Luke 17:1-2

Vers. 1 and 2. Offences. “ Then said He unto the disciples, It is impossible but that offences (scandals) will come: but woe unto him through whom they come! 2. It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones. Take heed to yourselves. ”

The formula εἶπε δέ, then said He (aor.), has not the same weight as the ἔλεγε δέ, He was saying to them, the significance of which in Luke we have often remarked. It is the simple historical fact. ᾿Ανεκδεκτόν, inadmissible. The absence of offences is a supposition which cannot be admitted in the sinful state in which the world is plunged. The determining particle τοῦ is authentic.

The form, (the) offences (τά), denotes the entire category of facts of this kind. The reading μύλος ὀνικός, a millstone moved by an ass, is undoubtedly borrowed from Matthew; we must adopt, with the Alex., λίθος μυλικός, a millstone of smaller dimensions, moved by the hand (Luke 17:35).

The punishment to which Luke 17:2 alludes was usual among many ancient peoples, and is so still in the East. The reading of several copies of the Itala, which is also found in Marcion, “It were better for him that he had never been born, or that a stone...,” arises, no doubt, from an ancient gloss taken from Matthew 26:24. This is confirmed by the fact that Clemens Romanus combines in his 1 Cor. 46 the two passages, Matthew 18:6-7 (parallel to ours) and Matthew 26:24.

The little ones are beginners in the faith.

The final warning, Take heed..., is occasioned, on the one hand, by the extreme facility of causing offence (Luke 17:1); on the other, by the terrible danger to which it exposes him who causes it (Luke 17:2). The lost soul, like an eternal burden, is bound to him who has dragged it into evil, and in turn drags him into the abyss.

The same warning is found Matthew 18:6 and Mark 9:42. The offence which gave rise to it may be in this context, either that which the disciples had given one another in the strife which had taken place between them, or that which they had caused to the man in whom faith had just dawned (one of these little ones), and who was manifesting it by curing the possessed. Luke evidently did not know this connection; for he would not have failed to indicate it, he who seeks out historical situations with so much care. Had he not, besides, himself mentioned those two facts (Luke 9:46-50), and might he not have connected this admonition with them as Mark does? Luke, therefore, did not possess this original Mark, which Holtzmann regards as one of his principal sources; otherwise he would not have detached this saying from the fact which gave rise to it. But the account given by Matthew and Mark proves the truth of Luke's introduction, “He said unto the disciples,” and the accuracy of the document from which he derived this precept.