Mark 5:27-29

5:27 When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, ¹  5:28 for she kept saying, ²  “If only I touch his clothes, I will be healed.” ³  5:29 At once the bleeding stopped, ⁴  and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.

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¹ tn Grk “garment,” but here ἱμάτιον (Jimation) denotes the outer garment in particular.

² tn The imperfect verb is here taken iteratively, for the context suggests that the woman was trying to muster up the courage to touch Jesus’ cloak.

³ tn Grk “saved.”

sn In this pericope the author uses a term for being healed (Grk “saved”) that would have spiritual significance to his readers. It may be a double entendre (cf. parallel in Matt 9:21 which uses the same term), since elsewhere he uses verbs that simply mean “heal”: If only the reader would “touch” Jesus, he too would be “saved.”

⁴ tn Grk “the flow of her blood dried up.”

sn The woman was most likely suffering from a vaginal hemorrhage, in which case her bleeding would make her ritually unclean.