Then was brought unto him one possessed with a demon, blind, and dumb: and he healed him, so that the blind and dumb both spoke and saw.
Read Chapter 12
Epiphanius the Latin
AD 403
The entire population of the Gentiles was blind, sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death. They could not see Christ with the eyes of their hearts blinded. This was because they did not know the law and could not praise God. They were possessed by a demon, because after such great idolatry and hunger for the demonic, they were led captive as it were by an unclean spirit. “Then a blind and dumb demoniac was brought to him.” By whom was he offered if not by the apostles, who quickly brought all the Gentiles who were attacked by the devil to bring offering to God? Jesus cured him in their presence, “in such a way that he might speak and might see.” He spoke because he praised God through his faith. He saw Christ because light shined on the eyes of his heart. He was healed because, now by leaving behind his mad idolatry and his various mistakes, he was faithfully serving the Lord.
The healing of the blind, mute, demonpossessed man follows. It was not without reason that, although he had said that all the multitudes were healed together, now a blind, mute man possessed by a demon was offered to him so that the same order of understanding might follow without any ambiguity. The Pharisees accused the apostles of plucking ears of corn, that is, of prematurely gathering the people of their age. But in his presence mercy was praised over sacrifice. A man with a withered hand was offered up in a synagogue and was cured. Yet not only were these deeds not useful in converting Israel, but the Pharisees even entered into a plan of murder. So it was necessary that the salvation of the Gentiles happen after these events in the dramatic definitive form of a single person. A blind, mute man who was the dwelling place of a demon was being prepared as one fit for God, that he might behold God in Christ and might praise the works of Christ by his acknowledgment of God. The crowd ...
O wickedness of the evil spirit! He had barred up both entrances, whereby that person should have believed, as well sight as hearing; nevertheless, both did Christ open.
