Glory Turns Its Face Toward Jerusalem

Luke pairs two words: dynamis, power, the ability to act, and exousia, authority, the right to act. The crowd at Capernaum had marvelled at the same two in Jesus’ own word (4:36). “All devils” leaves no class of spirit outside the commission, a detail that makes verse 40 sting.

“Sent” is apostellō, the verb behind the title apostle, and Luke calls them apostles when they return (verse 10). Preaching the kingdom comes first and healing second, the same order as Jesus’ own work in 8:1-2.

Mark 6:8 allows a staff; Luke forbids even that. The “scrip” is the pēra, a traveller’s bag, the kind wandering Cynic preachers carried for collecting alms, so going without one also marks them off from beggars. The two coats are two tunics, a spare undergarment for the road.

The rule is to stay in the first house that takes them in until they leave the town. Hospitality to travellers was a duty in Israel, and moving on to a better host would shame the first one who opened his door.

Pious Jews were said to shake off the dust of Gentile lands on returning home, so doing it to a Jewish town treated it as foreign soil. Paul and Barnabas do exactly this at Pisidian Antioch (Acts 13:51). “The very dust” means even the dust: they carry away nothing of that place.

“Went through” is dierchomai, the verb Luke uses again and again in Acts for missionary travel (Acts 8:4). The towns are kōmai, villages, and “every where” is pantachou: the Twelve cover ground Jesus himself could not reach in a day.

A tetrarch was originally the ruler of a fourth part of a kingdom; Antipas received Galilee and Peraea when his father’s realm was divided. “Perplexed” is diaporeō, thoroughly at a loss, a word found only in Luke and Acts (Acts 2:12, 5:24, 10:17).

Elijah’s return was promised in Malachi 4:5, and Luke’s verb is exact: Elias “had appeared”, not risen, because Elijah never died (2 Kings 2:11). The others are said to be risen, since they had been buried.

This single sentence is all the Book of Luke says about John’s death; the banquet and the dancing daughter of Mark 6:17-29 are left out. “Desired” is in the imperfect: Herod kept seeking to see him, a wish carried for months.

Bethsaida, “house of fishing”, stood near the place where the Jordan enters the lake at its northeast corner. Philip the tetrarch had rebuilt it as Julias, so going there took Jesus out of Herod Antipas’s territory, an inference the timing after verse 9 makes likely.

He had gone aside for privacy, and when it fails he “received them”, apodechomai, the word for welcoming a guest. “Them that had need of healing” uses therapeia, a word that also meant care or household service.

“The day began to wear away” is literally “the day began to bow”, klinō, the same phrase the two travellers use at Emmaus (24:29). “Victuals” is episitismos, provisions for a journey, found only here in the New Testament. The Twelve speak for once as a body.

“Give ye them to eat” puts an emphatic “ye” in the Greek. Mark supplies the cost, two hundred pence; Luke leaves the sum out, and the disciples’ “except we should go and buy meat for all this people” sounds half like an offer and half like a protest.

“Men” is andres, adult males, so the total fed was larger. “By fifties in a company” uses klisia, a party reclining to eat, a word found only here in the New Testament. Moses had organised Israel in the wilderness under rulers of fifties (Exodus 18:21).

The response is plain obedience, told in one line. The verb for making them sit, kataklinō, is used only by Luke in the New Testament, for reclining at a meal, and he uses it again when Jesus sits at table at Emmaus (24:30).

Took, blessed, brake, gave: the four verbs will return at the Last Supper (22:19) and at Emmaus (24:30). Jewish custom blessed God over bread; Luke’s Greek has Jesus bless “them”, the loaves and fishes themselves, one of the few places where the food is the object of the blessing.

“Filled” is chortazō, first used of fattening animals with fodder, so the meal was not a token but a proper fill. Elisha’s servant fed a hundred men with twenty loaves “and they did eat, and left thereof” (2 Kings 4:44). The baskets are kophinoi, stout wicker carriers.

Between the feeding and this question Luke leaves out everything in Mark 6:45 to 8:26, the walking on the water, the Syrophoenician woman and more. He also gives no place; Mark’s Caesarea Philippi disappears, and the setting is prayer instead.

The disciples’ report repeats almost word for word the rumours Herod heard in verses 7-8. The crowd and the tetrarch are working with the same three guesses, and none of them takes Jesus to be anything more than a returned prophet.

“Ye” is emphatic: but you, who do you say? “The Christ of God” means God’s anointed one, echoing the promise to Simeon that he would see “the Lord’s Christ” before death (2:26).

