Luke 6:6-11 - A Man with a Withered Hand
On another Sabbath, he entered the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was withered. And the scribes and the Pharisees watched him, to see whether he would heal on the Sabbath, so that they might find a reason to accuse him. But he knew their thoughts, and he said to the man with the withered hand, “Come and stand here.” And he rose and stood there. And Jesus said to them, “I ask you, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to destroy it?” And after looking around at them all he said to him, “Stretch out your hand.” And he did so, and his hand was restored. But they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus. (Luke 6:6-11, ESV Bible)
The same account occurs in Matthew 12:9-14 and Mark 3:1-6. We will consider all accounts while looking at Luke 6:6-11.
The Man With a Withered Hand
On another Sabbath, he entered the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was withered (Luke 6:6, ESV Bible)
Immediately after telling the story of the incident in the grain fields, all three Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) report another Sabbath conflict with religious authorities. "On another Sabbath He entered the synagogue and was teaching" (Luke 6:6). According to His custom, He went to the synagogue on Sabbath morning to join the congregation for the prayers, the Torah reading, and to offer teaching about the kingdom of heaven. "And there was a man there whose right hand was withered" (Luke 6:6).
The now lost Hebrew Gospel of the Nazarenes had a longer version of the story that explained that the man was a stone mason and that he begged the Master for healing. In his commentary on Matthew, Jerome reports the passage as follows:
In the Gospel which the Nazarenes and the Ebionites use, which we recently translated from Hebrew to Greek, and which is called by many the authentic text of Matthew, it is written that the man with the withered hand was a mason, praying for help with words of this kind, "I was a mason, seeking a livelihood with my hands. I beseech you, Jesus, that you restore health to me, lest I must beg shamefully for my food.”
The Master's opponents among the sages watched Him carefully to see whether or not He would respond to the man's need and heal on the Sabbath day.
And the scribes and the Pharisees watched him, to see whether he would heal on the Sabbath, so that they might find a reason to accuse him. But he knew their thoughts, and he said to the man with the withered hand, “Come and stand here.” And he rose and stood there. (Luke 6:7-8, ESV Bible)
In Matthew’s account, the parallel passage reads:
And a man was there with a withered hand. And they asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”—so that they might accuse him. (Matthew 12:10, ESV Bible)
Arguments in the Talmud demonstrate that the preparation, application, and ingestion of medicines on the Sabbath day for the purpose of healing remained under debate centuries after the ministry of Jesus. The variety of opinions and legal maneuvers offered in the Talmud suggests that there might not have been complete consensus on the issue of Sabbath healing in the days of the Master. Nevertheless, the Gospels make it clear that Jesus lenient opinion on the matter was, at best, a minority opinion. In the gospel narratives, the sages and Pharisees seem to share a unanimous opinion that healing constitutes a violation of the Sabbath.
As students of the Gospels read the Sabbath-healing controversies, they might assume that Jesus argued only with the Jewish interpretation of the Sabbath, not with the Sabbath law itself. In other words, Jesus believed that healing did not constitute melachah (prohibited work) and was therefore not a violation of the Sabbath. That is to say, He argued with the sages in order to correct their mistaken ban on healing. He was attempting to reconcile them with a more sola scriptura interpretation of Sabbath law that never explicitly prohibits healing.
