Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Only Child
Luke 9:37-45
37 On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great multitude met him. · WEB
At the foot of the mountain a father is waiting whom the nine could not help — and the crowd's applause is answered with the cross.
On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great multitude met him Luke 9:37.
The descent is immediate and the contrast is deliberate: glory on the summit, failure at the bottom. The scene is told at length in the earliest account Mark 9:1–29.
"Teacher, I beg you to look at my son, for he is my only born child" Luke 9:38. The word is this writer's again — an only son, as at Nain and in Jairus's house. He has now recorded three, and all three are given back.
The father's description is a catalogue of what he has watched: the seizures, the crying out, the foaming, the bruising, and the phrase it hardly departs from him Luke 9:39. This is a man who has seen everything there is to see and is describing it accurately to a stranger.
"I begged your disciples to cast it out, and they couldn't" Luke 9:40. He tried the delegation first. They had been given authority over exactly this a chapter earlier Luke 9:1, and had used it successfully.
"Faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you and bear with you?" Luke 9:41. The weariness is aimed at a generation rather than at the father, who is not rebuked at any point in the account.
Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy, and gave him back to his father Luke 9:42. The last clause is this Gospel's, and it is the same phrase used at Nain Luke 7:15. The healing is not complete until the child is back in the right arms.
They were all astonished at the majesty of God. But while all were marveling at all the things which Jesus did, he said to his disciples Luke 9:43.
The placement is everything. At the peak of public enthusiasm — the crowd astonished, everyone marveling — he turns aside to the twelve and says the one thing nobody wants to hear.
"Let these words sink into your ears, for the Son of Man will be delivered up into the hands of men" Luke 9:44. The preface is unusual and urgent: put this somewhere it will stay. And the saying is stripped to its hardest clause, with no resurrection attached this time.
But they didn't understand this saying. It was concealed from them, that they should not perceive it, and they were afraid to ask him about this saying Luke 9:45.
Three failures in one verse, and the account is unsparing. They did not understand; it was hidden from them; and they did not ask. The last is the only one that was theirs to fix.
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