One of the stranger events that happened to Christ was when He was walking through a crowd, and a woman who had had an issue of blood for twelve years touched the hem of His garment. He felt the power leave Him immediately. It wasn't that He deliberately stopped and healed the woman, it was that it seems He was unaware of what she was going to do, and she surprised Him as He was walking by. When all of His other miracles seem to have been deliberately performed by Him, why is this one different? True all of them were able to be performed because of the faith of the recipient, but this woman did something which seem to catch Him off guard. He acted as if He didn't know it was coming (although since He did seem to know everything, the seeming to be surprised may have been for the sake of those there).
Why did the woman think that all she had to do was touch the hem of His garment and she would be healed? His miracles had never been done that way. One of the problems with translations is that there is always some information that is lost. This is especially true of the Bible in translating from Hebrew and Greek to English. They had words which we do not have equivalents for, and there were understandings of words that were cultural or idiomatic that we also do not understand. In the case of this woman, it seems that possibly she took a prophecy about the Messiah that is usually taken in a less literal way and instead took it quite literally. As a result, she acted upon that literal belief in faith and in response to that, God did heal her. The prophecy is one that because we do not read the Scriptures in the original language, we have missed something. Malachi 4:2 says, “But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall.”
In this verse, the Sun of righteousness is referring to the Messiah, and when it says He will arise with healing in His wings, we tend to think of bird-like wings and just accept it as a metaphor of some kind. However, that is not the only way one can understand it in the original. The word for “wings” is the Hebrew word “kanaph,” and while it can be translated as wings, the idea is something that is at the extremity or border or edge of something. Wings are the extremities of birds, but there is something else to which it refers. It is also the same word that is used in the Torah for describing the fringes and borders of the garments of the men where they would hang the tassels. As a rabbi, Jesus would certainly be wearing a garment like this. And in taking it at its most literal meaning, the prophecy would tell the woman that the edges or borders with tassels of his garment would have healing power, which explains why she would grab hold of it to be healed. Her faith in the literal fulfillment of that prophecy was what drove her to do what she did instead of approaching Him and asking for healing. As a result of her faith and belief in that prophecy having a literal fulfillment, she was healed.
This has a lesson that goes beyond just the story above. Prophecy is so often thought to be metaphorical, or to be interpreted spiritually, but not literally. However, as strange as these prophecies might seem at times, especially those in Revelation, they can be taken literally in many cases. In fact, they should be taken literally in many cases, if one is to truly understand what lies ahead. So often we do not think God actually means what He says, but if you were an omnipotent, omniscient person and you wanted to convey knowledge to a far lesser intelligent being, would you wrap it in verbiage and metaphor that is too difficult to understand, or would you just mean what you say and expect it to be taken at face value? I go with the latter, and in my experience, it has made Scripture far more understandable in the long run.
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