F. Scott Spencer, Reading Mark: A Literary and Theological Commentary, Reading the New Testament Second Series (Smyth & Helwys, 2023), 86-87.
The younger girl, Jairus’s daughter, relates more proximally with Jesus’s sleeping and more remotely with his rising from the dead, although the connections are disrupted by key distinctions. Jesus slept in the storm-tossed boat as a sign of his peaceful confidence in God’s protection and awoke – or rather was awakened by deathly terrified disciples – to calm the tempest and preserve life (4:38-41). In the present incident, Jesus pronounces the (really) dead daughter as “but sleeping” (5:39) to signify not only her placid state (“rest in peace”) but, more importantly, his intention to awaken her to fresh life: to rouse her, to raise her from the dead, as Jesus himself will be resurrected after his crucifixion (16:6-7). The other Gospels include other resuscitative miracles: Luke also reports Jesus’s raising a widow’s son during his ministry (Luke 7:10-17); Mathew adds in conjunction with Jesus’s resurrection that “the tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised” (Matt 27:52-53); and John features the raising of Lazarus in Bethany (John 11:11-15, 38-44). Mark presents only the raising of Jairus’s daughter as a parallel to his own resurrection. The parallel is not perfect since, unlike Jesus, the girl is destined to die again. Nonetheless, she represents the “first-fruits” of God’s life-giving power through Christ (cf. 1 Cor 15:20-23).
The Amateur Exegete 