Luke 4

CHAPTER IV

The Second Part

While Jesus Was In Galilee

Chapter 4 to 9:50

Luke now begins the account of the active ministry of Jesus as this was carried forward in Galilee and introduces this part with the temptation which took place near the lower Jordan. We do not know on which side of the river this took place. Of the other two accounts of this event only Matthew’s is a real parallel, Mark offers only a condensed summary. It is quite impossible to have Matthew draw from Luke, or Luke from Matthew, judging from the narratives themselves. As far as Matthew is concerned, he wrote in advance of either Mark or Luke. The idea that Mark presents “the original tradition” on the basis of which Matthew and Luke wrote their accounts is cancelled by the other claim of the critics that it is Mark who notes the detailed touches in contrast with Matthew and Luke.

Mark simply abbreviated what Matthew had already narrated at length and added something from the oral tradition. Luke may have had both Matthew and Mark before him besides the oral tradition that was available to all. Matthew presents the three temptations in their historical order; Luke makes a climax of the places: desert—mountain—Jerusalem and the Temple. The fact that Matthew has the historical order appears from the command that is issued after the third temptation which orders Satan to leave. The other questions about the temptation are treated at the end of v. 13.

Luke 4:1

1 Now Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, turned back from the Jordan, and he was being led in connection with the Spirit in the desert for forty days, being tempted by the devil.

The close connection with the outpouring of the Spirit at his baptism is apparent from the double mention of the Spirit in this new narrative. We have ΠνεῦμαἍγιον without articles as was the case repeatedly in the preceding chapters which is identical with the articulated name v. 22 and is followed by ἐντῷΠνεύματι, the article of previous reference. “Full of the Holy Spirit” has its comment in v. 22, the Spirit coming down upon Jesus, and in John 1:33, remaining upon him. Jesus was now ready for his great task, in fact, God had inaugurated him into his great office. Although ὑπέστρεψεν is the same verb as that used in v. 14, the two do not mean that in v. 1 Jesus began and in v. 14 completed his return to Galilee. In v. 1 Jesus “turned back from the Jordan,” from the place where John had baptized him, and went into the wilderness. Matthew writes that “he was led up,” meaning from the Ghor, the deep depression through which the Jordan winds its way, starting at the lake 600 feet below sea level and ending in theDead Sea 1, 300 feet below sea level. The rocky heights on both sides are wild and rugged.

The imperfect ἤγετο is merely descriptive: “he was being led,” and at the same time intimates that presently something happened as is told by the aorists in v. 2 and 3. Matthew writes ὑπό, which makes the Spirit the agent who leads Jesus (Mark expresses this differently), whereas Luke has ἐν, but this is not instrumenal as R., W. P., thinks possible, for the Spirit is never regarded as an instrument, but ἐν in its original sense: “in connection with the Spirit” without specifying what this connection was. “In the desert for forty days” (the accusative of duration) means that Jesus was led thus during this entire time. Matthew and Mark say that the Spirit took Jesus “into” the desert, Luke makes no point of that.

Luke 4:2

2 The forty days are to be construed with the main verb (R. V.), not with the participle (A. V.). “Being tempted by the devil,” which is expressed by a durative participle that modifies the main verb, means that the temptation continued during the entire time that Jesus was thus led. Mark says the same thing. The πειραζόμενος used by the evangelists does not denote purpose: “in order to be tempted”; this construction would require an infinitive or better still a purpose clause or the future participle. We have no means of knowing in what way Jesus was continually tempted.

The idea that this occurred in his own thoughts, that he debated whether to go on or not, is warded off by the ὑπό phrase. All this tempting was brought upon Jesus “by the devil,” none of it originated or could originate in his own sinless heart. This temptation of Jesus was not like our temptations in this respect, and we cannot reason from ours to his. Jesus gained no breathing spell whatever during these forty days; his mind was kept from even thinking of the wants of his body so that he ate nothing during these days. It is not necessary to assume that Jesus did not sleep during the forty nights; that would surely have been mentioned if it had been the case.

The synoptists say that Jesus was brought into this great temptation by the Spirit. This, of course, implies no reluctance on the part of Jesus. It intends to bring out the very opposite: the willingness to do the divine will. It does even more: it wards off the idea that Jesus threw himself into this temptation of his own accord when at this beginning of his ministry he might have been wise to avoid such a decisive test. We often rashly rush into temptation. Jesus was led into the ordeal by his Father’s own Spirit. And this means that the temptation had to occur, and at this time, at the very start of the ministry. In a sense Jesus’ whole battle was with Satan, and so this great clash was arranged at the very start.

The verb πειράζω is a vox media, “to try,” “to test,” “to put to the proof.” It obtains its sinister sense from the context, and because this is evil, in so many cases the verb has its dark connotation “to tempt,” and ὁπειράζων means “the tempter.” Mark writes the devil’s personal name “Satan,” Matthew and Luke write “the devil,” ὁδιάβολος, which is an adjective used as a noun, “the slanderer,” “the adversary.” We need not waste time by bringing in the volume of Biblical evidence which reveals “the devil” as the fallen angel Satan, the author of sin, the head of the hellish kingdom, forever opposed to God and devoted to man’s eternal ruin because of this opposition. Consult the details in C.-K., 187, etc. If no devil exist as he is described in the Bible, the whole Bible is false, and man himself is turned into his own devil.

The remarkable conjunction between God’s Spirit and the devil ought to be noted—the one to bestow all his power upon the human nature of Jesus, the other at once to put this power to a supreme test. God’s will and the devil’s will meet in a strange way in a tremendous clash in Jesus. We may take it that Satan knew all about this man Jesus, who had been miraculously conceived and born by Mary and had then lived so long and so quietly in Nazareth. As an invisible spectator he beheld what transpired after the baptism at the Jordan. So this was God’s Messiah who had come to crush and rob Satan, destroy all his works, and erect the kingdom of God among men. The devil at once resolved to break this divine champion.

He had conquered the first Adam, he would conquer the second, and do that at once. Before this Jesus ever got under way with his work Satan would lay him low with his old cunning. God willed that Satan should have his wish.

And he ate nothing in those days. And when they were brought to an end, he became hungry.

This leads over to the three great temptations that are now to be described in detail. There is no reason to suppose that by fasting so long Jesus only weakened himself for the final battle. We find it of little value to compare the fasting of Jesus with the forty days twice spent by Moses without food or drink on Sinai (Exod. 34:28; Deut. 9:9, 18) or the forty foodless days of Elijah as he travelled to Horeb (1 Kings 19:8) or other long fasts on the part of ordinary men. Since the body of Jesus was wholly unaffected by sin, its power of enduring abstinence from food exceeds ours by far. Any idea of partial fasting, living without ordinary food, which was due to wandering in the wilderness, is wholly shut out: “he did eat nothing in those days” (the Greek doubles the negative). The fact that the hunger held off for just forty days, no more and no less, cannot be considered accidental.

The passive participle συντελεσθεισῶν in the genitive absolute points to God as the agent who brought the days to an end. We meet other periods of just forty days and the use of forty in other things mentioned in the Scriptures, there is some sort of law underlying this number. The aorist ἐπείνασε is ingressive, “he became hungry.”

This long fast should not be regarded as a preparation for the three final temptations, for we read nowhere that Jesus fasted and prayed (the two always go together). So also the temptation filled the forty days and only ended in the three final tests. This is also no retirement of Jesus such as he sought at other times for communion with God. It is not a fact that Jesus spent these forty days in the happy enjoyment of the good pleasure of his Father and thus forgot all about food. All such ideas stray from the text.

Luke 4:3

3 Now the devil said to him, If thou art a son of God, say to this stone that it become bread.

Matthew states that the tempter came, Luke implies his presence by stating what he said. The previous temptations were also authored by the devil, but he now appears visibly to deal with Jesus. The speculation that all angels possess an ethereal form of some kind and are able to appear by means of this is un-biblical and usually goes to the length of ascribing some tangible form also to God. As πνεύματα, “spirits,” angels differ from men in having no bodily form whatever. Yet good angels freely appear to men when they are sent by God; men see them and hear them speak. God appears in the same way (3:22).

Even apart from 2 Cor. 11:14, Satan, too, as an angel must have the power to appear. The view that because he quotes the Scriptures he must have come as a Jewish scribe or, if that is too specific, as a man of authority is answered by the last two temptations. He came as what he was, Satan; and Jesus knew with whom he was dealing, and that Satan had come to put him to the supreme test.

Exactly as he did in Gen. 3:1 and in Job 1:9; 2:4, 5, Satan starts the temptation by raising a cloud of doubt. Although he uses a condition of reality (R. 1009): “if thou art a son of God,” the “if” really questions the fact, for Satan demands that Jesus furnish the proof. We see that (as in Gen. 3) Satan questions the very word of the Father that was spoken from the open heaven. In doing so he cunningly modifies the Father’s word. He does not say “the Son of God,” the one and only eternal Son, but “a son of God,” one of a class who is related to God only by divine favor (ἀγαπητός, “beloved,” 3:22) and chosen only thus to be the Messiah (R. 781). Our versions translate (also in Matthew) “the Son of God,” and it must be admitted that the unarticulated υἱὸςτοῦΘεοῦ may be so rendered; it is then like a title.

As far as Satan’s demand of proof is concerned, no real difference would obtain. Satan, as we take it, says “a son” because Jesus is a man, a fact that is strongly emphasized by his present hunger for food. “Only such a son art thou,” he suggests, and even that, in view of the fact that God let him hunger, Satan implies, needs proof. The thought that if Jesus would furnish this proof, Satan himself would accept this sonship of Jesus plus his Messiahship, is out of line; for this is a temptation of Jesus, a trying to induce him to prove even this sonship.

How is Jesus to prove that he is “a son of God”? “Say to this stone that it become bread.” Luke has the singular, which individualizes, whereas Matthew has the plural “stones” and “breads.” The Greek has no word for “loaf” and merely uses its word “bread” and the plural “breads.” The ancient bread was baked in flat form. “A loaf” in the R. V. margin, also R., W. P., is misleading. The ἵνα clause is subfinal, the object of εἰπέ; it states what Jesus is to say, R. 993. The temptation lies in this bidding on the part of Satan. The idea is not that the tempter really doubted that a word spoken by Jesus could turn a stone into bread for Jesus to eat.

That was the very thing that Satan wanted Jesus to do. He knew that the Messiah would perform miracles; even the Jews expected that. Like the tempter, the Jews asked for peculiar miracles, which, if they had been wrought by Jesus, would have plunged him into sin. In this they were simply tools of the devil who continued the temptations here inflicted by Satan in person. Ordinary Christians have the right idea when they say, “Jesus would have obeyed the devil instead of God.” So by acceding to the Jews he would have done their wrong and wicked will and not the Father’s.

