Lastly, we read the story of Jairus’ daughter in our reading this week. Jairus, a synagogue leader, comes to Jesus in desperation because his daughter has died. At the same time, Matthew intertwines this story with the healing of a woman who had suffered from chronic bleeding for twelve years. Together, these stories reveal Jesus confronting systems of exclusion, restoring dignity, and affirming the value of lives society often overlooks.
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This is Part 3 of the series A Tax Collector, A Marginalized Woman, and A Sleeping Girl
(Read this series from its beginning here.)
Jairus is a respected religious leader, someone with status and influence. His position cannot shield him from grief, though. Meanwhile, the bleeding woman represents the opposite end of the social spectrum. Because of purity laws, she would have been considered ritually unclean, marginalized from worship and community life. Jesus responds to both people with compassion.
In Matthew’s telling, social status neither elevates nor diminishes a person’s worth. The raising of Jairus’ daughter is especially significant because Jesus touches the hand of a dead girl. According to purity customs, contact with a corpse brought ritual uncleanness. Yet Jesus consistently prioritizes human restoration over social systems that isolate and stigmatize. In our story, Jesus brings life where death has ruled. This reflects the heart of justice in Matthew’s Gospel: Matthew’s Jesus continues to work toward dignity, inclusion, and hope.
The young girl’s restoration, too, reminds us that children in Jesus’ society, especially girls in the ancient world, often possessed little social power. Yet Jesus centers her life as precious and worthy of communal attention. The kingdom Jesus announces is one where even the most vulnerable are not ignored, but restored to fullness of life.
The story of Jairus’ daughter and the woman with the issue of blood carries multiple layers of meaning that reveal the deeply social and political dimensions of healing. Placing the synagogue leader beside the bleeding woman in this story teaches the Jesus community to practice a preferential option for those pushed to the margins of society. In a world where we are often tempted to prioritize the Jairuses in our world who have positions of power and influence, Jesus responds to the respected religious leader only after he has fully healed an unnamed and excluded woman whose suffering had rendered her invisible within her community.
There is another layer, too. In the Gospel of Mark’s version of these stories, for example, both females are connected through the repeated number twelve. The woman has suffered from bleeding for twelve years, while Jairus’ daughter is twelve years old. This literary connection invites readers to interpret their stories together. Both are experiencing forms of death shaped by the patriarchal and purity structures of their society.
The woman with the issue of blood has already endured years of exclusion. According to purity laws, her bleeding rendered her ritually unclean, cutting her off from normal religious, social, and economic life. She lived in isolation, shame, and vulnerability. Jairus’ daughter stands at the threshold of entering that same world.
Jesus’ actions challenge these systems directly. He allows the bleeding woman to touch him without condemnation, restoring her dignity and publicly calling her “daughter.” He then takes Jairus’ daughter by the hand and raises her to life. In both scenes, Jesus crosses purity boundaries and resists structures that devalue women’s bodies and lives. Matthew’s and Mark’s Gospel presents Jesus as a liberating force who restores women not only physically, but socially, spiritually, and communally.
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