The previous passage leads straight on to the open antagonism which resulted from the healing on a Sabbath of a man whose hand was paralyzed.

A man with such a disability in a rural society would have found it very difficult to support himself or a family and may have been reduced to being a beggar. Jesus restored to him the hope of a full and useful life. What better thing could be done on a Sabbath? Mark is explicit in 3:6 that the Pharisees were by then set on a collision course with Jesus. The old wineskins of Judaism could not contain the new wine of the Gospel; the Pharisees would not be satisfied until Jesus was removed.

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