But this involves much more. We cannot say that it would have been wrong for Jesus to supply himself with bread by means of a miracle. Jesus himself most likely ate of the bread that was gathered after the feeding of the 5, 000 and of the 4, 000, the bread that he had himself miraculously produced. Why should he alone have remained hungry on those occasions when all the rest were fully fed? But everything is different here.

By the very act of miraculously turning one or more stones into bread to prove himself “a son of God” Jesus would in reality prove himself a false “son.” That act would mean distrust of his Father. Jesus was here to undergo the severest temptation by the Father’s own Spirit. The Father’s own will had brought him to this hunger. For forty days he had supported the body of Jesus so that it did not even feel hunger until now. Is Jesus now no longer to look up to his Father with a true son’s trust but to look down to these stones, to use them in evading his hunger? Does it, perhaps, seem strange that the Father should leave a son of his to hunger thus or unworthy for a son of this Father to be in such hunger so that the son, in order to make sure that he is a son, must rush to provide food for himself?

Was this son, who is even the eternal Son, not to suffer infinitely greater hurt than the present hunger? The idea that this first temptation is one that is apart from Jesus’ Messianic mission overlooks the essential point in the conditional clause: “If thou art a son of God.” The hunger and the making bread out of a stone are connected with the devil’s method of proving sonship, and in this case sonship necessarily involves Messiahship; for as the Son, the Beloved, Jesus was the one chosen (see 3:22).

Luke 4:4

4 Jesus conquers the tempter by acting as a true “son” should act, to say nothing about “the Son.” The devil’s suggestion is not for one moment entertained by Jesus’ mind. The implied distrust that the devil wants Jesus to show toward his Father is at once met by the most perfect trust and reliance on the Father. And Jesus made answer to him, It has been written, Not on bread alone shall man live. The sum of this reply is trust, the trust of any true son of God, the trust of the incarnate Son. This trust rose in its might and crushed the very suggestion of distrust or mistrust and thus conquered the temptation.

The remarkable feature is that Jesus meets each of the three assaults with a word of Scripture: γέγραπται, “it has been written,” the perfect tense implying “and now stands thus.” Hence we may translate “it is written,” the common formula of quotation (3:3). Jesus smites the devil with “the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God,” Eph. 6:17. In Luther’s battle hymn: “One little word o’erthrows him.” He who would himself say, “Verily, verily, I say to you!” and could speak with divine authority in every utterance of his own turns to the Word that has already been written and uses that and only that.

The quotation from Deut. 8:3 stamps the Pentateuch as the Word of God, for the formula “as it has been written” is used only with reference to the divine Word. What God wanted Israel to learn during the forty years in the desert when he humbled Israel, suffered it to hunger, and fed it with manna, that Jesus did not need to learn, that he knew perfectly even now when he was distressed by hunger. Israel was a type of the Messiah in many features of its history and was so here in these forty days of Jesus’ fasting in the desert. Israel often murmured and sinned when hungry or thirsty, not so Jesus, God’s true Son. The word that Moses spoke for God rings out from the lips of Jesus as the innermost conviction of his heart and voices his absolute trust in God. Not by making bread but by speaking this word this son proved in the truest way that he was “a son.”

Note the gradation: the Son (spoken by the Father in 3:22)—a son (spoken by the devil)—a man (spoken by Jesus in the quotation). Does the devil lower Jesus and refer to him only as “a son,” one of a class? Jesus does not reply, “I am the Son.” He is not debating with the devil and has no call to enlighten the fiend of darkness. He is here to conquer Satan. So Jesus meets the insult, which questions even his sonship, by a reply which pertains to all men merely as men, ὁἄνθρωπος with the generic article, der Mensch, “man.”

This actually makes the devil ridiculous. Did he himself really imagine that it was bread that kept men alive, or did he really think that he could induce Jesus to act on such a fool notion? All his lying assumptions are of the same nature. When they are exposed to the light of truth they appear as what they actually are, ridiculous, preposterous, the notions of fools. The devil’s bidding that Jesus hurry and appease his hunger with stones made bread wants Jesus to believe the silly notion that a man’s life, to say nothing about the life of “a son of God,” rests “on bread alone,” ἐπʼ ἄρτῳμόνῳ, on this ground or basis (R. 604) “alone” and thus apart from God, the Creator of both the man and the bread. In his blind folly the devil may think this, but Moses knew better, Israel learned better, every “son of God” knows better, only fools who have been blinded by the devil do not know better. The future “shall live” is probably volitive, the tense expresses the divine will; it is not merely futuristic with reference to what shall occur (R. 889).

Luke omits the rest of the quotation, not, as some think, because it was missing in the document which he used—who, then, originally made the curtailment?—but to simplify the reply for Theophilus. A good many texts add the remainder or a part of it (A. V.) from Matthew.

The first temptation resembles that of our first parents in Eden. It deals with food and uses food to awaken distrust of God and of God’s Word. What succeeded in Eden, in the land of plenty, failed in the destitute desert. What succeeded in the case of Adam and Eve who were well fed failed in the case of Jesus who was in great hunger. The temptation assailed Jesus from his human side; he smote it down, not with his deity, but as a man, with his trust in God and in God’s Word. By doing it in this way he today enables us to follow his example. All true sons may follow the “Son.”

Luke 4:5

5 And having led him up, he showed him all the kingdoms of the inhabited earth in a prick of time. And the devil said to him: To thee will I give all this authority and their glory because to me it has been delivered, and to whomever I will I give it. If thou, therefore, wilt do an act of worship before me, all shall be thine.

Luke places this temptation second and follows the order of places: desert, mountain, Temple. Luther says that in the first temptation Satan showed himself as a black devil, in the one in which he used God’s Word as a white devil, but here as a divine and majestic devil who comes right out as if he were God himself. Luke writes only the participle “having carried him up,” and Matthew adds that this was done by taking Jesus with him to a very high mountain. Many view this transfer to a high mountain and also the transfer to a wing of the Temple as a mental act that was by Satan thrust into the mind and thought of Jesus. R., W. P.: “This panorama was mental, a great feat of the imagination, a mental satanic ‘movie’ performance.” Although the devil himself was actually visible, Jesus is merely made to feel himself on such a lofty mountain; in reality he never left the wilderness, for, of course, no physical mountain affords a view of all the kingdoms of the earth.

One answer to these ideas is that, if the showing of the kingdoms was mental only, then a mental mountain was certainly not necessary but wholly superfluous. Another answer is that the plain words of both Luke and Matthew bar out any mental hypothesis. The third is that, if Satan by his mere volition could project thoughts and feelings into the mind of Jesus and could make Jesus think that he was where he actually was not, the mind of Jesus would be utterly helpless under the will of Satan. The statement that Jesus “still remained master of his thinking and willing” is the assertion of the commentator who would escape from the precipice that his hypothesis has built. Only from the outside, by the words which Satan spoke audibly, could he present thoughts to the mind of Jesus; and these lying thoughts Jesus instantly rejected.

The verb ἔδειξεν (Matthew has the present tense) does not mean that Satan flashed the thought of all the kingdoms of the inhabited earth (ἡοἰκουμένη, the present passive participle with γῆ understood) into the mind of Jesus. “Showed” means “showed to the eyes of Jesus”; and ἐνστιγμῇχρόνου means literally, “in a prick of time,” in just one instant. This phrase should not be regarded symbolically with reference to the transient nature of all these kingdoms, their authority, and glory, flashing brilliantly for a second and then as quickly being gone again. Before the very eyes of Jesus as he looked out over the world from that mountaintop the prince of this world, by his occult power, flashed out in an instant a view of the mighty realm he ruled. How this was done, and why the view lasted only so long, no one will ever say.

Luke 4:6

6 Now the tempter’s offer: “To thee will I give,” etc. Luke brings out the tempting features of the proposed gift: “all this authority,” ἐξουσία, the authority plus the power to exercise it, and “all this” as if it were one great unit of most imperial control; then also “their glory,” the majesty, magnificence, and greatness of all these kingdoms, of which Jesus had been given a glimpse, which they would bestow upon their ruler. It is Luke who adds the devil’s explanation as to how he is able to make this magnificent offer: “because to me it has been delivered, and to whomever I will I give it.” He speaks as if, although he himself did not create these kingdoms, he is, nevertheless, their rightful owner, as if God himself had given him this rule and dominion. This is, of course, a lie, for he is an illegitimate ruler who has usurped his authority, and he will be brought to book for his usurpation and also for his presumption that he is so supreme in his rulership that he is able to make a gift of it to whomever he pleases. A usurper’s gift is spurious, and whoever would accept his gift makes himself a party to his usurpation. All the arrogant pride of the devil, who first fell from God through pride, comes out in his offer: “To thee will I give!”

Luke 4:7

7 The boldness of the stroke, however, lies in the little condition Satan attached to his offer with the ἐάν and the subjunctive of expectancy: “If thou, therefore, wilt do an act of worship before me”—then, yes, then “all shall be thine.” The aorist subjunctive signifies a single act. The verb is used regarding Oriental prostration before great human lords but especially also regarding prostration before God in the deepest religious reverence and adoration; Matthew adds πεσών, “by falling down.” The reply of Jesus shows that the latter is meant. Satan’s proposition is this: God has turned all these kingdoms over to him, and he is willing to turn them over to Jesus if, as Satan is under God, Jesus will place himself under Satan. Satan thus offers to make Jesus the Messiah-King just as God wants him to be King. It can all be done with one little act of prostration before Satan. Instead of a long, bitter journey to the throne one short step will reach the crown.

The whole proposition intends to appeal to the human nature of Jesus. Jesus can rule at once like a god. There is no need to face shame, agony, ignominious death. Instead of the bitter cup only a single obeisance. Satan would place himself in harmony with God in making Jesus King. Yet the whole proposition is false through and through.

Satan does not bow to God in worship as Jesus is to bow to Satan. Satan has not received the kingdoms from God, he rules them as the enemy of God, as a rebel against God, as a usurper whom God is dethroning through Jesus. By this one act of worship Jesus would also become a rebel against God and at the same time a tool of Satan. The kingdoms, authority, and glory promised by Satan would remain Satan’s. The transfer would be a delusion. Instead of becoming a king Jesus would become the slave of Satan.

The way in which Satan tried to buy Jesus is the way in which he bought Eve: “Ye shall be as gods.” Thus he bought Judas for the trivial thirty pieces of silver. He still buys men in this way, but never at a price so great as that which he offered to Jesus. It may seem foolish on Satan’s part to come to Jesus with such a temptation and to think that Jesus might be bought thus. But after succeeding with his proffers to other men in thousands of instances Satan felt that this man Jesus would certainly succumb to an offer that was more magnificent than any he had ever made. Let us remember that the author of evil lies almost completely under the blinding power of evil. As men, when they are submerged in sin, lose all moral judgment, so by his fall Satan lost all sense of righteousness and truth and moves only in absolute moral darkness.

