Does God make people deaf and blind, or do evil spirits?

Hard question · Who God is · raised by 1 of the lists sceptics circulate

Both true, in different sensesRead in context

See the passages joined in the interactive map

The passages

Exodus 4:11

“Who hath made man’s mouth? or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I the Lord?”

And the Lord said unto him, Who hath made man’s mouth? or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I the Lord?

John 9:1–3

Of a man born blind, Jesus says that neither he nor his parents sinned, “but that the works of God should be made manifest in him”.

And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.

Mark 9:17

A father brings Jesus his son, “which hath a dumb spirit”.

And one of the multitude answered and said, Master, I have brought unto thee my son, which hath a dumb spirit;

Mark 9:25

Jesus rebukes the spirit: “Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee, come out of him”.

When Jesus saw that the people came running together, he rebuked the foul spirit, saying unto him, Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee, come out of him, and enter no more into him.

Mark 7:32–35

Jesus heals a deaf man with a speech impediment by touching his ears and tongue; no spirit is mentioned.

And they bring unto him one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech; and they beseech him to put his hand upon him. And he took him aside from the multitude, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spit, and touched his tongue; And looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. And straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain.

Matthew 12:22

A man “possessed with a devil, blind, and dumb” is healed, so that he both speaks and sees.

Then was brought unto him one possessed with a devil, blind, and dumb: and he healed him, insomuch that the blind and dumb both spake and saw.

The objection

God tells Moses that he is the one who “maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind”, and Jesus says that a man was born blind “that the works of God should be made manifest in him”. Yet in Mark a boy is mute and deaf because of an evil spirit, and Jesus speaks to it: “Thou dumb and deaf spirit”. So who makes people deaf and blind: God, or evil spirits?

The answer

The Bible speaks of causes on more than one level. Exodus 4:11 is God’s answer to Moses, who had pleaded that he was “slow of speech” (4:10). God reminds him that every human power, and every lack of one, falls within his rule: he made the mouth, and he will be with the mouth he made (4:12). Gill explains that what God allows to be, he can also put right when he chooses. God is not describing how each case comes about. He is telling Moses that nothing in the human body is beyond his power, so Moses’ weakness is no excuse.

The Gospels show that such conditions come about in different ways. Some are the work of an evil spirit, as with the boy in Mark 9 and the blind and mute man of Matthew 12:22. Many are not. Jesus healed a deaf man by touching his ears and tongue, with no word about any spirit (Mark 7:32–35), and he treated the man in John 9 simply as born blind, while denying that a particular sin had caused it. The Gospel writers distinguish healing the sick from casting out demons: “he healed many that were sick of divers diseases, and cast out many devils” (Mark 1:34). So the Bible does not trace every disability to spirits.

Where an evil spirit is at work, it acts only within limits God sets, as the book of Job shows (see the entry on whether Satan or the Lord brought Job’s troubles). Luke tells of a woman “whom Satan hath bound” for eighteen years (Luke 13:16), and when she was healed she “glorified God” (13:13). So the passages answer two different questions: who is sovereign over these conditions (God), and what was the cause in a particular case (sometimes an evil spirit, often not). In John 9 Jesus turns from the question of blame to God’s purpose: “that the works of God should be made manifest in him”.

Still open

Christians differ on how directly to read Exodus 4:11. Some take it to mean that God forms each person as he or she is, for his own good purposes (compare Psalm 139:13–16); others, that he permits conditions that arise in a fallen world and works through them. Both hold that God rules over them and does no wrong in doing so.

From the classic commentators

so calling him, not because the spirit was dumb and deaf, but because he had been the cause of dumbness and deafness in the child: he had at times taken away both his speech and hearingJohn Gill, Exposition of the Bible: Mark 9:25 (1746–63), at Bible Hub

Sources

Raised by: The Skeptic’s Annotated Bible. Only the verse references come from these lists.

Checked 2026-10-22. All hard questions