If we this day be examined. — The word is employed in its technical sense of a judicial inter rogation, as in Luke 23:14. It is used by St. Luke and St. Paul (Acts 12:19; Acts 24:8; 1 Corinthians 2:14-15; 1 Corinthians 4:3-4), and by them only, in the New Testament.
Of the good deed. — Strictly, the act of beneficence. There is a manifest emphasis on the word as contrasted with the contemptuous “this thing” of the question. It meets us again in 1 Timothy 6:2.
By what means he is made whole. — Better, this man. The pronoun assumes the presence of the man who had been made able to walk. (Comp. John 9:15.) The verb, as in our Lord’s words, “Thy faith hath made thee whole” (Mark 10:52; Luke 7:50), has a pregnant, underlying meaning, suggesting the thought of a spiritual as well as bodily restoration.