Luke 4:8

8 And answering him Jesus said, It has been written, The Lord, thy God, thou shalt worship, and him only shalt thou serve.

On ἀποκριθείς as marking a weighty response see 1:19. Jesus again quotes a word of Scripture. We are to know that the written Word is the one and only shield and weapon by which to overthrow the evil one. The quotation is taken from Deut. 6:13, save that the “thou shalt fear” of the Hebrew and the LXX is rendered by “thou shalt worship,” which conforms to the tempter’s word. Yet yare’ denotes the fear of reverence which is expressed by the humble and reverent act of worship. The Hebrew has “and serve him,” to which the LXX adds “him alone.” Since this is the true sense of the original, Jesus retains it.

The service of λατρεία or worship (often with offerings) belongs to deity alone and is incumbent on all whereas λειτουργία is the official service of priests and Levites. Rendered to others, it becomes the abomination of idolatry. Satan attempted to lure Jesus into a flagrant transgression of the First Commandment, the most fundamental of all, in which the entire law centers.

Here again Jesus speaks only as “a son,” we may say a true Israelite. As a man Jesus, too, was under God, under the law of God (Gal. 4:4), and hence honored and worshipped God and kept all his commandments as all men ought to keep them. Jesus made no use of his divine prerogatives and powers in the battle against Satan. He vanquished Satan as a man. Thus “we have not an High Priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin,” Heb. 4:15.

Luke 4:9

9 Moreover, he brought him to Jerusalem and stood him on the wing of the Temple and said to him: If thou art a son of God, throw thyself down from here, for it has been written:

To his angels will he give injunction concerning thee, thoroughly to guard thee.

And,

On hands will they bear thee up

Lest ever thou strike thy foot against a stone.

When Matthew writes “the holy city” he brings out the enormity of this unholy temptation. Jerusalem, the Temple, and then quotations from Scripture bring out a strong contrast to the devil, to whom, of course, nothing is holy in prosecuting his unholy work. Since the devil is a spirit, we are told by some interpreters that what is stated here must have taken place “in the spirit.” The devil’s power did not actually stand Jesus on the wing of the Temple but only controlled his senses so that Jesus “felt himself” standing on the Temple wing. It is added that this included dizziness because Joseph, Ant. 15, 11, 5, mentions this feeling in describing the height above the rocks below. But is Jesus to throw himself down from this height only “in the spirit,” mentally? And if this temptation and the preceding one are only mental, is the first one not also mental?

Like Job, Jesus was placed into Satan’s power so that the latter might tempt him to the uttermost. The transfer of Jesus to the Temple was physical. There is no difficulty as to the willingness of Jesus; he consented to the Father’s will to be tempted of the devil as the devil might will. We need not say that Jesus transferred himself to the Temple; the motive power in “he brought and stood him” is that of the devil. Throughout all three temptations Jesus only submits to the tempter’s operations.

The ἱερόν is not the ναός or Sanctuary (the building that housed the Holy and the Holy of Holies) but the entire Temple area with all its buildings and its courts. The πτερύγιον is “the wing of the Temple”; note the article: not some wing but the one specifically so called. The diminutive has lost its force in the Greek. This “wing” was most likely the one from which James was thrown, Acts 12:2; Eusebius 2:23. This was part of the outer wall that encircled the entire Temple area. The most likely location is the στοὰβασιλική or royal porch on the south wall, a deep ravine lay between it and the suburbs opposite.

Others think of the east wall along Solomon’s Porch where the drop Isaiah 400 cubits or 600 feet. Josephus describes both locations in Ant. 15, 11, 5, the latter also in 20, 9, 7. Not a word is said about people being in the Temple courts, before whom Jesus was to make a display by throwing himself from a great height and remaining unharmed. How could they have seen him after the leap from the high wall? This view, which is wholly foreign to the text and contrary to the very nature of this temptation, has led some to think of the roof parapet or of the roof gable of the Sanctuary, a leap from which could be seen by all who were in the courts below.

10, 11) The conditional clause in the tempter’s bidding is the same in thought and in form as that used in v. 3. But the temptation itself runs in the opposite direction. As a true son Jesus demonstrated his absolute trust in God regarding his bodily needs. As a true son he rested this trust of his on God’s Word. Satan aims his assault at both points. If Jesus is such a true and trustful son of God, let him demonstrate that fact by something that is more decisive than just continuing patiently in hunger.

That, the devil implies, is a cheap way of showing real trust. Yet, like the liar that he is, this cheap way was the very one he assailed first of all when he sought to entice Jesus to give up that trust by not waiting for bread from God but by rushing to provide it himself. The heroic way to prove trust, Satan says, is to test some special promise of God to the limit and on the instant. Let Jesus throw himself down from this great Temple height and prove that God’s promise stated in Ps. 91:11, 12 is true. If Jesus has real filial trust, the devil intimates, he will not hesitate a moment; and, of course, if God fails to keep his Word, that Word amounts to nothing, and Jesus might as well be dead as to live and bank on empty promises. The idea that in both the first and this temptation the devil is promising to believe in Jesus if Jesus complies successfully with the devil’s suggestions, is untenable.

The cunning of the temptation is doubled by the devil’s use of Scripture. By himself quoting Scripture the devil would block any resort of Jesus to Scripture; he would wrest the sword of the Spirit from Jesus’ hand. The devil shows himself expert in handling Scripture. Luther calls him a doctor non promotus sed expertus. The passages he quotes seem to fit the proposal that he makes in a perfect way. Read the entire psalm and see how all of it seems to fit quite exactly.

All that Satan, then, does here is to invent an act to match the two verses he quotes, one in which God’s angels can bear a man up and prevent him from crashing his feet on stones beneath. They will catch him under the arms and let him light on the rocks below as gently as feather down. The two ὅτι are recitative; they are like our quotation marks and are not to be translated. The two psalm verses are quoted separately by placing καὶὅτι between them.

In this case the deception does not lie in misapplying to Jesus what really does not apply to him. Psalms 91 applies to any son of God, and certainly also to this Son. Satan abbreviates by omitting “in all thy ways” after “thoroughly to guard thee.” Some find the deception in this omission as if the promise of God were conditional: to protect us only when we walk in the path of divine duty. But the words should then read “in all his ways.” If the deception lay in this omission, Satan would have been overthrown very easily. A misquotation is annihilated by the corrected quotation. Jesus, however, makes no correction, does not point to the omitted phrase, but accepts the quotation as being substantially correct.

The deception in the use of this Scripture by Satan lies in setting one Scripture against another. One statement is stressed, and others that should go with it are quietly disregarded.

The devil’s way of citing Scripture has been taught far and wide in the devil’s school, and some of his pupils and graduates are doctors who are quite as expert as he is. One of their tricks which is constantly practiced, often on a large scale, is to combine a mass of passages in a way that makes the Bible say what it most certainly does not say, in fact, openly contradicts elsewhere in the plainest language. This type of deception catches the unwary, especially the devout among them who esteem the Scriptures highly; it is also the delight of those who love to harass devout believers while they think they are fortifying themselves behind impregnable walls.

Luke 4:12

12 And answering Jesus said to him, It has been said, Thou shalt not test out the Lord, thy God.

This temptation is overcome by a single word. A true son knows what his father says and means; so Jesus knows that all the great promises of his Father’s protection are meant for our humble trust in him and never once for our presumption. It would be a caricature of humble trust to take a gracious promise of God and by some foolhardy act to challenge God to see whether he will, indeed, do what he has said, or still worse, simply presume that he must do what his words say. As the first temptation tries to lead, under the plea of acting like a true son, to distrust of the Father, so this temptation tries to lead, under the same plea, to a false trust of the Father. What such false trust really is the Father himself has declared in plainest language, and as a true son, who knows all that his Father has said and means by his words, Jesus sets beside the word quoted by the devil another word that belongs together with it and brings out its true meaning. After the devil himself used γέγραπται, “it has been written,” in imitation of Jesus who used this formula, Jesus now says pointedly εἴρηται, “it has been said,” namely by God himself.

His word was, of course, also written, but Jesus stresses the fact that God himself spoke this word, and he is certainly able to speak his meaning so as to make it clear. In other words, in any quotation we must get just what is said and meant and not use another’s words in a sense which he never intended. The perfect tense “has been said” also has the present connotation: and stands thus to this day.

Jesus does not set one Scripture passage against another. Jesus places one Scripture passage beside another, each casts light on the other. He thus establishes the great principle of all correct interpretation: Scriptura ex Scriptura explicanda est, Scripture is explained and must be explained by Scripture. We dare not put our own or any other man’s ideas into it. Any false conclusions or deductions drawn from any one passage are eliminated by comparing this with other pertinent passages. No man dare force into a passage a thought that contradicts another passage. This condemns all exegesis that operates with contradictions in the Scriptures. In the present case all is clear: Ps. 91:11, 12 dare not be stressed so as to clash with Deut. 6:16: “Thou shalt not test out the Lord, thy God.”

This word of God rests on the incident recorded in Exod. 17:7 when the people demanded that God furnish them water with the challenging cry: “Is the Lord among us or not?” Their sin was that they were testing out God, trying or tempting him. Instead of praying and trustfully relying on God and leaving the fulfillment of his promises of help in need to his abounding grace the people chided and challenged God. They did it in the bad situation in which they found themselves. They did it by presumptuous lack of trust. They said virtually: “If God does not do what we demand as help, then there is no God among us, then his promises amount to nothing.” In this negative way they tempted or tried him out. And this was their sin.

The devil wants Jesus to commit this sin in the opposite or positive way, which is far worse. Jesus is in no danger, but he is deliberately to throw himself into mortal danger. And to do this for no reason whatever save to try out God regarding his promise—as if God had not proved often enough that he helps his own and keeps his Word. Such plunging oneself into mortal danger without necessity may look like supreme, heroic trust in God and thus as supreme proof of being truly a son of God. That is the lure of this temptation. This is in reality false trust and thus, as Jesus points out, nothing but tempting God, of which no true son of God would ever be guilty as little as he would be guilty of lack of trust.

All lack of trust and all false trust are closely akin. Both tempt and challenge God with their presumptions as to what he must really do to keep his promises. For Jesus to throw himself down from the Temple height is to go presumptuously beyond God’s promise and thus to tempt God and to sin against him and his promise. For Jesus not to trust God for needed food is to go presumptuously against his promise in the other way and thus to sin against him and his promise. And so the tempter is again vanquished.

