“Then Simon Peter, having a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s servant, and cut off his right ear. The servant’s name was Malchus” (John 18:10).
Replantation is the surgical reattachment of a body part that has been completely cut off from a person’s body. Doctors have successfully reconnected fingers, hands, forearms, arms, toes, feet, legs, ears, faces, tongues, and lips. Repairing nerves and vessels usually requires the use of an operating microscope since these tissues are quite small. Such work must take place within a few hours of the injury, but some body parts can be kept near freezing in a sterile environment to delay surgery.
The first replantation performed in the world was by Dr. Ronald Malt at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston in 1962. A twelve-year- old named Everett Knowles tried to hop a freight train and was thrown against a stone wall, losing his right arm at the shoulder. He was rushed to the emergency room where doctors pinned his arm bone together and reconnected skin, muscle tissue, and four major nerve trunks. Four years later, Everett had regained the same use of his right arm as his left. The boy received so many letters and interviews that he became a celebrity of sorts.
Malchus could have been the first person to have a body part successfully reattached. When a group of soldiers and religious officers converged on the Garden of Gethsemane to capture Jesus, the disciples were shocked that they came with ropes to bind their Master. Peter stepped forward to defend Christ. He pulled out a sword and somehow managed to cut off the ear of Malchus. Jesus immediately stopped the commotion by reattaching the ear of the high priest’s servant.
Can you imagine going to arrest Jesus, almost being killed, and then having the One you are capturing reach out and heal your body? It must have made some type of impact on Malchus’ heart. We don’t know for sure, since the Bible says no more about this servant. Lying in bed that night, perhaps he reached up and touched his ear and at that moment heard the voice of God call to him.
“Alas! and did my Saviour bleed and did my Sovereign die? Would He devote that sacred head for someone such as I?”
For Further Study: John 18:1–12; Luke 22:47–53; 1 Peter 2:21–24