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 8:10

8:10 He ⁵  said, “You have been given ⁶  the opportunity to know ⁷  the secrets ⁸  of the kingdom of God, ⁹  but for others they are in parables, so that although they see they may not see, and although they hear they may not understand. ¹⁰ 

[5:36]  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.

[5:36]  ² tn Grk “puts”; but since the means of attachment would normally be sewing, the translation “sews” has been used.

[5:36]  ³ tn Grk “he tears.” The point is that the new garment will be ruined to repair an older, less valuable one.

[5:36]  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.

[8:10]  ⁵ tn Here δέ (de) has not been translated.

[8:10]  ⁶ tn This is an example of a so-called “divine passive,” with God understood to be the source of the revelation (see ExSyn 437-38).

[8:10]  ⁷ tn Grk “it has been given to you to know.” The dative pronoun occurs first, in emphatic position in the Greek text, although this position is awkward in contemporary English.

[8:10]  ⁸ tn Grk “the mysteries.”

[8:10]  ⁹ sn The kingdom of God is a major theme of Jesus. It is a realm in which Jesus rules and to which those who trust him belong. See Luke 6:20; 11:20; 17:20-21.

[8:10]  ¹⁰ sn A quotation from Isa 6:9. Thus parables both conceal or reveal depending on whether one is open to hearing what they teach.