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MARK 3:4 — KING JAMES VERSION 0
Mark 3:3Mark 3:5
“And he saith unto them, Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath days, or to do evil? to save life, or to kill? But they held their peace.”
Then Jesus asked them, which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill? But they remained silent — the question reframes the Sabbath issue entirely. The Pharisees' frame: is healing (= work) lawful on the Sabbath? Jesus' frame: is doing good, saving life, lawful on the Sabbath? The question implies that refusing to heal is itself a choice — not a neutral abstention but the choice to allow suffering to continue when it could be relieved. To fail to save life when one could is a form of killing. Their silence is the silence of people who cannot answer without either admitting Jesus' point or explicitly opposing the relief of suffering.

Church Fathers on Mark 3:4

After confounding the Jews, who had blamed His disciples, for pulling the ears of corn on the sabbath day, by the example of David, the Lord now further bringing them to the truth, works a miracle on the sabbath; shewing that, if it is a pious deed to work miracles on the sabbath for the health of men, it is not wrong to do on the sabbath thing necessary for the body.

Theophylact · 11th century

For, since He had defended the breaking of the sabbath, which they objected to His disciples, by an approved example, now they wish, by watching Him, to calumniate Himself, that they might accuse Him of a transgression, if He cured on the sabbath, of cruelty or of folly, if He refused.

Bede · 8th century · in Marc., 1, 14

But some one may wonder how Matthew could have said, that they themselves asked the Lord, if it was lawful to heal on the sabbath-day; when Mark rather relates that they were asked by our Lord, 'Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath-day, or to do evil?'

Augustine · 4th century · de Con. Evan., ii, 35
Read all 7 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
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