Tempting as that explanation may be, it has a few critical weaknesses. According to a sola scriptura reading of the Torah, the sages over Israel possessed the God-given right to interpret the application of God's laws. Scripture vested them with the legal authority to offer definitive rulings on ambiguities concerning Torah observance. An interesting passage in Deuteronomy 17:8-12 provides instructions for dealing with legal matters and disputes among the Israelites. It reads:
"If any case arises requiring decision between one kind of homicide and another, one kind of legal right and another, or one kind of assault and another, any case within your towns that is too difficult for you, then you shall arise and go up to the place that the LORD your God will choose. And you shall come to the Levitical priests and to the judge who is in office in those days, and you shall consult them, and they shall declare to you the decision. Then you shall do according to what they declare to you from that place that the LORD will choose. And you shall be careful to do according to all that they direct you. According to the instructions that they give you, and according to the decision which they pronounce to you, you shall do. You shall not turn aside from the verdict that they declare to you, either to the right hand or to the left. The man who acts presumptuously by not obeying the priest who stands to minister there before the LORD your God, or the judge, that man shall die. So you shall purge the evil from Israel." (Deuteronomy 17:8-12, ESV Bible)
It is essential to recognize that God delegated or gave away the responsibility of adjudicating the Old Testament law. God delegated making official decisions based on the laws He gave Israel. This responsibility of making official decisions lay with the Levitical priesthood, but it was all set up by God Himself. God gave up control over how the Law of Moses would take shape and left Israel to take part in that responsibility. So, we see that this delegation and spiritual authority given to the Levitical priesthood takes place outside of the text of the Bible. The Oral Torah is considered to be the additional teachings and interpretations of the written Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) that were passed down orally from generation to generation.
Jesus Himself endorsed that authority. It is of note that even Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, recognized the Sanhedrin as the proper adjudicating body of Jewish law even though he also criticized the hypocrisy and misguided practices of the religious leaders:
Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, "The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat, so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice." (Matthew 23:1-3, ESV Bible)
For that reason, He did not dismiss the Sabbath halachah to justify healing on the Sabbath; instead, He argued within the halachah for the justification. That is, He argued within the parameters of rabbinic legal discourse.
He never told the Pharisees, "It is permissible to heal on the Sabbath because healing does not constitute a prohibited form of work." Instead, His arguments with the Pharisees all assume that healing is a prohibited form of work. Jesus argued that, even though healing violates the Sabbath, the alleviation of human suffering is a weightier matter than the observance of the Sabbath prohibitions. If He meant to tell them that healing should not be considered a form of melachah (prohibited work), then His arguments failed to make logical sense.
One might object that the miraculous types of healing that Jesus performed cannot be construed to be a type of "work" that violates the Sabbath in any sense. On the contrary, miraculous or not, such healings constitute melachah by strict definition of rabbinic law in that they result in deliberately changing and transforming something from one state to another state. Just as repairing a leaky faucet on the Sabbath violates the Sabbath, so too, repairing a human body breaks the Sabbath.
Breaking the Sabbath is not so much about how the work is accomplished, but simply that it is accomplished. If healing is a form of prohibited melachah, it does not actually matter how Jesus accomplished it; it still violated the prohibition on work.
Is It Lawful to Do Good?
And Jesus said to them, “I ask you, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to destroy it?” (Luke 6:9, ESV Bible)
He knew that His opponents were watching Him, hoping that He would heal the man with the withered hand so that they would have a basis for denouncing Him as a Sabbath-breaker and disregarding His teaching. He summoned the man to stand before Him. Turning to His opponents, Jesus answered their question by returning it to them. He said, "I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save a life or to destroy it?" (Luke 6:9).
The answer to His first question is "Yes." It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath. To do good" refers to the performance of a positive commandment. When there is a command to do good, the performance of that commandment supersedes a prohibition that would impede it. The Talmud says
Wherever you find a positive commandment and a negative commandment contradicting, if you can fulfill both of them, it is preferable; but if not, let the positive command come and supersede the negative command. (b.Shabbat 133)
Based upon this principle, Jesus could argue that the positive command of showing compassion (chesed) by alleviating suffering overrides the prohibition against work on the Sabbath.
