Note 176 — Chapter IX · MIRACLES OF JESUS.

The narratives all agree in representing the affliction under which the patient laboured, as a χεὶρ ξηρὰ, or ἐξηραμμένη. Indefinite as this expression is, it is treated too freely when it is understood, as by Paulus, to imply only that the hand was injured by heat,176 or even by a sprain, according to Venturini’s supposition.177 For when, in order to determine the signification in which this term is used in the New Testament we refer, as it is proper to do, to the Old Testament, we find (1 Kings xiii. 4) a hand which, on being stretched out, ἐξηράνθη (‏וַתִּיבַשׁ‎), described as incapable of being drawn back again, so that we must understand a lameness and rigidity of the hand; and on a comparison of Mark ix. 18, where the expression ξηραίνεσθαι to be withered or wasted away is applied to an epileptic, a drying up and shrinking of that member.178 Now from the narrative before us a very plausible argument may be drawn in favour of the supposition, that Jesus employed natural means in the treatment of this and other diseases. Only such cures, it is said, were prohibited on the sabbath as were attended with any kind of labour; thus, if the Pharisees, as it is here said, expected Jesus to transgress the sabbatical laws by effecting a cure, they must have known that he was not accustomed to cure by his mere word, but by medicaments and surgical operations.179 As, however, a cure merely by means of a conjuration otherwise lawful, was forbidden on the sabbath, a fact which Paulus himself elsewhere adduces;180 as moreover there was a controversy between the schools of Hillel and Schammai, whether it were permitted even to administer consolation to the sick on the sabbath;181 and as again, according to an observation of Paulus, the more ancient rabbins were stricter on the point of sabbatical observance than those whose writings on this subject have come down to us;182 so the cures of Jesus, even supposing that he used no natural means, might by captious Pharisees be brought under the category of violations of the sabbath. The principal objection to the rationalistic explanation, namely, the silence of the Evangelists as to natural means, Paulus believes to be obviated in the present case by conceiving the scene thus: at that time, and in the synagogue, there was indeed no application of such means; Jesus merely caused the hand to be shown to him, that he might see how far the remedies hitherto prescribed by him (which remedies however are still a bare assumption) had been serviceable, and he then found that it was completely cured; for the expression ἀποκατεστάθη, used by all the narrators, implies a cure completed previously, not one suddenly effected in the passing moment. It is true that the context seems to require this interpretation, since the outstretching of the hand prior to the cure would appear to be as little possible, as in 1 Kings xiii. 4, the act of drawing it back: nevertheless the Evangelists give us only the word of Jesus as the source of the cure; not natural means, which are the gratuitous addition of expositors.183