Luke 14:18

“And they all with one consent began to make excuse. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a field, and I find it necessary for me to go out and see it, I beg you, have me excused.' ”

The excuses are to some extent patterned on the excuses offered to Israel's fighting men before they went to war, (excuses which were probably not intended to be taken up as an examination of them demonstrates. See our commentary on Deuteronomy 20:5). There it was a house, a vineyard and a wife that gave the excuse. Here it is a piece of land (which could be a vineyard), a yoke of oxen and a wife. In Deuteronomy they were probably excuses offered in order to enable the men to refuse them, which would then nerve them for the fight and remind them of what they were fighting for. But there is no hint of warfare in this passage, apart possibly from the fight of faith. But they still excuse themselves.

We can take the excuses as either artificial or genuine. If the former they were typical of the excuses people make when faced up with the truth of the Gospel, if the latter they are evidence of ‘the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches and the desire for other things' that make the word unfruitful (Mark 4:18). But either way they were a deep insult. Only the most urgent of catastrophes could excuse not responding to such a final invitation when it followed one already given and technically, if not actually, accepted.

One of those invited excused himself, making as his excuse the fact that the had bought a piece of land and needed to go out and examine it. But all would know that he could have done this at any time, and that the evening was not the best time for such a venture anyway. His need to see it suggests that his agent had bought it for him. He is deliberately depicted as wealthy. But the idea is either that he was just making an excuse, or that he was too taken up with his possessions to be willing to forsake them in order to go to the supper, that is, to enter into the Kingly Rule of God.

‘All with one consent.' Apo mias probably signifies ‘unanimously', although some have translated ‘all at once', immediately'. But the point is clear. All took the same view.