Prayer, Light, and the Resistance to Hearing

Luke shows Jesus praying at each turning point, at his baptism (3:21), before choosing the Twelve (6:12), before Peter’s confession (9:18). John’s disciples were known for their prayers (5:33), and a teacher’s own form of prayer marked out his followers as a group. The place is left unnamed.

The oldest manuscripts of Luke begin simply “Father”, without “Our” or “which art in heaven”, and lack “Thy will be done”; the King James follows later copies that match Matthew 6:9-10. “Hallowed” means treated as holy, the hope of Ezekiel 36:23 that God will “sanctify my great name”.

“Daily” is epiousios, a word no one has found in Greek before the gospels, and its sense is still argued: bread for today, for the coming day, or what is needed to live. Jerome reported that a Hebrew gospel read mahar, tomorrow. Luke’s “day by day” asks for a supply that keeps coming.

Luke asks forgiveness of “sins” and then speaks of those “indebted to us”, where Matthew has debts in both halves; the Aramaic word hoba covers both debt and sin. “Every one” leaves no debtor out. “Deliver us from evil” is missing from the oldest copies of Luke.

Travellers often walked by night to escape the heat, so a midnight arrival was plausible. Three loaves were small flat rounds, enough for a guest’s meal with some to spare. “Lend” is chraō, found only here in the New Testament: he means to pay the bread back.

Kenneth Bailey, drawing on long experience of Middle Eastern village life, argued that a guest was received on behalf of the whole village, so that a host with nothing to set out shamed his neighbours as well. “In his journey” means the guest came straight off the road.

A peasant house was often a single room, with the family sleeping together on a raised floor or mats. The door was barred with a wooden bolt through rings, and drawing it back would wake the children. “Trouble me not” is literally “do not give me labours”.

“Importunity” renders anaideia, shamelessness. Readers divide on whose it is: most take it as the asker’s brazen persistence, while Bailey and others read it of the sleeper, who gets up to avoid the shame of refusing. “As many as he needeth” goes beyond the three loaves asked for.

The three commands are present imperatives: keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking. The passives, “it shall be given” and “it shall be opened”, leave the giver unnamed in a common Jewish way of speaking reverently of God’s action.

The commands become a rule, with the same three verbs turned into participles. “Every one” is the same pas used in verse 4 of every debtor forgiven: the promise is as wide as the forgiveness asked for.

Each pair is a look-alike: a round loaf and a round stone, a fish from the lake and a water snake. The best manuscripts of Luke have only the fish and serpent here; the bread and stone may have come in from Matthew 7:9.

Only Luke has the egg and the scorpion. A pale desert scorpion curled up at rest is roughly the size and colour of an egg. Serpents and scorpions were just now what the seventy were given power to tread on (10:19).

“Being evil” is blunt: the good human father is still called ponēros. “Heavenly Father” is literally “the Father from heaven”. Where Matthew 7:11 has “good things”, Luke names the Holy Spirit, the gift poured out in Acts 2 on those who had waited and prayed.

“Dumb” is kōphos, a word that can mean mute or deaf or both. Luke calls the spirit itself dumb, as though its character had passed into the man, and the moment it leaves, the man speaks.

Baal-zebub, “lord of flies”, was the god of Ekron whom King Ahaziah consulted (2 Kings 1:2). Most Greek manuscripts read Beelzebul, which may mean “lord of the dwelling”, a sense that fits the talk of houses and palaces in the verses that follow.

A sign “from heaven” would be something unmistakable from the sky, like fire on Elijah’s altar or manna in the desert. “Tempting” is peirazō, testing, the word used of Israel putting God to the test in the wilderness. The demand is answered not here but in verse 29.

Judaea had lived through this: the feud between the Hasmonean brothers Hyrcanus and Aristobulus opened the way for Pompey to take Jerusalem in 63 BC. “A house divided against a house falleth” can also be read as one house collapsing onto another, a picture of domino ruin.

