Jairus

Jairus is a ruler of a synagogue in Galilee whose daughter was restored to life by Jesus, named in the Gospels of Mark and Luke (Mark 5:22; Luke 8:41). The name is the Greek form of the Hebrew Ya'ir, meaning roughly “he gives light” or “he awakens” — a matter of established linguistic fact; the same name belongs to a Gileadite judge in Judges 10:3. The parallel account in Matthew 9:18 leaves the ruler unnamed.

The text says Jairus was “one of the rulers of the synagogue” (Mark 5:22), and history records that this was a lay office of oversight — an administrator of the building and its arrangements rather than a teacher of the law. Mark says he came, fell at Jesus' feet, and begged him much because his little daughter was at the point of death (Mark 5:22–23); Luke likewise has him fall down at Jesus' feet (Luke 8:41). While he is still speaking, the narrative is interrupted by a woman who had a discharge of blood for twelve years (Mark 5:25; Luke 8:43–44), whom Jesus addresses as “Daughter” and tells that her faith has made her well (Mark 5:34; Luke 8:48). Word then reaches Jairus that the child has died (Mark 5:35), and Jesus allows no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John (Mark 5:37). Taking the child by the hand, he says “Talitha cumi,” which Mark preserves in Aramaic and translates, “Girl, I tell you, get up!” (Mark 5:41); Luke's version is simply “Child, arise!” (Luke 8:54). He then orders that no one be told and that something be given her to eat (Mark 5:43; Luke 8:56).

One way to read the passage is to see Jairus and the unnamed woman as deliberate foils: a named man of standing and a ritually marginal woman, both driven to Jesus, their two stories braided together by the evangelist so that each comments on the other. Interpreters also differ over the command to silence — some read it as part of the so-called messianic secret that runs through Mark, others as ordinary protection of a family's privacy.

Traditions read the figure differently. Readings shaped by the charismatic and Pentecostal traditions tend to dwell on Jairus's urgent plea as an example of faith that persists through apparent delay, while Reformed and Lutheran readers more often stress that the initiative throughout belongs to Jesus, who raises the child without any confession from her father at the tomb. Some devotional traditions treat Jairus chiefly as a bereaved parent and a model of hope; historical-critical readers more often treat him as a narrative figure whose role is to frame the healing of the woman. These are interpretive judgments, not points on which Scripture itself speaks.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.