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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
THE JOURNEY TOWARDS DEATH
Luk_9:51 to Luk_19:27
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A. The Divine Harmony in the Son of Man and the Four Temperaments of the Children of Men
Luk_9:51-62
(Parallel to Luk_9:57-60. Mat_8:19-22.)
Luk_9:51. When the days were fulfilling that He should be received up.—With these words Luke begins a new particular narrative of travel, and for Harmonistics the question is naturally of great importance what we are to understand by the expression ἡì . ôῆò ἀíáë . We should be relieved of great difficulties if we found ourselves allowed to understand by it the coming to an end of the days in which the Saviour found a favorable reception in Galilee (Wieseler, Lange), but even if the grammatical possibility of this interpretation was sufficiently proved, yet the whole way of conceiving the first period of the public life of the Saviour, as a time of favorable reception in contrast with the conflict afterwards arising, appears to be hardly in the spirit of Luke. The translation of óõìðëçñïῦóèáé in the sense of: “To come to an end,” is at least not favored by Act_2:1, and moreover the whole Pauline usage of our Evangelist is decidedly in favor of interpreting the ἀíÜëçøéò in the ecclesiastical sense of Assumtio. Comp. Act_1:2; Act_11:22; 1Ti_3:16. We believe, therefore, that this is here indicated as the final term of the earthly manifestation of the Saviour, to which even His death was only a natural transition. But we are not obliged, therefore, as yet to assume that here the journey to the last Passover is meant; on the other hand, the opposite seems to be deducible from Luk_13:22; Luk_17:11. Quite as little can we assume that here two journeys to feasts have been confounded (Schleiermacher), and least of all that it is not even an account of any particular journey which begins here (Ritzschl). It appears, on the other hand, that here one of the last journeys is designated which the Saviour, on the approach of the end of His life, had entered upon with His view directed to His exaltation, and at the same time that in this whole narrative of journeying, Luk_9:51 to Luk_18:14, different details do not appear in their strict historical sequence. This was fully permitted to the Evangelist, since on his pragmatical position the whole public life of the Lord might properly be called a journey to death, as Bengel strikingly explains it: “Instabat adhuc passio, crux, mors, sepulcrum, sed per hœc omnia ad metam prospexit Jesus, cujus sensum imitatur stilus Evangelistœ.” Moreover, it clearly appears that this whole account of this journey in Luke is drawn from one or several distinct written sources ( äéçãÞóåéò ); yet respecting their nature and origin it is impossible to determine anything certain, and for the credibility of this part also we must be contented with the declaration which Luke has made respecting his whole Gospel in the introduction, Luk_1:1-4.
He steadfastly set His face, ἐóôÞñéîå ôὸðñüóùðïí .—We cannot agree with the opinion (Von Baur) that nothing is here meant to be intimated than that Jesus, in all of the journeys which He was now making, never lost the final goal out of His mind, but made them with the continual, unshaken consciousness that they, wherever they led, were properly a ðïñåýåóèáé åἰò ̔ Éåñïõó . True, there lies in the word ἐóôÞñéîå the conception of a steadfast undaunted beholding of the final goal of the journey but that nevertheless an immediate commencement and continuance of the journey itself was connected therewith is sufficiently apparent from Luk_9:53-56.
Luk_9:53. And they did not receive Him.—It is true that the caravans for Jerusalem often journeyed this way (see Josephus, Ant. Jud. xx. 6. 1; and Lightfoot, on Joh_4:4), but for all that, hospitality might very well have been refused to a company travelling separately, and, above all, to the Saviour; if the report of the increasing hatred against Him had already made its way even to Samaria, and obtained there some influence. [The fact that the company were Jews is quite sufficient to account for the refusal, without the wholly superfluous and ungrounded supposition that they were influenced by any condition of parties among the Jews. If Jewish hatred against the Saviour had had any influence among the Samaritans, it would have been in His favor.—C. C. S.] Respecting the hatred between Samaritans and Jews, comp. Lange, on the Gospel of John.
