Episode 94: Mark Part 34—Ephphrata! Psalm 135 and the Decapolis Pagans

There is so much more to this short little blurb than meets the eye. We’ll be talking about Psalm 135, my book Image-bearing, Idolatry and the New Creation, and two of my all-time favorite books—G K Beale’s We Become What We Worship and Richard Lints’ Identity and Idolatry. This event is enormously symbolic for the future ministry of the disciples but it is easy to miss it.

If you can’t see the podcast player, click here

Transcript:

Mark 7:³¹ Then he returned from the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. ³² And they brought to him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment, and they begged him to lay his hand on him. ³³ And taking him aside from the crowd privately, he put his fingers into his ears, and after spitting touched his tongue. ³⁴ And looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” ³⁵ And his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. ³⁶ And Jesus charged them to tell no one. But the more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. ³⁷ And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, “He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”

Last week, we talked about the Syrophoenician woman and why Yeshua/Jesus had just cause to call her a dog based upon the Syrophoenician oppression of the Jews and especially Jewish farmers and why Yeshua was telling her that He shouldn’t be expected to take from Jewish children to give to her child the way that Syrophoenicians were effectively taking from Jewish children in order to feed their own. It was a confrontation of a hard truth—no one likes to hear that they are members of an oppressive society but it is crucial. It’s a hard text to teach because Yeshua doesn’t like to stay in the box we made for Him but it is a good message for those of us who wonder why, in the third world, they are seeing amazing miracles and we largely aren’t—same exact reason, actually. We’re getting crumbs here in the West, and rightly so. But this week, we will have a healing without the drama. Well, there’s drama, but we might not notice it without some help.

Hi, I am Tyler Dawn Rosenquist, and welcome to Character in Context, where I teach the historical and ancient sociological context of Scripture with an eye to developing the character of the Messiah. If you prefer written material, I have five years’ worth of blog at theancientbridge.com as well as my six books available on amazon—including a four-volume curriculum series dedicated to teaching Scriptural context in a way that even kids can understand it, called Context for Kids—and I have two video channels on YouTube with free Bible teachings for both adults and kids. You can find the link for those on my website. Past broadcasts of this program can be found at characterincontext.podbean.com and transcripts can be had for most broadcasts at theancientbridge.com

All Scripture this week comes courtesy of the ESV, the English Standard Version but you can follow along with whatever Bible you want. A list of my resources can be found attached to the transcript for Part two of this series at theancientbridge.com.

³¹ Then he returned from the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. 

So, first of all, we have some bizarre geography here. Yeshua “returns” but He sure takes the long way around. Tyre is north of Israel, on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in modern-day Lebanon and if you ever want to study a cool bit of history, read up on Alexander the Great’s siege of Tyre. But is says that he went to Sidon from there—which is 25 miles north along the coast! And then, presumably, He wanders His way along roads southeast to end up on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee, in the Decapolis. We haven’t discussed the Decapolis before, so let’s do it now. He’s been on the eastern side before—that’s where He famously met the man with the legion of demons, sending them into the pigs. When He left, the man begged to go with Him but Yeshua left him behind to declare what God had done for Him. Let’s read that real quick here, from Mark 5:

¹⁸ As Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon-possessed begged to go with him. ¹⁹ Jesus did not let him, but said, “Go home to your own people and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” ²⁰ So the man went away and began to tell in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him. And all the people were amazed.

So, what was the result? He’s coming back now so we’re going to find out. After we talk very briefly about the Decapolis.

