Matthew 9:18–26 ‘Not dead but sleeping’

Matthew's Gospel is structured to answer one central question for a largely Jewish audience: is Jesus truly the promised Messiah, the Son of David, the King who was to come? Matthew builds his case in blocks — teaching sections (like the Sermon on the Mount, chapters 5–7) followed by narrative sections that demonstrate the authority of what was just taught.  Thus the book has an introduction, five narrative sections followed by five teaching sections and then a conclusion.

Chapters 8–9 is one of these narrative blocks. Having just delivered the great manifesto of the Kingdom in chapters 5–7, Matthew now assembles a carefully arranged sequence of miracles — roughly nine or ten of them — that prove Jesus has authority not merely over words, but over disease, nature, demons, and even death itself. This section answers the question the crowds were quietly asking: ‘Does Jesus have the power to back up what he taught?’

Where this passage sits in that sequence:

8:1–4 — cleansing a man with leprosy (authority over ceremonial uncleanness)

8:5–13 — healing the centurion's servant (authority reaching Gentiles, at a distance)

8:14–17 — healing Peter's mother-in-law and many others (authority over sickness broadly)

8:23–27 — calming the storm (authority over nature)

8:28–34 — healing the demon-possessed men of the Gadarenes (authority over the demonic realm)

9:1–8 — healing the paralysed man, with the pointed claim to forgive sins (authority over sin itself)

9:9–13 — the calling of Matthew, and eating with sinners (authority to call and redefine who belongs)

9:18–26 — the synagogue leader's daughter and the bleeding woman (authority over death and over chronic, "untouchable" affliction)

9:27–34 — healing two blind men and a demon-possessed mute man (authority over blindness and mute demons)

Notice the escalation, Matthew has been building toward a climax: sickness, storm, demons, sin — and now, in one interwoven story, Jesus confronts death itself and a suffering that has resisted twelve years of hopeless treatment. This is Matthew's way of saying: there is no category of brokenness beyond the reach of this King.

It is also significant that Matthew places two healings inside one another — the woman's healing happens while Jesus is on his way to deal with the synagogue leader's daughter. This "sandwich" structure (a technique also used by Mark, who tells the same story at greater length in Mark 5:21–43) is deliberate. Matthew wants us to read these two accounts of desperate faith together, not separately.

1. A Father's Desperate Faith (v. 18–19)

A synagogue leader comes and kneels before Jesus, pleading that though his daughter has just died, a touch from Jesus would bring her back to life. Mark and Luke identify this man as Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue — a position of real social and religious standing. This detail matters. Synagogue rulers were not typically friends of Jesus; many in that class viewed him with suspicion, even hostility (recall the controversies already brewing in chapter 9 over Jesus eating with sinners). Yet here is a man of status and reputation, publicly kneeling before Jesus in front of a crowd, in his moment of desperation.

Notice what strips away pretence: ‘grief’. Status, reputation, theological suspicion — none of it survives contact with a dying child. Jairus doesn't come with careful theology or cautious hedging. He comes with a raw, specific request: come and put your hand on her, and she will live.

A hospital chaplain once observed that in the paediatric ICU waiting room, titles disappear. The CEO sits next to the janitor, both equally undone, both praying the same simple prayer. Status is a useful tool for navigating ordinary life, but it has no currency at all in the room where a child might die. Jairus, a man used to being deferred to in the synagogue, kneels in the street. Desperation is a great leveller — and, as this story shows, it's often the doorway through which real faith walks in.  This is repeatedly seen in Scripture

Mark 5:22–23 — the fuller account naming Jairus as "one of the synagogue leaders"

Luke 8:41–42 — Luke's parallel account, adding that she was his only daughter, about twelve years old

John 4:46–49 — a royal official's similarly urgent plea for his dying son

Psalm 34:18 — the Lord is close to the brokenhearted

Hebrews 4:16 — believers are invited to approach God's throne of grace with confidence

This synagogue leader is desperate and he comes to Jesus for help:

“Jesus got up and went with him, and so did his disciples.”

This story is interrupted by another person in dire need.

