CHAPTER III: THE MINISTRY IN GALILEE
2. FIVE CONFLICTS WITH THE PHARISEES
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Chapter III: < PART
I | PART II: Five
conflicts with the Pharisees | 48.First conflict: the cure
of the paralytic | 49.The call of Levi. The Pharisees are scandalized |
50.A
question about fasting | 51.The plucking of the ears of corn
on the Sabbath day | 52.The man with a withered hand on the
Sabbath day | 53.The first plan to destroy
Jesus |
PART III >.
FIVE CONFLICTS WITH THE PHARISEES
All this could not fail to disturb the Pharisees.
The priests at Jerusalem
were taken up with their duties,
some of them chiefly occupied with secular
affairs,
and hence there was no immediate show of dissatisfaction on their
part at the growing movement in Galilee.
There, as everywhere else where Jews
gathered, was to be found a group of doctors of the Law.
They all held together,
following the lead of the great rabbinical schools of Jerusalem,
united by
their inclination for the study of Scripture, their religious zeal, and their
passion for domination.
This Galilaean group sent word of what was happening
to the rabbis at Jerusalem, who had been already put on their guard by what
Jesus had done down by the Jordan and by the expulsion of the traders from
the Temple.
They knew that the over-zealous preacher had gone away from Judaea,
but now
they learnt that He was carrying on His campaign somewhere else, and more vigorously
than ever.
He was working miracles,
He was attracting the populace,
He was
recruiting disciples and was beginning to take them about in His company.
This
was a thing which they could not tolerate;
they must learn for themselves
who and what this new teacher might be.
They had reason for suspecting Him,
but provided that He agreed to serve their
party what was to prevent their profiting by His reputation?
They must see
for themselves.
Members of the Judaean group were sent to join the scribes
of Galilee
with whom they now continually mixed,
keeping Jesus in sight in
order to spy out opportunities for putting Him to the test.
With no provocation
on His part,
but merely as a result of circumstances,
especially of the miracles
which the people obtained from His goodness,
five different conflicts occurred
between Him and the Pharisees.
They are placed by St. Mark and St. Luke consecutively,
probably a logical rather than a real order.
[Matthew, who is usually more systematic than the other
evangelists, has divided the five conflicts into two groups.]
The end of all this was to be
settled hostility towards Jesus,
and we must not forget this hostility and
the motives which determined it when we later read the severe judgment which
Jesus pronounced upon these men, who, inasmuch as they were the adversaries
of His mission, were also the enemies of the people's salvation.
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First conflict: the cure of the paralytic (48).
Luke v.17-26; Mark ii.1-12; Matthew ix.2-8.
Capharnaum, where there was an important synagogue and where Jesus now generally
lived, clearly provided the Pharisees with the most favourable opportunity
for watching Him.
When the people learnt that He had quietly returned thither
and was in a house, they crowded around, the Pharisees and Scribes well to
the fore, in such great numbers that the door was blocked.
Jesus began to speak
to the people, and we may take it that there was no room for objection in
His teaching since no reproof was offered.
The calm, however, was disturbed
by an extraordinary
scene.
Little by little the roof was seen to open,
bits of earth and lime falling
in the process on those who were sitting below.
Finally the opening was large
enough to allow room for a pallet to be let down by ropes;
on the pallet
lay a paralytic.
The four men who had brought him, had mounted to the flat
roof by an outside stair, and there, digging a hole in the roof, they had
pulled out the mass of plaster rubble resting on twisted reeds and the wooden
beams which formed the ceiling.
The beams were loosely fixed, and by removing
one of them a sufficiently large opening had been made.
This was doing a
sort of violence to Jesus, but they felt assured beforehand that their violence
was forgiven and regarded favourably.
The paralytic was let down to the ground
and lay there without a word;
the boldness of what had been done was quite
enough to manifest his desire and his faith.
Jesus said to him:
'My son, thy sins are forgiven thee.'
We can well believe that the man was asking
for this also in his inmost heart, since he was begging the favour of such
a cure as God does not usually grant to those who take no pains to please
Him.
Therefore when Jesus said this, the paralytic's hopes were merely deferred,
not disappointed.
No one spoke;
but the Pharisees, as if by common consent,
merely through the instinct of their common beliefs, were inwardly moved
by the same feeling of astonished indignation:
'How does this man speak thus?