Decapolis means “ten cities” in Greek. They were “city-states” sort of like Athens and Sparta in ancient Greece. This means they functioned almost as their own countries within a country, but they were still dependent on the Roman Empire. There is a lot we don’t know about the Decapolis but we do know that Pompey granted them autonomy in 63 BCE—which meant they could rule themselves but still owed loyalty (and taxes) to Rome. But the cities were similar in that they were fully realized Hellenistic cities east (except for one) of the Sea of Galilee and were predominantly Gentile in population. Pliny lists them in his Natural History (which I lazily lifted from a list in Wikipedia): Gerasa (Jerash) in Jordan; Scythopolis (Beit She’an) in Israel, the only city west of the Jordan River and famous for being where King Saul’s headless body was hung on the city wall by the Philistines; Hippos on the Golan Heights; Gadara in Jordan—this is the region where the Legion incident occurred; Pella in Jordan; Philadelphia, modern-day Amman, the capital of Jordan; Capitolias, in Jordan; Canatha in Syria; Raphana, in Jordan; Damascus, the capital of modern Syria. So, if you pull out a map of the middle east and look at Syria down to Jordan, that tells you the location of eight of these cities, which were mostly in modern-day Jordan. Hippos is on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee and is on the Golan Heights. There were many Jews living in these cities but they would not have been in the majority as they were in the Galilee.

Now what Mark doesn’t tell us is where within the Decapolis region Yeshua ended up but as the man who was delivered from Legion was witnessing in the region and as this would have been big news, I am certain that once He showed up anywhere there would be quite the stir. Unlike modern atheists and many modern believers who turn their noses up at the miraculous, this was right up their alley. They believed in gods and demons and angels and signs and omens and wonders and oracles and miracles. But they didn’t generally see anything that was genuinely miraculous right before their eyes. There was no separation in the ancient world between spiritual and physical realities. Everything in the physical was an extension of what was going on in the spiritual and the Jews believed no differently. Ancient people saw behind the scenes spiritual battles playing out in the events they could see on earth. Science as we know it was barely beginning to function, although their engineering and mathematical knowledge were already formidable. But they still saw natural phenomena as controlled by individual deities and events as being caused and influenced by daimons, who were forces of chaos—sometimes doing good and sometimes doing evil. In their eyes, nothing just happened. It was all fore-ordained or brought on by blessings or curses that were either sent at you because you were inherently worthy, favored by the gods, or the victim of your own evil deeds or someone else’s envy. They also believed in magic and, by this time, mostly hated it. It was a chaotic element in society and therefore feared. Human sacrifice had long since been banned in the Roman Empire, about a hundred years before this. But, let’s just wrap this up and say their outlook was very different from ours, and in walks a miracle worker powerful enough to deliver a man from a ton of demons and who was responsible for the death of a ton of pigs that would have fed their gods and so, evidently, more powerful than their own gods because he was still up and walking around!

One more thing—why did Yeshua take the long way around instead of heading southeast from Tyre? Would have been a lot easier. This was not a quick trip, north and around. As I mentioned last week, part of Yeshua’s MO was to stick around long enough to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom and then leave after controversy arose to go elsewhere. The Pharisees and the Scribes from Jerusalem are turning up the heat and it is evident, especially after the Beelzebul controversy and their ignoring of the miracles happening around them to nitpick at Him for not ritually washing His hands (His disciples only were accused of this in Mark but Luke claims Yeshua didn’t do it either), it is evident that nothing will bring them around and they are determined to be a hindrance and a stumbling block. There is no use in preaching where they are and it is better to move on to the next town. Also, Herod has killed John the Baptist and so there is danger on that front as well. So, He withdraws to Gentile territory to regroup and rest, perhaps, or to allow things to cool down a bit. Yeshua knows He is headed for the Cross but He is no rash fool. He knows it cannot happen yet and certainly not in Galilee. Again, no mention of His disciples, just like last week but they will be mentioned in the next account of the feeding of the four thousand.

³² And they brought to him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment, and they begged him to lay his hand on him.

