Mercy Opens an Interval That Will Not Last Forever

No other source records this incident, though Josephus describes Pilate’s troops killing protesters in Jerusalem and Samaritans at Mount Gerizim. At Passover laymen slaughtered their own lambs in the temple court, which may explain how worshippers’ blood could mix with their sacrifices. “At that season” is kairos, the word of 12:56.

The question voices the assumption of Job’s friends: “who ever perished, being innocent?” (Job 4:7). The disciples will ask the same thing about a man born blind in John 9:2. Galileans had a reputation in Jerusalem as hot-headed provincials, which makes “above all the Galilaeans” pointed.

Some readers hear an echo that Luke’s first audience could not miss: within a generation, in AD 70, Roman soldiers cut down Jews in the temple courts and Jerusalem’s buildings fell on its people. “Perish” is apollymi, to be destroyed or lost, the verb of the lost sheep and coin in chapter 15.

Siloam was the pool at the southern end of the City of David, fed by Hezekiah’s tunnel (2 Kings 20:20), and the tower probably stood in the wall nearby. The word for “sinners” changes here to opheiletai, debtors, the language of the prayer in 11:4.

The refrain is repeated word for word, and both answers open with the emphatic “Nay”, ouchi, a flat no. Jesus says nothing about Pilate’s guilt or the builders’ competence; neither case is allowed to become an explanation of the dead.

Fig trees were often planted in vineyards, where the soil was best, and “every man under his vine and under his fig tree” was Israel’s picture of peace (Micah 4:4). Isaiah 5:1-7 had told of a vineyard where the owner “looked that it should bring forth grapes”, and found none.

Leviticus 19:23-25 forbade eating the fruit of a new tree for its first three years, so an owner who has now waited three more may have been waiting six. “Cumbereth” is katargeō, to make idle or useless: the tree is draining the soil and taking the place of a vine.

“Lord” here is kyrie, the everyday “sir” of a worker to his master. Manuring a fig tree was not ordinary practice, so the vinedresser proposes unusual care for a tree that has earned none. The verb for “let it alone” is aphiēmi, also the ordinary word for forgiving.

The Greek breaks off: “and if it bear fruit…”, leaving the happy outcome unsaid, and the King James supplies “well” in italics. The vinedresser also hands the axe back: “thou shalt cut it down”, not I.

This is the last time the Book of Luke places Jesus in a synagogue. From here on his teaching happens in houses, on the road and finally in the temple courts in Jerusalem.

“Bowed together” is synkyptō, bent double, and she could “in no wise” straighten, not even partly. The verb for lifting up, anakyptō, returns in 21:28, where Jesus tells the disciples to “look up, and lift up your heads” when their redemption draws near.

“Woman” was a courteous address, not a cold one. “Thou art loosed” is a perfect tense, apolelysai: the release is declared as already done before any hand is laid on her.

The touch follows the word rather than producing it. “Made straight” is anorthoō, to set upright again, the verb Acts 15:16 uses for raising up the fallen tabernacle of David. “Glorified” is imperfect: she went on praising God.

The ruler does not address Jesus but the crowd, and quotes the fourth commandment, “Six days shalt thou labour” (Exodus 20:9). “Ought” is dei, it is necessary, and Jesus will throw the same word back at him in verse 16.

Many manuscripts read “hypocrites”, plural, aimed at everyone who agreed with the ruler. Jewish rules allowed animals to be led to water on the sabbath, and later rabbinic law discussed which knots might be untied that day. The Qumran community was stricter, forbidding even helping an animal give birth on the sabbath.

“Daughter of Abraham” appears nowhere else in Scripture; its match is Zacchaeus, “a son of Abraham” (19:9). “Ought not” is the ruler’s own dei: if something must happen on the sabbath, this is it. “Lo, these eighteen years” makes the length itself the argument.

“All” appears three times: all the adversaries, all the people, all the glorious things. The ruler’s appeal to the crowd has failed, and the verb for the people’s rejoicing is in the imperfect, continuing after the argument has ended.

