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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comRobertson Word Pictures - Luke 14:18 - 14:18
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
With one consent (apo mias). Some feminine substantive like gnōmēs or psuchēs has to be supplied. This precise idiom occurs nowhere else. It looked like a conspiracy for each one in his turn did the same thing.
To make excuse (paraiteisthai). This common Greek verb is used in various ways, to ask something from one (Mar 15:6), to deprecate or ask to avert (Heb 12:19), to refuse or decline (Act 25:11), to shun or to avoid (2Ti 2:23), to beg pardon or to make excuses for not doing or to beg (Luk 14:18). All these ideas are variations of aiteō, to ask in the middle voice with para in composition.
The first (ho prōtos). In order of time. There are three of the “many” (“all”), whose excuses are given, each more flimsy than the other.
I must needs (echō anagkēn). I have necessity. The land would still be there, a strange “necessity.”
Have me excused (eche me parēitēmenon). An unusual idiom somewhat like the English perfect with the auxiliary “have” and the modern Greek idiom with echō, but certainly not here a Greek periphrasis for parēitēso. This perfect passive participle is predicate and agrees with me. See a like idiom in Mar 3:1; Luk 12:19 (Robertson, Grammar, pp. 902f.). The Latin had a similar idiom, habe me excusatum. Same language in Luk 14:19.