the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
free while helping to build churches and support pastors in Uganda.
Click here to learn more!
Bible Dictionaries
Blindness
Fausset's Bible Dictionary
or Its cure is one of our Lord's most frequent miracles (Luke 7:21; Matthew 9:27; Mark 8:23; John 5:3; John 9:1), as had been foretold (Isaiah 29:18; Isaiah 35:5). In coincidence with this is the commonness of it in the E. In Ludd (Lydda) the saying is, every one is either blind or has but one eye. Jaffa has 500 blind out of 5,000 of a population. The dust and sand pulverized by the intense heat, the constant glare, and in the sandy districts the absence of the refreshing "green grass," (the presence of which Mark notices as noteworthy in the miracle of the feeding the multitudes,) the cold sea air on the coasts, the night dews affecting those sleeping on the roofs, all tend to produce blindness.
It is a constant image used of spiritual darkness, and Jesus' restoration of sight to the blind pointed to the analogous spiritual bestowal of sight on the soul. Paul, who had passed through both the physical and the spiritual transition from darkness to light (Acts 9:8-9), instinctively, by an obviously undesigned coincidence confirming authenticity, often uses the expressive image (Acts 26:18; 2 Corinthians 4:4; Ephesians 1:18; Ephesians 4:18; Colossians 1:13). Elymas was smitten with blindness at Paul's word (Acts 13:11, compare Genesis 19:11; 2 Kings 6:18). The blind were to be treated kindly (Leviticus 19:14; Deuteronomy 27:18). The pagan conquerors sometimes blinded captives (2 Kings 25:7; 1 Samuel 11:2).
These files are public domain.
Fausset, Andrew R. Entry for 'Blindness'. Fausset's Bible Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/fbd/b/blindness.html. 1949.