The “then” links the parables to the healing just told: a bent woman made straight in one synagogue may be the kind of small beginning they describe, an inference the Greek particle invites. Mark and Matthew place these parables in the lakeside teaching; Luke places them here, on the road.

Black mustard grows around the lake to eight or ten feet in a season. Mark has the seed sown in the earth and Matthew in a field; Luke has a garden, and alone calls the result a “tree”. Birds lodging in branches recalls Nebuchadnezzar’s great tree, where “the fowls of the heaven dwelt” (Daniel 4:12, 21).

The introduction is repeated in a shorter form, so the two parables come as a matched pair, a man with seed and a woman with dough. Matthew 13:33 introduces the second one without any question at all.

Three measures, sata, made an ephah, reckoned at somewhere between twenty and forty litres of flour, bread for a hundred people or more; it is the quantity Sarah baked for the three visitors at Mamre (Genesis 18:6). “Hid” is an odd verb for kneading, and it fits the kingdom’s hidden start.

This is the first reminder since 9:51 that the whole journey is aimed at Jerusalem. Luke punctuates the long road with such notices (17:11, 19:11), so that the teaching is always heard on the way somewhere.

The question was debated in Jewish writing: 4 Ezra, near the end of the century, says “many have been created, but few shall be saved”, while the Mishnah states that “all Israel have a share in the world to come”. Jesus answers “them”, all present, not only the questioner.

“Strive” is agōnizomai, to contend as an athlete does, the root of the English agony. Where Matthew 7:13 has a gate, many manuscripts of Luke read “door”, thyra, preparing for the house door shut in the next verse.

The master rises from the table to bar the door for the night, and after that nobody enters. “I know you not whence ye are” is a formula of disowning: the householder does not recognise them as belonging to his house.

“In our streets” uses plateiai, the broad streets and squares of a town, the same places the servant will be sent to fetch the poor and the lame in 14:21. Those outside claim meals and lessons; those brought in from the streets had neither.

The dismissal quotes Psalm 6:8, “Depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity”, where the psalmist, rescued from his enemies, sends them away. “I tell you” strengthens the repeated disowning of verse 25.

Gnashing of teeth is a picture of rage and anguish together, as in Psalm 112:10, where the wicked see the righteous blessed and “gnash with his teeth”. “Thrust out” is ekballō, the verb for casting out devils, now used of the ones left outside.

The four directions echo Psalm 107:3, where the redeemed are gathered “from the east, and from the west, from the north, and from the south”. “Sit down” means recline at table: the kingdom is pictured as the feast Isaiah 25:6 promised for all peoples.

The proverb appears in other settings in Mark 10:31 and Matthew 20:16. Luke’s form is careful: “there are last” and “there are first”, some, not all, so the reversal is not a mechanical rule.

Herod Antipas ruled Galilee and Peraea, the land east of the Jordan, and Jesus is probably travelling through his territory at this point on the road. “Get thee out, and depart” doubles the urging: leave, and go.

In Jewish usage the fox was a crafty but petty animal, set against the lion; a later saying advises being a tail to lions rather than a head to foxes. The Greek alōpēx is feminine. “Perfected” is teleioumai, brought to the goal, as a race is finished.

“I must” is dei again, divine necessity. The saying is bitterly ironic, since prophets did die elsewhere; but Jerusalem’s record included Urijah, cut down by King Jehoiakim (Jeremiah 26:20-23), and the Book of Luke has already named Zacharias killed at the altar (11:51).

Stoning was the law’s penalty for a false prophet who led Israel astray (Deuteronomy 13:10), here turned on true ones. The image of wings recalls Psalm 91:4, “He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust”, and Boaz’s blessing on Ruth (Ruth 2:12).

“Your house” may mean the temple or the city and its people; Jeremiah 22:5 warned that “this house shall become a desolation”. The line quoted is from Psalm 118:26, sung by pilgrims at the feasts, and the crowds will shout a form of it as Jesus rides into Jerusalem (19:38).