F. The Healing of a Woman and Raising of a Dead Girl (5:21-43)

Mark weaves these stories together because of their chronological proximity and their thematic relationship. The girl, terminally ill, is pronounced dead; the woman has exhausted all human possibilities for healing. The disciples fail to understand what Jesus has done for the woman; the girl’s friends and family could not anticipate Jesus' authority over death. However, the woman had faith and exercised it, just as Jairus had faith in coming to Jesus and later is encouraged to believe. Finally, in spite of the critical states of both the woman and girl, Jesus is able to restore them to health. That he devoted himself in this way to two females is startling and points to his giving new value to women—and to others considered less unimportant by his contemporaries.