The healing of the man with the withered hand and evidence of Jesus’s superior knowledge of the law have shattered their confidence and confounded their strategy. The Pharisees are now, as we say, “out of their minds” with anger, for they have much invested in their point of view, not to mention their institutional control over how such matters are to be understood by the people. From their perspective, one can see how Jesus’s challenges put their authority at risk. Luke’s attention to detail we may, I think, imagine to be consistent with his having listened closely for small but significant elements in the accounts of the eyewitnesses on whom he relied. That these [eyewitnesses] included at this point the disciples themselves seems more probable than any alternative; in any case, Luke’s finely detailed account of the healing of the man with the withered hand reveals something of the character that made him seem to the early church the appropriate patron saint of painters, for the additional elements all build up together toward a thematic unity and form the basis for seeing this event just as Luke presents it, not only as a literal but also as a symbolic or iconic healing. Though the event is recorded in Mark and Matthew, in Luke alone do we learn that the event takes place on “another Sabbath,” that it occurred while Jesus was teaching in the synagogue, that it was the right hand of the man, that the Pharisees and scribes were present, that Jesus “knew their thoughts,” and that the man both stood up and stepped out of the crowd in response to Jesus’s command to him. We might think that in the careful way he relates such significant detail Luke could readily be an exemplar for historians, dramatists, and novelists as well. --R. R. Reno, Luke, Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible
Posted on: Fri, 03 Oct 2014 06:22:40 +0000
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