<p>7:14 <i>And he came near and touched the coffin; and the bearers stood still. And he said: Young man, I say to you, arise</i>- The Lord spoke to the corpse of the widow&rsquo;s dead son as if it were already restored to life; see on Mk. 5:41. The touching of the coffin was all significant, for it made the Lord ritually unclean. And yet He touched it when in His own mind having proclaimed the man alive; there was therefore no defilement from a dead body because in fact the body was not dead. The Lord surely knew the kind of casuistic discussion of the legalism of the situation which would be provoked. And He was seeking to teach through the miracle that legalistic defilement is no issue to Him because He can transform defiling situations. He taught the same by touching lepers and sick people who were probably also ritually unclean. But He touched them at the point of healing, raising the legalistic question as to whether He had in fact touched the defiled, seeing that He spoke of dead and unclean things as if they had already come clean and alive to Him.</p>