Bible Commentaries
Luke 6

Introduction

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

1 Christ reproveth the Pharisees’ blindness about the observation of the Sabbath, by Scripture, reason, and miracle:

13 chooseth twelve apostles:

17 healeth the diseased:

20 preacheth to his disciples before the people of blessings and curses:

27 how we must love our enemies:

46 and join the obedience of good works to the hearing of the word: lest in the evil day of temptation we fall like a house built upon the face of the earth, without any foundation.

Verse 1

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

On the second Sabbath after the first. — On this phrase, εν σαββατω δευτεροπρωτω , says Simon, there are eight different explications, and all conjectural; and even the Syriac and Arabic versions, though so much nearer in time and place to Palestine, show plainly, that their authors did not understand it. Happily nothing depends upon it; and it only adds another proof that this gospel was written, as it professes, by one intimately familiar with Jewish customs and modes of expression. — That most generally received, is sanctioned by Scaliger, Lightfoot, Whitby, Lamy, and others. On the second day of unleavened bread, or of the passover week, Leviticus 23:10; Leviticus 23:16, took place the offering of the sheaf or first fruits of the harvest. Thence they reckoned fifty days to the pentecost. The δευτερο -πρωτον , or second-first Sabbath, is the first Sabbath after this second day of unleavened bread. The second Sabbath would be called δευτερο -δευτερον the third, δευτερο -τριτον ; but of this, no instances can be quoted, or this view of the matter would be established. This view is originally drawn from Theophylact, who explains the Sabbath in question as the first of the seven Sabbaths between the passover and the pentecost. This is supported by the season of the year; for when our Lord went through the corn fields, the corn was standing ripe, or nearly so, in the fields. On this transaction, see the notes on Matthew 12:1, &c.

Verse 6

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

A man whose right hand was withered, See notes on Matthew 12:9-14.

Verse 7

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

That they might find an accusation, κατηγοριαν , the matter of an accusation, against him so as to proceed against him judicially, and arraign him before the council of twenty-three, as a Sabbath-breaker. See notes on Matthew 12:14.

Verse 12

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

In prayer to God. — Προσευχη του Θεου , here, is taken by some for one of the proseuchæ, or places of prayer, which they think distinct from the synagogues, and more ancient, and in which men prayed not together but apart. That proseuchæ was but another name for synagogue appears, however, most probable; but however this may be, there is no reason for departing here from the common interpretation, that our Lord on this, as on many other occasions, spent the night in the open air alone, in meditation and prayer. In order to ensure more absolute solitude, he seems to have generally chosen a mountain for these special exercises. The genitive case, after προσευχη , is a genitive of the object, and has the force of προς , with an accusative: he continued all night in prayer TO GOD. It is not improbable that our Lord spent this night in prayer preparatory to the solemn business of choosing the twelve apostles, which he did the next day.

Verse 13

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

And of them he chose twelve. — See the notes on Matthew 10:1, &c.

Verse 17

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

And stood in the plain. — Those who think that St. Luke, in what follows, has given an abridgment of the sermon on the mount, reconcile this account of our Lord’s having delivered it in the plain with that of St. Matthew, who says that it was delivered from the mountain, by supposing that the plain spoken of was an elevated table land, on the declivity of the mountain, where his audience might conveniently stand. This presents no material difficulty; but there are reasons on the other side of greater weight: the sermon on the mount was not delivered after the choosing of the twelve apostles, but the calling of the four at the sea of Tiberias; and St. Luke has united with passages from the sermon on the mount, several others which were not delivered at that time, but on various occasions. Notwithstanding, therefore, the objection that this discourse has the same exordium and the same peroration as in Matthew’s version of it, and that by both evangelists Christ is represented as having returned to Capernaum, after having delivered it, it cannot be the same discourse preached on the same occasion. It contains many of the same passages of Divine wisdom and eloquence, which, however, only shows that our Lord sometimes chose to deliver the same truths in the same or nearly similar words, and that in discourses of considerable length; and it is confirmatory of this, that St. Luke himself, who has nowhere, like St. Matthew, recorded the sermon on the mount at full length, has preserved the account of another portion of the same sermon, as having been spoken by Christ on an entirely different occasion. See Mathew 12:22, &c. Parts of this sermon were therefore at other times repeated, with some variations.

Verse 20

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

Blessed be ye poor, &c. — See notes on Matthew 5:1, &c.

Verse 22

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

When they shall separate you from their company. — Οταν αφορισωσιν υμας , when they shall excommunicate you, or cast you out of their synagogues.

