Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Luke · About this commentary
Blessings, and Woes
Luke 6:17-26
17 He came down with them and stood on a level place, with a crowd of his disciples and a great number of the people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the sea coast of Tyre and Sidon, who came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases, · WEB
He comes down to level ground and blesses the poor, the hungry and the weeping — then says woe to their opposites.
He came down with them and stood on a level place Luke 6:17.
He has been on the mountain all night; now he comes down. The sermon in this book is preached standing on flat ground with a crowd pressing in from Judea and the coast, and people are being healed while he speaks Luke 6:18–19.
The teaching that follows overlaps at many points with the sermon in Matthew's account Matthew 5:1–12, where the beatitudes are given in their fuller form. What is distinctive here is the shape: four blessings, each with a matching woe, and both halves stated in the second person.
"Blessed are you who are poor, for God's Kingdom is yours" Luke 6:20.
You, not they. He lifted up his eyes to his disciples and said it to their faces — a group that had recently left boats and a tax booth. And the word is bare: poor, without qualification. This Gospel does not spiritualize it, because this Gospel has been about actual poverty since a girl sang about the hungry being filled Luke 1:53 and a family brought two pigeons because they could not afford a lamb Luke 2:24.
"Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh" Luke 6:21. The word now does the work in both. Nothing is being said about the goodness of hunger; something is being said about its duration. The blessing is not on the condition but on the reversal that is coming to it.
"Blessed are you when men hate you, and when they exclude and mock you, and throw out your name as evil" Luke 6:22. Four verbs, and the middle two are social rather than violent — being shut out and being laughed at, which is how most people actually suffer for this.
"Rejoice in that day and leap for joy... for their fathers did the same thing to the prophets" Luke 6:23. The comfort offered is odd and effective: this is what happened to the prophets, so the treatment is evidence of the company you are in.
Then the woes, which are this Gospel's own.
"But woe to you who are rich! For you have received your consolation" Luke 6:24.
The reason given is not that wealth is wicked. It is that the account is settled — you have received, the word for a payment taken in full and receipted. The trouble with a consolation already collected is that there is nothing outstanding.
"Woe to you, you who are full now... Woe to you who laugh now" Luke 6:25. The same now returns, and the same reversal, running the other way. Every blessing has its mirror, and the four pairs together are the Magnificat in the form of an address.
"Woe, when men speak well of you, for their fathers did the same thing to the false prophets" Luke 6:26.
The last is the most uncomfortable and the least quoted. Universal approval is listed as a danger, and the test given is historical: the men everyone praised in Israel's past were, as a class, the ones telling people what they wanted to hear. A reputation that costs nothing is evidence about the message.
settled What this mark means