Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary

Luke 6:7

παρετηροῦντο δέ. See Luke 20:20. The verb implies that they watched, ex obliquo et occulto (Bengel). The followers of Shammai, at that epoch the most powerful of the Pharisaic Schools, were so strict about the Sabbath, that they held it a violation of the Law to tend the sick, or even to console them on that day. (Shabbath, 12. 1.) Hence what the Pharisees were waiting to see was whether He was going to side with them in their Sabbatic views, or with the more lax Sadducees, whom the people detested. If He did the latter, they thought that they could ruin the popularity of the Great Prophet. But in this, as in every other instance, (1) our Lord absolutely refuses to be guided by the popular orthodoxy of the hour, however tyrannous and ostensibly deduced from Scripture; and (2) ignores every consideration of party in order to appeal to principles.

εἰ θεραπεύει, ‘whether He intends to heal.’ The present being a continuous or imperfect tense often implies an intention or an attempt (conatus rei perficiendae) as here, ‘whether He is for healing.’ Comp. John 5:32, λιθάζετέ με; Do ye mean to stone me? John 13:6, σὺ μοῦ νίπτεις τοὺς πόδας; Dost Thou mean to wash my feet? See Winer, p. 332. The other reading, θεραπεύσει, is a more commonplace idiom.

ἵνα εὕρωσιν. According to the ordinary law of the sequence of tenses the word here should have been the optative, “They watched him that they might find.” No doubt the subj. is sometimes substituted for the optative, even by classical writers, to make the narrative more picturesque (πρὸ ὀμμάτων ποιεῖν). In Hellenistic writers however the rule of the sequence of tenses is constantly violated, because of the gradual obsolescence of the optative, which was chiefly used in literary language. See Winer, p. 360.

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Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary

Luke 6:7

Old Testament

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