V. APPLICATION OF THE DEMONIAC’S FATHER. To our Lord’s interrogatory, one of the multitude, or rather one out of (éx) the multitude, stepping forward, volunteers an answer. He felt that his child’s misfortune had given occasion to the altercation, in which the disputants had waxed warm, if not angry, and that it devolved of right on him to make the requisite explanation, Another and a more urgent reason calling for his interference was bis paternal solicitude. “I brought [fveyxa, aorist] some short time ago my son to thee;” such had been his intention, as he had not been aware of the Saviour’s absence. “I spake to thy disciples,sin thy absence [tva, denoting here the purport of what he said, as also the purpose for which it was said], that they should drive the demon from my son; but they could not;” while it must be observed that this verb is not an auxiliary, nor even a part of dévaua, but a stronger term (lexveay), which, preceded by the negative, means that they had not strength enough for such a difficult operation. After stating, in reply to a question of our Lord about the length of time the suffering had lasted, that his son had been afflicted in this shocking manner from childhood, he went on to enumerate other aggravating circumstances of the afilio- tion, to the effect that the demon often cast him into the fire and into the waters to destroy him. He then concluded with the remarkably earnest appeal, “If thou canst
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i) THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MARK. (on. 1x. 1—50.
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do anything, have compassion on us, and help us.” The expression Sef@ncor (from Boh, cry, and @é~, to run) is very significant, being equivalent to “ hasten to our cry for help;” it is more than succour (from sub and cwrro, to run), which means to run to one’s aid ; it is “run to our aid at our earnest, urgent cry for help.” The compassion is: taken for granted, being expressed by a participle; and it also is a very expressive word, denoting the yearning of the bowels or heart in tenderness and pity.
VI. THe Saviour’s ANSWER. Our Lord utters a reproof on the ground of their want. of faith. In that reproof he includes his own disciples, the scribes who had been in conflict with them, and the father of the afflicted boy—one and all comprehended in the “faithless generation” of that time. The failure of the apostles to drive out the demon had been a matter of humiliation to themselves, and of exultation to those hostile scribes, who had, no doubt, made the most of this case of unsuccess; and that failure had been owing in part to weakness, if not want, of faith. The scribes all along had acted the part of obstinately incredulous sceptics. The distressed father, earnest as he was, and eloquent as he was in his appeal, betrayed much weakness of faith, saying, “Tf at all thou canst—if in any way thou canst,” or “if thou caust do anything.” This. refers the matter of cure to the power of Christ; the leper resolved the cure in his case into the will of Christ, “If thou wilt, thou canst.” How prone we are to circumscribe the Saviour by our own narrow conditions! and yet he shows us demonstratively that he is above and independent of all such limitations. He proved to the leper his pos- session of the will, and to the demoniac’s father his possession of the power; and to us, through both, his ability as well as willingness to do to us and in us and for us ‘‘ exceeding abundantly above all we can ask or think.” The limitations are all on one: side—all on our side, and are owing to the weakness of our frail and naturally faithless humanity. The possession in the present instance had been from childhood. The distress was thus of comparatively long standing; it had become chronic; it was an apparently hopeless case. It had defied the power of the disciples, and baffled their utmost skill and strength. While this failure had lowered them in the estimation of the crowd, and left them at the mercy of the biting taunts of the sarcastic scribes, it. at the same time lessened still more the faith of the unhappy parent. The cure, there- fore, which ow Lord effected in this seemingly hopeless, certainly desperate case, holds forth encouragement to the weakest and the worst—those morally so—to apply to him.
VII. His appuiance. The first direction is, “ Bring him unto me:” you have tried the power of my disciples; I now invite you to try mine. You have been disappointed: by their failure ; but I will remedy that failure by my favour to thee and thine. You have been disheartened—too much disheartened; I now bid you take heart of hope. His neat step was to secure the confidence and strengthen the faith of the father; and for this purpose he employs his own words and (1) according to the common reading he said to him the (1d) saying, “ If thou cunst believe, all things are possible to [or possible to be done for] him that believeth.” But (2) the word mio7etoa: is omitted in three or more of the oldest uncials, in several versions, by the critical editors T'regelles and Tischendorf, and by Meyer and some commentators ; and with this omission the sentence. reads, “ Jesus suid unto him, As for thy lf thou canst, all things are possible to him that believeth.” And (3) some, putting the acute on the antepenult wlorevoa, take it to be imperative aorist middle, and translate, “ Believe what you expressed by your If thou canst, all things are possible to him that believeth.” Again, (4) others take it interro- gatively, “ The If thou canst ? or What? If thou canst?” so that the sense is as if he asked, “Is this what you say?” or, “Do you really mean this?” The man’s own words were thus thrown back on him, and by this judicious retort he is brought to understand that faith in the Saviour’s power and propitiousness is a prerequisite for the bestowal of the buon he sought; he is also brought to feel that the hand of faith must Likewise be outstretched for the reception of spiritual benefits and blessings; at the same time he is nade conscious of the great deficiency —the entire inadequacy of his faith for the attainment of the favour he is so anxious to obtain. Suspending his petition on behalf of his son, but resuming his equest with the same term and now in his own interest, he called aloud, with eyes brimful of tears—if this reading (perd Saxptar) is accepted, at all events—affectingly and touchingly, “ Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” He affirms the possession of belief, but that belief is so weak as to be scarcely worthy of the name; that he has some faith, but that faith is small, exceeding small, like a grain of
cH. Ix. 1—50] ‘THK GOSPEL ACCURDING TO ST. MARK. 51