He blasphemeth!
Who can forgive sins but God alone? '
But it is
also God alone who can read thoughts,
and Jesus shows that He knows them.
To give a yet clearer sign of His power
He says:
'Which is easier,
to say to this paralytic: Thy sins are forgiven thee
or to say: Arise, take up thy bed and walk?
But that you may know that the Son of Man hath power to forgive sins on earth
(He saith to the paralytic),
I say to thee:
Arise, take up thy bed, and return to thy house.'
[Mark ii.9-11.]
The man at once arises and carries his pallet away, while the bystanders bless
God with rapturous admiration;
the thought of connecting blasphemy with one
who holds such extraordinary power does not enter their minds.
Such forgiveness
of sins was unheard of,
but it is overshadowed by the miracle that was apparent
to all eyes;
for it is evident that the man's friends would not have had recourse
to such a stratagem as letting him down through the roof had not his condition
been considered as hopeless.
Hence what chiefly impresses the crowd is the
astounding nature of the miracle.
No doubt there may have been some among the
Pharisees also who shook their heads and said:
'We have never seen the like.'
But the novelty seemed to augur ill to their minds, firmly fixed as they were
in the principle that God alone could forgive sins.
In their opinion not even
the Messiah could do such a thing without encroaching on the divine rights.
By what right, then, did Jesus act?
He had spoken as 'Son of Man.'
Obviously
He had not meant to suggest that every son of man had the right to do the like.
[The
opinion of Wellhausen.]
That is ridiculous.
What, then, did Jesus mean by the expression 'Son of Man,'
and why did He apply it to Himself?
This is a problem still debated among scholars.
How would the Pharisees have
solved it?
The more erudite among them may have called to mind the celestial
being of Daniel's vision,
'like unto a son of man coming upon the clouds of heaven.'
[Daniel vii.13.]
But what was there in common between this apparition and Jesus of
Nazareth?
It could not, they thought, have been an apparition of the Messiah
since it came from heaven,
and was not the Messiah to be born of David like
a true son of man?
Now the reconciliation of this apparent opposition was
exactly the problem the Pharisees should have set themselves to solve: there
was no answer to it in their books.
The problem was to be solved in the
person of Jesus Himself,
but He judged it prudent first to prepare men's minds
to understand its solution.
He was guilty of no ambiguity in choosing an expression
which drew special attention to the human nature assumed by Him in its full
reality;
on the day of His appearance before the Sanhedrin
He was to declare
that this was the identical expression chosen by Daniel
to indicate the Messiah's
heavenly origin.
But the name of Messiah was not so suitable for this purpose
as the expression 'Son of Man,' seeing that the mere mention of it stirred
up liopes of national freedom not unmixed with the less worthy desires of political
domination, slaughter, and pillage.
It was a word with which to turn people's
heads.
Jesus could not renounce this royal title, however;
but He had first
to empty it of its worldly meaning,
purify it, spiritualize it,
and at the
same time extend its embrace to the whole human
race.
The Son of Man was the title chosen by Him in order to lead the Jews
to the notion of that universal salvation which had been proclaimed by the
Scriptures.
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The call of Levi.
The Pharisees are scandalized (49).
Luke v.27-32; xv.1-2; Mark ii.13-17; Matthew ix.9-13; xii.7.
The occupation
of publican was looked on with such contempt that Jesus seriously compromised
Himself in the eyes of the Pharisees when He invited a man who followed that
occupation to become His disciple;
nay, a publican who was actually at the
moment engaged in his duties.
The first Christians were well aware that Jesus
had called a publican to follow Him, and they accepted the fact reverently.
But out of respect for the Apostles they preferred not to name too openly the
man to whom that mercy had been shown.
It is thought that this is the reason
why St. Mark and St. Luke have called him Levi,
a name that does not appear
in the list of the Twelve.
It was left for the grateful humility of the first
evangelist -
and it comes very near to being a sign manual -
to give the name
Matthew to Levi in this place and to call him a publican in the official list
of the Apostles.
That the same man bore two names is likely enough, for it
was quite a common custom.
We see, then, how difficult it is, even for Christians,
to realize that to be called by Jesus confers the noblest of all titles.
