Luke 14:21-24

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In the report which the servant gives of his mission, we may hear, as Stier so well observes, the echo of the sorrowful lamentations uttered by Jesus over the hardening of the Jews during His long nights of prayer. The anger of the master (ὀργισθείς) is the retaliation for the hatred which he discovers at the bottom of their refusals.

The first supplementary invitation which he commissions his servant to give, represents the appeal addressed by Jesus to the lowest classes of Jewish society, those who are called, Luke 15:1, publicans and sinners. Πλατεῖαι, the larger streets, which widen out into squares. ῾Ρῦμαι, the small cross streets. There is no going out yet from the city.

The second supplementary invitation (Luke 14:22-23) represents the calling of the Gentiles; for those to whom it is addressed are no longer inhabitants of the city. The love of God is great: it requires a multitude of guests; it will not have a seat left empty. The number of the elect is, as it were, determined beforehand by the riches of divine glory, which cannot find a complete reflection without a certain number of human beings. The invitation will therefore be continued, and consequently the history of our race prolonged, until that number be reached. Thus the divine decree is reconciled with human liberty. In comparison with the number called, there are undoubtedly few saved through the fault of the former; but nevertheless, speaking absolutely, there are very many saved. Φραγμοί, the hedges which enclose properties, and beneath which vagrants squat. The phrase, compel them to come in, applies to people who would like to enter, but are yet kept back by a false timidity. The servant is to push them, in a manner, into the house in spite of their scruples. The object, therefore, is not to extinguish their liberty, but rather to restore them to it. For they would; but they dare not.

As Luke 14:21 is the text of the first part of Acts (i.-xii., conversion of the Jews), Luke 14:22-23 are the text of the second (xiii. to the end, conversion of the Gentiles), and indeed of the whole present economy. Weizsäcker accuses Luke of having added to the original parable this distinction between two new invitations, and that in favour of Paul's mission to the Gentiles. If this saying were the only one which the evangelists put into the mouth of Jesus regarding the calling of the Gentiles, this suspicion would be conceivable. But does not the passage Luke 13:28-30 already express this idea? and is not this saying found in Matthew as well as in Luke? Comp. also Matthew 24:14; John 10:16.

According to several commentators, Luke 14:24 does not belong to the parable; it is the application of it addressed by Jesus to all the guests (“ I say unto you ”). But the subject of the verb, I say, is evidently still the host of the parable; the pron. you designates the persons gathered round him at the time when he gives this order. Only the solemnity with which Jesus undoubtedly passed His eyes over the whole assembly, while putting this terrible threat into the mouth of the master in the parable, made them feel that at that very moment the scene described was actually passing between Him and them.

The parable of the great feast related Matthew 22:1-14 has great resemblances to this; but it differs from it as remarkably. More generalized in the outset, it becomes toward the end more detailed, and takes even a somewhat complex character. It may be, as Bleek thinks, a combination of two parables originally distinct. This seems to be proved by certain touches, such as the royal dignity of the host, the destruction by his armies of the city inhabited by those first invited, and then everything relating to the man who had come in without a wedding garment. Nothing, on the contrary, could be more simple and complete than the delineation of Luke.