Matthew 9:32-34 - Exposition

The demon cast out of the dumb man. The astonishment of the multitudes and their confession. [ The accusation by the Pharisees. ] The whole narrative greatly resembles the cure of the blind and dumb man possessed with a devil ( Matthew 12:22-24 ; Luke 11:14 , Luke 11:15 ), as may be seen from the fact that the following words are common to both passages, the brackets indicating a want of exact correspondence in the original. "They brought to him one possessed with a devil, dumb, and the [dumb spake]. And the multitudes [said.]… But the Pharisees, He casteth out the devils by … the prince of the devils."

One explanation is that the two narratives are taken kern different sources, but represent the same incident; another, that as in Matthew 9:27-31 , so also here, the narratives of two similar incidents have become assimilated. At any rate, in the case of Matthew 9:34 there has probably been assimilation, and that since the writing of the Gospel. For:

Observe that this is not a ease in which subjective difficulties are in themselves a prima facie argument for the genuineness of a phrase, for the early copyists troubled themselves very little about questions of the internal arrangement and the general aim of the sections.