Luke 5:36

Ver. 36. First Parable.

The T. R. says: “No man putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old garment.” The Alex. var. has this: “No man, rending a piece from a new garment, putteth it to an old garment.” In Matthew and Mark the new piece is taken from any piece of cloth; in Luke, according to two readings, it is cut out of a whole garment; the Alex. reading only puts this in a somewhat stronger form.

The verb σχίζει, rends (Alex. σχίσει, will rend), in the second proposition, might have the intransitive sense: “Otherwise the new [piece] maketh a rent [in the old],” which would come to the same meaning as the passage has in Matthew and Mark: “The new piece taketh away a part of the old, and the rent is made worse.” But in Luke the context requires the active sense: “Otherwise it [the piece used to patch with] rendeth the new [garment].” This is the only sense admissible in the Alex. reading, after the partic. σχίσας, rending, in the preceding proposition. The received reading equally requires it: for, 1 st. The second inconvenience indicated, “the new agreeth not with the old,” would be too slight to be placed after that of the enlargement of the rent. 2 d. The evident correlation between the two καί, both...and..., contains the following idea: the two garments, both the new and the old, are spoiled together; the new, because it has been rent to patch the old; the old, because it is disfigured by a piece of different cloth. Certainly it would still be possible to refer the expression, not agree, not to the incongruity in appearance of the two cloths, but to the stronger and more resisting quality of the new cloth, an inequality which would have the effect of increasing the rent. This would be the untoward result intended in Matthew and Mark. But the term συμφονεῖν, to harmonize, refers much more naturally to a contrast in appearance between the two cloths.

The futures, will rend, will agree, in the Alex. reading, may be defended; but are they not a correction proceeding from the use of the future in the second parable (will break, will be spilled, will perish, Luke 5:37)? The corrector, in this case, could not have remembered that, in the case of the wine and the leathern bottles, the damage is only produced after a time, whilst in the garment it is immediate. To sum up: in Matthew and Mark there is only a single damage, that which befalls the old garment, the rent of which is enlarged; in Luke the damage is twofold: in one case affecting the new garment, which is cut into to patch the other; in the other, affecting the old garment, as in Matthew and Mark, but consisting in the patchwork appearance of the cloths, and not in the enlargement of the rent.

In the application it is impossible not to connect this image of the piece of new cloth with the subject of the previous conversation, the rite of fasting, while we admit that Jesus generalizes the question. Moses had nowhere prescribed monthly or weekly fasts. The only periodical fast commanded in the law was annual that on the day of atonement. The regular fasts, such as those which the adversaries of Jesus would have had Him impose on His disciples, were one of those pharisaical inventions which the Jews called a hedge about the law, and by which they sought to complete and maintain the legal system. John the Baptist himself had been unable to do anything better than attach himself to this method. This is the patching-up process which is indicated in Matthew and Mark, and which is opposed to the mode of action adopted by Jesus the total substitution of a new for an old garment. In Luke the image is still more full of meaning: Jesus, alluding to that new, unconstrained, evangelical fasting, of which He has spoken in Luke 5:34, and which He cannot at present require of His disciples, makes the general declaration that it is necessary to wait for the new life before creating its forms; it is impossible to anticipate it by attempting to adapt to the legal system, under which His disciples are as yet living, the elements of the new state which He promises them. His mission is not to labour to repair and maintain an educational institution, now decaying and waxing old (παλαιούμενον καὶ γηράσκον). He is not a patcher, as the Pharisees were, nor a reformer, like John the Baptist. Opus majus! It is a new garment that He brings. To mix up the old work with the new, would be to spoil the latter without preserving the former. It would be a violation of the unity of the spiritualism which He was about to inaugurate, and to introduce into the legal system an offensive medley. Would not the least particle of evangelical freedom suffice to make every legal observance fall into disuse? Better then let the old garment remain as it is, until the time comes to substitute the new for it altogether, than try to patch it up with strips taken from the latter! As Lange says (Leben Jesu, ii. p. 680): “The work of Jesus is too good to use it in repairing the worn garment of pharisaical Judaism, which could never thereby be made into anything better than the assumed garb of a beggar.” This profound idea of the mingling of the new holiness with the ancient legalism comes out more clearly from Luke's simile, and cannot have been introduced into the words of Jesus by him.

Neander thinks that the old garment must be regarded as the image of the old unregenerate nature of the disciples, on which Jesus could not impose the forms of the new life. But the moral nature of man cannot be compared to a garment; it is the man himself.

Gess applies the image of the piece of new cloth to the asceticism of John the Baptist. This meaning might suffice for the form of it in Matthew and Mark; but it leaves Luke's form of it (a piece of the new garment) unexplained.

What a view of His mission this word of Jesus reveals! What a lofty conception of the work He came to accomplish! From what a height He looks down, not only on the Pharisees, but on John himself, the great representative of the old covenant, the greatest of those born of women! And all this is expressed in the simplest, homeliest manner, thrown off with the greatest facility! He speaks as a being to whom nothing is so natural as the sublime. All that has been called the system of Paul, all that this apostle himself designates his gospel, the decisive contrast between the two covenants, the mutual exclusiveness of the systems of law and grace, of the oldness of the letter and the newness of the spirit (Romans 7:6), this inexorable dilemma: “ If by grace, then is it no more of works; if it be of works, then is it no more grace ” (Romans 11:6), which constitutes the substance of the Epistles to the Romans and the Galatians, all is contained in this homely figure of a garment patched with a piece of cloth, or with part of a new garment! How can any one, after this, maintain that Jesus was not conscious from the beginning of the bearing of His work, as well of the task He had to accomplish in regard to the law, as of His Messianic dignity? How can any one contend that the Twelve, to whom we owe the preservation of this parable, were only narrow Jewish Christians, as prejudiced in favour of their law as the most extreme men of the party? If they perceived the meaning of this saying alone, the part attributed to them becomes impossible. And if they had no comprehension of it, how was it that they thought it worthy of a place in the teaching of Jesus, which they handed down with such care to the Church?

Often, after having presented an idea by means of a parable, from a feeling that the figure employed fails to represent it completely, Jesus immediately adds a second parable, designed to set forth another aspect of the same idea. In this way are formed what may be called the pairs of parables, which are so often met with in the Gospels (the grain of mustard seed and the leaven; the treasure and the pearl; the unwise builder and the imprudent warrior; the sower and the tares). Following the same method, Jesus here adds to the parable of the piece of cloth that of the leathern bottles.