Bible Reference > Bible Book Studies > Gospel of Luke > Luke 6
Quick Summary
In Luke 6:6-11, Jesus is teaching in a synagogue on the Sabbath when he notices a man whose right hand is withered. The scribes and Pharisees watch closely to see whether Jesus will heal on the Sabbath so they can accuse him. Jesus knows what they are thinking. He calls the man to stand in the middle of the room and asks the leaders, "Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to destroy it?" Then he tells the man, "Stretch out your hand," and the hand is restored. The leaders are filled with fury and begin discussing what to do with Jesus. The passage shows that God's day of rest is a day for healing and mercy, and it marks the point where opposition to Jesus turns toward plotting.
Scripture Reference
Luke 6:6-11 (NRSV). Parallels: Matthew 12:9-14 and Mark 3:1-6.
In the Gospel of Luke, the Sabbath is a recurring point of tension between Jesus and the religious authorities. The Sabbath, established by God for rest and renewal, had become a subject of intense debate. This is the second of two Sabbath conflicts that open Luke 6. In the first, Jesus defended his hungry disciples and declared, "The Son of Man is lord of the sabbath." Now he shows what that lordship looks like. This time the stakes are even higher, because the man's need is standing in the room.
Luke 6:6-11 Commentary
Luke 6:6 – A Man With a Withered Right Hand
"On another sabbath he entered the synagogue and taught, and there was a man there whose right hand was withered."
Luke frames the scene with Jesus teaching. In Luke's Gospel, the synagogue is where Jesus' ministry began, when he read from Isaiah in Nazareth (Luke 4:14-30). Healing and teaching go together for Jesus. What he says about God's kingdom, he then does.
In the audience is a man whose hand was "withered." The Greek word xēros means dry or shriveled, describing a hand that was paralyzed or wasted. Matthew and Mark say only "a man with a withered hand." Luke specifies that it was his right hand. That detail would have mattered a great deal. For most people the right hand was the working hand, the one used to earn a living, to greet, and to eat. A man with a useless right hand faced a hard life in a world of manual labor.
An early Christian gospel used by Jewish Christians, known as the Gospel of the Nazarenes, adds a detail that Jerome preserved. It says the man was a stonemason who begged Jesus, "I was a mason, seeking a livelihood with my hands; I pray you, Jesus, restore my health, that I may not shamefully beg for food." The story sits outside Scripture, but it shows how early readers understood what was at stake for him.
The man is in the synagogue, present for worship on the Sabbath. A withered hand did not make a person ritually unclean, but physical disability often carried social stigma, and some assumed it was a sign of sin. Yet he is there, and Jesus sees him.
Luke 6:7 – The Scribes and Pharisees Watch
"The scribes and the Pharisees watched him to see whether he would cure on the sabbath, so that they might find an accusation against him."
The verb for "watched" (paratēreō) means to watch closely, often with suspicion, as if lying in wait. Luke uses the same word in Luke 14:1, when Pharisees watch Jesus at a Sabbath dinner, and again in Luke 20:20, when the authorities send spies to trap him. The scribes and Pharisees are watching to build a case.
They want to see whether Jesus will violate their interpretation of the Sabbath law. In their view, healing was work, and work was forbidden. Jewish teaching recognized an important exception: saving a life overrides the Sabbath. The Mishnah later put it plainly, "Whenever there is doubt whether life is in danger, this overrides the Sabbath" (Yoma 8:6). But a withered hand was not an emergency. From the Pharisees' perspective, this man had lived with his condition for a long time and could wait one more day. The leader of a synagogue makes exactly that argument in Luke 13:14: "There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day."
We see a similar pattern when a crowd tries to silence blind Bartimaeus as he shouts for Jesus, a story I preached in Blind Bartimaeus: Shadows, Shouting, and Sight. When people decide in advance what God may do and when, they stop seeing the person in need standing in front of them.
Luke 6:8 – "Come and Stand Here"
"Even though he knew what they were thinking, he said to the man who had the withered hand, 'Come and stand here.' He got up and stood there."
Luke says Jesus "knew what they were thinking" (dialogismous, their reasonings). Luke used the same idea when Jesus perceived the questioning of the scribes and Pharisees over the paralyzed man lowered through the roof. Jesus knows the heart, and he does not need to wait for his opponents to speak.
Despite knowing their intentions, Jesus walks straight into the confrontation and invites the man to come forward. The Greek reads literally, "Rise and stand in the middle." A man who may have spent years hiding his hand is called into the center of the room, where everyone can see him. Jesus sees beyond the man's physical condition and beyond the judgment of the Pharisees. His invitation offers healing and inclusion at once. He calls the man into the center of the moment and makes him visible.
The man "got up and stood there." Luke's word for "got up" (anistēmi) is a common word, but it is also one of the words the New Testament uses for resurrection. Before his hand is restored, the man rises.
Luke 6:9 – "Is It Lawful to Do Good or to Do Harm on the Sabbath?"
