Luke 13:10

And he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(10) And he was teaching in one of the synagogues.—The narrative that follows is peculiar to St. Luke. The indefiniteness as to time and place indicate that it was probably one of the previously unrecorded traditions which he met with when he entered on his personal search for materials. This is in part con firmed by the use of “the Lord” in Luke 13:15. (See Note on Luke 7:13.)

MacLaren's Expositions

Luke

TRUE SABBATH OBSERVANCE

Luke 13:10 - Luke 13:17.

This miracle was wrought, unasked, on a woman, in a synagogue, and by all these characteristics was specially interesting to Luke. He alone records it. The narrative falls into two parts-the miracle, and the covert attack of the ruler of the synagogue, with our Lord’s defence.

What better place than the synagogue could there be for a miracle of mercy? The service of man is best built on the service of God, and the service of God is as truly accomplished in deeds of human kindness done for His sake as in oral worship. The religious basis of beneficence and the beneficent manifestation of religion are commonplaces of Christian practice and thought from the beginning, and are both set forth in our Lord’s life. He did not substitute doing good to men for worshipping God, as a once much-belauded but now all-but-forgotten anti-Christian writer has done; but He showed us both in their true relations. We have Christ’s authority for regarding the woman’s infirmity as the result of demoniacal possession, but the case presents some singular features. There seems to have been no other consequence than her incapacity to stand straight. Apparently the evil power had not touched her moral nature, for she had somehow managed to drag herself to the synagogue to pray; she ‘glorified God’ for her cure, and Christ called her ‘a daughter of Abraham,’ which surely means more than simply that she was a Jewess. It would seem to have been a case of physical infirmity only, and perhaps rather of evil inflicted eighteen years before than of continuous demoniacal possession.

But be that as it may, there is surely no getting over our Lord’s express testimony here, that purely physical ills, not distinguishable from natural infirmity, were then, in some instances, the work of a malignant, personal power. Jesus knew the duration of the woman’s ‘bond’ and the cause of it, by the same supernatural knowledge. That sad, bowed figure, with eyes fixed on the ground, and unable to look into His face, which yet had crawled to the synagogue, may teach us lessons of patience and of devout submission. She might have found good excuses for staying at home, but she, no doubt, found solace in worship; and she would not have so swiftly ‘glorified God’ for her cure, if she had not often sought Him in her infirmity. They who wait on Him often find more than they expect in His house.

Note the flow of Christ’s unasked sympathy and help. We have already seen several instances of the same thing in this Gospel. The sight of misery ever set the chords of that gentle, unselfish heart vibrating, as surely as the wind draws music from the Aeolian harp strings. So it should be with us, and so would it be, if we had in us ‘the law of the Spirit of life in Christ’ making us ‘free from the law of’ self. But His spontaneous sympathy is not merely the perfection of manhood; it is the revelation of God. Unasked, the divine love pours itself on men, and gives all that it can give to those who do not seek, that they may be drawn to seek the better gifts which cannot be given unasked. God ‘tarrieth not for man, nor waiteth for the sons of men,’ in giving His greatest gift. No prayers besought Heaven for a Saviour. God’s love is its own motive, and wells up by its inherent diffusiveness. Before we call, He answers.

Note the manner of the cure. It is twofold-a word and a touch. The former is remarkable, as not being, like most of the cures of demoniacs, a command to the evil spirit to go forth, but an assurance to the sufferer, fitted to inspire her with hope, and to encourage her to throw off the alien tyranny. The touch was the symbol to her of communicated power-not that Jesus needed a vehicle for His delivering strength, but that the poor victim, crushed in spirit, needed the outward sign to help her in realising the new energy that ran in her veins, and strengthened her muscles. Unquestionably the cure was miraculous, and its cause was Christ’s will.

But apparently the manner of cure gave more place to the faith of the sufferer, and to the effort which her faith in Christ’s word and touch heartened her to put forth, than we find in other miracles. She ‘could in no wise lift herself up,’ not because of any malformation or deficiency in physical power, but because that malign influence laid a heavy hand on her will and body, and crushed her down. Only supernatural power could deliver from supernatural evil, but that power wrought through as well us OB her; and when she believed that she was loosed from her infirmity, and had received strength from Jesus, she was loosed.