2. A Woman's Hidden, Desperate Faith (v. 20–22)

Matthew tells this story with striking economy — Mark's version (5:25–34) gives us fuller, more painful details: she had spent everything she had on doctors, and instead of improving, she had grown worse.

What Matthew doesn't need to spell out — because his first readers would have known instantly — is what a twelve-year bleeding condition meant under Jewish law. According to Leviticus 15:25–27, a woman with this kind of chronic bleeding was ceremonially unclean — continuously, for as long as the condition lasted. Anyone or anything she touched became unclean too. For twelve years, this woman had been functionally excluded from worship, from touch, from ordinary human contact. She had likely not embraced another person, been embraced, or entered the temple courts in over a decade. She was ‘unclean’.  She was suffering a living death and her disease had cost her everything.  Mark includes what doctor Luke omits:

“ She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse.” Mark 5:26

This is why she comes up behind Jesus — secretly, hoping to escape notice. She isn't just shy; she knows (rightly, under the Law) that reaching out to touch a rabbi in a crowd would make him unclean too, and could bring public shame and censure on them both. Her plan is to take just enough — the very edge of his cloak — and vanish before anyone notices.

Think of someone who has carried a shame or a wound so long they've arranged their whole life around not being seen — sitting at the back of the room, leaving gatherings early, deflecting every question about how they're really doing. That's this woman's twelve years distilled into a single posture: come close enough to touch hope, but not close enough to be noticed. Her faith is real — she believes Jesus can heal her — but it's a faith still shackled by shame, reaching out from the shadows rather than walking up in the light.

She realises that there is something special about Jesus, even though there is a hint of superstition in her action.  Many in our world are superstitious, thinking that if they do the ‘right thing’ in the ‘right way’ something good will happen and disaster avoided.  Even religious people can think that doing the ‘right thing’ will somehow protect us.  Much religion can be just superstition but this lady had more - she did have a personal faith in Jesus.

But notice what happens: she cannot stay hidden. Jesus turns and sees her. And rather than any rebuke for a supposedly presumptuous, law-breaking touch, Jesus calls her ‘daughter.’ In an instant, twelve years of exclusion are answered not just with physical healing, but with public, dignifying inclusion into the family of God.

Jesus only says two sentences in this account.  He says to this troubled woman:

“Take heart, daughter,’ he said, ‘your faith has healed you.” Matthew 9:22

Trusting Jesus is what counts.  Many think that faith is Jesus is for the naive and doesn’t make any real difference in life.  Jesus profoundly disagrees.  He says that faith in him is essential and everything else flows from this.

Death and dying are common to us all and there is nothing we can do to avoid this.  Only Jesus can change this desperate state of affairs.  When facing terminal illness in a member of the family or in ourselves or attending at a graveside, the world has no answer, it offers no hope.  Jesus however does just this.  He gives us an evidence based hope.

This woman was suffering from the tragic end result of sin in this world. Only occasionally is suffering the direct result of a person’s individual sin, most suffering comes because we live in a fallen world.

Cross References:

Leviticus 15:25–27 — the ceremonial law that made her an outcast

Mark 5:25–34 — the fuller parallel account

Luke 8:43–48 — Luke's parallel, noting no one could heal her

Numbers 5:2–3 — the broader Levitical exclusion of the ceremonially unclean from the camp

Matthew 8:2–3 — Jesus deliberately touching a man with leprosy earlier in this same section, another "untouchable" restored

Hebrews 4:15–16 — Christ, who is not distant from our weaknesses, invites us to draw near

Isaiah 61:1–3 — the Messiah's mission includes binding up the brokenhearted and freeing captives

3. Interrupted, Not Delayed (the "sandwich" structure)

It's worth pausing on the narrative shape itself. Jesus is en route to a dying girl — an urgent errand of mercy for someone with status and standing — when he stops everything for an anonymous, unclean woman in the crowd. In the culture of the day, and by any measure of practical urgency, this looks like a costly delay. A little girl is diying. Every moment matters.

Yet Jesus stops. He turns. He waits for the woman to come forward (Mark 5:33 tells us she came ‘trembling with fear’). He calls her "daughter" and reassures her before he ever continues to the synagogue leader's house.

