My outline from the end of the last chiastic structure we charted in Mar 4:
Mar 4:35-41, The wind and the sea obeyed Jesus;
Mar 5:1-20, The legion of unclean spirits obeyed Jesus;
Mar 5:21-34, The incurable flow of blood obeyed Jesus;
Mar 5:35-43, Life and death obeyed Jesus.
Mark is answering the disciples’ question in Mar 4:41, “Who can this be?” with the answer, “This is the Son of God,” the focus of Mark’s gospel.
Mar 5:22-43 forms a chiastic structure:
1a) Mar 5:22-23 , The ruler of the synagogue begged Jesus to come lay His hands on his daughter at death’s door;
1b) Mar 5:24a, So Jesus went with him;
1c) Mar 5:24b, And a great multitude followed Him and thronged Him;
1d) Mar 5:25-26, The affliction of the woman with the incurable flow of blood;
1e) Mar 5:27-28, What the woman believed;
1f) Mar 5:29, She touched His clothes, and the fountain of her blood was dried up;
1g) Mar 5:30, He immediately knew that power had gone out of Him, and asked, Who touched My clothes?;
central axis) Mar 5:31, You see the multitude thronging You, and You say, “Who touched Me?”;
2g) Mar 5:32, He looked around to see who had done this thing;
2f) Mar 5:33, The woman fell down before Him and told Him what she had done;
2e) Mar 5:34a, Your faith has made you well;
2d) Mar 5:34b, Go in peace, and be healed of your affliction;
2c) Mar 5:35-37, He permitted no one to follow Him but Peter, James, and John;
2b) Mar 5:38-39, He came to the house;
2a) Mar 5:40-43, He raised up the little girl from death and returned her to her parents.
The central axis puzzled me at first. It seems an insignificant detail of the story, and that it would be THE central point of the whole structure? But then I realized, God has a throng following Him. But in the middle of that throng, His attention is on the individual, the single person, who reaches out to Him in faith, and touches Him.
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