THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW
Chapter 8: When Yeshua came down from
the mountain He was followed by great crowds. A leper came up to Him, fell on
his knees and cried, ‘Adonai, if You want to, You can heal me!’ Yeshua stretched
out His arm and touched him, and said, “I will. Be clean!” And at once he was
cured of his leprosy. Then Yeshua said to him, “Tell no one, but go and show
yourself to the priest, and as a witness to them offer the gift that Moshe
(Moses) commanded” (Leviticus 14:3).
When He came back to Capernaum, a captain of
the Roman army came up to Him and said to Him imploringly, ‘Adonai, my son is
sick in bed, paralyzed, and in great pain.’ Yeshua said to him, “I will come
over and heal him.” The captain replied, ‘I am not worthy, Adonai, to have You
come under my roof. But speak only a word of command and my son will be healed.
For though I am a man who has to take orders, I have soldiers under me, and when I say to one – ‘Go!’, he goes;
and to another – ‘Come!’, he comes; and to my servant – ‘Do this!’, and he does
it.’ When Yeshua heard this, He was amazed and said to His followers, “Indeed,
I tell you, that not even in Israel have I found so great faith. And I tell you
that many will come from the East and from the West, and they will sit down to
feast with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, but the sons
of the kingdom shall be put out into the outer darkness, and there will be
weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Yeshua then said to the captain, “Go, and be it
to you as you have believed!” And the boy was healed that very hour.
When Yeshua came to Simon’s house (Peter),
Yeshua saw Simon’s wife’s mother lying down sick with fever. Then He touched
her hand and the fever left her, and she got up and waited on Him. In the
evening, they brought Him many who were possessed by demons, and with a word He
drove out the evil spirits, and all who were ill He made well again. In this
way He fulfilled the words of the prophet Isaiah, “He took our infirmities upon
Himself, and took away our diseases” (Isaiah 53:4).
Yeshua, seeing the great crowds around Him,
then gave orders to cross over to the far side of the lake. At this, a scribe
came to Him and said, ‘I will go with You, Rabbi (Teacher), wherever You want
to go’. Yeshua answered him, “Foxes have holes and birds in the air have
roosts, but the Son of Man has not a place where He can lay His head.
Another man – one of his followers – said to
Him, ‘Adonai, let me first go and bury my father’. But Yeshua answered him, “Follow
Me, and let the dead bury their own dead!”
He then went into a boat, and His disciples
came in after Him. A terrible storm came upon them, and the waves dashed over
the boat, but He was asleep. His disciples went over to Him and awakened Him,
crying out, ‘Save us, Adonai! We shall perish!’ He said to them, “Why are you
afraid, you of little faith?” Then he got up and rebuked the sea, and there was
great calm. And the men, dumbfounded, said, ‘What kind of Man is this, for both
the winds and the waves obey Him?’
When He had reached the other side, the land
of the Gadarenes, He met two demon-possessed men who were just then coming out
of the tombs. They were so violent that no one could pass that way. Then, all
at once, they set up a cry, ‘What do You want of us, You Yeshua, bar Elohei
(Son of God)? Have You come here to torment us before our appointed time?’ Now
there was, quite some distance from them, a large drove of pigs feeding. The
demons then entreated Him, saying, ‘If You are going to drive us out, let us go
into the drove of pigs’. He answered them, “Go!” And they left the men and went
into the animals. But suddenly the whole drove of pigs rushed down the slope
and into the sea, and they drowned there in the water. Those who fed the pigs
then fled, and came back to town and told everything, also what happened to the
men who had the evil spirits. The whole town then turned out to meet Yeshua,
but on seeing Him, they begged Him to go away from their countryside.