Jesus, therefore, as He passed along the lake-side, saw Levi the son of Alphaeus engaged in his occupation as a publican:
He said to him:
'Follow Me.'
The man rose and followed Him.
He follows Jesus and obeys Him joyfully.
He asks
the Master to a meal in his house and there is nothing to be surprised at if
he invites a few of his former fellow-publicans, perhaps those whose honesty
was beyond reproach.
[The chief Roman publicans only accepted the post of farming
the taxes in order to plunder the countries subject to Rome;
but there is no doubt that there were minor officials among the tax-gatherers
who were honest.
A conscientious Jewish tax collector in the service of Herod had every right
to the respect of his fellow-countrymen;
but the whole class of publicans was considered disgraced,
and the Pharisees were more reluctant to forgive Jews than others who followed
that occupation.]
But there were ' sinners ' present too.
Some of these were doubtless sinners in the sight of God:
others, even if
they kept the moral law, did not trouble themselves about Pharisaic precautions
for avoiding legal uncleanness.
The mere act of eating with foreigners was
held in horror by the Pharisees, and it was done in this none too scrupulous
society in which not only is Jesus consenting to mix, but with which He is
not even afraid to let His disciples come into contact.
The Pharisees would have thought themselves defiled merely by going into the
dining-room.
They therefore wait for the disciples as they come out and, not
daring to address the Master for fear they might put Him on His guard,
they ask without even naming Him:
'How is it that He eats with publicans and sinners? '
The disciples had not even thought about it:
a sad state of mind to be in!
But Jesus answers for them:
'They that are well have no need of a physician,
but they that are sick.'
The Pharisees knew that well enough, and they regarded themselves as
both teachers and physicians of the common people, whose ignorance they considered
must necessarily leave them sunk in sin.
But the medicine of the Pharisees
was chiefly preventive, for they took good care to avoid the sick for fear
of contracting contagion;
they gave imposing prescriptions from a distance,
and the first thing in the prescription was that it was of absolute importance
to consult them.
Jesus, however, does not fear contact with these poor people;
He goes out of
His way to seek it.
Righteous men, like the Pharisees, stand in no need of
Him.
He does not remind them that they are closing the way to God against themselves
by their contemptuous pride;
He only says: 'I came not to call the just,
but sinners.'
A truly divine utterance! 'I came not. ...'
Where, then,
was He formerly?
Did He not belong to the earth,
He who had just called Himself
Son of Man?
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A question about fasting (50).
Luke v.33-39; Mark ii.18-22; Matthew ix.14-17.
A little while after there was a fast day for the Pharisees and John's disciples.
Fasting for the Greeks meant hardly more than mere abstention from food.
But
in the Jewish fast, going without food had the character of a symbol;
it was a mode of humbling and belittling oneself,
of appeasing the divine wrath
or submitting to its consequences.
Thus, with the Jews fasting was essentially
a rite of repentance and mourning.
The Law prescribed it on one day only,
the Day of Atonement,
and then it was binding on all.
But fasts were also
kept in memory of great national calamities,
like the capture of Jerusalem
by the Chaldeans on the ninth day of the month Ab. [About
July 14.]
The Pharisees unquestionably
kept other fasts apart from those of simple devotion, which John's disciples
joined them in observing, following in that the example of the great ascetic,
their master.
But ordinary people occupied in hard work did not lay this
additional burden upon themselves,
and Jesus had not imposed it upon His
disciples.
It might be thought that no one could object to that ;
nevertheless the Pharisees, as well as John's disciples, complained.
St. Luke
names the former, St. Matthew the latter, St. Mark mentions no names.
The probability
is that adverse comments were made here and there, and although those who voiced
them were without doubt animated by Pharisaism, yet it may be taken for granted
they would pretend not to be actuated by party spirit.
The complaints are started
by onlookers, or rather by spies.
This time they address their enquiries to
Jesus, as usual in a roundabout way, asking Him for what reason His disciples
do not follow , the example of pious people, seeing that He must have chosen
these disciples in order to lead them along a more perfect way than that followed
by the generality of people.
He replies with a comparison,
and the point of
the comparison concerns His own person.
The friends of the bridegroom,
those
gay companions of his former life
who in the picturesque language of the Semites
are called 'the sons of the nuptial couch,'
whose business it was to see to
the wedding feast
and by their talk and songs to make things go with a swing,
can they be expected to put on a sad demeanour while the feast is still in
progress?
