Mark 7:33

Jesus had personal contact with this man as He did with so many others He healed, which Mark stressed. Jesus apparently did what He did to help the man place his trust in Jesus.

"The laying on of hands would of itself have been sufficiently efficacious, and even, without moving a finger, he might have accomplished it by a single act of his will; but it is evident that he made abundant use of outward signs, when they were found to be advantageous. Thus, by touching the tongue with spittle, he intended to point out that the faculty of speech was communicated by himself alone; and by putting his fingers into the ears, he showed that it belonged to his office to pierce the ears of the deaf." [Note: Calvin, 2:271-72.]

Jesus may have spat on the ground and then touched the man’s tongue with His finger. Both acts would have told the man that Jesus intended to do something about his tongue and mouth.

". . . spittle supposedly had a therapeutic function in both the Greco-Roman (e.g., Pliny, Nat. Hist. 28.4.7; Tacitus, Hist. 6.18; Suetonius, Vesp. 7) and the Jewish world (Str-B, Mark 2:15-17)" [Note: Guelich, p. 395. Str-B is H. Strack and P. Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament.]