Luke 5:29-32

2 d. Luke 5:29-32. The Feast. According to Luke, the repast was spread in the house of Levi; the new disciple seeks to bring his old friends and Jesus together. It is his first missionary effort. Meyer sees a contradiction to Matthew here. Matthew says, “as Jesus sat at meat in the house,” an expression which, in his opinion, can only mean the dwelling of Jesus. He decides in favour of Matthew's narrative. But (1) how came the crowd of publicans and people of ill-fame at meat all at once in the house of Jesus? (2) Where is there ever any mention of the house of Jesus? (3) The repetition of Jesus' name at the end of the verse (Luke 5:10 in Matthew) excludes the idea that the complement understood of the house is Jesus. As to Mark, the pron. αὐτοῦ, his house, refers to Levi; this is proved (1) by the opposition of αὐτοῦ to the preceding αὐτόν, and (2) by the repetition of the name ᾿Ιησοῦ in the following phrase. The expression in the house, in Matthew, denotes therefore the house, wherever it was, in which the meal took place, in opposition to the outside, where the call, with the preaching that followed it, occurred. As usual, Matthew passes rapidly over the external circumstances of the narrative; it is the word of Jesus in which he is interested.

The repast, doubtless, took place on the groundfloor, and the apartment or gallery in which the table was spread could easily be reached from the street. While Jesus was surrounded by His new friends, His adversaries attacked His disciples. The T. R. places their scribes before the Pharisees. In this case, they would be the scribes of the place, or those of the nation. Neither meaning is very natural; the other reading, therefore, must be preferred: the Pharisees and their scribes, the defenders of strict observance, and the learned men sent with them from Jerusalem as experts (Luke 5:17-21). The Sinait. and some others have omitted αὐτῶν, doubtless on account of the difficulty and apparent uselessness of this pronoun.

Eating together is, in the East, as with us, the sign of very close intimacy. Jesus, therefore, went beyond all the limits of Jewish decorum in accepting the hospitality of Matthew's house, and in such company. His justification is partly serious and partly ironical. He seems to concede to the Pharisees that they are perfectly well, and concludes from this that for them He, the physician, is useless; so far the irony. On the other hand, it is certain that, speaking ritually, the Pharisees were right according to the Levitical law, and that being so, they would enjoy the means of grace offered by the old covenant, of which those who have broken with the theocratic forms are deprived. In this sense the latter are really in a more serious condition than the Pharisees, and more urgently need that some one should interest himself in their salvation; this is the serious side of the answer. This word is like a two-edged sword: first of all, it justifies Jesus from His adversaries' point of view, and by an argument ad hominem; but, at the same time, it is calculated to excite serious doubts in their minds as to whether this point of view be altogether just, and to give them a glimpse of another, according to which the difference that separates them from the publicans has not all the worth which they attributed to it (see on Luke 15:1-7).

The words to repentance are wanting in Matthew and Mark, according to the best authorities; the words understood in this case are: to the kingdom of God, to salvation. In Luke where these words are authentic, they continue the irony which forms the substance of this answer: come to call to repentance just persons!

It is for the Pharisees to ask themselves, after this, whether, because they meet the requirements of the temple, they satisfy the demands of God.

The discussion here takes a new turn; it assumes the character of a conversation on the use of fasting in the old and new order of things.