The bridegroom is being taken from them,
and when he enters on his
new life,
then they can show their regrets,
but not so long as he is still
with them.
Jesus Himself is the bridegroom;
the day will come when He will
be taken away from His friends, and on that day they will fast.
Jesus foresaw, then, that He would be separated from His
disciples.
Would there be time before that for Him to reign along with them?
But was there
any question of reigning?
His prediction was guarded, yet it left an impression
of sadness:
Jesus taken from His own, and His own left to sorrow!
To us its
meaning is plain, fulfilled as it is in the fast we celebrate on the anniversary
of Christ's death and during the days preceding that mournful commemoration.
This reply of Jesus vindicated His disciples:
the joy of His presence took
from them every reason for showing signs of sadness in such a case as this,
where the sole motive was the example set by the Pharisees, an example followed
so submissively by the disciples of John the Baptist.
Yet He wished to teach
a deeper truth.
His disciples were not with Him simply to be His companions:
by His teaching He breathed a new spirit into them.
That spirit was not in
contradiction with what is essential in the Law, as later on Jesus will say
openly.
But at present there was no question of any command of the Law:
it
was a question of new practices added to the Law by the Pharisees, perhaps
with the intention of preserving it more safely against the assaults of time.
A bad system indeed!
For when a garment is worn out we do not sew a new piece
on to it, for a slight movement will pull the new piece away and bring with
it some of the old material round it:
thus the rent is made bigger still.
Or when wine-skins are worn thin through being jolted about on the ass's back,
is that the time to put new wine into them?
It will only ferment and burst
the skins.
These disciples of His, therefore, since they have been imbued with
a new spirit, should not be required to take part in observances inspired by
the spirit of the Old Law.
That would be a piece of patch-work which would
only end by showing up more clearly than ever the decay of the legal institutions,
such at least as they were in the Pharisaic interpretation.
Fasting is not
condemned;
it is even foreseen for the future when, after the renewal of man's
religious sense, it will be practised with a new intention:
'New wine in new skins! '
Doubtless this lesson is profound rather than clearly to be seen on the surface.
But Jesus, with the foreknowledge of what was to come, relied on the future
to elucidate His words.
Now we can fathom their meaning.
The ill-natured people
who had questioned Him suspected danger
to the Law in the future;
they gained little by their question.
After all,
since the fasting in question was not of 'obligation the disciples were not
at fault.
But it is clear that the answer given by Jesus had a tone that
was none too sympathetic to Pharisaic observances.
The hostility of the Pharisees
went on growing, and they were exasperated by finding no motive for it out
of which they could concoct some vital case against Jesus.
But the Sabbath
was to provide them with the opportunity they sought.
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The plucking of the ears of corn on the Sabbath day (51).
Luke vi.1-5; Mark ii.23-28; Matthew xii.1-8.
Jesus was walking through the corn with His disciples, and they, either because
they were hungry or else mechanically and absent-mindedly, plucked the ears
and began to taste the ripe but still tender grain.
It was therefore only just
before the harvest.
If the conversation with the Samaritan woman took place
when the barley was whitening,
and if the grain eaten by the disciples was
wheat, which is much more pleasant to the taste,
we may suppose that an interval
of about two or three weeks separated the two incidents.
It is true, of course,
that down by the shores of the lake the harvest is ripe earlier than in the
plain of Nablus;
but it is possible that the present incident occurred on
the plain above the lake, called the plain of Hattin.
If so, then the time
would have been about the beginning of June.
To pluck a few ears of corn or a few figs from the trees as one passed was
a common practice;
no one objected to that.
But the incident with which we
are dealing took place on the Sabbath day.
As the Sabbath was the day of rest
it was only permitted to take short walks,
but it was the general custom to
go out on the Sabbath.
In our own day at Jerusalem you will find all the Jews
out of doors on the Sabbath strolling slowly within the prescribed Sabbath
day limits, called the erubin.
[The Sabbath limit was 2000 cubits from the place where
a man lived.
But sometimes one finds several Jewish houses connected up with wires,
and by this device they are reckoned as one so that the Sabbath limit may be
extended.]
