John 5:11

Not lawful. See on Mark 2:24. The Jews seemed to be concerned, not that the man was healed on the Sabbath, but that he was carrying a burden, his bed, on that day. Jewish traditional law provided strict regulations in regard to the carrying of burdens on the Sabbath. Thus the Mishnah lists 39 types of work that cannot be performed on Sabbath, the last one of which is “carrying out from one domain to another” (Mishnah Shabbath 7, Soncino ed. of the Talmud, p. 349). Another Mishnaic passage declares that if a man carries into the public domain “a living person in a bed, he is not culpable even in respect of the bed, because the bed is subsidiary to him” (Mishnah Shabbath 10, Soncino ed. of the Talmud, p. 448), which seems to imply that carrying an empty couch would be considered a transgression.