{"commentary":{"id":"jamieson-fausset-brown","name":"Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary","website":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamieson-Fausset-Brown_Bible_Commentary","licenseUrl":"https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/","licenseNotes":null,"licenseNotice":null,"englishName":"Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary","language":"eng","textDirection":"rtl","sha256":"db3d4c8b3c1f32ef9d1430a57392e02bda3a17aac1f9bbe398461de021a3cb13","availableFormats":["json"],"listOfBooksApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/books.json","listOfProfilesApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/profiles.json","numberOfBooks":66,"totalNumberOfChapters":1187,"totalNumberOfVerses":17056,"totalNumberOfProfiles":0,"languageName":"English","languageEnglishName":"English"},"book":{"id":"LUK","commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","name":"Luke","commonName":"Luke","introduction":"THE writer of this Gospel is universally allowed to have been Lucas (an abbreviated form of Lucanus, as Silas of Silvanus), though he is not expressly named either in the Gospel or in the Acts. From Col 4:14 we learn that he was a \"physician\"; and by comparing that verse with Col 4:10-11 --in which the apostle enumerates all those of the circumcision who were then with him, but does not mention Luke, though he immediately afterwards sends a salutation from him--we gather that Luke was not a born Jew. Some have thought he was a freed-man (libertinus), as the Romans devolved the healing art on persons of this class and on their slaves, as an occupation beneath themselves. His intimate acquaintance with Jewish customs, and his facility in Hebraic Greek, seem to show that he was an early convert to the Jewish faith; and this is curiously confirmed by Act 21:27-29, where we find the Jews enraged at Paul's supposed introduction of Greeks into the temple, because they had seen \"Trophimus the Ephesian\" with him; and as we know that Luke was with Paul on that occasion, it would seem that they had taken him for a Jew, as they made no mention of him. On the other hand, his fluency in classical Greek confirms his Gentile origin. The time when he joined Paul's company is clearly indicated in the Acts by his changing (at Act 16:10) from the third person singular (\"he\") to the first person plural (\"we\"). From that time he hardly ever left the apostle till near the period of his martyrdom (Ti2 4:11). EUSEBIUS makes him a native of Antioch. If so, he would have every advantage for cultivating the literature of Greece and such medical knowledge as was then possessed. That he died a natural death is generally agreed among the ancients; GREGORY NAZIANZEN alone affirming that he died a martyr.\n\nThe time and place of the publication of his Gospel are alike uncertain. But we can approximate to it. It must at any rate have been issued before the Acts, for there the 'Gospel' is expressly referred to as the same author's \"former treatise\" (Act 1:1). Now the Book of the Acts was not published for two whole years after Paul's arrival as a prisoner at Rome, for it concludes with a reference to this period; but probably it was published soon after that, which would appear to have been early in the year 63. Before that time, then, we have reason to believe that the Gospel of Luke was in circulation, though the majority of critics make it later. If we date it somewhere between A.D. 50 and 60, we shall probably be near the truth; but nearer it we cannot with any certainty come. Conjectures as to the place of publication are too uncertain to be mentioned here.\n\nThat it was addressed, in the first instance, to Gentile readers, is beyond doubt. This is no more, as DAVIDSON remarks [Introduction to the New Testament, p. 186], than was to have been expected from the companion of an \"apostle of the Gentiles,\" who had witnessed marvellous changes in the condition of many heathens by the reception of the Gospel. But the explanations in his Gospel of things known to every Jew, and which could only be intended for Gentile readers, make this quite plain--see Luk 1:26; Luk 4:31; Luk 8:26; Luk 21:37; Luk 22:1; Luk 24:13. A number of other minute particulars, both of things inserted and of things omitted, confirm the conclusion that it was Gentiles whom this Evangelist had in the first instance in view.