Mark 7:31, commentary and pictures

Again departing from the districts of Tyre and Sidon, He came toward the Sea of Galilee through the middle of Decapolis, after withdrawing from Capernaum to the border country of Phenicia where He sought retirement and prepared His disciples for their mission. The journey belongs to His work among people beyond the Jewish community, and in that region a heathen woman who had heard of His healing power came to seek help for her daughter. The journey served another purpose of giving His disciples a lesson about the needs of people outside Israel and the need to break down barriers to sympathy and help.

His return was to a Decapolis prepared by the healed demoniacs He had left behind as messengers and witnesses, whose testimony helped open the region to the gospel, though the people who had first sent Him away had not understood what they were rejecting. There people from the surrounding country gathered to see Him and hear the message of salvation, with thousands flocking to Him and hearing for three days.

The verse begins the account in which they bring to Him one who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech and stammered, beseeching Him to put His hand upon him. He took him aside from the multitude and put His fingers into his ears and spit and touched his tongue, and looking up to heaven sighed and said Ephphatha, that is, Be opened, whereupon straightway his ears were opened and the string of his tongue was loosed and he spoke plain, and the man spread the news of his cure. In departing from Tyre and Sidon to the Sea of Galilee through Decapolis He exemplifies the work His disciples should do, joining teaching of truth with healing by the demonstration of the Spirit. The destruction of the swine, intended by Satan to turn people from Jesus and stop the gospel, instead drew attention to Christ, so that even evil was overruled for good.