Controversy over Sabbath observance holds a prominent place in the Gospel record. Much attention was focused upon its rules and regulations as interpreted by the rabbis. Edersheim summarizes his comments on the lengthy and detailed Sabbath prohibitions advocated by the Jewish religious authorities: "Such are the leading provisions by which Rabbinism enlarged the simple Sabbath-law as expressed in the Bible, and, in its anxiety to ensure its most exact observance, changed the spiritual import of its rest into a complicated code of external and burdensome ordinances" (The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, Vol. II, p. 787).
It is not clear where Christ Jesus was at this time. Luke (13:22) simply refers to his "journeying toward Jerusalem," but was he in Judea, on his way to Jerusalem, or across the Jordan in Perea? In any case, "he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And, behold, there was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself." Her immediate release from physical bondage roused the indignation of the ruler of the synagogue, because the healing had occurred on the Sabbath day. "There are six days" he said to the people, "in which men ought to work: in them therefore come and be healed, and not on the sabbath day." However, as the Master pointed out, if Jewish tradition allowed for the humane treatment of domestic animals on the Sabbath, should not one of their own people be loosed on the Sabbath day from a crippling deformity? His opponents were confused, but the congregation echoed the joyous exclamations of the woman who had been healed. (See Luke 13: 10-17; cf. Ex. 20:8-11; Deut. 5:12-15.)
Luke's account continues with some of the Nazarene's many earnest attempts to explain to the people the nature of the kingdom of heaven. From small beginnings come grand results, whether in the form of outward development, as apparent in the growth of the mustard seed into a tree, or working secretly, as the invisible influence of leaven acts in the process of baking (see 13:18-21).
