them, but they don't know what to do about them, because it seems like he dispelled it.

I mean, anything that someone could witness or see, this evil was dispelled, the uncleanness was dispelled, and cleanliness was the result.

So it was pretty hard to argue with. This is a whole other conversation, but there's a part of me that has some sympathy for the

Pharisees, just because as holy people, they're doing the best they can. They're trying to uphold

God's Word and be a religious society, and they're religious leaders in place. That seems like a very

God -focused nation. But you're right. Those rules of cleanliness are there for a purpose.

So when Jesus shmeses, this new guy comes in and starts getting close to the unclean, you're going to put up some walls and say, that's not how we do things.

Don't do that. We don't want to get leprosy. We don't want any of that. We want to keep our pigs.

Can you please not do that, Jesus? And it's just so beyond our comprehension.

Yeah, no, it's a whole other conversation, but I do have sympathy for them, even though they did kind of cause a downfall.

But moving forward, now he's... The Pharisees, I would say the Pharisees were the closest religious party to what

Jesus was in the Jewish world. The ones that probably...

There's times when the Pharisees are stated to be plotting against him, but the ones that are truly against him were the

Sadducee party. They were the ones that were the most against him, and the Pharisees often had

Pharisees that were for him, and some that were indifferent, and some that were, well, we're gonna weigh this thing out and see how it turns out.

So the Pharisees were not all in the same boat when it came to Jesus's identity.

They were wrestling with a lot of different issues around him. I think Nicodemus was a solid friend.

We also see Nicodemus show up at his burial to help bury him, so that's a good trait.

But yeah, the Pharisees are an interesting group inside the first century, for sure. Yeah, yeah.

I guess that's my mistake for trying to group them all together as just one evil group of people, but like all people, you know, there's going to be, you know, various opinions.

But interesting that there's parties within the Pharisees. Yes, and even within the

Jewish religion, in the practitioners of it, the Sadducees had a very different approach than the

Pharisees. They often butted heads over issues of life and how to interpret the

Torah, and they were almost polar opposites in terms of how to think about the text.

And so when we look at the conversations between Jesus and the Pharisees, we see bickering in the

New Testament text, but what's been the tendency for most of our

New Testament thinkers is to think that that involves animosity, like they were enemies or something like that.

And actually the type of debates that they're having are the type that you normally have with people that pretty much align with you, and the discussions that they were having would be typical for any two

Pharisees or rabbis to have amongst themselves. Debate was a healthy part of first century

Judaism. Debates were often had between rabbis and groups of Pharisees, so that wasn't uncommon.

To not have conversations that were ongoing was actually a sign of separation, and you don't read about Jesus having conversations with the

Sadducees. Having conversations that weren't ongoing was a sign of separation.

Yes. Interesting. The only interaction that we read about with Jesus and the

Sadducees was a trial, and they said all the words and he said nothing. Wow.

So even if it's a hard conversation, keep having it. Yeah, I think so, and I think healthy religious discussion is often two people who have different views, or more, can be more than two, and they discuss those things.

I think sometimes that's where truth -seeking actually takes place. Yeah, absolutely.

Well, let's keep talking. Yeah, sure. Okay, so now everyone's like, get out of here,

Jesus, you're scary, and now another man comes up to Jesus. What do you think is the timeline between that?

Do you think he like pivoted to leave town and then a guy approached him? Do you think it was like a couple days later that some guy approached him to say, my daughter is dying?

Well, they have to pass across the That's the first step. That's probably a several -hour journey.

If you're late in the evening when you start, you're gonna be morning getting to the other side. Oh, it's like eight hours on the water at least.

It depends on the wind, because it's sailboats, and most of your wind is going the opposite direction that he needs to travel now, because he's on the end where the wind blows to, and now he's got to go to the side where the wind blows from.

Yeah, I would kill to hear what those conversations were like between the disciples on that boat.

And the man who was cleansed actually wants to join them. He wants to come so that he could be with them again, but Jesus didn't allow him for some reason.

We're not even told why. Jesus said, no, we're gonna go alone, and part of that is because they're about to go to a new mission, a different mission, and Jesus needs the 12 to be with him, and they're gonna stick with him.

The other thing is, I think we mentioned this the other day, a typical first century fishing boat for that lake was about a 15 -passenger boat, and so Jesus and the 12 are 13.

Maybe they had some gear. Maybe there wasn't a lot of room for another person. Maybe there was enough, but it wouldn't be for many more, for sure.

Two more at the max if they had nothing with them. But he says to him, go and tell your people what was done for you.

Which is interesting. Yeah, he turns him into a witness, basically. Well, I feel like Jesus was telling people not to talk about his miracles because he didn't want people to know about him yet because he knew that that was leading to the resurrection.

I also know that like Jesus knew every step he took. That was at the perfect time for when he revealed himself to get to the resurrection.

So it's interesting that before he was saying, don't tell anybody about this, and now to this guy he's saying, tell everybody what

I've done and what you've seen here today. Yeah, he says, go to your home and your friends and tell them the great things that God has done for you.

