The Sabbath - 3
(Bible Study - August 1999) The last four Sabbath healings come in pairs. Two of them only Luke records, the other two we find only in John. The two in Luke, of course, emphasize medical aspects. They have similar structures, and in both Jesus justifies his actions with reasoning that uses the Pharisees’ own academic methodology.
The two healings in John’s gospel also have similar structures and a number of unique points in common. Jesus’ last recorded Sabbath healing, the man born blind, follows the pattern of the healing of the man with thirty-eight years’ infirmity.
We can tentatively place the two healings recorded in Luke in between the two in John’s chronologically, but for purposes of analysis in this article we will address first the two in Luke and then the two in John. As the chronology of the seven Sabbath healings doesn’t come easily, we have chosen a pattern format rather than a necessarily chronological sequence.
Two brief accounts
Luke alone records the accounts of the woman with eighteen years’ infirmity and
the man with dropsy. The Lord Jesus healed the woman in a synagogue and the man in the
home of a prominent Pharisee. Both appear to be near Jerusalem, but Edersheim (Alfred
Edersheim in The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah) places them in Perea. Both
healings have Pharisaic opposition, although the Pharisees (as a group) have no recorded
dialogue. Jesus silenced them by taking the initiative of asking them pointed questions,
anticipating their objections.
4. Eighteen Years’ Infirmity
The woman with eighteen years’ infirmity (Luke 13:10-16) could have waited the
few hours until sundown to be healed. Obviously, her degenerative spinal condition
constituted no life-threatening illness. Eighteen years of gradually increasing
decrepitude wouldn’t considerably worsen in the next few hours, as unpleasant it must
have been to be "bent over together." Folded at the waist, always
looking at the ground (cp. Lk. 21:28), she strained to see even where she walked.
Yet she came to the synagogue; apparently the Pharisees had nothing to do with her presence -- this was not one of their set-ups to trap Jesus. Perhaps she had heard Jesus the healer and teacher would be at that synagogue on that Sabbath. Upon seeing her, Jesus immediately called her to the front, and declared her free from her infirmity. Then he laid his hands on her, and, for the first time in nearly two decades, the woman stood upright. Now she could look into the love and compassion of the Master’s eyes! She may have had no recognition of the theological implications of what Jesus had done, but she knew her body was restored to youthful fitness. Can we imagine her joy?
The Pharisee’s reaction
Someone else in the synagogue saw a different scenario. The ruler (chief elder) of the
synagogue saw only a violation of the Sabbath; he was unable to appreciate in the
slightest the woman’s relief. But what was the specific charge? Which rabbinical
precept did Jesus transgress?
Laying on his hands? Declaring her healed? Which of the 39 categories or hundreds of rulings did he have in mind? Possibly nothing -- except the fear that this act would lead to something worse. So he remonstrated with Jesus, saying that he had six other days of the week to do such things, not on the Sabbath.
The ruler was not alone in his sentiment. Jesus, anticipating the objections of the assembly, answered them all in the inclusive, "you hypocrites," plural. Luke wrote "the Lord" answered them, indicating Jesus’ role as Lord of the Sabbath. The force of "ought not" in "ought not this woman...be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath" (v. 16) is "must." This word, according to Vine’s Expository Dictionary, denotes "a logical necessity" (cp. Lk. 24:26). While the chief rabbi and the other Pharisees deemed the Sabbath the only day excluded from healing, the Lord Jesus deemed it the day he must heal. The "other six days" proposed by the chief rabbi wouldn’t do for the teaching of the Sabbath’s role in human restitution. Certainly Jesus did heal many on the other six days.
But only a Sabbath healing could indicate the figurative redemption of this daughter of Abraham as an act of grace, not works.
Using the Pharisee’s logic
Moreover, the Lord took a line right out of the Pharisees’ own teaching to reveal
their hypocrisy, and justify his prerogative to heal. He cited their own easement of
Sabbath regulations to provide for the normal, necessary care of their beasts (Edersheim
gives the Talmudic details). They would have to unbind the animal from its stall to lead
it to the trough. If unbinding is permissible for the animal, is it not permissible for a
human? This type of reasoning would hit home with the Pharisees, for it was exactly the
same way they would use precedent and analogy to establish Sabbath strictures.
Luke adds one more perspective to the event to close the narrative, that of the common folk also in the synagogue. The episode ended with the Pharisees put to shame, and the common folk delighting in both the healing and the Lord’s theological triumph. For the Pharisees, it was another humiliation. From the woman’s perspective, it was a joy so intense and unreal she probably took weeks to adjust to her new view of life. For Jesus, it was another installment in demonstrating the theology of the Sabbath.