This makes the miracle no less, but it makes it a mirror in which the manner of our deliverance from a worse dominion of Satan is shadowed. Christ is come to loose us all from the yoke of bondage, which bows our faces to the ground, and makes us unfit to look up. He only can loose us, and His way of doing it is to assure us that we are free, and to give us power to fling off the oppression in the strength of faith in Him.

Note the immediate cure and its immediate result. The ‘back bowed down always’ for eighteen weary years is not too stiff to be made straight at once. The Christ-given power obliterates all traces of the past evil. Where He is the physician, there is no period of gradual convalescence, but ‘the thing is done suddenly’; and, though in the spiritual realm, there still hang about pardoned men remains of forgiven sin, they are ‘sanctified’ in their inward selves, and have but to see to it that they work out in character and conduct that ‘righteousness and holiness of truth’ which they have received in the new nature given them through faith.

How rapturous was the gratitude from the woman’s lips, which broke in upon the formal, proper, and heartless worship of the synagogue! The immediate hallowing of her joy into praise surely augurs a previously devout heart. Thanksgiving generally comes thus swiftly after mercies, when prayer has habitually preceded them. The sweetest sweetness of all our blessings is only enjoyed when we glorify God for them. Incense must be kindled, to be fragrant, and our joys must be fired by devotion, to give their rarest perfume.

The cavils of the ruler and Christ’s defence are the second part of this incident. Note the blindness and cold-heartedness born of religious formalism. This synagogue official has no eye for the beauty of Christ’s pity, no heart to rejoice in the woman’s deliverance, no ear for the music of her praise. All that he sees is a violation of ecclesiastical order. That is the sin of sins in his eyes. He admits the reality of Christ’s healing power, but that does not lead him to recognition of His mission. What a strange state of mind it was that acknowledged the miracle, and then took offence at its being done on the Sabbath!

Note, too, his disingenuous cowardice in attacking the people when he meant Christ. He blunders, too, in his scolding; for nobody had come to be healed. They had come to worship; and even if they had come for healing, the coming was no breach of Sabbath regulations, whatever the healing might be. There are plenty of people like this stickler for propriety and form, and if you want to find men blind as bats to the manifest tokens of a divine hand, and hard as millstones towards misery, and utterly incapable of glowing with enthusiasm or of recognising it, you will find them among ecclesiastical martinets, who are all for having ‘things done decently and in order,’ and would rather that a hundred poor sufferers should continue bowed down than that one of their regulations should be broken in lifting them up. The more men are filled with the spirit of worship, the less importance will they attach to the pedantic adherence to its forms, which is the most part of some people’s religion.

Mark the severity, which is loving severity, of Christ’s answer. He speaks to all who shared the ruler’s thoughts, of whom there were several present {Luke 5:17, ‘adversaries’}. Piercing words which disclose hidden and probably unconscious sins, are quite in place on the lips into which grace was poured. Well for those who let Him tell them their faults now, and do not wait for the light of judgment to show themselves to themselves for the first time.

Wherein lay these men’s hypocrisy? They were pretending zeal for the Sabbath, while they were really moved by anger at the miracle, which would have been equally unwelcome on any day of the week. They were pretending that their zeal for the Sabbath was the result of their zeal for God, while it was only zeal for their Rabbinical niceties, and had no religious element in it at all. They wished to make the Sabbath law tight enough to restrain Jesus from miracles, while they made it loose enough to allow them to look after their own interests.

Men may be unconscious hypocrites, and these are the most hopeless. We are all in danger of fancying that we are displaying our zeal for the Lord, when we are only contending for our own additions to, or interpretations of, His will. There is no religion necessarily implied in enforcing forms of belief or conduct.

Our Lord’s defence is, first of all, a conclusive argumentum ad hominem, which shuts the mouths of the objectors; but it is much more. The Talmud has minute rules for leading out animals on the Sabbath: An ass may go out with his pack saddle if it was tied on before the Sabbath, but not with a bell or a yoke; a camel may go out with a halter, but not with a rag tied to his tail; a string of camels may be led if the driver takes all the halters in his hand, and does not twist them, but they must not be tied to one another-and so on for pages. If, then, these sticklers for rigid observance of the Sabbath admitted that a beast’s thirst was reason enough for work to relieve it, it did not lie in their mouths to find fault with the relief of a far greater human need.