Luk_9:54. James and John.—There is just as little ground for assuming (Euth. Zigab.) as for denying (Meyer) that the sons of Zebedee themselves were the messengers. The exasperation that filled them is as easily comprehensible as the entreaty for vengeance which they uttered. 1. They had seen the Lord upon Tabor, where Moses and Elijah did Him homage: shortly after, a conversation of high moment had directed their attention to Elijah and his relation to the kingdom of God. Is it a wonder that an image from the history of this prophet came up before their souls, and a spark of his fiery zeal set their hearts into a flaming glow? Comp. 2Ki_19:12. That the name Boanerges was given them for a humiliating reminder of what here took place, is, as already remarked, without any ground.
As Elijah did, ὡò êáὶ Ἠ . ἐðïßçóåí .—Upon the authority of B., L., and some cursives and variations, these words have been often suspected (Mill, Griesbach), and finally omitted by Tischendorf. We believe, however, that their early omission must be explained on the ground that “in the answer of Jesus an indirect censure of this example was discovered” (De Wette). On the other hand, it is probable that the words proceeded from the disciples themselves, since such an apparently unreasonable inquiry could be best justified by an express appeal to the man who had also performed such a miracle of punishment.
Luk_9:55. Know ye not of what Spirit ye are ?—The Saviour does not disapprove this Elijah-like zeal unconditionally. Ç e knows that this, on the plane of the old Theocracy, was not seldom necessary; but thi s does He seriously censure: that His disciples so entirely overlooked the distinction between the Old and the New Testament, that they, in the service of the mildest Master, still continued to believe that they could act as was permitted the stern reformer of Israel on his rigoristic position. They ought far rather to have considered that they, in His society, had, from the very beginning, become partakers of another Spirit, which knew no pleasure in vengeance. Not only of this does the Master powerfully admonish them, that they should be the bearers of this Spirit, but also that they in His society were already the dwelling-places of this Spirit. We find no ground for removing these words as spurious from the text, notwithstanding that they had been quite early suspected and expunged by many. (See Tischendorf, ad loc.) Their rejection, however, is sufficiently explained by the fact that they seemed to contain an indirect censure of Elijah’s way of dealing, and therefore gave offence to the copyists, although from a mistaken understanding of them. Perhaps it was feared also that by retaining these words the ancient Christian zeal in the persecution of heretics would be seen to be condemned, and they were therefore discreetly left out. In both cases the omission is at least fully intelligible, but not in what way they had come into the other manuscripts if the Saviour had not uttered them. And would Luke have written only ἐðåôßìçóåí áýôïῖò without adding anything more; precisely as he had previously, Luk_9:42, said in reference to an evil spirit? On the contrary, as respects the last words in the Recepta: “The Son of Man is not come,” &c., the number as well as the weight of the authorities for their spuriousness is in our eyes decisive. They are in all probability, as a fitting conclusion of an ecclesiastical lesson, transferred either from Mat_18:18, or Luk_19:10. The grounds, at least, on which, for example, Stier, iii. p. 95, will still vindicate them, appear to us rather subjective and unsatisfactory.
Luk_9:57. And it came to pass.—The correct historical sequence of this occurrence appears to have been observed by Matthew, Luk_8:19-20. The second may have taken place almost contemporaneously with it, the third probably on another occasion; but it is related by Luke here, on account of the similarity of the case, in one connection with the others. Our Evangelist apparently gives them at the beginning of this last narrative of travel, for the reason that they have all relation to one most momentous subject, the following of the Saviour in the way of self-denial, of toil, and of conflict.
A certain man.—According to Matthew, a scribe. If we proceed upon the presupposition that the Evangelist, in the case of very special callings of disciples, had in mind only the calling of apostles, and that therefore the here-mentioned person must necessarily have been one of the Twelve, the conjecture of Lange is then in the highest degree happy, that we here in the two following accounts have the history of the calling of Judas Iscariot, Thomas, and Matthew. On the other hand, we do not know whether the first was a scribe: we believe, moreover, that we must assume, on chronological grounds, that the calling of Matthew had already taken place. The first of these three men is moreover not called by Jesus, but, unrequested, offers himself to Him as companion of His journey. He utters the language of excited enthusiasm, follows the impression of the moment, and is the type of a sanguine nature.
