Earlier in this Mark commentary we discussed the Pharisees and Herodians in a presentation titled, Sons of Herod, and we explored how many Christians today are themselves unknowingly both Pharisees and Herodians in their doctrine and worship of government.

Throughout this gospel we have already seen several miracles, such as the cleansing of the leper, the lifting of the paralytic, and most recently, the restoration of a man’s withered hand, and these have all been types in one form or another for the bruises of Israel being healed through the reconciliat

The previous account of Mark ended with the Pharisees and Herodians taking counsel on how to kill Christ, which is how they sought to reward Him for the love He displayed to a withered kinsman on the Sabbath. The measure with which they measured was ultimately brought back to them, because in the end, the fruitless fig tree of Jerusalem was made withered with the Roman sword.

The accounts of the plucking of the grain and the man with the withered hand are both recorded as having occurred on Sabbath days, and for that reason they are deliberately paired together in all three synoptic gospels. This thematic pairing is more apparent in Matthew and Luke, because the later medieval chapter division in Mark splits the pairing between the end and beginning of its second and third chapters. We should always remember to discard these artificial chapter divisions in our minds, since no passage of Scripture exists in a vacuum apart from the larger context of its book.

In our previous commentary, we observed how the Pharisees had the audacity to criticize those who did not follow in the unrighteous traditions of their elders; and today their successors attempt to condemn men who do not abide in their unrighteous church tradition. Such men will fast according to supposed “holy days” such as Lent, which are found nowhere in the Bible, and think themselves righteous for doing so, while they promote the abominations which God hates.

In His engagements with the hypocritical scribes of the Pharisees, who were ostensibly of the portion Solomon would have described as pure in their own lofty eyes yet not washed from their filthiness (Proverbs 30:12-14), we saw Christ describe Himself as a physician healing the sick. These concepts appear often in the prophets as a picture of sin and repentance, and Christ elucidated on the familiar parable when He said, “I have not come to call the righteous, but wrongdoers!” (Mark 2:17)

The cleansing of the leper and healing of the paralytic are paired together in both Mark and Luke (Mark 1:40-2:12, Luke 5:12-26), and there is no doubt that the pairing is intentionally thematic. Both conditions would have reduced men to hopelessly impoverished states, and then both these men are fully restored upon seeking out Christ, because Yahweh is indeed a rewarder to those who seek Him (Hebrews 11:6). It is us who must take the initiative, and even at the end of what is now the first chapter of Mark, we saw how the people came to Christ from everywhere (Mark 1:45).

The gospel of Mark is essentially Peter's gospel, and in our previous presentation we read what could be considered Peter's personal account of the healing of his mother-in-law, whom we identified as a type for the woman of Israel in this particular instance, as the woman is often depicted as the symbolic mother of the nation in the prophets.

In our previous presentation concerning the possessed man in the Capernaum assembly hall, we discussed how the origin of unclean spirits both embodied and disembodied is tied to the fallen angels throughout Scripture, whose fornication is described in Genesis and 1 Enoch.