This double story, set in the Jewish area again, begins with the cry for help from Jairus, a synagogue official; his daughter was extremely ill. As Jesus started off towards Jairus' house, a woman who had been an outcast from society for twelve years because of bleeding which made her continually defiled, touched Jesus' cloak secretly, believing that even this slight contact with him would heal her. When her healing was discovered, the woman was extremely afraid of what she had done because according to the Law (Leviticus 15 :25-27) everyone who had accidentally pushed against her in the crowd and Jesus himself because she had touched his cloak, had been defiled. As Jesus spoke comfortingly to her (5 :34) people came from Jairus' house to say that his daughter was dead but Jesus went on to the house and restored her to life.

In these two stories the power of faith and God's response to faith is emphasized. Both Jairus and the woman believed that Jesus was able to put right what was judged humanly hopeless. The story of the woman and her defilement would have been significant to Gentile readers-because the Jews considered the Gentiles to be equally defiled but through faith in Jesus Christ they had been made holy (1 Peter I :2) and brought into the community of the new People of God (Galatians 3 :26-28). That the power of death had been broken in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ was a great statement of faith in the kerygma; in the restoration to life of Jairus' daughter there is a foreshadowing of this.

In 5 :43 the command not to spread the news of what Jesus had done is again repeated. Mark translates an Aramaic phrase in 5 :41. Peter, James and John were the only disciples whom Jesus took with him to witness the restoration to life of the girl; these same disciples were to be the witnesses of the Transfiguration of Jesus, later.