The Bible Says
Mark 7:31-37 Meaning

The parallel gospel account for Mark 7:31-37 is found in Matthew 15:29-31.

In Mark 7:31-37, Jesus travels through the Decapolis and heals a deaf man who has a speech impediment by touching him and commanding his ears and tongue to be opened. The astonished crowds proclaim His power, saying, “He has done all things well.”

Sometime after His encounter with the Syrophoenician woman and the healing of her daughter from the unclean spirit (Mark 7:24-30), Jesus left Syria.

Again He went out from the region of Tyre, and came through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, within the region of Decapolis (v 31).

The pronoun-He-in verse 31 refers to Jesus.

The word-Again-serves two purposes.

1. Again serves as a transition from the interaction Mark had just described in the region of Tyre (Mark 7:24-30) to the events Mark is about to describe in Mark 7:31-37, which took place within the region of Decapolis.
   
   
2. Again also indicates that Jesus went into the region of the Decapolis before and that He was now going into it again. Mark recorded Jesus’s first trip to the Decapolis in Mark 4:35-5:20. During Jesus’s first trip to the Decapolis, He cast out a demon from a man who lived among the tombs into a herd of swine-who then plunged themselves into the lake. The people then asked Jesus to leave. This time they are more willing to receive Him.
   
   Perhaps this was because Jesus instructed the man delivered of demons to share his experience among the Decapolis cities (Mark 5:18-20).

Jesus left and went out from the region of Tyre, and He came through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee.

The city of Sidon was also in the same region as the city of Tyre. Tyre was the largest and most prominent city in this region which was officially the Roman district of Syria.

The district of Syria is located northwest of Galilee and extends to the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Both Tyre and Sidon were located on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Sidon was about 20-25 miles north of Tyre. The people of Tyre and Sidon were Phoenician and were largely of Canaanite descent (Matthew 15:22) and were therefore Gentile. Today this region is part of the modern nation state of Lebanon.

After Jesus went out from the region of Tyre (Syria), He came to the region of Decapolis.

The region of Decapolis is located to the southeast of Galilee. Decapolis literally means “ten cities.” This region took its name from the ten Greek cities that were established in the wake of Alexander the Great’s world conquest and the Hellenization that ensued. Later when Rome took over, they organized the region of Decapolis into a distinct district.

Because Mark says that Jesus went through Sidon, instead of backtracking through Galilee, where He was more well known, it appears that Jesus then headed east to the major highway in the district of Iturea/Gaulanitis that took Him south to the Decapolis. In other words, it seems that Jesus went around the Jewish district of Galilee on His way to Decapolis. The western border of the Decapolis was along the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, which is why Mark says that Jesus went to the Sea of Galilee.

The people of the Decapolis were mostly Greek and therefore Gentile.

Mark 7:24-37 details Jesus’s encounters in two different Gentile districts. The first was in Syria with the Syrophoenicians (Mark 7:24-30) and the second was in Decapolis with the Greeks (Mark 7:31-37). Because this was one of the relatively few instances where Jesus interacted with Gentiles, Mark’s predominantly Gentile (Roman) audience may have taken a particular interest in this portion of his gospel account.

Mark does not explain why Jesus traveled to this district, but it is reasonable to think He went there to spend time in prayer with His Father and to teach His disciples away from the constant interruptions of the crowds.

Galilee (where Jesus’s ministry was headquartered) no longer offered Him peace (Matthew 14:34-36), Judea had become dangerous (John 7:1), and even in Tyre, He had been recognized (Mark 7:24). Perhaps He hoped the Decapolis-which the local Greeks had once begged Him to leave (Matthew 8:34, Luke 8:37)-would offer some solitude.

If solitude was Jesus’s purpose for coming to the Decapolis, it seems as though He would not find it. For Matthew writes: “And large crowds came to Him” (Matthew 15:30a). It could also be that Jesus was doubling back to this area to follow up on the work He had given the man healed of the demons to do in telling of God’s goodness to the Decapolis area. As we see in Mark 5:18-20, the man was faithful to do as Jesus requested, and “everyone was amazed.” This likely contributed to why Jesus was met by large crowds.

Matthew further explained that when the large crowds came to Him, they were:

“bringing with them those who were lame, crippled, blind, mute, and many others, and they laid them down at His feet; and He healed them.”
(Matthew 15:30b)

Matthew pointed out how Gentile Greeks of the Decapolis had faith. They acted on what they had heard about Jesus and not only came to Him, but as He began to heal those they brought to him, these Gentiles were worshipping the God of Israel (Matthew 15:31).

Mark’s account-rather than focusing on the multitudes and mentioning how Jesus performed many miracles of healing the mute, crippled, lame, and blind-chooses rather to zero in on one of those many miracles of healing.