Only Luke spells out the charge as the premise of the argument: “because ye say”. Satan and Beelzebub are treated as the same figure, so the accusers are made to follow their own claim to its end.

“Your sons” means your own followers. Jewish exorcists were well known: Acts 19:13-14 tells of the sons of Sceva, and Josephus describes one Eleazar driving out a demon before Vespasian. If the same act is holy in them, it cannot be satanic in Jesus.

Matthew 12:28 has “the Spirit of God” where Luke has “finger”. “Is come upon you” is ephthasen, has already arrived, reached you before you expected: the kingdom is not only near, as in 10:9, but has overtaken them.

“Strong man armed” is kathōplismenos, fully equipped, and his “palace” is aulē, a walled courtyard house. Isaiah 49:24-25 asks whether the prey can be taken from the mighty and answers that it can, which the parable plays out.

“All his armour” is panoplia, the full kit of a heavy infantryman, a word found elsewhere in the New Testament only in Ephesians 6:11 and 13. Dividing the spoils was the victor’s act, and Isaiah 53:12 promises the servant a portion with the great and the spoil divided with the strong.

Gathering and scattering is shepherd language: the LORD promises to seek out his flock and gather it from where it was scattered (Ezekiel 34:12-13). Anyone not helping to gather is, by default, helping the scattering.

Waterless places were thought to be the haunts of demons; Isaiah 34:14 puts wild creatures and night spirits in the ruined desert. The spirit still calls the man “my house”, as though the tenancy had only been suspended.

“Garnished” is kosmeō, put in order or adorned, the same word used of the temple’s goodly stones in 21:5. Matthew adds that the house is “empty”; Luke leaves the vacancy to be inferred from what follows.

Seven is the number of completeness, so the second possession is total. “The last state of that man is worse than the first” is a sentence 2 Peter 2:20 applies to those who return to what they had escaped.

Only Luke records this interruption. Praising a son by blessing his mother was a familiar Jewish form, and it half fulfils Mary’s own words, “all generations shall call me blessed” (1:48). “Paps” was the ordinary 1611 word for breasts.

“Yea rather” is menoun, a Greek particle that can confirm and correct in the same breath: yes, and more than that. “Keep” is phulassō, to guard, as a watchman keeps a gate.

“Gathered thick together” is epathroizō, crowding in upon him, a word found only here. “Evil generation” recalls Moses’ phrase for the wilderness generation that would not enter the land, “this evil generation” (Deuteronomy 1:35).

The future tense, “so shall also the Son of man be”, points ahead, perhaps to the resurrection, perhaps to the Son of man’s coming in judgment; interpreters differ. Nineveh saw no miracle, only a prophet from far off and a message of forty days.

The queen of Sheba came from southwest Arabia, well over a thousand miles, to test Solomon with hard questions (1 Kings 10:1). “A greater” is neuter in the Greek, pleion, “something greater”, which may point beyond a person to what is happening in him.

Nineveh was the Assyrian capital on the Tigris, Israel’s enemy, and in Jonah 3:5 the whole city from greatest to least put on sackcloth. To “rise up in the judgment” is courtroom language: the Gentile witnesses stand to testify. Luke places the queen before the Ninevites, in the order of their history.

The “secret place” is kryptē, a cellar or vault, and the “bushel” is a modios, a grain measure of about two gallons. Luke has a lamp saying already in 8:16, where the lamp is hidden under a vessel or a bed; here it is set against the demand for a sign.

“Single” is haplous, simple, and the word family also meant generous; in Hebrew idiom an “evil eye” meant a grudging, stingy one (Deuteronomy 15:9, Proverbs 28:22). A generous eye and a stingy eye stand behind the English of healthy and diseased sight.

“Take heed” is skopei, look out, a verb that is itself about looking: watch your own watching. The warning assumes a person may be confident of the very light that has failed.

Found only in Luke, the verse is notoriously hard to translate, because its two halves seem to say the same thing. “Bright shining” is astrapē, a flash of lightning, the word used of Satan’s fall in 10:18.

