Luke 14:5

14:5 Then he said to them, “Which of you, if you have a son or an ox that has fallen into a well on a Sabbath day, will not immediately pull him out?”

John 7:21-24

7:21 Jesus replied, “I performed one miracle and you are all amazed. 7:22 However, because Moses gave you the practice of circumcision (not that it came from Moses, but from the forefathers), you circumcise a male child on the Sabbath. 7:23 But if a male child is circumcised on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses is not broken, 10  why are you angry with me because I made a man completely well 11  on the Sabbath? 7:24 Do not judge according to external appearance, 12  but judge with proper 13  judgment.”


tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “then” to indicate the implied sequence of events within the narrative.

tc Here “son,” found in Ì45,75 (A) B W Ï, is the preferred reading. The other reading, “donkey” (found in א K L Ψ Ë1,13 33 579 892 1241 2542 al lat bo), looks like an assimilation to Luke 13:15 and Deut 22:4; Isa 32:20, and was perhaps motivated by an attempt to soften the unusual collocation of “son” and “ox.” The Western ms D differs from all others and reads “sheep.”

tn Grk “Jesus answered and said to them.”

tn Grk “I did one deed.”

sn The “one miracle” that caused them all to be amazed was the last previous public miracle in Jerusalem recorded by the author, the healing of the paralyzed man in John 5:1-9 on the Sabbath. (The synoptic gospels record other Sabbath healings, but John does not mention them.)

tn Grk “gave you circumcision.”

tn Grk “a man.” While the text literally reads “circumcise a man” in actual fact the practice of circumcising male infants on the eighth day after birth (see Phil 3:5) is primarily what is in view here.

tn Grk “a man.” See the note on “male child” in the previous verse.

tn Grk “receives circumcision.”

10 sn If a male child is circumcised on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses is not broken. The Rabbis counted 248 parts to a man’s body. In the Talmud (b. Yoma 85b) R. Eleazar ben Azariah (ca. a.d. 100) states: “If circumcision, which attaches to one only of the 248 members of the human body, suspends the Sabbath, how much more shall the saving of the whole body suspend the Sabbath?” So absolutely binding did rabbinic Judaism regard the command of Lev 12:3 to circumcise on the eighth day, that in the Mishnah m. Shabbat 18.3; 19.1, 2; and m. Nedarim 3.11 all hold that the command to circumcise overrides the command to observe the Sabbath.

11 tn Or “made an entire man well.”

12 tn Or “based on sight.”

13 tn Or “honest”; Grk “righteous.”