Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Luke · About this commentary
In My Father's House
Luke 2:41-52
41 His parents went every year to Jerusalem at the feast of the Passover. · WEB
The only story from his childhood: a boy of twelve is lost for three days and found asking questions.
His parents went every year to Jerusalem at the feast of the Passover Luke 2:41.
This is the one episode between infancy and the Jordan that any Gospel records, and it is here because it answers a question the reader has: what was he like? The answer given is a boy who kept the feasts with his family and asked good questions.
When he was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem according to the custom of the feast Luke 2:42. Twelve is the year before a boy took on the obligations of the law as an adult. He is at the edge of it.
The boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. Joseph and his mother didn't know it, but supposing him to be in the company, they went a day's journey Luke 2:43–44.
The detail is entirely believable. Pilgrims traveled in large village groups, and a twelve-year-old could be anywhere among the cousins for a whole day without anyone worrying. The neglect is not negligence; it is how travel worked.
After three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the middle of the teachers, both listening to them and asking them questions Luke 2:46.
He is not lecturing. He is listening — the verb comes first — and asking, which was exactly how teaching was done in those courts. The scene is a boy doing what students did, and doing it so well that all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers Luke 2:47.
"Son, why have you treated us this way? Behold, your father and I were anxiously looking for you" Luke 2:48. Mary's reproach is a mother's, and the word for their state is strong — distress, the kind that comes from three days of searching a city.
"Why were you looking for me? Didn't you know that I must be in my Father's house?" Luke 2:49.
The first recorded words of Jesus are a question, and they answer his mother's your father with a different one. The English translations divide over the last phrase, since the Greek is elliptical — in the things of my Father, which may be read as his house or as his business — and the two come to nearly the same thing here, because his Father's business is where his Father's house is.
What is unmistakable is the possessive. A boy of twelve, in the building his parents brought him to as an infant, says my Father about God and treats it as something they should have worked out. And the little word must is the one this book uses all the way to the resurrection for what has to happen Luke 24:26. It appears first here, out of a child.
They didn't understand the saying which he spoke to them Luke 2:50. The account is honest about his parents throughout. They were told by angels, and they still do not follow.
And he went down with them and came to Nazareth. He was subject to them Luke 2:51. That is the resolution, and it is the most surprising sentence in the passage. Having said where he belongs, he goes home and obeys them for another eighteen years. And his mother kept all these sayings in her heart — the second time the chapter has said it, and the second reason to think we know where the story came from.
settled What this mark means