Now, this healing story is only found in Mark. We assume these people have brought the man because they heard of His previous miracle. I do prefer the translation of this here in the ESV to other versions that say he is mute—that’s not what the word mogilalos means. He’s deaf, yes but his tongue works. Now, the cool thing here is that they are begging Yeshua to lay hands on Him, which requires Him to stretch out His arm. Before we get to that, I want to remind you of the “arm of the Lord” motif in Isaiah that the writers of 1QIsa, the Great Isaiah Scroll found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, equate with the Messiah. Whenever Yahweh would talk about stretching out His arm, the authors labeled that “arm of the Lord” as the Messiah. I have a seventeen-part series on Deutero-Isaiah (Is 40-56) where I talk about that at length. Let’s look at Isaiah 35:1-6 real quick:

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; the desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus; it shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God. Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who have an anxious heart, “Be strong; fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you.” Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy. For waters break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert…

We keep seeing what scholars call “self-manifesting” miracles, which is what they call any event where Yeshua does something that only God can do in Scripture or something that is a fulfillment of the prophecy of God acting directly on behalf of His people. If you remember–healing the leper, calming the storm, commanding demons and teaching on his own authority and not appealing to a higher power, walking on water, multiplying bread and fishes, and not succumbing to the temptation of the devil, something no human has ever perfectly accomplished! Here, of course, He will fulfill the parts of this prophecy dealing with being unable to hear and speak but in Mark 8 and 10, He will heal the blind. Matthew, Luke, and John all speak of His healing of the lame, and, of course, when He made the paralyzed man walk in Mark chapter 3, that obviously counts. Any one of these would be miraculous but all four is a direct fulfillment of Isaiah 35 in what to expect when God visits His people to save them. These are all clues—not heavy-handed as they would be if they were written into a fictional account or an ancient mythology—which were never subtle as they were created to explain things very simply with no great deep meanings attached which weren’t readily obvious—as that would have completely defeated their purpose.

In the Dead Sea Scrolls, document 4Q521 aka the Redemption and Resurrection Scroll, we see the expectation of a healing Messiah.

[the hea]vens and the earth will listen to His Messiah, [and all w]hich is in them shall not turn away from the commandments of the holy ones. Strengthen yourselves, O you who seek the Lord, in His service! Will you not find the Lord in this, all those who hope in their heart,? For the Lord seeks the pious and calls the righteous by name. Over the humble His spirit hovers, and He renews the faithful in His strength. For He will honor the pious on the th[ro]ne of the eternal Kingdom, setting prisoners free, opening the eyes of the blind, raising up those who are bo[wed down]. And for [ev]er (?) I (?) shall hold fast [to] the [h]opeful and pious […]  […]will not be delayed […]. And the Lord shall do glorious things which have not been done, just as He said. For He shall heal the critically wounded. He shall revive the dead. He will send good news to the afflicted. He shall […the…]. He shall lead the […] and the hungry He shall enrich. (Frag 2 + Frag 4. Col 2, from The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation, Wise et al.)

After last week, with the Syrophoenician woman, we are almost cringing wondering if we will have a repeat performance of a scathing rebuke—as we are still in gentile territory, but it does not happen. The Decapolis is entirely different from Tyre and the Syrophonecians. The Greco-Roman Hellenists are decadent and pagans, but they aren’t guilty of anything in particular against the Jewish people needing to be addressed.  These aren’t oppressors, in other words infringing on Jewish survival, to put it another way.

³³ And taking him aside from the crowd privately, he put his fingers into his ears, and after spitting touched his tongue. 

This isn’t the first time that Yeshua has taken someone aside privately, not wishing to perform for a large crowd. He also did this in the episode with raising Jairus’s daughter, and the changing of water into wine at the wedding in Cana. An audience is sometimes positive and sometimes negative. In any event, this isn’t a public miracle. And here we get to the importance of the handwashing controversy. If one could contract the sort of defilement from just coming in contact with this or that in the marketplace in Galilee, just think of the uncleanness we are about to see here with Yeshua touching, twice, this man who is almost certainly a Gentile. And I think this was a Gentile because of the privacy demanded. Like I said last week, there is no preaching involved here. It is not the time for the gentiles to be brought into the Kingdom yet. Only the Jews would understand the Gospel message at this point—for the Gentiles, this is all too easily credited to paganism. This was mercy, yes, but if the disciples are with Him, then this is a sign for them as well. To follow Him, they are also going to have to go to the Gentiles, doing these same works. But, is He presenting Himself to the gentiles as the Yahweh-Warrior? As the Messiah? No, they would not understand and before the Cross and the New Creation, it would be pointless to preach. There is a time and a season for every purpose under heaven, and this ain’t it.

