Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Luke · About this commentary
Today This Scripture Is Fulfilled
Luke 4:14-30
14 Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee, and news about him spread through all the surrounding area. · WEB
He reads his job description out of Isaiah in his hometown synagogue, and by the end of the sermon they are trying to kill him.
He came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. He entered, as was his custom, into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read Luke 4:16.
This Gospel puts the Nazareth visit at the front of the ministry and gives it three times the space the other accounts give it Mark 6:1–6 Matthew 13:53–58. It functions as the opening statement — everything the book will describe is announced in this room, and so is everything that will be done to him for it.
As was his custom is quietly important. Weekly synagogue attendance was his habit, and the account says so of a man whose Sabbath conduct is about to be the running controversy of the book.
The book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. He opened the book, and found the place Luke 4:17. He searches for it. A scroll has to be unrolled to a particular column, so this is a deliberate choice of text rather than a set reading taken as it came.
"The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to heal the broken hearted, to proclaim release to the captives, recovering of sight to the blind, to deliver those who are crushed, and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord" Luke 4:18–19 Isaiah 61:1–2.
Every clause is a program, and this book carries out all of them. The poor get the good news at the front of the sermon on the plain. The blind receive sight. The crushed are delivered. Anointed is the verb behind the word Christ, so the text he has selected names his office in its first line.
The acceptable year of the Lord is the jubilee — the year when debts were canceled, slaves went free and land returned to the family that had lost it Leviticus 25:10. It is the most concrete image of release the law contains, and it is being claimed as the thing now beginning.
And he stops mid-sentence. Isaiah's next clause is the day of vengeance of our God, and it is not read. What is announced is the acceptable year, and the day is left for later — which is precisely the answer given to John's messengers when they ask why the judgment has not arrived Luke 7:22.
He closed the book, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fastened on him Luke 4:20. Sitting is the teaching position. The room waits.
"Today, this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing" Luke 4:21.
One sentence, and today is the first word. This book uses that word at the birth, at Zacchaeus's house and on the cross Luke 2:11 Luke 19:9 Luke 23:43 — always for the moment the promise lands on somebody.
All testified about him and wondered at the gracious words... and they said, "Isn't this Joseph's son?" Luke 4:22. The reaction is warm, and the question underneath it is proprietary. He is theirs, and the natural expectation is that a local boy who has been doing things elsewhere will now do them here.
He names the expectation before it is voiced. "Whatever we have heard done at Capernaum, do also here in your hometown" Luke 4:23. And then, instead of obliging, he tells them two stories out of their own Scriptures.
"There were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah... Elijah was sent to none of them, except to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon" Luke 4:25–26. "There were many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed, except Naaman, the Syrian" Luke 4:27.
Both cases are in the books of Kings 1 Kings 17:8–16 2 Kings 5:1–14, and both make one point: in the worst days of the northern kingdom, the two greatest prophets were sent past Israel to foreigners. A Sidonian widow and a Syrian general received what Israel did not.
They were all filled with wrath Luke 4:28. The wonder curdles in a single verse, and the cause is identifiable. It is not the claim to fulfill Isaiah, which they had received with admiration. It is the suggestion that God's mercy might go somewhere else.
They rose up, threw him out of the city, and led him to the brow of the hill... that they might throw him off the cliff Luke 4:29. The neighbors who watched him grow up try to kill him inside one paragraph, and the manner is a lynching rather than a trial.
But he, passing through the middle of them, went his way Luke 4:30. No explanation is offered. He walks through the crowd and leaves, and the account moves on — because the hour was not yet, and this book knows exactly which hour it is waiting for.
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