He doesn't say what I did for you. He says what God did for you. So he uses that language, and we're still looking at Mark 5 .19,

but this language that he uses with him is different than what he used with the others, but we have to remember he's not in a

Jewish neighborhood here. He's in a Gentile, a Greek neighborhood. So in the Greek neighborhood, he wants him to go tell what

God has done because it won't get misunderstood as easily, and it won't cause debates as much.

In the Jewish sectors, if Jesus is perceived as one who's acting on behalf of the divine, it creates more problems than it solves.

So he tried to do his miracles on the down -low. Oh my gosh. Yeah, so because a

Gentile would hear that and be like, sounds good, whereas a Jew would be like, not my God. Yeah, because for the

Greek man or the man in the Greek sector, typically what's worshipped is the pagan

Greek gods, and recently, recently as in in the last 40 -50 years or so, the

Caesar has been trying to get the acclaim to the gods. Instead of going to the gods, it's going to Caesar.

Don't know how much Caesar worship has impacted the Decapolis region, but it impacted most of the

Roman Empire, and a lot of the people had forsaken the old gods, and they were worshipping Caesar. One area we know of that didn't do that so much was

Ephesus, because they were loyal to Artemis, and that actually creates havoc between the

Caesar and the Artemisians over in Ephesus. But this region probably was still worshipping their old gods but giving

Caesar all the credit and things that Caesar needed to keep Caesar happy. So how come they wouldn't feel threatened by Jesus if they're like, whoa, what about Zeus?

Yeah, I think for Jesus to turn him into a witness, it's to begin having people think not about Zeus, not about Caesar, but let's think about God.

And so it has a semi -evangelistic purpose here within this community where it may not have one in a

Jewish community. And so he's seen as a prophet or as a rabbi, and that's working better than seeing him as a person connected to the divine.

Whoa. This guy went from so demonically possessed to being the muster seed planted in such a paganistic society.

Yeah. Oh my gosh. He was cleansed and then he was set apart right after to be the witness.

I might cry. Oh my gosh, that is so amazing. Oh my gosh,

I won't cry. So now they're on a boat for hours because the wind's against them.

The disciples are probably reeling, at least I would be if I was one of them. And now they get to a new type of land.

I'm gonna let you take over. This is a Jewish sector now. They're headed back to the Jewish side.

They probably land somewhere around the eight to nine o 'clock position on the clock, maybe ten o 'clock, you know, somewhere in that region.

There were a lot of fishing villages along there. Capernaum was a famous one, but he's back in home territory now.

And when he comes to, in Mark 5 .22, when he comes to this side, one of the rulers of the synagogue came named

Jarius, came running to him and saw him and fell down at his feet. That is a verse that's very easy to pass over when we're reading it in our

Americanized Western mind, 21st century mind, because everybody fell down at people's feet, right?

No. That's how I greet all my friends. Yeah, we don't today, do we? But in the ancient world, it was the only form of greeting someone divine.

How many divine people were they running into? Like, none. None. Oh, got it.

So that was like a big deal. This was a big deal, and it's a really big deal if the ruler of the synagogue is doing it, running and then falling at his feet.

When we read in our Bibles, the Hebrew Bible, how many times somebody fell face forward to the feet of somebody, they thought they were

God, and it turned out they were an angel. Or when the burning bush is speaking to Moses, it actually is

God in the bush. Yeah, I'm thinking when they greeted the angels in the town that turned to salt.

Yeah. Mm -hmm. And then he welcomed, yeah, and saw them. He saw the angels and fell at their feet.

Yeah, and it is a little wider than that. We do see the prostrating of oneself before rulers, like a king, an emperor sometimes, but don't miss the fact that those emperors are declaring themselves to be

God to those people. They are? The emperors that request this kind of worship, yes.

What? Yeah, so like in Nebuchadnezzar, when he wants the people to bow before the golden idol, the idol is of himself, but he's being worshipped as a

God. That's why Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are not going to bow to it, or at least the latter three.

Daniel's not mentioned in that story, but the Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego cannot bow.

That is a sign of worshiping a God, and Nebuchadnezzar and his golden statue are not

God. Now, a lot of ancient rulers expected people to do this to them, but in the

Jewish circle, that did not happen. This was something that was only done to and for God.

The proper position of prayer in the temple, in any time that was ever up, was a prostrated position facing the

Most Holy Place. So you went down, face forward, face to the ground, facing the

Most Holy Place, and that's how people prayed at the temple.

That was normal. So they would do that all of church service?

I feel like this is, I feel so dumb asking that. No, that's a good question. Synagogue is not the same thing as the temple.

So synagogue is a place where you meet, you you do worship God there, you sing songs, you have a sermon from the rabbi, and sometimes there's needs that need met, and within the village and the community and people take up collections and meet needs from the synagogue's central location.

A synagogue was an extension of its village or its city in terms of meeting people holistically, too, not just, oh, we came here to worship

God, now everybody go home. It was, so God was worshipped in the synagogue, but it was also a place to sit and listen, a place to ask questions and interact with the speaker, and a place for people to grow.

Yeah, so it was a, it had a multifunction sort of approach, and churches were modeled after the synagogues, early churches were.

They were not modeled after the temple. The temple was the place of sacrifice, the place of atonement, but the synagogue was the place for people to grow and learn.

Very interesting distinction. Thank you for explaining that. Okay, so a leader of one of these synagogues or temples falls at his feet.

