‘Now it was the Sabbath on the day that Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes.'
The day of the healing was the Sabbath, and according to the teaching of the Rabbis all healing, apart from emergency work, was forbidden. And healing blindness was not seen as an emergency work. It could be done any day of the week. The Pharisees were thus concerned, and they were even more so when they learned that Jesus had actually moulded clay on the Sabbath.
This was certainly breaking their carefully worked out rules. They did not consider the wonder of what was happening. Their rules and regulations meant more to many of them than the wonder of God at work. It was this which showed them to be essentially blind. So instead of sharing in the general amazement at the miracle, and recognising God at work in a new way, something which might have meant them rethinking their position, they looked at the minor details with critical eyes and ignored the main lesson. They did not consider the amazing fact that a man who was blind from birth had wonderfully received his sight. They asked rather whether the making of clay to give sight to a man blind from birth could be justified, whether the making of clay for this reason on the Sabbath was allowable within the Law. And their view was rather that inessential healing should not take place on the Sabbath. Thus the man was a lawbreaker. They overlooked the essential difference between natural healing, and healing by the power of God.