Biblion Bible Commentary
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Put Out Into the Deep
Luke 5:1-11
1 Now while the multitude pressed on him and heard the word of God, he was standing by the lake of Gennesaret. · WEB
A borrowed boat, a catch after a wasted night, and a fisherman who asks him to leave.
Now while the multitude pressed on him and heard the word of God, he was standing by the lake of Gennesaret Luke 5:1.
Only this Gospel tells the calling this way. The other accounts have a brief scene on the shore — a word spoken, nets left Mark 1:16–20 Matthew 4:18–22; here the same men are called after something happens in their boats.
He entered into one of the boats, which was Simon's, and asked him to put out a little from the land. He sat down and taught the multitudes from the boat Luke 5:3. He borrows a workplace. Simon is cleaning up after a failed night and finds his boat requisitioned as a platform, which is the first thing asked of him and the smaller one.
"Put out into the deep, and let down your nets for a catch" Luke 5:4.
The instruction is wrong in every professional respect. Those nets were worked at night in the shallows; daylight in deep water is the one combination a Galilean fisherman knows is useless. And it is given by a carpenter's son from a hill town.
"Master, we worked all night and caught nothing; but at your word I will let down the net" Luke 5:5. The reply is honest about both things. He states the professional objection, and then does it anyway — and the reason he gives is not that the advice sounds good. It is at your word.
When they had done this, they caught a great multitude of fish, and their net was breaking Luke 5:6. The second boat is signaled for, and both are filled so that they began to sink Luke 5:7. The scale is comic, and it is aimed at a man who had just explained his trade to a preacher.
When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, Lord" Luke 5:8.
That is the point of the whole scene. What overwhelms him is not fear of the power but a sudden view of himself beside it — the same reaction Isaiah had in the temple Isaiah 6:5, and Job at the end of his argument Job 42:5–6. It is worth noticing what triggered it. Not a demon cast out, not a fever rebuked; a boatload of fish. The thing that undid him was competence in his own field.
And he asks the wrong thing. Depart from me is the natural request and it is refused.
"Don't be afraid. From now on you will be catching people alive" Luke 5:10. The answer keeps the trade and changes the object, and the verb is not the ordinary one for catching. It means taking alive — what fishing does not do to fish. Everything Simon knows about his work is being kept and inverted.
When they had brought their boats to land, they left everything, and followed him Luke 5:11.
They land the catch first. And then they leave it — which is the sharp edge of the sentence. What they walk away from is not a bad night at the office but the largest haul of their lives, sitting on the beach, on the day it finally came in.
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