Luke 4:13

13 And after having finished every temptation the devil stood away from him until a suitable season.

Luke does not report as does Matthew that Jesus ordered Satan to leave because he is not reporting the temptations in their historical order. So he says merely that, when Satan had exhausted his efforts, he stood away from Jesus. “Every temptation” (πάντα with the article) means every one of which he was capable at that time. Omnia tela consumpsit, Bengel. Even if Jesus had not ordered Satan to leave after he had reached the climax of his temptations, Satan had nothing more in the present situation by which to assail Jesus with any hope of success. But ἄχρικαιροῦ, “until a suitable season,” is significant. Though defeated, Satan intended to attack Jesus again at such a time as promised him better success. He did not come again in person but sought to turn Jesus from his course through others by using Peter (Mark 8:32, etc.), the multitude (John 6:15), and others.

Luke 4:14

14 And Jesus turned back in the power of the Spirit to Galilee; and a fame went out throughout the whole neighboring land concerning him. And he was teaching in their synagogues, being glorified by all.

In this little paragraph Luke bridges the time between the baptism and the temptation of Jesus and the full tide of his ministry in Galilee by omitting the events that lie between these events. In this respect Luke agrees with Matthew and Mark who make the same omission. Some overlook the fact that Luke differs from the other two in a marked way. Matt. 4:12 and Mark 1:14 date the full tide of the Galilean ministry from the time of the imprisonment of the Baptist. This has led to the supposition that the Baptist was imprisoned soon after having baptized Jesus, and that Jesus thus began his work after the Baptist’s work was practically ended. John 4:1, etc., shows that this is incorrect; the Baptist and Jesus worked side by side for some time.

Luke, therefore, separates the mention of the Baptist’s imprisonment (3:19) from the work of Jesus in Galilee; he connects this with Jesus’ baptism and the reception of the Spirit. What happened between this double event and the height of Jesus’ ministry is summarized in v. 14, 15. That this must have been a good deal we see from John’s Gospel and can ourselves well imagine.

“In the power of the Spirit” does not mean that the Holy Spirit led Jesus into Galilee as he led him into the wilderness to be tempted but that, being endowed with the Spirit’s power in his human nature, he proceeded to Galilee and wrought there in this power by word and by deed. “In the Spirit” thus goes back not only to v. 2 but even to 3:22. God’s great purpose in bestowing his Spirit upon Jesus was being completely fulfilled. The effect of Jesus’ work was that all the neighboring land adjoining Galilee (καθʼ ὅληςτῆςπεριχώρου, supply γῆς) heard about Jesus; κατά = “throughout,” R. 607. We see how much Jesus must have done in order to attain this widespread fame.

Luke 4:15

15 Luke mentions only the most important feature of Jesus’ activity, his teaching in the synagogues, the imperfect tense indicates the steady practice of Jesus. Synagogues were used also on two of the weekdays. The rulers of the synagogue might permit any rabbi or established teacher to address the people; so Paul found his way into the synagogues everywhere. The participle δοξαζόμενος is not causal: “since he was glorified,” but modal (R. 1127): “as being glorified by all.” Luke is speaking in general of Galilee where no opposition had as yet arisen.

Luke 4:16

16 Luke begins the narration of the incidents of the activity of Jesus in Galilee by recounting what took place on one occasion in his own home town Nazareth. This incident is chosen, it seems, because it illustrates in a general way how Jesus met with great approval among the people for a time and then saw this turn into opposition to him. By starting with this incident Luke abandons the chronological order from the very start so that we cannot depend on him to state the exact sequence of events. He is more concerned with the inner significance and the connection of what he presents than with the order of time although he also in a general way adheres to that. Compare the brief account in Matt. 13:54, etc., and in Mark 6:1, etc.

And he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up. And according to the custom for him he went on the day of the Sabbath into the synagogue and stood up to read.

Luke makes the preliminaries brief and hurries us into the synagogue. Jesus came from Capernaum and the neighborhood of the sea. Nazareth was the town in which he “had been brought up” (periphrastic past perfect) from earliest childhood till the age of thirty (2:39; 3:23). Here he had buried his foster-father, supported his mother with his labors as a carpenter, was known by all, and was in contact with them all those years. At the start of his ministry he moved the family to Capernaum (John 2:12) in order the more conveniently to reach his mother. Something like a year ago the people of Nazareth had seen him leave as an ordinary man; he now returns to them with the fame of his deeds running high through the land. The relative clause with the past perfect passive from τρέφω, “to nourish,” refers only to his physical development, not to what we usually call home-training, education, and formation of character; this clause is added for the sake of what follows in v. 22, 23.

Jesus must have arrived before the Sabbath, and Mark adds that his disciples were with him. The Greek plural as well as the singular are used as a designation for a single Sabbath; this is probably due to the fact that festivals were designated by the plural. So Jesus went to the synagogue “on the day of the Sabbath.” Τὸεἰωθός is the perfect active neuter participle of ἔθω, it is used here as an adjective (R. 537) and is substantivized by the article and means literally “according to what has been customary to him.” This is often referred to the years when Jesus lived in Nazareth, and lessons are drawn from it accordingly; but the reference is to v. 15, the custom of Jesus during his ministry when he used the synagogues so extensively for his preaching. On this day the synagogue must have been filled to capacity, for Jesus, the famous teacher, was attending with his band of disciples. The question whether the κατά phrase extends also to the verb “stood up to read” is of minor importance; it does not seem to modify this verb. This does not, of course, deny the custom of Jesus in teaching in the synagogues, which is already expressed in v. 15.

The synagogues had no official readers; any competent male member might read one or the other lesson. The Pentateuch was divided into fixed pericopes, and these were always read first in the established order, one for each Sabbath of the year. At the Sabbath morning service, and only at this, not at the weekday services, a second lesson was read, again from a fixed line that was taken from the prophetical books. The first were called parashoth, the latter haphtaroth as closing the service. The lesson from the Pentateuch was considered the more important, but the reader of the second lesson might, if he desired, add an address that was in more or less close connection with what he had read. Jesus waited until the haphtarah was to be read and then arose to indicate his desire to do the reading.

It does not seem that he had been asked in advance; the probability is that everybody, including the synagogue rulers, expected it of him. It seems that Jesus waited for this lesson because he desired to add his midrash or comment thereon. It was the fixed custom, as Luke also describes, for the reader to stand while reading but to sit while making his address. To add this address was an entirely voluntary matter. This seems to be the first time that Jesus spoke publicly in Nazareth and, as far as we know, the last.

Luke 4:17

17 And there was duly given to him a roll of the prophet Isaiah. And having opened the roll, he found the place where it had been written:

The Lord’s Spirit upon me

Since he did anoint me to preach good news to poor people,

Has sent me to herald to captives release

And to blind people return of sight;

To send away such as have been broken in release;

To herald a year acceptable to the Lord.

After Jesus had ascended the steps of the bima to act as the maphtir or reader, the chazzan (clerk) drew aside the silk curtain of the painted ark, which contained the sacred manuscripts, and handed him the megillah or roll of the prophet Isaiah. Βύβλος is the Egyptian papyrus plant from which there are derived Βίβλος and the diminutive βιβλίον in the sense of “paper,” “writing,” “book”; it was here in the form of a roll; and some texts read ἀναπνύξας, “having unrolled” (from ἀναπτύσσω) instead of ἀνοίξας, “having opened,” and so in v. 20 πτύξας would mean “having rolled up.” Ἀπό in ἀπεδόθη implies that the roll which contained only the writings of Isaiah was “duly given” to Jesus. He did not ask for this prophet. It is the general opinion that fixed haphtaroth were not as yet in use, which would agree with Luke’s statement that Jesus “found” the passage which he then read.

Isaiah was very likely the prophet from whom readings had been made on previous Sabbaths. Coincidences such as this that Isaiah, the evangelist among the prophets, was placed into Jesus’ hands on this day are due to divine providence. We need not carry the coincidence farther so as to include the fact that Jesus just happened on the passage in Isaiah that was so appropriate for the present occasion; “he found” may well mean that Jesus let his eyes run over the columns of writing until he found the lines which he intended to find and read. “Had been written,” ἦν with the perfect participle, is the periphrastic form. Luke omits mention of the fact that the Hebrew of the prophet was at once translated into the Aramaic vernacular, which Jesus most likely did himself. In reading the parashoth each Masoretic verse had to be translated at once; in the case of the haphtaroth as much as three verses were taken at a time. Jesus, too, read only what would make one long verse, Isa. 61:1, 2.

Luke 4:18

18 Luke records the LXX’s rendering, which reproduces the Hebrew sufficiently. The main difference is the line: “And recovering of sight for the blind” for the Hebrew: “And the opening of the prison to them that are bound.” But this giving of sight may refer to men in dark dungeons who at last come to the light of day; Luke retained the LXX’s translation of this line. But according to the best texts “he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted” (see A. V.) is omitted by Luke although it is found in both the LXX and the Hebrew; and a line that is found in neither is added, apparently from Isa. 58:6: “To send away such as have been broken in release” (our translation), although this line in Isa. 58 refers only to a godly Jew and his proper way of fasting. The usual explanation is that this line is added as a midrash or comment; and we may in general say that Luke is not copying the haphtarah that Jesus read line for line but the words on which Jesus preached as his text. The Hebrew has “Lord” in the beginning twice, not so the LXX and Luke; and in the last line the LXX’s καλέσαι is made κηρῦξαι by Luke. The choice of this passage from Isaiah by Jesus was masterly in the highest degree as was also the fact that he stopped just where he did and did not add “and the day of vengeance of our God,” on which Jesus did not wish to speak.

In his dramatic way Isaiah introduces a speaker without naming him and lets us see who he really is from what he says. It cannot be God as it is in chapter 59, for God cannot be anointed with the Spirit; nor can the prophet Isaiah here speak of himself, for this would not only be a novelty in his book but would be attributing to himself the mighty work which he attributes in his entire book to the great Ebed Yahweh, Yahweh’s Servant, the Messiah. The question is, of course, settled by Jesus himself who interprets Isaiah’s words as referring directly to himself (Jesus).

This clears up the question about the imagery employed by Isaiah. We may admit that all of it refers to the coming release from the Babylonian exile and certainly found its fulfillment in that release. But it is impossible to stop there unless, as Aug. Pieper puts it in his excellent Jesaias II, 572, the mountain is to travail and bring forth a mouse, and unless Jesus is turned into a liar. Whatever the preliminary fulfillment in the return from the exile may be, the complete fulfillment came in the Messiah, the Servant of Jehovah, Jesus, who was in the midst of the fulfillment when he spoke in Nazareth.

