Mark 5:21-43

J.B. Phillips New Testament

Faith is followed by healing

^21-23 When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side of the lake, a great crowd collected around him as he stood on the shore. Then came a man called Jairus, one of the synagogue presidents. And when he saw Jesus, he knelt before him, pleading desperately for his help. “My little girl is dying,” he said. “Will you come and put your hands on her—then she will get better and live.”

^24-28 Jesus went off with him, followed by large crowds jostling at his elbow. Among them was a woman who had a haemorrhage for twelve years and who had gone through a great deal at the hands of many doctors (or physicians), spending all her money in the process. She had derived no benefit from them but, on the contrary, was getting worse. This woman had heard about Jesus and came up behind him under cover of the crowd, and touched his cloak, “For if I can only touch his clothes,” she said, “I shall be all right.”

^29-30 The haemorrhage stopped immediately, and she knew in herself that she was cured of her trouble. At once Jesus knew intuitively that power had gone out of him, and he turned round in the middle of the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?”

³¹ His disciples replied, “You can see this crowd jostling you. How can you ask, ‘Who touched me?’”

^32-34 But he looked all round at their faces to see who had done so. Then the woman, scared and shaking all over because she knew that she was the one to whom this thing had happened, came and flung herself before him and told him the whole story. But he said to her, “Daughter, it is your faith that has healed you. Go home in peace, and be free from your trouble.”

³⁵ While he was still speaking, messengers arrived from the synagogue president’s house, saying, “Your daughter is dead—there is no need to bother the master any further.”

³⁶ But when Jesus heard this, he said, “Now don’t be afraid, just go on believing!”

^37-39 Then he allowed no one to follow him except Peter and James and John, James’s brother. They arrived at the president’s house and Jesus noticed the hubbub and all the weeping and wailing, and as he went in, he said to the people in the house, “Why are you making such a noise with your crying? The child is not dead; she is fast asleep.”

^40-41 They greeted this with a scornful laugh. But Jesus turned them all out, and taking only the father and mother and his own companions with him, went into the room where the child was. Then he took the little girl’s hand and said to her in Aramaic, “Little girl, I tell you to get up!”

^42-43 At once she jumped to her feet and walked around the room, for she was twelve years old. This sight sent the others nearly out their minds with joy. But Jesus gave them strict instructions not to let anyone know what had happened—and ordered food to be given to the little girl.