A man who was blind and mute
Sight given by Jesus. Sight restored. Matthew 12:22-24.
What led up to it
Jesus is healing many and is in growing conflict with the Pharisees over the Sabbath.
What happens
A man who is blind and mute, and described as demon-possessed, is brought to Jesus. He heals him so that he can speak and see. The crowd wonders whether this is the Son of David. The Pharisees say He does it by the prince of demons.
In their shoes
This man cannot see and cannot speak, so he cannot come on his own or ask for himself. Others bring him. The whole account is one verse, and then the argument about Jesus takes over. The man himself is never heard from, even after he can speak.
The place and the time
What the old books and the archaeologists can add. Each paragraph names its source.
Edersheim keeps this healing apart from the one in Matthew 9. This one, told also in Luke 11, came at a much later point, when opposition had hardened and the charge that Jesus worked by the prince of demons had taken shape. That explains why the healing itself gets one verse and the argument gets the rest of the chapter.
Source: Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (1883), Book III, chapter XXII.
Eye disease in the ancient Near East was widely thought to be a divine infliction, the 1915 encyclopedia says, citing Exodus 4:11. That is a statement about how blindness was understood in general. Matthew gives no cause for this man's condition beyond the spirit that held him.
Source: International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915), entry "Blindness."
The passage
Matthew 12:22-24
22 Then a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute was brought to Jesus, and He healed the man so that he could speak and see.
23 The crowds were astounded and asked, “Could this be the Son of David?”
24 But when the Pharisees heard this, they said, “Only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, does this man drive out demons.”