‘And he was casting out a demon that was dumb. And it came about that, when the demon was gone out, the dumb man spoke, and the multitudes marvelled.'
The scene here opens with Jesus faced up with a dumb man, rendered dumb by an evil spirit within him. Perhaps the hope of the evil spirit was that by this means he would escape detection. But when the man had been brought to Jesus, Jesus recognised what was at the root of his dumbness and cast out the evil spirit, with the result that the man was able to speak. That Jesus did not see all dumbness as caused by evil spirits is quite apparent elsewhere (Luke 1:20; Matthew 15:30; Mark 7:37), but it was seemingly not rare (compare Matthew 9:32; Matthew 12:22; Mark 9:17). The crowd watched and marvelled.