Luk_9:58. The foxes.—The answer of the Saviour does not of itself entitle us to accuse the scribe who offers himself as a disciple, of an interested end; but it only presupposes that his resolution had been taken too hastily to be well matured and well considered. The Saviour therefore desires that he should first consider how little rest and comfort he had to expect in this journey. He Himself had less than even the wildest beasts possess, and can therefore call His followers also only to daily self-denial. The Saviour here does not primarily refer to the humbleness and poverty of His life, but to His restless and wandering life, although the first of these thoughts need not be wholly excluded. Does, perchance, the presentiment also express itself in these words that even dying He should lay His head to rest in a place which was not even His own property? At all events, we have to admire the deep wisdom of the Saviour in this, that on this occasion He calls himself the Son of Man, as if He would intimate that He who requires so much self-denial, also fully deserves it. As far as we from other passages are acquainted with even the better-minded scribes, we shall be very well able to assume that this one, at such a word, went from thence with a disturbed mind. The interpretation, moreover, that the Saviour with this pregnant answer only meant to say, “But I know not as yet for the coming night where I shall sleep” (Herder), or, that “The Divine Spirit which restlessly worked in Him, suffered itself to be hemmed in under no roof, within no four walls” (Weisse), belongs fitly in a collection of exegetical curiosities. The view of Schleiermacher, that the scribe wished to follow the Saviour to Jerusalem on whichever of the many roads to Jerusalem He might travel, we cannot approve, since it rests upon an improbability, in presupposing that not Matthew but Luke has given this occurrence in the right historical connection. To better purpose may we, in order to understand this man’s meaning, compare the language which Ittai used towards David, 2Sa_15:21.
Luk_9:59. And He said unto another, Follow Me.—According to Matthew’s intimation also: ðñῶôïí , Jesus first called this man to follow Him, and encouraged him, therefore, while He rather deterred the former. The melancholy temperament is treated by the Lord very differently from the sanguine. According to Matthew, he is one of the ìáèçôáß , belonging to the wider circle which is alluded to also in Joh_6:66. If the scribe was too inconsiderate, this man is too melancholy, and even in the most immediate neighborhood of the Prince of life, he sees himself pursued by gloomy images of death. The Lord knows that this man must choose at once or without doubt he will never choose, and deals with him, therefore, with all the strictness, but at the same time with all the wisdom, of love.
First to go and bury my father.—The sense is not that the father was already old, and that he wished to wait for his death (so, among others, Hase, Leben Jesu, second edition), for then he would have demanded an indefinite, perhaps a long postponement, and would have deserved a sharper answer. No, without doubt his father had died, and he had perhaps only quite lately received the intelligence of his death. It is not, however, probable that he would have mingled among the people and approached the Saviour, immediately from the house of death, after he had become Levitically unclean. He wishes, on the other hand, to go to his dead father, and cherishes the hope that the Saviour, for his sake, will postpone His departure or else permit him to follow afterwards.
Luk_9:60. Let the dead.—See Lange, ad loc. in Matthew. With a man of such a character the Saviour considers it absolutely necessary to insist on the exact fulfilment of the high principle, that for His sake, one must unconditionally leave all. If even the Nazarites were not permitted to defile themselves by touching the mortal remains of their kindred (Num_6:6-7), without this prohibition having been viewed as too strict, the Saviour also does not require too much when He here demanded the leaving of the dead father; the more so since He made good a thousandfold that which was given up for His sake, by the joyful calling to preach the Gospel of the kingdom of God. Duty to a handful of dust must now give way before duty towards mankind. It is of course understood, that the Saviour here by the first mentioned íåêñïß means the spiritually dead, and it at once appears how much, by the double sense in which the word íåêñïß is here used, the expression gains in beauty and power. Here also, in the use of language by the Synoptic and the Johannean Christ, there is discernible an admirable agreement. Comp. Joh_5:24-25.
Luk_9:61. Lord, I will follow Thee.—Luke does not state definitely whether the initiative proceeded from the Saviour or the disciple. It may be that Jesus had first called him, yet it is also possible that he here offers himself. This history has a remarkable concurrence with the prophetical calling of Elisha, 1Ki_19:19; 1Ki_19:21, and the form of the Saviour’s answer also appears borrowed from what took place with Elisha, who was called when ploughing. Here the Saviour insisted upon undivided devotion, as He in the first case insisted upon ripe consideration, in the second upon courageous decision. The inquirer is either not to follow, or to follow wholly and perfectly.