5. The Man With Dropsy
Soon after this, Jesus dined at the home of a prominent Pharisee. Evidently the
"ruler who belonged to the Pharisees" invited Jesus, and also another
person, who had dropsy. The word "dropsy" comes from transliterating
the Greek hudropikos and has nothing to do with "dropping." The
man didn’t have a neurological disorder which caused him to fall down or drop things.
Rather, it refers to what we call today edema, or fluid accumulation. Edema, itself a
symptom, could indicate various diseases. In any event, the man would have had turgid
extremities, a distended belly, and shortness of breath. This was a true medical
condition, and definitely in a different category from that of the woman with the
degenerative spine.
Pharisees silent
Could the Pharisees possibly object to Jesus healing the man? Jesus, knowing their eristic
inclination, put forth a question they should have known the answer to by then regarding
the appropriateness of Sabbath healing. He asked exactly the same question that other
Pharisees had proposed to him when he healed the man with the withered arm (Mt. 12:10). He
had repeatedly demonstrated the "legality" of Sabbath healing both
through his power and his use of their own argumentative methods. What could they say?
Anything they said would further diminish their waning credibility, so "they held
their peace." They had nothing to say.
Jesus healed the man, and then gave the Pharisees another lesson. Using a similar line of Pharisaic reasoning, and, undoubtedly quoting one of their own Sabbath rulings, he cited the legality of rescuing an animal from a pit on the Sabbath. If this applied to a beast, how much more so to a man? Again, they had no reply. Jesus had stultified them with both his intellect and his divine power of healing. The now healthy man, free of both symptom and underlying disease, rejoiced. The Pharisees had another long night. Like Pharaoh, they hardened their hearts and ignored the work of God in their midst, for they had too much personally at stake to admit their error.
John’s healing accounts
The two episodes in John give the most complete account of the Pharisees’ enmity
toward Jesus and Sabbath healings. The two healings both went to the extreme as regards
Jesus’ intentions of Sabbath confrontation. The two men represented the two most
chronic conditions of all -- 38 years without walking (5:1-18) and a lifetime of
sightlessness (9:1-41). John’s narratives contain many features unique among the
Sabbath miracles: both incidents occurred in the heart of Jerusalem, and Jesus overtly
added elements of "work" to further provoke the Pharisees. Both have
Jesus looking for and finding the healed person sometime afterwards, and both involve the
healed person in the dialogue. Theologically, both incidents led to discussions of sin and
judgment, and Jesus’ relationship to the Father.
6. The Invalid at the Pool
Thirty-eight years can lead us to consider Israel in the desert, but if we look solely
at the symbology, we will miss the human side of the incident. This man had lain by the
pool since before Jesus’ birth. Jesus came up to him and asked, "Do you want
to get better?" This question didn’t indicate any disregard Jesus had for
the man’s motivation or intelligence. Rather, it had to do with the man’s faith
in Jesus as the Messiah. For these 38 years he believed he had to have some special ritual
ablution in the pool. Jesus merely instructed him to walk.
Deliberate confrontation
However, the Lord went beyond the instruction to get up and walk. He told the man to
rise, take up his sleeping mat and walk, a detail so important that it comes
up five times in the text (5:8, 9, 10, 11, & 12). John records the crux of the event
tersely, "Now that day was the Sabbath." Healing was one thing; the
Lord had demonstrated that it was lawful to heal on the Sabbath. Now he had instructed the
man to carry his bedroll. This would clearly violate the Sabbath injunctions against
carrying a burden on the Sabbath. Jesus had created an overt confrontation over a scruple.
Wouldn’t it have been better for the Lord to wait just a few hours, still do the healing, and avoid all the hassle? Did he have to tell the man to carry his bedroll? Was that really necessary?
Yes! He had to destroy the Pharisees’ notion of legalistic righteousness. He had to destroy the Sabbath as they kept it. This was not youthful insolence or smug self-righteousness. This was a necessary part of the work of the Messiah, to emancipate all those who would have faith in his word.
God works on the Sabbath
Amazingly, the Pharisees had no eyes for seeing a man walk for the first time in
nearly four decades. They had no facility to share in the joy of healing. They
couldn’t see the power of God at work in their midst. They only saw one thing: a man
carrying a burden. So they interrogated the man, asking him who directed him to carry the
burden. They held him in violation of the law, and they likewise held Jesus culpable, for
they decided that he, too, kept not the Sabbath (5:16).
The Pharisees also misinterpreted his claim that God was his father (v.18). They thought he claimed divinity, and they thought he broke the Sabbath. Neither, of course, was true. But his Father was still working, and this formed the basis of the Lord’s Sabbath ministry.
