Luke 20:20-26

4. The Question of the Pharisees: Luke 20:20-26.

The official question of the Sanhedrim served only to prepare a triumph for Jesus. From this time forth the different parties make attempts on Him separately, and that by means of captious questions adroitly prepared.

Vers. 20-26. The introduction to this narrative presents in our three Syn. (Matthew 22:15; Mark 12:13) some marked shades of meaning. The simplest form is that of Luke. The priests and scribes (Luke 20:19) suborn certain parties, who, affecting a scruple of conscience (“ feigning themselves just men ”), interrogate Jesus as to whether it is lawful to pay tribute to Gentile authorities. The snare was this: Did Jesus answer in the affirmative? It was a means of destroying His influence with the people by stigmatizing His Messianic pretensions. Did He reply in the negative? He fell as a rebel into the hands of the Roman governor, who would make short work with Him. This is brought out in Luke 20:20 by the emphatic accumulation of the terms ἀρχή, ἐξουσία, military power and judicial authority. Once given over to that power, Jesus would be in good hands, and the Sanhedrim would have no more concern about the favour with which the people surrounded Him. Λόγου and αὐτοῦ ought both to be taken, notwithstanding Bleek's scruples, as immediately dependent on ἐπιλάβωνται : “to take Him by surprise, and to catch a word from Him by surprise.” According to Mark and Matthew, the Pharisees in this case united with the Herodians. Bleeks thinks that the bond of union between the one party, fanatical zealots for national independence, and the other, devoted partisans of Herod's throne, was common antipathy to foreign domination. The presence of the Herodians was intended to encourage Jesus to answer in the negative, and so to put Himself in conflict with Pilate. But the attitude of the Herodians toward the Roman power was totally different from Bleek's view of it. The Herods had rather planted themselves in Israel as the vassals of Caesar. The Herodians, says M. Reuss, “were the Jews who had taken the side of the family of Herod against the patriots,” that is to say, against the Pharisees. We have therefore here, what so often occurs in history, a coalition of two hostile parties, with the view of crushing a third, dangerous to both. In Galilee we have already seen a similar combination (Mark 3:6; Luke 13:31-32). There was a perfectly good reason for it in this case. If the answer of Jesus required to be denounced to the people, this task would fall to the Pharisees, who stood well with the multitude. If, on the contrary, it was necessary to go to Pilate, the Herodians would take this part, so disagreeable to the Pharisees.

According to Matthew (Matthew 22:16), the heads of the pharisaic party took care to keep aloof. They attacked Him first through some of their disciples. In reality, their alliance with the Herodians compromised those well-known defenders of national independence.

The address of the emissaries is variously rendered in our three Gospels. ᾿Ορθῶς : without deviating from the straight line. Λέγειν and διδάσκειν, to say and to teach, differ as pronouncing on a question and stating the grounds of the decision. The Hebraistic phrase λαμβάνειν πρόσωπον, which must have been a frightful barbarism to Greek ears (to take the countenance, for: to accept men's persons), is found only in Luke. It would therefore be himself, if he was copying Matthew or Mark, who had added it at his own hand he who was writing for Greek readers! ῾Οδὸς Θεοῦ, the way of God, denotes the straight theocratic line traced out by the law, without regard to accomplished facts or political necessities. They think by their praises to render it impossible for Him to recoil. There was, in reality, and this is what formed the apparently insurmountable difficulty of the question, a contradiction between the pure theocratic standard and the actual state of things. The normal condition was the autonomy of God's people, normal because founded on the divine law, and as such, sacred in the eyes of Jesus. The actual state of things was the subjection of the Jews to the Romans, a providential situation, and as such, not less evidently willed by God. How was this contradiction to be got over? Judas the Galilean, rejecting the fact, had declared himself for the right; he had perished. This was the fate to which the rulers wished to drive Jesus. And if He recoiled, if He accepted the fact, was this not to deny the right, the legal standard, Moses, God Himself?

Is it lawful for us (Luke 20:22)? They have a scruple of conscience! Jesus at once discerns the malicious plot which is at the bottom of the question; He feels that never was a more dangerous snare laid for Him. But there is in the simplicity of the dove a skill which enables it to escape from the best laid string of the fowler. What made the difficulty of the question was the almost entire fusion of the two domains, the religious and political, in the Old Covenant. Jesus, therefore, has now to distinguish those two spheres, which the course of Israelitish history has in fact separated and even contrasted, so that He may not be drawn into applying to the one the absolute standard which belongs only to the other. Israel should depend only on God, assuredly, but that in the religious domain. In the political sphere, God may be pleased to put it for a time in a state of dependence on a human power, as had formerly happened in their times of captivity, as is the case at present in relation to Caesar. Did not even the theocratic constitution itself distinguish between the tribute to be paid to the king and the dues to be paid to the priests and the temple? This legal distinction became only more precise and emphatic when the sceptre fell into Gentile hands. What remained to be said was not God or Caesar, but rather, God and Caesar, each in his own sphere. The Gentile money which passed current in Israel attested the providential fact of the establishment of the Roman dominion, and of the acceptance of that state of things by the theocratic people. Ubicunque numisma regis alicujus obtinet, illic incolae regem istum pro domino agnoscunt, says the famous Jewish doctor Maimonides (quoted by Bleek). The piece of Roman money which Jesus calls His adversaries to show, establishes by the image and inscription which it bears the existence of this foreign power in the political and lower sphere of the theocratic life; it is to this sphere that the payment of tribute belongs; the debt should therefore be discharged. But above this sphere there is that of the religious life which has God for its object. This sphere is fully reserved by the answer of Jesus; and He declares that all its obligations can be fulfilled, without in the least doing violence to the duties of the other. He accepts with submission the actual condition, while reserving fidelity to Him who can re-establish the normal condition as soon as it shall seem good to Him. Jesus Himself had never felt the least contradiction between those two orders of duties; and it is simply from His own pure consciousness that He derives this admirable solution. The word ἀπόδοτε, render, implies the notion of moral duty toward Caesar, quite as much as toward God. De Wette is therefore certainly mistaken here in limiting the notion of obligation to the things which are God's, and applying merely the notion of utility to the things which are Caesar's. St. Paul understood the thought of Jesus better, when he wrote to the Romans (Luke 13:1 et seq.): “Be subject to the powers..., not only from fear of punishment, but also for conscience' sake. ” Comp. 1 Timothy 2:1 et seq.; 1Pe 2:13 et seq. Dependence on God does not exclude, but involves, not only many personal duties, but the various external and providential relations of dependence in which the Christian may find himself placed, even that of slavery (1 Corinthians 7:22). As to theocratic independence, Jesus knew well that the way to regain it was not to violate the duty of submission to Caesar by a revolutionary shaking off of his yoke, but to return to the faithful fulfilment of all duties toward God. To render to God what is God's, was the way for the people of God to obtain anew David instead of Caesar as their Lord.

Who could find a word to condemn in this solution? To the Pharisees, the Render unto Caesar; to the Herodians, the Render unto God. Each carries away his own lesson; Jesus alone issues triumphantly from the ordeal which was to have destroyed Him.

5. The Question of the Sadducees: Luke 20:27-40.

We know positively from Josephus that the Sadducees denied at once the resurrection of the body, the immortality of the soul, and all retribution after death (Antiq. 18.1. 4; Bell. Jude 1:2; Jude 1:2.8. 14). It was not that they rejected either the O. T. in general, or any of its parts. How, in that case, could they have sat in the Sanhedrim, and filled the priesthood? Probably they did not find personal immortality taught clearly enough in the books of Moses; and as to the prophetic books, they ascribed to them only secondary authority.