Mark 3:1-6

The Sabbath Healing which Determined Pharisaic Hostility. (See p. 666.) Mk. links this synagogue incident with his first (Mark 1:21) by the word again. Jesus is no longer unknown; He is suspect. Another healing in a synagogue may be used as the basis of a charge against Him. He challenges with a question the opponents who are watching Him. Is it not a more loyal observance of the Sabbath to save life as Jesus proposes to do than to be plotting evil against another man as the Pharisees are actually doing? (This interpretation seems to be more attractive than that adopted in HNT, Loisy, or Pfleiderer; who says, He recognises no third course between the fulfilment of duty by doing good and the transgression of duty by not doing good: for the omission of a possible work of love is in itself an evil-doing which cannot be justified by any Sabbatic ordinance.) The refusal of the Pharisees to answer the question moves Jesus to anger. This is one of the few passages peculiar to Mk. which attributes anger to Jesus (cf. Mark 10:14); passionate grief rather than wrath is meant. The evangelist had little power of analysis and had not precise nomenclature for emotions shading into one another. (See The Practice of Christianity by the author of Pro Christo et Ecclesia, p. 92, but note also Fairbairn's sentence, A character incapable of indignation is destitute of righteousness, without the will to give adequate expression to its moral judgments.) The result is the determined hostility of the religious and political leaders of Galilee, who even plot His destruction. (The plot to kill is perhaps introduced too early into the story. See Menzies.)

Mark 3:1. The Gospel to the Hebrews adds that the man was a mason who asked Jesus to give him back the use of his arm to save him from the disgrace of begging. Such an addition is clearly an afterthought, and does not develop the main interest of the story. Cf. a more clearly irrelevant addition in the story of the rich young ruler (Mark 10:17). his hand withered: the attempt to derive this story from that of king Jeroboam (1 Kings 13:6, see Loisy, p. 107) seems to depend on the word withered, a very slight connexion!

Mark 3:5. when he had looked round: characteristic of Jesus according to Mk.; cf. Mark 3:34; Mark 10:23; Mark 11:11; Mark 10:21. The kind but searching glance.