Significance of 12 years The combined stories have been used as an example of
intercalation ("sandwich story"), where one incident is inserted within another, linked in this case by the connection between the 12-year ailment and the 12-year-old girl. Twelve years also represents the age at which
girls come of age in Judaism, and so it appears that Mark and Luke mention the girl's age to emphasise the tragedy of her dying before her father could marry her off, receive a dowry, and expect grandchildren to continue his lineage. Mary Ann Getty-Sullivan (2001): "Thus the father may have faced financial loss as well as social disgrace, in addition to the personal sorrow of his daughter's illness and death." According to Barbara E. Reid (1996), it is significant that Luke adds that it is the father's
only daughter, and that the
Raising of the son of the widow of Nain narrative (only told in Luke's gospel, 7:11–17) mirrors it exactly by stating that he was the mother's
only son. Seeing that the genders are reversed here, but nevertheless treated in the same way, Reid concluded that daughters and sons were treated as equals by Luke's Jesus, in contrast to that society's culture, which valued sons far above daughters. Getty-Sullivan (2001) pointed out that, rather than Mark/Luke's verb ἀνίστημι ("to stand up, to get up"), Matthew used the verb ἐγείρω ("to (a)rise") that is commonly connected to the
resurrection of Jesus, suggesting that Matthew wanted to cast Jesus' miraculous revival of Jairus' daughter as a foreshadowing of what would later happen to Jesus himself. ==See also==