Jesus had evidently not transgressed these
limits for He is not found fault with on that account;
but to rub the grains
out of the ears of corn,
was not that to perform prohibited work?
The question makes us smile, but to the Jews it was a serious matter.
Harvesting
on the Sabbath day was expressly forbidden by the Law [Exodus
xxxiv.21.],
and Pharisaic casuistry
had included under harvesting every action, however trifling, that could be
said to be like harvesting.
[Cf. Strack and Billerbeck, Einleitung in Talmud und
Midrash, I, p. 617.]
All this can be found in the rabbinical books
[Cf. Mishnah,
Shabbath, VII, 2, which gives a list of thirty-nine kinds of forbidden
work.],
where we also learn that it was forbidden to pick fruit, or even to climb a
tree, lest one should shake off the fruit even unintentionally.
Nay more, as
the Sabbath was the law of creation and hence binding on all nature it was
forbidden to eat an egg that had been laid or fruit fallen from a tree on the
Sabbath day.
The reproach uttered by the Pharisees, then, has all the marks
of probability.
They addressed it to the Master without even giving the name
of disciples to those at whom it was aimed
[According to
Mark ii.24.],
thus insinuating the impression
that their question is not motived by ill-will.
Surely, they say, the disciples
are doing what is forbidden.
They wish it to be thought that they are charitably
inclined to conclude that there must be some excuse for what the disciples
are doing but would like to know what that excuse is.
Jesus replies to the question by quoting an example from the Scriptures,
the
example of what the young King David did during his time of trial,
David the
chosen one of God.
In that case there was no question of Sabbath observance,
but the matter at stake was a legal point just as explicitly determined by
the Law as was the Sabbath rest.
Only the priests were authorized to eat the
loaves of proposition [Leviticus xxiv.5 ff.],
the bread, that is to say, which had been exposed in
the presence of God upon the altar in the sanctuary.
To satisfy his own hunger
and the needs of his companions David had obtained permission from the high
priest to receive the sacred loaves which had just been replaced by fresh loaves.
[i Kings (1Sam) xxi.2 ff., where the text names Achimelech
as the priest;
but his son Abiathar, who succeeded him, was present (i Kings (1 Sam) xxii.20).
St. Mark says: 'under Abiathar the high priest,'
for Abiathar's name appears so frequently in the biblical history of that time
as to link his name with that of David.]
Was that a violation of the Law?
Was it not rather the fact that the high
priest wisely interpreted the Law in order to meet a case of necessity?
True, the disciples had not David's excuse:
but at the same time their neglect
of the Law was much more slight.
The essential thing was this:
where there is question of a positive command which does not involve any eternal
principle, one must go back to the original purpose of the Law.
This was the
case in the question of the Sabbath:
when God bound the Israelites to rest
on that day His purpose was to secure their benefit,
not to tie them down by
an absolute command
which took no account of circumstances or of the relative
importance of various actions.
In a word, as Jesus boldly expressed it:
'The Sabbath was made for man,
not man for the Sabbath.'
This statement, which goes right to the root of the matter, is recorded by St. Mark,
and there is no reason to doubt its authenticity.
To it he adds a declaration which depends for its understanding on St. Matthew's text:
'so that the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.'
What has been said above
of the authenticity of the principle enunciated by Jesus concerning the Sabbath
can be repeated also of this conclusion which He draws.
Indeed, it bears
all the signs of probability when we observe how He refuses to meet the craft
of the Pharisees with craft.
They have tried to make Him affirm that He sets
up a new standard of Sabbath observance,
but He declines the honour.
No:
on the contrary his chief concern is to make clear what is His mission in
such a way as not to draw attention to its messianic aspect.
In His former
encounters with them He has claimed the power to forgive sins in His character
of a physician who has come to cure the victims of that malady.
He has proclaimed
the beginning of a new order of things,
an order that is dependent on His
own person:
now He declares that He is master, even of the Sabbath. [Matthew
xii.5 ff.]
Pursuing
His usual method of argument,
that drawing of principles from particular
cases which even the simplest of people can understand,
He reminds His hearers
that the priests in the Temple appear to break the Sabbath by the tasks they
perform,
yet no one blames them for that.
But there is now in the midst of
them one who is greater than the Temple, namely the Son of Man.
He who forgives
sins is also master of the Sabbath,
master in the sense that He is the judge
of what is lawful for His disciples.
