A Sabbath Controversy

A Sabbath Controversy Commentary by Chloe Cooke Cite Share Show Bible Passage When read in isolation, the healing of the man with a withered hand is a story of Jesus’s miraculous power over physical suffering. When read within its biblical context, the story is part of a longer discourse on Sabbath regulations—a particularly important topic to the Jewish leaders of the day. Jan van Orley has pointed to this wider, religious context by setting the story in the corner of a monumental temple-like structure—although the building’s grand interior is much more reminiscent of a seventeenth-century Catholic church in the artist’s native Brussels than a first-century Jewish synagogue. A little under thirty people are visible in the composition, but an abundance of three-dimensional figurative sculptures increases the effect of a crowded, busy space. The man with the withered hand leans against the imposing column in the right foreground. He lifts his arm towards Jesus, who points to it with his own right hand. Yet, Jesus’s attention is directed towards two figures to his right. The man closer to the picture plane appears in shock, his splayed figures suggesting an urgent desire to stop Jesus in his tracks. These figures no doubt represent the group of Pharisees who are attempting to find a way to accuse Jesus. Their hope is that he will actively heal the man, thus violating sabbath prohibitions regarding non-lifesaving ‘work’ (Exodus 20:10; Deuteronomy 5:14; Mishna Yoma 8.6). Indeed, in Matthew’s account they directly question him regarding his stance on this matter. Perhaps this is the moment at which Jesus appeals to the Pharisees and asks them what is lawful on the Sabbath: ‘to save life or to kill’ (Mark 3:4; Luke 6:9), or whether if any of them had a sheep and it fell into a pit on the Sabbath, they would not ‘take hold of it and lift it out?’ (Matthew 12:11; Tosefta Shabbat 15.1; Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 128b). In the end, Jesus carries out no work in healing the man’s hand, instead commanding the man to perform the crucial action: simply stretching out his own hand. In Orley’s engraving, we see the man’s healing take second place to the challenge that Jesus is delivering to his interlocutors, both through his words and his lack of work. References Heil, John Paul. 1979. ‘Significant Aspects of the Healing Miracles in Matthew’, The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 41.2: 274–87 Saldarini, Anthony J. 2021. Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible: Matthew (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans)