Matthew 12:9

καὶ μεταβὰς … αὐτῶν. The αὐτῶν seems to imply that our evangelist takes the order as one of close temporal sequence (Mark says simply “into a synagogue,” Matthew 3:1). In that case the αὐτῶν would refer to the fault-finding Pharisees of the previous narrative, piqued by Christ's defence and bent on further mischief (vide Weiss-Meyer). The narrative comes in happily here as illustrating the scope of the principle of humanity laid down in connection with the previous incident.