The Kingdom Arrives Through Messengers and Mercy

The manuscripts divide between seventy and seventy-two, and both numbers have a background. Genesis 10 lists seventy nations in the Hebrew and seventy-two in the Greek, and Moses shared his spirit with seventy elders (Numbers 11:16-25). Pairs gave each messenger a witness and a companion on the road.

Harvest was a prophetic picture of God’s final gathering (Joel 3:13). “Send forth” is ekballō, a forceful verb, to throw out, the one used for casting out devils: the Lord of the harvest is asked to drive workers into the field.

Matthew 10:16 has sheep among wolves; Luke has arnes, lambs, still younger and more defenceless. The sending is spoken with “behold”, calling attention to a danger they are being walked into on purpose.

The “purse” is a money bag, a word only Luke uses in the New Testament, and no shoes probably means no spare sandals. Elisha gave Gehazi the same order when sending him on an urgent errand: “if thou meet any man, salute him not” (2 Kings 4:29). Eastern greetings on the road could take a long time.

Shalom was the ordinary Jewish greeting, and here it is the first word spoken inside a house. David’s young men were sent to Nabal with “Peace be to thine house” (1 Samuel 25:6) and were refused hospitality, a precedent for what verse 10 anticipates.

“Son of peace” is a Hebrew idiom for someone marked by peace or ready to receive it, as “son of perdition” means one bound for ruin. Peace is pictured as a thing that can alight and stay, epanapauomai, to rest upon, or come back to the one who spoke it.

“Such things as they give” is literally “the things from them”, whatever the host’s own table holds. “Go not from house to house” uses metabainō, to move one’s lodging, and makes explicit what was only implied when the Twelve were sent (9:4).

The same rule appears in almost the same words in Paul, “whatsoever is set before you, eat” (1 Corinthians 10:27). For Jewish messengers in mixed towns the instruction had an edge: questions about tithes and purity were not to hold up the table.

In the sending of the Twelve preaching came before healing (9:2); here healing comes first. “Is come nigh” is a perfect tense, ēngiken, has drawn near and is now at hand, the word of Jesus’ first preaching in Mark 1:15.

The streets are plateiai, the broad open places of a town, so leaving becomes a public statement rather than a quiet exit. The messengers do not slip away; they say something first.

“Cleaveth” is kollaō, to stick, and “wipe off” is apomassō, to wipe clean: even the dust clinging to their sandals is handed back. Some manuscripts lack “unto you” in the last clause, making it a flat statement that the kingdom has come near, whether or not the town is ready.

“That day” is the prophets’ phrase for the day of the LORD. Ezekiel 16:49 lists Sodom’s sins as pride, fulness of bread and neglect of the poor, and Genesis 19 adds violence against guests, which makes the comparison with a town that refuses messengers pointed.

Chorazin appears only here and in Matthew 11:21; its black basalt ruins lie about two miles north of Capernaum. Tyre and Sidon, the Phoenician ports, were the targets of Isaiah 23 and Ezekiel 26-28. Sackcloth was coarse goat-hair cloth, and sitting in ashes was the posture of public mourning.

Luke has already said that people from “the sea coast of Tyre and Sidon” came to hear Jesus and be healed (6:17), so the comparison uses cities whose people had shown up. “The judgment” is krisis, the final verdict.

The line borrows the taunt against the king of Babylon, who said “I will ascend into heaven” and was “brought down to hell” (Isaiah 14:13-15). “Hell” here is hadēs, the realm of the dead, answering to the Hebrew Sheol, not the place of fire.

“Despiseth” is atheteō, to set aside as invalid, the verb for the Pharisees rejecting God’s counsel in 7:30. The chain rests on a principle of Jewish law, that a man’s agent is as the man himself: to refuse the messenger is to refuse the one who sent him.

Their instructions in verse 9 mentioned healing, not exorcism, which explains the “even” in their report: the devils too have yielded. “Through thy name” gives the source, and the seventy do not claim the authority as their own.

“I beheld” is imperfect, I was watching, as of a sight held for a while. The same chapter of Isaiah behind verse 15 speaks of the day star fallen from heaven (Isaiah 14:12). Lightning is sudden, bright and downward, and cannot be taken back.

Serpents and scorpions were the hazards of the wilderness Israel crossed (Deuteronomy 8:15), and Psalm 91:13 promises the faithful will tread on the adder. Paul shakes off a viper on Malta without harm (Acts 28:3-5). The Greek piles up negatives: nothing, by no means, shall hurt.

“Are written” is a perfect tense, stand written, recorded and still on the register. The picture is the roll of citizens or the book of Moses’ prayer, “blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book” (Exodus 32:32), and Daniel 12:1 speaks of everyone “found written in the book”.

“Rejoiced” is agalliaō, exulted, the verb of Mary’s “my spirit hath rejoiced” (1:47); many manuscripts read “in the Holy Spirit”. “Babes” are nēpioi, infants too young to speak. “Seemed good” is eudokia, good pleasure, the word of the angels’ song, “good will toward men” (2:14).

