Open an explanation beneath verses with notes. Your notes and highlights stay on this device.
He entered again into the synagogue, and there was a man there whose hand was withered.
Verse 1. He entered again into the synagogue, that is of Capharnaum. The man was there either, of course, on account of the sabbath, or to be cured by Jesus Christ.
They watched him, whether he would heal him on the Sabbath day, that they might accuse him.
He said to the man whose hand was withered, “Stand up.”
He said to them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath day to do good or to do harm? To save a life or to kill?” But they were silent.
Verse 4. A difficulty here arises, how to reconcile Saint Mark with Saint Matthew. Saint Mark puts the words into the mouth of Jesus Christ: Is it lawful? When Saint Matthew says, that they interrogated him: Is it lawful? To cut the knot of this apparent difficulty, we must understand that they first put the question to our Lord, whether it was lawful to heal on the sabbath-day or not: and that Jesus understanding their secret thoughts, that they wished to have some grounds of accusation against him, placed the sick man in the midst of them, and said what Saint Mark here relates of him: Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath-day, or to do evil? Saint Augustine
When he had looked around at them with anger, being grieved at the hardening of their hearts, he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored as healthy as the other.
The Pharisees went out, and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how they might destroy him.
Jesus withdrew to the sea with his disciples; and a great multitude followed him from Galilee, from Judea,
from Jerusalem, from Idumaea, beyond the Jordan, and those from around Tyre and Sidon. A great multitude, hearing what great things he did, came to him.
Verse 8. What is to be understood by Idumea, see Rutter’s Evangelical Harmony. Vol. i. p. 286.
He spoke to his disciples that a little boat should stay near him because of the crowd, so that they wouldn’t press on him.
For he had healed many, so that as many as had diseases pressed on him that they might touch him.
The unclean spirits, whenever they saw him, fell down before him and cried, “You are the Son of God!”
Verse 11–12. The unclean spirits being obliged by the Divine Power, not only to come and worship, but also to declare his majesty, exclaimed: Thou art the Son of God. How astonishing then is the blindness of the Arians, who even after his resurrection denied him to be the Son of God, whom the devils confessed as such when clothed with human nature. But it is certain that not only the devils, but the infirm that were healed, and the apostles themselves were forbidden, as well as the unclean spirits, to proclaim his divinity; lest the passion and death of Christ might be on that account deferred. Ven. Bede.
He sternly warned them that they should not make him known.
Verse 11–12. The unclean spirits being obliged by the Divine Power, not only to come and worship, but also to declare his majesty, exclaimed: Thou art the Son of God. How astonishing then is the blindness of the Arians, who even after his resurrection denied him to be the Son of God, whom the devils confessed as such when clothed with human nature. But it is certain that not only the devils, but the infirm that were healed, and the apostles themselves were forbidden, as well as the unclean spirits, to proclaim his divinity; lest the passion and death of Christ might be on that account deferred. Ven. Bede.