They were disabled men, indigent, sitting by a busy thoroughfare in the hope that passersby would have mercy on them and throw some spare change their way.
They were blind. But they weren’t deaf. And they certainly weren’t dumb.
When they heard that Jesus was passing by, they decided to trade up to a bigger “ask.” Just yelling “Hey, you!” wouldn’t do. These men began to loudly acknowledge Jesus as the messianic king of Judah. Their begging became worship.
The Evangelist tells us that at this moment Jesus and his entourage were leaving Jericho. Jericho is not in Judea; that is, it’s not in the region of the kingdom of Judah, ruled by the royal line of David, “the lion of Judah.” Jericho is in the territory of the Northern Kingdom, the kingdom of Israel, which rebelled against David’s grandson Rehoboam and established itself as an independent kingdom with its own king, Jeroboam. And Jeroboam was definitely not a “son of David”: “And it came to pass, when all Israel heard that Jeroboam was come again, that they sent and called him unto the congregation, and made him king over all Israel: there was none that followed the house of David, but the tribe of Judah only” (1 Kings 12:20).
So Jericho was not “son of David” country—no fans of David and his descendants there.
Yet the blind men called on the “Lord, thou son of David.” And they kept calling on him, in spite of David not being a hero in those parts. And some of their neighbors didn’t like it, so they told them to “hush.”
But those guys wouldn’t “hush.” They just kept on calling Jesus, because they had heard that this “son of David” was healing the blind. And these two blind men wanted to be among them.
In this tale of Jesus’ service to two blind men, the Evangelist tells us something about getting what you want.
Know what you want. Ask for it. And keep asking for it. Don’t hush!
And don’t let anybody stop you from talking to someone who can give it to you.
Let everybody else talk to the hand.