Luke 13:16

“And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan had bound, lo, these eighteen years, to have been loosed from this bond on the day of the sabbath?”

So if they were willing to loose domestic animals on the Sabbath day so as to water them (not a life threatening condition as other provision could have been made), why did they cavil at Jesus for loosing from her tether a woman who had been bound for eighteen years, who was of far greater worth than a domestic animal as she was a daughter of Abraham (a full Jewess)?

‘Daughter of Abraham' may well indicate that He was asserting that she was a godly woman, something that some may have doubted because of her condition. See Luke 3:8 where children of Abraham signifies those who claim to be in the right with God. Was it not right then to also loose her on the Sabbath?

‘Eighteen years'. This was three times six. Possibly He was saying that they should recognise that she had completed not just ‘six days' but six years, three times over, and had not been loosed on any of them, because they were unable to loose her, and thus it was right that at last she be loosed by God on the ‘seventh' day, the Sabbath, on a day when God was at work.

‘Loosed.' Compare Luke 4:18. This example was probably chosen to be the centrepiece of this section in which the word of deliverance and the Kingly Rule of God is in mind precisely because it illustrated so well Jesus' commission to ‘loose the captives' and to ‘loose those who are oppressed'.

It should be noted that Jesus does not just defend His healing on the Sabbath, but seems to suggest that it was right that it happen on the Sabbath. This might be seen as confirming that to Him the Sabbath pointed forward to the ‘rest' of the people of God into which He wanted all to enter. It was thus the most suitable day for healing and revealing the compassion of God. After all Satan had still been at work in the woman on the Sabbath day. Was he then to have it as his sole preserve?