The gestures are a bit confusing and debated. I certainly don’t see it as ritualistic but instead an attempt to communicate with this man what Yeshua is about to do. After all, he can’t hear and actual sign language hasn’t been invented yet. Putting His fingers in the man’s ears will show intent to heal and allow the man to operate in faith, and touching his tongue would have the same effect, if I am right. Certainly, Yeshua didn’t actually need to do either of these things. But He does really seem to prefer giving people the opportunity to act out in faith and belief instead of simply acting on His own. Yeshua gives dignity whenever possible and appropriate. He knows what each person needs to hear and experience rather than what they might want to hear and experience.

Before we move on, I want to bring up the incident between Moses and Yahweh at the burning bush in Ex 4:10-11. Moses, of course, is history’s most famous example of a speech impediment. Or at least that is how “slow of speech and tongue” is traditionally interpreted.

¹⁰ But Moses said to the Lord, “Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.” ¹¹ Then the Lord said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?

So, again, we are about to see a self-manifesting event here. Yahweh isn’t claiming that only He can make men mute, deaf, seeing or blind because all of those can be inflicted through injury or by nature of birth defects or whatever. Instead, Yahweh is claiming sovereignty over tongue, ears, and eyes. Moses is being challenged to faith in this area of weakness and, likely, embarrassment. Of course, he failed abysmally and Aaron had to be called in to be the voice of Yahweh instead. No one can be perfect all the time—except Yeshua.

³⁴ And looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.”

He sighed—it’s an interesting translation because the word translated “sighed” is stenazo and it appears five other times in the NT and twenty-one times in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, and it’s always translated as groaning or grumbling elsewhere—and we are going to see a variant of it in chapter eight. It’s always like exasperation or anguish or that sort of thing, like in Romans 8:28 when all creation and is groaning (as are we) while waiting for the redemption. So, this is like a pained expression. So, why here? Why is Yeshua looking up and making a pained expression before He heals this guy? You’ll have to wait a bit for my opinion on that. But He speaks in Aramaic the word Ephphatha, which means “be opened.” So this is a command stemming from authority and not sorcery. These words, when they are given, are very important. They are not incantations or mumbo jumbo—they are simply commands spoken with absolute authority.

³⁵ And his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. 

This was clearly not a case of demonic possession. This was a physical infirmity and the language makes that clear. His ears were opened—we see similar phraseology when one of the matriarchs is barren and cannot have children. Their wombs aren’t uncursed or delivered of demons but opened—made functional. His tongue, also, was released not to speak for the first time but to speak plainly. As was mentioned before, this is a speech difficulty, not muteness. I can see the commercial now, “Okay, man from the Decapolis, you just got your ears open and your voice—what are you going to do?”

³⁶ And Jesus charged them to tell no one. But the more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. 

Of course, it isn’t just the guy who knows. His buddies/family who brought him knew it too. And He tells them, like with the leper in chapter one, and Jairus’s daughter in chapter five—for the love of Pete don’t tell anyone about this. But, like the situation with the leper, they are like on the talk show circuit telling absolutely everyone. Isn’t it funny that Yeshua tells the storm, “Be muzzled” and it immediately calms down. He wants to walk on water and I don’t know how that works if He made it solid under Him or what, but He can do it. He tells demons to leave and they do. He wants to multiple loaves and fishes and there are leftovers after feeding five thousand men plus women and kids. But you tell people, reasoning thinking grownups, and nope, they don’t listen. And don’t think we’d necessarily be any better, boy howdy. We are just a piece of work, we are. And they aren’t just talking about it—they must have started shouting immediately because the verse clearly shows Him as trying to shush them but they just are more determined to blab. Maybe they thought He couldn’t possibly be serious or was just humble. I think He was trying to avoid being mobbed. Which, as you know, it isn’t like it would be the first time.

