1 This incident occurred during “the Festival of Booths” – or Sukkot – and as such the mention of “the Jews” here speaks to the certain throng of Jewish laypeople in attendance, as well as to the priests & scribes who were certainly present.

2 While it is true that the Jews of Jesus’ day saw circumcision more as a healing than as an amputation, more than a few Jews in attendance (and all of the Gospel’s non-Jewish readers – seeing as how the tale was written in their native tongue of Koine Greek) would have understood Jesus lambasting intent. Even the Jewish historian & scholar Maimonides admitted that the male penis is undoubtedly weakened by circumcision, and as such the flagrant irony of Jesus critically contrasting the Law’s requirement of circumcision with his recent deed of healing that had “made a man completely whole” (holon hygie, Strong’s #3650 & #5199) would not have been lost on anyone paying sincere attention thereto. As a final point of emphasis, Jesus made the aforementioned contention even more crystalline when he claimed that the regulation requiring circumcision came “not from Moses, but [merely] from the patriarchs” (i.e. customs which could be more readily overturned or amended – see John 7:22) – a claim that was only partially true, seeing as how both Genesis & Leviticus did indeed state that circumcision was in fact a clear facet of God’s legal proclamation.