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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comRobertson Word Pictures - Luke 4:23 - 4:23
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Doubtless (pantōs). Adverb. Literally, at any rate, certainly, assuredly. Cf. Act 21:22; Act 28:4.
This parable (tēn parabolēn tautēn). See discussion on Matthew 13. Here the word has a special application to a crisp proverb which involves a comparison. The word physician is the point of comparison. Luke the physician alone gives this saying of Jesus. The proverb means that the physician was expected to take his own medicine and to heal himself. The word parabolē in the N.T. is confined to the Synoptic Gospels except Heb 9:9; Heb 11:19. This use for a proverb occurs also in Luk 5:36; Luk 6:39. This proverb in various forms appears not only among the Jews, but in Euripides and Aeschylus among the Greeks, and in Cicero’s Letters. Hobart quotes the same idea from Galen, and the Chinese used to demand it of their physicians. The point of the parable seems to be that the people were expecting him to make good his claim to the Messiahship by doing here in Nazareth what they had heard of his doing in Capernaum and elsewhere. “Establish your claims by direct evidence” (Easton). This same appeal (Vincent) was addressed to Christ on the Cross (Mat 27:40, Mat 27:42). There is a tone of sarcasm towards Jesus in both cases.
Heard done (ēkousamen genomena). The use of this second aorist middle participle genomena after ēkousamen is a neat Greek idiom. It is punctiliar action in indirect discourse after this verb of sensation or emotion (Robertson, Grammar, pp. 1040-42, 1122-24).
Do also here (poiēson kai hōde). Ingressive aorist active imperative. Do it here in thy own country and town and do it now. Jesus applies the proverb to himself as an interpretation of their real attitude towards himself.