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(Parallel to Mat_22:41-46; Mat_23:14; Mar_12:35-40.)
How say they.—Not in the sense of “How is it possible that they so speak?” but, “In what sense is this name given to the Messiah?” There is a distinction between the question which, Mat_16:13, is addressed to the disciples and that which is here addressed to the Pharisees. There our Lord inquires after their view as to His own person; here He speaks in general, entirely objectively, respecting the Christ, the object of their expectation. Luke, who gives the account with the utmost possible condensation, passes over the answer, “David’s Son,” in order to let the second question: êáὶ áὐôüò , &c., follow immediately upon the first.
Luk_20:42. And yet David himself saith.—That the Messiah was to be David’s Son was, it is true, not the universal (comp. Joh_7:27), but yet the most current, conception. It would be an entire perversion, however, of our Saviour’s intention in making the citation from David, to suppose (Weisse, Evang. Gesch. i. p. 168) that He wished thereby to controvert the conception in itself as an ungrounded or indifferent one, and to point to the truth that the Christ was rather to be called David’s Lord. No: He proceeds the rather with His enemies e concessis: the Messiah is David’s Son, an homage which we know that He often received without gainsaying. But now He proposes to them for solution the enigma, how David could yet speak of his Son at the same time as his Lord. To a generally acknowledged truth He attaches the conception of a higher, almost forgotten one.
In the Book of Psalms.—We seek in vain also in Luke for the very pregnant hint found in Matthew and Mark, that David spoke ἐí ðíåýìáôé . Yet even according to his statement the Lord designates the 110th Psalm as a Messianic and Davidic one. In reference to the last point, critical investigation need not, it is true, be bound by this form of the citation, since our Saviour was evidently here not concerned with rendering critical judgment; but, on the other hand, a considerate criticism will certainly only venture upon sure grounds to deny the Davidic originality of this Psalm. But as respects the first point, we willingly acknowledge that it requires more courage than we possess in order, after so decided a declaration, to dispute the Messianic import of this psalm, which, moreover, is sufficiently established by Stier, Hoffman, Hengstenberg, and others. The question of the conception which the poet himself connected with the Scheblimini, does not lie within the sphere of our investigation; but that the poet in the element of the Spirit has greeted the Messiah as his Lord, can only be disputed by such expositors as, like those of the Jews, would place their authority above that of our Lord.
Luk_20:44. How is He his Son?—The question, how David in his Son—that is, one standing below himself—could at the same time honor his Lord, and therewith one who stood above him, is for us Christians scarcely a question any longer, since we have been initiated into the secret of the Divine nature of the Messiah. To the Jews, on the other hand, who expected a Messiah endowed with heavenly gifts and energies, and that as an earthly king, who was to be in a Theocratic and not in a metaphysical sense God’s Son, the matter was not so evident. It appears that the dead monotheism to which they surrendered themselves, especially after the exile, closed the eyes of most to the pregnant intimations which even in the Old Testament were here and there given respecting the supernatural descent and Divine dignity of the Messiah. The Lord will therefore show them that their whole Christology is imperfect and contradicts itself, so long as this integral element is wanting to it. He brings them to silence by pointing them to a sanctuary whose key they had lost. He wishes to stir them up to profounder reflection upon the truth which they had either never yet understood or had looked upon as blasphemy against God, and greeted with stones. In this way He will cure them once for all of their carnal expectations, and show them that He is in no wise minded to direct Himself according to their egoistic wishes. Even to-day the Jews are not in condition to answer satisfactorily the enigma proposed to them by the Great Master. Comp. the Ebionitic conception of the Messiah as èéëὸò Ü ̓ íèñùðïò , and the Christological confession which the Jew Trypho, in Justin Martyr, has given.
