Someone wrote that “The argument is this: You blame me for healing an impotent man on the Sabbath; yet you break the Sabbath to circumcise a child if the eighth day after its birth falls on the Sabbath. You say that the law of circumcision (which) was given to Abraham, is older than the Sabbath law, and must be kept if the Sabbath is to be broken. Now the law of love and mercy is older than Moses; why find fault if it is kept on the Sabbath?” (PNT)

Moses knew that some things must be done, even on the Sabbath, but the Jews missed the point. Morris states that “Had they understood the significance of what they were doing they would have seen that a practice which overrode the Sabbath in order to provide for the ceremonial needs of a man justified the overriding of the Sabbath in order to provide for the bodily healing of a man.” (408)

The Jews kept one law, circumcision, by violating another, the keeping of the Sabbath. This is the charge against Jesus in chapter 5 for which they are seeking to kill Him! Godet sees this as “the most piquant irony: ‘Moses has in advance pleaded my cause before you, by making you all jointly responsible for the crime for which you charge me.’”

“the whole man” = circumcision was concerned with a work on one member of the body, of which the Jews recognized 248 members. Jesus contrasts this with His healing of all 248 members of the body of the invalid man.