The blind man at Bethsaida

Sight given by Jesus. Sight restored. Mark 8:22-26.

What led up to it

Jesus has just fed four thousand and has rebuked His disciples in the boat for not understanding: "Having eyes, do you not see?" They land at Bethsaida.

What happens

People bring a blind man and beg Jesus to touch him. Jesus takes him by the hand and leads him out of the village. He puts saliva on his eyes, lays hands on him, and asks whether he can see anything. The man says he sees people, but they look like trees walking. Jesus lays hands on him again, and he sees clearly. Jesus sends him home and tells him not to go back into the village.

In their shoes

This is the only healing told in two stages, and the only one where Jesus asks how it is going. He leads the man by the hand Himself, away from the people watching. The man answers honestly that it is not right yet. Anyone who has lived with partial or changing sight will recognize "people like trees walking": seeing something, but not enough to trust. That he knows what trees look like suggests he had once seen.

The place and the time

What the old books and the archaeologists can add. Each paragraph names its source.

Bethsaida was a fishing town; the name means "house of fish," and it was the home of Andrew, Peter and Philip. Excavations at the candidate sites on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee have turned up fishing weights and net-mending needles. Which ruin is the Bethsaida of the Gospels is still argued.

Source: Wikipedia, "Bethsaida," revision of 18 July 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); Smith's Bible Dictionary (1884 edition), entry "Bethsaida."

Edersheim calls this the only gradual cure in the Gospels and notes that saliva was a well-known Jewish remedy for the eyes. He infers from the man's words about trees that the blindness was not from birth but the result of disease. That inference is his, not the text's, though the man's knowledge of what trees look like points the same way.

Source: Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (1883), Book III, chapter XXXIV.

The passage

Mark 8:22-26

22 When they arrived at Bethsaida, some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him.

23 So He took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village. Then He spit on the man’s eyes and placed His hands on him. “Can you see anything?” He asked.

24 The man looked up and said, “I can see the people, but they look like trees walking around.”

25 Once again Jesus placed His hands on the man’s eyes, and when he opened them his sight was restored, and he could see everything clearly.

26 Jesus sent him home and said, “Do not go back into the village.”