Those Who Receive What They Cannot Secure

Luke names the point of a parable before telling it, as he will again at 18:9 and 19:11. “Faint” is enkakein, to lose heart or give up from weariness, the verb Paul uses for not flagging in 2 Corinthians 4:1 and Galatians 6:9.

The two negatives cover both directions a judge was meant to face: toward God, and toward the people before his bench. “Regarded” is entrepomai, to feel respect or shame before someone, the verb the vineyard owner uses of his son in 20:13: “they will reverence him.”

The law named the widow as the person a judge must not fail (Exodus 22:22; Deuteronomy 10:18). “Avenge me” is ekdikeson me, a plea for a ruling in her favour against an opponent at law, closer to “give me justice” than to revenge. She has no man to plead for her, so she comes herself.

Luke is fond of letting a character talk to himself: the rich fool (12:17), the prodigal (15:17), the steward (16:3), the vineyard owner (20:13). This judge’s soliloquy repeats the description of verse 2 almost word for word, so he convicts himself out of his own mouth.

“Weary me” is hypopiazo, a boxing word meaning to strike under the eye, which Paul uses of pummelling his own body (1 Corinthians 9:27). The judge may fear a literal black eye or a blackened reputation; either way the powerful official is afraid of the powerless widow, and the picture is meant to be comic.

Luke calls Jesus “the Lord” in the telling far more often than Matthew or Mark do. “The unjust judge” is literally “the judge of injustice”, a Hebrew way of speaking that matches “the unjust steward” of 16:8, another bad character from whom a lesson is drawn.

“Day and night” recalls Anna, the widow of eighty-four who served God in the temple “with fastings and prayers night and day” (2:37). The Book of Luke has already shown the widow of this parable in real life. “Bear long” is makrothymeo, the patience of one slow to anger, not the neglect of the judge.

“Speedily” (en tachei) can mean suddenly as well as soon, so the verse may promise that vindication will come without warning rather than without delay. The Greek has an article before “faith”: “the faith”, that is, faith of the widow’s persistent kind.

“Despised” is exoutheneo, to treat as nothing. Luke uses the same verb when Herod and his soldiers “set him at nought” (23:11). The parable is aimed at an attitude with two halves, trust in oneself and contempt for others, and the Pharisee in it will show both.

One always “went up” to the temple, which stood on its hill above the city, and the public prayers were tied to the morning and evening sacrifices (Acts 3:1 names “the hour of prayer, being the ninth hour”). A publican was a toll collector under contract, the trade of Levi (5:27) and of Zacchaeus in the next chapter.

Standing was the ordinary posture for prayer. “Prayed thus with himself” can be read as “stood by himself” or as “prayed to himself”, depending on where the Greek phrase is attached, and both readings have old support. His thanks are for what he is not; “extortioners” is harpages, robbers or swindlers.

The law required one fast a year, on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:29). A twice weekly fast went far beyond it; the Didache (8:1) later names Monday and Thursday as the days “the hypocrites” fasted. “All that I possess” is better “all that I acquire”: he tithes even what he buys, in case the seller had not.

Beating the breast was a gesture of grief, and Luke alone records the crowds doing it as they leave the cross (23:48). “Be merciful” is hilaskomai, to be propitiated, akin to the word for the mercy seat, and the Greek has “the sinner”, as though he were the only one in the building.

“Went down” answers “went up” in verse 10: the same two men, reversed. “Justified” is dikaioo, declared righteous by a verdict, the word Paul will build Romans on, and here pronounced by Jesus alone. The closing saying repeats 14:11 exactly, where it closed the lesson about seats at a wedding.

“Infants” is brephe, the word Luke used for the child leaping in Elisabeth’s womb (1:41) and the baby in the manger (2:12). Matthew and Mark say “little children”. The disciples’ rebuke falls on the adults carrying them, since babies cannot be told off for coming.

“Suffer” in 1611 means allow, as in “suffer me first to go and bury my father” (9:59). The Greek pronoun in “called them” is neuter, pointing at the infants themselves: Jesus summons the ones who cannot walk. “Of such” means those of this kind, not children only.

“Verily” is amen, a Hebrew word left untranslated in the Greek. Luke uses it only six times, far less than Matthew or John, so each one marks a saying set apart. “In no wise” renders ou me, the strongest negative Greek has.

Only Luke calls him a ruler (archon), perhaps a synagogue official or a member of a local council; Matthew calls him young and Mark just “one”. His question is word for word the lawyer’s in 10:25, which led to the parable of the good Samaritan.

Addressing a teacher as “good” was unusual, and Jesus takes up the adjective rather than letting it pass. “None is good, save one” echoes the “one” of the Shema, “The LORD our God is one LORD” (Deuteronomy 6:4), the creed every Jew said daily.

All five commandments come from the second table, about neighbours, and adultery is placed before murder, the order of the Greek Old Testament in some copies and of Romans 13:9 and James 2:11. The one command missing is “thou shalt not covet”, which is precisely where the conversation is about to go.

“From my youth up” implies his youth is behind him, which is why the “young man” of Matthew 19:20 has puzzled harmonisers; Luke never calls him young. The claim is not mocked or contradicted. Jesus takes it as offered and moves on to what it does not cover.

