28-20. The Woman with a Spirit of Infirmity
20. The Woman with a Spirit of Infirmity
We have here another of our Lord’s cures, which being accomplished on the Sabbath, awoke the indignation of the chief teachers of the Jewish Church; cures, of which many, though not all, are recorded chiefly for the sake of showing how the Lord dealt with these cavillers; and what He Himself contemplated as the true hallowing of that day. This being the main point which the Evangelist has in his eye, everything else falls into the background. We know not where this healing took place; we are merely told of the Lord that “He was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath.” While there was but one temple in the land, and indeed but one for all Jews in all the world, there were synagogues in every place; and in these, on every Sabbath, prayer was wont to be made, and the word of God to be read and explained (Acts 13:14-15). “And, behold, there was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together, and could in nowise lift up herself.” Had we only these words, “a spirit of infirmity,” we might be doubtful whether St. Luke meant to trace up her complaint to any other than the natural causes, whence flow the weaknesses and sufferings which afflict our race. But from later words of the Lord concerning this woman,—”whom Satan hath bound,”—we learn that her calamity had a deeper root; and that she should be classed with those possessed by evil spirits, though the type of her possession was infinitely milder than that of many others, as is shown by her permitted presence at the public worship of God. Her sickness having its first seat in her spirit, had brought her into a moody melancholic state, of which the outward contraction of the muscles of her body, the inability to lift herself, was but the sign and the consequence.[1]
“And when Jesus saw her, He called her to Him, and said, Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity.” He did not here wait till his aid was sought, though it may have been that her presence in that place was, on her part, a tacit seeking of his help,—as, indeed, seems implied in the words of the ruler of the synagogue, bidding the multitude upon other days than the Sabbath to “come and be healed.” “And He laid his hands on her,”[2]—those hands being here the channel by which the streams of his truer life should flow into her,—uttering at the same time (for though recorded, as was necessary, one after another, we are to assume the words and imposition of hands as in fact contemporaneous) those words of grace and power. He said, and it was done; the bands, spiritual and bodily, by which she was held, were loosened; and “immediately she was made straight, and glorified God.” Some part of this glory could not but redound to Him, the author of her health. But this the ruler of the synagogue could not bear (cf. Mat 21:15-16),—a “hypocrite,” as the Lord calls him,—zeal for God being but the cloak which he wore to hide, whether from others only, or, in a more hopeless hypocrisy, from his own heart also, his hatred of all that was holy and divine.[3] His indignation was in fact less that the Sabbath was violated, than that. Christ was glorified. Therefore, because he put forward as the ground of his anger that which was not so indeed, he drew down upon himself that sharp rebuke from Him, whose sharpest rebuke was uttered only in love, and who now would, if possible, have torn from off this man’s heart the veil which was hiding his true self even from his own eyes. Another part of his falseness was, that, not daring directly to find fault with the Lord, lie seeks circuitously to reach Him through the people, who were more under his influence, and whom he feared less. He takes advantage of his position as the interpreter of the law and the oracles of God, and from “Moses’ seat” would fain teach the people that this work done to the glory of God—this restoring of a human body and a human soul—this undoing the heavy burden—this unloosing the chain of Satan,—was a servile work, and one therefore forbidden on the Sabbath. Blaming them for coming to be healed, he indeed is thinking not of them, but means that rebuke to glance off on Him who has put forth on this day his power to help and to save.
“The Lord then answered him, and said, Thou hypocrite, doth not each one of you on the Sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead him away to watering? And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?” Every word of this answer tells. The Lord does not defend his breach of the Sabbath, but denies that He has broken it at all:[4] “You have your relaxations of the Sabbath’s strictness, required by the very nature and necessities of your earthly condition; you make no difficulty in the matter, where there is danger that by the omission of some act loss would ensue, your property would be jeopardized. Your ox and your ass are precious in your sight, and, whatever you may hold or teach concerning the strictness with which the Sabbath should be kept, disciples of Hillel or disciples of Schammai, you loose them on that day; yet ye will not that I should loose a human spirit, which as such is of more value than many beasts. They too, when you loose them, have not been tied up for more than some briefest space; while I, in your thoughts, may not unloose from the thraldom of Satan this captive of eighteen years,[5] Yours, farther, is a laborious process of unfastening and leading away to water,—which yet (and rightly) you do not omit; being at the same time offended with Me, who have only spoken a word, and with that word have released a soul.”[6] There lies at the root of this argument, as of so much else in Scripture, an implied assertion of the specific difference between man, the lord of creation, for whom all other things were made, on the one side, and all the inferior orders of beings that tread the same earth with him, and to which upon the side of his body he is akin, on the other. He is, yet at the same time he is much more than, the first link in this chain and order of beings (cf. 1Co 9:9 : “Doth God take care of oxen?” and Psa 8:8). But this woman has further claims than the general claims of humanity; she is a “daughter of Abraham;”—an inheritress, as some understand, of the faith of Abraham,—however, for the saving of her soul in the day of the Lord, she had come for some sin under the scourge of Satan and this long and sore affliction of the flesh. Yet more probably Christ intends but this, that she was one of the chosen race, a “daughter of Abraham” after the flesh; though we may well believe that after and through this healing, she became something more, an inheritress of his faith as well.[7]
Footnotes
[1] This woman is often contemplated as the representative of all those whom the poet addresses—
Oh curvae in terras animae!
