Bible Study series: Luke 14:1-6. Another Sabbath healing. Sparks, again.
Friendly greetings and a warm welcome to this Bible study! I write to learn, so let’s learn together.
I also translate to learn. The translations are mine, unless otherwise noted. If you would like to see many others, please click here:
In the next link to the original chapter, I comment more and offer the Greek text. At the bottom you will find a “Summary and Conclusion” section geared toward discipleship. Check it out!
In this post, links are provided for further study.
Let’s begin.
Scripture: Luke 14:1-6
1 And so it happened that on the Sabbath he entered the house of a certain leading Pharisee and ate bread, and they were lying in wait for him. 2 And look! a certain man with dropsy was right in front of him. 3 So in reply, Jesus said to the legal experts and Pharisees: “Is it permitted on the Sabbath to heal or not?” 4 But they were quiet. Then he took and healed him and sent him away. 5 And he told them, “Which one of you whose child or ox fell down a well would not immediately pull him up on the Sabbath day?” 6 And they were unable to reply to these things. (Luke 14:1-6)
Comments:
1:
Jesus honored the Sabbath, but he did not keep it according to the traditions of the legal experts, traditions that piled up over the centuries. So now we have another episode in which he broke the Sabbath traditions and rules. There is a lot of activity at the dinner—servants bringing out dishes and bustling around—so this Pharisee does not seem so legalistic as certain Jewish sects today, if the popular reports are true.
“lying in wait” Picture watchdogs sitting right by you and glowering at you. So it means, depending on the context: “watch closely, observe carefully” (1) “watch (maliciously), lie in wait … Watch, guard”; (2) “observe religiously.” Here it means to watch maliciously or lie in wait.
“Their enmity reminds the reader that, despite this Sabbath respite, Jesus is on a journey to his death. It recalls Ps. 37:32: ‘The wicked lie in wait for the righteous, intent on putting them to death.’ Because of this, this Pharisee’s house will also be ‘abandoned of salvation’ (13:35)” (Garland, comment on 14:1).
2:
“look!” I like this verb. It is usually translated as “behold.” But I updated it here. It is the storyteller’s art to draw attention to the people and action that follow. Here it introduces a man with dropsy. Apparently he barged into the dinner, or he may have been related to one of the guests. In any case, he stood right in front of Jesus. It must have been moving to the guests to observe the scene. The man was desperate, and his silence spoke loudly. For all we know he held out his hands, palms open, to implore Jesus to help him. He may have been in tears of desperation. We don’t know, but the silence is telling.
Dropsy is swelling by liquid retention. It appears only here in the entire NT, through the pen of Dr. Luke.
“… the Pharisees’ inadequacies as interpreters of the law, and the examples Jesus will give of their violations of the Sabbath reveal that they are motivated more by self-interest than by obedience to God” (Garland, comment on 14:3).
“A set-up is likely. Regardless, the man now sits before Jesus, so that a response is possible. Jesus will take the initiative. Trap or no, Sabbath or no, he will help the man” (Bock, p. 1257).
3:
“in reply”: In reply to what? In reply to their lying in wait for him, religiously speaking. It was a tense dinner. He could read their minds and faces. It is amazing how Jesus would submit himself to tense situations and then come out on top. Courage is a virtue, and he displayed it often, especially on the cross. On a human level, he was quite a man.
“legal experts and Pharisees”: you can learn more about them at this link:
Quick Reference to Jewish Groups in Gospels and Acts
Both groups were the Watchdogs of Theology and Behavior (cf. Garland, p. 243), like the puritans of the seventeenth century. In the case of these two Jewish groups of enforcers, it is a sad fact that religious people—even extra-spiritual ones—can miss God’s purpose or will for them. They are too smart for their own good. The Pharisees and legal experts valued their traditions over healing a man with a disease.
Further, the problem which Jesus had with them can be summed up in Eccl. 7:16: “Be not overly righteous.” He did not quote that verse, but to him they were much too enamored with the finer points of the law, while neglecting its spirit (Luke 11:37-52; Matt. 23:1-36). Instead, he quoted this verse from Hos. 6:6: “Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Matt. 9:13; 12:7, ESV). Overdoing righteousness damages one’s relationship with God and others.