This is not divine inefficiency. It's a statement: no one's suffering is an interruption to Jesus. The dead girl and her family not loved more because of her father ‘s status; the outcast woman is not loved less because she came from the shadows. Both receive Christ's full, unhurried attention.

Imagine a surgeon rushing to an emergency who nonetheless pauses, mid-corridor, because a frightened patient grabs his sleeve — and rather than shaking free, he stops, looks the patient in the eye, and makes sure they are cared for before continuing to the emergency. It would be a strange thing for an ordinary surgeon to do. It is exactly the kind of thing this Great Physician does, again and again, throughout the Gospels — because for him, there is no queue of the unimportant.

Cross References:

Mark 5:31–34 — the disciples' impatience at the crowd pressing in, contrasted with Jesus's deliberate pause

Luke 19:1–10 — Jesus stopping for Zacchaeus amid a crowd with more pressing claims on his time

Matthew 19:13–14 — Jesus refusing to let the disciples turn away children as unimportant interruptions

4. Death Meets Its Master (v. 23–26)

By the time Jesus arrives at the synagogue ruler’s home, professional mourners are already at work — the noisy crowd and the pipe players were a standard, even hired, feature of ancient Jewish funerals, confirming that the girl was certainly dead. Mark's account even records messengers arriving to tell Jairus not to bother Jesus further, since his daughter had died (Mark 5:35).

Jesus's makes a simple statement :

“The girl is not dead but asleep.”

This provokes laughter and mockery. The mourners knew death when they saw it; they had no reason to expect otherwise. But Jesus's words aren't a denial of the reality of her death. They're a statement about what death actually is, from the vantage point of one who has authority over it: for Jesus, physical death is no more permanent or fearsome than sleep, because he has the power to wake the sleeper.

The English word ‘cemetery’ directly originates from an ancient Greek verb meaning "to put to sleep.” From this verb, the Greeks created the noun koimeterion (κοιμητήριον), which literally translated as a "sleeping place," "dormitory," or "inn." At this point in history, it referred strictly to a place where the living went to sleep.

The major shift in meaning happened with the rise of early Christianity. Early Christians rejected the standard pagan Latin words for burial grounds—such as ustrina (cremation site) or sepulcrum (grave)—because they implied finality and destruction.  Instead, viewing death as a temporary sleep before resurrection, they adopted the Greek koimeterion as a metaphor. To them, a burial ground was simply a "dormitory for the dead."

Early Christian writers began calling burial grounds coemeterium (cemetery) or dormitorium—literally creating a "dormitory for the dead." Over the centuries, "dormitory" shifted exclusively to mean housing for the living (monks, then students), while "cemetery" kept the funerary association.

Jesus puts the crowd outside, takes her by the hand — remarkable again, given the ceremonial uncleanness associated with touching a corpse (Numbers 19:11) — and she gets up. No incantation, no lengthy ritual. A touch, and life returns.

To someone standing at a grave with no hope beyond it, death looks total and final — the end of the story. But to a parent standing at a child's bedside at 2 a.m., ‘asleep’ is not a synonym for ‘gone’; it's a temporary, reversible state, and the parent expects morning to come. Jesus speaks over this girl's death the way a parent speaks over a sleeping child — not denying the stillness, but refusing to accept it as the final word. That's precisely the authority Matthew has been building toward across two whole chapters: this is a King who does not merely heal sickness, but reverses death.

Cross References:

Mark 5:35–43 and Luke 8:49–56 — the fuller parallel accounts.

John 11:11–14, 25–26 — Jesus using the same ‘sleep’ language for Lazarus, then declaring himself ‘the resurrection and the life’.

Numbers 19:11 — the ceremonial uncleanness of touching the dead, which Jesus overturns by touch rather than being defiled by it.

1 Thessalonians 4:13–14 — Paul describing believers who have died as those who have ‘fallen asleep’.

1 Corinthians 15:20–26 — Christ as the ‘firstfruits’ of those who have fallen asleep, the guarantee of a future resurrection.

Luke 7:11–15 — the raising of the widow of Nain's son, another demonstration of this same authority.

John 5:28–29 — Jesus's own claim that all who are in their graves will one day hear his voice.

