Matthew 8:3

Niels Larsen Stevns's 1913 depiction of Jesus curing the leper

Matthew 8:3 is the third verse of the eighth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament. This verse continues the miracle story of Jesus cleansing a leper, the first of a series of miracles in Matthew.

In the original Greek according to Westcott-Hort this verse is:

και εκτεινας την χειρα ηψατο αυτου λεγων θελω

καθαρισθητι και ευθεως εκαθαρισθη αυτου η λεπρα

In the King James Version of the Bible the text reads:

And Jesus put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will;

be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.

The English Standard Version translates the passage as:

And Jesus[a] stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I will;

be clean.” And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.

The events in this verse are paralleled in Mark 1:41^[1] with the notable change that Mark has Jesus acting because he pitied the leper. Matthew removes the emotional motivation, throughout his gospel Jesus' emotions are only rarely mentioned, reducing the references to the humanity of Jesus. Davies and Allison reject the idea that growing reverence caused the author of Matthew to limit Jesus' emotions, and the later Gospel of John makes frequent reference to Jesus' feelings.^[2]

Stretching out his hand is an expression that occurs some 80 times in the LXX version of the Hebrew Bible, and the standard physical expression of healing and causing miracles.^[3] Touching the leper is seemingly in defiance of Leviticus 5:3 and touching an unclean leper would have made Jesus himself unclean. Keener argues that this is not a violation of the law, as Jesus is fulfilling it by his act of cleansing the leper.^[4]

Bede used this verse as a compact criticism of various heresies he perceived. "I will" disproves Photinus' view that Jesus is not divine; "be Clean" counters Arianism; and "touched him" denies the Manichaeism rejection of Jesus' physicality.^[3]

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