Speaking of healing the man with swelling, Jesus asked a snappy question: Is it lawful (or permitted) to heal on the Sabbath or not? The tag-on “or not” speaks to me of being a little terse with them. He dared them to interrupt him so the sick man would not be healed. The Pharisees and legal experts were baffled. They still had a few molecules of compassion, so they did not have the courage to prevent the oncoming healing, but they must have felt the urge to stop it, to obey their traditions.
Jewish law permitted healing on the Sabbath when a man’s life was in imminent danger, but this man was not about to die. He probably had this malady for some time now. He could have waited to be healed on any of the other six days, as the ruler of a synagogue had said (Luke 13:14).
“healed”: the verb is therapeuō (pronounced thair-ah-pew-oh, our word therapy is related to it), and it means to “make whole, restore, heal, cure, care for.” But it does not mean counseling, but healing.
As to the Sabbath, the Spirit, inspiring the writers of the New Covenant Scriptures after Pentecost, frees us from Sabbath obligations (Luke 6:5; Rom. 14:5; Col. 2:16-19). But if you want to take a day or two off, go for it. Just don’t do it because one of the Ten Commandments tells you to. The Ten Commandments contain theological truths and moral laws. Learn and obey them. The Sabbath, in contrast, is a ritual, and the New Covenant frees us from all such rituals.
To expand on the previous point, the Sabbath was the fourth commandment of the Ten Commandments (Exod. 20:8-11 and Deut. 5:12-15), but those verses do not describe how to keep it. In Num. 15:32-36, people found a man gathering wood, and Moses ordered them to stone him to death. So what kind of interpretations can come from that illegal act and punishment? Was plucking heads of grain the same thing? But the disciples—not Jesus, incidentally—were eating them, so does that excuse them, since they were saving their own lives (if we stretch things)? Apparently not, because healing on the Sabbath was questionable behavior, too (Luke 6:6-11). Or in the next passage, maybe the man with the withered hand was not in a life-or-death situation, while the disciples were.
Here are the Mishnah’s thirty-nine categories of work that were not allowed. This comes from the second century, but it does reflect the times of Jesus:
- Sowing, plowing, reaping, binding sheaves, threshing, winnowing, selecting, grinding, sifting, kneading, and baking.
- Shearing wool, bleaching, hackling, dyeing, spinning, stretching the threads, the making of two meshes, weaving two threads, dividing two threads, tying [knotting] and untying, sewing two stitches, and tearing in order to sew two stitches.
- Capturing a deer, slaughtering, or flaying, or salting it, curing its hide, scraping it [of its hair], cutting it up, writing two letters, and erasing in order to write two letters [over the erasure].
- Building, pulling down, extinguishing, kindling, striking with a hammer, and carrying out from one domain to another.
These are the forty primary labors less one.
(Source)
The rest of the tractate at another source goes on to define the parameters more precisely.
Religious teachers debated these issues endlessly. In effect, these strict teachers of the law said it was better that people should virtually do nothing on the Sabbath. It is better to be safe than sorry, to be severe and austere than risk too much questionable behavior before a holy God. This is called building a wall or fence around the Torah, so that people would not really break the Torah, but the traditions. Problem: the extra-rules became so strict that people felt oppressed.
4:
And so they were quiet. This shows they had a few molecules of compassion in them, because they did not interrupt him. Alternatively, they did not want the people to turn against them, because Jesus had a reputation of being a healer, and everyone knew what would happen next—the man was going to be healed. It’s one thing for the uptight religious leaders to impose all kinds of heavy laws on people; it is quite another to publicly stop the healer from helping a needy commoner.
“took and healed”: Evidently, Jesus must have taken ahold of him in some way. We don’t know what he did. My hunch is that he took him by the shoulders and spoke healing to him.
“healed”: this verb is iaomai (pronounced ee-ah-oh-my), and it means, unsurprisingly, “healed, cure, restore.” The noun, incidentally, is iasis (pronounced ee-ah-seess), and it means “healing, cure.” The noun is used three times: Luke 13:22; Acts 4:22, 30. In other words, only Luke uses the noun.
The word “heal” in this verse is a synonym for the verb “heal” in v. 3.
It is amazing to me that Jesus could have such confidence to heal someone who stood in front of him, while everyone was watching. He even announced the healing before it happened, to make a point about the law—Sabbath keeping. I for one never view these healing miracles casually.