Yeah, and that's a shocker, and we don't recognize the shock when we read this, because we don't recognize what this means to the community.

There's no reaction. They don't even say, and then his disciples were baffled. Right, right. We don't get the, we don't get the crowd pan from the camera here to see what's going on with everybody else.

I wish that we did, and I think some documentaries try to try to duplicate that with acting.

I know in some of my high school level Bible classes, I showed some well -done video series that kind of depicts some of these things.

So if you're not catching it when you're reading Matthew or Mark or Luke, you can see it acted out, and it's like, well, why did they all look in horror at what was going on?

I thought that was just an ordinary statement. That's good to know. I thought maybe that was like Hollywood playing it up.

Right. So yeah, so he falls at his feet and beseeches him greatly, saying, my little daughter lies at the point of death, and then of course, depending on your

English translation, it says, I pray thee, that's the King James, that's just Old English for us, but I request of you is, or please come, and do that.

Please come, yeah. Yeah, so please come and lay your hands on her, that she may get well and live.

So he already understands that Jesus can heal his daughter and help her live, but he's already prostrated himself for her, and he's not a commoner, so to speak.

He's one of the rulers of the synagogue. So when a ruler of the synagogue does this, it's like, well, he knows his theology, right?

And it's like, he's bowing down full -faced in front of this guy. It's saying something that if an ignorant person were to do this, someone would maybe correct them, you know?

But if the ruler of the synagogue does this, he's their spiritual leader. It's like, you're not gonna go correct him, right?

Right. This is a detail that we often miss, just reading it quickly in English.

Yeah. And Jesus begins to go with him. He starts to follow him there, and much people followed him and thronged him.

He's still on the way to heal this man's daughter, and a big crowd presses in on him.

We don't know why, specifically this time. Did they hear that news from Decapolis, where the

Gadarene or Gerasene man was cleansed? Did news reach this side of the water?

Not very likely, but this is also not the first time Jesus has been in this area. Can I just pause real quick?

Yeah, go ahead. Since we're approaching the question of how did the woman have faith, like what did she have faith in, what did this leader have faith in?

When you say that he wasn't ignorant and he knew the Jewish text, was he already recognizing

Jesus as a prophet, or what was he seeing? What did he have his faith in?

Right. I haven't worked out all the details for his reaction, but he seems to be approaching him at least as someone who's come from heaven, but exactly how did he get here, we don't know.

So he's approaching him the same way that some of the angels were approached by people, so at least he's a messenger from heaven somehow, exactly how, we don't know.

And so it seems like Jairus is approaching him that way. Okay. He doesn't say he's divine, necessarily, that we don't know that he knows that he's divine or thinks that he's divine.

Sometimes it's easy for us to read too much into the text, but he's at least interacting with him the way that people interact with angels.

But what would normally happen when someone went prostrating on the ground before an angel, the angel would say, get up,

I am not him, get up. Jesus doesn't do that.

That's a good point. So there's a message that's being given subtly, but I don't think it can be ignored, at least in a first century

Jewish context. They have to be thinking about this and talking about this. The ruler prostrated himself and he didn't say get up,

I'm not the one you should be bowing down before. That's a good point. So something's going on here that's just a bit different.

And of course some of these things are subtle. They're so subtle that you don't actually pick them up in an

English text without filling in background details. You just can't pick them up.

And I also think that they were still subtle in that day, but it was noticeable enough that people had to think about it and ask their friends, their neighbors, what was that?

Something don't seem right there. What was going on that day? And then probably later they've got to ask

Jarius, what were you thinking? Right, and if you're reading this text as a first century

Jew, kind of what you were saying at the beginning, you know, we read this for face value right now, but if I was in maybe in that mentality,

I'd say, wait, hold up, he didn't tell him to get up. Or why would he have known to, you know, you would have been thinking those types of things.

So this is great. Okay, so now a mob is pressing in on him and he's in a mosh pit.

I'm just kidding. Yeah, he's headed somewhere and the road has become congested.

And a certain woman who had an issue of blood, we read it in Matthew already, so now we're in Mark's Gospel reading it, a certain woman which had an issue of blood for 12 years and had suffered many things of many physicians.

So this was the result of the medical practitioners of the day trying to cure her. So she was subjected to whatever first -century medicine, medical treatments that would be done.

Don't know what they all would have been. I've read some Greek manuscripts on ancient medicine.

I've read some of Hippocrates' own works. The same, he was the founder of the

Greek School of Medicine and he wrote many works on a lot of medicine. Some of the treatments were quite a bit different from what we're used to in the 20th or 21st century, so some of them sound barbaric to us, but they did work.

But I haven't read anything that would relate to her illness, so I don't know what would be the treatments in the first century.

Of course, Hippocrates is older. He's several centuries before this, but his manuscripts were around.

People did study medicine in Athens. Luke, for example, who we'll be taking a look at his passage on this, was a medical doctor, probably what we think of today as a primary care doctor.

Maybe 50 years ago we would have thought of him as the family doctor. You know, that was the kind of care that he was involved in.

So Luke was that kind of doctor, and probably more of this kind of doctor was in this woman's area.

Many people did study medicine. Medicine had been around. We tend to think that, well, we've got more things figured out today in medicine than anybody ever has, and it's true down a certain track.

