Faithfulness Between the Present Kingdom and Its Revealing

“It is impossible but that” renders anendekton, inadmissible or unthinkable, a word found only here in the New Testament: a world without stumbling-blocks cannot be had. “Offences” are skandala, the noun behind the “offended” of 7:23.

Mark and Matthew speak of a donkey’s millstone, the great stone turned by an animal; Luke has lithos mylikos, a mill stone, perhaps the upper stone of a hand mill. Drowning a man weighted down was a punishment known to the Romans. “These little ones” are the weak or newly believing, like the babes of 10:21.

“Take heed to yourselves” may close the warning of verse 2 or open this instruction; the Greek allows both. Leviticus 19:17 commanded, “thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him”, one verse before “thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself”.

In Matthew 18:21-22 Peter proposes seven times and is told seventy times seven. “Turn again” is epistrephō, the prophets’ word for Israel turning back to God, here used of a brother turning back to the one he wronged.

“The apostles” is Luke’s title for the Twelve, and “the Lord” his title for Jesus in his own voice. “Increase” is prostithēmi, to add, the verb of 12:31, “all these things shall be added unto you”.

The sycamine is the black mulberry, known for roots so deep and wide that it was hard to uproot; a rabbinic tradition claimed it could stand six hundred years. It is not the sycamore fig Zacchaeus climbs (19:4). The Greek mixes its tenses: “if ye have faith”, as a fact, “ye would say”, as a supposition.

“By and by” meant immediately in 1611; the phrase has since drifted to mean eventually. The servant who both ploughs and tends the animals belongs to a small farmer with one slave to do everything.

“Make ready wherewith I may sup” means prepare my evening meal. Slaves ate after the household, and the farmer’s order simply reflects the custom: the day’s work ends only when the table has been served and cleared.

“I trow not” is 1611 English for “I think not”, from an old verb meaning to trust or believe; the phrase is missing from the oldest manuscripts. “Thank” is literally “have favour toward”: the master owes no special gratitude for work that was ordered.

“That which was our duty to do” uses opheilō, to owe, the root of the debt words in 11:4 and 13:4. Obedience here pays what was owed; it does not open a line of credit. The same adjective, achreios, describes the servant cast out in Matthew 25:30.

The geography is puzzling, since a traveller heading south would pass through Galilee before Samaria. “Through the midst” may mean along the border between the two, the frontier strip where a mixed group of Jewish and Samaritan lepers could plausibly be found together.

Leviticus 13:45-46 required a leper to live apart, outside the camp, and to cry “Unclean, unclean.” Outcast lepers banded together for survival, like the four at the gate of Samaria who found the Syrian camp deserted (2 Kings 7:3).

“Master” is epistata, a word only Luke uses and otherwise only on the lips of disciples, such as Peter in the boat (8:24); these men are the only outsiders to use it. They lift their voices because distance was required of them.

Leviticus 14:2-32 laid down how a priest examined a healed leper and pronounced him clean. The cleansing happens on the road, as Naaman the Syrian was cleansed after being told to go and wash (2 Kings 5:10-14), the very case Jesus cited at Nazareth (4:27).

Verse 14 said they were “cleansed”, katharizō, the ritual term; this man sees that he is “healed”, iaomai, and grasps something more than a verdict of clean. “Turned back” is hypostrephō, Luke’s favourite verb for returning.

“Giving him thanks” is eucharisteō, the verb from which the word Eucharist comes. The last clause is emphatic in the Greek, “and he himself was a Samaritan”, the word placed at the end of the sentence for effect.

In Greek the last question is four words, “but the nine, where?” Three questions in two verses, and none of them is answered; Jesus asks them aloud to those standing by.

“Stranger” is allogenēs, a foreigner of another race. The same word was carved on the stone barrier in the temple warning any foreigner not to pass into the inner courts on pain of death: the man shut out of the temple is the one who gives glory to God.

