Jesus has finished and there is wonder-struck silence. It seems that many are weighing, testing, enjoying and comparing the words they have heard.
While that is happening and Jesus, Who is tired and hot, sits down and speaks to John and Judas, a loud noise is heard coming from the other side of the garden enclosure. The shouts, at first confused, become clearer: «Is the Messiah there? Is He there?» and when they receive an affirmative reply, they bring forward a cripple who is so deformed that he looks like an S.
«Oh! it is Mashal!»
«But he is too crippled! What does he expect?»
«There is his mother, poor woman!»
«Master, her husband left her because of that freak of nature, her son, and she lives here of charity. But she is old and will not live very long…»
The freak of nature, he really is, is now before Jesus. It is not possible to see his face as he is so bent and twisted. He looks like the caricature of a man-chimpanzee, or of a humanised camel. His mother, a poor old wretch, does not even speak, she only moans: «Lord, Lord… I believe…»
Jesus lays His hands on the crooked shoulders of the man, who hardly reaches up to His waist, looks up to Heaven and thunders: «Rise and walk in the ways of the Lord» and the man gives a start and then springs up as straight as the most perfect man. His movement is so rapid that one would think that the springs, holding him in that abnormal position, had suddenly broken. He now reaches up to Jesus’ shoulders, he looks at Him, then falls on his knees, with his mother, kissing the feet of his Saviour.
What happens in the crowd is indescribable… And against His will, Jesus is compelled to stay in Hebron, because the people are ready to make barriers at the gates to prevent Him from going out.
He thus enters the house of the elderly head of the synagogue, who has changed so much since last year…