But there were things that were figured out in the ancient world too, and sometimes those were forgotten and relearned over time.

We often forget to take into account civilization collapses and periods of renewing.

That's why we have the Dark Ages and the Renaissance. The Dark Ages were a civilization collapse point, and the

Renaissance was renewing the knowledge that we had lost. So she suffered many things.

She's been suffering for 12 years. If you've got something wrong with you, and it's wrong with you for 12 years, you're gonna try to go to a lot of different doctors and try to get it fixed or seen or something.

Somebody says, oh, this other doctor's got a special skill. Maybe that one can help you out.

And then, of course, you go and help try to get help from that one. So she endured a bunch of treatments that were not successful.

That can be exhausting, draining, emotionally, psychologically. And then the next note, and she spent all that she had and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse.

She never got better. Everything just went downhill. So she was at her wit's end, and when she heard of Jesus, she heard about Jesus, we don't know what she heard.

That's the first thing that stands out in my mind. What did she hear? Not just that, oh, a man named

Jesus is outside. She heard something about him that we're not told here.

She heard about Jesus. She came up in the crowd behind him and touched his cloak.

That's Mark's Gospel. In Matthew, we had touching the fringe of his garment.

In Mark's Gospel, we just have the cloak. No specific region of the cloak is mentioned.

For she said, if I may but touch his clothes, I shall be well. And straightway, the fountain of her blood was dried up, and that doesn't mean that her blood in her body suddenly turned solid and she couldn't have blood.

What it means is that the bleeding stopped, and she felt in her body that she was healed of that affliction.

And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue or power had gone out from him, turned him about in the press, or he turned about in the press and said, who touched my clothes?

And his disciples said to him, you see a big crowd around you, and you're asking, who touched you?

They're kind of taken aback by this. They don't have enough information to know what's going on.

You're in a crowd of people, and somebody whirls around. You've been elbowing your way through, shouldering your way through, and then they were on, who touched me?

You've been bumped by 50 people in 50 seconds. What do you mean, who touched you? Exactly. So they're a little bit frustrated by it, but then he looked around to see her that had done this thing, or the woman who had done this thing.

She must have been on like her hands and knees, right? If she's gonna touch that, she had to at least stoop low or get down low to do that, yes.

We'll say a little bit more about what that was in a moment, but it's not something that's up at chest level.

It's something that's down low on the garment, and the woman was fearing and trembling, aware of what had happened to her.

She came and fell down before him. There we get that same phrase that we had with Jarius. She falls down before him.

Now she's not a synagogue ruler, obviously, so maybe she's a little bit ignorant.

We don't know. We don't know what theology she was told, you know, in the past years at the synagogue, how much she paid attention to and whatnot, but this also is something that's not typically done, falling down before someone's feet.

Same thing we said earlier, but she fell down before him and told him the whole truth. And he said to her, daughter, thy faith, your faith has made you well.

Go in peace and be healed of your affliction. And the go in peace part is something that seems a little bit odd to us in our

American setting or the Western mindset, but this is a common expression when people are greeting or departing in Jewish culture.

Shalom Lecha, or peace to you. Shalom Lechem, peace to you all, is a very common expression.

It's also used in Arabic today, very much so. Salaam alaikum.

People have heard that, I'm sure, but it's the same phrase, peace be to you, peace be upon you.

And in English, you will hear it, too, as well. This is a normal social greeting.

He's basically saying goodbye here. Okay, thank you, bye -bye. Yeah, it seems rather abrupt, rather fast, and he says, go in peace and be healed of your affliction.

And then, of course, that's when he gets the update on Jarius's daughter. Yeah, yeah. I want to back up here and also catch

Luke's story on the woman who approached Jesus.

There was a woman, this is Luke 8 43, there was a woman who had a discharge of blood for 12 years, and though she spent all her living on physicians, the interesting thing here is that Luke is a lot more precise about details when it comes to medicine.

He's got the word for physicians, he's got discharge of blood very specifically stated here, where the other

Gospels are a little bit more general, and she spent all her living. The thing here that I noticed with Luke's writing above the others is that Luke comments a lot on the socioeconomic status of individuals in the story.

She's broke, and Luke is careful to say it in a lot more detail, and that she could not be healed by anyone.

She came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment, and immediately her discharge of blood ceased or stopped.

And Jesus said, Who was it that touched me? When everyone denied it, Peter said, Master, the crowds around you, the crowds surround you, and are pressing in on you.

And Jesus said, Someone touched me, for I perceive that power has gone out for me. And when the woman saw that she was not hidden,

I mean, she hid herself, but the truth was known. So she's not totally hidden now. This kind of reminds me of the

Adam and Eve story when they're hiding in the bushes, and God says, Where are you? They're not truly hidden, but they've hidden, right?

And so she realizes she was not hidden. She came trembling and falling down before him, declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched him, and how she had been immediately healed.

And he said to her, Daughter, your faith has made you well. Shalom lech, go in peace.

And basically tells her goodbye, right? Right there. So what do we have here?

What are we missing to understand what she has done? It's very abrupt.

Yeah, the story is really abrupt, and when you read all three accounts, John doesn't have the story, so when you read it in these three

Gospels, you're left wondering. That was really abrupt. It seemed really valuable and important here for the writers to include it, but they didn't include enough detail for me to know what's going on.

