The Call Reaches Boats, Rooftops, and Tables

Matthew and Mark call it the Sea of Galilee; Luke, who knew the Mediterranean, calls it a lake. Gennesaret was the fertile plain on its north-western shore, and the lake is about thirteen miles long. The crowd presses in “to hear the word of God”, a phrase Luke will use again and again in Acts.

In 1986 a first-century fishing boat was recovered from the mud near Ginosar on this shore, about eight metres long and just over two wide. Fishing was done at night, when fish could not see the nets, and in the morning the crews washed and mended their linen nets.

“Prayed him” is 1611 English for asked him. Jesus asks; the boat is Simon’s, and Simon can refuse. “A little from the land” means a few yards, far enough to keep the crowd from pressing in and near enough to be heard.

“Launch out” is singular, addressed to Simon; “let down your nets” is plural, to the whole crew. “The deep” means deep water, and a “draught” is a haul. Daylight fishing in deep water went against everything a Galilean fisherman knew.

“Master” is epistates, a word only Luke uses, meaning a person in charge, an overseer, rather than a rabbi. “Toiled” means laboured to exhaustion. Simon names the wasted night in full before he agrees.

“Brake” is imperfect: the net was beginning to tear, not torn apart. In John 21:11, after another night of empty nets, a catch of 153 large fish is hauled in and “yet was not the net broken”.

“Partners” here is metochoi, those who share in a venture; verse 10 uses a different word, koinonoi, for James and John. Galilean fishermen commonly worked in family cooperatives. They “beckoned”, perhaps because every hand was on the net.

This is the only place in Luke’s gospel where the double name “Simon Peter” appears. He called Jesus “Master” in verse 5 and now calls him “Lord”. His words recall Isaiah in the temple: “Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips” (Isaiah 6:5).

“Astonished” is literally that amazement had seized him. “All that were with him” includes the crew, and in Mark 1:20 Zebedee’s boat carries hired men as well as sons. The fear is not of drowning but of what the catch has shown.

“Catch” is zogreo, literally to take alive. Fish are caught to die; men will be caught to live. “Fear not” is what Gabriel said to Zacharias and to Mary and the angel said to the shepherds (1:13, 30; 2:10).

Luke adds the word “all”, as he does again with Levi (verse 28). In 14:33 Jesus says, “whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.” These men leave the best catch of their lives on the beach.

Only Luke says “full of leprosy”, the extent a physician would note. Leviticus 13:12–13 contains a curious provision: if the disease covered the whole body from head to foot, the priest was to pronounce the man clean. “Fell on his face” is full prostration.

The Law required a leper to live apart and cry “Unclean, unclean” to warn others off (Leviticus 13:45–46), and touching him made a person unclean. Here the touch runs the other way: the clean hand does not become unclean, and the leper becomes clean.

The procedure in Leviticus 14 involved two birds, one killed over running water and the other dipped in its blood and let fly, then a week’s wait, shaving, and offerings on the eighth day. “For a testimony unto them” means evidence for the priests and the public.

Mark says the healed man disobeyed and spread the news (1:45); Luke does not blame him and says only that the report spread “so much the more”. “Infirmities” means weaknesses of every kind, not only disease.

The Greek construction describes a habit: he would withdraw and pray, again and again, not on a single occasion. “Wilderness” is plural, lonely places. As the crowds grow, so does the praying.

This is the first appearance of the Pharisees in Luke. “Doctors of the law” are teachers of the Law. The oldest manuscripts read “to heal him” where the King James has “them”, meaning the Lord’s power was present for Jesus to heal, which is how most modern translations take it.

“Bed” is kline, a pallet or stretcher, which becomes “couch”, a diminutive, in verses 19 and 24. “Taken with a palsy” renders the participle for paralysed that Greek medical writers used, where Mark has a more popular word.

Luke’s “tiling” describes a roof of fired clay tiles, the kind his Greek readers knew. Mark describes men digging through, suited to a Galilean roof of beams, branches and packed mud. Each account gives its readers a roof they could picture.

