Mark 10:49

Jesus is going up to Jerusalem, where he will suffer, die and rise again. Just before this he has told the twelve for the third time what waits for him there (Mark 10:32–34), and James and John have asked him for the places of honour in his glory (Mark 10:35–45). He answered them with the words that come right before our passage: “For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). The healing of Bartimaeus shows that saying at work, as the Son of Man, on his way to give his life, stops to serve a blind beggar.

This is the last healing Mark records before Jesus enters Jerusalem. The long journey of Mark 8–10, full of teaching on what it costs to follow him, has a blind man healed at Bethsaida near its start (Mark 8:22–26) and this blind man healed at its end. All through it the disciples are slow to grasp who Jesus is and where he is going. Here a man who has no sight calls Jesus by his royal title, and once he can see, he follows him.

Bartimaeus also answers to the rich man earlier in this chapter, who “went away grieved: for he had great possessions” (Mark 10:17–22). The rich man held on to what he had and left. Bartimaeus has almost nothing, throws aside the one thing he has, and follows.

Matthew and Luke tell of this healing too. Matthew speaks of two blind men healed as Jesus left Jericho (Matthew 20:29–34), and Luke tells of a blind man by the road near Jericho (Luke 18:35–43).

Jericho, often called the City of Palms, was an ancient city in the Jordan Valley, a busy place of trade and the gateway to Jerusalem from the east. Pilgrims going up to Jerusalem for the Passover travelled this way, which accounts for the “great number of people” walking with Jesus and his disciples. Mark sets the meeting as Jesus was going out of the city, so the crowd was large and on the move, and one blind man’s voice had to carry over all of it.

Bartimaeus is typhlós, blind, unable to see. The same word is used figuratively of people unable to understand, and the Gospels speak of blindness in both ways, as this story will. In Israel blindness shut a man out of nearly every kind of work, and it was often taken as a sign of sin or of God’s judgment, so the blind were commonly neglected and left to beg. Bartimaeus “sat”, káthēmai, the ordinary verb for sitting or being seated, and he sat “by the highway side”, para ten hodon, beside the road. That was the customary place for beggars, because every traveller passed them there. He was “begging”, prosaitéō, which Strong’s explains as asking repeatedly, soliciting. He lived on whatever the passers-by gave him.

Bartimaeus “heard”, akoúō, the everyday word for hearing, that it was Jesus of Nazareth going by, the common way people named him. Jesus’ name as a healer had spread far, and for a blind beggar this was the news of a lifetime, so his hearing turned at once into action. He “began”, árchomai, to “cry out”, krázō. Strong’s gives that verb as a croak, like a raven’s, or a scream, and more generally to call aloud, to shriek, exclaim or entreat. This was a loud cry in public, meant to reach Jesus over the noise of the crowd.

His plea is “have mercy on me”. The verb eleéō, from éleos, mercy, means to show compassion by word or deed, and especially by God’s grace. Mercy is pity that acts. Bartimaeus asks Jesus to act for him, owning his own helplessness and Jesus’ power to help.

Many in the crowd took his shouting as a disturbance and tried to stop it. “Many charged him that he should hold his peace.” The verb epitimáō means to express strong disapproval, or to give an order with a threat behind it, so they rebuked him sternly and told him to be quiet. Mark leaves their reasons unstated. They may have found him a nuisance interrupting their procession with the teacher. A blind beggar stood low in their eyes, and a loud cry from him in the presence of a respected teacher may have struck them as unfitting. Some may have thought Jesus too busy or too important to be bothered by such a man.

“But he cried the more a great deal.” Here mâllon, “more”, joins polýs, “much”, and he cried out much more than before, with the same verb, krázō, and the same words: “Thou Son of David, have mercy on me.” The rebuke made him louder. Luke tells it the same way: “he cried so much the more, Thou son of David, have mercy on me” (Luke 18:38–39). Two other blind men once followed Jesus with the same cry, “Thou son of David, have mercy on us”, and he answered them, “According to your faith be it unto you” (Matthew 9:27–29).

