Luke 11:29-36

4 th. Luke 11:29-36. The Second Discourse.

This is the answer of Jesus to the demand which was addressed to Him to work a miracle proceeding from heaven (Luke 11:16). Strauss does not think that Jesus could have reverted to so secondary a question after the extremely grave charge with which He had been assailed. We have already pointed out the relation which exists between those two subjects. The miracle proceeding from heaven was claimed from Jesus as the only means He had of clearing Himself from the suspicion of complicity with Satan. In the first part of His reply, Jesus speaks of the only sign of the kind which shall be granted to the nation (Luke 11:29-32); in the second, of the entire sufficiency of this sign in the case of every one who has the eye of his soul open to behold it (Luke 11:33-36).

Vers. 29-32. The Sign from Heaven. “ And when the people thronged together, He began to say, This is an evil generation: they seek a sign; and there shall no sign be given it, but the sign of Jonas. 30. For as Jonas was a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall also the Son of man be to this generation. 31. The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with the men of this generation, and condemn them: for she came from the utmost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here. 32. The men of Nineveh shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here. ”

During the previous scene, a crowd, growing more and more numerous, had gathered; and it is before it that Jesus gives the following testimony against the national unbelief. In the πονηρά, wicked, there is an allusion to the diabolical spirit which had dictated the call for a sign (πειράζοντες, Luke 11:16).

The point of comparison between Jonas and Jesus, according to Luke, appears at first sight to be only the fact of their preaching, while in Matthew 12:39-40 it is evidently the miraculous deliverance of the one and the resurrection of the other. M. Colani concludes from this difference that Matthew has materialized the comparison which Jesus gave forth in a purely moral sense (Luke). But it must not be forgotten that Jesus says in Luke, as well as in Matthew: “The Son of man shall be (ἔσται) a sign,” by which He cannot denote His present preaching and appearance, the Fut. necessarily referring to an event yet to come, an event which can be no other than the entirely exceptional miracle of His resurrection. They ask of Jesus a sign ἐξ οὐρανοῦ, proceeding from heaven, Luke 11:16. His resurrection, in which no human agency intervenes, and in which divine power appears alone, fully satisfies, and only satisfies, this demand. This is the feature which Peter asserts in Acts 2:24; Acts 2:32; Acts 3:15, etc.: “ God hath raised up Jesus.” In John 2:19, Jesus replies to a similar demand by announcing the same event. The thought in Luke and Matthew is therefore exactly the same: “It was as one who had miraculously escaped from death that Jonas presented himself before the Ninevites, summoning them to anticipate the danger which threatened them; it is as the risen One that I (by my messengers) shall proclaim salvation to the men of this generation.” Which of the two texts is it which reproduces the answer of our Lord most exactly? But our passage may be parallel with Matthew 16:4, where the form is that of Luke. As to the words of Matthew 12:39-40, they must be authentic. No one would have put into the mouth of Jesus the expression, three days and three nights, when Jesus had actually remained in the tomb only one day and two nights.

But how shall this sign, and this preaching which will accompany it, be received? It is to this new thought that Luke 11:31-32 refer. Of the two examples which Jesus quotes, Matthew puts that of the Ninevites first, that of the queen of Sheba second. Luke reverses the order. Here again it is easy to perceive the superiority of Luke's text. 1. Matthew's order has been determined by the natural tendency to bring the example of the Ninevites into immediate proximity with what Jesus has been saying of Jonah 2. Luke's order presents an admirable gradation: while the wisdom of Solomon sufficed to attract the queen of Sheba from such a distance, Israel demands that to the infinitely higher wisdom of Jesus there should be added a sign from heaven. This is serious enough. But matters will be still worse: while the heathen of Nineveh were converted by the voice of Jonas escaped from death, Israel, at the sight of Jesus raised from the dead, shall not be converted.

Comp. as to the Queen of the South, 1 Kings 10:1 et seq. Seba seems to have been a part of Arabia-Felix, the modern Yemen. ᾿Εγερθήσεται, shall rise up from her tomb on the day of the great awakening, at the same time as the Jews (μετά, with, not against), so that the blindness of the latter shall appear in full light, contrasted with the earnestness and docility of the heathen queen. The word ἄνδρων, “the men of this generation,” certainly indicates a contrast with her female sex. Indeed, this term ἄνδρες, men, does not reappear in the following example, where this generation is not compared with a woman. Perhaps the choice of the first instance was suggested to Jesus by the incident which had just taken place, Luke 11:27-28.

The word ἀναστήσονται, Luke 11:32, shall rise up, denotes a more advanced degree of life than ἐγερθήσονται (shall awake). These dead are not rising from their tombs, like the queen of Sheba; they are already in their place before the tribunal as accusing witnesses. How dramatic is everything in the speech of Jesus! and what variety is there in the smallest details of His descriptions!