It is ironic, however, that he was given a voice and then immediately told to shut up! But the irony there Is nothing compared to what comes next.

³⁷ And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, “He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”

I know, you’re saying, “What’s ironic about that? I’d be dazzled too!” But the irony is that the Gentiles are praising Him as doing all things well when the Pharisees and the Scribes from Jerusalem can’t seem to give Him credit for anything, no matter what He does, and have attributed His works to being in league with the Prince of Demons, Beelzebul. Of course, the ordinary people react just as these gentiles do—amazed at His works and gossiping about His identity. I tell you, I am a big fan of and believer in education but it won’t ever get you closer to God than an illiterate person with superior faith. Of course, that isn’t why people were following Him and the Scriptures make it clear—they loved the goodies and abandoned Him at the Cross even though everyone was in town and likely we would have done the exact same thing. The heathen Greeks, here, are responding positively to the New Exodus so far—problem is that this is not the time and so they have not heard the message of the Kingdom, nor would it make sense until after the Resurrection because they have no context for it. Nothing like this has ever been preached before, despite atheist zeitgeist propaganda that is so easily debunked that you can do it with Wikipedia. The coastlands are waiting for His law, as we see in Isaiah 42:4 and Isaiah 60:9 but the Gospel is to the Jew first and then the Gentile.

And that’s why I think Yeshua was groaning. Some scholars believe He is praying in the Spirit, maybe. Others believe that he is sighing sadly over the man’s condition. There are a number of theories because the text doesn’t say and there aren’t supplemental texts to pull from. This account is only in Mark. In the second Servant Song, we see this:

“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant  to raise up the tribes of Jacob  and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

It is Yahweh’s will, mercy, and love in longing for the heathen nations to be delivered from their idolatry and their bondage to oppressive human regimes. I believe that when Yeshua is groaning it is because He longs to save them and save them now but He knows that the time is still far off. If you have ever visited a foreign orphanage full of children, you know what I am talking about. You can’t help them all and you can’t even help any of them right now. You have to jump through hoops and hope and wait and yet your heart is full of anguish and love and hope. The children are far off and under the authority of a government that is barely caring for them and is making money off the adoptions. But kidnapping the child would be an exercise in futility—they are trapped and so are you. Yeshua was trapped by His destiny. He couldn’t even preach the message of the Kingdom to these people because there was nothing to give them—except miracles and miracles are nice but when you are suffering under oppressive governments, the miracles are not really what you need most. Like the kids in the orphanage, you need adoption and freedom. To put it another way, any parent of a wayward child knows the heartache of watching a child who needs salvation but they, for whatever reason, can’t understand the message yet. You groan, waiting, praying, doing a bit here and there in hopes of helping but they are trapped by a force that you can’t budge. I believe that’s Yeshua’s experienced in the Decapolis.

But beyond that, let’s talk about the spiritual problem of idolatry that these Greco-Romans suffered under. If you’ve read my last book, Image-bearing, Idolatry, and the New Creation then you probably already know what I am going to say. Idolatry, according to Scripture, induces spiritual blindness, deafness, muteness, lameness, etc. Let’s look at Psalm 115:2-8

Why should the nations say, “Where is their God?” ³ Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases. ⁴ Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. ⁵ They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see. ⁶ They have ears, but do not hear; noses, but do not smell. ⁷ They have hands, but do not feel; feet, but do not walk; and they do not make a sound in their throat. ⁸ Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them.

