Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Day of the Son of Man
Luke 17:20-37
20 Being asked by the Pharisees when God’s Kingdom would come, he answered them, “God’s Kingdom doesn’t come with observation; · WEB
Asked when the kingdom comes, he says it is already among them — and then describes a day nobody will be able to miss.
Being asked by the Pharisees when God's Kingdom would come, he answered them, "God's Kingdom doesn't come with observation" Luke 17:20.
The word means the watching a person does for signs — the sky-scanning of someone with a calendar. And the answer is that this is the wrong instrument entirely.
"Neither will they say, 'Look, here!' or, 'Look, there!' for behold, God's Kingdom is within you" Luke 17:21.
The last phrase can be read as within or among, and the audience settles it. He is talking to Pharisees who are about to reject him; nothing is inside them. What is among them is the person they are questioning, standing in the room while they ask when the thing will start.
Then he turns to the disciples, and the subject changes from the kingdom's arrival to the Son of Man's day.
"The days will come when you will desire to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it" Luke 17:22. A warning about the interval, spoken to men who have not yet lost him.
"For as the lightning, when it flashes out of one part under the sky, shines to another part under the sky, so will the Son of Man be in his day" Luke 17:24. Nobody is informed that there has been lightning. The test is not a location, and the treatment of the reports of here and there is given in Matthew's account Matthew 24:23–28.
"But first, he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation" Luke 17:25. Dropped into the middle of a description of glory, and it is the order of events: the rejection comes first.
"As it was in the days of Noah, even so it will also be in the days of the Son of Man" Luke 17:26.
The comparison is treated in Matthew's account Matthew 24:36–44, and this telling adds a second case. "Likewise, even as it was in the days of Lot: they ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built" Luke 17:28.
Six ordinary verbs, and not one of them is a sin. That is the whole force of both examples. Sodom is Scripture's standing case of wickedness, and what is listed here is not the wickedness — it is shopping, farming and construction, going on right up to the morning.
"Remember Lot's wife" Luke 17:32. Three words, and they are the shortest sentence in the Gospels. She was outside the city, on the road, with her family, and she looked back Genesis 19:26 — which is exactly the failure named of the man at the plow Luke 9:62. Nothing about her is far-fetched; she wanted what she had left.
"Whoever seeks to save his life loses it, but whoever loses his life preserves it" Luke 17:33. The saying is attached here to that image, which sharpens it: what she tried to keep was her home.
"There will be two grinding grain together. One will be taken and the other will be left" Luke 17:35. The pairs make the parable's point about separation — two people at identical work, indistinguishable to any observer, divided by something not visible in the room. And the comparison that governs them was set two paragraphs earlier: in Noah's day the flood destroyed them all Luke 17:27, and it was Noah who was left.
"Where the body is, there the vultures will also be gathered together" Luke 17:37. Their question was where?, and the answer is a proverb: you will not need directions. Some things announce their own location.
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