Verse 24

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

Wo unto you that are rich. — Not as rich, but rich men living in the spirit and after the example of the world. He alludes immediately to the opulent, proud, and luxurious Pharisees and Sadducees; yet against all rich men, in all ages, who forget God, this terrible wo lies, — that in this world they have received their consolation, and no felicity awaits them in another. — Campbell has a note to caution us against considering these woes uttered by our Lord as imprecations. Perhaps in that he is right; but when he says, that “if we regard them as authoritative denunciations of judgments, this is the same thing.” he forgets our Lord’s character as a judge. A judge may pronounce a sentence without uttering an imprecation; and though he alleges that the office of judge is a part of that glory to which he was afterward raised, this only refers to the actual exercise of judgment upon persons. The authoritative denunciation of punishment against classes of persons or characters, the connection of certain penalties with certain offences, are both judicial; and these he frequently announced in the time of his humility: so that these woes are not mere declarations of consequences, or warnings, which any teacher as well as our Lord himself might use: with him they assumed a higher and more solemn character.

Verse 26

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

When all men speak well of you. — There is no more reason to suppose that these words were spoken to the apostles, by way of hypothetic caution, than that the woes in the preceding verses were addressed to them. The Jewish priests and doctors are the persons still intended. — They were universally popular; all men spake well of them; they were “of the world,” and the world in them “loved its own;” but this says our Lord, only proved them to be deceivers, for so did their fathers to the false prophets. In a wicked age, only those who prophesy smooth things can be popular.

Verse 27

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

Love your enemies &c. — See note on Matthew 5:44. No man, says one justly, had ever lived who would have invented this precept. The strongest passions of the heart oppose it, the most inveterate prejudices of all nations and all climates disavow and contradict it. We may regard it as an absolute certainty, therefore, that the invention of man would never have produced this precept; and less perhaps than any other a Jew, by whom hatred of some descriptions of enemies was supposed to be a principle of duty.

Verses 29-38

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

See the notes on the sermon on the mount in Matthew. There are, however, a few variations in expression, which may here be noticed.

Verse 32

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

What thank have ye? — Χαρις here includes the μισθος , reward, as mentioned in the parallel places of Matthew. — What praiseworthy act do you perform, and what reward shall you receive?

Verse 34

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

If ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive. — Either the interest of money lent, and then this is a traffic in money, and no favour; or under stipulation of some equivalent return in any other way. In either case the beneficent character of the act is destroyed. It ceases to be a religious act: it implies no true charity to men; no faith in God’s providence; no implicit subjection to his commands. It is therefore enjoined to lend hoping for nothing again; not including the sum lent, for that would destroy the difference between lending and giving; but without hope of earthly advantage, that so it might be a generous and self-denying act.

Verse 36

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

Be ye therefore merciful. — In the parallel place in Matthew it is “perfect.” And by both we are taught that our perfection consists in love. The mercifulness here spoken of is not only pity to the miserable, but benignity to all; and, as it is used by the Hebrews, implied the exercise of every kind of beneficence. The root of this is unfeigned charity; and the true love of our neighbour, according to the intention of the law, can only spring from the true love of God, that is, loving him supremely and habitually with all the powers of the soul. This is our perfection in its ROOT and FRUIT.

Verse 38

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

Good measure, &c. — Sometimes good or equal measure with that ye have meted; but often more, even pressed down or shaken together, according to the nature of the substances, the measure being made to hold more of one thing by pressing down, of another by shaking together: and running over; so that all the terms intimate a liberal return whether of good for good, or of evil for evil. The phrase, into your bosom, εις τον κολπον , refers to the use made of the folds of their long robes to carry dry articles, as corn or fruits.

Verse 39

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

Can the blind, &c. — See the note on Matthew 15:14.

Verse 40

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

The disciple is not above his Master, &c. — As the preceding parable appears to have no connection with what goes before, so this remark seems to stand wholly disconnected with the parable. These are golden sayings of our Lord, a sort of text on which no doubt he enlarged in the discourse. To be perfect, in a disciple of Christ, is to be fully instructed in his Lord’s doctrine, and in spirit and temper fully conformed to it, or what he himself, in another place, calls being “sanctified by the truth.” That our Lord is here speaking of his own disciples, is clear from his saying the disciple is not above his Master, meaning that it cannot be, it is a thing impossible; which would not be true of the disciples of a human master, for by them he might be excelled. however excellent. No disciple of Christ can, however, rise above his Master, who is introduced apparently for the express purpose of impressing us the more forcibly with the height of our POSSIBLE attainments through the grace of God: for every one that is perfect shall be as his Master. Καταρτιζειν is to compact or knit together, hence to make ready, to perfect; and, applied to teaching, fully to instruct. Every fully instructed disciple therefore shall be as his Master; in other words, the end of our discipleship is to be made like Christ; and this shall be the glorious result, if we continue to follow him. “The mind that was in Christ” shall be in us; and it is only as we advance in this state of conformity to our Saviour that we approve ourselves as his true disciples. For as every perfectly instructed or prepared disciple thinks, wills, and acts in the same manner as his Master, so are we to THINK, WILL, and ACT like Christ.

Verse 41

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

The mote that is in thy brother’s eye. — See the note on Matthew 7:3.