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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadMatthew Poole Commentary - Luke 3:23 - 3:23
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Here is amongst critics a little dispute, whether our blessed Lord at his baptism (after which he soon began his public ministry) was full thirty years of age; wsei and arcomenov in the Greek give occasion to the doubt. Those who judge that he was thirty complete, conceive that the age before which the priests and Levites did no service in the tabernacle of God. Num_4:3 commanded the number of them to be taken from thirty years old to fifty, and it was done accordingly, Luk_3:34,35, &c. David, in the latter end of his life, so numbered them, 1Ch_23:3, when their number (of that age) was thirty-eight thousand; yet in that chapter, 1Ch_23:24,27, we find them numbered from twenty years old and upward; but possibly that was for some more inferior service. In conformity to this, most think that both John the Baptist and Christ entered not upon their public ministry till they were of that age; but whether they were thirty years of age complete, or current, is a question, but so little a one, as deserves no great study to resolve: the two qualifying words, wsei and arcomenov, would incline one to think Christ was but thirty years of age current, which is advantaged by what others tell us, that the Jews ordinarily called a child two or three years old as soon as it did but enter upon its second or third year. Some think our Saviour was ten months above twenty-nine years of age when he was baptized, after which he was tempted of the devil forty days before he entered the public ministry; but these are little things.
Being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph. Joseph was not his natural father, though so supposed by the Jews, Joseph being indeed his legal father, being married to the virgin when our Saviour was born, Mat_1:20.