A Place at the Table and the Cost of Following

This is the third Pharisee’s table in the Book of Luke (7:36, 11:37), and the host is a leading man among them. Sabbath food had to be cooked the day before, and the main meal came after the morning synagogue. “Watched” is paratēreō, to watch closely, the verb of the scribes in 6:7 watching whether he would heal on the sabbath.

“Before him” means right in front of Jesus, which has led some readers to suspect the man was placed there as a test; Luke does not say. “Had the dropsy” is one Greek word, hydrōpikos, swollen with water, found nowhere else in the New Testament.

“Answering” comes before anyone has spoken: Jesus replies to their watching. He had put almost the same question in a synagogue in 6:9, and here the lawyers and Pharisees are the ones asked to rule on it.

“Held their peace” is hēsychazō, the verb used when the women “rested the sabbath day” before going to the tomb (23:56). “Let him go” is apolyō, the verb for releasing the bent woman in 13:12. “Took him” is epilambanomai, to take hold of: Jesus lays hands on the man.

Many manuscripts read “a son or an ox” rather than “an ass or an ox”, which makes the argument stronger still. Practice differed: the Qumran community forbade lifting an animal out of a pit on the sabbath, while other Jewish teachers allowed helping it.

“Answer him again” is antapokrinomai, to answer back or reply in return, a word found elsewhere only in Romans 9:20, “who art thou that repliest against God?” The silence of verse 4 now becomes an inability.

At formal dinners guests reclined on couches arranged around the tables, and the places nearest the host carried the most honour. “Marked” is epechō, to fix one’s attention: Jesus has been watching the watchers choose their places.

The advice reworks Proverbs 25:6-7: “Put not forth thyself in the presence of the king… for better it is that it be said unto thee, Come up hither; than that thou shouldest be put lower”. A wedding was the feast at which precedence counted most.

The shame is drawn out: by the time the guest is moved, the middle places are already filled and only the lowest is free. “Begin with shame” pictures the long walk down the room in front of everyone.

“Worship” in 1611 meant honour or esteem, the older sense of worth-ship; the Greek is doxa, glory. “Friend, go up higher” echoes the Proverbs line, and the honour is given in front of the same guests who might have watched the humiliation.

The saying returns at the end of the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector (18:14). Mary had sung that God “hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree” (1:52), and Ezekiel 21:26 has the same reversal: “exalt him that is low, and abase him that is high”.

“Dinner” and “supper” are ariston and deipnon, the midday and the evening meals, so every kind of meal is covered. The four groups named, friends, brothers, kinsmen and rich neighbours, have one thing in common: all can invite back. “Recompence” is antapodoma, a repayment in kind.

The Qumran rule excluded the lame, blind and maimed from the assembly of the last days, and Leviticus 21:17-23 barred priests with such defects from offering. Jesus names exactly those people as the guests to invite.

“The resurrection of the just” is a phrase found only here; Paul later speaks before Felix of “a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust” (Acts 24:15). “They cannot recompense thee” is given as the reason for the blessing, not as a regret.

Eating bread in the kingdom meant sharing the banquet Isaiah 25:6 promised, “a feast of fat things” for all peoples on God’s mountain. The guest’s remark may be a pious effort to ease an awkward table, an inference the timing suggests.

A “great supper” is a deipnon, the main evening meal, on a large scale. “Bade many” means the invitations went out in advance, so everyone invited knew the day and had already accepted.

A second summons when the meal was ready was the custom of the day, as when the king’s chamberlains came to hurry Haman to the banquet Esther had prepared (Esther 6:14). “All things are now ready” means the animals have been slaughtered and cooked, and cannot wait.

“With one consent” is apo mias, literally “from one”, an idiom with a missing noun, voice or mind. No one bought land without inspecting it first, so the first excuse is thin on its face; “have me excused” is paraiteomai, the polite form of a refusal.

Five yoke is ten oxen, a large holding; Elisha was ploughing with twelve yoke when Elijah found him (1 Kings 19:19). “Prove” is dokimazō, to test, as a buyer tests a team before the deal is closed; again, that would come before buying.

Deuteronomy 24:5 freed a newly married man from military service for a year, and he may be stretching that exemption to cover a dinner. He does not ask to be excused as the other two did; he simply says he cannot come.

“Lanes” are rhymai, the narrow alleys, where the plateiai are the broad squares: the servant is sent through every kind of street. “Quickly” matters, since the food is ready. “Halt” is the 1611 word for lame, and the four groups repeat the guest list of verse 13.

“It is done” means the servant has already gone out and brought them in before he reports. “Room” is topos, the same word as the “place” the humbled guest had to give up in verse 9. At this table there is place to spare.

“Highways and hedges” are the country roads and the hedgerows or walls beyond the town, where vagrants sheltered. Courtesy expected a humble guest to decline a first invitation and be urged, as the two at Emmaus “constrained” Jesus to stay (24:29). Augustine later used “compel” to justify coercing the Donatists, a use the parable does not support.

“Taste” is geuomai: not even a mouthful. “Unto you” is plural, which suggests Jesus steps out of the parable and speaks directly to the guests around the table, and “my supper” brings the host of the parable and the speaker very close together.

“Went with him” is symporeuomai, travelling together, the road-verb of the journey to Jerusalem. The crowd is walking behind him; he turns round on the road to face them, and what follows is spoken to their faces.

“Hate” in Hebrew idiom can mean to love less, as when “Leah was hated” beside Rachel (Genesis 29:30-31). Luke alone includes “wife” in the list, as he does again in 18:29, and adds “his own life also”, psychē, so the list ends with the self.

“Bear” is bastazō, to carry a load, where 9:23 had “take up”. The phrase “come after me” finds its picture in Simon of Cyrene, on whom they laid the cross “that he might bear it after Jesus” (23:26).

A tower could be a watchtower in a vineyard, like the one in Isaiah 5:2, or a farm building. “Counteth” is psēphizō, from psēphos, the pebble used on a counting board. The builder “sitteth down first”, the posture of someone doing sums before any stone is laid.

The foundation is the one stage that everyone can see. “Mock” is empaizō, the verb Luke uses for the soldiers mocking Jesus (22:63, 23:36), so the builder suffers in miniature what the one speaking will suffer in full.

“This man”, houtos ho anthrōpos, carries contempt, as the neighbours’ taunt names no one. They do not need to: the stump of the tower keeps the builder’s failure on view to every passer-by for years.

The king too “sitteth down first”, the same phrase as the builder in verse 28: two men seated, doing arithmetic. Odds of two to one were not hopeless in ancient warfare, which is what makes this a real decision and not an obvious one.

“Ambassage” is presbeia, an embassy of elders. “Conditions of peace” is literally “the things toward peace”, close to the phrase Jesus uses weeping over Jerusalem, “the things which belong unto thy peace” (19:42). A king who cannot win negotiates while there is still distance between the armies.

“All that he hath” is hyparchonta, property, possessions. The first disciples had done exactly this: Simon and his partners “forsook all” (5:11), and Levi “left all, rose up, and followed him” (5:28).

“Lost his savour” is mōrainō, literally to become foolish or insipid, the verb Paul uses in Romans 1:22, “they became fools”. In 1611 “his” was still the usual possessive for things; “its” was just coming into use.

“Cast it out” is literally “throw it outside”, and the same picture returns when the tenants “cast him out of the vineyard” (20:15). The closing summons repeats the words that ended the parable of the sower (8:8).