Resurrection of Jairus’ Daughter

What does Resurrection of Jairus’ Daughter show?

Jesus stands near the center in red, holding the girl’s raised hand with one hand and extending the other above her. Her eyes turn toward Him from the pillow. A blue and yellow striped blanket runs across the bed, while cups, jars, and hanging cloths furnish the room. These ordinary objects keep the miracle close to a household’s daily life.

The mother leans forward with clasped hands beside the bed; the other witnesses gather in the shadowed space at the left. The light moves from their faces toward Jesus and the child, giving the broad composition a clear center of attention. The Russian Academy of Arts museum dates this large canvas to 1871 and identifies it as Polenov’s work for the academy’s graduation competition.

What does Mark 5:41 mean?

Jairus first asks Jesus to come because his daughter is near death. While Jesus is speaking with the woman healed of bleeding, messengers report that the girl has died. He continues to the house, tells Jairus to believe, and takes the parents and three disciples into the child’s room after sending the noisy crowd outside.

Mark preserves the command in Aramaic and translates it for the reader. The girl immediately gets up and walks; she is twelve years old. Jesus then orders that she be given food. The joined hands in Polenov’s painting hold the miraculous command beside the kind of bodily care that continues after the astonishment.

Polenov makes the joined hands the room’s center, while Mark carries the restored child from that touch into movement and a meal.

Sources

Russian Academy of Arts Museum: Resurrection of Jairus’s Daughter. The owning record identifies the canvas, date, dimensions, and graduation competition.

Mark 5 — Berean Standard Bible. Jairus’s appeal, the interrupted journey, and the raising of his twelve-year-old daughter.