5-13a The
Woman Bound by Satan
Luke
13:11-17 And a woman was there who had had a disabling spirit
for eighteen years; she was bent over and could in no way straighten
herself. And when Jesus saw her, he called her and said to her: Woman,
you are free from your infirmity. And he laid his hands upon her, and
immediately she was made straight, and she glorified God. And the ruler
of the synagogue, being moved with indignation because Jesus had healed
on the Sabbath, answered and said to the crowd: There are six days in
which men ought to work. In them therefore come and be healed, and not
on the Sabbath day. But the Lord answered them and said: You
hypocrites! Does not each one of you on the Sabbath release his ox or
his ass from the stall and lead him away for watering? And ought not
this woman, being a daughter of Abraham whom Satan had bound for
eighteen years, to have been freed from this bond on the Sabbath day?
And as he said these things, all his adversaries were put to shame, and
all the crowd rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by
him.
Popular
Interpretation
This passage is
understood to mean that Satan uses "spirits" to bind people with
illness.
Comments
1 The woman "had" a spirit which was associated with her being bent
over (Lk. 13:11). She was not attacked by a "spirit" from outside of
her, but she "had" this spirit within her. "Spirit" is commonly to be
understood in Biblical usage as an attitude of mind. She had an
attitude of mind which disabled her. And this spirit came from an
adversary, a satan. And that adversary is explained in the context- the
"adversaries" were the Jewish system who had so crippled the woman (Lk.
13:17).
2 There is no explicit statement that "Satan", the adversary,
controlled the "spirit". That has to be assumed by those who wish to
see that idea, but the text itself doesn't support it.
3 Jesus is not recorded as doing spiritual battle with Satan or any
evil spirit; He simply said "Woman, you are free from your infirmity".
He dealt directly with the issue of her illness. And it was "your
infirmity", just as the woman "had" a disabling spirit. The source of
her illness was within her, internal to her rather than having been
imposed by some external, cosmic entity.
Suggested
Explanations
1 I have elsewhere outlined the connection between "Satan" and the
Jewish opposition to Jesus [see http://www.realdevil.info/2-4.htm;
for they were the main adversary / satan to His work and that of the
early church. The connection is made explicit in this passage- the Jews
are called Christ's "adversaries" (Lk. 13:17), as if explaining who the
'satan' was who had 'bound' the woman. The woman's binding by Satan is
connected with the fact she was "a daughter of Abraham", a Jewess. Why
make this otherwise throwaway comment, that she was a Jewess? For we
are led by the context to assume that obviously she was Jewish. The
point surely is that the Jewish system had 'bound' this woman. I
suggested in section 4-8 http://www.realdevil.info/4-8.htm
that many of the diseases Jesus cured had a psychological basis to
them; His healing of minds was reflected in the healing of bodies from
conditions which had been brought about psychologically. Just as He
"loosed" the woman from her illness, so He "loosed" sinners from the
burden of their sin [the same word is used in Mt. 18:27 in this
connection, and is twice translated "to forgiven" in Lk. 6:37]. It
may've been that it was her sense of unforgiven sin which was the
actual psychosomatic cause of her strange physical condition. The
woman's physical condition- being chronically bowed down- may well have
been her body reflecting how her mind felt, bowed down by the heavy
burdens the Jewish leaders placed upon her. And of course Jesus uses
that very figure in describing the weight placed upon Jewish people by
the teachers of Judaism (Mt. 23:4- "They bind heavy burdens and lay
them on men's shoulders; but they will not move them with their
finger"). The context of the miracle is that the Jews loosed their tied
up animals on the Sabbath, and Jesus reasoned that He likewise could
loose His sheep who had been bound or tied up by Satan. But who tied up
the animals whom the Jewish leadership loosed? They themselves bound /
tied them and loosed them. Jesus says that He looses / unties those
whom Satan has tied up. He thus draws a parallel between the Jewish
leadership and Satan, the adversary to His work. The unloosing was
performed on the Sabbath- the very day whose Mosaic regulations the
Jews had abused to burden people. Significantly, Jn. 5:18 uses the same
word translated "loose" to describe how Jesus was accused of 'breaking'
or 'unloosing' the Sabbath. He did not come to destroy the Law of Moses
itself during His lifetime, but to teach Israel that the Jewish
additional laws were to be unloosed. The same Greek word is used in
other contexts of how Jesus through His death unloosed ['took down']
the wall of partition which excluded Gentiles (Eph. 2:10).
2 Without doubt there is a word play going on in Lk. 13:16: "And ought [dei
- must] not this
woman, being a daughter of Abraham whom Satan had bound [deo
- a form of dei,
literally, 'must-ed'] for eighteen years, to have been freed from this
bond [deis-mon,
another form of dei,
this 'must-ing'] on the Sabbath day?". Who was it who had taught the
woman 'You must this, that and the other; you must not this or that'?
Was it Satan in the sense of a personal, cosmic being? Was it surely
not the Jewish system who were 'must-ing' people? They, therefore, were
the adversary in this context. |
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