Two blind men follow Jesus

Sight given by Jesus. Sight restored. Matthew 9:27-31.

What led up to it

Jesus has just raised a synagogue leader's daughter, and news of it is spreading through the region. As He leaves, two blind men follow Him.

What happens

They follow Him along the road calling out for mercy, and follow Him into the house. He asks whether they believe He is able to do this. They say yes. He touches their eyes, and their eyes are opened. He tells them sternly to keep it quiet. They tell everyone.

In their shoes

Two blind men following a moving crowd down a road and into a house are doing it by sound and by each other. Jesus does not act on the road. He waits until they have come all the way in, then asks them a question before He does anything: do you believe? They are treated as people with something to say, not as a problem to be fixed in passing.

The place and the time

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

Edersheim places this healing on the way back to Capernaum after the raising of the synagogue leader's daughter, and is careful to separate it from the similar healing in Matthew 12, which he says came much later. Elsewhere, though, he wonders whether the details point to a setting away from Galilee, and he does not settle the question. The place is uncertain.

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

Matthew Henry pictures the two men following Jesus through the streets "as beggars do, with their incessant cries," and notes that "Son of David" was the common name for the Messiah. They were not asking a healer for help; they were naming who they believed He was.

Source: Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706-1721), on Matthew 9.

Why tell them to keep it quiet? Edersheim suggests that a profession of faith as far-reaching as theirs, calling Him Son of David and able to open blind eyes by a touch, was not yet to be proclaimed in public. That is his reading. The men did not keep quiet.

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

The passage

Matthew 9:27-31

27 As Jesus went on from there, two blind men followed Him, crying out, “Have mercy on us, Son of David!”

28 After Jesus had entered the house, the blind men came to Him. “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” He asked. “Yes, Lord,” they answered.

29 Then He touched their eyes and said, “According to your faith will it be done to you.”

30 And their eyes were opened. Jesus warned them sternly, “See that no one finds out about this!”

31 But they went out and spread the news about Him throughout the land.