Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Matthew 12:12
How much then is a man better than a sheep? Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the sabbath days.
12. How much then is a man better than a sheep? ] Cp. “ye are of more value than many sparrows,” ch. Mat 10:31.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Mat 12:12
How much then is a man better than a sheep!
The dignity inherent in mans nature
This is not a question, but an exclamation, and it is so punctuated in the Revised Version.
Exclamation rare with our Lord; He can say great things without becoming perturbed. How much, then, is a man better than a sheep?
1. Our reading of this exclamation is not appreciative till we realize that in it the Son of Man was not propounding a theory, but uncovering an experience. He is hinting here at what He knew. He knew what was in man-was conscious of Himself; we are not. I do not know what we should say if we could understand all that it means to be a man. Almost every one has times when he stands in awe of himself. Christ utters no word that cheapens man. He exhorts to humility, but humility is a symptom of dignity. Conceit one thing; sense of worth another.
2. Even sin, too, has about it something that in this matter is pleasantly suggestive. It is better to be a man that sins than a sheep that cannot. A mans moral corruption is index of the native moral grandeur. It is important that men should be saved, because there is so much for them to be saved to as well as from.
3. There is in man, also, a certain power to transcend limitations that gives him just a flavour of infinitude. The spirit chafes under restraints; has a sense continually of something outside that it has not yet gotten to; makes for itself a larger and larger world; stretches itself back in memory, and forward in surmise.
4. It is rather in the line of this to say that we are persuaded how great a thing it is to be a man, by observing the ease with which man can receive a Divine revelation. Man and God will have to be understood as standing to one another within intelligent reach. It is not the fact that there can be a Divine revelation so much as what it contains that convinces us of the dignity inherent in our nature. The cross proves Gods esteem for the sinner. Mans worth explains redemption; not redemption mans worth. (C. H. Parkhurst.)
A sense of self-worth not conceit
The two take cognizance of different matters. My conceit occupies itself with what I have that is different from others; my sense of worth occupies itself with what I am in common with others. Conceit therefore separates men, while just sense of worth only draws them more closely together. Hence where there is the largest self-respect there will be always the largest and gentlest respect for other people. Once in a while we are a surprise to ourselves; are stirred at times by what we seem to get upon the track of when we take deep, quiet counsel with our own hearts. We appear to be upon the edge of something. Every soul has what it calls its grand moments. A sort of refraction appears for an instant to throw above our horizon lights that are not yet risen. (C. H. Parkhurst.)
Self-worth aids our realization of God
Mens estimate of God will maintain a certain proportion with their estimate of themselves. Even shadows keep a certain ratio with the objects that cast them. Christianity gives us a deepening sense of human worth, and through that deepened sense of human worth we reach a higher sense of Gods worth, and theology is bound to expand along the brightening lines of the human self-consciousness; and the gospel and humanity play backward and forward upon one another, like the sun which brightens the eye so that it can see the sun; like the stars which wake up the eye so that it can find more of the stars. (C. H. Parkhurst.)
Capacity for evil indicative of worth
A mans moral corruption is index of the native moral grandeur of the man; just as the wealth of weeds in a field, equally with the wealth of wheat in the same field, measures the potency and richness of the soil. The strength of the spring can be calculated as well by the distance which the pendulum swings to the left of the perpendicular, as by the distance of its swing to the right. There is the same degree of sinfulness in a sin as there is of personal worth in the man that commits it. Here, too, the shadow keeps a ratio with the object that casts it; and the blackness of the shadow will vary with the brightness of the sunshine that gets excluded. (C. H. Parkhurst.)
