Mark 7:33

And he took him aside from the multitude privately, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue; and looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened.

He took him aside ... The evident reason for this action was that Jesus was required by the man's deafness to communicate with him in sign language; and the Lord definitely did not wish to permit the multitude to have any basis for supposing that his touching the man's ears and tongue, or his use of spittle, had anything whatever to do with the man's cure, such actions being only part of the process of communication with the afflicted person. If the Lord had not done such things privately, some might have considered the Lord's healing to be accomplished magically, after the manner of Greek and Jewish magicians. As Sanner said:

(These were) acts evidently designed to arouse and fortify faith ... touching this tongue ... and his ears ... Jesus looked up to heaven with a sigh - a prayer without words. Jesus thus spoke in signs to the man who could not hear. His gestures declared (in a kind of pantomime) that with power from above and by the words of his own mouth he would open the closed ears and release the bound tongue.[14]

Ephphatha ... means "open completely," or "be opened," as Mark explained. It may be supposed that the deaf-mute read the Saviour's lips in this word, the very syllables of which would have made it easy to read visually on the lips of the speaker.