Is there a positive commandment to heal? "Is it permissible to save life or to destroy it?" Jesus asked. According to Jewish law, the Sabbath can be set aside when a medical condition constitutes a threat to life. The Sabbath laws may be breached in any situation where one's life is at risk, even if the risk is an uncertain one. The Mishnah cites the principle of danger to life overriding the Sabbath as a general rule of thumb. The Talmud makes various arguments to justify the principle:
Rabbi Mattivah Ben Charash said, "He who has a sore throat-they administer medicine to him even on the Sabbath because it is uncertain if [the sore throat] might be a danger to life, and any case in which life might be endangered overrides the prohibitions of the Sabbath." (m. Yoma 8:6)
Rabbi Yehudah said in the name of Shmuel, "If I had been in on the argument, I would have proven (that medical attention is permissible) with a better proof-text than the one they used. It is written [in Leviticus 18:51, The man who obeys [my laws] will live by them! It says 'he will live by them'; it doesn't say 'he shall die because of them.”" (b. Yoma 85b)
If anyone Jesus encountered had been in any distress that constituted a danger to life, He had license to heal them with exemption. The rabbinic principle of pikuach nefesh (saving a life) ensures that much. It is lawful on the Sabbath to save life, not to destroy it. The principle of pikuach nefesh, however, applies only to life-threatening conditions. The Talmud, for example, forbids the splinting of a broken bone on the Sabbath because a broken bone does not constitute a threat to life.
Neither does a shriveled hand constitute a danger to life. As the official in the synagogue in Luke 13 pointed out:
But the ruler of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, said to the people, “There are six days in which work ought to be done. Come on those days and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day.” (Luke 13:14, ESV Bible)
Had Jesus been concerned with honoring the prohibition against healing on the Sabbath, He certainly could have waited a few hours until sunset and the Sabbath's conclusion to heal the man's hand.
The Master did not invoke the "threat-to-life" argument as His legal justification for healing. His healings were, strictly speaking, never a matter of pikuach nefesh (saving a life). In his Hebrew commentary on the New Testament, Rabbi Lichtenstein explains:
"The opinion of the Prushim was that only in the case of saving a life in mortal danger it was permitted to heal, whereas in his words, it is permitted to do good even when there is no mortal danger. Pikuach nefesh (saving a life) takes precedence over Shabbat. But in the opinion of Jesus, even when life is not in danger, it is permitted to desecrate it.”
On what basis, then, did Jesus justify His decision to heal on the Sabbath?
Mercy on Animals
He said to them, “Which one of you who has a sheep, if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not take hold of it and lift it out? Of how much more value is a man than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.” (Matthew 12:11-12, ESV Bible)
Consider Matthew 12:11-12, when asking how Jesus justified his decision to heal on the Sabbath. No one has yet answered the legal question posed by Jesus. As the man with the withered hand stood expectantly in front of Him, Jesus posed another question to the sages present in the synagogue, "What man is there among you who has a sheep, and if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will he not take hold of it and lift it out?" (Matthew 12:11). One might wonder why this question would even raise a concern, but according to Sabbath law, one may not lift/carry an object (or an animal) outside of an established boundary. Lifting an animal constituted "carrying" on the Sabbath day.
Rabbi Jesus’ hypothetical question might have been a standard rhetorical scenario for discussing Sabbath prohibitions. The Essene community that produced the Damascus Document forbade lifting an animal out of a pit on the Sabbath day, but apparently, in first-century Pharisaic-Galilean practice, the priority of rescuing an animal from a pit, even on the Sabbath, was a given. Later arguments in the Talmud take up the same question. For example, in tractate Beitzah, Rabbi Eliezer allows a man to lift an animal out of a pit on a Sabbath day only if the animal is required for a festival sacrifice. Otherwise, he prescribes feeding it in the pit to keep it alive. Another passage discusses other options for removing an animal from a pit on the Sabbath, expressing concern for the welfare of the beast:
Rabbi Yehudah said in Rab's name, "If an animal falls into a pit, one may bring cushions and blankets to put under the animal, and if it climbs out, it climbs out." Another opinion objects, "If an animal falls into a pit, provisions may be made for it in the pit to keep it alive”…
Preventing the suffering of animals is a biblical law. The biblical law comes and supersedes the authority of the rabbis. (b.Shabbat 128b)
According to the Talmud then, it may be necessary to violate some prohibitions in order to alleviate or prevent the suffering of animals. The Talmud says that showing kindness to animals "is a biblical law" and biblical law, in theory at least, trumps rabbinic mandates. For that reason, the sages deemed it permissible to carry provisions to an animal to feed it or to enable it to climb out of a pit on the Sabbath day. All of these fall into the category of "doing good" on the Sabbath, because showing mercy to animals is a positive biblical commandment.