Vers. 33-36. The Spiritual Eye. “ No man, when he hath lighted a candle, putteth it in a secret place, neither under the bushel, but on the candlestick, that they which come in may see the light. 34. The light of the body is the eye: therefore when thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of light; but when thine eye is evil, thy whole body is full of darkness. 35. Take heed, therefore, that the light which is in thee be not darkness. 36. If thy whole body, therefore, be full of light, having no part dark, the whole shall be full of light, as when the bright shining of a candle doth give thee light. ”

Christ, such is the sign from heaven whose light God will diffuse over the world. He is the lamp which gives light to the house. God has not lighted it to allow it to be banished to an obscure corner; He will put it on a candlestick, that it may shine before the eyes of all; and this He will do by means of the resurrection. Κρυπτήν, a place out of view, under a bed, e.g., (Luke 8:16). Τὸν μόδιον, not a bushel, but the bushel; there is but one in the house, which serves in turn as a measure, a dish, or a lantern.

But it is with this sign in relation to our soul, as with a lamp relatively to our body, Luke 11:34. To the light which shines without there must be a corresponding organ in the individual fitted to receive it, and which is thus, as it were, the lamp within. On the state of this organ depends the more or less of light which we receive from the external luminary, and which we actually enjoy. In the body this organ, which by means of the external light forms the light of the whole body, the hand, the foot, etc., is the eye; everything, therefore, depends on the state of this organ. For the soul it is

Jesus does not say what, He leaves us to guess the heart, καρδία; comp. Matthew 6:21-22. The understanding, the will, the whole spiritual being, is illuminated by the divine light which the heart admits. With every motion in the way of righteousness there is a discharge of light over the whole soul. ῾Απλοῦς, single, and hence in this place, which is in its original, normal state; πονηρός, corrupted, and hence diseased, in the meaning of the phrase πονηρῶς ἔχειν to be ill. If the Jews were right in heart, they would see the divine sign put before their eyes as easily as the Queen of the South and the Ninevites perceived the less brilliant sign placed before them; but their heart is perverse: that organ is diseased; and hence the sign shines, and will shine, in vain before their view. The light without will not become light in them.

Ver. 35. It is supremely important, therefore, for every one to watch with the greatest care over the state of this precious organ. If the eye is not enlightened, what member of the body will be so? The foot and hand will act in the darkness of night. So with the faculties of the soul when the heart is perverted from good.

Ver. 36. But what a contrast to this condition is formed by that of a being who opens his heart fully to the truth, his spiritual eye to the brightness of the lamp which has been lighted by God Himself! To avoid the tautology which the two members of the verse seem to present, we need only put the emphasis differently in the two propositions: in the first on ὅλον, whole; and in the second on φωτεινόν, full of light, connecting this word immediately with the following as its commentary: full of light as when...The very position of the words forbids any other grammatical explanation; and it leads us to this meaning: “When, through the fact of the clearness of thine eye, thy whole body shall be penetrated with light, without there being in thee the least trace of darkness, then the phenomenon which will be wrought in thee will resemble what takes place on thy body when it is placed in the rays of a luminous focus.” Jesus means, that from the inward part of a perfectly sanctified man there rays forth a splendour which glorifies the external man, as when he is shone upon from without. It is glory as the result of holiness. The phenomenon described here by Jesus is no other than that which was realized in Himself on the occasion of His transfiguration, and which He now applies to all believers. Passages such as 2 Corinthians 3:18 and Romans 8:29 will always be the best commentary on this sublime declaration, which Luke alone has preserved to us, and which forms so perfect a conclusion to this discourse.

Bleek having missed the meaning of this saying, and of the piece generally, accuses Luke of having placed it here without ground, and prefers the setting which it has in Matthew, in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, immediately after the maxim: “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Undoubtedly this context of Matthew proves, as we have recognised, that the eye of the soul, according to the view of Jesus, is the heart. But what disturbs the purity of that organ is not merely avarice, as would appear from the context of Matthew 6. It is sin in general, perversity of heart hostile to the light; and this more general application is precisely that which we find in Luke. This passage has been placed in the Sermon on the Mount, like so many others, rather because of the association of ideas than from historical reminiscence. The context of Luke, from Luke 11:14 to Luke 11:36, is without fault. On the one side the accusation and demand made by the enemies of Jesus, Luke 11:15-16, on the other the enthusiastic exclamation of the believing woman, Luke 11:27-28, furnish Jesus with the starting-points for His two contrasted descriptions, that of growing blindness which terminates in midnight darkness, and that of gradual illumination which leads to perfect glory. We may, after this, estimate the justness of Holtzmann's judgment: “It is impossible to connect this passage about light, in a simple and natural way, with the discourse respecting Jonas.”