Bartimaeus’s persistence is the kind of asking Scripture encourages: “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16). He kept asking because he was sure that Jesus was able to help him and willing to hear, and the voices around him counted for less than that.

“And Jesus stood still.” The verb hístēmi means to stand, or to come to a stop and stay there. Jesus is walking to Jerusalem with a crowd around him, and he halts the whole company for the one voice the crowd was trying to silence. He did the same for the woman who touched his garment in the press of people (Mark 5:25–34). The psalm says, “The righteous cry, and the LORD heareth, and delivereth them out of all their troubles” (Psalm 34:17), and here we watch it happen on a road outside Jericho.

He “commanded him to be called”, and the word “call” comes three times in this verse. Jesus has him called, they call the blind man, and they tell him, “he calleth thee.” The people who were rebuking Bartimaeus a moment earlier now carry Jesus’ invitation to him, and at one word from Jesus the crowd becomes a messenger of hope.

Their message has three parts. “Be of good comfort” is tharséō, to take courage, to be bold, to cheer up. Jesus speaks this word himself to the man sick of the palsy: “Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee” (Matthew 9:2). “Rise” is egeírō, to wake, rouse, lift up or raise, and here it simply means to get up from where he sat. Its middle and passive forms mean to rise or be raised, and they are used of Christ being raised by God. “He calleth thee” is the heart of it. Jesus calls this man to himself, as the Good Shepherd “calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out” (John 10:3–4), and as he called Matthew from the receipt of custom: “Follow me. And he arose, and followed him” (Matthew 9:9). The voice that summons Bartimaeus is the voice that called Lazarus out of the tomb (John 11:43–44). The comfort the crowd offers him is real, because it comes from “the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort” (2 Corinthians 1:3–4).

Bartimaeus answers at once: “And he, casting away his garment, rose, and came to Jesus.” The verb apobállō means to throw off or cast away. His garment, himátion, was his outer garment, a cloak. For a beggar such a cloak commonly served as a blanket at night, a cushion by the roadside and a place to catch the coins people gave him, and it was often the most valuable thing he owned. He throws it aside to get to Jesus.

“Rose” is anístēmi, to stand up or rise. The crowd’s “rise” and Mark’s “rose” share the English word and translate two different Greek verbs, egeírō and anístēmi, and both describe a blind man getting to his feet. Then he “came to Jesus.” Everything he does is aimed at that, and a man who had sat waiting for others to come to him now gets up and goes to the one who called him.

In this chapter the garment speaks clearly. The rich man held on to his great possessions. Bartimaeus lets go of the one possession he had, the cloak that belonged to his life as a beggar, because someone better is calling him. The fishermen did the same at the lake: “And they straightway left their nets, and followed him” (Matthew 4:20).

“What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?” Jesus knew the man was blind, and his question let Bartimaeus speak for himself. It honoured him as a man who could ask, and it drew from him a plain request made before the whole crowd, a public confession of his trust in Jesus. The verb thélō means to will, wish, desire or purpose, and Strong’s gives “choose or prefer”. Jesus asks him what he wants.

The answer is clear and quick: “Lord, that I might receive my sight.” “Lord” translates rhabboní, an Aramaic word of honour related to “rabbi”, meaning “my teacher” or “my master”, used in speaking to Jesus. Joined to his earlier cry of “Son of David”, it is the address of a man who honours Jesus and trusts his power to heal. “Receive my sight” is anablépō, which means to look up, and also to recover one’s sight. Some take that second sense to mean Bartimaeus had once been able to see, so that Jesus gives back what was lost.

God already knows what we need, and he still calls us to ask. “The LORD is nigh unto all them that call upon him, to all that call upon him in truth” (Psalm 145:18). Paul writes, “in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God” (Philippians 4:6), and Jesus promised, “Ask, and it shall be given you” (Matthew 7:7). Bartimaeus asks for exactly what he needs, and he asks the one who can give it.

