John 5:10 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

The Jews therefore said unto him. — But what they cannot deny they can cavil at. One might have expected from human hearts wonder and thankfulness that the man could walk at all. We find from the formalism which had bound the letter round men until it had well nigh crushed all heart out of them, the murmur that the carrying of his bed was not lawful on the Sabbath. This is not the only place in this Gospel where the words and works of Christ clashed with the current views of the sanctity of the Sabbath day. (Comp. John 7:23; John 9:14.) The general question has been treated in Notes on Matthew 12:10-12. Here it will be sufficient to note that the bearing of burdens was specially forbidden in the Prophecy of Jeremiah: “Take heed to yourselves, and bear no burden on the Sabbath day” (Jeremiah 17:21; comp. Nehemiah 13:15 et seq.), and that the Rabbis pressed this to include a burden of any kind. They said, for example, “If any man on the Sabbath bring in or take out anything on the Sabbath from a public to a private place, if thoughtlessly he hath done this he shall sacrifice for his sin; but if wilfully, he shall be cut off and shall be stoned.”