In the account of the healing of blind Bartimaeus, he
calls upon Jesus as “son of David” to have mercy on him. This appellation of
Jesus is strategically placed by Mark just before Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem.
Jesus’ reply to the man, “Go, your faith has saved you,” in 10:52 implicitly
affirms his designation of Jesus as “son of David.” Then, in the entry itself,
the crowd blesses “the coming kingdom of our father David.” Although Jesus is
not hailed explicitly as king in that passage nor as son of David, the context
suggests that he is both. Such an inference is supported by the address of
Jesus as “son of David” by Bartimaeus in the immediately preceding passage.
There is no indication in 11:1–11 that the designation of Jesus as “son of
David” is inadequate. The fact that the leaders of the city do not come out to
meet Jesus suggests, however, that they do not recognize him as such. The lack
of a welcome of Jesus by the leaders of the people and the anticlimactic ending
of the account of his entry into Jerusalem are hints that the role Jesus will
play in the rest of the narrative is not the one most often associated with the
messianic son of David among Jews of the time.
In this passage, the voice of Jesus raises an explicit
question about the adequacy of the epithet “son of David” for the messiah. It
does so by quoting an early Christian testimony to the glorified state of Jesus
after his crucifixion and exaltation. The reference to the enemies of Jesus
being placed under his feet expresses in a concrete way the kingship that he is
to exercise after his resurrection. This glorified state is related to the
portrayal of Jesus as the heavenly Son of Man elsewhere in Mark (8:38;
13:26–27; and esp. 14:62). The question about the messiah as son of David in
this passage is thus part of a complex and nuanced narrative portrayal of Jesus
as messiah. He is son of David, but not in the way that many in his time would
expect. His identity is best expressed in terms of the juxtaposition of and
tension between the suffering Son of Man and the glorious Son of Man related to
the vision of a heavenly one like a son of man in Dan 7:13. (Adela
Yarbro Collins, Mark: A Commentary on the Gospel of
Mark [Hermeneia—a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible;
Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 2007], 581–582)
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