Luk_9:62. No man.—Before all things the Saviour will give the man to feel that in the kingdom of God a severe labor must be accomplished,—a labor which will be doubly severe and certainly unfruitful, if the whole man does not take part in it. He portrays to us from life the plougher whose hand is on the plough, whose eye is turned back, and whose work roust thereby become toilsome, ill regulated and insignificant. [The light, easily overturned plough of the East lends force to the image.—C. C. S.] What should He have to do with such laborers in His kingdom? To be compared with this, although not to be identified with it, is the example of Lot’s wife, Luk_17:32, and the apostolic saying, 2Pe_2:22.
Remarks on the whole Section.—It has often been remarked that Luke, without observing a strict chronological sequence, brings together here four different characters: Luk_9:51-56 the Choleric, Luk_9:57-58 the Sanguine, Luk_9:59-60 the Melancholic, Luk_9:61-62 the Phlegmatic. Without precisely asserting that the Evangelist had the definite purpose to portray the Saviour’s manner of dealing with men of the most different temperaments, we yet cannot deny that he is much more concerned for the union of similar facts than for strict chronological arrangement. It is not probable that in the last period of the public life of the Saviour, when enmity against Him had already so considerably increased, a scribe would have followed Him even then; on the contrary, it is much more credible that this, as Matthew relates, took place at an earlier period of time. That this last case occurred twice (Stier), appears to us on internal grounds hardly admissible.
2. The insult which the Saviour received from the Samaritans must have been the greater, the more widely the fame of His Messianic dignity had penetrated even among them. To a Messiah who was going up to Jerusalem instead of restoring the temple-service on Gerizim, they could not possibly extend hospitality. But at the same time, this hatred is also a striking symbol of the reception which is now as ever prepared for the Christian in the midst of an unbelieving world, as soon as this becomes aware, or conjectures, that his countenance also is directed towards the heavenly Jerusalem.
3. The heavenly mildness of the Saviour over against religious hatred on the one hand and the desire of vengeance on the other, only becomes rightly apparent, if we not only compare Him with Elijah, but above all consider who He was, and what reception He was entitled to demand. His vengeance on Samaria for the refusal of recognition here, we read in Act_8:14-17.
4. It is quite as incorrect to overlook the special necessity of the requirements, Luk_9:60-62, for those times, as to suppose that they were exclusively suitable for those times. On the contrary, there is here expressed in a peculiar form the high principle which binds all His disciples immutably, without respect to time or place, and with which we have already become acquainted, Luk_9:23-25.
5. The very strictness of the requirements which the Saviour imposes on His followers, is an incontrovertible proof of the exalted self-consciousness which He continually bore within Himself. Who has ever demanded more, but who also has promised more and rendered a greater reward than He? And in that which He here demands of others, He Himself has gone before in accomplishing the will of His Father at every time without rebuke.
Passion and His Glory.—The distinction between this village of the Samaritans and Sychar, Joh_4:40.—The power of deep-rooted religious hatred.—The strife between exaggerated religiosity and genuine humanity.—The hatred in Samaria the presage of the conflict in Jerusalem.—The fiery zeal of the sons of Zebedee: 1. Flaming out, 2. rebuked, 3. purified.—The Saviour over against: 1. Bigoted enemies, 2. unintelligent friends.—Jesus the meek Servant of the Father.—True and false religious zeal. Comp. Rom_10:2.—Religious hatred, false zeal, and meekness.—The distinction between the spirit of the Old and that of the New Covenant.
Luk_9:57-62. The following of Jesus; a threefold precept: 1. No very hasty step; the Master requires earnest consideration; 2. no melancholy resolution; the Master requires a courageous walk; 3. no unresolved wavering; the Master requires entire devotion.—Well-meaning but ill-considered steps, Jesus dissuades from.—The restless life of the Lord.—Whoever will follow the Son of Man, must count on self-denial.—What is heaviest, must weigh heaviest.—The dead father and the living Gospel.—To the spiritually dead commit the care of the lifeless dust.—Forgetting what is behind, reaching on to what is before.—The love of the Saviour in an apparently arbitrary refusal.—The undecided man between the Saviour and them of his house.—The useless plougher on the field of the kingdom of God: 1. His type; 2. his work; 3. his sentence.—Three stones of stumbling on the way of following Jesus: 1. Overhastiness, 2. heavy-heartedness, 3. indecision.
