The scribes and Pharisees were watching for a reason to accuse Jesus, but Jesus "knew their thoughts" (Luke 6:8). He called the man to stand in the middle, then put a question to his watchers before He acted. He set the issue in plain terms: on the sabbath, is it right to do good or evil, to save life or destroy it?

The first question asks about doing good. The second sharpens it into a matter of life. Barnes says Jesus' question implied "that to omit to do good was, in fact, doing evil." Gill adds that saving life on the sabbath was agreeable to their own canons, that is, their own rules. The question also exposed the watchers: they were using the sabbath to look for an accusation while He was using it to heal.

Luke records no answer from them. Jesus, "looking round about upon them all," said to the man, "Stretch forth thy hand," and "his hand was restored whole as the other" (Luke 6:10). Mark adds that "they held their peace" (Mark 3:4). Instead of answering, "they were filled with madness; and communed one with another what they might do to Jesus" (Luke 6:11). Gill says their rage came both from the cure and "because they could not answer him."

The KJV's "I will ask you one thing" follows the Textus Receptus, which reads Eperōtēsō hymas ti. Other Greek editions read "I ask you whether," which is why the ESV says "I ask you, is it lawful." The word for "do good" is agathopoieō, and its opposite is kakopoieō, "to do evil." The word for "life" is psychē, the life or soul of a person.

The Gospels tell this scene from different angles. In Matthew, the critics ask first, "Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath days?" (Matthew 12:10). Luke alone says the man's "right hand" was withered (Luke 6:6).

This question reveals the heart of God behind the sabbath. God gave His day for good, not for harm. Jesus would not let the sabbath become a reason to leave a suffering man unhelped. Barnes, quoting Cotton Mather on the parallel in Mark, puts it simply: "The ability to do good imposes an obligation to do it."

The contrast in Luke 6:11 is striking. Jesus used the sabbath to restore a hand. His critics used it to plan what they "might do to Jesus." Matthew Henry says, "No wicked men are such absurd and unreasonable men as persecutors are, who study to do evil to men for doing good." Barnes thinks their madness was probably produced by "Pride, obstinacy, malice, and disappointed self-confidence."