I Saw Satan Fallen
17 The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!” 18 He said to them, “I saw Satan having fallen like lightning from heaven. 19 Behold, I give you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy. Nothing will in any way hurt you. 20 Nevertheless, don’t rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” 21 In that same hour, Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit, and said, “I thank you, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for so it was well-pleasing in your sight.” 22 Turning to the disciples, he said, “All things have been delivered to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is, except the Father, and who the Father is, except the Son, and he to whomever the Son desires to reveal him.” 23 Turning to the disciples, he said privately, “Blessed are the eyes which see the things that you see, 24 for I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see the things which you see, and didn’t see them, and to hear the things which you hear, and didn’t hear them.”
They come back thrilled about the demons, and are told to be glad about something else entirely.
The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!”
The word even gives them away. They had been told to heal and to announce; the authority over demons was not itemized, and it turns out to be included. Their surprise is honest and their joy is not rebuked — it is redirected.
He said to them, “I saw Satan having fallen like lightning from heaven.
The sentence is one of the strangest in the Gospels and the account offers no explanation. What can be said is that it is spoken as testimony — I saw — and that it treats the seventy's small successes in Galilean villages as a visible instance of something much larger. Lightning is sudden and it is seen; the fall is not described as gradual.
Behold, I give you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy. Nothing will in any way hurt you.
The serpents and scorpions are the wilderness's two standing dangers Deuteronomy 8:15, and the promise is about the errand rather than a general immunity — the seventy will die eventually, like everyone else.
Nevertheless, don’t rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”
This is the correction and it is worth taking slowly, because what is being downgraded is genuine spiritual success. He does not deny the authority; he has just confirmed it. The problem with joy in results is that results are about what you can do, and what you can do is a poor foundation — it varies, it can be compared with other people's, and it can fail, as the nine found at the foot of the mountain Luke 9:40.
A name written somewhere by someone else is not subject to any of that.
In that same hour, Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit, and said, “I thank you, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for so it was well-pleasing in your sight.”
The one recorded moment of his rejoicing, and this account alone reports it — with the Spirit named as its source.
The prayer that follows is treated in Matthew's account Matthew 11:25–27: thanks that these things are hidden from the wise and revealed to little children, and the mutual and exclusive knowledge of Father and Son.
What is worth marking here is the occasion. He rejoices immediately after telling seventy unremarkable people not to measure themselves by their achievements — and what he gives thanks for is precisely that the disclosure went to people with no standing. The prayer is the theological form of what he has just said pastorally.
"Blessed are the eyes which see the things that you see, for I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see the things which you see, and didn't see them" Luke 10:23–24. Prophets and kings here, where the other account has prophets and righteous men. The people who had the vision and the people who had the power both wanted this, and neither got it.
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