Luke 14:12

A dinner or a supper. — The two words were used respectively for the morning and the evening meal — the former, like the Continental déjeûner, being taken commonly a little before noon, the latter, about sunset.

Thy friends, nor thy brethren. — The words were clearly chosen as including the classes of guests who were then present. Our Lord saw in that Sabbath feast nothing but an ostentatious hospitality, calculating on a return in kind. It might not be wrong in itself, but it could take no place, as the Pharisee clearly thought it would do, in the list of good works by which he sought to win God’s favour. The very fact that it met with its reward on earth excluded it, almost ipso facto, from the reward of the resurrection of the just.