Page 31 - Discipleship Ministries Student E-Book

Another popular Roman god was the goddess Diana. She was the goddess of the moon and of hunting.
In the city of Ephesus there was a great temple built to honor this goddess. This temple had more than a
hundred columns of stupendous size, single stones of sixty feet in height. This great temple was one of
the seven wonders of the ancient world. Inside the temple was a great image or statue of this goddess.
The silversmiths who lived in Ephesus would make small images of the goddess and sell them to
idolaters for a great profit.

Here is an example of how important the culture of the day is in helping us understand the passage of
Scripture we are studying:

Luke 8:43-48 And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, and though
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she had spent all her living on physicians, she could not be healed by anyone. She came up behind him
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and touched the fringe of his garment, and immediately her discharge of blood ceased. And Jesus

said, “Who was it that touched me?” When all denied it, Petersaid, “Master, the crowds surround you
and are pressing in on you!” But Jesus said, “Someone touched me, for I perceive that power has gone
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out from me.” And when the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling, and falling
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down before him declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched him, and how she had
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been immediately healed. And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.”
(ESV)
The rationale behind some of Israel’s laws is not always clear to us. So, it is with legislation governing
the uncleanness of blood discharges from the body. According to the Law of Moses (Lev. 15: 25-28), a
flow of blood rendered a woman ceremonially unclean, and communicated uncleanness to anyone she
touched. The woman Jesus encountered in this passage had experienced a continual flow of blood for
12 YEARS that most probably forced her to remain single. If the problem started after she was married,
it probably led her husband to divorce her. In her case, ceremonial uncleanness made her an outcast of
her society. In the culture of the day, it was as bad as having leprosy!

Since she had had the problem for 12 years, much of her life had been consumed by this illness.
Because many people died in their forties in this culture, her problem probably began sometime after
puberty; she may have felt like half her adult life was already lost. Furthermore, in a culture where
women remained economically dependent upon men, this woman’s disease had exhausted “her”
livelihood” (8:43). She was desperate – so desperate that she would allow NOTHING to deter her from
Jesus.

Anyone this woman touched would be rendered unclean, so it was scandalous for her to press her way
to Jesus through the crowd. Even touching Jesus’ garment would make Him unclean. If she was going to
touch Him, she must do so without announcing her intentions (see Lev. 15: 26-27)

If a person was declared ceremonially unclean, the process to be cleansed was very involved, depending
upon the defilement. According to Lev. 15: 26-27, since Jesus was touched by this woman, He would
have to wash his clothes and bathe in water and would be unclean until that evening. Her defilement
could only be cleansed by her flow of blood ceasing for seven days, then on the eighth day, offering two
turtledoves or two young pigeons at the doorway of the outer court of the temple. Should a person be
defiled by touching a dead person, the process was even more complex. That person had to travel to
the temple courtyard but could not gain admittance. He had to remain outside the courtyard for the
entire week and declare himself unclean to all those who passed by. During that week, the person had

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