Luke 14:3

answering spake unto the lawyers and Pharisees See on Luke 5:22. He took the initiative, and answered their unspoken thoughts.

Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath day? We have already seen (Luke 6:1-11; Luke 13:11-17; comp. John 5:11; John 9:14), that these Sabbath disputes lay at the very centre of the Pharisaic hatred to him, because around the ordinance of the Sabbath they had concentrated the worst puerilities and formalisms of the Oral Law; and because the Sabbath had sunk from a religious ordinance into a national institution, the badge of their exclusiveness and pride. But this perfectly simple and transparent question at once defeated their views. If they said -It is not lawful" they exposed themselves before the people to those varied and overwhelming refutations which they had already undergone (see on Luke 13:15). If they said -It is lawful" then cecidit quaestio,and their plot had come to nothing.