Luke 13:15

Doth not each one of you— Our Lord soon put the hypocritical ruler to silence, by placing the action which he found fault with, in the light of their allowed practice. They loosed and led their cattle on the sabbath day to water, and thought the mercy of the work justified them in so doing. He, by uttering a word, had loosed a woman, a reasonable creature; nay, and what heightens the colouring, a daughter of Abraham, who had been bound with an incurable distemper, not for a single day, but for eighteen years! Without doubt, the far greater mercy of this and the other God-like works which Jesus did, justified his performing them on the sabbath, as the ruler might easily have seen, had he not been whollyblinded by his superstition. It is not improbable, that this ruler might that very day have been performing such an office for one of his cattle with his own hands, as is here spoken of; for it was by no means necessary to his being a ruler of the synagogue, that he should be a person of wealth or dignity in common life. Critics have collected passages from rabbinical writers, in which they allow it to be lawful to feed or water a beast on the sabbath-day. See Lightfoot's Hor. Heb. on the text, where he shews that they were expressly allowed even to draw water for their beasts, a more laborious work than leading them to it. We may remark, that the folly even of the men of learning among the Jews, conspicuous in this and some other instances mentioned in the Gospels, shews the malignant nature of superstition. It is capable of extinguishing reason, of banishing compassion,andoferadicatingthemostessentialprinciplesandfeelingsof the human mind.