Mark 3:5

with anger Not merely did He look upon them, He "looked round" upon them, surveyed each face with "an all-embracing gaze of grief and anger." Feelings of "grief" and "anger" are here ascribed to Him, who was "very God and very Man," just as in another place we read that "He wept" before the raising of Lazarus (John 11:35), and "slept" before He stilled the storm (Mark 4:38), and was an hungred (Matthew 4:2), and was "exceeding sorrowful even unto death" (Matthew 26:38).

being grieved The word here used occurs nowhere else in the New Testament, and implies "a feeling of compassion for," even in the midst of anger at, their conduct.

hardness The word thus rendered denotes literally (1) the process by which the extremities of fractured bones are re-united by a callus;then (2) callousness, hardness. St Paul uses the word in Romans 11:25, saying, "I would not have you ignorant, brethren, … that hardness(see margin) in part is happened to Israel;" and again in Ephesians 4:18, "Having the understanding darkened … because of the hardnessof their heart" (see margin again). The verb, which = "to petrify," "to harden into stone," occurs in Mark 6:52; Mark 8:17; Joh 12:40; 2 Corinthians 3:14.

whole as the other This is one of the instances where our Lord may be said to have wrought a miracle without a word, or the employment of any external means. It also forms one of seven miracles wrought on the Sabbath-day. The other six were, (1) The demoniac at Capernaum (Mark 1:21); (2) Simon's wife's mother (Mark 1:29); (3) the impotent man at the pool of Bethesda (John 5:9); (4) the woman with a spirit of infirmity (Luke 13:14); (5) the man who had the dropsy (Luke 14:1); (6) the man born blind (John 9:14).