“The Lord’s Spirit upon me,” as well as the next line: “since he did anoint me,” etc., evidently intend to recall 3:22, the coming down of the Spirit to remain upon Jesus, this constituting the anointing for his great office. This constitutes the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy. Πνεῦμα is the same term that was used throughout the previous part of this Gospel with Κυρίου as a rendering of the Hebrew Ruach Adonai Yahweh, the third person of the Godhead; and again it is here to be noted that the people of Nazareth need no explanation whatever about the person of this Spirit, they were evidently conversant with the Holy Trinity from the Old Testament. We translate οὖἕνεκεν, not “therefore,” darum, but “since,” weil. Not for this reason that the Spirit was already upon him did the Lord anoint Jesus but because God anointed Jesus the Spirit was upon him. The subject of ἔχρισε is not the Spirit but, as the Hebrew shows by repeating Yahweh, the Lord. The verb χρίω is used to designate ceremonial anointing in a sacred act, hence the anointed one is χριστός, Christ.

The anointing sanctified and equipped for a mighty work: “to preach good tidings to poor people”; note the force of this infinitive of purpose of the verb in 1:19; 2:10; 3:18, the aorist tense is constative (including all the preaching of Jesus) and effective. We have πτωχοῖς, like the following terms for persons, without the article, which stresses the quality in each term; so here: “to poor (people),” to such as are poor. In the Greek the two words to gospel poor (ones) are correlative: for such the gospel is intended, and such will receive the gospel. The infinitive, as the following statements show, refers to the preaching of the gospel in the narrower sense, which includes only grace and pardon, not in the wider sense as including also the law. The word πτωχός, from the verb “to cringe,” “to crouch” like a beggar (M.-M. 559) is stronger than just “poor.” In Matt. 5:3 Jesus calls them “the beggarly poor in spirit”; Isa. 66:2: “But to this man will I look, even to him that is poor, and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my Word.”

This is not the poverty against which the will rebels but under which the will bows in deep submission. It is more than just a state or condition, it is also an attitude of the soul toward God, that attitude that grows out of the profound realization of utter helplessness and beggary as far as any ability or possession of self are concerned. These wretched beggars bring absolutely nothing to God but their complete emptiness and need and stoop in the dust for pure grace and mercy only. This is the condition and the attitude of true contrition for which the Baptist worked, on which Jesus insisted, and which alone opens the heart for the grace of the gospel so that Jesus says of such “poor in spirit” that theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

The rest of v. 18 is an exposition of this preaching of good news. The anointing was done for an office, so we have the parallel verb “sent me,” but now in the perfect tense, for this commission was still in force when Jesus spoke in Nazareth. Ἀποστέλλω is “to send or commission” as an “apostle” or ambassador, and “to herald to captives release” is a definition of what it means “to preach good news to poor people.” Κηρῦξαι is again the constative and effective aorist, the word is translated “to preach” in the sense of making a public announcement as a herald delivers a message.

In a new figure that befits the exile the “poor” are now described as “captives” (again no article). The image is not that of prisoners in jail but of prisoners of war who are dragged away into exile by the conqueror. So the devil holds men as captives with no hope of escape by any means of their own. And Jesus has the great commission to stand forth as a herald and to proclaim to them ἄφεσις, “release.” This word is a correlative of captives and is thus used in the sense of release; but it is the standard term of the New Testament for the remission of sins, sending them away forever (compare 1:77). This herald-announcement is not an empty message but the authoritative, effective “release” itself which transfers these sighing captives of Satan into the liberty of the sons of God.

“To blind people return of sight” is the LXX’s rendering of the Hebrew “the opening of the prison to bound people.” It may well be possible that the translator understood phaqach, which is regularly used regarding the opening of the eyes, to mean the same thing here and translated it with ἀνάβλεψις, “return of sight,” so that we must understand “blind (ones)” to refer to “bound” captives in dark dungeons. How they would rejoice again to come to the light of day! This line would then intensify the preceding one regarding captives in exile by adding those captives who were lodged in dungeons. But it would be unwarranted to speak of them as knowing nothing of God, “having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart,” who “being past feeling have given themselves over to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness,” Eph. 4:18, 19, in pagan blindness; for such must first receive the law, and not until after it has done its work could the gospel give them the ἀνάβλεψις of faith. These are “blind” who have been brought to a sense of their blindness (Rom. 3:20), and to whom Jesus can give the sight of faith. Note that this and the preceding line thus go together: the ἄφεσις is the release of absolution (objective) which goes together with the ἀνάβλεψις of faith (subjective), both being bestowed by Jesus.

One more thought is needed. These poor sinners are also crushed and shattered by their sin, τεθραυσμένοι, the perfect participle (θραύω) to denote a condition that still continues. Sin wrecks and makes wretched by its crushing, shattering consequences in this life, and the Savior grants absolution to faith and also frees from wretchedness and restores joy and peace. This is what “to send away in release” signifies, which again uses ἄφεσις but now as a designation for the release from this broken condition.

The inner connection of the terms has not always been seen. “Poor” is a general term for the entire beggarly condition. This is then specified in three directions: as needing absolution, the sight of faith, the release from misery. What a glorious task is assigned to Jesus to bring the effective bestowal of these priceless blessings to these “poor”!

Luke 4:19

19 The closing line is the climax of what the Messiah is to herald (again κηρῦξαι) and thereby actually to usher in, namely “a year acceptable to the Lord,” to him as Κύριος or Yahweh. This imagery is not taken from the exile but from the Jewish year of jubilee, which was, always the fiftieth year after seven sabbatical years; the Hebrew yobel signifies the trumpet blasts that ushered in the year, Lev. 25:8, etc., see the description. It is usually called Jehovah’s year of grace, but Isaiah calls it a year “acceptable” or pleasing to the Lord, for this is the new era which the Messiah shall usher in. It pleases the Lord because in it his plans of salvation are being carried out through Jesus. The κηρύσσειν of Jesus is the yōbēl year, indeed, as the lines cited in v. 18 testify.

Luke 4:20

20 And having closed the roll, having given it to the attendant, he sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were looking intently on him. Moreover, he began to say to them, Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your ears.

It is as if an eyewitness were describing this scene, and Luke must have received the story from such a witness. Jesus makes no strange move of any kind. The scroll was not retained by the speaker while he spoke his comment. The clerk took it from Jesus’ hands and placed it reverently back into the ark. Then Jesus sat down on the high platform cross-legged on its floor just as the hearers sat cross-legged on the floor of the synagogue. There must have been a dignity and a power in his whole appearance, in every inflection of his voice, and in every gesture and movement, that riveted all eyes in the synagogue upon him. The scene was far above what any one in Nazareth realized. The Word himself had read the Word to them. When Jesus sat down, this was a signal that he would make an address.

Luke 4:21

21 The formula “he began” with an infinitive, here “to speak,” is circumstantial and marks the importance of this speaking. It does not need to mean that the sentence recorded was the first one spoken, but it does mean that Jesus spoke at some length, ἤρξατο to indicate the point of beginning (aorist) and λέγειν to indicate the address that followed (present tense, durative). Luke records only the theme and the substance of the address, and we should note that the perfect passive “has been fulfilled” is regularly used regarding the fulfillment of prophecies; the sense is “stands this day as fulfilled” since the Messiah, who has the Spirit upon him, is now present and doing all that Isaiah foretold of him in “this Scripture.” “In your ears” is added because this Scripture had just been read, and because Jesus was now elucidating it to them. Would that Nazareth had known, at least in this her day, the things which belonged to her peace, but, alas, like Jerusalem, they were hid from her eyes!

Luke 4:22

22 And all were giving him testimony and were marvelling at the words of grace proceeding out of his mouth and were saying, Is not this the son of Joseph?

The imperfect tenses describe the immediate effect of the address of Jesus on the Isaiah prophecy and at the same time hint at a further development of the scene. The hearers did not leave the synagogue, and all the following takes place until Jesus is forcibly put out by the worshippers (v. 29). What caused the trouble for the people was the fact that words of such grace (descriptive genitive, which is stronger than an adjective)—Matthew and Mark mention the “wisdom” and also the mighty works—should come from the mouth of this their former townsman whom they knew as “the son of Joseph” (3:23); they mention also his and his father’s occupation as carpenters, his mother, and other relatives, Matt. 13:55, 56; Mark 6:3. Οὖτος is purely deictic, R. 697. It is the question with οὐ (οὐχ before an aspirate), which expects an affirmative reply, that shows the turn toward unbelief. Despite all the attractive words these people cannot believe that this is the Messiah.

Luke 4:23

23 And he said to them: Doubtless you will say to me this proverb, Physician, cure thyself! What things we heard as having occurred in Capernaum do also here in your native place!

Luke takes up the point that is indicated by Matthew and Mark by their reference to Jesus’ “works of power,” the miracles of which the people in Nazareth had heard, and a few of which some may have seen when they were visiting Capernaum. From Jesus’ words we gather that the people found fault with Jesus for not distinguishing his own πατρίς or native place by working a lot of such “works of power there.” Jesus first lays his finger on this cause of dissatisfaction among his auditors and then gives his reply in v. 24, etc. The παραβολή, mashal or pointed saying about a physician’s curing himself, first of all recalls the mockery under the cross about a savior of others saving himself. Jesus himself at once explains in what way that saying would apply here: whatever these people heard (aorist to indicate the simple fact whereas we should have the perfect “have heard”) as having occurred in Capernaum, i. e., through Jesus in the way of miracles, they would demand that he most certainly do also in his own town. And he seems to be making no effort in that direction. Mark says no more than that he laid his hands on a few sick folk and healed them, which must have occurred before the Sabbath, likely on the Friday when he arrived. The participle γενόμενα is a descriptive adjective (modifying ὅσα) and yet is used in indirect discourse, R. 1103; and εἰς is static, the equivalent of ἐν, although even some recent commentators put motion into it.

Luke 4:24

24 Moreover, he said: Amen, I say to you, that no prophet is acceptable in his native place. Nevertheless of a truth I tell you: There were many widows in the days of Elijah in Israel when the heaven was shut up for three years and six months, when there came a great famine over all the land; and to no one of them was Elijah sent except to Sarepta of Sidon to a widow woman. And many lepers were in Israel at the time of Elisha, the prophet, and no one of them was cleansed except Naaman, the Syrian.

In v. 23 Jesus states only the thoughts and the demand of the people of Nazareth. And in v. 24, etc., he gives an answer to those thoughts. That is why Luke inserts εἶπεδέ, “moreover, he said.” Another reason is the weight of the answer indicated by the formula, “amen, I say to you,” which lifts the entire answer into prominence.

