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When the woman with the issue of blood touched the hem of Jesus' garment, she had been bleeding for twelve years — a condition invisible to everyone who looked at her but which had cost her everything. She had spent all her money on physicians and grown worse. She came in a crowd, anonymous, hoping to touch him without being noticed. Jesus stopped and asked who touched him. He would not let her remain invisible. He called her forward and named her: "Daughter." Her hidden suffering was seen.
Get These Verses Daily — Free“O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me.”
The Hebrew chaqar — 'searched' — means to dig, to examine thoroughly. God's knowledge of you is not surface-level. What cannot be seen by doctors or family members is not beyond God's sight. You are known in the parts of you no one else can reach.
“For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.”
The Greek sympatheo means to co-suffer, to feel with. Jesus is not a distant God observing invisible illness from outside. He has been in a body, has suffered in it, and has the specific capacity to feel with a person whose suffering is inside where no one can see.
“But the LORD said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart.”
God's mode of perception is specifically different from human perception: he does not require outward evidence to know inward reality. The invisible illness — the suffering that leaves no outward mark — is visible to the one who looks at what cannot be seen.
“And he said unto her, Daughter, be of good comfort: thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace.”
Jesus stopped a crowd, identified a woman who had tried to remain anonymous, and addressed her directly as 'daughter.' The woman with the hidden bleeding condition — invisible, chronic, isolating — was the one he singled out to name and see. He does not let invisible suffering remain invisible.
“Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?”
God is described as keeping a record of specific sufferings — each tear, each wandering. The person with an invisible illness who cannot prove to others what they are living is fully documented in God's accounting. Nothing is missed or dismissed.
1 Samuel 16:7 contains God's statement to Samuel when he was looking at Jesse's sons for a king: "the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart." The word for 'heart' here — levav — encompasses the whole inner life, including the physical interior of a person. God's vision is specifically different from human vision in that it does not require visible evidence to register reality. The invisible illness is not invisible to him.
Psalm 139:1–3 describes a God whose knowledge is comprehensive: "Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways." The Hebrew word yada — 'knowest' — carries the sense of intimate, experiential knowledge, not just factual awareness. God knows the specifics of a body that is suffering in ways no one else can see.
Commentary is from a charismatic Protestant perspective, drawing on KJV text and public-domain sources including Spurgeon, Andrew Murray, and Matthew Henry.
Hebrews 4:15 describes Jesus as a high priest "which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin." The phrase "touched with the feeling" is one Greek word — sympatheo — from which we get sympathy, but stronger: co-suffering, feeling-with. The argument in Hebrews is that Jesus has the capacity for sympatheo with human weakness because he has been in it. He is not a priest who theorizes about pain. He is one who has been in the body when the body suffers.
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