Luke 8:14

Cares and riches and pleasures of this life. — Better, simply, of life, St. Luke’s word (bios) being different from that in the other two Gospels (œon, a time, or period — and so used for “the world”). The insertion of “pleasures” is peculiar to St. Luke, as is also the specific “bring no fruit to perfection “instead of “becometh unfruitful.” The one Greek word which St. Luke uses, and for which the English version substitutes five, occurs nowhere else in the New Testament, and belonging, as it does, to the vocabulary of a more polished literature, is characteristic of his general culture.