Mercy Exposes a Different Measure

“Corn” in 1611 meant any grain, here wheat or barley. Only Luke mentions “rubbing them in their hands”. Later rabbinic law listed reaping and threshing among the thirty-nine kinds of work forbidden on the sabbath, and plucking ears and rubbing out the husks could be classed as both, two offences in one mouthful.

Luke says “certain of the Pharisees”, some, not the whole party. The question is put to the disciples, not to Jesus. It rests on an interpretation of Exodus 34:21: “in earing time and in harvest thou shalt rest.”

“Have ye not read so much as this” is pointed irony to men who read the Scriptures daily: not even this? David was fleeing Saul when he came to the priests at Nob (1 Samuel 21:1–6). Mark 2:26 names Abiathar as high priest; Luke leaves the name out.

The shewbread was the bread of the Presence, twelve loaves set out on the golden table and replaced each sabbath, the old ones eaten by the priests (Leviticus 24:5–9). Since the loaves were changed on the sabbath, later rabbis reasoned that David’s visit also fell on one.

Luke leaves out the line Mark records here, “The sabbath was made for man”. One ancient manuscript, Codex Bezae, moves this verse and puts in its place a saying found nowhere else: Jesus sees a man working on the sabbath and tells him he is blessed if he knows what he is doing.

Only Luke says it was the right hand, the working hand, the one a man earned his bread with. “Withered” means dried up, shrunken. Luke also notes that Jesus was teaching, so the healing interrupts a lesson.

“Watched” means watched closely, lay in wait; Luke uses the same verb when the leaders “watched him, and sent forth spies” (20:20). The Mishnah allowed the sabbath to be set aside where life was in danger, and a withered hand was no emergency. It could have waited a day.

“Stand forth in the midst” is literally stand into the middle. Jesus stages the question in full view of everyone, so the watchers cannot keep their accusation private. The man obeys twice over: he arose, and he stood.

The watchers came to put a question to Jesus; he puts one to them. “Life” is psyche, which can also mean soul. The way he frames it leaves no neutral option: on the sabbath, declining to do good is placed on the side of doing harm.

Mark says Jesus looked around “with anger” (3:5); Luke keeps the look and leaves out the anger. “Restored” is the verb used in Acts for the restoring of the kingdom (1:6) and the restitution of all things (3:21).

“Madness” is anoia, literally mindlessness, a rage that drives out reason. Luke is milder than Mark, who has the Pharisees plot with the Herodians how to destroy him; here they discuss “what they might do”, and leave it open.

The Greek says literally that he spent the night “in the prayer of God”, a phrase found nowhere else in the New Testament. “A mountain” is the mountain, the hills rising above the lake.

“Apostles” means envoys, men sent with a commission. Luke uses the word six times in his gospel, far more than the other gospels. Twelve matches the tribes of Israel, and Jesus later promises the twelve thrones judging those tribes (22:30).

Peter is Greek for rock, the Aramaic Kepha. Andrew and Philip are Greek names, Philip meaning lover of horses. Bartholomew is not a first name but an Aramaic patronymic, son of Talmai; he is often identified with the Nathanael of John 1:45, though that is a guess.

Luke does not say that this Matthew is the Levi of 5:27, as Matthew’s gospel does. Thomas is Aramaic for twin. Zelotes means zealous; Mark and Matthew give the Aramaic equivalent, Cananaean. Whether it meant a political party or religious zeal is debated.

The Greek says only “Judas of James”, which usually means son of James; the King James reads brother, by analogy with Jude 1. Mark and Matthew have Thaddaeus in this place. Iscariot “also was the traitor” is more exactly “became a traitor”: he was not one when chosen.

“The plain” is a level place, which can be a plateau on a hillside; Matthew sets the same teaching on a mountain. Tyre and Sidon were Gentile ports forty or fifty miles away; Sidon was the region of the widow Elijah was sent to (4:26).

“Vexed” meant tormented, troubled. Luke keeps two groups distinct, the diseased and those troubled by unclean spirits, but says both were healed. The verb is imperfect: they were being healed, one after another.

“Sought” is imperfect, they kept trying to touch him. The same phrase returns when the woman with the issue of blood touches his garment and Jesus says, “I perceive that virtue is gone out of me” (8:46).

Jesus lifts his eyes to his disciples, the listening circle within the crowd. “Blessed” is the form that opens the Psalms, “Blessed is the man” (Psalm 1:1), a pronouncement of good fortune. The poor are the ones to whom he said at Nazareth he was anointed to preach good news (4:18).

“Filled” is the verb used when the five thousand “did eat, and were all filled” (9:17), a hunger actually satisfied. “Laugh” occurs in the New Testament only here and in verse 25. Psalm 126:5: “They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.”

Four verbs build up: hate, separate, reproach, cast out. “Separate you from their company” may mean exclusion from the synagogue (John 9:22). “Cast out your name as evil” could mean the name “Christian”, first used at Antioch (Acts 11:26), which 1 Peter 4:16 shows was a charge in itself.

“Leap for joy” is the verb used when John leaped in Elisabeth’s womb (1:41, 44). Jeremiah was beaten and put in the stocks by a priest of the temple (Jeremiah 20:2). The joy is commanded for the very day of rejection.

“Received” is the commercial term for a receipt: paid in full. “Consolation” is paraklesis, the word for what Simeon waited for, “the consolation of Israel” (2:25). The rich have already had theirs.

