Biblion Bible Commentary
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Compel Them to Come In
Luke 14:15-24
15 When one of those who sat at the table with him heard these things, he said to him, “Blessed is he who will feast in God’s Kingdom!” · WEB
Three men decline a dinner for excellent reasons, and the house gets filled with people who had nothing on.
"Blessed is he who will feast in God's Kingdom!" Luke 14:15.
The remark is safe and warm and it is made by a man at a table where the poor were not invited. The parable that answers it is this Gospel's own, and it is aimed at exactly that comfort.
"A certain man made a great supper, and he invited many people. He sent out his servant at supper time to tell those who were invited, 'Come, for everything is ready now'" Luke 14:16–17.
The two-stage invitation was the custom: an advance notice, then a summons when the food was on. So everyone refusing had already accepted. This is not a declined invitation; it is a promise broken at the last hour, when the animals have been killed and the food cannot be kept.
"They all as one began to make excuses" Luke 14:18.
The three that follow are studies in plausibility. I have bought a field, and I must go and see it — nobody buys land unseen, so the errand is either unnecessary or the purchase was reckless. I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I must go try them out — the same, and the animals will still be there tomorrow. Both are business, and both could wait a night.
"I have married a wife, and therefore I can't come" Luke 14:20. The third does not even ask to be excused. And it has a footing in the law, which released a newly married man from campaign and public duty for a year Deuteronomy 24:5, so he has the strongest case of the three and is the rudest of them.
What the excuses have in common is that none of them is a sin. A field, a team of oxen, a marriage — property, work, and love, which is a fair summary of a good life.
"Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor, maimed, blind, and lame" Luke 14:21.
The four groups are the identical four he had just told his host to invite Luke 14:13. The parable is not a general allegory at this point; it is a direct answer to the man across the table.
"Lord, it is done as you commanded, and there is still room" Luke 14:22. The most hopeful line in the parable. The house is bigger than the guest list twice over.
"Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled" Luke 14:23.
The second sending goes outside the city altogether, to the roads and the field edges where people with no address were. Compel has an unhappy history of being read as license for force, and the picture will not support it: the messenger is a servant with no power over anybody, and what he is overcoming is the disbelief of destitute people who assume such an invitation cannot be meant for them. It takes insistence to get a beggar into a banquet.
"For I tell you that none of those men who were invited will taste of my supper" Luke 14:24. The door closes on the people who had the earliest notice and the best reasons.
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