Giving Voice to Pain: New Testament Narratives of Healing in the Poetry of Jacob of Serugh

Abstract

The late antique Syriac poet, Jacob of Serugh (451–521CE), composed narrative poems or mēmrē on a variety of biblical stories featuring miraculous healings. This essay approaches the subject of pain through examining two of these works: Homily 169 about the woman with a bent spine from the Gospel of Luke (13:10–17) and Homily 170 about the woman with an uncontrolled flow of blood found in the Gospel of Mark (5:25–34) and recounted in Matthew 9:20– 22 and Luke 8:43–48. Composed for liturgical performance, Jacob's poems feature expanded descriptions of the women's bodies and imagined speeches. Through his crafted persona as poetic narrator, Jacob rendered the anomalous female body as a symbol for the sinful human condition, reflecting larger interpretative traditions surrounding these biblical stories. In addition to this exegetical approach, Jacob's poetic form allowed him to dramatise these encounters with Jesus through embellished, first-person speeches. Jacob centres the listener's attention on the physical pain, emotional distress, and the social implications of the bodily conditions of the biblical characters. As a result, his poetry resists the erasure of the female body through the closure of symbolic readings. He embedded his meditations on pain and the social consequences of physical impairment within an overarching anti-Jewish polemic. These complex literary representations project ideals of faithful suffering and Christian identity that were formative for the Syriac Christian communities who heard and preserved Jacob's writings.