SUMMARY
In a synagogue on the Sabbath, Jesus heals a woman with a severely crooked spine. His action sparks a debate with the synagogueA synagogue is a Jewish house of worship. Jesus often taught in synagogues where he sometimes ran afoul of Jewish leaders. In the book of Acts, Paul and others attend synagogues and teach in them. More leader concerning appropriate ways of honoring the SabbathSabbath is a weekly day of rest, the seventh day, observed on Saturday in Judaism and on Sunday in Christianity. In the book of Genesis, God rested on the seventh day; in the Gospel accounts Jesus and his disciples are criticized by some for not... More day.
ANALYSIS
Several aspects of this scene relate to themes and ideas developed throughout Luke’s Gospel. For example, the woman’s misshapen spine is characterized as bondage to Satan, the effects of “a spirit.” This language does not necessarily mean that she is possessed by a demon, but the description reflects a common belief in the first century that one’s physical and spiritual conditions were intricately related and never fully separable. The woman’s posture also likely reflects her social condition: diminished and frail—not on the same level as everyone else. Salvation for her means freedom from spiritual, physical, and social struggle, just as others in Luke find similar freedom through Jesus’ activity.
No one insinuates that it was a bad idea for Jesus to heal the suffering woman. The issue is the timing, specifically the Sabbath day. The synagogue leader contends that healing on the Sabbath violates the command to observe the Sabbath and keep it holy, because healing constitutes work. When Jesus replies to the leader, he says that the issue is not about what constitutes “work.” Rather, it is about the kinds of activities and aims that truly reflect the purpose of the Sabbath. Jesus notes that people rightly care for their livestock on the Sabbath. Nothing in the law forbids such basic acts of compassion. Jesus implies that his healing hardly breaks the law; instead, it upholds the foundational principles of the Sabbath laws. Healing appropriately reflects what the Sabbath is all about. The Sabbath commandment in Deuteronomy 5:12-15 roots Sabbath observance in remembering God’s commitment to bring people out of bondage. These verses emphasize the value of giving everything that is part of creation a Sabbath rest—including land, slaves, and livestock. The Sabbath exists, according to Deuteronomy 5, to proclaim God’s commitment to renewal (what we might call wholeness) for all aspects of creationCreation, in biblical terms, is the universe as we know or perceive it. Genesis says that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. In the book of Revelation (which speaks of end times) the author declares that God created all things and... More.
Jesus’ point, therefore, is that if it is a good thing for a person to “untie” an ox or a donkey on the Sabbath in order to refresh it, even more so is it a good thing for him to “set free” a human being on the Sabbath in order to restore her. (The same Greek word translates as both “untie” and “set free” in vv. 15-16, showing that Jesus is comparing two acts of “release” that are consistent with the Sabbath’s primary purpose.) After all, the healed woman is a “daughter of Abraham,” one with whom God has entered into a covenantal relationship. Jesus also contrasts the severity of her bondage to that of a tied-up ox or donkey. She has been bound by Satan for 18 long years, making her circumstances even more exigent. What better day than the Sabbath, the day of renewal, to set her free at last?
