"... We can see Matthew combining those conditions when he redacts Mark’s story of the man who was deaf with a speech impediment (Mark 7:32). Matthew has rather included a reference to those powers in a summary he matches of up Mark’s in Matthew 15:31 / Mark 7:37 ... Translations of the word then really rely on the context, or the outcome of the miracle. So [it] is translated as 'mute' for Matt 9:32 and 33 and in Matt 15:30, 31, because the miracle results in the ability to speak. But it is translated as 'deaf' in Matthew 11:5 / Luke 7:22 / Q 7:22 and in Matthew 12:22, as in 'blind and deaf' because the results are that the person is said to be able to hear. (In Mark, [it] always means someone who is deaf [Mark 7:32, 37; and 9:25]). What we can see in Matthew’s representation of Mark in Matthew 15:31 shows that, like so many people in his own time, he presumed that if someone is described as 'deaf' the person is mute because they are deaf. If they are able to speak, it is because they can also hear. So scholars are quite right to say that the correct translation in 9:23 is 'mute' because the result is that the man can speak ..."