Luke 13:15

Luke 13:15, in plain English

Jesus fires back: 'You hypocrites! Don't each of you untie your ox or donkey on the Sabbath to give it water?' You take care of your animals on the Sabbath but get angry when a woman is healed?

Why it's here

The argument is so simple it's devastating. They'll lead an animal to water on the Sabbath but won't let a suffering woman be freed. Their priorities are completely upside down.

Who's speaking

Jesus confronts the hypocrisy with an argument so obvious that no one can respond.

Where it sits in the story

Jesus turns their own rules against them. If your donkey gets Sabbath care, why not a daughter of Abraham? The leader has no answer because there isn't one.

The scholarly reading

Jesus calls them hypokritai (hypocrites) and employs a qal wahomer argument: every one of them unties (lyei) their ox or donkey on the Sabbath and leads it to water. If animals receive Sabbath care, surely humans deserve the same compassion.

Language and setting

Rabbinic law explicitly permitted watering animals on the Sabbath. Jesus uses their own practice to expose the inconsistency: animals get Sabbath relief but a suffering woman doesn't? The logic is devastating.

Voice

Jesus responds to the synagogue ruler with a sharp accusation of hypocrisy and an argument from their own Sabbath practices.

Significance

Jesus demolishes the leader's objection with a single comparison. You untie your donkey for water on the Sabbath but want to keep this woman tied up in suffering? The hypocrisy is staggering.

13Then He placed His hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and began to glorify God.

14But the synagogue leader was indignant that Jesus had healed on the Sabbath. “There are six days for work,” he told the crowd. “So come and be healed on those days and not on the Sabbath.”

15“You hypocrites!” the Lord replied. “Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or donkey from the stall and lead it to water?

16Then should not this daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be released from her bondage on the Sabbath day?”

17When Jesus said this, all His adversaries were humiliated. And the whole crowd rejoiced at all the glorious things He was doing.

Read all of Luke 13 — A bent-over woman is healed on the Sabbath, a mustard seed grows into a tree, and Jesus weeps over Jerusalem's refusal to come home.