Luke 4:23

4:23 Jesus ¹  said to them, “No doubt you will quote to me the proverb, ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ ²  and say, ‘What we have heard that you did in Capernaum, ³  do here in your hometown too.’”

Luke 4:41

4:41 Demons also came out ⁴  of many, crying out, ⁵  “You are the Son of God!” ⁶  But he rebuked ⁷  them, and would not allow them to speak, ⁸  because they knew that he was the Christ. ⁹ 

Luke 7:32

7:32 They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling out to one another, ¹⁰ 

‘We played the flute for you, yet you did not dance; ¹¹ 

we wailed in mourning, ¹²  yet you did not weep.’

Luke 20:28

20:28 They asked him, ¹³  “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies leaving a wife but no children, that man ¹⁴  must marry ¹⁵  the widow and father children ¹⁶  for his brother. ¹⁷ 

[4:23]  ¹ tn Grk “And he”; the referent (Jesus) has been specified in the translation for clarity. Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.

[4:23]  ² sn The proverb Physician, heal yourself! means that Jesus should prove his claims. It is a “Prove it to us!” mentality that Jesus says the people have.

[4:23]  ³ sn The remark “What we have heard that you did at Capernaum” makes many suspect that Luke has moved this event forward in sequence to typify what Jesus’ ministry was like, since the ministry in Capernaum follows in vv. 31-44. The location of this event in the parallel of Mark 6:1-6 also suggests this transposition.

[4:41]  ⁴ sn Demons also came out. Note how Luke distinguishes healing from exorcism here, implying that the two are not identical.

[4:41]  ⁵ tn Grk “crying out and saying.” The participle λέγοντα (legonta) is redundant in English and has not been translated here.

[4:41]  ⁶ tc Most mss (A Q Θ Ψ 0102 Ë^1,13 Ï) read “the Christ, the Son of God.” But the earliest and best mss, along with several other witnesses (א B C D L W Ξ 33 579 700 1241 2542 lat sa), lack “the Christ” here. It is likely that later scribes wished to bring the demons’ confession in line with what Luke says they knew later in the verse.

[4:41]  ⁷ tn Or “commanded,” but “rebuke” implies strong disapproval, which seems to be more in keeping with the context here (L&N 33.419).

[4:41]  ⁸ sn Jesus would not allow the demons to speak because the time for such disclosure was not yet at hand, and such a revelation would have certainly been misunderstood by the people. In all likelihood, if the people had understood him early on to be the Son of God, or Messiah, they would have reduced his mission to one of political deliverance from Roman oppression (cf. John 6:15). Jesus wanted to avoid, as much as possible, any premature misunderstanding about who he was and what he was doing. However, at the end of his ministry, he did not deny such a title when the high priest asked him (22:66-71).

[4:41]  ⁹ tn Or “Messiah”; both “Christ” (Greek) and “Messiah” (Hebrew and Aramaic) mean “one who has been anointed.”

[7:32]  ⁷ tn Grk “They are like children sitting…and calling out…who say.”

[7:32]  ⁸ sn ‘We played the flute for you, yet you did not dance…’ The children of this generation were making the complaint (see vv. 33-34) that others were not playing the game according to the way they played the music. John and Jesus did not follow “their tune.” Jesus’ complaint was that this generation wanted things their way, not God’s.

[7:32]  ⁹ tn The verb ἐθρηνήσαμεν (eqrhnhsamen) refers to the loud wailing and lamenting used to mourn the dead in public in 1st century Jewish culture.

[20:28]  ¹⁰ tn Grk “asked him, saying.” The participle λέγοντες (legontes) is redundant in contemporary English and has not been translated.

[20:28]  ¹¹ tn Grk “his brother”; but this would be redundant in English with the same phrase “his brother” at the end of the verse, so most modern translations render this phrase “the man” (so NIV, NRSV).

[20:28]  ¹² tn The use of ἵνα (Jina) with imperatival force is unusual (BDF §470.1).

[20:28]  ¹³ tn Grk “and raise up seed,” an idiom for procreating children (L&N 23.59).

[20:28]  ¹⁴ sn A quotation from Deut 25:5. Because the OT quotation does not include “a wife” as the object of the verb, it has been left as normal type. This practice is called levirate marriage (see also Ruth 4:1-12; Mishnah, m. Yevamot; Josephus, Ant. 4.8.23 [4.254-256]). The levirate law is described in Deut 25:5-10. The brother of a man who died without a son had an obligation to marry his brother’s widow. This served several purposes: It provided for the widow in a society where a widow with no children to care for her would be reduced to begging, and it preserved the name of the deceased, who would be regarded as the legal father of the first son produced from that marriage.