Luk_20:45. While all the people were listening.—Matthew (Luk_22:46) and Mark (Luk_12:37) communicate especially the impression which this last question of our Lord made; Luke visibly hurries on and communicates only a little of the extended warning which our Lord before leaving the temple uttered in reference to the Pharisees and scribes. Comp. Mat_23:1-36. In the little that he mentions of it he faithfully follows Mark, while he himself has already (Luk_11:37-54), preserved many a terrific “Woe to you” of the Lord in another connection. Respecting the historical accuracy of this arrangement see above (on Luk_17:20-37). Yet even from his compendious account (Luk_20:41-47), there appears so much as this: that our Lord, after He had proposed that question to the Pharisees upon which they are not even to this day clear, turns forever away from them, in order to address Himself to the more receptive people, and to warn them yet once again before His departure, against the blind leaders of the blind. Luke mentions particularly in addition (Luk_20:45) that our Lord addressed these warnings to His disciples (not exclusively the apostles, but a wider circle of His followers), yet coram populo.
Luk_20:46. Beware of the scribes.—The scribes, as the worst corrupters of the people among all the Pharisees, are here particularly brought forward and drawn from life; yet not according to their inward character, but according to their external guise. The Lord depicts their behavior: 1. In social life—the self-complacency with which they go about, ἐí óôïëáῖò , by which we have especially to understand the wide Tallith reaching down even to the feet; the value which they lay upon being universally greeted in the market, as well as upon extended titles; 2. in the Synagogues, where they lay claim to the ðñùôïêáèåäñßáò , which are allotted according to office and law; 3. in the house, where they transfer the controversy of rank for the place of honor from the Synagogue to the feast, and seek to dispute with others the first place; 4. in the sphere of philanthropy, where they devour widows’ houses while they pretend to advance their interests. Thus are hypocrisy, pride, and covetousness the three chief traits of which their portrait is composed. The last reproach “has reference primarily to the parasitism of the saints, who in long exercises of devotion sought to acquire influence with wealthy women and widows. The susceptibility of the weaker sex has been ever an object of the attention of devout friends of the world, and has never yet lost anything of its attractive power.”
Luk_20:47. Greater damnation.—This expression also appears to be an indirect proof that our Saviour on this occasion brought up more than only this little against the corrupters of the nation. It lay, however, in the character of the Hellenistic, Pauline Gospel of Luke, that He speaks with less particularity and detail than Matthew of the terrific judgment with which our Lord, on leaving the temple, shakes the dust from His feet. Here also holds good what has been observed of Mark: “For young Gentile Christians the great sermon of denunciation would have been in part unintelligible and in part too strong a food.”
2. The last question with which Jesus parts from His enemies affords the convincing proof that for true Christianity everything depends on a correct judgment of His glorious person. If conceptions of faith (Glaubensbegriffe) were really a matter of quite subordinate importance, and the assertion of rationalism were well founded—namely, that not the person but the doctrine and example of our Lord are the chief concern, He would scarcely have given Himself the trouble of encouraging the Pharisees to an investigation which in this case would have concerned a dry, exegetical, and abstract dogmatical question.
3. On this occasion it plainly appears that our Lord finds direct Messianic prophecies even in the book of Psalms; that He conceives David as with his vision into the future taken up into a region of the Spirit; that to Him the prophetic Scripture, as an inspired, was also a perfectly infallible, Scripture. So long as one regards the Old Testament with His eyes, neither the Nomistic over-valuation nor the Gnostic contempt for the first and largest half of the Scripture has a satisfactory prospect of finding great acceptance in His church.
4. There is no book in which our Lord in His last week has so lived as in the book of Psalms; an intimation which should not be neglected, particularly by suffering and striving Christians.
5. There exists a palpable similarity between the image which our Lord has here sketched of the Pharisees and scribes, and Clericalism, especially that of the middle ages. Altogether spontaneously, one in reading the expression, Luk_20:47, thinks of the presents which the church and the monkish orders knew how to get for themselves, of the traffic in masses for the dead, of the unhappy influence of the confessional. The value also which they laid upon sumptuous garments and places, of honor, the predilection for circumstantial titles, and the system of reciprocal deification and homage has all revived in many a form, and even to-day has not yet died out. But it would betray a very short-sighted view, if one knew how to find the traces of these perversions nowhere else than merely within the jurisdiction of Rome.
