Luke 9

Indeed many think the Mary Magdalene here mentioned, the sinner who anointed our Lord’s feet; but there is no proof of this, nor, indeed, much probability. The other females mentioned, appear to have been in respectable circumstances, and to have afforded the principal means of our Lord’s support. Yes! he ‘who was rich, for our sakes became poor;’ and though he never degraded himself to be a beggar, he condescended to receive not alms indeed, but of his support; and highly honoured are the females who, with much delicacy and affection, contributed to supply his wants. See exposition of (Matthew 27:55-66).

Chap. IX. Ver. 51—62. The evil of intolerance; and the danger of irresolution in religion.—Jesus going to Jerusalem, sends some of his disciples forward to a village of the Samaritans in the road from Galilee to Judea, to prepare supper and lodging by the way. The narrow-minded Samaritans, however, finding he was going to the temple of Jerusalem, refused to afford him the necessary accommodations, which greatly offended James and John, two of the disciples deputed on this occasion, and who instantly applied to their Master, if they should not call fire from heaven to destroy these bigoted, inhospitable Samaritans; and to countenance their application, they produce the example of Elijah under the old dispensation, on a very different occasion.

But Elijah was not an example for Christ, who is himself the pattern of all his disciples. Jesus reproves the intemperate and misguided zeal of his disciples: ‘“Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of.” Your zeal is not of God, because it is not according to knowledge. ‘The Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them.” “It is far from the good Spirit of God (says Bp. Hall) to stir up any man to private revenge, or thirst of blood. Not an eagle, but a dove, was the shape in which he chose to appear. Neither wouldest thou, O God, be in the whirlwind, or in the fire, but in the soft voice. O Saviour, why do we seek for any precedent but thine, whose name we challenge? Thou camest to thine own, thine own received thee not.

Didst thou call for fire from heaven upon them? Didst thou not rather send down water from compassionate eyes, and weep for them for whom thou bleed? Better had it been for us never to have an [had] mercies be cruelty. “O Saviour, if we look into those sacred acts and monuments of thine, we find many a life which thou preservedst from perishing; some that had perished, by thee recalled; never any by thee destroyed: only one poor fig tree, as the real emblem of thy severity to the unfruitful, was blasted and withered by thy curse. But to man how ever-favourable and indulgent wert thou! So repelled as thou wert; so reviled, so persecuted, laid (wait) for, sold, betrayed, apprehended, crucified: yet what one man didst thou strike dead for these heinous indignities?

Yea, when one of thine enemies lost an ear in that ill quarrel, thou gavest that ear to him, who came to take thy life from thee. I find some whom thou didst scourge and correct, as the sacrilegious money changers; none whom thou killedst.”’ [The idea is unfounded; examination of the Greek, (John 2:15), shows that the “scourge of small cords,” was used simply in driving the sheep and oxen from the temple.] Jesus is not so easily disconcerted as his disciples; finding the people of one village object to receive him, he goes to another. Our tempers are often ruffled, and our peace disturbed, by circumstances in themselves of no consequence, which, had we either more humility, or more enlarged views, would only excite our pity, and our prayers.

The following incidents seem to be the same as are mentioned by Matthew, (Luke 8)but being there (for brevity sake) passed over, demand here an observation. The “certain man” mentioned by Luke, (ver. 57,) appears by Matthew to have been a scribe, who volunteered his service to follow our Lord; but when he found the indifferent accommodation he was likely to meet with, we hear no more of him. ‘The Son of man hath not where to lay his head.” Foxes can burrow in the ground, and birds can build their nests on high: but he who “came, not to be ministered unto, but to minister,” hath no settled habitation, no home of his own, where he can lay his head; but is constantly beholden for a lodging either to the affection of his disciples, or to the hospitality of strangers.

He who made all things, lives upon the benevolence of his own creatures! Others, who had been called to follow Jesus, excused themselves, on the ground of their secular concerns, and those too scenes of humanity. “Lord, (said one,) let me first go and bury my father: and another, ‘Lord, let me first go and bid farewell that are at home.’ To the former our Lord “Let the dead bury their dead:” let those who are engaged in secular concerns, and thus spiritually dead, let them attend to services of this nature: but there are in Christianity, duties paramount to all the obligations of civil life, even as the concerns of the soul and of eternity rise infinitely superior to those which regard only the body and the present transitory life.

