A second story further expands the ministry of Jesus to the Gentiles (7:31–37). From Tyre, Jesus travels twenty miles north to Sidon, then southeast to the Gentile Decapolis east of the Sea of Galilee, following a horseshoe circuit of one hundred rugged miles. In the Decapolis a man “who was deaf and could hardly talk” (7:32) is brought to Jesus for healing. The description of the man’s speech and hearing defects is a single word in Greek, a word that occurs only once elsewhere in the Greek Bible, in Isaiah 35:6. Use of this rare term indicates that Mark intends for readers to see the healing of verses 31–37 as a fulfillment of Isaiah 35, in which the …