Biblion Bible Commentary
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Nowhere to Lay His Head
Luke 9:57-62
57 As they went on the way, a certain man said to him, “I want to follow you wherever you go, Lord.” · WEB
Three men on the road, two excellent reasons for delay, and no allowance made for either.
"I want to follow you wherever you go, Lord" Luke 9:57.
Three short exchanges close the chapter, all on the road, and none of them is resolved — the account never says what any of the three did. That is deliberate. The reader is left holding the question.
The first man volunteers, and enthusiastically. What he gets is not encouragement but information.
"The foxes have holes and the birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head" Luke 9:58. The comparison is with animals rather than with poor men, and the point is that even a fox has somewhere to go at night. He has just been refused a bed in a Samaritan village, so the sentence is a report of that week rather than a general lament. Wherever you go has been given a specific answer: nowhere, and there is no bed at the end of it.
He said to another, "Follow me!" But he said, "Lord, allow me first to go and bury my father" Luke 9:59.
The second is called rather than volunteering, and his request is the most reasonable sentence in the passage. Burying a parent was a son's binding duty, ranked above almost every other obligation, and no one in that world would have judged him.
"Leave the dead to bury their own dead, but you go and announce God's Kingdom" Luke 9:60.
The answer is hard and it is not callous, once the phrasing is heard. The first dead and the second cannot mean the same thing — corpses do not conduct funerals. The saying divides the world into those who are alive to what is happening and those who are not, and says the funerals of this world can be handled by people who have nothing else to do.
It is worth adding what the passage does not say. It does not forbid burying a father; it refuses to let the burial come first, which is the word the man himself used.
"I want to follow you, Lord, but first allow me to say good-bye to those who are at my house" Luke 9:61. The third request is smaller still, and it has a precedent — Elisha asked exactly this of Elijah and was permitted 1 Kings 19:19–21. The claim being made by refusing it is not modest.
"No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for God's Kingdom" Luke 9:62.
The image is exact rather than poetic. Ancient plowing was done with one hand on the handle and the eyes fixed on a point ahead; a man who turns his head puts a curve in the furrow, and every following furrow copies it. The problem with looking back is not sentiment. It is that the work goes crooked and stays crooked.
And the word is first in all three cases. Nothing on the list is wicked — a bed, a funeral, a farewell. What is refused is their position in the queue.
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