So what are we missing, James? Yes, when I first read this in Greek, I thought, Well, I would find the answer if I just read it in Greek.

No, you're still missing all the details that you need to fully fit the story together.

Okay. So that didn't help, reading all three Gospel passages in Greek.

Well, I was in a role where I was teaching Hebrew, and we happened to be teaching on the texts.

That opened my eyes to what is the missing part here, and then I connected the dots. So I want to go to another text.

We're going to go to three texts in our Hebrew Bible, and once we read these in English, we should be able to see what it is she has faith in, in order that her faith has made her well.

Jesus just tells her, Your faith has made you well, but he doesn't say what her faith was in. What did she believe?

What exactly was it? Was it just that she would become healed? I believe

I will be healed, so I'm healed? That's a common interpretation, but it's missing something. It also misses the point why

Jesus healed people in the Gospel accounts. Very often, the people that receive healing, not every story, but the major ones that are included in the

Gospel accounts have a common thread, and I think if we look at this, we'll see the common thread.

Numbers 15, 37, 38, and 39. Three -verse segment.

This is in the Torah. This is what God told Moses to tell all the Israelites to do. So verse 37 is really short.

The Lord said to Moses, 38, Speak to the people of Israel and tell them to make tassels on the corners of their garments, the cloaks, throughout their generations, and to put a cord of blue on the tassel at each corner.

So these tassels were probably white or off -white, and there would be a blue cord in the middle of this tassel on the corners, but only on the corners.

And it shall be a tassel for you to look at and remember all the commandments of the

Lord, and to do them, and to not follow after your own heart and your own eyes.

So this this tassel has a special purpose. It's to remember all of God's commandments. Every time you see the tassel, you're supposed to remember, but then not only remember them, but remember to do them, and remember that we're not supposed to follow after our own heart and our own eyes, but to follow what

God has said. So that's the purpose of the tassel, and what is the thing that God has told them?

It's the Torah. It's the laws of Moses. And so every time you look at the tassel, you think of, oh, the books of Moses, the things that God told us to do.

We need to do them, and not follow after our own heart and our own eyes, because our own heart and our own eyes can lead us in a lot of different places.

So these tassels are there. There's four of them. A cloak is a squarish garment that goes around you, but the tassels would hang down low, and this was, it's often called a tallit in Jewish culture, and the the tassel on the end is the tzitzit, and these are the these are the pieces of it.

And in modern Judaism, this is often worn on a prayer shawl, a smaller tallit, if you will, that's really small and just goes over the head.

But these were normally, before those were invented, I would say, they were normally large cloaks that were worn over the whole body, and this was a primary garment that you would wear to keep yourself warm on a chilly evening out.

It's the interesting phrase to me here is, speak to the people of Israel and tell them to make these things, put them on, and throughout all their generations do this.

So let's fast forward to the New Testament. Jesus is a Jew. What must he have on?

One of these tallits with the tzitzit at the corners, with the blue cord in the tassel on each corner.

But isn't he in a Jewish nation right now? He is in the in the territory, yes.

So he's he's left the region of the Gadarenes and he's come to the west end of the lake, which is a

Jewish section. So he's there and he has his tallit and his tzitzit on as he's walking around.

He would not have disobeyed this. Jesus fulfilled all the law in his lifetime, so he wouldn't have been disobedient of the law of Moses.

He would have done what's in the text. And this is something that often escapes our often

Western Christian mindset specifically, thinking of Jesus as doing the things that are in Moses's law carefully.

We're often not taught this in church, for example. But he does. He did. And he has to have one of these on because he's a

Jew and he's one of the ones that are throughout all the generations. So he's obedient to the law.

He's wearing this cloak with the tassel on it. Here in Numbers we find a command by God for devout

Israelites to place the tassels on the garments, specifically having a blue cord in it.

And something that's not immediately apparent, but it's clear in the Hebrew Bible, is that this word corner, and I'm gonna say the

Hebrew word, is kanaf. Okay. But it's called kanaf because if you're running down the road with your tallit on and these corners start flapping, it looks like wings.

That's beautiful. Yeah, keep that image in mind as we think about Jesus and his first century garments.

The kanaf is an important piece to how we're going to connect some text together that aren't immediately obvious.

So we have this kanaf. It can either be translated edge, corner.

It's the Hebrew word for wing. Now I want to kind of add, go back and catch

Luke's word for this thing. What did he say? She touched the fringe of his garment.

Yeah, mine says edge of his cloak. Edge, okay. Edge is a common translation. All right, so I want us to keep the the word kanaf in mind here.

And here's one of the issues that comes to mind. When we translate the

Hebrew Bible into English and then we go and translate the Greek New Testament into English, we are not guaranteed that the translator of both ended up on the same

English word. So kanaf can be wing here, it can be corner or fringe here, and we won't catch it because now we're using different English words for something.

Right. All right, it's the same word used throughout the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament regardless of whether it's referring to a bird's wing or the corner of a garment with the tzitzit on it, the tassel with the blue cord thread.

The other thing to notice is that God commanded Moses that all Israelites should do this forever. This was not a temporary thing in Moses' day, so Jesus is doing it in Jesus' day.

