Mark 5
Mark 5 — Commentary and Meaning
The short answer
Mark 5 tells three stories of people whose suffering has pushed them outside ordinary life. First, Jesus crosses the lake into Gentile territory and meets a man living among tombs, so tormented that chains cannot hold him. When the man sees Jesus, he cries out, "don't torment me" — a cry so tangled that, as David Peters observes, we cannot be sure whether the man, the demon, or someone else is speaking. Begging Jesus to come near and begging him to leave sound exactly the same. Jesus frees him anyway, and by the end the man is "clothed and in his right mind," sent home to his own people.
Back across the lake, Mark weaves two stories together. Jairus, a synagogue leader, pleads for his dying twelve-year-old daughter. On the way, a woman who has bled for twelve years — the same span as the girl's whole life — touches Jesus' clothing in the crowd. Her bleeding made her ritually unclean, cut off from worship and community. Jesus stops, finds her, and calls her "Daughter," telling her that her faith has made her well. Then he raises Jairus's daughter with the tender words, "Little girl, I tell you, get up!"
What holds the chapter together is the Greek word sōzō, which Clive Pearson notes means being saved, healed, and made whole all at once. These are not merely medical cures. The man from the tombs regains his mind and his home; the bleeding woman regains her place among people; the girl regains her life just as adult life begins. In Mark 5, Jesus moves deliberately toward those whose pain has made them unrecognizable — and restores them not only to health, but to belonging.
What scholars say
David Peters slows down over the strangest moment in the chapter — the cry of Mark 5:7 — asking who is actually speaking and naming the palpable fear in a man begging Jesus to leave him alone. Clive Pearson, meanwhile, shows how the Greek word sōzō in the stories of the two nameless women means being saved, healed, made whole, and restored to life in community all at once.
“And so this scarred man staggers zombie-like to Jesus crying out in a loud voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me” (Mark 5:7). We cannot know who is speaking; is it the man, the demon, or someone else? The fear is palpable. The man is falling on his knees begging Jesus to leave him alone.”
“An example of the use of σώζω and its derivatives for healing and salvation is found in the familiar pericope of the two nameless women, one dying as she begins adult life, and the other suffering the entire length of the girl’s life from the devastating flow of the same blood that makes the girl a woman. Each of them is restored to life in community, each of them is saved, healed, made whole by the power that comes forth from Jesus the Nazarene 3 (see Mark 5:21–43, esp. vv. 23, 28, 34).”
What it means for you
Most of us know what it feels like to want help and fear it at the same time — to reach out and pull back in a single motion. Mark 5 suggests that Jesus is not put off by that confusion. He hears the cry underneath the words, whether it comes from a man among tombs or a woman hiding in a crowd.
The chapter also reframes what healing means. If sōzō covers body, soul, and community all at once, then wholeness includes being restored to other people. Recovery that leaves someone isolated is unfinished. The question the chapter asks a modern reader is simple: who around you is well in body but still outside the circle?
Mark 5 in context
Mark 5 follows immediately after Jesus calms the storm at the end of chapter 4, where the disciples ask, "Who then is this?" The three miracles of chapter 5 — the Gerasene demoniac, the bleeding woman, and Jairus's daughter — answer that question by showing Jesus' power over demons, chronic illness, and death itself, on both Gentile and Jewish sides of the lake. The chapter's crescendo makes the rejection that opens Mark 6 all the more startling: the one who restores strangers is dismissed in his own hometown.
Passages we cover in this chapter