Dinner on Sabbath
Dinner on Sabbath. Dropsy healed.
(The Gospel History, Section 106)
And it came to pass, when he went into the house of one of the rulers of the Pharisees on a sabbath to eat bread, that they were watching him. And behold, there was before him a certain man which had the dropsy. And Jesus answering spake unto the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath, or not? But they held their peace. And he took him, and healed him, and let him go. And he said unto them, Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fallen into a well, and will not straightway draw him up on a sabbath day? And they could not answer again unto these things.
Commentary by J. R. Dummelow
Lk 14:1–6. The sabbath question again. The man with the dropsy healed (peculiar to Lk).
Lk 14:1. To eat bread] So far from being abstemious on the sabbath, the Jews carried the pleasures of the table to excess. ‘The Hebrews honour the sabbath chiefly by inviting each other to drinking and intoxication’ (Plutarch). ‘Rabbah Abba bought flesh of thirteen butchers that he might be sure to taste the best, and paid them at the very gate, that he might hasten dinner, and all this in honour of the sabbath’ (Talmud).
Lk 14:2. There was … before him] Spectators often enter the house to witness an Eastern banquet.
Lk 14:3 > Mt 12:10. Is it lawful to heal?] Only malice could call healing by a word, without labour or medicine, a breach of the sabbath. Even the use of medical assistance was not forbidden in all cases on the sabbath. The rabbis said, ‘All danger of life or limb abrogates the sabbath,’ and this was interpreted to mean even possible danger.
Lk 14:5. An ass] Nearly all modern editors read ‘a son.’ The rabbis allowed ‘an ox or an ass, a son or a daughter, a man-servant or a maid-servant’ to be drawn out of a well on the sabbath. Thus they allowed to themselves breaches of the sabbath day which they denied to Christ.
Dinner on Sabbath
(The Saviour of the World, Vol VI Book IV Poem LXIV)
Again, a Pharisee the Lord invites
To eat with Him, between the sacred rites
Distinguishing the Sabbath. All the place
Is filled with those who share the rich man’s grace;
His friends were there, or Scribes or Pharisees,
And the disciples of the Lord; with these,
Sick men and poor stood round the rich man’s door,
Hoping an alms from his abundant store.
A vessel water-logged, a man diseased
With dropsy, caught the haughty glance displeased
Of the fastidious Pharisees; they looked
At Christ, full well assured His pity brooked
No sight of suffering, but brought relief
To a poor soul oppressed with any grief.
They nothing spake, but yet Christ answer made
To query in the hearts which He surveyed;
Those haughty men before Him stood arraigned,
Convicted of the scorn they entertained;
Succinct, direct, the Judge states all the case:
Is’t lawful or unlawful to embrace
The means of healing on the Sabbath Day?
Confounded by the searching question, they
In confusion held their peace: had they allowed
His right to heal, full sure the eager crowd
Would spread the news that Jesus kept the law,
And multitudes the more to Him would draw;
Nor yet for very shame dared they deny,
Lest men the hardness of their heart decry.
Silent and shamed they stood, while Jesus called
That heavy, suffering man whose state appalled
Those who looked on him. With a word, He healed,
And bade him go. Merciful, He appealed
Once more to those hard men ’gainst pity, proof,
That they might turn them e’en beneath that roof.
“Conceived not, have ye, that poor man’s estate,
In whom the waters rise without abate
Until he perish, drowning! Were your ass
Or your own ox at such a sorry pass,
How would ye haste to draw him from the well
Down which, in Sabbath idleness, he fell!
But never have ye pictured in your thought
This poor man’s worse condition, evil fraught!
Go ye and have compassion on your kind;
So shall ye measure the Eternal Mind
More surely than with all your rules minute
For Sabbath Day’s observance none dispute!”
St. Luke xiv. 1–6.
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