The Jews therefore said unto him that was cured, It is the sabbath day: it is not lawful for you to carry your bed.
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Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
The Jews therefore, &c. As Nonnus paraphrases, "Clamorously they uttered an accusing charge, "It is the Sabbath, which every one ought to keep wholly in rest: it is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed."" Speaking generally, they say the truth; for among the Jews it was a matter of the highest obligation to keep the Sabbath. All work was then forbidden, as appears from Exodus 20:8. And especially the carrying of burdens on that day is forbidden by Jeremiah ( Jeremiah 17:21, &c.). Christ, however, here says the contrary to the sick man whom He cured, because Hebrews , being Lord of the Sabbath, could dispense with its obligation. Moreover, what was forbidden by the Law upon the Sabbath was servile work, not a pious and Divine work like this. Christ bade the man who was healed take up his bed that the crowds of people who were flocking into the Temple on the Sabbath might become acquainted with the miracle, and acknowledge Jesus, its author, to be the Messiah, giving Him thanks.
Most seasonably (I think) doth He cry over them, Hear now this O foolish people and heartless, which have eyes and see not. For what can be more uninstructed than such people, or what greater in senselessness? For they do not even admit into their mind that they ought to wonder at the Power of the Healer: but being bitter reprovers, and skilled in this alone, they lay the charge of breaking the law about him who had just and with difficulty recovered from a long disease, and foolishly bid him lie down again, as though the honour due to the Sabbath were paid by having to be ill.
Hear what he says ("He that made me whole . . ."), all but saying, You are silly and mad who bid me not to take Him for my Teacher who has delivered me from a long and grievous malady, and not to obey whatever He may command. Had he chosen to act in an unfair manner, he might have spoke differently, as thus, I do not this of my own will, but at the bidding of another; if this be a matter of blame, blame him who gave the order, and I will set down the bed. And he might have concealed the cure, for he well knew that they were vexed not so much at the breaking of the Sabbath, as at the curing of his infirmity. Yet he neither concealed this, nor said that, nor asked for pardon, but with loud voice confessed and proclaimed the benefit. Thus did the paralytic; but consider how unfairly they acted. For they said not, Who is it that has made you whole? on this point they were silent, but kept on bringing forward the seeming transgression.
