From: Isaiah 38:1-6, 21-22, 7-8
Illness and cure of Hezekiah
[21] Now Isaiah had said, “Let them take a cake of figs, and apply to the boil,
that he may recover.” [22] Hezekiah also had said, “What is the sign that I shall
go up to the house of the Lord?”
[7] “This is the sign to you from the Lord, that the Lord will do this thing that he
has promised: [8] Behold, I will make the shadow cast by the declining sun on
the dial of Ahaz turn back ten steps.” So the sun turned back on the dial the ten
steps by which it had declined.
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Commentary:
38:1-22. Hezekiah’s faith and devotion were tested during the siege of Jerusalem:
now comes a further test: the king falls gravely ill, even though he is still a young
man. This time, too, he turns to God, and his prayer is answered. Isaiah’s inter-
vention (vv. 4-8) assures the king that his health will he restored; the defence of
the city requires it.
Here we are given a further example of Hezekiah’s trust in the Lord as against
Ahaz’s lack of faith. The Lord offers him a sign (just as he did his father) that he
will keep his word (vv. 7-8; cf. 7:14). After this, Hezekiah’s canticle is inserted (vv.
9-20) — a passage which does not appear in the parallel texts in 2 Kings and 2
Chronicles, and which has features of the sapiential writing style. The poem
takes the form of a thanksgiving psalm spoken by the king. When all seemed
lost (vv. 10-12), he had recourse to the Lord in humble and trusting prayer (vv.
13-16), and God saved him from death (v. 17). Therefore, the psalmist expresses
his great desire to worship the Lord in the temple (cf. v. 22) along with the rest of
the community (vv. 18-20). Verses 21-22 fit in better (as St Jerome points out) af-
ter vv. 6-7, which is where they appear in the parallel account (2 Kings 20:7).
38:8. From the text of the book of Isaiah found at Qumran we know that Ahaz
had built a flight of steps that worked as a sundial, so that the time could he told
depending on which steps were in shadow. “Turning the sun back” meant exten-
ding the day by a few hours — a sign that God would grant the king some more
years of life.
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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.
Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.
From: Matthew 12:1-8
The Question of the Sabbath
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Commentary:
2. “The Sabbath”: this was the day the Jews set aside for worshipping God. God
Himself, the originator of the Sabbath (Genesis 2:3), ordered the Jewish people to
avoid certain kinds of work on this day (Exodus 20:8-11; 21:13; Deuteronomy 5:
14) to leave them free to give more time to God. As time went by, the rabbis com-
plicated this divine precept: by Jesus’ time they had extended to 39 the list of
kinds of forbidden work.
The Pharisees accuse Jesus’ disciples of breaking the Sabbath. In the casuistry
of the scribes and the Pharisees, plucking ears of corn was the same as harves-
ting, and crushing them was the same as milling—types of agricultural work for-
bidden on the Sabbath.
3-8. Jesus rebuts the Pharisees’ accusation by four arguments—the example of
David, that of the priests, a correct understanding of the mercy of God and Jesus’
own authority over the Sabbath.
The first example which was quite familiar to the people, who were used to liste-
ning to the Bible being read, comes from 1 Samuel 21:2-7: David, in flight from
the jealousy of King Saul, asks the priest of the shrine of Nob for food for his men;
the priest gave them the only bread he had, the holy bread of the Presence; this
was the twelve loaves which were placed each week on the golden altar of the
sanctuary as a perpetual offering from the twelve tribes of Israel (Leviticus 24:5-9).
The second example refers to the priestly ministry to perform the liturgy, priests
had to do a number of things on the Sabbath but did not thereby break the law of
Sabbath rest (cf. Numbers 28:9). On the other two arguments, see the notes on
Matthew 9:13 and Mark 2:26-27, 28.
[The notes on Matthew 9:13 states:
13. Here Jesus quotes Hosea 6:6, keeping the hyperbole of the Semitic style. A
more faithful translation would be: “I desire mercy more than sacrifice”. It is not
that our Lord does not want the sacrifices we offer Him: He is stressing that every
sacrifice should come from the heart, for charity should imbue everything a Chris-
tian does — especially his worship of God (see 1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Matthew 5:
23-24).]
[The notes on Mark 2:26-27, 28 states:
26-27. The bread of the Presence consisted of twelve loaves or cakes placed
each morning on the table in the sanctuary, as homage to the Lord from the
twelve tribes of Israel (cf. Leviticus 24:5-9). The loaves withdrawn to make room
for the fresh ones were reserved to the priests. Abiathar’s action anticipates what
Christ teaches here. Already in the Old Testament God had established a hierar-
chy in the precepts of the Law so that the lesser ones yielded to the main ones.
This explains why a ceremonial precept (such as the one we are discussing)
should yield before a precept of the natural law. Similarly, the commandment
to keep the Sabbath does not come before the duty to seek basic subsistence.
Vatican II uses this passage of the Gospel to underline the value of the human
person over and above economic and social development: “The social order and
its development must constantly yield to the good of the person, since the order
of things must be subordinate to the order of persons and not the other way a-
round, as the Lord suggested when He said that the Sabbath was made for man
and not man for the Sabbath. The social order requires constant improvement:
it must be founded in truth, built on justice, and enlivened by love” (”Gaudium
Et Spes”, 26).
Finally in this passage Christ teaches God’s purpose in instituting the Sabbath:
God established it for man’s good, to help him rest and devote himself to Divine
worship in joy and peace. The Pharisees, through their interpretation of the Law,
had turned this day into a source of anguish and scruple due to all the various
prescriptions and prohibitions they introduced.
By proclaiming Himself ‘Lord of the Sabbath’, Jesus affirms His divinity and His
universal authority. Because He is Lord he has the power to establish other
laws, as Yahweh had in the Old Testament.
28. The Sabbath had been established not only for man’s rest but also to give glo-
ry to God: that is the correct meaning of the expression “the Sabbath was made
for man.” Jesus has every right to say He is Lord of the Sabbath, because He is
God. Christ restores to the weekly day of rest its full, religious meaning: it is not
just a matter of fulfilling a number of legal precepts or of concern for physical well-
being: the Sabbath belongs to God; it is one way, suited to human nature, of ren-
dering glory and honor to the Almighty. The Church, from the time of the Apostles
onwards, transferred the observance of this precept to the following day, Sunday
— the Lord’s Day — in celebration of the resurrection of Christ.
“Son of Man”: the origin of the messianic meaning of this expression is to be
found particularly in the prophecy of Dan 7:13ff, where Daniel, in a prophetic vi-
sion, contemplates ‘one like the Son of Man’ coming down on the clouds of Hea-
ven, who even goes right up to God’s throne and is given dominion and glory and
royal power over all peoples and nations. This expression appears 69 times in
the Synoptic Gospels; Jesus prefers it to other ways of describing the Messiah —
such as Son of David, Messiah, etc.—thereby avoiding the nationalistic overtones
those expressions had in Jewish minds at the time (cf. “Introduction to the Gos-
pel According to St. Mark”, p. 62 above.]
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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.
Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.