The Master appealed to what must then have been a standard practice, at least in the Galilee: Saving your animal's life took precedence over the Sabbath prohibition on carrying and lifting. At least no one in the synagogue raised any objection to that premise. If that was not an accepted standard of the time and place, Jesus’ argument would have lost its rhetorical force. Several men in the synagogue could have simply raised their hands and said, "We would not take hold of it or lift it out.”
The Master declared, "How much more valuable then is a man than a sheep! So then, it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath" (Matthew 12:12). The Master argued from the light to the heavy, a method of rabbinic argumentation called kal vechomer. A classic kal vechomer argument hinges on presenting a minor case, and then stating, "If this is so in the minor case, how much more so is it true in the major case." Thus the logic proceeds from the light matter to the more serious matter: "If it is permissible to violate Shabbat in order to do good to animals and alleviate their suffering, how much more so is it permissible to do the same for human beings?”
Good or Evil?
The sages did not answer the Master's rhetorical questions, but if they had, they could have simply said, "It is lawful to save a life on the Sabbath, but if one's life is not in danger, let the matter wait until the Sabbath concludes." Anticipating such an answer, Rabbi Jesus framed His question in black and white, yes-or-no terms. He literally asked, "Is it lawful on the sabbaths to do good, or to do evil?" (Luke 6:9). He left no room for a "wait until later" answer.
From Rabbi Jesus’ perspective, the question had only two possible answers. One could do good, which was the equivalent of saving life and alleviating suffering, or one could do evil by refusing to alleviate suffering. He categorized the latter option as destroying life. From where did Jesus derive such urgent absolutes? Why must the answer be "yes" or "no." "Do good" or "do evil? He might have been alluding to a prominent passage in the book of Proverbs that condemns withholding good as a sin of omission:
Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to do it. Do not say to your neighbor, "Go, and come again, tomorrow I will give it”— when you have it with you. (Proverbs 3:27-28)
James, the brother of the Master, summarizes the Master's dichotomous, good-versus-evil halachah, saying:
"Whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin" (James 4:17 ESV).
No one ventured to engage the Rabbi from Nazareth in the halachic argument. The sages and teachers present simply sat in stoic silence, neither affirming His reasoning nor objecting to it. Their silence irritated Jesus. He would have invited further discourse on the subject. "After looking around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, He said to the man, 'Stretch out your hand? And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored” (Mark 3:5). "It was restored to normal, like the other" (Matthew 12:13).
Strange Alliance
The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him. (Mark 3:6, ESV Bible)
The Pharisees present in the synagogue that Sabbath (likely not the same ones from the grainfields) did not care for the young rabbi's reasoning, nor did they like His wild popularity. The entire exchange, in front of the whole synagogue, was embarrassing for them. What could they do? After a miracle like that, everyone in the synagogue was in awe. How do you argue against miracles? "They themselves were filled with rage, and discussed together what they might do to Jesus" (Luke 6:11).
To their shame, a wicked idea occurred to them. Was this Jesus not a follower ofJohn the Immerser, and had not Herod Antipas arrested John the Immerser? Now this man was drawing more followers than even John had attracted. If Herod Antipas were to take notice of Jesus, he might solve the whole problem for them. Mark 3:6 tells us that they conspired "with the Herodians against Him, as to how they might destroy Him.
This evil plan explains the otherwise incomprehensible alliance between the Pharisees and the Herodians. The Pharisees and the men of Herod Antipas-assimilated, wealthy, secular Jews - had nothing otherwise in common with one another. Indeed, the Herodians were the type of "sinners and tax-collectors" about which some Pharisees had earlier scolded the Master.