This is what the Lord says: Be careful not to carry a load on the Sabbath day or bring it through the gates of Jerusalem. Do not bring a load out of your houses or do any work on the Sabbath, but keep the Sabbath day holy, as I commanded your ancestors.
Jer 17:21 (NIV)
Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.
The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.”
But he replied, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ ”
J 5:8-11 (NIV)
"...they tried all the more to kill him [Jesus]; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God"
J 5:18 (NIV)
The carrying of the mat was not necessary for the healing or walking.
The passage is about the calendar and the commencement of the daily Shabbat hour, which has been discussed quite a few times in various threads on this particular board, and which most seem to choose not to believe because of bias and paradigm, (their beliefs concerning the Shabbat being only the full day of the seventh day of the week).
However, also, your thread title is a well known logical fallacy know as
begging the question because it assumes that the Master instructed the man to break the Shabbat when that is not what is being taught in the passage. What is being taught is that the rulers of the people were off in their estimation of
the timing of the daily Shabbat hour: they were wrong, and that is why the Master says, "My Father works until just now" or "right now", as in
right this very moment, (εως αρτι).
That means the Shabbat hour had not yet commenced until this exact time when the Master says this in the text, in John 5:17, and therefore they were wrong in their timing or, more likely, had insulated the Shabbat hour by adding a half hour before to insure that no one broke it, as they were wont to do with all of the commandments. In "
putting a hedge about the commandment" in this manner they disallowed the legality of this healing which would have occurred during their own hedge time, likely the half hour before the actual Shabbat commenced.
John 5:25 KJV
25 Verily, verily, I say unto you,
The hour is coming,
and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live.
That is the Shabbat hour which is taught in the opening creation account and occurs in every day of the year, on the sacred calendar day, which is seven yamim-hours in a yom-day, (while the civil calendar day is twelve hours in a day). The opening creation account is the foundational teaching, the sacred calendar day, from which the full day of the weekly Shabbat is also understood. The one does not void the other, both are taught in the opening creation account: but the sacred calendar day is the prototype or foundational principle from which the weekly Shabbat is derived. Without an understanding of the calendar such things are hidden.
Addendum:
Since no one responded to this post, I suppose I will go ahead and park the greater part of the remainder of the answer herein below, (but there is also much more study that can be done which verifies the things herein).
The matt or mattress in John 5 is almost assuredly the same type mentioned in 1 Samuel 19:13-16, (mistakenly rendered as a pillow in some translations). This mattress was more like a heavy blanket and was typically made of woven goat's hair. It could be folded up into a pillow as it is in the Samuel passage.
1 Samuel 19:13-16 YLT
13 and Michal taketh the teraphim, and layeth on the bed,
and the mattress of goats' hair she hath put for his pillows, and covereth with a garment.
14 And Saul sendeth messengers to take David, and she saith, 'He is sick.'
15 And Saul sendeth the messengers to see David, saying, 'Bring him up in the bed unto me,' --to put him to death.
16 And the messengers come in, and lo, the teraphim are on the bed,
and the mattress of goats' hair,
for his pillows.
This mattress is called a kbiyr in the Hebrew, very similar to the Greek word krabbatos in the N/T, in general, as also in the John passage. If the matt speaks of this type then it is not difficult to imagine what happened: the healed man took up his matt by rolling it up into
a roll and carried it with him because it was most likely the only possession he had apart from the clothes he wore.
In addition to these things the man had been held in his infirmity for thirty and eight years: this time span is mentioned in only one place in the scripture, and it is the time from Kadeshbarnea until the crossing of the brook Zered, until the time when all the men of war had died out from the congregation, recounted in Deuteronomy 2:14, and includes many supernal things which pertain to this passage in John 5, even a full discussion of giants, (even the bed-frame of Og the king of Bashan is mentioned if one follows the passage in detail).