Incidentally, the verb translated “dismissed” could have just as easily been rendered “freed” or “loosed.” But “dismissed” is the intent here, though I wonder whether Luke did not intend the double meaning.
5:
“Well”: this word could also be translated as “pit” (Rev. 9:2), which some translations chose, instead of “well.”
Of course the leader of the Pharisees, the Pharisees themselves, and the legal experts, would have rushed to lifted their son or ox out of the well.
Here’s how the parallel case went down for the disabled woman bent double, when the synagogue ruler complained about her healing on the Sabbath:
14 In reply, the synagogue ruler, indignant that Jesus healed on the Sabbath, proceeded to tell the crowd, “There are six days you ought to work; on one of them come and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day!” 15 In reply to him, the Lord said, “Hypocrites! Doesn’t each one of you untie his ox or donkey from its stall and lead it to drink on the Sabbath? 16 Shouldn’t this daughter of Abraham, whom Satan had bound—look at her!—eighteen years, be loosed from this bondage on the Sabbath day? (Luke 13:14-16)
Here Jesus was equally indignant as he was back then, but his indignation was righteous, while theirs was misguided.
Bock points out that the Mishnah, a compilation of oral traditions and laws, written down in about 200 AD, mentions that cattle could be fed and watered—taking them there, as long as they are not loaded down (m. Šab. 5; 15.2; m. ‘Erub. 2:1-4) (Bock, p. 1258). So what is really happening is that they oppose Jesus as a threat to their institutions.
“child”: it is literally “son,” but in context it is generic.
It also may seem incongruous to link a child to a beast of burden. But the text yields a paronomasia [play on words] when translated back into Aramaic: bera (“son”) and becira (“ox”) and bera (“well”). The wording also matches the fourth commandment in Deut. 5:14: “But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your ox, your donkey or any of your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns, so that your make and female servants may rest, as you do.” “Son” stands first in the list among family members, and “ox” stands first among farm animals” (Garland, comment on 14:5).
6:
These religious leaders were silenced to submission by the reality of the healing that just took place. Here is how the parallel verse is reported by Luke: “After saying these things, his opponents were put to shame” … (Luke 13:17). It is the same idea here in v. 6.
As noted in the previous chapter, first-century Israel was an honor-and-shame society. Verbal and active confrontations happened often. By active is meant actions. Here the confrontation is both verbal and acted out. Jesus healed the man with dropsy, so he won the actual confrontation, and this victory opened the door to his verbal victory with religious leaders who were binding people up with traditions. They needed to be loosed from them. Jesus shamed the leaders to silence. He won. It may seem strange to us that Jesus would confront human opponents, because we are not used to doing this in our own lives, and we have heard that Jesus was meek and silent.
Here he replied to the religious leaders and defeated them and their bad traditions. Get into a discussion and debate with your challengers. Stand toe to toe with them. In short, fight like Jesus!
Of course, caution is needed. The original context is a life-and-death struggle between the kingdom of God and religious traditions. Get the original context, first, before you fight someone in a verbal sparring match. This was a clash of worldviews. Don’t pick fights or be rude to your spouse or baristas or clerks in the service industry. Discuss things with him or her.
Here Jesus does not, however, get into an intense verbal sparring match about healing on the Sabbath, because the feast is still going on, and he is about to tell the invited guests to stop looking for the seats of honor and the Pharisee who invited him to look for the outcasts to invite. But he still won in the public contest.
What Does the New Covenant Retain from the Old?
Do Christians Have to ‘Keep’ the Ten Commandments?
Ten Commandments: God’s Great Compromise with Humanity’s Big Failure
One Decisive Difference Between Sinai Covenant and New Covenant
GrowApp for Luke 14:1-6
1. How have you broken down religious traditions that keep you from a clear perspective about what is really important?
RELATED
11. Eyewitness Testimony in Luke’s Gospel
3. Church Fathers and Luke’s Gospel
2. Archaeology and the Synoptic Gospels
1. The Historical Reliability of the Gospels: Introduction to Series
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND MORE
To see the bibliography, please click on this link and scroll down to the bottom. You will also find a “Summary and Conclusion” for discipleship.
Dr. Jim's Essential Bible Teaching 