\n\nWe have already adverted to the classical style of Greek which this Evangelist writes--just what might have been expected from an educated Greek and travelled physician. But we have also observed that along with this he shows a wonderful flexibility of style, so much so, that when he comes to relate transactions wholly Jewish, where the speakers and actors and incidents are all Jewish, he writes in such Jewish Greek as one would do who had never been out of Palestine or mixed with any but Jews. In DA COSTA'S'S Four Witnesses will be found some traces of \"the beloved physician\" in this Gospel. But far more striking and important are the traces in it of his intimate connection with the apostle of the Gentiles. That one who was so long and so constantly in the society of that master mind has in such a work as this shown no traces of that connection, no stamp of that mind, is hardly to be believed. Writers of Introductions seem not to see it, and take no notice of it. But those who look into the interior of it will soon discover evidences enough in it of a Pauline cast of mind. Referring for a number of details to DA COSTA, we notice here only two examples: In Co1 11:23, Paul ascribes to an express revelation from Christ Himself the account of the Institution of the Lord's Supper which he there gives. Now, if we find this account differing in small yet striking particulars from the accounts given by Matthew and Mark, but agreeing to the letter with Luke's account, it can hardly admit of a doubt that the one had it from the other; and in that case, of course, it was Luke that had it from Paul. Now Matthew and Mark both say of the Cup, \"This is my blood of the New Testament\"; while Paul and Luke say, in identical terms, \"This cup is the New Testament in My blood\" (Co1 11:25; Luk 22:20). Further, Luke says, \"Likewise also the cup after supper, saying,\" &c.; while Paul says, \"After the same manner He took the cup when He had supped, saying,\" &c.; whereas neither Matthew nor Mark mention that this was after supper. But still more striking is another point of coincidence in this case. Matthew and Mark both say of the Bread merely this: \"Take, eat; this is My body\" (Mat 26:26; Mar 14:22); whereas Paul says, \"Take, eat, this is My body, which is broken for you\" (Co1 11:24), and Luke, \"This is My body, which is given for you\" (Luk 22:19). And while Paul adds the precious clause, \"This do in remembrance of Me,\" Luke does the same, in identical terms. How can one who reflects on this resist the conviction of a Pauline stamp in this Gospel? The other proof of this to which we ask the reader's attention is in the fact that Paul, in enumerating the parties by whom Christ was seen after His resurrection, begins, singularly enough, with Peter--\"And that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures and that He was seen of Cephas, then of the Twelve\" (Co1 15:4-5) --coupled with the remarkable fact, that Luke is the only one of the Evangelists who mentions that Christ appeared to Peter at all. When the disciples had returned from Emmaus to tell their brethren how the Lord had appeared to them in the way, and how He had made Himself known to them in the breaking of bread, they were met, as Luke relates, ere they had time to utter a word, with this wonderful piece of news, \"The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon\" (Luk 24:34).\n\nOther points connected with this Gospel will be adverted to in the Commentary. \n\n\n\nNext: Luke Chapter 1\n\n","order":42,"numberOfChapters":24,"sha256":"204b6ad5a3007ae03d59f0a3f250dc1a4fed154e78ef885292075f6de0b65757","firstChapterNumber":1,"firstChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/LUK/1.json","firstChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"LUK","chapter":1},"lastChapterNumber":24,"lastChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/LUK/24.json","lastChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"LUK","chapter":24},"totalNumberOfVerses":596},"chapter":{"number":10,"content":[{"type":"verse","number":2,"content":["The harvest, &c.--(See on Mat 9:37). \n\npray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth labourers into his harvest--(See on Mat 9:38).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":3,"content":["(See on Mat 10:7-16).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":10,"content":["son of peace--inwardly prepared to embrace your message of peace. See note on \"worthy,\" (see on Mat 10:13).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":12,"content":["(See on Mat 11:20-24). \n\nfor Sodom--Tyre and Sidon were ruined by commercial prosperity; Sodom sank through its vile pollutions: but the doom of otherwise correct persons who, amidst a blaze of light, reject the Saviour, shall be less endurable than that of any of these.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":16,"content":["He that, &c.--(See on Mat 10:40).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":17,"content":["returned--evidently not long away. \n\nLord, &c.