Whatever might Ije the dillerences between the schools of Shammai and Hillel as to the class of works forbidden on the Sabbath day, the general practice of the Jews themselves wa.s based on the recognition that danger to life superseded the Sabbath law, and the question of Jesus points out this with force. If they aUowe<l a man to save his son or his ox from a position of imminent danger, and yet considered the Sabbath rest un- broken, how much stronger claim had a man, suft'ering from an incurable malady, upon Him whose power to heal had again and again been manifested t
It is possible, perhii I- ■ I inent of scorn in Jesus'
attitude on this occa-i ; inn of the words wi«;
and,3«ck isatleast rt'in L I , 1 ^ : 1 ts to vehemence on His
part in pressing the 111 -I I I I ■ Ti , ry feast at which He sat as guest was a proof of nisincenty in their attitude. How prevalent the abuse of Sabbath feasting became amongst the Jews is noticed by St Augustine (Bnarr. in Ps 911 : • Hodiernus dies sabbati est : hunc in pr«senti tempore otio quodam cor- poraliter languido et fluxo et luxurioso celebrant Judai ').
St. Luke does not tell us plainly whether Jesus used any visible means in ])ci funning the cure of the dropsical man. He, however, uses one word which may point to a treatment similar to what He emploj'ed on other occasions (cf. (irmB^vai tAs Xeipa^, 4« 13", Mk 5=3 etc., and oTrTco-tfai, 5" 22", Mk 1-", Mt 20^ etc. ). It is, of course, possible that (Tri\a^6/i.fi>os (v.^) may have hezr. used by the writer of the narrative to coiTespond with the word ava- ffiraaei (v.'), in order to einpfiasize the force of Jesus' argument, and that Jesus, in actually laying hold of the dropsical patient, intended to convey objec- tively the lesson which each one of them ought to have learned from the toil involved in pulling a drowning animal out of a well.
The reference to the ' well ' {eit ippiap, cf. eis §l)9vvov, Mt 12") is particularly appropriate when the nature of the disea.se is remembered, and shows how wonderfully every incident was used by Jesus to illustrate the lesson He meant to teach. A
DROWNING
DUST
501
very similar instance is observed when He com- pared tlie woman with the diseased spine to the animal which, tied to his stall, required to be loosed therefrom even on the Sabbath day for his daily watering (Lk 13'^ ; ' congruenter hydropicum ani- mali quod cecidit in puteum comparavit ; humore enim laborabat,' Augustine, Qucest. Evang. ii. 29).
Literature. — Plummer, 'St. Luke' in Internal. Crit. Com. in toe. ; Hastings' DB iii. p. 3'28 ; Trench and Taylor on Miracks ; Emyc. Brit. art. ' Dropsy.' J. R. WiLLIS.
DROWNING. — Drowning never was or could be a recognized form of capital punishment in so poorly watered a country as Palestine, as it was in Assyria and Babylonia. It is mentioned in Mt 18* (II Mk 9^-, Lk 17-) as a fitting reward for those who ' oflend one of these little ones which believe in me.' The last expression may either be taken literally, or this utterance of Jesus may be directed against those who cause the simple believer to stumble in his faith. The Greek word Karairov- Tlieiv is used by the LXX to translate the Hebrew y3B in Ex 15*, and the expression used by Jesus may he a reminiscence of the drowning of the Egyptians in the Red Sea, or of the adventure of Peter (Mt 14**), where the same word is employed.
In the Code of Qammurabi, drowning is the penalty for selling beer too cheaply (C. H. W. Johns' Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts, and Letters, p. .52 ff.), as well as for more serious offences. The keepers of the beer-shops appear to have been women, and it is curious that drowning seems to have l)een considered the form of execution proper to female criminals. In Moslem law as defined by Abu Hamfah (d. 767 A.D.),ikiUing by means of drowning was not accounted murder, and no retalia- tion could be claimed. T. H. WeiR.
DRUNKENNESS.— Only one explicit utterance of our Lord relating to drunkenness is recorded ( Lk 21**). Elsewhere He warns against it indirectly, as in the parables where He holds up drunken .servants to reprobation (Mt 24« = Lk 12«). But His references to the vice are surprisingly meagre. That must not be regarded as a measure of the
contemporary extent of the evil, nor as indicating
any"
tude to the matter must be estimated in view of
• lac!
porai kof
His i)art. Our Lord's atti-
Hebrew literature provides ample proof of famili- arity with its unvarying iiioial and social con.se- quenees. The scandids associalccl ^\■ith the early Christian love-feasts (1 ('i> 1 1-', .Imli' '-) were doubt- less partlyarecrudescencc. it ].ir ( 111 isti an practices. While excess was unsparingly <(iiidemned by moralists, moderation was uniformly commended. Occasional maxims hint at the expediency of abstinence in the interests of moral integrity and personal security. But where that is actually practised, it is invariably the outcome of pureljr religious impulse. It would seem that the Nazi- rites, the Rechabites, and other ascetics realized that indulgence in wine was inimical to spiritual life (cf. Lk 1"^), or inexpedient in situations de- manding the highest possible personal purity, or inappropriate to persons of singular and abnormal holiness (cf. John the Baptist, with whom some seem to have compared Jesus unfavourably, Lk 7"). To the ordinary Jew, however, habitual in- dulgence was a matter of course. Abstinence required strong reasons to justify it. The Baby- lonian Gemara would even seem to suggest that abstinence might be a positive sin. ' The Nazirite has sinned by denying himself wine.' It bases this opinion on an arbitrary and erroneous interpreta- tion of Nu 6-° (see Jewish Encyc. art. 'Drunken- ness ').