But the words hold a wider truth, applicable to our conduct. The relief of human sorrow is always in season. It is a sacred duty which hallows any hour. ‘Is not this the fast [and the feast too] that I have chosen . . . to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?’ The spirit of the words is to put the exercise of beneficence high above the formalities of worship.

Note, too, the implied assertion of the dignity of humanity, the pitying tone of the ‘lo, these eighteen years,’ the sympathy of the Lord with the poor woman, and the implication of the terrible tragedy of Satan’s bondage. If we have His Spirit in us, and look at the solemn facts of life as He did, all these pathetic considerations will be present to our minds as we behold the misery of men, and, moved by the thoughts of their lofty place in God’s scheme of things, of their long and dreary bondage, of the evil power that holds them fast, and of what they may become, even sons and daughters of the Highest, we shall be fired with the same longing to help which filled Christ’s heart, and shall count that hour consecrated, and not profaned, in which we are able to bring liberty to the captives, and an upward gaze of hope to them that have been bowed down.

Benson Commentary

Luke 13:10-13. He was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath — Our Lord Jesus spent his sabbaths in the synagogues, and we should make conscience of doing so; that is, of attending places of worship, as we have opportunity, and not think that we can spend our sabbaths as well at home, in praying and reading good books; for public worship is a divine institution, to which we must bear our testimony, though the congregation may consist but of two or three. And generally, when Jesus was in the synagogues, ην διδασκων, he was teaching there, knowing that the people were perishing for lack of instruction. On this occasion, to confirm the doctrine which he preached, and recommend it as important, faithful, and worthy of all acceptation, he wrought a signal miracle of mercy. For, behold, there was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity — Ασθενειας, of weakness; eighteen years — During which she had been bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself — Or stand straight. The evil spirit, which possessed her, afflicted her in this manner. To many doubtless, it appeared a natural distemper. Would not a modern physician have termed it a nervous case? That by a spirit of infirmity we are to understand an infirmity produced by an evil spirit, we learn from our Lord’s own explanation of the phrase, Luke 13:16, where he says, Satan had bound this woman eighteen years. When Jesus saw her — Knowing perfectly all the sad circumstances of her affliction, and the difficulty with which she was now come to attend the solemnity of divine worship there; he called her to him — It does not appear that she had made any application to him, or had any expectation of relief from him; but, though she did not call, he answered. She came to him to be taught, and to receive spiritual benefit, and he gave her deliverance from her bodily infirmity. Thus, those whose first and principal care is for their souls, do best promote the true interests of their bodies likewise; because they seek the kingdom of God, other things are added to them. He said, Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity — Thou hast long been labouring under it, but thou art now at length released from it. Let not those despair, therefore, whose disease has been of long continuance, and is inveterate. God can relieve them, and has he not encouraged them to apply to him, and wait for him? Reader, remember, he is a present help, a help at hand in trouble, and hath said, Call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee; and thou shalt glorify me. So this woman did; immediately upon Christ’s laying his hands on her, and healing her, she glorified God — Praised him before the whole assembly, for the signal and unexpected favour, declaring, doubtless, how long her affliction had continued, and how desperate and incurable it had been thought to be.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

13:10-17 Our Lord Jesus attended upon public worship on the sabbaths. Even bodily infirmities, unless very grievous, should not keep us from public worship on sabbath days. This woman came to Christ to be taught, and to get good to her soul, and then he relieved her bodily infirmity. This cure represents the work of Christ's grace upon the soul. And when crooked souls are made straight, they will show it by glorifying God. Christ knew that this ruler had a real enmity to him and to his gospel, and that he did but cloak it with a pretended zeal for the sabbath day; he really would not have them be healed any day; but if Jesus speaks the word, and puts forth his healing power, sinners are set free. This deliverance is often wrought on the Lord's day; and whatever labour tends to put men in the way of receiving the blessing, agrees with the design of that day.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The dresser of his vineyard - The man whose duty it was to trim the vines and take care of his vineyard.