In the supernal Way of the Meshiah and his Apostles this man had just come into contact with the dead, and the one who died suddenly next to him was the one who had held him in his infirmity thirty and eight years, the years of the rebellion in the desert. He was now required to undergo purification, (which is probably why the Master later finds him in the temple), and that purification was to be performed in seven yamim, and the third yom and the seventh yom the man is required to cleanse with the water of the purification. In the scared calendar day that seventh yom is the seventh hour of the sacred calendar day no matter what day of the year it is because that is the Shabbat hour in each and every day.
Not only all these things, but even everything which has come into contact with the one who is deemed unclean by the dead must either be destroyed or cleansed and purified, by fire and-or by water.
Numbers 19:11-22 KJV
11 He that toucheth the dead body
[nephesh, soul] of any man shall be unclean seven days.
12 He shall purify himself with it on the third day, and on the seventh day he shall be clean: but if he purify not himself the third day, then the seventh day he shall not be clean.
13 Whosoever toucheth the dead body
[nephesh, soul] of any man that is dead, and purifieth not himself, defileth the tabernacle of the LORD; and that soul shall be cut off from Israel: because the water of separation was not sprinkled upon him, he shall be unclean; his uncleanness is yet upon him.
14 This is the law, when a man dieth in a tent: all that come into the tent, and all that is in the tent, shall be unclean seven days.
15 And every open vessel, which hath no covering bound upon it, is unclean.
16 And whosoever toucheth one that is slain with a sword in the open fields, or a dead
body,
[the dead] or a bone of a man, or a grave, shall be unclean seven days.
17 And for an unclean person they shall take of the ashes of the burnt heifer of purification for sin, and running water shall be put thereto in a vessel:
18 And a clean person shall take hyssop, and dip it in the water, and sprinkle it upon the tent, and upon all the vessels, and upon the persons that were there, and upon him that touched a bone, or one slain, or one dead, or a grave:
19
And the clean person shall sprinkle upon the unclean on the third day,
and on the seventh day:
and on the seventh day he shall purify himself,
and wash his clothes,
and bathe himself in water,
and shall be clean at even.
20 But the man that shall be unclean, and shall not purify himself, that soul shall be cut off from among the congregation, because he hath defiled the sanctuary of the LORD: the water of separation hath not been sprinkled upon him; he is unclean.
21 And it shall be a perpetual statute unto them, that he that sprinkleth the water of separation shall wash his clothes; and he that toucheth the water of separation shall be unclean until even.
22 And whatsoever the unclean person toucheth shall be unclean; and the soul that toucheth it shall be unclean until even.
The interpretation of this later includes all vessels or works made of goat's hair:
Numbers 31:19-24 KJV
19 And do ye abide without the camp seven days: whosoever hath killed any person, and whosoever hath touched any slain,
purify both yourselves and your captives on the third day,
and on the seventh day.
20
And purify all your raiment,
and all that is made of skins,
and all work of goats' hair, and all things made of wood.
21 And Eleazar the priest said unto the men of war which went to the battle, This is the ordinance of the law which the LORD commanded Moses;
22 Only the gold, and the silver, the brass, the iron, the tin, and the lead,
23
Every thing that may abide the fire, ye shall make it go through the fire, and it shall be clean: nevertheless it shall be purified with the water of separation: and all that abideth not the fire ye shall make go through the water.
24 And ye shall wash your clothes on the seventh day, and ye shall be clean, and afterward ye shall come into the camp.
The cured man had essentially one possession apart from the clothes he wore: a kbiyr or krabbatos, a matt that was like a thick blanket which could also be used as a pillow or even a covering, that is, raiment, and the kbiyr or krabbatos was therefore probably made of goat's hair just as in the Samuel passage quoted above herein.
The cured man was therefore required by the Torah to purify all his raiment, including both his clothes and his matt, and that is plainly stated as necessarily to be done in the seventh yom, (Num 19:19), and this seventh yom is the Shabbat hour of the sacred calendar day which is the seven yamim of creation in each and every day of the world for as long as the earth and world endure.
The Yhudim in John 5 were wrong, even according to the Torah, for they neither saw nor perceived see the spiritual warfare that had delivered the cured man from his spiritual captor of thirty and eight years.
