Luke by Nicholas Perrin;

Author:Nicholas Perrin; [Perrin;, Nicholas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Tyndale;commentary;bible commentary;biblical commentary;new testament;new testament commentary;tntc;luke;luke’s gospel;gospel of luke;theology;biblical theology;new testament theology;biblical studies;new testament studies;jesus;gospel;historical bible;historical gospel;historical context of the bible;historical context of luke’s gospel;luke commentary;luke’s gospel commentary;gospel commentary;theology of luke;gospel of luke theology
ISBN: 9781514005361
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2022-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

Comment

i. Parable of the rich fool (12:13–21)

13. No sooner does Jesus speak of the dark persecution and glorious recompense awaiting the faithful (12:1–12) than someone in the crowd interrupts hoping to leverage Jesus’ status as a high-profile figure for a personal agenda. Notwithstanding Jesus’ vision of eschatological inheritance (v. 8), the man in the crowd is ironically more immediately concerned with his temporal inheritance. His request that Jesus intervene would not have been highly unusual: religious authorities were likely summoned to settle disputes of this kind.

14. On the face of it, Jesus declines the man’s request, but does so with intimations of an analogous dispute involving Moses’ uninvited attempt to mediate between two fighting Hebrews (Exod. 2:13–14). Jesus asks, Who set me [tis me katestēsen] to be a judge or arbitrator over you? Meanwhile, according to Exodus 2:14 (LXX), one of the two street fighters asks, ‘Who set you [tis se katestēsen] to be a ruler and judge over us?’ (my translation). Of course, in the Exodus account the fighting Hebrew’s question is rhetorical and assumes the answer ‘No-one’, meaning that the uninvited Moses had no right to stick his nose into the Hebrews’ quarrel, at least not until Yahweh had authorized Moses to be judge (Exod. 18) and king of Israel. By slightly tweaking the very same question, Jesus invites an exploratory comparison between himself and Moses. Yet the query also raises a probing Christological question: who indeed has set Jesus to be judge and arbitrator over the two brothers or, for that matter, the rest of humanity? The answer to this question – should this enquirer piece it together – has already been baked into Jesus’ statement contained in 12:8: ‘everyone who acknowledges me before others, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God’. Just as Jesus will, after the pattern of Moses, finally acquire the right to judge, so too will the Danielic Son of Man be given authority to judge.77 Thus, while on the surface Jesus appears to be putting off the man in the crowd, he is in fact throwing down the gauntlet for further engagement. ‘First answer my question correctly,’ Jesus seems to say, ‘and then you will find that both your life and the things that you seek in life will take on an entirely new framing.’

15. Turning to them, the crowds, Jesus makes an example out of the man’s request by issuing a double warning: Take care! (horate) and Be on your guard (phylassesthe). The twin imperatives, including the verb ‘to guard’, seem to be an emphatic variant of the earlier admonition of guarding (prosechete) against the leaven of the Pharisees (12:1). And what are Jesus’ disciples to guard against in this instance but all kinds of greed. If Jesus deemed the Pharisees’ lust for mutual approval as a particular expression of greed, now he makes a more generalized statement regarding greed in all its various manifestations, not least the perverse desire for an abundance of possessions. Be alert, Jesus insists, because one’s life is not derived from such things.

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