These three years - These words are not to be referred to the time which Christ had been preaching the gospel, as if he meant to specify the exact period. They mean, as applicable to the vineyard, that the owner had been "a long time" expecting fruit on the tree. For three successive years he had been disappointed. In his view it was long enough to show that the tree was barren and would yield no fruit, and that therefore it should be cut down.

Why cumbereth it the ground? - The word "cumber" here means to render "barren" or "sterile." By taking up the juices of the earth, this useless tree rendered the ground sterile, and prevented the growth of the neighboring vines. It was not merely "useless," but was doing mischief, which may be said of all sinners and all hypocritical professors of religion. Dr. Thomson ("The Land and the Book," vol. i. p. 539) says of the barren fig-tree: "There are many such trees now; and if the ground is not properly cultivated, especially when the trees are young - as the one of the parable was, for only "three" years are mentioned they do not bear at all; and even when full grown they quickly fail, and wither away if neglected. Those who expect to gather good crops of well-flavored figs are particularly attentive to their culture - not only plow and dig about them frequently, and manure them plentifully, but they carefully gather out the stones from the orchards, contrary to their general slovenly habits."

This parable is to be taken in connection with what goes before, and with our Saviour's calling the Jewish nation to repentance. It was spoken to illustrate the dealings of God with them, and their own wickedness under all his kindness, and we may understand the different parts of the parable as designed to represent:

1. God, by the man who owned the vineyard.

2. The vineyard as the Jewish people.

3. The coming of the owner for fruit, the desire of God that they should produce good works.

4. The barrenness of the tree, the wickedness of the people.

5. The dresser was perhaps intended to denote the Saviour and the other messengers of God, pleading that God would spare the Jews, and save them from their enemies that stood ready to destroy them, as soon as God should permit.

6. His waiting denotes the delay of vengeance, to give them an opportunity of repentance. And,

7. The remark of the dresser that he might "then" cut it down, denotes the acquiescence of all in the belief that such a judgment would be just.

We may also remark that God treats sinners in this manner now; that he spares them long; that he gives them opportunities of repentance; that many live but to cumber the ground; that they are not only useless to the church, but pernicious to the world; that in due time, when they are fairly tried, they shall be cut down; and that the universe will bow to the awful decree of God, and say that their damnation is just.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

Lu 13:10-17. Woman of Eighteen Year's Infirmity Healed on the Sabbath.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Ver. 10-13. Though the Greek be on the sabbaths, which might signify any day of the week, yet it is manifest by what followeth that this miracle was wrought upon the seventh day, which was the Jewish sabbath, else the ruler of the synagogue would not have quarrelled with our Saviour about it. What is meant here, Luke 13:11, by a spirit of infirmity, would not easily be determined, whether only a very great infirmity, or an infirmity in the bringing and continuing of which upon her the devil had a great instrumentality, but for Luke 13:16, where she is said to be one that Satan had bound; she was a cripple, and so bowed down that she could not lift up herself, and thus she had been for eighteen years, so as the distemper was inveterate, and out of the course of ordinary cure. Christ, who, as to people’s bodily infirmities, was sometimes found of those that sought him not, seeing her, calleth her to him, and saith,

Woman, thou art loosed from thy infirmity. And he laid his hands on her; and immediately she was made straight. The inveterateness of the disease, and the instantaneousness of the cure, without the use of any means, made the miracle evident. The woman for it gave thanks to God, for that is meant by

glorified God, she spake some things to the honour and glory of God, who had healed her.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And he was teaching in one of the synagogues,.... That is Jesus, as the Syriac and Persic versions express it; which was his work, he being a teacher sent from God, and who took all opportunities of instructing men in the truths of the Gospel; this was done either in Galilee, or in Judea, in one of the synagogues of some city there, for in their larger cities there were more synagogues than one. In Jerusalem, we are told (o), there were three hundred and ninety four synagogues; and other writers (p) increase their number, and say, there were four hundred and eighty: and it was

on the sabbath; which was now in force, and was religiously observed by Christ.

(o) T. Bab. Cetubot, fol. 105. 1.((p) Pesikta in Jarchi in Isa. i. 21. Shirhashirim Rabba, fol. 20. 3. Ecka Rabbati, fol. 37. 4.

Geneva Study Bible

{3} And he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath.

