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Blood, Issue of (2)

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(in Heb. זוּב דָּם ), is in Scripture applied only to the case of women under menstruation or the fluxus uteri (Leviticus 15:19-30; Matthew 9:20, γυνὴ αἱμοῤῥοοῦσα; Mark 5:25, and Luke 8:43, ο῏υσαἐν ῥύσει αἵματος ). The latter caused a permanent legal uncleanness, the former a temporary one, mostly for seven days; after which the woman was to be purified by the customary offering. The " bloody flux" (ὅυσεντερία) in Acts 28:8, where the patient is of the male sex, is probably a medically correct term (see Bartholini, De Morbis Biblicis, 17). In Matthew 9:20, the disease alluded to is hemorrhage; but we are not obliged to suppose that it continued unceasingly for twelve years. It is a universal custom, in speaking of the duration of a chronic disease, to include the intervals of comparative health that may occur during its course; so that when a disease is merely stated to have lasted a certain time, we have still to learn whether it-was of strictly a continuous type, or whether it intermitted. In the present case, as this point is left undecided, we are quite at liberty to suppose that the disease did intermit, and can therefore understand why it did not prove fatal even in twelve years. It was most likely uterine in this instance, and hence the delicacy of the woman in approaching Christ, and her confusion on being discovered. (See FLUX).