Man greater than matter
We are like the bird in the cage that is kept inside the bars, but lives in continuous communication with the air and light without, as though animated still with a sense of freedom that has been forgotten. The Shinarites built into the air. The giants piled Ossa on Pelion. Everything is to us small because there is a larger; everything partial because there is a whole. Assurance continually runs ahead of verification. Everything that gets in our way is felt by us almost as an impropriety and an indignity. In one way the earth is larger than we, in others it is a great deal smaller. It is compelled to loan itself to our service. Mind masters matter. We tame and harness the forces of nature and put them to our work. The sea that separates the continents is made over into a highway to connect them. We play off the energies of nature upon each other, and set the mountain torrent to boring a roadway through the very mountain it flows off from. We rub out distance and talk through the air to Chicago, and tie our letters to the lightning and post them under the sea to London, Constantinople, and Calcutta. Pent in the body we are, and yet domiciled in all the earth; a sort of adumbration of omnipresence. In the same way thought gets into the sky, slips around upon the ocean of space from star to star as easily as a birch canoe among the islands of any mundane archipelago; finds out what has been transpiring in the heavens for a million years; fixes latitudes and longitudes of suns a thousand years away as the light flies; learns their secrets, weighs them, measures them, exacts from them their biography and their kinships; reads in the star-beams the story of stellar composition; finds the unity that pervades the whole; translates the phenomena of the heavens into terms of terrestrial event; gets at the language in which all the worlds unconsciously think, the lines along which they instinctively act. It is grander to think a world than to be a world. To be able to conceive of a universe is fraught with richer sublimity than to be a universe. We rejoice in the great created world. It pleased God when He had made it, and it pleases us because our tastes are like His. We can discover the laws which work in it. A natural law is a Divine thought. In detecting and threading those laws then we are following where Gods mind has gone on before. Mind can construe only what mind constructs, and only when the mind that construes matches the mind that constructs. In this way nature is a mirror that shows both Gods face and our own; and scientific truth is only religious truth secularly conceived. (C. H. Parkhurst.)
The dignity of man as compared with the animal
I. Man is better than the animal.
1. In origin.
2. In endowments.
3. In destiny.
II. Practical lessons.
1. He ought to live better than an animal.
2. He is better worth saving. (American Homiletic Review.)
Better than a sheep
I. That a sheep is worth something, and is very useful.
II. How much are you better than a sheep?
1. You can use Gods Word. Every child can read the Bible.
2. You are better than a sheep, because you are to be praised or blamed for what you do.
3. Because you can grow better than you are now.
III. Because we are so much better than sheep Jesus Christ came to seek and save us,
IV. Because we are better, than sheep God and his angels are glad over every one that repents of sin. (W. Harris.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 12. How much then is a man better than a sheep?] Our Lord’s argument is what is called argumentum ad hominem; they are taken on their own ground, and confuted on their own maxims and conduct. There are many persons who call themselves Christians, who do more for a beast of burden or pleasure than they do for a man for whom Christ died! Many spend that on coursers, spaniels, and hounds, of which multitudes of the followers of Christ are destitute:-but this also shall come to judgment.
Wherefore, it is lawful to do well, &c.] This was allowed by a multitude of Jewish canons. See Schoettgen.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
12. How much then is a man betterthan a sheep?Resistless appeal! “A righteous manregardeth the life of his beast” (Pr12:10), and would instinctively rescue it from death or sufferingon the sabbath day; how much more his nobler fellow man! But thereasoning, as given in the other two Gospels, is singularly striking:”But He knew their thoughts, and said to the man which had thewithered hand, Rise up, and stand forth in the midst. And he aroseand stood forth. Then said Jesus unto them, I will ask you one thing:Is it lawful on the sabbath days to do good, or to do evil? to savelife or to destroy it?” (Luk 6:8;Luk 6:9), or as in Mark (Mr3:4), “to kill?” He thus shuts them up to thisstartling alternative: “Not to do good, when it is in the powerof our hand to do it, is to do evil; not to save life, when we can,is to kill”and must the letter of the sabbath rest be kept atthis expense? This unexpected thrust shut their mouths. By this greatethical principle our Lord, we see, held Himself bound, as man. Buthere we must turn to Mark, whose graphic details make the secondGospel so exceedingly precious. “When He had looked round abouton them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts,He saith unto the man” (Mr3:5). This is one of the very few passages in the Gospel historywhich reveal our Lord’s feelings. How holy this anger wasappears from the “grief” which mingled with it at “thehardness of their hearts.”