It's a powerful reminder of what God has given us and what we should do. Obey God.

And that was everywhere present as you walked around in the community. You would not miss this thing or go a day without seeing this thing.

Probably wouldn't go five minutes without seeing this thing. Yeah. So Jesus follows this tradition.

Jesus would have had these fringes on his garment with the corner tassel having that blue cord in it, and it's not an accident.

It's not random. He's doing it because of the Moses law in Numbers, and by doing so he's encouraging the people around him to obey

God's laws and remember them as any Israelite would have worn. Now, there's another story in our

Hebrew Bible that talks about this kanaf. In the book of Ruth, Ruth 3, 7, 8, and 9, just three verses, just to give a little background to these three verses,

Ruth has become a widow while married to an oldest son.

An oldest son is the inheritor. He's the one who inherits his father's property, and Ruth was married to him, but he died before they had a child, so she has the right to produce the heir to the property because she was married to the oldest son, but she no longer has the ability because he's dead, his dad's dead, and the property's in limbo.

Well, in the Jewish circles you had a law that allowed someone who was in a reserve status in the community to come in and be the redeemer of such situations, and that person was a was a man of decently good means.

They couldn't be a broke person. They had to be somebody who had a job and money. The ability to take over a widow with children, if need be, and raise the children, so they had to be somebody with substantial means, and also of a good report in the village elders.

He couldn't be a scoundrel. He had to be somebody who was upright, who remained single until an available widow needed a husband.

Interesting. And so there was a guy like that. His name was Boaz, and Ruth was targeting him.

She wanted him. She wanted to marry him, and we have to realize that's going on.

She's not so aggressive, but she's clearly got him in mind. She's very focused on him.

It hasn't been too terribly long since she's developed this approach to Boaz.

It's only been a few days since she's known him, but she's honing in on him because he's available, and she fits the profile of someone he should marry, because that's his job, is to be a person who stays single until a widow needs a husband in the clan.

But here's how the approach happens. In verse 7, Ruth 3 .7, when Boaz had eaten and drank his supper, his heart was merry, and he went to lie down at the end of the grain heap.

He's the one that pounds the grain to turn it into material that can go to the mill, and then it gets ground at the mill into flours.

So he's got the back -breaking end of the job. So when he's done with his job for the day, he's pretty beat, pretty tired.

So he drinks his drink. He eats his meal. His heart is merry. He goes to lay down at the end of the grain heap.

He's gonna get up probably in the crack of dawn and begin again. Until this grain is processed, he's got to stay on it, because you get about a three -day window to process grain before it molds and rots.

What? Yeah. Mm -hmm. Usually if you cut the grain, it drops in the field.

You got about two or three days to get it up out of the field and onto something dry, or it ruins.

And then once you've got it in a dry place, you still have only about two to three days, three days most likely, to process the grain and get it down to hard grains only.

So anyway, she comes in, and she had recently converted to the

Israelite religion. She was not an Israelite. She was from Moab. But Ruth makes a commitment when she follows

Naomi into Israel. She makes a commitment to serve her God. We see that your

God will be my God before she follows her in. So she's serious about doing things the way that God says to do it when she comes in.

So she's interested in obtaining something that's rightfully hers, but the right way.

She wants to follow the law of Moses and become married to a kinsman -redeemer. So that's her mission.

She meets Boaz, and the scene in Ruth 3 -7 is where he first gets his clue that she wants to marry him.

At midnight, he was, well, I missed a piece. She came in softly and uncovered his feet and lay down.

And we think, well, what has that got to do with anything? Well, if you are chilly at night, in this kind of time of the year, it's going to be hot in the day, but it gets really chilly at night because of where it's located.

It's an arid area, and the temperature drops significantly after the sun goes down. So by uncovering somebody's feet, that means in the middle of the night, they're going to wake up with cold feet.

Not the metaphorical kind, but the physical cold feet. They want to fix their blanket or their toilet with the tzitzit on the corners.

We have to keep remembering that that's what he must have as he's laying down there. That's the thing that was covering his feet.

And at midnight, he was startled. Of course, that's when his feet got cold, right? So at midnight, he was startled and turned over, and behold, a woman lay at his feet.

She's just chilling there. That's crazy. Yeah, she's just chilling there. How long did she wait?

I don't know. It would have been a few hours. Of course, we don't know what time she showed up, but she's kind of snuck in there and uncovered his feet and laid down.

She must have been there a while anyway, just waiting. And he said, who are you? And she said, I am

Ruth, your servant. She's got a mission. You can't blame her. No, no. She's diligent. And she says,

I am Ruth, your servant. And that kind of language is odd to us, but that was the language that people often used around nobility.

She's perceiving him as a noble person. She's a foreigner who has moved into the land, and he is a landed individual with property and jobs to hand out to people.

He employed a bunch of people, so he's one of the recognized leaders in his community.

So she says, I am Ruth, your servant. But then she tells him what to do. Spread your wing over your servant, for you are a redeemer.

Now, what word is that? That's kanaf. What's she talking about? The corner tassel, the end of the kanaf, where the tzitzit is sewn onto the talit.

Spread this over me, for you are a kinsman redeemer. What is this thing? What has it become?

