John Chapter 7 verse 23 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 23. - If a man on (a) sabbath receive circumcision, which was the removal by surgical means of what was regarded as a cause and sign of physical impurity, as well as the seal of the covenant made with the family of Abraham, that his seed should be heir of the world, and that in that seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed, in order that the law of Moses might not be broken. It is not without difficulty that, in the previous verse, the law of circumcision on the eighth day is declared to be older than Moses, to have come down from the fathers of the consecrated race: how, then, does he call it the law of Moses? Clearly he refers to the fact that this particular law was embodied by Moses and made part of his own code, even though in one respect it was obviously older than the particular form of the fourth commandment, and must frequently clash with the letter of that commandment. The law of Moses, then, as much as the law of the Abrahamic covenant, would have been broken by any infraction of the rule which made circumcision incumbent on the eighth day. The common custom of the people was to adminster this rite on that day, even if it fell on a sabbath. "None of you keepeth the Law" in its Strict integrity, said Jesus. Nay, it is certain that the older laws, which Moses endorsed and embodied in his own code, do themselves demand such violation from you. This appeal to the spirit of the Law - the closest approach that a Jew could make to the will of God - is reproduced in Paul's Epistles (Colossians 2:11; Ephesians 2:11). Are ye then wroth with me (χολᾶτε, χολᾶν (from χολῆ, bile, gall) - to be bitter with wrath, and even mad with rage (Aristoph., 'Nub.,' 833), is found in 3Macc. 3:1, but not elsewhere in the New Testament) - because I made an entire man - i.e. the whole frame of the paralyzed man (not his spirit or mind in contrast with his body) - sound - or, healthy - on a sabbath day? The antithesis is not between healing the wound of circumcision and healing the paralytic. Of the former there does not seem the faintest trace, notwithstanding the conjecture of Lampe. Circumcision was the removal of an offending portion of the human body, the sanitary purpose of which rite was strenuously believed in, but it was a partial cleansing and actual excision of one member of the body. To accomplish this purpose Moses, by his enactment, regarded even the sabbatic law as subsidiary. Why, then are the Jews wrathful with Jesus for making an entire man - a whole physical frame - healthful on the sabbath? The stress laid on the Authorized Version and R.T. translations, "every whit whole," by some commentaries is unfortunate; for it would throw discredit on circumcision altogether, which was far from our Lord's contention here, and would reduce the force of his argument. Christ does not in this argument take up the great line of defence pursued in ch. 5. Nor does he call the healing of the paralytic more than an ἔργον, a "work;" but it must be remembered that he had spoken on the previous occasion of his great miracles as "works," the like to which he saw the Father ever doing.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(23) That the law of Moses should not be broken.--The text here is to be preferred to the marginal reading, though the latter has still the support of considerable authority. In the one case, the law which may not be broken is the law directing circumcision on the eighth day. In the other, "without breaking the law of Moses," refers to the law of the Sabbath. The rule of circumcision on the eighth day (Genesis 17:12; Genesis 21:4) was adopted in the Mosaic law (Leviticus 12:3), and strictly adhered to--we have examples in the New Testament, in Luke 1:59; Luke 2:21, and Philippians 3:5--and if the eighth day fell on the Sabbath, then, according to Rabbinic precept, "circumcision vacated the Sabbath." The school of Hillel the Great--and disciples of this school were at the time of our Lord the chief teachers at Jerusalem (comp. Note on John 5:39)--gave as a reason for this that the "Sabbath Law was one of the Negative and the Circumcision Law one of the Positive Precepts, and that the Positive destroys the Negative." His appeal, then, is an example of His knowledge of their technical law, at which they wondered in John 7:15. Indeed, the argument itself is an example of Hillel's first great law of interpretation--"that the Major may be inferred from the Minor." If circumcision be lawful on the Sabbath, much more is it lawful to restore the whole man. For other instances in which our Lord used this famous Canon of Interpretation, comp. Matthew 7:11; Matthew 10:29-31. . . .