John 7:23

John 7:23. If a man receiveth circumcision on the sabbath day, that the law of Moses may not be broken, are ye angry with me, because I made a man every whit whole on the sabbath day? Their reverence for the law and their determination that it should not be broken led them to break the letter of the Fourth Commandment, or rather to do that which they would otherwise have thought inconsistent with its precept. How then can they be indignant at Jesus for the deed which He had done on the sabbath? He had performed a far more healing work than circumcision. He had given not merely a token of the removal of uncleanness, but complete freedom from the blight and woe which sin had brought (see chap. John 5:14) on the ‘whole man.' It may be thought that in this last expression our Lord refers only to the cure of a disease by which the entire body had been prostrated; but the verse just quoted (chap. John 5:14), and the recollection of the figurative and spiritual application of the rite of circumcision with which the prophets had made the Jews familiar, warn us against limiting the miracle at the pool of Bethesda to the restoration of physical health.