Beginning in Genesis 3, we see this theme of becoming like whatever it is that we worship. When Adam and Eve transferred their trust to the serpent, they became quite crafty. At Sinai, after the incident with the Golden Calf, Yahweh and Moses begin describing Israel in terms of being like stubborn cattle. Because worship is about more than bowing down to something, okay? It’s about the transference of actual loyalties. “Choose this day whom you will serve.” And so the nations, as represented by this deaf and speech impaired man, are spiritually impaired. They have eyes but cannot see and ears but cannot hear, etc. They can’t see the truth of God and will not for at least another ten years. Considering the life expectancy in those days, good odds were that Yeshua was walking past a lot of people who would be dead long before the message got to them. He’s like those prospective adoptive parents seeing kids in need of so much and yet unable to do anything about it except keep pushing forward with the paperwork and praying. His ministry has to run its course. He can’t skip anything. He can’t rush it along. The entire world depends on it, not just these poor lost souls trapped in sin and idolatry.

I am going to jump ahead just a bit—so I can make this even more depressing and heartbreaking. We’re going to skip the feeding of the four thousand and head straight to Chapter 8:11-13

¹¹ The Pharisees came and began to argue with him, seeking from him a sign from heaven to test him. ¹² And he sighed deeply in his spirit and said, “Why does this generation seek a sign? Truly, I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation.” ¹³ And he left them, got into the boat again, and went to the other side.

Have you ever been in a debate with someone who presents emotional claims and when you counter with facts, they remain unconvinced and just keep rehashing their emotional claims? It has to be one of the most frustrating things on earth. I was once talking to someone about Easter (I keep Passover and First Fruits, FYI), and they were telling me all about Ishtar worship but the problem was their information was all wrong. It all came from junk books that either made stuff up out of nowhere or passed on stuff from earlier junk books. I actually own a lot of scholarly materials on Ishtar, including transcripts of all her mythologies, archaeological reports of the unearthing of her Temple in Ninevah, translations of the cuneiform tablets they found in that Temple, reports from writers during the time when she was worshiped—I mean, I know a lot about Ishtar (long story but I was studying the reference to the Queen of Heaven in Ezekiel, which was either Asherah or Ishtar—my money is on Ishtar because of the time period and the Babylonian influence being greater in that time than the Canaanite, which had been waning for a long time, but I can’t be 100% sure). I know her priests were cross-dressers. I know that there were no virgins in her cult because she was the patron goddess of war and prostitutes. I know she wasn’t a mother goddess because I have read all her mythologies and she never really had kids, just a lot of human and animal husbands that she went through so quickly and scandalously that it would make Jerry Springer blush and say, “Enough!.” I know her priests weren’t impregnating virgins on Ishtar Sunday because there was no such thing as Ishtar Sunday (plus, Sunday didn’t exist at that point or in that part of the world) plus her priests weren’t really those kinds of guys and the Babylonians didn’t really practice human sacrifice that I have ever seen evidence of outside of junk books and googled pages written by who knows who and YouTube videos. I know they made unleavened bread to offer on her altar. So, I have all these facts about Ishtar and Tammuz, hard facts from archaeology, and their mythologies that we have from ancient documents. So, I counter with the facts and tell her that there is zero evidence for what she is saying and she counters with, “It’s obvious.” And I say there’s a big difference between, “I believe this” and “It’s obvious.” Obvious requires facts, indisputable evidence, and not just suspicions based on scare stories. In the end, she told me that it might be true, and the evidence hasn’t been discovered yet so she will keep teaching it. I asked her if she would want me to accuse her of adultery based on no evidence and solely on my suspicions and what seems obvious to me. Probably not the best response.

But anyway, here Yeshua is working all these miracles and doing great things and preaching the Gospel and the Pharisees come to argue with Him and say, “Show us a sign.” DUDE, He does nothing but give signs all day every day if you are interested in the evidence. They weren’t interested in the evidence. They had made up their minds. They would disregard any signs or attribute them to Beelzebul again. So, Yeshua responds by “sighing deeply in His spirit” and it is a variation on that word again that means groaning—anastenazo. And who can blame Him???