(3) Christ came to deliver us from the hand of Satan.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Meyer's NT Commentary

Luke 13:10-17. A Sabbath cure peculiar to Luke, without any more precise specifying of time and place. He might find a motive for inserting it just in this place in his source of the narrative of the journey itself. But to explain its position here from the fact that the three years of Luke 13:7 had reminded him of the eighteen years of Luke 13:11 (Holtzmann, p. 153) would be fantastic.

Luke 13:11. ἦν] aderat.

πνεῦμα ἀσθενείας] a spirit of weakness, i.e. a demon (see Luke 13:16), who paralyzed her muscular powers, so that she could not straighten herself. This conception of ἀσθέν. is more in accordance with the context than the general one of sickness.

εἰς τὸ παντελές] comp. Hebrews 7:25, and thereon Bleek; Ael. xii. 20, v. 7. It belongs adverbially not to μὴ δύναμ. (de Wette, Bleek, and most commentators), but to ἀνακύψαι, with which it stands. She was bowed together (Sir 12:11; Sir 19:26 f., and in the Greek writers), and from this position to straighten herself up perfectly was to her impossible.

Luke 13:12. ἀπολέλυσαι] thou art loosed; that which will immediately occur is represented as already completed.

Luke 13:14. ἀποκριθείς] See on Matthew 11:25.

τῷ ὄχλῳ] Taking his stand upon Deuteronomy 5:13, he blames—not directly Jesus, for he could not for shame do so, but—the people, not specially the woman at all: Jesus was to be attacked indirectly.

Luke 13:15. ὑποκριταί] Euthymius Zigabenus aptly says: ὑποκριτὰς ὡνόμασε τοὺς κατὰ τὸν ἀρχισυνάγωγον (the class of men to which he belonged, the hierarchical opposition, comp. Luke 13:17), ὡς ὑποκρινομένους μὲν τιμᾶν τοῦ σαββάτου νόμον, ἐκδικοῦντας δὲ τὸν φθόνον ἑαυτῶν.

ἀπαγαγών] pictorially, “ad opus demonstrandum,” Bengel.

Luke 13:16. The argument is a minori ad majus (as Luke 14:5), and the majus is significantly indicated by the doubled description θυγατέρα Ἀβρ. οὖσαν (comp. Luke 19:9) and ἣν ἔδησεν ὁ Σατανᾶς κ.τ.λ. “Singula verba habent emphasin” (Grotius),—a remark which holds good also of the vividly introduced ἰδού, comp. Deuteronomy 8:4. As a daughter of Abraham, she belongs to the special people of God, and must hence be wrested from the devil. Of spiritual relationship with Abraham (Lechler in the Stud. u. Krit. 1854, p. 821) nothing is said.

ἣν ἔδησεν ὁ σατ.] since he, namely, by means of one of his servants, a demon, has taken away her liberty in the manner mentioned at Luke 13:11.

δέκα κ.τ.λ. is not a nominative, but an accusative of the duration of time. Comp. Luke 13:8; Luke 15:29, and elsewhere.

Luke 13:17. κατῃσχύν. πάντ. οἱ ἀντικ. αὐτ.] Comp. Isaiah 45:16.

γινομένοις] Present; describing the glorious work of Jesus as continuing.

Expositor's Greek Testament

Luke 13:10-17. Cure in a synagogue on a Sabbath day, peculiar to Lk.

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

10-17. The Sabbatical Hypocrite and the Suffering Woman.

10. in one of the synagogues] The mention of synagogue-teaching becomes much rarer at this later stage of Christ’s ministry. It is most probable that from some at least of the synagogues of Galilee he was excluded by the ‘lesser excommunication.’ See John 16:2.

Pulpit Commentary

Verses 10-17. - A miracle of mercy. The Lord's teaching on certain strict observances of the sabbath day then practised by the more rigid Jews. Verse 10. - And he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. We hear little of our Lord's public teaching in the synagogues of the towns and villages through which he was then passing in this his last long journey. In the earlier months of the ministry of Jesus he seems to have taught frequently in these houses of prayer, very possibly every sabbath day. It has been suggested, with considerable probability, that owing to the persistent enmity of the hierarchy and dominant class at Jerusalem, he was excluded from some at least of the synagogues by what was termed the "lesser excommunication." Luke 13:10