In our Sabbath School, we have been discussing how Jesus healed people. If they had a spiritual problem He spoke and healed them, if they had a physical problem He touched them, and if they needed both--He did both. Then it says that He spit on the deaf and dumb man's toungue (sp?) and he spit in the blind man's eye. Spitting seems to be a new element here and since Jesus never did anything on the surface so to speak, can any one tell me what the spitting represented?

Liz

The best explanation I can find seems to be in the following quotation from the SDA Commentary:

SDA Commentary, Vol. 5, p. 626 - "Although ancient literature preserves numerous examples of the use of saliva by physicians and wonder-workers who believed it able to communicate healing from their bodies to those of their patients, and thus to have curative properties, there is no apparent reason why Jesus chose here to heal in this manner, so unusual for Him. Some have suggested the possibility that this gesture was simply a concession to the man’s unavoidable ignorance and dullness of perception. But whatever the reason may have been, the entire procedure here followed closely resembles that of the healing of the blind man of Bethsaida."

Hope this helps. Apparently, it is allied to the later belief that a king's touch had some healing, that a particular person's body had miracle-working powers.

Eye salve... See the letter to the church of Laodicia (I think) where He says to pruchase eye-salve and raiment from Him.