“Amen” is the seal of verity, and “I say to you” the seal of authority. “Amen” is the transliterated Hebrew word for “truth” or “verity,” an adverbial accusative in the Greek which is equal to ἀληθῶς, “verily.” In the Hebrew it appears only at the end of a statement or of an obligation much like our liturgical amen. “All search in Jewish literature has not brought to light a real analogy for the idiomatic use of the single or of the double ἀμήν on the part of Jesus.” Zahn. This refers to its use at the head of a statement. The best one can say is that Jesus used the double “amen” (as John has it) when he spoke in Aramaic, and that when the synoptists changed this into Greek they deemed the single ἀμήν sufficient for their readers. The supposition that John’s double amen is intended to reproduce the sound of the Aramaic words for “I say” is unlikely and leaves unexplained why John adds the words “I say to you” to the double amen. In the latter all the authority of Jesus as the one who knows and whose word is beyond question comes out. The entire formula is always solemn and introduces only statements of great importance.

It sounds like a proverbial saying that no prophet is acceptable (δεκτός as in v. 19) in his native place, and Mark elaborates, in his own country and among his own kin and in his own house. The nearer home, the less acceptable, the less honored. The amen formula lifts this common saying into special prominence as intending to say: “It is surely proved once more by you people of Nazareth among whom I grew up. You, my townsmen, ought to be foremost in believing in me, but no, you refuse to believe at all.”

25, 26) Δέ is adversative: in spite of his being unacceptable to his townsmen Jesus gives them the following assurance. The ring of authority continues from v. 24: “I tell you,” and also the assurance of verity in ἐπʼ ἀληθείας, “on the basis of truth.” But it ought to be seen at once that this strong preamble is not intended to support the historical actuality of the two illustrations cited from the Old Testament (1 Kings 17:8, 9; 2 Kings 5:1, 14) but, as in v. 24, the genuineness of the application of these illustrations to the people of Nazareth. They never doubted that Elijah and Elisha had done what was recorded, but they did not see that the deeds of these prophets in the interest of a pagan widow and a pagan general had any bearing upon them. They thought that, as compared with Capernaum to which Jesus had but recently removed (John 2:12), Jesus certainly ought to distinguish his native town Nazareth where he had grown to his greatness with at least equal works of power. Jesus replies by showing by two Scriptural examples that any claims that are based on such grounds are most certainly not sound. Did not two of Israel’s greatest prophets do their mightiest works in the interest of two pagan people who were not even Israelites?

What about the claims of all the starving widows in Israel in the days of the great famine when the country (this is the sense of γῆ) had no rain for three years and six months (ἐπί in the sense of “up to” when referring to time) over against the one heathen widow up in the heathen country, in the little village of Sarepta (Hebrew Sarephath) that belonged to the great city of Sidon in Phœnicia? Yet God sent Elijah to this widow alone.

James 5:17 agrees as to the length of the time of the famine. A disagreement has been found between these statements and 1 Kings 17:1 and 18:1 by claiming that the drought ended in the third year. But the first passage says only “these years” and does not fix the length of time but only implies several years and thus agrees well with 3½. And the second passage does not say or mean “in the third year” of the drought as some understand it but “in the third year,” which started with Elijah’s coming to Sarepta (1 Kings 17:8). So every discrepancy disappears; First Kings does not say how long the drought lasted, Jewish tradition knew it to be 3½ years. It may or may not be that 3½, as the half of 7, is symbolical; it is certainly not regarded so in Kings or in Luke or in James.

Luke 4:27

27 The same is true with regard to Naaman. What of the claims of all the lepers in Israel? They belonged to Elisha’s native land. Yet he works his mightiest work in the interest of a pagan leper of heathen Syria! Ἐπί, “at the time of Elisha is good Greek,” R. W. P.

The argument involved in these illustrations is overwhelming. The people of Nazareth were comparing two Galilean cities: their own town where Jesus had actually been a native and Capernaum where he had removed over a year ago. The examples top this with a reference to all the widows and lepers in the whole of Israel and one widow and one leper of pagan lands. What is then the force of the argument? The gifts of God’s grace, in particular the works of his power, are not bestowed because of nationality or outward connection of any kind. Nazareth has no claims over against Capernaum nor, for that matter, Capernaum over against any other city.

All the widows and all the lepers in all Israel had no claims that God recognized over against the widow of Sarepta and Naaman of Syria. There are no claims that coerce God; he bestows the gifts of his grace and mercy freely, without human merit or worthiness, yet not arbitrarily but according to his gracious plans and designs, in which he considers man’s need and emptiness and the hearts that make no claims at all—these he delights to bless.

Jesus did not come to Nazareth because it was his native city and thus had special claims on him; he had not gone to Capernaum for any such reason. He brought the gospel to Nazareth as he brought it to any number of places in Galilee. Instead of receiving him gladly Nazareth thought of its special claims, met Jesus with this presumption, and ended by driving him out. And thus Jesus could do no mighty works there “because of their unbelief” (Matthew) which caused even Jesus to marvel (Mark). This is often taken to mean that faith must precede miracles. But no faith preceded in the case of the widow or that of the general nor in many miracles that were wrought by Jesus; in many cases faith was to follow.

But it does mean that where open unbelief and its arrogant presumption meet Jesus nothing is left for him but to turn away. Matt. 10:14, 15; Acts 13:46, 47; 28:25–28.

Luke 4:28

28 And they were all filled with fury in the synagogue on hearing these things, and, having arisen, they threw him out outside of the city and brought him as far as the hill’s brow on which their city had been built so as to cast him down the precipice. But he, having gone through their midst, went on his way.

We see that the preceding events happened in the synagogue. Instead of taking to heart what Jesus said, dropping their presumptions, and allowing themselves to be humbled so that God might thus bless them through Jesus they went into a rage at what they heard. Many modern preachers would regard this as the gravest kind of mistake on Jesus’ part. They think it the part of wisdom to be soft and yielding toward unbelief and presumption and never to strike it down with the cudgel of the law. But Jesus kept causing commotions like this, and Peter and James followed his example (Acts 4:10, 19, 20), so did all the apostles (Acts 5:30–32), likewise Stephen (Acts 7:51–54). The harder the unbelief, the harder the blows it receives from Jesus, Matt. 23:13, etc.

Luke 4:29

29 Violent hands thrust Jesus out of the synagogue. The congregation turned into a mob and hurried Jesus to the brow (ὀφρύς, literally, “eyebrow”) of the high hill on which their city had been built (past perfect), which falls in a precipice on the far side, so as to (ὥστε, contemplated result, R. W. P.) crowd him over the precipice (only one word, κατακρημνίζω, from κρημνός, an overhanging bank or precipice). This place is still shown to tourists. Murder on the very Sabbath!

We cannot determine whether they chose this plan to do away with Jesus in order to escape the technical guilt of murder. The whole affair stands out in abnormal hideousness even in the life of Jesus. We recall that James the Less was pushed from the parapet of the Temple and then dispatched on the rocks below. The intention of the people of Nazareth foreshadows the violent end of Jesus and thus furnishes another reason why Luke placed this narrative in the forepart of his Gospel.

Luke 4:30

30 Did Jesus use his miraculous power to pass from the brow of the hill through the midst of the murderous mob? Many deny it and think it enough to refer to the majesty of Jesus’ person but forget that this majesty did not deter this mob from bringing Jesus to this precipice to kill him. And right here, when one thrust would have done it, Jesus walks calmly through the crowd and, altogether unmolested, walks on his way and leaves Nazareth forever. This sign of his miraculous might Jesus left them in order to strike dismay into their hearts, to lead them to repentance, if possible, to warn them of his power of judgment if they continued obdurate. The imperfect ἐπορεύετο is dramatic here at the end—Jesus proceeded on his way! He does not run, he simply walks on and on. Luke omits all reference to the disciples who were present (Mark 6:1).

Luke 4:31

31 And he went down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee. And he was engaged in teaching them on the Sabbath. And they were in astonishment at his teaching because his word was in connection with authority.

Luke follows Mark 1:21, etc., in describing a day in Capernaum and details the same two miracles that are reported by Mark. The fact that καί indicates no connection of time with what precedes warns us in regard to the connection of time in succeeding narratives. “Went down” is used because the lake lies 600 feet below sea level, and Capernaum is called a city of Galilee because it is introduced to Theophilus who is not conversant with the towns of Galilee; its mention in v. 23 was only incidental. Luke writes throughout from the standpoint of the world which is a distinction of his Gospel. The time when Jesus came to Capernaum is indicated in a way by Mark (1:14–21).

The fact that Jesus was engaged in teaching (the periphrastic imperfect, descriptive like the verb in the next verse) in the local synagogue appears from v. 33 as well as from Mark. And the fact that one Sabbath is referred to is plain from Mark, τὰσάββατα meaning “Sabbath” (v. 16) just like the singular and just as festivals were designated by plurals. It goes without saying that the rulers of the synagogue requested Jesus to instruct the people as they did in v. 16 by inviting him as they did the sopherim, the professional scribes who were learned in the law.

Luke 4:32

32 The effect of the teaching is described by another imperfect. The verb used is very strong; the people were struck as by a blow, ἐκπλήσσειν, ausser sich bringen, betaeuben, “were being dumbfounded.” Matthew has used the same verb at the end of the Sermon on the Mount. What produced this effect was the διδαχή of Jesus. This word may mean the act of teaching (active) or the doctrine taught (passive); C.-K., 293, think of the latter although the manner of Jesus’ teaching cannot well be dissociated from the substance of what he taught.

Ὅτι states the reason for this astonishment at the teaching of Jesus. His λόγος, what he said, was coupled with (ἦνἐν) authority, ἐξουσία, Mark adds that it was unlike that of the scribes. The teaching of Jesus came as the Word of God which was presented undiminished in its force by the Son of God and went home with all its power to the astonishment of these Jews who had never heard the like. This was no skimming of the surface, no quoting of human authorities and basing conclusions on them, no trivialities and useless distinctions, no arid dissertations and legal human precepts that led to nothing. The “word” of Jesus reached the conscience and the heart with unerring directness and made shiningly clear the will of God and Jesus’ own great mission. No man ever spake like this man, John 7:46.

Luke 4:33

33 With this description of the essentials, the two imperfects also intimating that something is to follow, the event is now narrated. And in the synagogue there was a man having a spirit of an unclean demon, and he yelled out with a great voice: Ha! What have we to do with thee, Jesus Nazarene? Thou didst come to destroy us! I know thee, who thou art, the Holy One of God.

From Mark we gather that this demoniac did not sit in the audience until Jesus was through teaching but burst into the synagogue with his yelling. Mark writes ἐνπνεύματι, “in connection with an unclean spirit,” Luke uses ἔχων, “having,” etc., and the unusual turn “a spirit of an unclean demon,” the genitive being appositional: a spirit, namely an unclean demon. The first miracle which Luke, the physician, reports is the deliverance of a demoniac; he reports others of the same kind and agrees with Jesus as to the reality of demoniacal possession.

