A large crowd was following
Jesus and pressing around him. And a
woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a great deal under the care
of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew
worse. When she heard about Jesus, she
came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, “If
I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.”
Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was
freed from her suffering.
At once Jesus realized that
power had gone out from him. He turned
around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?” “You see the people crowding against you,”
his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’ ”
But Jesus kept looking around
to see who had done it. Then the woman,
knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with
fear, told him the whole truth. He said
to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you.
Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”