"Then Jesus said to them, 'I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to destroy it?'"
Jesus turns the question back on his accusers. Rather than debate which tasks count as work, he reframes the whole issue. The question becomes "Which is lawful on the Sabbath, doing good or doing harm?"
The question has no neutral option. In Jesus' framing, refusing to do good when you can is a way of doing harm. Leaving a man disabled when you could restore him is a choice. The Sabbath was given to set people free, and Jesus asks how it could ever be used to keep someone bound.
The word for "life" here is psychē, which can mean life, soul, or self. "To save life" (psychēn sōsai) points beyond physical survival to the wholeness of a person. And there is a sharp irony in the question. While Jesus asks whether it is lawful to save life or destroy it, his opponents are already thinking about how to destroy him. Mark tells us they answered with silence (Mark 3:4).
We are always free to do the right thing.
Luke 6:10 – "Stretch Out Your Hand"
"After looking around at all of them, he said to him, 'Stretch out your hand.' He did so, and his hand was restored."
Luke slows the scene with one detail: Jesus looks around at all of them. He meets every pair of watching eyes before he speaks. Mark adds that Jesus looked at them "with anger" and was "grieved at their hardness of heart" (Mark 3:5). Luke leaves the anger out and lets the look speak for itself.
Then comes the command: "Stretch out your hand." Jesus never touches the man or performs any action a critic could call work. He simply speaks. The healing happens by word alone, much as the centurion's servant will be healed by a word in the next chapter (Luke 7:1-10).
The man's part is to obey. He is asked to stretch out the very hand he could not move. In the act of trying, he is healed. Faith often looks like that: doing what Jesus asks before we can see how it is possible.
"His hand was restored." The verb is apokathistēmi, "to restore to a former condition." It is the word used for the restoration of a leper's skin and the healing of a blind man's sight. Its noun form appears in Acts 3:21, where Peter speaks of "the time of universal restoration" that God announced through the prophets. A single man's hand becomes a small preview of the day when God will restore all things.
There is an Old Testament echo too. In 1 Kings 13:4-6, King Jeroboam stretched out his hand against a man of God, and his hand withered. When the prophet prayed, the king's hand was restored. In Luke, the withered hand is restored without any prayer at all, by Jesus' command.
Along with healing his hand, Jesus makes a powerful statement about the day itself: on the Sabbath, mercy and healing reign. God is always at this kind of work!
Luke 6:11 – "They Were Filled With Fury"
"But they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus."
The response is shocking. A man has just been healed in front of them, and the leaders are enraged. The Greek word for "fury" is anoia, which literally means "mindlessness" or "folly." It describes a rage that has stopped thinking. Instead of celebrating, they are consumed by their inability to reconcile Jesus' actions with their view of the Sabbath. In this moment, the problem must be Jesus and not their entrenched rigidity.
Luke's ending is softer than Mark's. In Mark 3:6, the Pharisees go out immediately and conspire with the Herodians, supporters of Herod's dynasty, "how to destroy him." Luke says only that they "discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus." But the direction is clear. From this point on, the opposition in Luke moves from questions to plotting.
The irony is complete. Jesus asked whether the Sabbath was for saving life or destroying it. He chose to save. They began to talk about destroying.
Luke 6:6-11 Compared With Matthew and Mark
All three Synoptic Gospels tell this story, and the differences show each writer's emphasis.
Matthew 12:9-14 has the Pharisees ask Jesus directly, "Is it lawful to cure on the sabbath?" Jesus answers with an argument about rescuing a sheep that falls into a pit on the Sabbath and concludes, "So it is lawful to do good on the sabbath."
Mark 3:1-6 emphasizes Jesus' emotions, his anger and grief at their hardness of heart, and ends with the Pharisees and Herodians plotting to destroy him.
Luke 6:6-11 alone says it was the man's right hand, says that Jesus was teaching, and tells us that Jesus knew their thoughts. Luke's ending is the most restrained.
For another passage where Luke and Matthew handle the same material differently, see the Sermon on the Mount vs. the Sermon on the Plain.
Every Time Jesus Healed on the Sabbath
Jesus healed on the Sabbath at least seven times in the Gospels, and Luke records more of these healings than any other Gospel writer. That pattern is no accident. Jesus seems to have chosen the Sabbath on purpose, as if to say that the day God set apart for rest is exactly the day for setting people free.