They brought to Him one who was deaf and spoke with difficulty, and they implored Him to lay His hand on him (v 32).

The pronoun-they-refers to the crowd (v 33) of people who had gathered around Jesus after He arrived in the Decapolis.

They brought to Him (Jesus) a man who was deaf and largely mute. This man spoke with difficulty (possibly because of his deafness). The crowd asked Jesus to lay His hand on the deaf man because they believed that if He touched the man, he would be able to hear and speak clearly.

Mark then recounts how Jesus helped this deaf man. Jesus healed people in many different ways-sometimes by speaking, sometimes by laying on His hands. In this instance, Jesus used both words and touch and He used His saliva.

Jesus took him aside from the crowd, by himself (v 33a).

Jesus pulled the man aside from the crowd. This indicates that Jesus did not perform this miracle in front of the masses.

Mark detailed the method Jesus used to heal this man of his deafness and speech impediment:

and put His fingers into his ears, and after spitting, He touched his tongue with the saliva; and looking up to heaven with a deep sigh, He said to him, “Ephphatha!” that is, “Be opened (vv 33b-34).

Jesus spit into His hands and then put His fingers into the man’s ears and then He touched his tongue with the saliva. Jesus seems to have touched his ears to heal the man’s deafness and touched the man’s tongue to heal his difficulty speaking.

After He touched the man’s ears and tongue, Jesus looked up to heaven with a deep sigh.

Interestingly, this is the only instance anywhere in the Gospels that it records how Jesus sighed before doing a miracle.

A sigh is a long, audible exhalation of breath, often made involuntarily in response to weariness or fatigue and/or intense emotions such as relief, sorrow, frustration, or compassion. It serves as a physical and emotional release, expressing what words often cannot. A sigh is often caused by physical tension or pain or deep inner feelings that are stirred by a moment or situation.

Why did Jesus look up to heaven with a deep sigh? And why does Mark include this detail?

There are several possible answers to the first question.

1.  Jesus’s deep sigh could be an expression of His empathy and compassion.

Jesus was not detached or mechanical in His miracles. He loved the people He healed. His deep sigh could be a personal acknowledgement of the pain and suffering the deafness and muteness had caused this individual. Jesus’s sigh could be an indication of the emotional burden of witnessing human brokenness, especially in a Gentile region where suffering may have seemed even more spiritually hopeless, from a Jewish perspective.

Jesus’s deep sigh shows how He entered into the man’s suffering and groaned with him. Jesus shared in his suffering before delivering him from it.

2.  Jesus’s deep sigh as a response to the fallenness of the world.

It would be natural for Jesus, the Creator of all things (John 1:1-3) to groan over the effects of sin and decay upon His good creation-especially when it harmed one of His image bearers. Just as Romans 8:22-23 says that “the whole creation groans,” Jesus’s sigh could be a lament over a world marred by sickness, disability, and spiritual blindness.

Jesus’s deep sigh expresses holy frustration or sorrow over the widespread human condition, not just this one case.

3.  Jesus’s deep sigh could be seen as His strong emotional appeal to His Father.

Jesus often lifted His eyes heavenward in prayer to give thanks to His Father (John 11:41, Mark 6:41). Jesus seems to be doing something similar here. He is acknowledging His absolute dependence on His Father. The deep sigh could reveal His fatigue. As a human, Jesus became weary and tired. And the audible sigh as He looked up to heaven may have been offering a nonverbal or guttural prayer to His Father during a moment of exhaustion.

Jesus’s deep sigh reveals His own pain and weariness and His dependence on His Father for grace and strength.

4.  Jesus’s deep sigh could also be a foreshadowing of the anguish He would eventually suffer.

Thus far, Mark’s Gospel has accurately depicted Jesus as the most powerful human being to ever live. Given the remarkable authority and power Jesus displayed, one might wrongly suppose that He was immune to the mortal frailties of being human-weariness, pain, frustration, etc.

Jesus’s deep sigh is a reminder that even though He was fully God, He was also fully human and thus susceptible to every temptation and condition we experience (Hebrews 2:17-18).

It is also possible that Jesus’s deep sigh was caused by and an expression of all of these sentiments:

• His compassion for the deaf man,
• His frustration over the brokenness of creation,
• His appeal to His Father in a moment of weariness,
• His lament of the greater suffering He would endure on behalf of the world.

After Jesus had touched the man’s ears and tongue with His fingers and saliva and had looked up to heaven with a deep sigh, Jesus said to the man: “Ephphatha!”

Ephaphatha is the Greek transliteration of an Aramaic word, and as Mark explains, it means: “Be opened!”

Jesus often spoke in Aramaic, as it was the common street language of the larger region. (To learn more, see The Bible Says article: “The Four Language of Jesus’s Judea”).

