29-21. The Healing of the Man with a Dropsy
21. The Healing of the Man with a Dropsy
All which is most remarkable in the circumstances of this miracle has been already anticipated in others, chiefly in the two just considered, to which the reader is referred. Our Lord in his great long-suffering did not even at this late period of his ministry treat the Pharisees as wholly and finally hardened against the truth; but still seeking to win them for his kingdom, He had accepted the invitation of a chief among them “to eat bread” in his house. This was upon the Sabbath, with the Jews a favourite day for their festal entertainments: for it is a great mistake to suppose that the day was with them one of rigorous austerity; on the contrary, the practical abuse of the day was rather a turning of it into a day of riot and excess.[1] The invitation, though accepted in love, yet had not been given in good faith; in the hope rather that the close and more accurate watching of his words and ways, which such an opportunity would afford, might furnish matter of accusation against Him.[2] Mischief lurked in the apparent courtesy which was shown Him, nor could the sacred laws of hospitality defend Him from the ever-wakeful malice of his foes. They “watched Him.”[3]
“And behold, there was a certain man before Him which had the dropsy.” Some have even suggested that this sufferer was of design placed before Him; and they urge in proof that he would scarcely without permission have found entrance into a private house. But although it is quite conceivable of these malignant adversaries, that they should have laid such a snare as this, still there is no warrant for ascribing to them such treachery here; and the difficulty which some find, that if no such plot had existed, the man would scarcely have found his way into the house of the Pharisee, rests upon an ignorance of the almost public life of the East, and a forgetting how easily in a moment of high excitement, such as this of our Saviour’s presence must have been, the feeble barriers which the conventional rules of society might have opposed to his entrance would have been overthrown (Luk 7:36-37). At any rate, if such plot there was, the man himself was no party to it; for the Lord “took him, and healed him, and let him go.” But this He did, justifying first the work which He would accomplish, as more than once He had justified like works of grace and love wrought upon the Sabbath, and demanding of these lawyers and Pharisees, interpreters of the law, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day?” Here, as in so many matters of debate, it only needs for the question to be rightly stated, and all is so clear, that the possibility of its remaining a question any longer has for ever vanished;”[4] there can be but one answer. But as this answer they would not give, they did what alone was possible, “they held their peace;” for they will not assent, and they cannot gainsay. He proceeds: “Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fallen into a pit, and will not straightway pull him out on the Sabbath day?” Olshausen: “As on other occasions (Mat 12:11; Luk 13:15), the Lord brings back those present to their own experience, and lets them feel the keen contradiction in which their blame of Christ’s free work of love sets them with themselves, in that, where their worldly interests were at hazard, they did that very thing whereof they made now an occasion against Him. “We may observe, that as in that other case, where the woman was bound, He adduces the example of unbinding a beast (Luk 13:15),—so in this, where the man was dropsical, or suffering from water, the example He adduces has an equal fitness.[5] “You grudge that I should deliver this man on such a day from the water that is choking him; yet if the same danger from water threatened ought of your own, an ass[6] or an ox, you would make no scruple of extricating that on the Sabbath. Why then do you not love your neighbour as yourselves? why are you unwilling that he should receive the help which you would freely render to your own? And they could not answer Him again to these things.” They were silenced, but not convinced; and the truth, which did not win them, did the only other thing which it could do, exasperated them the more; they replied nothing, biding their time (cf. Mat 12:14).
Footnotes
[1] On the abuses in this kind of the Jewish Sabbath at a later day see Augustine, Enafr. in Psa 41:1; Enarr. ii. in Psa 32:2; Serm. ix. 3.
[2] The emphasis, however, which Hammond finds in the καὶ αὐτοί, even they that had invited Him did treacherously watch Him,—as though the Evangelist would bring into notice the violation here of the laws of hospitality,—is questionable. Such a superabounding use of /cat is not unusual in St. Luke.
[3] Ἦσαν παρατηρούμενοι. For a similar use of παρατηρεῖν compare Luk 6:7; Luk 20:20; Mark 3:2; Dan 6:11.
[4] Tertullian (Adv. Marc. iv. 12): Adimplevit enim et hie legem, dum conditionem interpretatur ejus, dum operum differentiam, illuminat, dum facit quae lex de sabbati feriis excipit, dum ipsum sabbati diem benedictione Patris aprimordio sanctum, benefactione suâ efficit sanctiorem, in quo scilicet divina praesidia ministrabat.
[5] So Augustine (Quaest. Evang. ii. 29): Congruenter hydropicum animali quod cecidit in puteum, comparavit: humore enim laborabat; sicut et illam mulierem quam decem et octo annis alligatam dixerat.... comparavit jumento quod solvitur ut ad aquam ducatur. Grotius: Hydropicum submergendae pecudi, ut τὴν συγκύπτουσαν pecudi vinctae, comparavit.
[6] Strange as the reading υἱός instead of ὄνος at first sight appears, “a son,” and not “an ass,” the authorities for it are so overwhelming (I believe they include all the Uncial MSS.), that one has no right on the ground of internal difficulties to reject it. Those, moreover, are not so serious as at first sight they seem. It is true the argument a minori ad majus is thus invalidated, but another is substituted in its room; an appeal, namely, to the great ethical rule, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Griesbach recommended υἱός; Scholz, Tischendorf, and Lachmann have all received it. The passage at Exo 21:33, to which the supporters of the reading ὄνος appeal, to which I appealed myself in earlier editions of this book, tells both ways. It may support the reading ὄνος, but it may also help to explain the substitution of this for another more correct one.