It's a symbol of covenant and covenant -making, because it is the symbol of God's covenant with Israel, first of all, to remember

God's laws, to do them, and to keep them. So that's the symbol that it is. It's a covenant symbol.

Put your covenant symbol over my head. Put it over me, because you are able to marry widows.

Wow, and Boaz realized what was going on at that point. Yeah, he got the message.

He's like, we're getting married, aren't we? Yeah, she's asking him to do the thing he's been waiting to do.

Wow. He knows what this symbol means. We miss what this symbol means, because we don't recognize it as a covenant symbol.

Spread your wing over your servant. What does that mean? It's like, is he a chicken?

Has he got a wing? No, it's this corner of the garment thing with the tassel on the end with the blue cord in it, the symbol of covenant -making and covenant - keeping.

Not just covenants, but keeping the covenant, because that was what it was for, for the

Israelites to remember the laws of God, to keep them, and do them. And so it's about covenant -making and covenant -keeping.

All right, James, you're gonna have to spell out the connection between this and the woman. We have to read a third passage in our

Hebrew Bibles. Malachi 4. Malachi 4, verse 1. For behold, a day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all the evildoers will be stubble.

The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will neither leave them root nor branch.

But for you who fear my name, the Son of Righteousness shall rise with healing in his

Qunaf. There it is. In his wings you shall go out leaping like calves from the stall, and you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day when

I act, says the Lord of hosts. It's an odd little passage from a prophet, one of the minor prophets as we often think of it, or Megalote prophets, because they're on a scroll of twelve prophets.

That's how they were recorded and collected. It's a rather odd phrase, but it suggests that there's healing in the corner tassel with the blue thread on it that someone who's coming will have.

Now this passage in Malachi is a Messianic passage. In the first century, a

Jewish person would connect these, many, not all maybe, but many would connect these three passages together to realize that there is a person who's coming who will have healing through the

Qunaf on the end of their tallit, or the tzitzit on the end of their tallit, or Qunaf as it's often called, and that person is connected to a

Messianic passage, a Messiah passage. She would have realized by then that Jesus's healing activities had never yet included the tallit, the tassel on the end of the corner, the blue corded tassel, and so if he's really the

Messiah and I touch that and I'm healed, then that also proves he's the

Messiah to me. So this one was well read, or are you saying that was common knowledge, that verse in Malachi?

I think the Megalot scroll would have been read commonly in many synagogues. Your typical reading material in a synagogue is going to be the

Psalms, the Torah, and Isaiah's scroll. Those are common. We see

Jesus in the synagogue reading from Isaiah in the Gospels, and that these were common, but also the

Megalot scroll, the scroll that has the twelve minor prophets, would have also been read commonly too.

Not every synagogue may have had a copy. We do see synagogues that do, some that don't. Sometimes the wealth of the synagogue is in question, but she's also been all over the place trying to get healed and speaking to different doctors, probably visiting different synagogues in this process.

Her ability to have heard the passage of Malachi would be quite high.

Wow, that is insane. I mean, there's no way for her to know, like, hey, of all the healings that Jesus has done, did anybody touch the hem of his cloak?

But in her head, if I, you know, he even says in one of them, if as long as I just touch the hem of his coat,

I'll be healed. You know, it says that's what she thinks. I love when that happens, when it connects.

It connects, and it doesn't connect just because we read the New Testament, or even if we read it in Greek.

It connects when we realize what Hebrew word would get translated into that Greek word, and which

Hebrew word is used in the other stories, and how the kanaf is a broad category word, because if you're reading

Malachi in English, you're not going to connect this thing to anything with a garment. Right. If someone has healing in their wings, they might be an angel or something.

With wings, they flap. But this was a common word for the tallit, on the corner of the tallit, where the tzitzit is sewn.

That is the tassel, and Jesus isn't the only one in history that had something like this happen.

Elijah also did, but Elijah was before Malachi, and Malachi says there's one coming who will have healing in his wings.

So it's almost like he's a sort of following the steps of Elijah a bit here in this story, but this woman perceives that Jesus should be able to do it that way.

Yeah. And goes for it, and none of the gospel writers even tell us that she's connected these dots.

No. They don't, and so the clues are actually in the Hebrew Bible rather than in the

Gospels. I'm so glad you're here. I mean, I would have never learned this in church, because it's not like I've got a

Hebrew speaking or Greek speaking pastor, but I also wouldn't have learned this in Bible study.

This is so intense. This is really intense, but amazing. I'm so glad you're here.

One of the things this leads us to is why do miracles happen around Jesus? Oh. Yeah.

A lot of them happen, especially the ones that get recorded by the gospel writers happen because there was faith in him as something more than just a healer.

There was faith in him either as divine or faith in him as the Messiah, one or the other, that initiate and cause the miracle to become an important one for the gospel writers to record.

Now whenever people are just randomly healed by Jesus, you'll get these statements that say, and he went and healed others for three days while he was in this village, but their story isn't told.

When we get when we get a story of somebody narrated out with their healing story, the ones that are highlighted this way are usually stories where someone exercised faith in Jesus's identity, either as Son of God in some stories or as the

Messiah, the long -awaited one in the Jewish literature. So, and I say either or because the language is either or.