The erect countenance of man, in contrast with that bent downward of all other creatures, being the sign impressed upon his outward frame, of his nobler destiny, of a heavenly hope, with which they have nothing in common;
Os homini sublime dedit, coelumque tueri
Jussit, et erectos in sidera tollere vultus:
and Juvenal, Sat. xv. 142-147, in a nobler strain: cf. Plato, Timaus, 90 a.; and the derivation of ἄνθρωπος, namely, the upward looking, which some have suggested, is well known. On the other hand, the looks ever bent upon the ground are a natural symbol of a heart and soul turned earthward altogether, and wholly forgetful of man’s time good, which is not beneath, but above, him. Thus of Mammon Milton writes:
Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell
From heaven; for even in heaven his looks and thoughts
Were always downward bent.
Thus Augustine (Enarr. ii. in Psa 68:24): Qui bene audit, Sursum cor, curvum dorsum non habet. Erectâ quippe staturâ exspectat spem repositam sibi in coelo.... At vero qui futurae vitae spem non intelligunt, jam excoecati, de inferioribus cogitant: et hoc est habere dorsum curvum, a quo morbo Dominus mulierem illam liberavit. Cf. Enarr. in Psa 37:7; Quaest. Evang. ii. qu. 29; Ambrose, Hexaëm. iii. 12; Theophylact (in loc.): Ταῦτα δέ μοι λάμβανε τὰ θαύματα καὶ ἐπὶ τὸν ἐντὸς ἄνθρωπον συγκύπτει γὰρ ψυχὴ ὅταν ἐπὶ τὰς γηΐνας μόνας ϕροντίδας νεύῃ‚ καὶ μηδὲν οὐράνιον ἢ θεῖον ϕαντάζηται.
[2] Chrysostom (in Cramer, Catena): Προσεπιτίθησι δὲ καὶ χεῖρας αὐτῇ‚ ἵνα μάθωμεν ὅτι τὴν τοῦ Θεοῦ λόγον [Λόγου?] δύναμίν τε καὶ ἐνέργειαν ἡ ἁγία πεϕόρηκε σάρξ.
[3] Augustine (Enarr. ii. in Psa 68:24): Bene scandalizati sunt de ilia erectâ, ipsi curvi. And again (Serm. cccxcii. 1): Calumniabantur autem erigenti, qui, nisi curvi?
[4] Tertullian (Adv. Marc. iv. 30): Unusquisque vestrûm sabbatis non solvit asinum aut bovem suum a praesepi et ducit ad potum? Ergo secundum conditionem legis operatus, legem confirmavit, non dissolvit, jubentem nullum opus fieri, nisi quod fieret omni animae, quanto potius humanae. Cf. Irenaeus, Con. Haer. iv. 8.
[5] Ambrose (Exp. in Luc. vii. 175): Vinculum vinculo comparat..... Cum ipsi animalibus sabbato solvunt vincula, reprehendunt Dominum, qui homines a peccatorum vinculis liberavit.
[6] Chemnitz (Harm. Evang. 112): Tempus etiam inter se confert. Jumenta fortassis ad noctem unam aut paucos dies praesepi alligantur. At vero haec foemina vel saltern ob temporis prolixitatem omnium commiseratione dignissima est.
[7] In a Sermon on the Day of the Nativity (Serm. Inedd. p. 33) Augustine makes the following application of this history: Inclinavit se, cum sublimis esset, ut nos qui incurvati eramus, erigeret. Incurvata siquidem erat humana natura ante adventum Domini, peccatorum onere depressa;. et quidem se in peccati vitium spontaneâ voluntate curvaverat, sed sponte se erigere non valebat.....Haec autem mulier formam incurvationis totius humani generis praeferebat. In hac muliere hodie natus Dominus noster vinculis Satanae alligatos absolvit, et licentiam nobis tribuit ad superna conspicere, ut qui olim constituti in miseriis tristes ambulabamus, hodie venientem ad nos medicum suscipientes, nimirum gaudeamus.