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gift than THEIR OWN CHILDREN? These pagan people would actually sacrifice their own children. The
child would be put into the fire (see 2 Kings 21:6). See Leviticus 18:21 ("seed" = children).

Dagon was the chief god of the Philistines (see 1 Chron. 10:10). The Philistines built a house, or temple,
for this god, and they made an idol or statue of their god and put him in this temple. Some believe that
this god had the body or trunk of a fish and human hands and a human head.

In the New Testament, the people of Lystra claimed Barnabas was Jupiter, the king of the gods, and Paul
was Mercury, the messenger of the gods. Mercury carried messages from the gods to men. He was
often pictured as having winged feet. They probably thought Paul was the messenger god because he
did most of the talking. Even in New Testament times the nations worshipped all kinds of false gods
which were really no gods at all.

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
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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
down before him declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched him, and how she had
been immediately healed. And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.”
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(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!
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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 absolutely desperate – so desperate that she would allow NOTHING to deter
her from Jesus.

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