They both end up being the same with Jesus's person and identity, but connecting the dots between those two was challenging for people.

So they're either recognizing divinity, like the Gentiles recognized divinity.

They just think, well, he's divine. They don't know about a Messiah. Right. You know, that's not something they recognize, but with the, even a

Roman centurion is recognizing Jesus's divine connection before maybe others do, but that's because the way that the

Gentiles thought anything like this is divine, but in the

Jewish community, devout Jewish community, they were expecting a Messiah, a person to be from the line of David, and a person who would ascend a throne, and in many

Jewish circles in that day, become their liberator. So would this assume that there are miracles that Jesus performed that aren't included the

Bible for people that didn't have faith? I would say that's a safe assumption.

Okay. Maybe them personally, they didn't, but somebody had faith that initiated the process, and everybody said, heal me, heal me, heal me, and they thronged him.

He was willing to heal a bunch of people, but they weren't, their stories aren't individually spelled out and told. And, you know, papyrus isn't cheap, so you're gonna pick kind of the top stories to include.

That's right. The Gospel writers' purpose in the stories they picked for us to know about and read were the ones that highlighted either his divinity or his

Messiahship. Yeah, that makes sense. And so for the Gospel writers to include this one, my mind goes to Messiahship, the

Kanaf story in the Hebrew Bible, the wing of the garment that has the tassel.

It's the only thread that I think that can connect those three accounts with this, and lead us somewhere that's relevant to what she was expecting and what she did.

So from the American 21st Western eyes, if we tie it right back to the beginning, we're gonna just take this as, oh, that was a quick little story that they threw in there that maybe alludes to women hygiene,

I don't know. But if you look at it with that Jewish, the time of Jesus, more of that type of eye, you're gonna know, well, there's faith in here somewhere, and then there are some allusions to earlier texts, if you're well read in that in that aspect.

So, wow, it's just like, I'm gonna have to cut you off because I know that you will continue educating me, and we will have more calls,

James. But this is just amazing. I mean, this podcast is set out to highlight the things church couldn't teach us, and I don't even know if I went to school

I would catch this. This is so in -depth and so intense. I just thought that word is just covering it for me right now, because this is, yeah, it's amazing.

I'm kind of lost for words right now. The other thing to keep in mind is she is perpetually unclean until this bleeding gets stopped.

With the Jewish ritual laws, she's unclean for seven days after bleeding.

Well, if she never stops bleeding, she never becomes clean, and for her to interact with societies and actually set foot in the synagogue and even go towards the temple are restricted until she's clean.

So this is also an act that causes her to become clean so that she can engage in normal society again as well.

Wow. Wait, so you're saying women who bled for seven days were unclean for an additional seven days?

Yes, there were a number of things that could happen to either gender that would make somebody unclean for seven days, and this was just one of them.

But yeah, that would be typical. And if we think about a possible reason why this is true, we also have to think about societies in how they maintain hygiene in a desert or an arid community that doesn't have lots of water.

Yeah. How do you maintain hygiene is different, and so how do you pick up something and share it with others accidentally is also different and more risky.

And so uncleanness is sometimes related to spiritual things, and sometimes it's related to looking out for the best of the community, keeping people safe from each other when they're spreading things.

All I hear is another podcast episode that we're gonna have to record together, but I think one thing, just a closing thought, is

I think we like to idolize things that cause miracles because we like to connect ourselves to magic and things that we don't understand.

And I think that me with my American mind read this, and we're like, okay, so Jesus is so holy.

Even the farthest reaching parts of his clothes can heal somebody. But there is such a deeper

Jewish connection here to the specific type of garment and the corners of it and the threads and the colors and the purpose and the prophets and what they've said.

Whereas me, little old me from America, you know, I remember

I had a friend who went to go see the Pope once, and it was a same story where as long as you saw the

Pope, you would be healed. Or if you were in the same room or if you touched him, you would be healed. And the way that registers for me is that he's so holy it'll rub off, but this is so much deeper than that.

Yes, it impacts us. I remember when I first read the three passages in the

Hebrew Bible that connected to this, and I thought, I didn't immediately read the Malachi one, but I read the first two and I started hunting.

I says, I know there's got to be one. And so I started digging for it, and then

I found it in Malachi. But yeah, a first century person who's living in what we might think of as an oral community, where their main way that they interact with the

Torah and the prophets and the Nevi 'im, in other words, or the writings or the poetry of the

Hebrew Bible, which is called the Ketuvim, so that you've got all three sections, the main way they would have interacted with it is hearing it read by somebody.

Most people did interact with it that way. They heard it read, and then they heard people discuss it, and they heard it read again, they heard people discuss it.

And so we're dealing with a very large oral community where things are transmitted orally.

Regardless of what reading skill she would have had or what level of education she would have had, she would have been exposed to the different readings and the different discussions about these texts many, many times.

Yeah. Wow. Well, thank you for sharing this discovery. Thank you for hunting for it and sharing it.

That's an amazing realization here, and really throws just the understanding of God's Word. So thank you so much.

Any closing thoughts before I get back on your calendar? I'm all good.

I don't have any grand closing thoughts, but yeah, I'm good.

Okay. Well, thank you so much for your time and sharing all this knowledge. Very, very insightful, and we'll see you back again here soon.