In Luke 13, he heals a woman who had been bent over for eighteen years and asks, "Ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?" (Luke 13:16). In Luke 14, he heals a man with dropsy and asks, "If one of you has a child or an ox that has fallen into a well, will you not immediately pull it out on a sabbath day?" (Luke 14:5). In John 5, he heals a paralyzed man at the pool of Bethesda and says, "My Father is still working, and I also am working" (John 5:17; see Jesus heals on the Sabbath at the pool of Bethesda). Each time, Jesus teaches the same lesson in a new way: the Sabbath is a day for freedom.
| Who was healed | Passage |
|---|---|
| A man with an unclean spirit in the Capernaum synagogue | Luke 4:31-37; Mark 1:21-28 |
| Simon Peter's mother-in-law | Luke 4:38-39; Mark 1:29-31 |
| A man with a withered hand | Luke 6:6-11; Matthew 12:9-14; Mark 3:1-6 |
| A woman bent over for eighteen years | Luke 13:10-17 |
| A man with dropsy | Luke 14:1-6 |
| A paralyzed man at the pool of Bethesda | John 5:1-18 |
| A man born blind | John 9:1-41 |
You can follow every healing in Luke, Sabbath or not, in the 18 miracles in the Gospel of Luke.
Themes in Luke 6:6-11
The Sabbath Is for Life
The Sabbath was given to a people who had been slaves in Egypt (Deuteronomy 5:15). It was always meant to be a day of freedom. Jesus shows that healing a man on the Sabbath fulfills the day's purpose. I explore this in the sermon The Sabbath Can Bring You Freedom and Make You Happy.
Mercy Over Rule-Keeping
The leaders treated the law as an end in itself, and in their pursuit of it they lost sight of the mercy it was meant to reflect. True obedience to God's commandments includes love and compassion. Many Pharisees understood this well, and the movement was more varied than we sometimes assume (see were the Pharisees really legalistic?). In this scene, though, the leaders let their rules outweigh a person. For more, see these Bible verses about mercy.
The Authority of Jesus' Word
Jesus heals without touching, without effort, by a simple command. His word carries the power of God, the same authority the crowds noticed in Capernaum and the centurion will recognize in Luke 7.
Seen and Called Into the Center
Jesus notices the man, calls him to stand in the middle of the room, and restores him in front of everyone. Healing in Luke restores people to their place in the community.
Luke 6:6-11 Meaning for Today
This passage calls us to reflect on our own approach to rules, tradition, and mercy. Jesus heals on the Sabbath to reveal the deeper, compassionate purpose behind God's law. The law was never meant to be a barrier to healing, compassion, or mercy. Its true purpose is to restore life.
In our own lives, we can become like the Pharisees, more focused on the appearance of righteousness than on the heart of it. We get caught up in rigid systems that can stifle the very things God desires from us: love, mercy, and compassion. In church life especially, it is easy to care more about how things have always been done than about the person sitting in the pew with a withered hand. Jesus reminds us that doing good, especially caring for others, is always the right choice.
This passage also challenges us to look at those around us with eyes that see their needs before their faults. Many people come to worship carrying something withered: grief, shame, illness, a part of life that no longer works. Jesus' example calls us to notice them, to make room for them in the middle, and to bring healing where there is brokenness. Scripture is full of that hope, as these Bible verses about healing show.
And if you are the one with the withered hand, hear what Jesus says: "Come and stand here." Then, "Stretch out your hand." You may not be able to see how it is possible. Stretch it out anyway.
As we seek to live faithfully in our own time, may we remember that the true purpose of God's law is to bring us closer to him and to one another in love and mercy. Just as Jesus healed on the Sabbath, we are called to bring healing and hope to those in need, whatever the day and whatever the rules.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the meaning of Luke 6:6-11? Jesus heals a man with a withered right hand in a synagogue on the Sabbath, despite the scribes and Pharisees watching to accuse him. He asks whether it is lawful to do good or harm on the Sabbath. The passage teaches that the Sabbath is a day for mercy and healing.
What was wrong with the man's hand in Luke 6? His right hand was "withered," meaning shriveled or paralyzed. Only Luke mentions that it was his right hand, the one he would have needed for work.
Why were the Pharisees angry that Jesus healed on the Sabbath? They considered healing a form of work, which was forbidden on the Sabbath unless a life was in danger. The man's condition was not life-threatening, so in their view the healing could have waited.
What does "is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath" mean? Jesus reframes the debate. Refusing to do good when you can is itself a kind of harm. The Sabbath, given to set people free, could never require leaving someone bound.
How many times did Jesus heal on the Sabbath? The Gospels record at least seven Sabbath healings: a man with an unclean spirit, Peter's mother-in-law, the man with the withered hand, the bent-over woman, the man with dropsy, the paralyzed man at Bethesda, and the man born blind.
Did Jesus break the Sabbath? Jesus broke the Pharisees' interpretation of the Sabbath while keeping the commandment itself. In this case he never even touched the man. He healed by word alone and taught that doing good fulfills the Sabbath's purpose.
What happened after Jesus healed the withered hand? Luke says the leaders "were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus." Mark adds that the Pharisees began plotting with the Herodians to destroy him.
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Works Consulted
Darrell L. Bock, Luke (NIV Application Commentary)
Fred B. Craddock, Luke (Interpretation)
Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke I-IX (Anchor Bible)
Joel B. Green, The Gospel of Luke (New International Commentary on the New Testament)
John Nolland, Luke 1-9:20 (Word Biblical Commentary)