“Dine” is aristaō, from ariston, the earlier meal of the day rather than the main evening dinner. This is the second time in the Book of Luke that a Pharisee has Jesus to his table (7:36), and the conversation will again run through the host’s private thoughts.

The Greek says literally that Jesus was not first “baptized” before dinner, baptizō in its plain sense of dipping or washing. Mark 7:3-4 explains the tradition of washing hands and vessels, which went beyond anything the law of Moses required of laymen.

The “platter” is pinax, a flat serving board or dish. “Ravening” is harpagē, plunder or seizure, a strong word for greed that takes by force. Jesus speaks while the vessels he names may be on the table in front of them.

“Ye fools” is aphrones, senseless, the word God addresses to the rich man with full barns in 12:20. The question appeals to creation: one maker is responsible for both surfaces, so neither is beneath his notice.

“Such things as ye have” is ta enonta, literally “the things inside”, a pun: give away the contents of cup and dish and the question of their inner cleanness is settled. The verse puts generosity where the ritual washing stood.

Deuteronomy 14:22 required a tenth of the yield of seed. Luke names rue, a bitter garden herb, where Matthew 23:23 has anise and cummin, and the Mishnah later lists rue among things exempt from tithe, so tithing it went beyond the law. “Judgment” means justice, as in Micah 6:8.

The “uppermost seats” were the front bench of the synagogue, facing the congregation, where the eminent were seen by everyone. “Greetings in the markets” were the formal salutations with honorific titles, received in the busiest public space of the town.

Touching a grave made a person unclean for seven days (Numbers 19:16), and graves were whitewashed each spring so pilgrims would not stumble on them before Passover. An unmarked grave defiles people without their knowing. Many manuscripts of Luke lack “scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites” here.

“Reproachest” is hybrizō, to insult or treat outrageously, a heavy word. The lawyers were experts in the law, and many were Pharisees themselves, so the man hears the last three woes landing on his own profession.

“Lade” is phortizō, to load a pack animal, and “grievous to be borne” is one word, hard to carry. The finger returns from verse 20: Jesus drives out devils with the finger of God, while the lawyers will not lift a finger to ease a load.

Memorial tombs for prophets and holy men were being built in this period; Josephus says Herod the Great raised a monument of white stone at the entrance to David’s tomb. Several of the great tombs still standing in the Kidron valley date from this era.

“Allow” in 1611 meant approve or sanction; the Greek syneudokeō, to consent together, is the verb used of Saul consenting to Stephen’s death (Acts 8:1). By finishing the tombs, the sons put their names to the fathers’ work.

“The wisdom of God” speaks as a person, whether quoting a lost writing or Jesus speaking as God’s wisdom; Matthew 23:34 has simply “I send”. Luke’s pair, prophets and apostles, reaches past the Old Testament to the messengers Acts will describe.

“Required” is ekzēteō, sought out, the language of blood-guilt from Genesis 9:5, where God says of shed blood, “will I require it”. “Foundation of the world” uses katabolē, a laying down, the founding moment of creation.

Abel’s blood cried from the ground (Genesis 4:10), and the dying Zechariah said, “The LORD look upon it, and require it” (2 Chronicles 24:22), the verb that closes this verse twice. “Between the altar and the temple” places the murder in the court of the priests.

“Taken away” is airō, to carry off, as if the lawyers had pocketed the key. Matthew 23:13 speaks of shutting up the kingdom; Luke makes the locked door one of knowledge, the understanding of Scripture that the experts claimed to hold.

“Urge him vehemently” is deinōs enechein, to press hard with a grudge, the phrase Mark 6:19 uses of Herodias against John. “Provoke him to speak” is apostomatizō, found only here, to make someone answer off the cuff, as a teacher fires questions at a pupil.

Two hunting words close the chapter: enedreuō, to lie in ambush, and thēreuō, to hunt game, found only here in the New Testament. The meal that began with washing ends with his hosts stalking him for a word to use in court.