--\"Thou hast exceeded Thy promise, for 'even the devils,'\" &c. The possession of such power, not being expressly in their commission, as in that to the Twelve (Luk 9:1), filled them with more astonishment and joy than all else. \n\nthrough thy name--taking no credit to themselves, but feeling lifted into a region of unimagined superiority to the powers of evil simply through their connection with Christ.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":18,"content":["I beheld--As much of the force of this glorious statement depends on the nice shade of sense indicated by the imperfect tense in the original, it should be brought out in the translation: \"I was beholding Satan as lightning falling from heaven\"; that is, \"I followed you on your mission, and watched its triumphs; while you were wondering at the subjection to you of devils in My name, a grander spectacle was opening to My view; sudden as the darting of lightning from heaven to earth, lo! Satan was beheld falling from heaven!\" How remarkable is this, that by that law of association which connects a part with the whole, those feeble triumphs of the Seventy seem to have not only brought vividly before the Redeemer the whole ultimate result of His mission, but compressed it into a moment and quickened it into the rapidity of lightning! Note.--The word rendered \"devils,\" is always used for those spiritual agents employed in demoniacal possessions--never for the ordinary agency of Satan in rational men. When therefore the Seventy say, \"the devils [demons] are subject to us,\" and Jesus replies, \"Mine eye was beholding Satan falling,\" it is plain that He meant to raise their minds not only from the particular to the general, but from a very temporary form of satanic operation to the entire kingdom of evil. (See Joh 12:31; and compare Isa 14:12).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":19,"content":["Behold, I give you, &c.--not for any renewal of their mission, though probably many of them afterwards became ministers of Christ; but simply as disciples. \n\nserpents and scorpions--the latter more venomous than the former: literally, in the first instance (Mar 16:17-18; Act 28:5); but the next words, \"and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you,\" show that the glorious power of faith to \"overcome the world\" and \"quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one,\" by the communication and maintenance of which to His people He makes them innocuous, is what is meant (Jo1 5:4; Eph 6:16).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":20,"content":["rejoice not, &c.--that is, not so much. So far from forbidding it, He takes occasion from it to tell them what had been passing in His own mind. But as power over demons was after all intoxicating, He gives them a higher joy to balance it, the joy of having their names in Heaven's register (Phi 4:3).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":21,"content":["Jesus . . . said, &c.--The very same sublime words were uttered by our Lord on a former similar occasion (see on Mat 11:25-27); but (1) There we are merely told that He \"answered and said\" thus; here, He \"rejoiced in spirit and said,\" &c. (2) There it was merely \"at that time\" (or season) that He spoke thus, meaning with a general reference to the rejection of His gospel by the self-sufficient; here, \"In that hour Jesus said,\" with express reference probably to the humble class from which He had to draw the Seventy, and the similar class that had chiefly welcomed their message. \"Rejoice\" is too weak a word. It is \"exulted in spirit\"--evidently giving visible expression to His unusual emotions; while, at the same time, the words \"in spirit\" are meant to convey to the reader the depth of them. This is one of those rare cases in which the veil is lifted from off the Redeemer's inner man, that, angel-like, we may \"look into it\" for a moment (Pe1 1:12). Let us gaze on it with reverential wonder, and as we perceive what it was that produced that mysterious ecstasy, we shall find rising in our hearts a still rapture--\"Oh, the depths!\"\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":23,"content":["(See on Mat 13:16-17).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":25,"content":["QUESTION OF A LAWYER AND PARABLE OF THE GOOD SAMARITAN. (Luk 10:25-37)\n\ntempted him--\"tested him\"; in no hostile spirit, yet with no tender anxiety for light on that question of questions, but just to see what insight this great Galilean teacher had.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":26,"content":["What is written in the law--apposite question to a doctor of the law, and putting him in turn to the test [BENGEL].\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":27,"content":["Thou shalt, &c.