The Blind man’s cloak

Throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet and came to Jesus
(Mark 10:50)

Bartimaeus who heard the disciples saying, “The Lord is calling you” threw his cloak aside and jumped to his feet and came to Jesus. This sentence is quite dynamic. Three verbs throw, jump and come get connected. Could this be a literal technique of Bartimaeus to express his urgent state of mind?

Here the expression of throwing his cloak aside has a great symbolic meaning. According to the Bible annotators, there are some transformed phrases. A certain transformed phrase describes that the blind man throw on his cloak before going to Jesus. The cloak has been spreading out for almsgiving on the street. And the others suggest that the blind man formally put on his cloak before a great teacher to show his respect.

Why does it vary in this manner? Though a certain insistence suggests that an oriental tinge has been added to the former and the latter was modified in the Greek way of life, it is hard for us to come to a specific conclusion. However, the important point we can learn here is the author’s deliberate effort to deliver the blind man’s high spirited emotion to the reader.

Though I may mention it in detail in the following verse 51, we can fully imagine how he was in such a status of high spirit. He should hang only on one fact. His status of being healed from his blindness is the most significant moment of his life. Compared to this aesthetic joy in his life other matters seems unimportant to him thereby making him throw his cloak aside. We also should throw it aside in times emergency.
Those who have not yet entered into the urgent status of the blind man neither know what the significance of cloak throwing aside is nor feel the necessity of this historic incidence. Lord! Have mercy on us!