Mark 10:48

10:48 Many scolded ¹  him to get him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”

Mark 10:47

10:47 When he heard that it was Jesus the Nazarene, he began to shout, ²  “Jesus, Son of David, ³  have mercy ⁴  on me!”

Mark 5:7

5:7 Then ⁵  he cried out with a loud voice, “Leave me alone, ⁶  Jesus, Son of the Most High God! I implore you by God ⁷  – do not torment me!”

[10:48]  ¹ tn Or “rebuked.” The crowd’s view was that surely Jesus would not be bothered with someone as unimportant as a blind beggar.

[10:47]  ² tn Grk “to shout and to say.” The infinitive λέγειν (legein) is redundant here and has not been translated.

[10:47]  ³ sn Jesus was more than a Nazarene to this blind person, who saw quite well that Jesus was Son of David. There was a tradition in Judaism that the Son of David (Solomon) had great powers of healing (Josephus, Ant. 8.2.5 [8.42-49]).

[10:47]  ⁴ sn Have mercy on me is a request for healing. It is not owed the man. He simply asks for God’s kind grace.

[5:7]  ³ tn Grk “And.” Here καί (kai) has been translated as “then” to indicate the implied sequence of events within the narrative.

[5:7]  ⁴ tn Grk “What to me and to you?” (an idiom). The phrase τί ἐμοὶ καὶ σοί (ti emoi kai soi) is Semitic in origin, though it made its way into colloquial Greek (BDAG 275 s.v. ἐγώ). The equivalent Hebrew expression in the OT had two basic meanings: (1) When one person was unjustly bothering another, the injured party could say “What to me and to you?” meaning, “What have I done to you that you should do this to me?” (Judg 11:12, 2 Chr 35:21, 1 Kgs 17:18). (2) When someone was asked to get involved in a matter he felt was no business of his own, he could say to the one asking him, “What to me and to you?” meaning, “That is your business, how am I involved?” (2 Kgs 3:13, Hos 14:8). These nuances were apparently expanded in Greek, but the basic notions of defensive hostility (option 1) and indifference or disengagement (option 2) are still present. BDAG suggests the following as glosses for this expression: What have I to do with you? What have we in common? Leave me alone! Never mind! Hostility between Jesus and the demons is certainly to be understood in this context, hence the translation: “Leave me alone….”

[5:7]  ⁵ sn Though it seems unusual for a demon to invoke God’s name (“I implore you by God”) in his demands of Jesus, the parallel in Matt 8:29 suggests the reason: “Why have you come to torment us before the time?” There was an appointed time in which demons would face their judgment, and they seem to have viewed Jesus’ arrival on the scene as an illegitimate change in God’s plan regarding the time when their sentence would be executed.