“Arise” is spoken to a man still lying on his face. “Made thee whole” is sōzō, saved, and the same sentence will be said once more in the Book of Luke, to the blind man at Jericho (18:42).

“Demanded” here simply means asked. “Observation” is paratērēsis, close watching for signs, a word used of astronomers tracking the heavens and physicians watching symptoms; its verb is the one used of Pharisees watching Jesus (6:7, 14:1).

“Lo here! or, lo there!” describes the claims of would-be deliverers who drew crowds to the Jordan or the wilderness expecting signs; Acts 5:36 names Theudas, and Josephus describes others. The kingdom is not found by following such directions.

“One of the days” is striking: they will long for even a single such day. The phrase can be read as longing for the days when Jesus was with them, or for the day of his coming; the disciples are told plainly that the longing will go unmet for a time.

The same cry as verse 21 returns, now as a warning, and in the mouths of others. “Follow” is diōkō, to chase or pursue: the disciples are not to go running after rumours of where he is.

Lightning is seen from horizon to horizon at once, not in one village. “Lighteneth” is astraptō, from the same root as the flashing garments on the mountain (9:29). Some manuscripts lack “in his day”.

Suffering and rejection are named again, as in 9:22 and 9:44, now set inside teaching about the end. “This generation” is the phrase that has run through the Book of Luke (7:31, 11:29-32, 11:50-51) for those who refuse.

“Noe” is the Greek form of Noah, which the King James keeps in the New Testament. “The days of” is plural in both halves, echoing the “days” longed for in verse 22.

The four verbs come without “and” between them in the Greek, a rapid list of ordinary business. Genesis 7:7 has Noah enter the ark, and 7:21-23 records that every living substance was destroyed; the verbs here are in the imperfect, going on until the door shut.

Only Luke adds Lot to the comparison, and gives him six verbs where Noah had four: buying, selling, planting and building belong to a settled and prosperous town. Genesis 13:10 describes the plain of Sodom as “well watered every where… even as the garden of the LORD”.

Genesis 19:24 says “the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire”. Brimstone is burning sulphur, and the land around the Dead Sea still has deposits of it. “The same day” leaves no gap between Lot’s leaving and the fire.

“Revealed” is apokalyptō, to unveil, the root of the word apocalypse. The Son of man is spoken of as already present and hidden, waiting to be uncovered rather than invented.

A flat roof was reached by an outside stair, so a man on it could flee without going through the house. Mark 13:15 uses this saying for flight from Jerusalem’s siege; Luke sets it here in the day of the Son of man, and gives the siege its own warning in 21:21. “Stuff” is skeuē, household goods.

Genesis 19:26 says she “looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt”. Only Luke has this command, three words in English and four in Greek. She had left Sodom with her family and was lost on the road out.

“Preserve” is zōogoneō, to keep alive, literally to give life to, the verb the Greek Old Testament uses for the Hebrew midwives who “saved the men children alive” in Egypt (Exodus 1:17). Losing one’s life becomes the way it is kept alive.

“That night” sits beside the daytime field and housetop of verse 31: the moment can fall at any hour. “Taken” is paralambanō, to take along, the verb used when Jesus took the three up the mountain (9:28); “left” is aphiēmi, to leave behind.

Grinding grain on a hand mill was daily women’s work at dawn, often two women sitting across from each other and turning the upper stone together; Exodus 11:5 mentions “the maidservant that is behind the mill”. The two here share a single task.

Verse 36 is missing from the oldest manuscripts of Luke and was probably copied in from Matthew 24:40; many modern editions print it only in the margin. The King James includes it, making three pairs: a bed, a mill and a field.

“Eagles” is aetoi, a word that also covered vultures, and Job 39:30 says of the eagle, “where the slain are, there is she.” Luke has “body”, sōma, where Matthew 24:28 has ptōma, carcass. The disciples ask where; the answer is that it will be as obvious as birds circling over a kill.