“Yet lackest thou one thing” echoes what Jesus told Martha: “one thing is needful” (10:42). Luke adds “all” to “sell that thou hast”, and the promise of treasure in heaven repeats 12:33, “Sell that ye have, and give alms”, now pressed on one named man.

“Very sorrowful” is perilypos, ringed round with grief, the word Mark uses of Jesus in Gethsemane (Mark 14:34). Matthew and Mark say he went away. Luke does not, so he is apparently still standing there when Jesus speaks about him in the next verse.

In 1611 “hardly” meant with difficulty, not scarcely: how hard it is. Jesus says it while looking at the man’s sorrow, so the saying is spoken over a particular face before it becomes a general rule.

The camel was the largest animal a Galilean would see and a needle’s eye the smallest opening. Luke’s word for needle is belone, used in medical writers for a surgeon’s needle, where Matthew and Mark have the seamstress’s rhaphis; the difference has long been cited for Luke the physician (Colossians 4:14).

The listeners, not only the disciples, ask this. Deuteronomy 28 had listed prosperity among the blessings of obedience, so if a rich and law-keeping ruler cannot enter, the question is who possibly can.

The answer repeats what Gabriel told Mary, “with God nothing shall be impossible” (1:37). The Book of Luke uses the same claim for a virgin’s child and for a rich man’s salvation, and Zacchaeus, a rich man, is only a chapter away.

“Lo” is idou, look. The best manuscripts read “we have left our own things”. Peter is recalling the day at the lake when “they forsook all, and followed him” (5:11), and he places the Twelve beside the ruler who could not.

Luke’s list is house, parents, brothers, wife and children; unlike Mark it leaves out lands, and it keeps the wife, as in the hard saying of 14:26. Where Mark has “for my sake, and the gospel’s”, Luke has “for the kingdom of God’s sake”, tying the answer back to verse 24.

Mark promises a hundredfold “with persecutions”; Luke has only “manifold more” and names no number. The verse uses the two ages of Jewish expectation, “this present time” and “the world to come”, and gives each its own reward.

“Took unto him” means took aside, away from the crowd. The earlier predictions (9:22, 9:44) did not mention the prophets; this one says their writing will be “accomplished”, teleo, the same verb Jesus uses at the supper: “this that is written must yet be accomplished in me” (22:37).

Of the predictions in Luke, only this one names the Gentiles. “Spitefully entreated” is hybrizo, to treat with insolence. The spitting recalls the servant of Isaiah 50:6, who hid not his face “from shame and spitting”, yet Luke’s own passion account, unlike Matthew’s and Mark’s, never records anyone spitting on him.

The third day is counted inclusively, Friday to Sunday. The phrase will be handed back twice at the tomb and after it: the angels say “remember how he spake unto you” and quote this (24:6–7), and the risen Jesus repeats it in 24:46.

“Hid” is the same verb as in 9:45, “it was hid from them, that they perceived it not”, and Luke will use it again as Jesus weeps over Jerusalem, “now they are hid from thine eyes” (19:42). The concealment lifts only when he “opened their understanding” (24:45).

Jericho lies about fifteen miles from Jerusalem and roughly three thousand feet lower, so the last stage of the road is a long climb. Mark places this healing as Jesus left Jericho; Luke, as he approached it. Old Jericho and the Herodian town stood a short way apart, one proposed way of fitting the two together.

A blind man learns the world by ear, and what he hears is a multitude, probably pilgrims going up for Passover. “Asked what it meant” renders an optative in the Greek, ti eie touto, “what this might be”, a polished construction Luke uses where the other Gospels would not.

“Passeth by” is present tense: Jesus is going past right now, and in a moment will be gone. This is his last passage through Jericho, and the beggar has one chance.

No one in the Book of Luke has yet addressed Jesus as Son of David, though Gabriel promised him “the throne of his father David” (1:32). “Have mercy” is eleeson, the cry of the ten lepers in 17:13, one chapter earlier.

“They which went before” are the front of the procession, the people nearest Jesus. In verse 38 he “cried” (boao); here the verb is krazo, the harsher word for shouting or screaming. Rebuked, he raises his voice rather than lowering it.

“Stood” means stopped. The man who since 9:51 has “stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem” halts the whole column for one beggar, and has him brought by the same people who were trying to shut him up.

The address changes from “Son of David” to “Lord” (kyrie). Luke has summarised many cures of blindness (7:21) and announced “recovering of sight to the blind” in the Nazareth sermon (4:18), but this is the only such healing he tells in full.

The fourth time in Luke that Jesus says “thy faith hath saved thee”: to the woman who anointed his feet (7:50), the woman who touched his garment (8:48), the Samaritan leper (17:19), and now here. The verb sozo covers both being healed and being saved, and Luke leaves both senses in play.

“Immediately” is parachrema, a word Luke uses about ten times and Mark not at all. The crowd of verse 36 (ochlos) has become “all the people” (laos), Luke’s word for Israel as God’s people. The man follows on the road to Jerusalem, where the ruler of verse 23 did not.