“Full” means filled up, glutted. The rich man in 16:19–25 acts this woe out: he fared sumptuously every day, and Abraham tells him, “thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things”.

Jeremiah 5:31: “The prophets prophesy falsely ... and my people love to have it so.” In 1 Kings 22:13 Ahab’s four hundred prophets all speak with one voice and are told to agree, while Micaiah alone says otherwise and is struck in the face.

“Which hear” turns from the rich, who are addressed but not present, to the people actually listening. The Law already commanded returning an enemy’s straying ox and helping his fallen donkey (Exodus 23:4–5). Jesus takes the command to love past his property to the enemy himself.

“Despitefully use” means insult and mistreat. On the cross Jesus prays, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (23:34), and Stephen, dying, prays for the men stoning him (Acts 7:60). The command is carried out in Luke’s own pages.

A blow to the cheek was an insult more than an injury. In Luke the robber takes the cloke, the outer robe, first and then the coat, the tunic beneath, as in a street robbery; in Matthew 5:40 it is a lawsuit, and the order is reversed.

“Give” is a present imperative: keep on giving. “Ask them not again” means do not demand them back. Deuteronomy 15:7–8 had commanded Israel not to shut its hand against a poor brother but to open it wide.

Tobit 4:15 gives the rule negatively, “Do that to no man which thou hatest”, and Hillel is said to have taught a pagan the whole Law in one sentence: what is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour. Jesus states it positively, which asks for action, not only restraint.

“Thank” is charis, grace or favour: what credit is that to you? Matthew has “publicans” where Luke has “sinners”. The comparison sets the standard below which the disciples’ love must not sink.

Greek and Roman society ran on benefaction: gifts given in the expectation of honour or favour in return. Seneca wrote a whole treatise on the proper exchange of benefits. Jesus names that arrangement and says it earns no credit.

Deuteronomy 15:9 warns against refusing a loan to a poor man as the seventh year approached, when debts would be cancelled. Later Jewish law, under Hillel, devised a legal document that let lenders avoid that cancellation. The pressure to lend only where repayment is secure is ancient.

“Hoping for nothing again” translates a verb that usually means to despair, and some manuscripts read “despairing of no one”. “Children of the Highest” echoes the angel’s title for Jesus, “the Son of the Highest” (1:32). “Unthankful” is literally ungracious.

“Merciful” is the word Exodus 34:6 uses in Greek when God proclaims himself “merciful and gracious”. The sentence has the shape of Leviticus 19:2: “Ye shall be holy: for I the LORD your God am holy.” Matthew’s parallel says “perfect” (5:48).

“Forgive” is apolyo, release, the verb used when Pilate releases Barabbas (23:25). The passive verbs, ye shall not be judged, ye shall be forgiven, leave the actor unnamed, a common Jewish way of speaking about what God does.

Grain was measured by filling a vessel, pressing it down, shaking it to settle, then heaping it until it spilled. The “bosom” is the fold of the robe above the belt, used as a pocket; Boaz poured six measures of barley into Ruth’s veil in the same way (Ruth 3:15).

The “ditch” is a pit or cistern, open holes that were a real danger to anyone walking without sight. Matthew uses the saying against the Pharisees (15:14); Luke sets it among instructions to disciples who will become teachers.

“Perfect” is katartizo, fully trained or fitted out, the verb Mark uses for James and John “mending their nets” (Mark 1:19). A student repaired and equipped becomes like his teacher, and no student can pass on what his teacher lacked.

“Mote” is karphos, a speck, a chip of straw or wood. “Beam” is dokos, a roof joist. The image belongs to a carpenter’s workshop, where splinters fly and a man might picture a joist lodged in someone’s eye. “Perceivest” means consider carefully.

“Brother, let me” is affectionate and polite, which makes it worse. “Hypocrite” first meant a stage actor, one who speaks behind a mask. This is the first time Luke uses the word.

“Corrupt” is sapros, rotten or worthless. John the Baptist had used the same picture, every tree that brings not forth good fruit hewn down (3:9), and Jesus takes it up again.

“His own fruit” is 1611 English for its own. “Bramble bush” is batos, the word the Greek Old Testament uses for the bush that burned before Moses (Exodus 3:2), which Luke uses again in 20:37. No one expects grapes from it.

“Treasure” is thesauros, a storeroom or chest, what is kept inside. “Abundance” is overflow. Proverbs 4:23: “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.”

The doubled “Lord, Lord” is an intense form of address, like God’s “Abraham, Abraham” (Genesis 22:11) or “Moses, Moses” (Exodus 3:4). Matthew puts it as a statement about the last day; Luke makes it a question to the people standing in front of him.

Three verbs in sequence, comes, hears, does, and the third is the one that decides. “I will shew you” is the verb John used when he asked, “who hath warned you to flee?” (3:7), a word for pointing something out by example.

The Greek has two verbs, “dug and went deep”. The flood is plemmyra, a river in spate, found only here in the New Testament. In winter rains the dry valleys of the land fill in minutes and sweep away anything not anchored in rock.

“Ruin” is rhegma, a breaking, found only here in the New Testament, and the Greek sentence ends on the word “great”. Ezekiel 13:10–14 describes a wall daubed with untempered mortar that falls and lays bare its foundation.