A Healing In The Synagogue Series

A Healing in the Synagogue

Introduction: Jesus healed people in different places at different times. One of the more unusual healings took place when four men carried a paralyzed man to a house but couldn’t enter. They didn’t stop, though: they carried the man up to the roof, opened a hole in the roof and lowered the paralytic (“sick of the palsy” in Luke 5) down to where Jesus was standing! That man was healed and walked home. This time, Jesus healed a man inside a synagogue!

This story is also told in Matthew 12:9-14 and Mark 3:1-6. Together, these three accounts supplement each other in adding some words and details to make a complete picture.

1 The man who needed healing

Text: Luke 6:6, KJV: 6 And it came to pass also on another sabbath, that he entered into the synagogue and taught: and there was a man whose right hand was withered.

Recently before this event took place, Jesus and the disciples had wandered through a field of grain and ate some of the raw grain, so it was near but before harvest time. They were approached by the Pharisees, religious leaders, who asked them why they broke the Sabbath by eating this raw grain on the Sabbath day. These leaders claimed that plucking the ears of grain was reaping and rubbing the husks off of the grain itself was threshing (per Ellicott’s on-line commentary at https://biblehub.com/commentaries/ellicott/matthew/12.htm, a parallel passage).

Think of it: they would rather see their fellow men go hungry instead of “breaking the Sabbath!”

Eventually Jesus and the others arrived at the synagogue. Apparently they followed the more-or-less standard procedure of the time, such as reading a passage from the Law and another from the Prophets, followed by a chance for one of the men to speak. This was the pattern which was in use during Paul’s ministry in Antioch of Pisidia (Acts 13:14-15). And this wasn’t the only time Jesus was invited to speak: Matthew and Mark both have several accounts where Jesus did this (see Matt. 4:23, 9:35 and Mark 1:29, to name three).

But that wasn’t the only thing to happen at the synagogue that day. There was a man whose right had (Luke alone tells which hand) was withered. I’ve searched a number of commentaries but haven’t yet found anything that explains what that term “withered” actually means. Now, I’ve seen a few people who had an arm that didn’t match the other. One neighbor’s right arm was much thinner and much shorter than the left arm; she was forced to become left-handed and for the time we were neighbors, she kept that right arm in a sling. Years later, we knew of another young man whose left arm seemed to be missing the forearm: we could see the elbow, but it seemed his fingers, and stubby ones at that, were close to the elbow.

Please remember, I am not criticizing or mocking these two or anyone else over something they had no control over. They and who knows how many others had congenital or birth defects; they were not in any way responsible for what had happened. Should these two, or anyone else, become believers or Christ-followers, their bodies will be made perfect. I pray they did!

And yet there is at least one man whose arm was withered due to an act of God Himself. That man was Jeroboam I, who was the first king of the Ten Northern Tribes (Israel) after these tribes split from Judah and Benjamin (1 Kings 12). Eventually Jeroboam built an altar dedicated to a golden calf in Bethel (a border town in those days) and offered sacrifices, all in defiance of God and the Law of Moses. A prophet delivered God’s message; Jeroboam didn’t like it (obviously) and ordered the prophet seized. Jeroboam got a very big surprise when his arm dried up and he couldn’t use it. He then asked the prophet to pray for him. After he did, Jeroboam’s arm was restored but he never repented of his sins (1 Kings 13 has that story).

Of course it’s anybody’s guess how many other Israelites suffered from withered arms or legs but we do know some waited by the Pool of Bethesda, They believed, and apparently it worked, that when the pool was “troubled”, the first one in was healed (see John 5:1-4). At first glance, this man in the synagogue had never been able to get to Jerusalem or visit the Pool of Bethesda because he was still here, maybe at or near Capernaum (none of the authors tell the location).

This man, though, was about to be part of a much larger story. How did he come to have a withered hand? We’re never told. And why was he in the synagogue at that moment?