“Straitly charged” is epitimaō, the verb Jesus uses to rebuke devils and wind, here aimed at silencing his own disciples. The title is true but premature in public, because the crowds would hear in it a king to fight Rome.

“Must” is dei, the word of divine necessity Luke uses from the boy in the temple (2:49) to the risen Jesus on the road (24:26). Elders, chief priests and scribes are the three groups of the Sanhedrin. Luke leaves out Peter’s protest and the rebuke “Get thee behind me”.

“He said to them all” widens the circle beyond the Twelve. A man condemned to crucifixion carried the crossbeam through the streets to the place of death, so the image was of a walk with no return. “Deny” is arneomai, the verb for Peter’s denial in 22:57.

The saying turns on psychē, which means both life and self. Holding on to one’s life by avoiding the cross loses the self, and the reverse keeps it. The form is a chiasm, save and lose, lose and save, easy to remember.

Two merchant’s words stand face to face: kerdainō, to gain or profit, and zēmioō, to suffer loss or forfeit. Luke has “lose himself” where Mark has “his own soul”, putting the whole person on the scales against the whole world.

Three glories are named, his own, the Father’s and the angels’. Only Luke gives all three, where Mark speaks of the Father’s glory with the angels. Being ashamed is courtroom language: to disown a person when testimony is called for.

“Taste of death” is a Semitic idiom for dying. “Of a truth” translates alēthōs, Luke’s Greek for the Hebrew “Amen” that opens the saying in Mark and Matthew. Luke also drops Mark’s “come with power”.

Mark and Matthew say “after six days”; Luke’s “about an eight days” probably counts inclusively, a week from Sunday to Sunday. The mountain is unnamed. Tradition since the fourth century has named Tabor, though many prefer Mount Hermon, closer to Caesarea Philippi.

Luke avoids Mark’s verb “transfigured”, metamorphoō, and says the appearance of his face became “other”. “Glistering” in 1611 meant flashing or sparkling, and the Greek exastraptō, to flash like lightning, appears nowhere else in the New Testament.

“Two men” is the same phrase Luke uses for the figures at the empty tomb (24:4) and at the ascension (Acts 1:10). Moses the lawgiver and Elias the prophet had both met God on the mountain called Sinai or Horeb, and both had left this life in unusual ways.

Of the three gospels, Luke alone records what they talked about. “Appeared in glory” gives them a share of the brightness, and “accomplish” is plēroō, to fulfil or bring to completion: the departure at Jerusalem is spoken of as a task to be carried out.

Only Luke says the three were weighed down with sleep, as they will be again in the garden (22:45). “When they were awake” is diagrēgoreō, fully roused, so the sight is not a dream; they see his glory with open eyes.

“Tabernacles” are skēnai, booths of branches like those Israel built each year at the Feast of Tabernacles (Leviticus 23:42), or like the tent of meeting where Moses spoke with God. Peter speaks just as the two are leaving, as if to keep them.

“Overshadowed” is episkiazō, the verb Gabriel used to Mary (1:35) and the Greek Old Testament uses for the cloud resting on the tabernacle in Exodus 40:35. The Greek leaves it unclear whether “they” who entered the cloud means the three disciples or Jesus, Moses and Elias.

Many early manuscripts read “my chosen Son” or “the chosen one”, echoing “mine elect” in Isaiah 42:1; the King James follows those that read “beloved”. “Hear him” recalls Moses’ promise of a prophet like himself: “unto him ye shall hearken” (Deuteronomy 18:15).

Luke gives no order to keep silent, as Mark 9:9 does; the three simply say nothing “in those days”. “Kept it close” is sigaō, fell silent.

“On the next day” is Luke’s detail and implies they spent the night on the mountain, which fits the drowsiness of verse 32. “Hill” here is oros, the same word as “mountain” in verse 28; the King James varies its English where the Greek does not.

“Look upon” is epiblepō, to look with care, the verb Mary used in 1:48 for God regarding her low estate. Only Luke says the boy is an only child, the third only child in three chapters after the widow’s son and Jairus’s daughter.

The father describes the fits as a spirit that seizes, throws the boy into convulsions and foaming, and leaves him bruised. “Hardly” in 1611 meant with difficulty: the spirit “scarcely” departs, after crushing him, syntribō, a word for bruising or breaking.

The disciples had been given authority “over all devils” in verse 1, and Luke recorded that they healed “every where”. The father’s flat report, “they could not”, lands against that commission.

