However, this beautiful system sometimes broke down.  It had broken in the case of this particular woman.

We cannot know, but let’s suppose that she had started her first period as a girl.  Celebrating her welcome into the world of women, now able to marry before long, able to visit the tent, all would have been amazing, despite the inconveniences that come along with the period.

But after seven days, she was still bleeding.

After 14, 21, 28 days… months, a year… 12 years.

Doctors were unable to help.
Her family isn’t mentioned in the passage.  Where was her father?  Why wasn’t he out seeking the Healer for his daughter?  Had they abandoner her?

She has no more money.

The Bible says she had “suffered much” at the hands of the doctors.  We might cringe to even guess at what first century doctors might have considered treatment for this; who knows?

Twelve years later, she is supposed to be married and have a few kids already; instead she has never held hands with a boy.

Possibly children called out “unclean” when she walked by to avoid inadvertent touches that would make other unclean as well.

Likely her malady now had been interpreted as a sign of God’s dissatisfaction with her and/or punishment.

Alone, abused, unwanted, unclean, unloved, and untouchable… she was a ghost in her own community. She was severely judged, found insufficient and flawed.  Are there any worse feelings for a woman?

And she heard that the famous Healer was coming by.
But she had a problem.

It was in the way He healed people.
He usually touched them.

Obviously, we cannot know what all went through her mind, heart and soul, but I think that when she considered this, she was not selfish or foolish enough to ask Him to heal her.
If He touched her, she would make Him unclean.  Then He couldn’t heal anyone else for a while.  Plus, there was no way that He would allow it or be willing.  She had to assume this!
So, she decided on a desperate strategy of sneaking up, or laying in ambush and when Jesus came by and the prayer tassels of His garment – probably the one-piece garment that Jewish men wear – she would reach out and just touch the tips.

Would this make Him unclean? Maybe it should, but no one would even know.  Would she be healed?  Surely she assumed that it would fail.  People who are chronically ill for years only continue to try to solutions in desperation – not belief that they will actually be effective.

So she does it.

Jesus, walking with a Synagogue official – well versed in the details of the law, and almost swallowed up by the crowd, walked past.

How could she know that He was on His way to touch someone’s little girl… someone’s daughter?  I don’t think she did or maybe she would have not followed through.

But she does.

And immediately, the bleeding stopped.  She knew it. But before she could celebrate this truth, she hears the words she has learned to fear for so long.

 

“Who touched me?”   Please keep reading.