Biblion Bible Commentary
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Two Men Went Up to Pray
Luke 18:9-14
9 He also spoke this parable to certain people who were convinced of their own righteousness, and who despised all others: · WEB
Two men in the same temple at the same hour, and the one who goes home right is the one who asked for nothing else.
He also spoke this parable to certain people who were convinced of their own righteousness, and who despised all others Luke 18:9.
The target is named in advance, and the two halves of the description belong together — confidence in one's own standing and contempt for other people are the same disposition seen from two sides.
"Two men went up into the temple to pray; one was a Pharisee, and the other was a tax collector" Luke 18:10. The pairing would have been heard as a contrast between the best man in the country and the worst. Nothing about that framing is being disputed; the Pharisee is not a fraud.
"The Pharisee stood and prayed by himself like this: 'God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of men'" Luke 18:11.
It begins as thanksgiving, which is correct form, and turns at once into a comparison. And the comparison needs a specimen: or even like this tax collector — a man in the same room, pointed at during a prayer.
"I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I get" Luke 18:12. Both claims exceed what the law required, which asked one fast a year and tithes on produce. He is not lying and he is not a hypocrite in the ordinary sense. He does more than he has to, and the account of it is accurate.
What the prayer never does is ask for anything. There is nothing he needs.
"But the tax collector, standing far away, wouldn't even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, 'God, be merciful to me, a sinner!'" Luke 18:13.
Every detail is the opposite. Far off rather than forward; eyes down rather than up; striking his own chest, a gesture of grief that men in that culture rarely made.
And the prayer is seven words. The verb behind be merciful is the one belonging to the sacrifice — make atonement, be propitiated — so he is not asking to be excused. He is asking God to do with him what the altar he is standing near was for. And a sinner has the article in the Greek: the sinner, as though he were the only one in the building, which is the exact reverse of the man who could see one from across the court.
"I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other" Luke 18:14.
The verdict is stated as an accomplished fact and it is the sharpest reversal in the book. Justified is a courtroom word — declared to be in the right — and it goes to the man whose whole prayer was an admission that he was not.
"For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted." The rule is the one given at the dinner table Luke 14:11, and both verbs are again passive. Neither man is doing the ranking.
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