The Man with Dropsy Healed
Watched, tested, and seated across from a suffering man at a Pharisee's sabbath dinner - Jesus healed him and asked a question nobody could answer.
Invited to eat bread at the house of a chief Pharisee on the sabbath, Jesus found himself watched - and facing a man swollen with dropsy, quite possibly placed there as bait. Jesus put the question to the lawyers and Pharisees first: 'Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath day?' They held their peace. He took the man, healed him, and let him go, then dismantled their silence with a question no one could answer: which of you, having an ass or an ox fall into a pit, will not straightway pull him out on the sabbath day? It is the last of seven sabbath healings in the Gospels, and the only one performed at a Pharisee's own dinner table - mercy exercised in the very stronghold of the objection.
Details
- Category
- Healing
- Testament
- New Testament
- Performed by
- Jesus
Key Chapters
Key Passages
Healing at the Pharisee's Table
Luke 14:1-6
Jesus answers a trap with a healing and a question - if compassion applies to livestock in a pit, how much more to a man at the table.
1nd it came to pass, as he went into the house of one of the chief Pharisees to eat bread on the sabbath day, that they watched him.
Did You Know?
Dropsy - fluid swelling with unquenchable thirst - was seen by ancient moralists as the disease of greed; Jesus healed it at a banquet table surrounded by status-seekers.
This is the seventh and final sabbath healing recorded in the Gospels, and the only one performed inside a Pharisee's own house.
Luke the physician is the only Gospel writer to record this miracle - and he uses the precise Greek medical term for the condition.