“Go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole.” In Greek the second half reads hē pístis sou sesōken se. Faith, pístis, is persuasion and conviction, and especially reliance upon Christ. Bartimaeus’s faith showed itself in everything he did. He named Jesus rightly, he kept crying when he was told to stop, he threw off his cloak and came, and he asked plainly. “Made thee whole” is from sṓzō, to save, deliver or protect, to heal, preserve or make whole. It is the word the New Testament uses for God saving those who believe, and here it covers his eyes and more besides, for the man who is healed goes on to follow Jesus.

Jesus credits the man’s faith, and the power that healed him was Jesus’ own. Faith is the trust that reaches out to him, and he honours it. He spoke the same words to others. To the woman who touched his garment he said, “Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace” (Mark 5:34), and Matthew gives his words to her as “Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole” (Matthew 9:22). To the one leper who came back to give thanks he said, “Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole” (Luke 17:19).

“And immediately he received his sight.” The word is euthéōs, “at once”, and Mark often stresses how quickly Jesus’ works take effect. The healing was instant and complete, plain to everyone on the road.

“Go thy way” sounds at first like a dismissal. Jesus is setting Bartimaeus free to go wherever he chooses, and the way he chooses is Jesus’ own.

“And followed Jesus in the way.” The verb akolouthéō means to go along with someone, to accompany, and especially to follow as a disciple. The word for “the way”, hodós, is the road itself, and it is the same word as “the highway side” in verse 46. The story opens with Bartimaeus sitting beside the road begging and closes with him walking on it behind Jesus. In Mark that road runs to Jerusalem, where in a few days Jesus will give his life for many, and Bartimaeus joins him on it with open eyes.

This is what following Jesus has meant from the first. At the start of the Gospel the fishermen heard “Come ye after me”, “And straightway they forsook their nets, and followed him” (Mark 1:17–18). The man born blind in John’s Gospel, once healed and told who Jesus was, said, “Lord, I believe. And he worshipped him” (John 9:35–38). Healing leads to following, and sight leads to worship.

Bartimaeus’s sight is a sign of the greater work of Christ. Apart from Christ we are all blind to God as Bartimaeus was blind to the road, for “the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not” (2 Corinthians 4:4). The LORD promised through Isaiah that his Servant would come “to open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house” (Isaiah 42:7). At the start of Luke’s Gospel the coming of Christ is praised as light “to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace” (Luke 1:79). Jesus said, “I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life” (John 8:12), and “For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see” (John 9:39).

So when Jesus opens a blind man’s eyes on the road to Jerusalem, he shows in one man what he came to do for the world. Paul says that God, “who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). He prays for believers, “The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling” (Ephesians 1:18). Those who were once darkness are now “light in the Lord” and are to “walk as children of light” (Ephesians 5:8), and “if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

The mercy Bartimaeus asked for comes, in the end, from the cross he is walking toward. Jesus came “to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10), as “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), and by his death he is “the mediator of the new testament” (Hebrews 9:15). God, “who is rich in mercy”, has made us alive together with Christ (Ephesians 2:4–5). The Son of David who stopped for one beggar went on to give his life for him.

This passage gives us a King who hears. The crowd was loud, the journey was urgent, and the man at the roadside was the least of all, and Jesus stood still for him. It shows us a mercy that answers those who ask for it, and a Lord who asks what we want because he means to give. It shows faith in simple terms: knowing who Jesus is, calling on him, crying out again when told to stop, coming when called, and following once the eyes are open.

The crowd shows the two ways people can stand toward someone crying out to Jesus. They can stand in the way, or they can carry his call: “Be of good comfort, rise; he calleth thee.” Bartimaeus shows where mercy leads. The man who sat begging beside the road ends up walking it with Jesus, toward Jerusalem and the cross, with his eyes open. The words the crowd carried to him hold for everyone who cries to the Son of David for mercy: he calleth thee.