--the answer Christ Himself gave to another lawyer. (See on Mar 12:29-33).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":28,"content":["he said, &c.--\"Right; THIS do, and life is thine\"--laying such emphasis on \"this\" as to indicate, without expressing it, where the real difficulty to a sinner lay, and thus nonplussing the questioner himself.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":29,"content":["willing--\"wishing,\" to get himself out of the difficulty, by throwing on Jesus the definition of \"neighbor,\" which the Jews interpreted very narrowly and technically, as excluding Samaritans and Gentiles [ALFORD].\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":30,"content":["A certain man--a Jew. \n\nfrom Jerusalem to Jericho--a distance of nineteen miles northeast, a deep and very fertile hollow--\"the Temple of Judea\" [TRENCH]. \n\nthieves--\"robbers.\" The road, being rocky and desolate, was a notorious haunt of robbers, then and for ages after, and even to this day.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":31,"content":["came down a . . . priest . . . and a Levite--Jericho, the second city of Judea, was a city of the priests and Levites, and thousands of them lived there. The two here mentioned are supposed, apparently, to be returning from temple duties, but they had not learnt what that meaneth, 'I will have mercy and not sacrifice' [TRENCH]. \n\nsaw him--It was not inadvertently that he acted. \n\ncame and looked--a further aggravation. \n\npassed by--although the law expressly required the opposite treatment even of the beast not only of their brethren, but of their enemy (Deu 22:4; Exo 23:4-5; compare Isa 58:7).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":33,"content":["Samaritan--one excommunicated by the Jews, a byword among them, synonymous with heretic and devil (Joh 8:48; see on Luk 17:18). \n\nhad compassion--His best is mentioned first; for \"He who gives outward things gives something external to himself, but he who imparts compassion and tears gives him something from his very self\" [GREGORY THE GREAT, in TRENCH]. No doubt the priest and Levite had their excuses--It is not safe to be lingering here; besides, he's past recovery; and then, may not suspicion rest upon ourselves? So might the Samaritan have reasoned, but did not [TRENCH]. Nor did he say, He's a Jew, who would have had no dealings with me (Joh 4:9), and why should I with him?\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":34,"content":["oil and wine--the remedies used in such cases all over the East (Isa 1:6), and elsewhere; the wine to cleanse the wounds, the oil to assuage their smartings. \n\non his own beast--himself going on foot.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":35,"content":["two pence--equal to two day's wages of a laborer, and enough for several days' support.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":36,"content":["Which . . . was neighbour?--a most dexterous way of putting the question: (1) Turning the question from, \"Whom am I to love as my neighbour?\" to \"Who is the man that shows that love?\" (2) Compelling the lawyer to give a reply very different from what he would like--not only condemning his own nation, but those of them who should be the most exemplary. (3) Making him commend one of a deeply hated race. And he does it, but it is almost extorted. For he does not answer, \"The Samaritan\"--that would have sounded heterodox, heretical--but \"He that showed mercy on him.\" It comes to the same thing, no doubt, but the circumlocution is significant.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":37,"content":["Go, &c.--O exquisite, matchless teaching! What new fountains of charity has not this opened up in the human spirit--rivers in the wilderness, streams in the desert! What noble Christian institutions have not such words founded, all undreamed of till that wondrous One came to bless this heartless world of ours with His incomparable love--first in words, and then in deeds which have translated His words into flesh and blood, and poured the life of them through that humanity which He made His own! Was this parable, now, designed to magnify the law of love, and to show who fulfils it and who not? And who did this as never man did it, as our Brother Man, \"our Neighbor?\" The priests and Levites had not strengthened the diseased, nor bound up the broken (Eze 34:4), while He bound up the brokenhearted (Isa 61:1), and poured into all wounded spirits the balm of sweetest consolation. All the Fathers saw through the thin veil of this noblest of stories, the Story of love, and never wearied of tracing the analogy (though sometimes fancifully enough) [TRENCH]. Exclaims GREGORY NAZIANZEN (in the fourth century), \"He hungered, but He fed thousands; He was weary, but He is the Rest of the weary; He is saluted 'Samaritan' and 'Demoniac,' but He saves him that went down from Jerusalem and fell among thieves,\" &c.