There is a strong tendency among commentators, even those of the better sort, to deny this reality as it is presented in the Scriptures. The demoniacs are thought to have been people who were afflicted with some mania, an unbalanced condition of mind, or were perhaps lunatics or epileptics. But what is gained? As regards the great miracles wrought upon these persons, they remain whatever the affliction under which they suffered. These views, however, run foul of something that is more serious. Jesus either knew or did not know that these were not demoniacs.

If he did not know their real condition, we have a Savio who was as ignorant as were the people of his day. If he did know that these were not demoniacs he acted as if they were, and we have a Savior who could act a lie. To say that Jesus only “accommodated himself” to the popular opinion leaves his case under a moral stigma. The fact is that he never lowered himself to any falsehood whatever, no matter how widely or strongly it was held.

The Scriptures distinguish clearly between all forms of ordinary disease and the peculiar affliction of demoniacal possession. Jesus, for instance, addressed the demons, and these spoke to him and often did that in statements which the human sufferers themselves could not have made. “It is in vain to clear away from the Gospel narratives the devil and his demons. Such an exegesis is opposed to the whole faith of the world at that time. If we are now to make these statements mean just what we please, why did no single man in the ancient world understand them thus? Have we become wiser? Then let us congratulate ourselves on our wisdom; but we cannot on that account compel these venerable writers to say what in their own time they neither could nor would say.” Horst, Zauber-bibliothek.

Matson, The Adversary, 177, etc., settles the question as to present-day cases, some of which still occur in heathen lands: “A certain abnormal state of mind exists, which is not insanity according to the legal definition of the term. It is a state unaffected, so far as science can prove, by any physical condition of the body; on which medicine appears to have no effect, and on which religion alone seems to exercise a beneficial control.” Christ gave his apostles power to drive out possessing spirits. The supposition that Jesus accommodated himself to the views of the people in order to help these sufferers denies his omnipotent power as the Son of God and thus brings him down to the level of modern “healers.” Nor can anyone show why Jesus and his better knowledge would not enlighten at least his chosen disciples but left them, as is supposed, under the old delusion. What Jesus said to the seventy when they returned to him after driving out devils also more than establishes the reality of such terrible possession, 10:18, etc. Compare Trench, Miracles, 160, etc.

The speech of the “spirit” shows that he is a personal being as the Scriptures teach regarding all πνεύματα. In this first case recorded in his Gospel Luke calls this spirit “an unclean demon,” which predicates that every trace of moral purity was absent, and utter foulness had become this spirit’s nature. Rushing into the solemn assembly in the synagogue on the Sabbath, this man is forced to violate both the sacred time and the place, for he yells out his objection to Jesus. Something of his devilishness appears in the strong verb ἀνέκραζε, to which “with a great voice” is added. The yelling rang through the building.

We may imagine the excitement that was caused among the assembled people. Something strange and uncanny that is beyond our ordinary comprehension makes this demon seek out Jesus in public and express what in an uncanny and supernatural way he knows about Jesus. We should think that the demon would drive the man away from Jesus in order to keep his hold on him the longer. It is beyond us why the devil rushes the man into the presence of Jesus and singles out Jesus as he does.

Luke 4:34

34 We regard ἔα as the interjection “ha!” It expresses several emotions, here indignation, as much as to say to Jesus; “Ha! here you are!” The question τίἡμῖνκαὶσοι; is idiomatic, literally: “What is there for us and for thee?” (the first person before the second in the Greek). The sense is: “Get out and let us alone!” The plural identifies this spirit with others of his kind; he is trying to get rid of Jesus for all of them. In John 2:4 this idiom is used by Jesus when he is putting off an implied request whereas it is here used to ward off hostile action from Jesus, B.-P., 335, under ἐγώ.

The astounding thing is that the demoniacs always recognize Jesus in his deity, in Matt. 8:29 as the Son of God, in Mark 5:7 as the Son of the Most High God, and here as the Holy One of God. And with this knowledge of his person there goes the further super-knowledge that Jesus has come to oust them from their unholy dominion. Those who deny that evil spirits actually took possession of human beings are compelled to resort to unwarranted means to explain these facts. Mental defectives and epileptics never exhibit such phenomena of inexplicable intelligence. It is always plain, too, that the demon is the speaker but uses the man’s organs; the man himself is never the speaker.

We cannot see that ἡμῖν and ἡμᾶς refer to the demon plus the people in the synagogue as though Jesus had come to destroy also the latter. The demon calls Jesus by his ordinary name “Jesus Nazarene,” which is only the common name by which Jesus was generally known since he had lived for so long a time in Nazareth. The demon can hardly be asking a question with ἦλθεςκτλ. (our versions), either a question for information or one that is merely rhetorical. He is stating a fact: “Thou didst come to destroy us”; and this is said in anger in order to blame Jesus. We see the same thing in Matt. 8:29. Ἀπολέσαι, the effective aorist, does not mean “to annihilate” but “to ruin” by driving the demons out of their control of human beings, by destroying their damnable works.

The demon yells out in a malicious way that he knows who Jesus is, “the Holy One of God.” The demon makes this direct public declaration because he knows that Jesus does not want it made, but that the people should discover who he really is from his words and his works. Jesus never proclaimed that he was the Messiah or the Son of God but let men draw this conclusion, and when they drew it in either hostile or believing fashion he substantiated it. This is the case even in John 4:25, 26 where all that Jesus had said made the woman think of the Messiah, Jesus then told her that this was he himself. So Jesus, indeed, revealed his person as being God’s Son and the promised Messiah.

In the New Testament the believers are called ἅγιοι, “holy ones” or “saints,” and in Ps. 106:16 Aaron is called ἅγιοςΚυρίου, “the Lord’s saint”; but in neither Testament is a mere man called ὁἅγιοςτοῦΘεοῦ. This is not even a common title for the Messiah since it occurs only in the parallel passage in Mark and in John 6:69; in Acts 4:27 we have ἅγιοςπαῖςτοῦΘεοῦ, “the holy Servant of God.” “The Holy One of God” is the Son of God whom God sanctified and sent into the world (John 10:36), who was conceived of the Holy Spirit and then anointed by the Spirit for his holy office, sanctified and separated unto God for his great work. Thus he was “holy,” sinless in all his life and his work, lifted above sin and death, possessing power over both to destroy them, and thus a terror to the demon world.

Luke 4:35

35 And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Be silent and come out from him! And the demon, having hurled him into the midst, came out from him, in no way having injured him.

Not for one instant does Jesus accept the testimony of the demon; he instantly silences him. Note the two peremptory aorist imperatives and the absolute mastery of the commands, instant obedience beyond question follows. Φιμώθητι is passive, literally, “be muzzled,” which some render like a middle, “be silent.” And on the instant the demon is to come “away from him,” ἀπό instead of Mark’s ἐκ.

Jesus is obeyed instantly: “the demon went out from him.” The stress is on this simple statement of the miracle. This was a display of the omnipotent power of Jesus right in Satan’s own domain. The raising of the dead as well as this expulsion of demons by a single command exhibit Jesus’ power in the highest degree. The first attendant circumstance is that in going out the demon hurled the man into the midst of the worshippers in the synagogue with an effect upon them that we may imagine (ῥίψαν, neuter participle because of τὸδαιμόνιον). Mark explains this by saying that the demon convulsed him. We might suppose that this caused the man great injury, but after Jesus spoke, the demon did not dare to injure his victim any more.

He hurled him among the worshippers rather in order to frighten them than for any other reason. βλάψαν is a neuter aorist participle but, like verbs of doing good or harm, is followed by two accusatives (R. 484), μηδέν being that of the inner content (R. 482): “having injured him nothing.” It is Luke, the physician, who notes this feature of the case. The fact that he adds this point shows not only his medical interest but quietly informs us that he knew all about the case apart from Mark’s record of it. It should be plain that Luke is not dependent on Mark or on Matthew either even when he follows them almost verbatim.

Luke 4:36

36 And there came amazement on all, and they were talking together to each other, saying, What is this word? seeing that with authority and power he issues orders to the unclean spirits, and they come out. And there was going out a noise concerning him into every place of the neighboring region.

The strong emotion expressed by θάμβος (Mark uses the verb) released itself in the question that was passed from one to the other again and again (the descriptive imperfect συνελάλουν): “What is this word?” etc., λόγος in the sense of Rede, which refers, as Mark shows, to both the teaching and the way in which Jesus handled the demoniac. We cannot see that ὅτι is ambiguous, or that the choice lies between causal (our versions) and declarative ὅτι. The former would have to be elliptical, and the very subject of the clause would have to be supplied; and the declarative idea, that the ὅτι clause states the contents of the λόγος, is still more remote. This is the so-called consecutive ὅτι (R. 1001, where he is sure whereas in W. P. he would have us choose one of the other two as both making good (?) sense): “seeing that with authority,” etc. In view of the authority and the power with which Jesus issues orders to the unclean spirits and they leave—what is this λόγος or doctrine that they have heard?

The plural generalizes from the one case, and the present tenses are used as they are in any general proposition, the thing occurs in any case that may be found. These terrible and most vicious demon spirits yield helplessly the instant Jesus speaks. Yet, although the people note “the authority and the power” that are connected with (ἐν) the commanding they ask only about “this word” with which Jesus operates and do not advance to the person in whom this authority and this power must reside to be able to work through his word. So these people after all fell short of apprehending what stood forth so plainly before them that Sabbath day in their synagogue.

Luke 4:37

37 The effect of this miracle went far beyond Capernaum. An ἦχος is a noise (our echo) which people hear; Mark has the counterpart ἀκοή which is taken from the act of hearing. It penetrated “into every place (village and town) in the neighboring region” (Galilee, Mark). This is a remark which presents Jesus at the height of his ministry, his deeds are noised about in all Galilee.

Luke 4:38

38 A comparison of their accounts shows that Luke followed neither Mark nor Matthew in telling the second miracle although he, too, is brief and agrees with them most exactly in substance. Data such as these should be observed when we are told that Mark was Luke’s authority throughout this section of the Gospel. Luke had the oral tradition just as Mark had it and used it in his own free way.

Matt. 8:14, 15 places the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law immediately after the Sermon on the Mount whereas Mark and Luke place it after the teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum. All are correct. The succession of events was as follows: the Sermon on the Mount on the morning of the Sabbath; the leper healed on the way from the mount (Matt. 8:1, etc.); the centurion’s servant healed on entering Capernaum (Matt. 8:5, etc); Jesus preaches in the synagogue with the same “authority” as he did on the mount; he delivers the demoniac in the synagogue. Toward the close of the Sabbath Jesus then goes to Peter’s house and heals his mother-in-law. When the Sabbath is over at dusk, all the additional miracles reported in Matt. 8:16; Mark 1:32–34; and Luke 4:40, 41 occurred.