This saying sounds so much like the Gospel of John that scholars have called it a bolt from the Johannine sky, falling in the middle of Luke and Matthew. “Delivered” is paradidōmi, the verb of 9:44: the Father hands all things to the Son, and men will hand the Son over.

Jesus turns from speaking to the Father to speaking to the disciples, “privately”, kat’ idian, away from the crowd. The blessing is on eyes, the plainest organ, as though the privilege lies simply in being present at this time.

Matthew 13:17 has “prophets and righteous men”; Luke has “prophets and kings”, the rulers of Israel who waited and did not see. “Desired” is epithymeō, strong longing, the verb behind the prodigal who “would fain” have eaten the swine’s husks (15:16).

A teacher sat and a questioner stood to address him. “Tempted” is ekpeirazō, to put to the test, the very verb of Jesus’ reply to the devil, “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God” (4:12). “Inherit eternal life” is the rich ruler’s question word for word in 18:18.

Two questions: what the law says, and how the man reads it. Joachim Jeremias suggested that “how readest thou” means “how do you recite”, pointing to the Shema said daily, which is exactly what the lawyer quotes next.

Deuteronomy 6:5 names three faculties in Hebrew, heart, soul and might; the Greek traditions add “mind”, dianoia, and Luke’s version has all four. Leviticus 19:18 is joined on, where the neighbour is one of “the children of thy people”; sixteen verses later the same chapter extends that love to the stranger (19:34).

“This do, and thou shalt live” echoes Leviticus 18:5, where the man who keeps God’s statutes “shall live in them”. The imperative is present tense, keep on doing this: an ongoing way of life rather than a single act.

“Justify himself” uses dikaioō, the verb of 7:29 and 7:35, and Jesus will tell the Pharisees “ye are they which justify yourselves” in 16:15. “Neighbour”, plēsion, literally means the one near, which is exactly what the lawyer is trying to measure.

The road from Jerusalem to Jericho ran about seventeen miles and dropped some 3,300 feet through desert ravines, notorious for robbers. It passed the ascent of Adummim (Joshua 15:7), “red place”, which later travellers called the ascent of blood. “Half dead” is hēmithanēs, one word, near to death.

“By chance” is synkyria, coincidence, a word found only here in the New Testament. Many priests lived in Jericho and served in Jerusalem in weekly courses, and this one is “coming down”, away from the city. “On the other side” is a double compound verb: he passed by opposite.

Levites were the temple’s assistants, below the priests. This one “came and looked”, going nearer than the priest had, before crossing to the far side of the road. The same verb as in verse 31 closes both men’s part in the account.

Samaritans kept the five books of Moses and worshipped on Mount Gerizim, and Jews “have no dealings” with them (John 4:9). He is the one traveller of the three who is not on home ground: a Samaritan on a Judean road, as exposed to robbers as the man in the ditch.

Oil soothed and wine cleansed; both were standard in ancient wound care, and the Hippocratic writings recommend wine for dressing wounds. The inn is a pandocheion, a “receive-all”, a commercial lodging house, not the kataluma of 2:7. Setting the man on “his own beast” means the Samaritan walked.

Two denarii were two days’ wages, enough for several days’ board at an inn. Since a man with nothing could be held for debt, the promise to settle “whatsoever thou spendest more” may be meant to protect the victim from the innkeeper as well as from hunger. “I will repay” is emphatic in Greek: I, myself.

“Thinkest thou” is literally “seems to thee”: as with Simon in 7:42, Jesus makes the listener deliver the verdict. The question is put in the form “of these three”, so the lawyer must choose among a priest, a Levite and a Samaritan.

“Shewed mercy” is literally “did mercy”, poieō, the verb that has run through the exchange: “what shall I do” (verse 25), “this do” (verse 28), and now “go, and do thou likewise”. The lawyer’s opening question has been answered with his own verb.

Luke does not name the village; John 11:1 places Martha and Mary at Bethany near Jerusalem, though Luke’s journey is still far from there. Martha is Aramaic for “lady” or “mistress”, fitting for the woman whose house it is. “Received him” is hypodechomai, the welcome Zacchaeus gives in 19:6.

“Which also sat” suggests Mary joined in the welcome and then took her place among the listeners. A woman sitting before a teacher as a pupil was unusual, and “heard” is imperfect: she kept listening, word after word.

“Cumbered” is perispaō, pulled in every direction, found only here in the New Testament. “Serving” is diakonia, the word Acts 6:1 uses for the church’s daily ministration. Martha’s “dost thou not care” echoes the disciples in Mark’s storm (Mark 4:38), words Luke left out of his own account of that night.

“Careful” in 1611 meant full of care, anxious; the Greek merimnaō is the root of the “cares” that choked the seed (8:14). “Troubled” is thorybazō, stirred up as a noisy crowd is. The doubled name is how Jesus addresses Simon in 22:31 and the risen Lord addresses Saul in Acts 9:4.

Some manuscripts read “few things are needful, or one”, a gentler line that looks back at the meal. “Part” is meris, a portion or helping at table: Martha’s many dishes against Mary’s one portion. The Levites were told that the LORD was their portion (Numbers 18:20).