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":38,"content":["MARTHA AND MARY. (Luk 10:38-42)\n\ncertain village--Bethany (Joh 11:1), which Luke so speaks of, having no farther occasion to notice it. \n\nreceived him . . . her house--The house belonged to her, and she appears throughout to be the older sister.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":39,"content":["which also--\"who for her part,\" in contrast with Martha. \n\nsat--\"seated herself.\" From the custom of sitting beneath an instructor, the phrase \"sitting at one's feet\" came to mean being a disciple of any one (Act 22:3). \n\nheard--rather, \"kept listening\" to His word.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":40,"content":["cumbered--\"distracted.\" \n\ncame to him--\"presented herself before Him,\" as from another apartment, in which her sister had \"left her to serve (or make preparation) alone.\" \n\ncarest thou not . . . my sister, &c.--\"Lord, here am I with everything to do, and this sister of mine will not lay a hand to anything; thus I miss something from Thy lips, and Thou from our hands.\" \n\nbid her, &c.--She presumes not to stop Christ's teaching by calling her sister away, and thus leaving Him without His one auditor, nor did she hope perhaps to succeed if she had tried.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":41,"content":["Martha, Martha--emphatically redoubling upon the name. \n\ncareful and cumbered--the one word expressing the inward worrying anxiety that her preparations should be worthy of her Lord; the other, the outward bustle of those preparations. \n\nmany things--\"much service\" (Luk 10:40); too elaborate preparation, which so engrossed her attention that she missed her Lord's teaching.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":42,"content":["one thing, &c.--The idea of \"Short work and little of it suffices for Me\" is not so much the lower sense of these weighty words, as supposed in them, as the basis of something far loftier than any precept on economy. Underneath that idea is couched another, as to the littleness both of elaborate preparation for the present life and of that life itself, compared with another. \n\nchosen the good part--not in the general sense of Moses' choice (Heb 11:25), and Joshua's (Jos 24:15), and David's (Psa 119:30); that is, of good in opposition to bad; but, of two good ways of serving and pleasing the Lord, choosing the better. Wherein, then, was Mary's better than Martha's? Hear what follows. \n\nnot be taken away--Martha's choice would be taken from her, for her services would die with her; Mary's never, being spiritual and eternal. Both were true-hearted disciples, but the one was absorbed in the higher, the other in the lower of two ways of honoring their common Lord. Yet neither despised, or would willingly neglect, the other's occupation. The one represents the contemplative, the other the active style of the Christian character. A Church full of Marys would perhaps be as great an evil as a Church full of Marthas. Both are needed, each to be the complement of the other.\n\n\n\n\nNext: Luke Chapter 11\n\n"]}],"introduction":"MISSION OF THE SEVENTY DISCIPLES, AND THEIR RETURN. (Luke 10:1-24)\n\nthe Lord--a becoming title here, as this appointment was an act truly lordly [BENGEL]. \n\nother seventy also--rather, \"others (also in number), seventy\"; probably with allusion to the seventy elders of Israel on whom the Spirit descended in the wilderness (Num 11:24-25). The mission, unlike that of the Twelve, was evidently quite temporary. All the instructions are in keeping with a brief and hasty pioneering mission, intended to supply what of general preparation for coming events the Lord's own visit afterwards to the same \"cities and places\" (Luk 10:1) would not, from want of time, now suffice to accomplish; whereas the instructions to the Twelve, besides embracing all those to the Seventy, contemplate world-wide and permanent effects. Accordingly, after their return from this single missionary tour, we never again read of the Seventy.\n\n"},"thisChapterLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/LUK/10.json","thisChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"LUK","chapter":10},"nextChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/LUK/11.json","nextChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"LUK","chapter":11},"previousChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/LUK/9.json","previousChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"LUK","chapter":9},"numberOfVerses":28}