Healing of the Demon-Possessed Boy

Biblical Text and Content

The account appears in all three Synoptic Gospels: Matthew 17:14–20, Mark 9:14–29, and Luke 9:37–43. All three Gospels place the event immediately after the Transfiguration.

When Jesus comes down from the mountain, a father asks him to heal his son. The father had already appealed to the other disciples, but they had been unable to cast out the demon. Mark reports that a crowd and some scribes were arguing with the disciples at the time. Mark describes the boy's symptoms as follows: from childhood he had been unable to speak, and he would go into convulsions, foam at the mouth, gnash his teeth, and become rigid. In Mark 9:23 Jesus says, "If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth," and the father replies, "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief" (Mark 9:24). Jesus rebukes the demon and drives it out; the boy then becomes as one dead, but Jesus takes him by the hand and lifts him up.

Afterward the disciples ask why they could not cast it out. The two Gospels give different answers:

• Mark: "This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer" (Mark 9:29).
• Matthew: Jesus attributes their failure to their little faith and says that with faith as a grain of mustard seed they could move a mountain (Matthew 17:20).

Background

The three Gospel accounts differ in some details. Luke specifies that the boy was his father's only son (Luke 9:38). Matthew describes the boy's condition with a Greek word meaning "moonstruck," which the Korean New Revised Version (Gaeyeok Gaejeong) renders as "epilepsy." The disciples had earlier received authority to cast out demons and had in fact done so (Mark 6:7, 13; Luke 9:1), which makes their failure on this occasion all the more striking.

Significance Within Scripture

All three Gospels follow this event immediately with the scene in which Jesus foretells his death and resurrection for the second time. The glory on the mountain is thus set against the powerlessness of the disciples below. Within this arrangement, the episode is read as illustrating faith, prayer, and the limits of discipleship.

Interpretation and Points of Debate

• Manuscripts that include "fasting": Some manuscripts of Mark 9:29 read "prayer and fasting." Matthew 17:21 ("Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting") is likewise absent from the major early manuscripts. Consequently, some translations include the verse in the main text, while others place it in brackets or a footnote.
• Illness or demon possession?: Because the symptoms resemble what is today called epilepsy, some interpreters read the account as an ancient way of describing illness. By contrast, most evangelical and traditional interpreters take it, as the text states, as genuine demon possession. At the same time, some pastors caution that this passage should not be used to treat people with epilepsy as though they were demon-possessed.
• Deliverance ministry today: Pentecostal and charismatic churches often cite this passage as evidence that the ministry of casting out demons continues today. Others hold that such miracles were given specially to the apostolic age. This debate is treated in the article Cessationism and Continuationism.
• "Faithless generation": Interpreters differ over whom Jesus' rebuke addresses, with proposals including the disciples, the father, the crowd, or that entire generation.

In the Korean Church

"Help thou mine unbelief" is frequently quoted in sermons as a prayer confessing weak faith. The phrase "but by prayer and fasting" has been widely used to encourage fasting prayer and "commitment prayer," in which believers pledge to pray for a set period.