The whole Section. The Divine harmony in the Son of Man, and the different temperaments of the children of men.—The wisdom of the Saviour in converse with and in guiding men of the most different kinds.—How: 1. Different temperaments are related to the Saviour; 2. how the Saviour is related to different temperaments.—Severity and love, holiness and grace, in the Son of Man united in noblest wise.—Comp. especially the admirable sermons of Fr. Arndt on Luk_9:52-62.
Starke:—The consideration of death must not depress us, since we know that we are travelling towards the heavenly Jerusalem.—J. Hall:—Oh, deep humiliation, that He whose is the heaven and all the habitations therein, entreats for a lodging, and does not even find it.—Quesnel:—When one has once begun in good earnest the journey to heaven, he has little credit thereafter in the world.—Not to be hospitable, especially towards those who follow Christ, is unrighteous. Heb_13:2.—Zeisius:—How thirsty for vengeance after all is flesh and blood!—Against sin we must be zealous, but not against the persons of the sinners.—Although one may indeed follow the saints, yet herein considerateness is to be used.—Canstein:—To the church of Christ there has no might and power for the destruction of men been given.—Nova Bibl. Tub.:—Whoever with Christ seeks only easy days, let him stay away from Him.—Brentius:—A Divine call must be accepted without conferring with flesh and blood, let it cost what it may. Gal_1:16.—Parents one must honor, but for the sake of the kingdom of heaven let them also go. Mat_19:29.—The ministry demands the whole man.—Zeisius:—It is easy and hard to be a Christian.
Heubner:—How many profitless and superfluous drones there are in the ministry. Such workers are corpses that will all yet be buried.—Jesus commonly comes even to us not unannounced.—Augustine:—Opus est mitescere pietate.—Palmer:—Earthly desire, earthly love, earthly sorrow—these are the three powers that scare men away from Christ.—Beck (on Luk_9:51-56):—Know ye not what Spirit ye are children of? 1. What Spirit we are children of; 2. what Spirit we ought to be children of.—Gerok:—The four temperaments under training of Jesus Christ, the Searcher of hearts.—Schaufler (on Luk_9:61-62):—Anything but a conditional following of Jesus!
Footnotes:
Luk_9:55.—Tischendorf omits all between ἐðåôßìçóåí áὐôïῖò and êáὶ ἐðïñ . according to A., B., C., Î ., Cod. Sin. As to this, Alford says, “It is hardly conceivable that the shorter text, as edited by Tischendorf, should have been the original, and all the rest insertion.” “The words have such a weight of authority against them, that they would be worthy of rejection, if it were explicable how they came into the text. How easily, on the other hand, out of regard to Elijah, could an intentional omission take place! Moreover, the brief, simple, and pregnant word of rebuke is so unlike a copyist’s interpolation, and as worthy of Jesus Himself, as it is, on the other hand, hard to conceive that Luke, on an occasion so unique, limited himself to the bare ἐðåôßìçóåí áὐôïῖò .” Meyer, “It is in itself something very improbable, that the original narrative should have been expressed with such boldness as according to this text: ‘He turned and rebuked them,’ without the communication of the Redeemer’s own expressions, and, on the other hand, it is not less improbable, that if the text had originally read barely [as proposed], it should have been already in the ancient church supplemented as it now appears in the Received Text. For it is already so found in the Vulgate, four manuscripts of the Itala, and in most of the other ancient versions, as well as in Marcion, Clemens Alexandrinus, Cyprian, Augustine, Ambrosius, and others. The early omission of the words was perhaps originally occasioned by an accidental error in copying, the eye of the copyist being misled from êáὶ åῖ ̓ ðåí to êáὶ ἐðïñ ., as Meyer supposes, and then this shorter text being retained in the church from dogmatical considerations also, namely, because the words of Christ were used by Marcion, who already read them, as we see from Tertull. adv. Marc. Luk_4:23, and other anti-Jewish Gnostics, to justify their rejection of the Old Testament and the Jewish economy.” Bleek. The spuriousness of the words: “For the Son of Man is not come,” &c., is not much contested. It appears to be “the interpolation of a sentence customary” with our Lord, from Mat_18:11, or Luk_19:10.—C. C. S.]
[Luk_9:62.—Om., ðñὸò áὐôüí . The variations show this to be an interpolated supplement to the verb: some insert it before, some after ὁ Ἰçó ., some giving áὐôῷ . Alford. Cod. Sin. has it.—C. C. S.]