Now having arisen from the synagogue, he went into the house of Simon. But Simon’s mother-in-law was in the grip of a great fever. And they made request of him concerning her. And coming to stand over her, he rebuked the fever, and it left her. And at once, on having risen up, she went on serving them.

Mark writes “the house of Simon and Andrew,” also James and John were invited. None of the narratives implies that Jesus was asked to come to the house in order to heal Simon’s mother-in-law; the impression is made that Jesus and James and John were asked to dine at Simon’s house. It is thus that mention is made of the mother-in-law, who was incapacitated because of a fever. The periphrastic imperfect describes the continuance, and the dative is the agent with the passive: “she was being held closely by a great fever.” By adding the word “great” Luke indicates that he is a physician, for Galen divides fevers into “great” (μεγάλοι) and “small” (σμικροί). The miracle is also according to the severity of the ailment. Luke mentions no cause of the fever and thus leaves us without a diagnosis of the case. By piecing together Mark (they told Jesus about her) and Luke (they made request concerning her) we may say that when Jesus did not see the woman he most likely asked where she was so that they told him of her illness and then asked him to help her.

We learn here that Peter was married, and that his mother-in-law lived at his home. This means that her husband was dead, and that she had no other children and no home of her own. The father of Peter is mentioned in Matt. 16:17 and in John 21:15, etc., but in such a way that the impression is made that he was dead; we never hear of Peter’s mother. On the basis of 1 Cor. 9:5 it is certain that Peter’s wife was living at that time and accompanied him on his missionary travels. All this is rather inconvenient for Catholicism which regards Peter as the first pope and demands celibacy for its priests.

Clement of Alexandria states that Philip and Peter begat children (ἐπαιδοποιήσαντο). He states that when Peter’s wife was led to her death, her husband encouraged her by telling her to remember the Lord. Elsewhere a paralytic daughter of Peter is mentioned.

Luke 4:39

39 Luke tells the story most graphically by relating how, coming to stand over her, Jesus rebuked the fever, and it left her; Mark does not forget that Jesus grasped her hand. All state that the fever left her. The miracle was wrought. He spoke to the fever as he did to the inanimate wind and to the waves and was instantly obeyed. To speak was to express his will, and what that will willed was instantly done. No weakness or lassitude was left as is always the case when a fever subsides, for “at once” (παραχρῆμα) she went on to serve them, διηκόνει (inchoative imperfect). This verb suggests that the woman helped with the δεῖπνον, the evening meal, the chief one of the day, to which Jesus and the other two guests had been invited.

How commentators arrive at the view that Peter’s house became the Capernaum home of Jesus because of the incident here recorded is one of the exegetical mysteries when we have John 2:12 and Matt. 4:13 to tell us that Jesus established his own home in Capernaum. Every time Jesus is in a house in Capernaum these commentators regard it as the house of Peter when, unless it is otherwise indicated, it was beyond question Jesus’ own house and home.

Luke 4:40

40 Now as the sun was setting, all as many as had any being sick with various diseases brought them to him. But he, having placed his hands on each one, did heal them. Moreover, also demons were coming out from many, yelling and saying, Thou art the Son of God! And rebuking them, he was not allowing them to speak because they knew that he was the Christ.

What a wonderful evening! Matthew sees in it the fulfillment of Isa. 53:4. To say “evening having come” would be inexact since two evenings were distinguished, one from 3 to 6 and the other from 6 onward, and this was the Sabbath. So the setting of the sun is mentioned, its setting ended the Sabbath rest and permitted all these people to bring their sick, who were ailing with all kinds of diseases, to the door of Peter’s house. Mark says that the whole city came. Jesus laid his hands on every one and healed all of them, no matter what the disease or what its progress and its severity were.

Wholesale healing, miracle upon miracle. Yet each one receives the healing touch. Jesus is so kind to each poor individual. Jesus often laid his hand or his hands on the sick but not always by any means; the healing was not wrought by the touch but by Jesus’ will. The touch of the hand was merely symbolical of the blessing bestowed. No power flowed out from the hands and physically entered the patient.

The power was in the volition of Jesus, and the miracle was wrought in a supernatural way.

Luke 4:41

41 Luke turns from the aorist ἐθεράπευσεν to the descriptive imperfect ἐξήρχετο, “were coming out from many,” i.e., from all the demoniacs that were brought. These were not a few, and all came from one city. It is remarkable that this affliction was so widespread. If only rare cases had occurred, these might have been doubtful, but since there were so many, the trouble was fully known in all its distinctive manifestations.

Luke, like Matthew and Mark, clearly distinguishes the demoniacs from all the other sufferers. He does not say that the demoniacs but that the demons yelled and spoke and were promptly hushed by Jesus. It is remarkable that they yelled out; “Thou art the Son of God!” as did the one mentioned in v. 34, which see for the reason. With the descriptive imperfect εἴα, which matches the preceding imperfect, we properly have the present durative participle ἐπιτίμων: in every instance Jesus continued to rebuke and not to let them speak. The ὅτι cannot be declarative after λαλεῖν: “to say that they knew” as the demon said in v. 34; this verb is not construed with ὅτι. The connective is causal: “because they knew.” The fact of this correct knowledge appears in every case where a demon spoke.

If Jesus had not silenced these evil spirits, they would have gone on shouting out their knowledge of his deity and his Messiahship. The Sonship and the Messiahship are not identified as being synonymous as modernism claims in order to justify its interpretation of “the Son of God.” As the Son Jesus was “the Christ.” “The Son of God” is the person, and “the Christ” is that person in his office. On the latter see 2:11, 26; 3:15. The second past perfect ᾔδεισαν is always used as an imperfect.

Beginning with the Sermon on the Mount and ending with this wholesale healing far into the night, we see Jesus on one of his most strenuous days. He had many like this.

Luke 4:42

42 Now day having come, having gone out, he went to a lonely place; and the multitudes were seeking him, and they came up to him and tried to keep him from going away from them. But he said to them, Also to the other cities it is necessary for me to preach the good news of the kingdom of God, because for this was I sent. And he went on preaching in the synagogues of Judea.

Mark writes at greater length. It was earliest dawn, and Jesus seems to have spent the night, which was very short at the best, in Peter’s house instead of going to his own home at so late an hour. Jesus got up quietly and slipped away to a lonely place outside of the city, where he continued in prayer (Mark). Mark relates how Simon and those with him searched for Jesus. Luke says this also of “the multitudes.” These must have gathered early and found out in what direction Peter went and so also came to Jesus. What Peter said to Jesus (Mark) was thus corroborated, namely that all men were seeking him.

Luke adds that the crowds that came to Jesus also tried to keep him (κατεῖχον, conative imperfect) from going away from them. Note that the infinitive with τοῦ is used after a verb of hindering and thus does not indicate purpose (R. 1089); and μή after a verb of hindering is a “neat Greek idiom of the redundant negative” (R., W. P., and 1171).

Luke 4:43

43 But it is impossible for Jesus to accede to this request. Δεῖ expresses all kinds of necessity, here, as Jesus states, the necessity of his mission: “because for this was I sent (commissioned),” second passive aorist. We have had εὐαγγελίσασθαι, which is here the effective aorist, repeatedly (1:19; 2:10; 3:18 regarding John’s preaching, now regarding that of Jesus). The mission of Jesus compels him to go far beyond Capernaum, and the time for that has now come. “The kingdom of God” is the object of the infinitive; Jesus will preach this.

“The kingdom of God” is the supreme concept of the New Testament. It is used often by Luke, a few times by Matthew who most frequently writes “the kingdom of the heavens.” Both mean the same thing, the distinction is only formal. The two genitives may be considered genitives of possession: the kingdom which belongs to God and to the heavens. But it is hard to keep the subjective idea out of the former: the kingdom which God rules; and the qualitative idea out of the latter: the kingdom whose very nature is that of heaven.

This grand Biblical concept cannot be denned by generalizing from the kingdoms of the earth. These are only imperfect shadows of God’s kingdom. God makes his own kingdom, and only where he is with his power and his grace his kingdom is to be found. Earthly kingdoms, which are many and various, make their kings, often also unmake them, and their kings are nothing apart from what their kingdoms make them. So we are not really subjects of God’s kingdom but partakers of it, i.e., of God’s rule and kingship; earthly kingdoms have only subjects. In God’s kingdom we already now bear the title “kings unto God,” and eventually the kingdom, raised to its nth degree, shall consist of nothing but kings in glorious array, each having his crown, and Christ thus being “the King of kings,” a kingdom of kings without a single subject.

This divine kingdom goes back to the beginning of time and rules the world and shall so rule it till the consummation at the end of time. All that is in the world, even every hostile force, are made subservient to the plans of God. The children and sons of God, as heirs of the kingdom in whom God’s grace operates, constitute the kingdom in its specific sense. The kingdom is in them, they are sharing it. This kingdom is divided by the coming of Christ, the king, in the flesh to effect the redemption of grace by which this specific kingdom is established among men. Hence we have the kingdom before Christ, looking toward his coming, and the kingdom after Christ, looking back to his coming—the promise and the fulfillment to be followed by the consummation—the kingdom as it was from Adam and in Israel, as it is now in the Christian Church, the Una Sancta in all the world, and as it will be at the end forever.

“To gospel” the kingdom is to bring the rule of God’s grace in Christ unto those who are made to hear this gospeling, to bring it effectively for those who hear, to turn them in repentance and faith to this blessed rule and its King and Ruler, Christ. We thus enter this kingdom by faith, i.e., become partakers of it, let the full blessedness of this rule fill our hearts and our lives. And the mission of Jesus was this work of by gospel preaching drawing men into God’s rule of grace, which is his kingdom.

Luke 4:44

44 The periphrastic imperfect expresses duration; Jesus kept on preaching. He used the synagogues. The verb now used is κηρύσσειν, which refers to the mode, it is like the proclaiming of a herald; εὐαγγελίζεσθαι refers to the substance, the good news. The textual evidence is greatly in favor of “Judea” instead of Galilee (which Mark has); but this means Judea in the wider sense as it does in 1:5, as including all Palestine, the entire Jewish land. Jesus never went beyond this except on a few rare occasions.

C.-K. Biblisch-theologisches Woerterbuch der Neutestamentlichen Graezitaet von D. Dr. Hermann Cremer, zehnte, etc., Auflage, herausgegeben von D. Dr. Julius Koegel.

R. A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research, by A. T. Robertson, fourth edition.

M.-M. The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament, Illustrated from the Papyri and other Non-Literary Sources, by James Hope Moulton and George Milligan.

B.-P. Griechisch-Deutsches Woerterbuch zu den Schriften des Neuen Testaments, etc., von D. Walter Bauer, zweite, etc., Auflage zu Erwin Preuschens Vollstaendigem Griechisch-Deutschem Handwoerterbuch, etc.