Luke 14:2

And behold, there was a certain man before him, which had the dropsy The verse represents with inimitable vividness the flash of recognition with which the Lord at once grasped the whole meaning of the scene. The dropsical man was not one of the guests; he stood as though by accidentin the promiscuous throng which may always enter an Oriental house during a meal. But his presence was no accident. The dropsy is an unsightly, and was regarded as an incurable, disease. The Pharisaic plot had therefore been concocted with that complex astuteness which marks in other instances (Luke 20:19-38; John 8:5) also the deadliness of their purpose. They argued (i) that He could not ignore the presence of a man conspicuously placed in front of Him; (ii) that perhaps He might fail.in the cure of a disease exceptionally inveterate; (iii) that if He didheal the man on the Sabbath day there would be room for another charge before the synagogue or the Sanhedrin. One element which kindled our Lord's indignation against the Pharisees for these crafty schemes was the way in which they made a mere tool of human misery and human shame.