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
How much then is a man better than a sheep?…. As a rational creature must be better, and more excellent, than an irrational one, more care is to be taken of, and more mercy shown unto, the one, than the other: even the health of a man is preferable to the life of a beast; and if it is lawful to give food to a beast, and make use of means for its relief, and for the lifting it up out of a ditch, when fallen into it on the sabbath day, “wherefore it is lawful to do well on the sabbath days”, to men; to do acts of beneficence and humanity to them, among which must be reckoned healing of diseases and infirmities: and particularly, if it is lawful to take a sheep out of a ditch on the sabbath day, it must be right to restore to a man the use of his hand on such a day; and especially to one that gets his bread by his hand labour, as it is very likely this man did. This was such a strong way of arguing, that the Jews could not well object to it; and it appears, that they were confounded and put to silence; for, as Mark observes, “they held their peace”: and indeed they allow of everything to be done where life is in danger, though not otherwise: they say h,
“they may take care of the preservation of life on the sabbath; and if he is prepared for it, lo! this is praiseworthy, and there is no need to take a licence from the sanhedrim: as when a man sees a child fallen into the sea, he may spread a net, and bring him out; and if he is prepared for it, lo! this is praiseworthy, and there is no need to take a licence from the sanhedrim, though he was fishing: if he sees a child fallen into a ditch, he may rake into the mud and bring him out; and if he is prepared for it, lo! this is praiseworthy, and there is no need to take a licence from the sanhedrim, though he had set a ladder ready.”
It is said of Hillell i, that
“he sat by a window to hear the words of the living God, from the mouth of Shemaia and Abtalion; and they say that that day was the evening of the sabbath, and the winter solstice, and the snow descended from heaven; and when the pillar of the morning ascended, (when it was daylight,) Shemaia said to Abtalion, brother Abtalion, all other days the house is light, but today it is dark, perhaps it is a cloudy day: they lift up their eyes, and saw the form of a man at the window; they went up, and found upon him snow the height of three cubits; they broke through and delivered him; and they washed him, and anointed him, and set him over against his dwelling, and said, very worthy is this man , “to profane the sabbath for him”.”
And if it was lawful to dig a man out of the snow, and do these several things for him on the sabbath day, why not cure a man of a withered hand, and especially when done by a word speaking, and without any labour?
h T. Bab. Yoma, fol. 84. 2. i T. Bab. Yoma, fol. 35. 2.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
How much then is a man ( ). Another of Christ’s pregnant questions that goes to the roots of things, an a fortiori argument. “By how much does a human being differ from a sheep? That is the question which Christian civilization has not even yet adequately answered” (Bruce). The poor pettifogging Pharisees are left in the pit.
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
1) “How much more then is a man better than a sheep?” (posp oun diapherei anthropos probatou) “By how much greater value then does a man surpass a sheep?” In how many respects then is a hungry or afflicted man better than a sheep?
2) “Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the sabbath days.” (hoste ekestin tois sabbasin kalos poiein) “So that it is lawful (according to your own practice) to do well or good on the sabbaths.” For even a righteous man “regardeth the life of his beast,” Pro 12:10. And man is of more worth or value in the sight of God than a beast, Deu 25:4; 1Co 9:7-10; Ecc 3:21.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
12. A man better than a sheep By as much as a man is better than a brute, by so much is it more justifiable to heal this man than to rescue your cattle.
The physician performs his work of preserving health and life rightfully on the Sabbath day; though a conscientious one will allow his profession to interfere as little as possible with his Sabbath duties. And so, though it is not lawful to employ the day in making property, it may be lawful to prevent destruction, as in case of fire.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
“How much then is a man of more value than a sheep! For which reason it is lawful to do good on the sabbath day.”
But is a man not more valuable than a sheep? Thus it is certainly lawful to do what is good on the Sabbath day, and that includes the restoration of a man whose state was worse than being in a pit. Did they really think that a God of mercy would do otherwise? Note that Matthew’s emphasis is on the value of men, and on their need to be restored. That is the lesson that he wants to get over.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
‘And he says to him, “Friend, how did you come in here not having a wedding-garment?” And he was speechless.’
So the king speaks gently bit firmly to the offending man. He begins by calling him, ‘Friend’. In Matthew this is always said with a heavy heart. Compare Mat 20:13; Mat 26:50. It indicates someone being addressed who is in the wrong, but is being approached with thought and consideration. And then he questions him as to why he has come to the marriage-feast not wearing a wedding-garment.
The speechlessness of the man is intended to indicate his guilt. Had he had good reason he would have spoken out. But he could hardly tell the king that he had done it because he was contemptuous of the king and his son. And yet that could be the only real reason for doing it. But he had probably not expected the king to come in among such ‘common’ company.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Mat 12:12 . ] Inference founded on the value which, according to Mat 12:11 , is no doubt set upon an animal in such circumstances, notwithstanding the laws of Sabbath observance: Of how much greater consequence, then, is a man than a sheep ? The answer is already involved in the question itself ( is of far more consequence , and so on); but the final conclusion is: therefore it is allowable to do what is right on the Sabbath . By means of the general expression , which does not mean to be beneficent (Kuinoel, de Wette, Bleek), but recte agere (Act 10:33 ; 1Co 7:38 f.; Phi 4:14 ; Jas 2:8 ; Jas 2:19 ; 2Pe 1:19 ; 3Jn 1:6 ), the is ranked under the category of duty , and the moral absurdity of the question in Mat 12:10 is thereby exposed. So, by this adroit handling of the argument, the inference of Jesus is secured against all contradiction; de Wette’s objection, to the effect that it might have been asked whether the healing did not admit of delay, is founded on a misunderstanding of the . This latter is the moral rule by which resting or working on the Sabbath is to be determined.
