Pharisees and teachers of the law21 are present “from every village of Galilee and Judea and Jerusalem” (5:17). This is surpassed in 6:17–18, where we hear of “a great multitude of the people from all the Jewish land and Jerusalem and the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon, who had come to hear him and be healed.” We reach the climax of this development in 7:17: “And this statement about him went out in the whole Jewish country and all the neighboring region.” The fame of Jesus as healer is presupposed