Canter Bridge

It is as interesting to consider what the blind beggar Bartimaeus saw before Jesus restores his sight as after.

Picking up the thread of an Isaianic promise that the Lord’s servant would restore sight to the blind, the sightless Bartimaeus discerns in the appearance of Nazareth’s roving Jesus the visit of a messianic figure. To the embarrassment of some, he calls him ‘Son of David’ and begs him for mercy.

Now the shape and scale of messianic expectation at the turn of the era is a matter of intense scholarly debate. A kind of critical consensus speaks of the drawing together of disparate strands that include an early heir to ancient David’s legacy of monarchy, the ‘archetypal man’ of Daniel’s visions, and the ‘servant of the Lord’ whose enigmatic figure is cast across the pages of the book called Isaiah. There is a disparate, variegated texture to this kind of conflation of motifs. Yet one scholar of the topic, Cambridge University’s William Horbury, has argued that a rather widely-shared messianic expectation in the period was cogent rather than chaotic, fueled by the various biblical tributaries to the concept rather than eroded by them into inchoate lumps.

Whatever the case—we are dealing here with the vagaries of historical reconstruction—the gospel tradition plays upon an Isaianic tradition of recovered sight when its narrative presents to us a blind beggar who sees the David in Jesus before almost anyone else. ‘Son of David’, he cries. ‘Have mercy on me!’. It is difficult to know whether the echo of an Isaianic motif was present in the writer’s mind or is rather to be understood as a happy coincidence.

The story is told this way:

They came to Jericho. As Jesus and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’ Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’ Jesus stood still and said, ‘Call him here.’ And they called the blind man, saying to him, ‘Take heart; get up, he is calling you.’ So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. Then Jesus said to him, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ The blind man said to him, ‘My teacher, let me see again.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go; your faith has made you well.’ Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

Curiously, the narrative tells us nothing of what the blind man saw after his sight was returned to him, opting instead to draw out what he glimpsed beforehand.

Sometimes the blind see most truly, the landscape of reality suggesting itself to a perceptive organ that has no retina, no lens, no refractory requirement at all. This one recognized in Nazareth’s son the fulfillment of a hope that God’s own designate might rule beneficently over his Israel. And felt himself unworthy to be present on the day.