While it was not necessary to the events of the story for Mark to use the Aramaic, the author chose to stay as close to the original dialect in this moment to emphasize the dramatic way in which Jesus healed this man.

We can view details such as the use and explanation of this Aramaic expression as demonstrating the authenticity of the Gospels and their eye-witness accounts. Mark’s source was probably Peter, Jesus’s apostle. This is according to church tradition. Only someone who was there and saw what had happened would include these kinds of details because they made a memorable impression upon them.

As soon as Jesus said: “Ephaphatha!” the man was healed.

And his ears were opened, and the impediment of his tongue was removed, and he began speaking plainly (v 35).

Jesus had cured the man of his deafness and speech impediment. Because of Jesus, the man could now hear and began speaking plainly so that people could now understand what he meant.

After healing the man, Jesus gave him and his friends instructions.

And He gave them orders not to tell anyone; (v 36a).

This prohibition to share is in contrast to the casting out of demons Jesus performed in His previous visit (Mark 5:1-20). On that visit, Jesus told the healed man to “Go home to your people and report to them what great things the Lord has done for you, and how He had mercy on you” (Mark 5:19). It is likely that Jesus was in the Decapolis city Hippos, which is known to have been located on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee-the area often referred to in the Gospels as “the other side.”

Perhaps the possessed man was from another Decapolis city and Jesus desired the word to spread there as well as it had in Hippos. Perhaps Jesus made a distinction between a spiritual healing and a physical healing. Everyone in the world would seek physical healing, regardless of their spiritual condition. Perhaps Jesus desired the word to spread that spiritual healing was available to all while minimizing physical healings. Jesus generally did the physical healings out of compassion as well as giving a sign to people that they might believe.

We can deduce from the facts that enormous crowds were seeking Jesus’s attention and that He declared “woe” on the cities of Galilee for rejecting His message (Matthew 11:21) that the people were showing up for physical benefit without seeking spiritual benefit. God does not “perform” for those whom He created; He is God and knows what is best for us better than we know for ourselves.

Jesus’s command for silence following the healing was likely driven by trying to avoid drawing even more attention. At this point in His ministry, Jesus was seeking time to be alone with and train His disciples (Mark 6:31, 7:24, 9:30-31). News of miraculous healings would draw more crowds and make Jesus’s hope of being alone with God and His disciples more difficult.

Jesus also may have wanted to avoid escalating political confrontations with the Pharisees and religious establishment at this time because it was not yet His appointed time to be crucified. When He told the man healed of demons to tell of the wonders he had experienced, it appears that the healed man’s “home” was in another Decapolis city. Hippos was one of the eastern-most Decapolis cities, and the only one with immediate proximity to the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus’s headquarters of Capernaum was located.

Jesus’s mission was not primarily to dazzle or entertain, neither was it to miraculously heal physical maladies. Jesus’s main mission was to reveal the Kingdom of God in God's way and time. However, it seems that people did not care to honor and follow Jesus but rather spread the word about how they could gain physical and material benefit:

But the more He ordered them, the more widely they continued to proclaim it. They were utterly astonished, saying, “He has done all things well; He makes even the deaf to hear and the mute to speak” (vv 36b-37).

Despite Jesus’s clear instructions, the witnesses of this miracle (and presumably the other miracles Jesus did at this time-Matthew 15:30-31) seemed unable to contain their amazement.

The miraculous transformation of the man was so complete and astonishing that it ignited a contagious enthusiasm, especially in a region where people were just beginning to grasp who Jesus was. Their spreading of the news-though disobedient-reveals the instinctive human desire to proclaim good news, particularly when it involves deliverance and restoration.

There are two parts to the witnesses’ testimony: “He has done all things well; He makes even the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”

The first part of their testimony was: He has done all things well.

Marks record of this part of the witnesses’ testimony may allude to the creation account of Genesis 1, where God repeatedly sees that His creation is “good.” The crowd’s reaction recognizes that Jesus’s actions are not just powerful, but they are perfect in character, purpose, and effect. He was not merely performing tricks; Jesus restores people fully and beautifully. His work is without flaw, done with care and compassion, revealing the heart of God in action.

The second part of the witnesses’ statement was: He makes even the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”

This part of their testimony emphasizes the miraculous reversal of human brokenness. It is especially striking because healing deafness and muteness were considered among the greatest signs of Messianic power (Isaiah 35:5-6).

This Gentile crowd may not have fully understood who Jesus was in this moment (the Jews and His own disciples struggled at times to understand His identity and purpose), but these Gentiles rightly perceived that Jesus was doing what only God was capable of doing.

In the next section of scripture (Mark 8:1-9), the Gentile crowds continue to flock to Jesus, and they remain with Him for three days (Mark 8:1-3). The Greeks of the Decapolis hear Him preach and teach and then they are miraculously fed by Him (Mark 8:4-9).