But the ruler of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus healed on the sabbath, answering said to the crowd, There are six days in which [people] ought to work; in these therefore come and be healed, and not on the sabbath day.
Jesus has just straightened a woman bent double for eighteen years, and she is praising God. The man in charge of the synagogue is furious: he cannot deny the miracle, so he attacks its timing.
Nobody could deny that the woman was standing straight. The ruler's anger exposes him, not the healing:
The ruler of the synagogue should have acknowledged God and blessed Him for the goodness and power He had just shown. Instead he was "indignant." He hated the grace he could not deny. So he proved himself to be under a deeper slavery to Satan than the woman who had been set free.
Where he was standing, and who stood in front of him, makes the anger worse:
An indignant synagogue ruler in the presence of the God of grace, the God of Israel! Indignant, and why? Because the Lord made a poor, suffering woman straight on the Sabbath day. Had she asked for it? The story says nothing of the kind.
He spoke to the crowd. His target was elsewhere:
The ruler spoke to the people, but his real attack was on the Lord, made under cover. He took his stand on the law (Ex. 20:9). If need be, he would use that law to block God's work in grace. He turned the commandment God gave to Israel against the God of Israel Himself... It is true that the ruler did not speak to Him or name Him. But the words the Gospel writer records — "There are six days in which work ought to be done" — pointed to a condemnation of the Lord. He, not the woman, had been working that day.
His rule does not survive a moment's thought:
Religion on its own, without Christ, is sadly unreasonable and cold with prejudice. This ruler spoke to the people, not to the Lord, and scolded them for coming on the sabbath day to be healed. He did not stop to think that if the healing the Lord was doing counted as work, then preaching was work too. But this was not the kind of daily labour done for gain, which is what the law forbade (Lev. 23:7). Under the law God did not forbid things like healing the sick. Only men with legal minds could imagine such cruel restrictions.
A second inconsistency runs deeper:
He was indignant at the gracious work of healing, yet he did not care at all about her humiliating condition... This poor, hollow religious man had no idea that he stood in the very presence of the Lord of the true sabbath! He was completely blind to the moral contradiction of trying to keep a sabbath while man's condition cried out for God to work!
The problem ran wider than one bad ruling about one day. He held real truth and used it to shut more truth out:
One weakness of the human mind is to use the truth it already holds to resist the truth God is now revealing. Paul is an example. He was, "as to righteousness under the law, blameless." Yet he was convinced that he "ought to do many things in opposing the name of Jesus of Nazareth"... Men use right doctrine to shut truth out. When truth is the ground a man stands on, it earns him credit. But when a new truth arrives, it puts his faith to the test... He should have known that the Lord of the sabbath was there. That one phrase, "daughter of Abraham," should have told him who was standing in front of him.
Christ could have waited a day. He did not:
Grace stoops tenderly to people in misery. But it does not bend to the stubborn unbelief of men, and least of all to men who make a show of their religion while they have nothing real in the sight of God. Christ healed her on the Sabbath, in front of the whole congregation. He knew it would stir up the hatred of the ruler of the synagogue. There is no use trying to stay on good terms with men who claim to be God's friends but are really His enemies... Strong feeling in religion never stops to think. It stands completely apart from true faith, so it tends to follow whatever suits the moment.
- Indignant. He hated a grace he could not deny, and showed a bondage deeper than the woman's own.
- Indirect. He spoke to the crowd, never to Jesus, yet his words condemned the only person working that day.
- Inconsistent. If healing was work, so was preaching. The law forbade work done for gain, not mercy shown to the suffering.
- Insensible. He guarded the day of rest and ignored the woman who needed God to act. He never realised whose day it was.
- Immovable. Grace stoops to the miserable, but it will not bargain with religious pretence. Christ healed her in the open, knowing the cost.
The Lord therefore answered him and said, Hypocrites! does not each one of you on the sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the manger and leading [it] away, water [it]?
A synagogue ruler had just found fault with Christ for healing a woman on the sabbath. The Lord answers by giving that objection its true name. Then He points to what these same men do for their own animals every sabbath.
The Lord does not answer the ruler alone. One writer notes that the better reading is plural. The argument then weighs what these men allow an animal against what they refuse a woman.
"You hypocrites" — that is how we should read it. The Lord addressed a whole class, not only that ruler, who was just the mouthpiece of others. How absurd to plead the holiness of the day against setting a human being free from Satan's power! In their own eyes that holiness was not broken when they cared for the needs of their animals. Was it wrong to care for the animals? Not at all. Then it certainly could not be wrong to set the woman free. Where their own daily interests were at stake, their practice showed that the ruler's objection was hollow and his indignation had no ground.
Another writer explains the ruler's silent supporters as sharers in the same half-heartedness:
"The Lord therefore answered him and said, You hypocrites!" — for he had not a few who shared his half-hearted unbelief.
Their everyday care for their animals showed what they thought a person was worth.
It was, in fact, only loud-voiced hypocrisy. They had no problem leading their animals away to water. They valued a person at less than an animal.
The same word "loose" covers both the animal and the woman. What stirred the ruler was not the bondage but the release from it.
As far as the ruler of the synagogue cared, that poor woman might have gone on to the end of her days, bent over and unable to straighten up. He would have been quite content to let her stay a sad witness to Satan's power, as long as he could keep his sabbath. What stirred his religious anger was not Satan's power, seen in the woman's condition. It was Christ's power, seen in her complete deliverance.
That indignation says something about the man himself:
The ruler of the synagogue should have acknowledged God and blessed Him for the goodness and power He had shown. Instead he was "indignant." He hated the grace he could not deny. So he proved himself to be under a deeper slavery to Satan than the woman who had been set free.
One writer traces the ruler's blindness to a habit of mind that Paul also once shared.
One weakness of the human mind is to use the truth it already holds to resist the truth God is now revealing. Paul was an example of this — "as to righteousness under the law, blameless"; yet he thought he "ought to do many things in opposing the name of Jesus of Nazareth"... People use their orthodoxy to shut truth out. When truth is the ground of a man's standing, it gains him credit; but when a new truth comes in, it puts faith to the test... But he ought to have known that the Lord of the sabbath was there; for that one phrase "daughter of Abraham" should have told him who was standing there.
The absurdity, as one writer puts it, is a creature legislating for his Maker about his Maker's own day.
If he had stopped to think for a moment, he would have seen the folly and wickedness of his pretended pious anger. He would have seen that he was fighting against God. But religious passion never stops to think. It stands wholly apart from true faith, so present interests usually rule it... Vain and wicked man, that dared to lay down the law to God! He was far from keeping the law himself, yet ventured to give law to Him who was not more truly man than God. God is not to work on His own Sabbath day!
The healing sits in a chapter about coming judgment.
But the Lord afterwards lets us see that grace could act in the middle of such a state. In healing the woman bent over by a spirit of weakness, He displays the goodness of God even in a day when judgment was at the doors. And He rebuked the hypocritical wickedness of a heart that found fault with His goodness because it was the sabbath day.
- Untie — the ruler unties his ox on the sabbath and leads it to water. The Lord turns that habit against him.
- Hypocrites — the plural shows the Lord addressed a whole class. The ruler spoke for others who thought as he did.
- Cheap — men who watered an animal without hesitation valued a person at less than that animal.
- Exposed — Satan's long grip on the woman did not anger him; Christ's power breaking it did. That left him in a deeper bondage than she was.
- Grace — judgment stood at the doors, yet God's goodness was still at work. The objection to it only exposed the objector.