6. Severe, yet not too severe, is the tone where with our Lord prepares Himself to leave the sanctuary. Perhaps we may even rather wonder that He has not said more, than that He has not said less. Nor may it be overlooked that He does not attack the persons of His enemies in themselves, but their principles, whose working was so utterly ruinous; that He by no means denies the existence of individuals of a better mind among the scribes, but directs His eye principally to the spirit ruling among them; that the salt of His speech must here often more than elsewhere bite, if it was as yet even in any measure to stay the corruption. And may we not add that our Lord felt even for Himself the necessity of holding up to Himself the whole wickedness of His enemies once more in an overwhelming picture (Matthew 23); that He might be able to rise up with so much the more power and dignity, and take of the temple a leave which was to Him so indescribably melancholy?
7. Immeasurable is the contrast between the first and the last visit of our Lord to the temple. The less may we leave unnoticed that the boy Jesus, who once by His questions threw the teachers in Israel into astonishment, and by His answers often made them suddenly dumb, and the Messiah, who often on the final day, both with questions and with answers, nobly maintains the field, exhibit really one and the same character. The Divine Sonship then presaged is now distinctly known.
Starke:—Let him whom the people like to hear take note of the opportunity to do good.—Quesnel:—Proud, ambitious, avaricious teachers are more dangerous than the greatest sinners among the people.—Hedinger:—Pride a sign of hypocrisy, believe it certainly; if an angel came and were proud, believe he were a devil, Psa_131:1.—Widows can very easily be talked over and misled: they should therefore take good heed to themselves; but woe to him that misleads them. 2Ti_3:6.—Brentius:—It is an abomination above all abominations to deceive people and deprive them of their property under the guise of godliness.
Heubner:—Jesus here proposes no school-question, but the highest, weightiest question in life.—It is a serious duty to become clear as to the person of Jesus.—Christ is Lord absolutely of the whole human race, even David’s Lord; His Lordship is the highest and most blessed one; Christocracy would be the best constitution for us.—Arndt, Prediglen über das Leben Jesu, iv. p. Luke 251:—The weightiest article of faith in the Gospel. The Pharisees, with their ‘David’s Son’, yet only expressed in substance that Jesus was a man like all other men, only of royal race. It was only the half, not the whole truth. Even as our contemporaries, who also will let Christ pass for a remarkably gifted and virtuous character, and yet for a man such as they and all are. If Jesus had been really only that and nothing higher, He would have had to praise the answer of the Pharisees, and to say something like this: Ye are right; and I see that ye are very much at home in Moses and in the prophets. But our Lord is in nowise content with the answer; He demands, when the discourse is about the Messiah, a deeper penetration into the declarations of the Scripture, and into the character of His person. Must He, therefore, if God already calls Him Lord, even before He was born, not be infinitely more than David’s Son—than a mere man?—Palmer:—There is, according to this inquiry, only one truth for our faith; for a living faith in God, in a providence, immortality, &c., is impossible without a knowledge of Christ.—Fuchs:—What think ye of Christ? In that name there is implied that He is: 1. The greatest Prophet; 2. the true High-Priest; 3. the eternal King.—Otto:—Christ, David’s Lord and Son.—Moll:—What think ye of Christ, whose Son is He? 1. A question of life, which stands in the centre of all moral problems; 2. a question of conscience, which lays hold of the personal life in its deepest root; 3. a question of faith, which finds its solution only upon the soil of revelation.
Footnotes:
Luk_20:45.— Ðñὸò áὐôïýò , to which Tischendorf gives the preference, [also Alford,] has not other authorities for it than Q. [As an ecclesiastical lection begins here, Alford explains the Recepta as having arisen very early from the wish to specify áὐôïýò . But it is strange that only a single authority should have retained the true reading.—C. C. S.]