Mark 2:9 (BSB)
“Which is easier: to say to a paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, pick up your mat, and walk’?
Commentary on Mark 2:9
- Matthew Henry (Presbyterian), Matthew Henry's Complete Commentary on Mark 2:1-12: Christ, having been for some time preaching about in the country, here returns to Capernaum his head-quarters, and makes his appearance there, in hopes that by this time the talk and crowd would be somewhat abated. Now observe, I. The great resort there was to him.
- John Gill (Reformed Baptist), Exposition of the Old and New Testaments on Mark 2:9: But that ye may know that the son of man,.... Meaning himself, who was really man, and the true Messiah, in which sense this phrase had been used in the writings of the Old Testament; see Psa 80:17, and though by reason of his outward form; and mean appearance, he might be thought by them to be but a mere man, and had no right...
- Jamieson-Fausset-Brown (Reformed), Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible on Mark 2:9: Whether is it easier to say to the sick of the palsy, Thy sins be forgiven thee--or "are forgiven thee"; or to say, Arise, and take up thy bed and walk?--"Is it easier to command away disease than to bid away sin? If, then, I do the one which you can see, know thus that I have done the other, which you cannot see."
- John Lightfoot (Puritan), Horae Hebraicae et Talmudicae on Mark 2:9: [Whether is it easier to say, &c.] He that observes the use of the word it is easy and it is hard, in the Jewish schools (and the schoolmen were now with Christ), cannot think it improper that is it easier should be of the same import with it is easy, which word denotes the thing or the sense plain, smooth, and without scruple; it is hard, denotes the contrary.