5.  Bringing the Two Stories Together

Matthew has deliberately woven together a story about a twelve-year affliction and a girl who was twelve years old (Mark and Luke supply this detail explicitly). Whether or not every hearer caught that numeric echo, the parallel in substance is unmistakable:

The Woman

The Girl

Ceremonially unclean, excluded

Ritually unclean in death, mourned

Approached in secret, from behind

Approached openly, by request

Healed by a touch she initiated

Raised by a touch Jesus initiated

Restored to community after 12 years of exclusion

Restored to family after death itself

Both accounts turn on the same principle: faith that reaches out to Jesus, however hesitant or however bold, meets a Christ who does not turn suffering away — regardless of how "unclean," hopeless, or socially advantaged or disadvantaged the sufferer is.  Our hope is an eternal hope and we know this is secure for those who are following Jesus because of the fact of his resurrection.  Paul stressed the essential nature of this fact

“But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?  If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.  And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.  More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised.  For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either.  And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.  Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost.  If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” 1 Corinthians 15:12-19

Just before Easter, in April 2018 there was an outcry against the Archbishop of Wales.    He liked to call Christian ‘Agents of the resurrection’.However in an interview published in the magazine, ’Christianity Today’, he was asked whether the resurrection of Jesus was real.  He replied,

“I don’t think any of us knows, quite frankly.  I don’t think anyone can tell you what happened when it comes to empty tombs.”

The subsequent outcry against the Archbishop was justified.  For him to fail to affirm the physical resurrection of Jesus is to deny the Christian faith.

Dr. David Jenkins, the former Bishop of Durham, caused a major national controversy in 1984 by questioning the literal, physical interpretation of the resurrection. Jenkins famously stated on a BBC broadcast that the resurrection was ‘not just a conjuring trick with bones’. He argued that the resurrection stories were a way for early Christians to express the living reality and ultimate significance of Jesus, rather than acting as strict, modern, news-like historical reports.  His appointment and views sparked intense protests, a petition signed by roughly 12,000 people called for his dismissal, and accusations of blasphemy came from traditionalists and conservative politicians. Shortly after, a lightning strike caused a fire severely damaged York Minster!

It is disturbing that some leading Churchman can openly disagree with Jesus and his apostles without there bing any consequences..

Later in Matthew some women were mourning after the execution of Jesus.  An angel then said to them:

“The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified.  He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay.”  Matthew 23:5-6

The fact of the resurrection is confirmed by the Old Testament prophecies, by what Jesus had foretold, by the evidence of the women and disciples there at the time, and by the many, over 500, who saw him after the resurrection.  Death has been defeated, only by the resurrection of Jesus..

Application

A personal appeal to Jesus by someone in need is essential.  Jairus didn't come with careful theological language; he came with the plain truth of his need. So can we.

Shame does not disqualify you from Jesus's touch. The woman came from the shadows, expecting at best a quiet healing and at worst public rebuke. She received both healing and open dignity. Don't let shame keep you at the back of the room.

No one's crisis is too small to interrupt Christ's attention, and no one's crisis is too large for his power. He gave the woman his full attention on the way to a dead girl, and then gave the girl his full power once he arrived.

Christ's authority extends beyond what looks final to us. Whatever in your life currently looks like "dead" — a relationship, a hope, a calling — is not necessarily beyond the reach of the one who can say, "not dead, but asleep," and mean it with full authority to back it up.

Closing

Matthew has spent two chapters proving one thing: this Jesus, the Son of David, has authority over every category of human brokenness — sickness, storm, demons, sin, shame, and now death itself. A woman who had been unclean for twelve years is healed with a touch. A girl who has just died is raised with a word and a hand. Whatever the crowd or the culture around you has already laughed off as hopeless, the Gospel of Matthew invites you to bring it — openly like Jairus, or quietly like the woman — to the one whose cloak, whose hand, and whose word are still more than enough.

“Take heart, daughter,” he said, “your faith has healed you.”

BVP

This article has been posted on the website www.bvpalmer.com where there are many other helpful articles and videos.

Christchurch Baldock is a Bible teaching, gospel centred, local church.  More details can be found on its website.  It meets every Sunday morning at 10.30 am in Knights Templar School, Baldock

Bernard can be contacted at berniepalmer1@sky.com