‘And behold, a woman, who had a discharge of blood twelve years, came behind him, and touched the border (or ‘fringe' or ‘tassel') of his cloak. For she said within herself, “If I do but touch his garment, I will be made whole.” '
In the crowd that followed Jesus was a woman who ought not to have been there, for she was permanently ritually unclean (Leviticus 15:25). She had a flow of vaginal blood that never stopped flowing. (Luke tells us that she had spent a fortune on doctors, and now she was in poverty and all hope had gone). But she had heard of Jesus, and no doubt disguised in some way, crept into the crowd around Him. She knew that what she was about to do was unforgivable, and would not want her neighbours to know that she was there. For when she touched this prophet she would be making Him ritually unclean, together with all the people around her who touched her. Religiously she was human dynamite. But her desperation overrode everything else and quietly and surreptitiously she made her way through the crowd and touched either the hem of His robe or the tassel required to be worn by all Jewish males in Numbers 15:37-38 (compare Matthew 14:36). The idea of the tassels which every Jewish male was supposed to wear in order to indicate his concern for God's commandments would be of great interest to his Jewish readers.
She only touched the hem of His garment,
As to His side she stole,
Amidst the crowd that gathered around Him,
And straightway she was whole.'
She may thus in fact have touched one of the tassels that every Jewish man had on his garment (Numbers 15:38), but either way it was effective. Immediately she sensed the change in her. For the first time in years the flow of blood had dried up. She was healed. She would hardly have been able to believe it. It would have seemed too good to be true.
It was a picture of what could also happen to Israel if only they too would reach out and touch Jesus. As God had promised to the woman in Ezekiel 16 so long before, full restoration was available when she was ready to turn to Him.