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
12 How much then is a man better than a sheep? Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the sabbath days.
Ver. 12. It is lawful to do well ] Nay, it is needful, since not to do well is to do ill, and not to save a life, or a soul, is to destroy it, Mar 3:4 . Not to do justice is injustice, and not to show mercy is no better than cruelty, non faciendo nocens, sed patiendo fuit. Aul. de Claud.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Mat 12:12 . , etc. This is another of those simple yet far-reaching utterances by which Christ suggested rather than formulated His doctrine of the infinite worth of man. By how much does a human being differ from a sheep? That is the question which Christian civilisation has not even yet adequately answered. This illustration from common life is not in Mark and Luke. Luke has something similar in the Sabbath cure, reported in Mat 14:1-6 . Some critics think that Matthew combines the two incidents, drawing from his two sources, Mark and the Logia. , therefore, and so introducing here rather an independent sentence than a dependent clause expressive of result. : in effect, to do good = , i.e. , in the present case to heal, , though in Act 10:33 , 1Co 7:37 , the phrase seems to mean to do the morally right, in which sense Meyer and Weiss take it here also. Elsner, and after him Fritzsche, take it as = prclare agere , pointing to the ensuing miracle. By this brief prophetic utterance, Jesus sweeps away legal pedantries and casuistries, and goes straight to the heart of the matter. Beneficent action never unseasonable, of the essence of the Kingdom of God; therefore as permissible and incumbent on Sabbath as on other days. Spoken out of the depths of His religious consciousness, and a direct corollary from His benignant conception of God ( vide Holtz., H. C., p. 91).
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
How much? Figure of speech Erotesis, for emphasis. App-6.
well: i.e. a good deed.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Mat 12:12. , on the Sabbaths) For a good deed is not to be procrastinated.- , to do well) sc. to either a man or a sheep, nay, to a man much more than to a sheep.[556] We must not on the Sabbath-day perform daily wonted tasks for hire, although we may do those things which time and place suggest to us for the good of our neighbour and all other living creatures, and especially for the honour of God.[557]
[556] Some one may think that there was danger in delay as regards the sheep, but that a man affected with a bodily infirmity for such a length of time, might easily be put off for once from one day to another day. But the answer is, it was the fitting time that the relief should be given, when the patient met the physician. A larger crowd of men was assembled together on the Sabbath, who were thus enabled to be spectators of the miracle, and to be profited (won over) by it.-V. g.
[557] Mat 12:14. ) It was not with the same laborious exertion as is needed in order to pluck ears of corn, and to draw out a sheep from a pit, that Jesus had effected the cure, but by mere words spoken. It was a pure undiluted benefit conferred without difficulty (pains): and yet blind men, notwithstanding, were regarding His act as if the Sabbath were profaned by it.-V. g.
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
is a: Mat 6:26, Luk 12:24
it is: Mar 3:4, Luk 6:9
Reciprocal: Mat 10:31 – General Mat 21:45 – they Luk 14:5 – Which
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
2:12
The contrast between the value of a man and a sheep is so evident that they could not give Jesus any answer to his question. Lawful to do well was putting the case in an unexpected form. It ignored the technical fact of a physical action on the sabbath day and expressed the more important and unanswerable idea of doing well. They could not deny that it would be doing well to relieve a man of an affliction, neither would they presume to say that any time existed when it would be wrong to do well.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Mat 12:12. How much, then, is a man better than a sheep? Some take this as an explanation: Of how much more worth now is a man than a sheep! But it is better to regard it as a question. Our Lord recognizes the superiority of man, as well as the superior claims of humanity.
Wherefore it is lawful, etc. (Comp. Mark and Luke.) Works of mercy on the Sabbath are lawful and right. Hypocrites care more for ceremonies than for their cattle, and more for their cattle than for suffering humanity.