“Faithless and perverse generation” echoes Moses’ song, “a perverse and crooked generation” (Deuteronomy 32:5). “Suffer you” means bear with you, anechomai. The rebuke seems aimed wide, at the generation, not only at nine disciples.

The attack comes as the boy is being brought, a last violence. “Tare” is syrrhēssō, to dash to the ground. Luke separates the acts: Jesus rebukes the spirit, heals the child, and gives him back, so exorcism and healing are both named.

“Mighty power” is megaleiotēs, majesty or grandeur, the word the Ephesian silversmiths use of Artemis in Acts 19:27. Luke credits it to God, while the next clause turns to “all things which Jesus did”, setting the two side by side.

“Let these sayings sink down into your ears” is literally “put these words into your ears”, a Hebrew way of saying listen hard. Luke’s second prediction gives only the handing over, with no mention of death or rising. “Delivered” is paradidōmi, the verb that will describe Judas’s act.

The passive “it was hid from them” suggests the concealment came from God, as it does in 18:34 and on the Emmaus road (24:16). “Perceived” is aisthanomai, to grasp by the senses, found only here in the New Testament.

“Reasoning” is dialogismos, a disputing that may have gone on in their thoughts as well as aloud, since verse 47 speaks of “the thought of their heart”. The Greek has the comparative “greater”, as though ranking the twelve against one another.

In the ancient world a child had no legal standing and little social worth. Jesus sets him “by him”, para heautō, at his own side, the position of honour next to the master.

“In my name” means on my account, for my sake. The last clause uses the same comparative, ho mikroteros, the lesser, that Jesus used of the least in the kingdom being greater than John (7:28).

“Forbad” is imperfect, we kept trying to stop him, which may mean the man did not stop. The scene recalls Joshua asking Moses to forbid Eldad and Medad from prophesying in the camp (Numbers 11:28-29), and Moses refusing.

Luke keeps both halves of a pair: this generous word, and the harder saying in 11:23, “He that is not with me is against me”. One concerns someone acting in Jesus’ name; the other concerns neutrality toward Jesus himself.

“Received up” is analēmpsis, a noun used only here in the New Testament, and the related verb describes the ascension in Acts 1:2 and 11. “Set his face” is a Hebrew idiom of fixed purpose, as in Isaiah 50:7, “I set my face like a flint.”

The messengers are angeloi, the same word as in the Malachi quotation of 7:27. Going through Samaria was the direct road from Galilee to Jerusalem, three days’ travel according to Josephus. The Samaritans worshipped on Mount Gerizim, not in Jerusalem.

The refusal has a single stated cause: his face was set toward Jerusalem. Pilgrims crossing Samaria for the feasts were sometimes turned away or attacked; Josephus tells of Galileans killed at the village of Ginae on their way to a festival.

Elijah twice called down fire on soldiers sent by King Ahaziah (2 Kings 1:10-12), and it happened in Samaria itself. Mark 3:17 records that Jesus named James and John Boanerges, sons of thunder, which this request helps explain. Some manuscripts lack “even as Elias did”.

“Turned” marks a deliberate facing, as when he turned to the woman in 7:44. “Rebuked” is epitimaō, the verb he has used on fever, wind and devils, now spent on two of his closest disciples.

The village they go on to is heteran, “another”, and Luke does not say whether it was Samaritan. The Book of Luke will soon give a Samaritan the lead in a parable (10:33) and have a Samaritan leper return to give thanks (17:16).

Matthew 8:19 makes the volunteer a scribe; Luke leaves him nameless, and places the exchange “in the way”, on the road to Jerusalem just begun. “Whithersoever thou goest” promises a destination he has not yet been told.

Foxes have dens and birds have kataskēnōseis, roosts, from a verb for pitching a tent. The Son of man lacks even that. The saying is spoken on a day when a village has just refused him a place to stay.

This time Jesus makes the call, and the man agrees but asks for an order of priority. Burying a father was so weighty a duty that the Mishnah later exempts a man with his dead unburied from reciting the Shema.

Luke alone adds the commission: “go thou and preach”, diangellō, announce far and wide. Many read the first “dead” as the spiritually dead and the second as the physically dead, an interpretation that fits the wordplay though the text does not spell it out.

“Bid them farewell” is apotassomai, to take leave, the verb Jesus will use in 14:33 for the one who “forsaketh not all that he hath”. The man’s own words, “I will follow thee; but”, contain the whole difficulty.

The Palestinian plough was light, steered with one hand while the other held a goad for the oxen, and a ploughman who looked behind him cut a crooked furrow. Hesiod had already told farmers to keep their eyes on the line. “Fit” is euthetos, well placed or suitable.