Luke 5:36

5:36 He also told them a parable: ¹  “No one tears a patch from a new garment and sews ²  it on an old garment. If he does, he will have torn ³  the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old. ⁴ 

Luke 9:33

9:33 Then ⁵  as the men ⁶  were starting to leave, ⁷  Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here. Let us make three shelters, ⁸  one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah” – not knowing what he was saying.

¹ sn The term parable in a Semitic context can cover anything from a long story to a brief wisdom saying. Here it is the latter.

² tn Grk “puts”; but since the means of attachment would normally be sewing, the translation “sews” has been used.

³ tn Grk “he tears.” The point is that the new garment will be ruined to repair an older, less valuable one.

⁴ sn The piece from the new will not match the old. The imagery in this saying looks at the fact that what Jesus brings is so new that it cannot simply be combined with the old. To do so would be to destroy what is new and to put together something that does not fit.

⁵ tn Grk “And it happened that as.” The introductory phrase ἐγένετο (egeneto, “it happened that”), common in Luke (69 times) and Acts (54 times), is redundant in contemporary English and has not been translated. Here καί (kai) has been translated as “then” to indicate the implied sequence of events within the narrative.

⁶ tn Grk “as they”; the referent (“the men,” referring to Moses and Elijah) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁷ tn Grk “to leave from him.”

⁸ tn Or “booths,” “dwellings” (referring to the temporary booths constructed in the celebration of the feast of Tabernacles).