"My Father is working still" (v.16) means God has never rested. On the seventh day of creation, with the work of creation finished, He ceased from his creative working. But he never stopped maintaining His creation. Since the beginning, the work of saving and rescuing His people has been a full-time, seven-day-a-week job (Psa. 121:4). He always hears prayers; He always forgives, restores, sustains, cares for, and upholds His creation and all that dwell in it.
Did the Jews ever consider that Creator God was also Maintainer God? God never stopped working. If He did, Earth would have ended on the seventh day. Ezra the scribe understood this. Ezra’s doxology (Neh. 9:6) describes the first six days of creative work, followed by the work of the seventh day, "and thou preservest them all." This is what Jesus meant when he said "My father is working still." The Sabbath brought restoration to the world of the six-day creation.
7. The Man Born Blind
The last and greatest Sabbath healing (John 9:1-41), has many superlatives. It has by
far the longest text (41 verses) of any of the Sabbath healing accounts. It has the most "chronic"
and hardest to cure (from a human physiological perspective) disability (v. 32). It takes
place in the temple itself. It features the most obvious of Jesus’ derogations of the
Pharisees’ Sabbath scruples. And it ends with a condemnation of the Pharisees like no
other Jesus uttered (v. 41).
Jesus had just engaged the Pharisees in the temple concerning the women taken in adultery. John 9:1 states, "As he passed by he saw a man blind from birth." Probably a beggar at the temple steps, this man had never experienced sight. In his world of darkness, all days looked the same. Unable to discern day from night, he could have no perception of his own of when the Sabbath started or ended. When Jesus asked the lame man, "Do you want to be healed," that man certainly knew what walking meant. But how could a congenitally blind person have any concept of sight? Only after the healing would he be able to reflect on his previous world of only four senses.
Jesus deliberately worked
Could Jesus have waited the few hours till sundown? Would the man have any way of
knowing? Could a man blind from birth have waited? We ask these questions to point out the
increasing vexation that Jesus put upon the Pharisees. This time, he went one step further
than ever before: the Lord did "work" as part of the healing process.
This time, the Pharisees could cavil. Jesus spat on the ground and made clay. Did he have
to do this to give the man his sight?
Of course not. On previous occasions he but spoke the word, and sometimes laid on his hands. The Pharisees would have to strain to fit those actions into their categories of work. Then he asked the lame man to carry his mattress. That was clearly "work." Now he did the work himself. He had to do it to show the Pharisees that "the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." This was the most deliberate of all the Lord’s Sabbath derogations. His act of healing was unnecessarily timed and included an unnecessary work, or so the Pharisees would judge.
Legalists reject Messiah
John, just as he did in 5:9, duly records, "Now it was a Sabbath day when
Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes" (v.14). Again, the Pharisees, blind to
the healing, had selective vision only for the "violations" of their
code. They deemed Jesus guilty of making clay on the Sabbath, carrying a load, and
probably also furrowing the earth to gather the dust. Their conclusion: this man is not
from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath. Judging the Lord’s actions by their own
standards which they had elevated to Vox Dei, the Pharisees condemned themselves.
They could not allow the Messiah into their lives, because in their substitution of things
man-made (laws) for things divine (grace), they excluded the possibility of Jesus being
the Son of God.
The Pharisees not only excluded Jesus, they also excommunicated the healed man. But Jesus found him and revealed himself to the now (literally and figuratively) sighted man. The Pharisees, on the other hand, claiming to see, received condemnation from Jesus. Why? Because they saw the obvious works of God and chose to ignore them to cavil over scruples. Because they had eyes only for judgment, Jesus pronounced them guilty.
Alfred Edersheim in The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, eloquently sums the theological and human contest of the Sabbath: Jesus, who represented the on-going work of God and His role in our salvation, versus the Pharisees, who represented the man-made system of rules and justification by adherence to them to the uttermost iota.
"While they [the Pharisees] were discussing the niceties of what constituted labor on a Sabbath, such as what infringed its sacred rest or what constituted a burden, multitudes of them [the suffering people] who labored and were heavy laden were left to perish in their ignorance. That was the Sabbath, and the God of the Sabbath of Pharisaism . . . Nay, if the Christ had not been the very opposite of all that Pharisaism sought, He would not have been the Orient Sun of the Eternal Sabbath. But the God Who ever worked in love, Whose rest was to give rest, Whose Sabbath was to remove burdens, was His Father. He knew Him; He saw His working; He was in fellowship of love, of work, of power with Him. He had to come to loose every yoke, to give life, to bring life, to be life -- because He had life: life in its fullest sense."
Next: Jesus and the Pharisees on Ritual Cleanliness
David Levin