Mark has Jesus call him “Son”; Luke has “Man”. “Are forgiven” is a perfect tense: have been forgiven and remain so. The words are spoken to a man lying on a stretcher who has not said anything at all.

Isaiah 43:25 has God say, “I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake.” The objection rests on Scripture. “Blasphemies” is plural, and the scribes and Pharisees “began to reason” among themselves, not out loud.

“Thoughts” is dialogismoi, the word Simeon used when he said that through this child “the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed” (2:35). Here the first such thoughts are exposed. “Perceived” means he recognised them fully, though no one had spoken.

“Whether is easier” is 1611 English for which of the two is easier. One sentence can be said and never checked; the other will be proved true or false in front of everyone within seconds.

This is the first time the title “Son of man” appears in Luke. In Daniel 7:13–14 one like a son of man receives dominion from the Ancient of Days. “Power” is exousia, authority, and “upon earth” sets it where people expected forgiveness to come only from heaven.

Luke avoids naming the stretcher and says “that whereon he lay”, what had been carrying him. He departs “glorifying God”, as healed people so often do in Luke (13:13, 17:15, 18:43).

“Strange things” is paradoxa, the root of “paradox”: things contrary to all expectation. The word occurs only here in the New Testament. “To day” echoes the angel to the shepherds (2:11) and Jesus at Nazareth (4:21).

Matthew’s account calls this man Matthew (Matthew 9:9); Mark calls him Levi son of Alphaeus. Capernaum stood near the border between Antipas’ Galilee and Philip’s territory, on a trade road, so goods crossing were taxed there. “Saw” is looked at attentively.

Luke adds “all” again. A fisherman could go back to his boat, but a toll collector who walked out of his post had likely lost it for good; that is an inference, but it measures the cost of standing up.

“A great feast” is a formal reception. In his own narration Luke calls the guests “publicans and others”; it is the critics in the next verse who call them sinners. They “sat down”, reclining at table together.

“Their scribes” means the scribes of the Pharisees’ party. “Murmured” is the word the Greek Old Testament uses for Israel grumbling in the wilderness against Moses and Aaron (Exodus 16:7–8). The complaint is aimed at the disciples, not at Jesus.

“Whole” translates a word meaning healthy, the ordinary medical term; Mark has “strong”. Paul calls Luke “the beloved physician” (Colossians 4:14). A doctor who avoided the sick would be a strange doctor.

In Mark the saying ends at “sinners”. Luke adds “to repentance”, making clear what the call is for. Repentance runs through Luke’s gospel, from John’s preaching (3:3) to the last commission (24:47).

Devout Pharisees fasted twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays, as the Pharisee boasts in 18:12. Only Luke adds “make prayers”; later a disciple asks Jesus to teach them to pray, “as John also taught his disciples” (11:1). The objection moves from whom they eat with to the fact that they eat at all.

“Children of the bridechamber” is a Hebrew idiom for the wedding guests, the bridegroom’s companions. A wedding feast lasted seven days (Judges 14:12). Later rabbinic law excused the groom’s attendants from certain religious duties during that week.

“Taken away” is a verb found in the New Testament only in this saying and its parallels, lifted off or removed. It is the first shadow of Jesus’ death in Luke, set inside a picture of a wedding. The days are coming; they have not come yet.

Luke calls this a “parable”, the same word translated “proverb” in 4:23. “Agreeth not” is literally does not harmonise, the verb from which “symphony” comes. The new cloth is ruined and the old coat looks worse.

New wine is still fermenting, giving off gas and swelling; an old skin has lost its stretch and splits. The Gibeonites showed Joshua their “old, and rent, and bound up” wine bottles as proof of a long journey (Joshua 9:4, 13).

“Must be put” renders a Greek verbal form found nowhere else in the New Testament. The closing words “and both are preserved” are missing from many manuscripts of Luke and seem to have come in from Matthew 9:17.

Only Luke records this saying. The oldest manuscripts read “The old is good”, not “better”: the drinker does not compare, he is simply satisfied. Sirach 9:10 says a new friend is like new wine, pleasant only once it has aged.