He is master too in a more absolute sense,
as the future will make clear.
There is here no threat to the principle of
the Law,
for the Sabbath rest will always be for man's advantage:
it gives
him leisure and makes it easier for him to draw nigh to God.
Nevertheless,
the power of the Son of Man which He has transmitted to His Church
was used
when a day for the Sabbath was chosen
on which, instead of commemorating the
rest taken by God after the creation of the world,
a rest which symbolizes
the divine conservation of the world,
we commemorate the resurrection of Christ.
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The man with a withered hand healed on the Sabbath day (52).
Luke vi.6-10; xiv.3b; Mark iii.1-5; Matthew xii.9-13.
The question of the Sabbath, always a burning one, was now raised.
In our
own days Jerusalem has witnessed the sight of a Jewish High Commissioner,
once
a minister of the British Government,
walking nearly two miles in full-dress
uniform on the king's birthday
so as not to cause his chauffeur to break the
Sabbath.
And a certain Jewish author [Harold Wiener, The Law
of Change in the Bible.]
who has written to prove that the Mosaic
Law is not unchangeable
would have similar scruples on this same fundamental
point.
It was on this vital matter that the conflict with the Pharisees was to end
in mortal combat.
The incident put before us here by the first three evangelists
provides a typical case, in which a merciless legalism strives in vain with
the compassionate heart of Jesus, the eternal source of Christian charity.
Jesus was again in the synagogue, and amongst those present was a man with
a withered hand.
The Pharisees by now knew Jesus well enough to suspect that
He would want to heal Him.
But would He dare to do it on the Sabbath day?
If He did, then He would provide them with a splendid opportunity for accusing
Him of a thing that He had done openly in the synagogue, without respect cither
for the place or for the scandalized crowd of faithful.
On this occasion no more than on the previous one does
Jesus shirk the issue, though now the danger is more pressing.
He even makes
an open declaration of the principle which is involved in the case of this
poor man.
Bidding him to come forward into the midst of the assembly,
He puts the question:
'Is it not better to do good rather than evil on the Sabbath day,
to save a life rather than commit a murder?'
We should think
that the rabbis might have answered yes without compromising themselves:
a general solution of that kind did not stand in the way of dispute about
cases in particular.
Yet they were silent, for they had made up their minds
to grant nothing that might compromise them even unconsciously.
It may have
been pride which made them refuse to argue with this tiro in the art of disputation:
they certainly showed hardness of heart by their silence,
for the disabled
man was there before their eyes,
his withered hand pleading with them,
yet
they will not say a word to authorize Jesus to heal it.
There are modern scholars
who say that they were right:
rabbinical jurisprudence permitted work on the
Sabbath when there was danger of death, but not otherwise.
In the present case
there was no question of urgency.
It was evident, however, that Jesus meant to go on further.
He had put forward
the suggestion that what rendered an action lawful on the Sabbath day was its
moral value, even though in performing it there was danger of breaking one
of those regulations with which the rabbinic lawyers, with their narrow-minded
reasoning, had overburdened the Law:
as, for instance, that it was unlawful to pour water over a sprained limb on
the Sabbath, or to draw the blood from a wound.
The enemies of Jesus persuaded
themselves that all they had to do was to let Him go on and work His own ruin:
it was certainly a splendid opportunity.
But, conscious of the hardness of their
hearts,
Jesus looked upon them with sadness,
even with a holy passion of anger.
This is the only occasion where anger is attributed to Him, and here it is recorded
by St. Mark alone [Mark iii.5.],
so little did it seem compatible with His goodness of heart.
And, indeed, His anger remained without effect, and only His goodness was revealed;
for at the command of Jesus the man stretched out his hand and drew it back full
of life and movement.
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The first plan to destroy Jesus (53).
Luke vi.11; Mark iii.6; Matthew xii.14.
This was the last straw:
from now onwards the Pharisees were determined.
For a long time they had been defied,
but now they had a case against Him,
and a good one as it seemed to them,
nor was there any lack of witnesses.
As
they were in the territory of Herod Antipas it was deemed advisable to come
to an understanding with some of the influential people of his petty court.
They met in secret and discussed ways and means of bringing about the downfall
of the innovator, though as yet no definite plan was formed.
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