To the other professed disciple, our Lord applies a kind of proverbial saying, intimating, that as he who put his hand to the plough, must drive straight forward his furrows, and not look behind him: so he who has once engaged in the gospel ministry, must bend all his attention to fulfil its duties. He whose heart is in this work, will not look behind him; and he whose heart is not in his work, had far better never enter on it. To look back is the first step to go back; indifference to the cause of Christ is the prelude to a falling away; and “If any man draw back, (saith the Lord,) my soul shall have no pleasure in him.” ((Hebrews 10:38).)

Notes on the verses

One word of our Lord can change the face of nature, and calm the troubled ocean, as well as restore peace to the disconsolate soul. —Bagster. Ver. 31. The deep, Gr. Abyss—That is, hell: not the sea; for they went there of their own accord. Ver. 33. See (Romans 10:7). (“The abyss,” says Dr. Doddridge, “the prison in which many of these fallen spirits are detained; and to which some, who may, like these, have been permitted for a while to range at large, are sometimes by Divine justice and power remanded.”) —B. Ver. 33. Then went the devils.—(By this was fully evinced the sovereign power of our Lord, and the reality of diabolical agency; for, says Dr. Doddridge, ‘It was self-evident that a herd of swine could not be confederates in any fraud: their death, therefore, in this instructive circumstance, was ten thousand times a greater blessing to mankind, than if they had been slain for food, as was intended.”) —Bagster. Ver. 40—56. Came to pass, &c.—See the parallel passages, (Matthew 9:18-26). Ver. 45. Who touched me?—(“Not that he was ignorant who had touched him,” says Epiphanius, “but that he might not be himself the divulger of the miracle, and that the woman, hearing the question, and drawing near, might testify the singular benefit she had received, and that, in consequence of her declaration, she might presently hear from his lips, that her faith had saved her; and that, by this means, others might be excited to come and be healed of their disorders.”) —Bagster. Ver. 55. Her spirit came again.—This word, thus used of one who had been dead, strongly implies, that at death the soul not only exists separately, but returns and is re-united to the body, when it is raised from the dead. “(Luke 9)a 4, And thence depart.—Doddridge and Campbell, “Till have the place.”; ver. 5. For a testimony.—How so? When their feet were covered with dust on leaving a town, it proved that no one had received them, and washed their feet. Ver. 7. The tetrarch.—A tetrarch properly signifies a prince, or ruler, over a quarter of any region; and had its origin from Galatia, which was governed by four princes. In the New Testament, however, it denotes a prince, or king, who reigns over the fourth part of a former kingdom. By Herod’s will, his kingdom was thus divided among his sons: Archelaus had one half, consisting of Idumea, Judea, and Samaria; Herod Antipas, one fourth, consisting of Galilee and Perea; and Philip the remaining fourth, consisting of Batanea, Trachonitis and Auranitis.

Doddridge, “By some,” re Ver. 26. Come in his own glory.—Not in the mean condition as now, but in his own nature, glory, and majesty, attended with innumerable hosts of holy angels as his retinue. Ver. 27. There be some standing here, &c.—See note on Matt. a Ver. 28. About an eight days after.—Modern translators omit the [words]. Ver. 31. Of his decease.—Greek, Exodus; i.e. departure or decease. See (2 Peter 1:15). Ver. 41. O faithless.—Doddridge, “Incredulous.” Josephus. —Bagster.—Of some.—So ver. 8. xvi, 28. — Ver. 45. It was hid from them.—Campbell, “It was veiled to them.” Ver. 48. He that is least.—“Before honour is humility.” Ver. 51. When the time was come.—Doddridge, (more literally,) “As the days were fulfilled,” (or nearly so,) that he should be received up; i.e. into heaven. Ver. 62. No man having put his hand to the plough.—No one who professes to follow me, and yet suffers himself to be withdrawn from my service, can be admitted to the heavenly kingdom. A proverbial expression. Psalm’s see Arch. A passage in Hesiod strikingly illustrates this: of the ploughman he says, “Let him attend his charge, and careful trace The right-lin’d furrow; gaze no more about, But have his mind intent upon the work.” —Orient. Lit. No. 1293 A Jewish plough was so small and light, that it required the constant care of the ploughman to keep it in the ground, or to make a straight furrow,