Paolo Veronese, The Raising of the Young Man of Nain, 1560s. Public domain.

Matthew, Mark and Luke · Passage · Mercy

The Compassion of Jesus

The Greek verb splanchnizomai, to be moved with compassion, stands twelve times in the Gospels, all of them in Matthew, Mark and Luke.

Every time the Gospels say that Jesus was moved with compassion, a deed of His follows: He heals, touches, teaches, feeds, sends out workers or gives a dead son back to his mother.

Luke 7:13 BSB

When the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her and said, “Do not weep.”

12The table
4The touch
8Readings

The passage: Matthew 9:36, Mark 1:41, Luke 7:13
Books: Matthew, Mark, Luke
Hold in memory: Matthew 9:36, Hebrews 4:15

Summary

Splanchnizomai is a Greek verb for pity felt deep within a person, and in the narrative of the Gospels it is said of no one but Jesus. Jesus Himself gives it to three characters in His parables: a master who forgives a debt, a Samaritan and a father whose son comes home. These verses show the inner side of the mercy that Jesus showed and taught.

What moved Jesus was a need He met: crowds without a shepherd or bread, a leper, two blind men and a widow burying her only son.
Jesus speaks the verb of Himself only twice, at Matthew 15:32 and Mark 8:2, when He says, "I have compassion for this crowd".
In Mark 9:22 a father asks Jesus to "have compassion on us and help us", and Jesus drives out the spirit that had seized his son.
The Samaritan of Luke 10:33 is moved with compassion, and in Luke 10:37 the expert in the law calls what he did mercy, eleos.

The Verb for Compassion

The verb is glossed as a yearning of the inward parts, and the noun beside it names the tender mercy of God in Luke 1:78.

Mercy has an inward side as well as an outward one, and the Gospels give that inward side a name when they say that Jesus was moved with compassion. Did Jesus feel for the people He healed, or only do what their need required? The Gospel writers answer by choosing a verb of feeling for Him and then telling what He did.

For the value of mercy, the verb shows what mercy looked like in Jesus, from the crowds of Matthew 9 to the widow at the gate of Nain.

Strong's dictionary glosses splanchnizomai "to have the bowels yearn, i.e. (figuratively) feel sympathy, to pity", and the King James Version renders it have compassion or be moved with compassion. The noun splanchnon, glossed "an intestine (plural); figuratively, pity or sympathy", stands 11 times in the New Testament.

because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the Dawn will visit us from on high,

Luke 1:78BSB

In the song of Zechariah the Greek behind the tender mercy of our God is splanchna eleous, the noun for the inward parts joined to eleos, mercy.

Twelve Uses in the Gospels

Matthew has the verb five times, Mark four times and Luke three times.

The Gospels use the verb for compassion twelve times, eight of Jesus, one in a plea to Him and three in His parables.

The verse	The Berean words	Who is moved	What moved them	What followed
Matthew 9:36	He was moved with compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd	Jesus	the crowds	He told the disciples to ask the Lord of the harvest for workers, and He sent out the Twelve (Matthew 9:37 to 10:1)
Matthew 14:14	He had compassion on them and healed their sick	Jesus	a large crowd	He healed their sick
Matthew 15:32	I have compassion for this crowd, because they have already been with Me three days and have nothing to eat	Jesus, speaking of Himself	a crowd three days without food	He broke the seven loaves and the fish for them (Matthew 15:36)
Matthew 18:27	His master had compassion on him, forgave his debt, and released him	the master in a parable	a servant on his knees, begging	He forgave the debt and released the servant
Matthew 20:34	Moved with compassion, Jesus touched their eyes	Jesus	two blind men crying for mercy	He touched their eyes, and they received their sight and followed Him
Mark 1:41	Moved with compassion, Jesus reached out His hand and touched the man	Jesus	a leper begging on his knees	He touched him and said, Be clean, and the leprosy left him (Mark 1:42)
Mark 6:34	He had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd	Jesus	a large crowd	He began to teach them many things
Mark 8:2	I have compassion for this crowd	Jesus, speaking of Himself	a crowd three days without food	He broke the seven loaves for them (Mark 8:6)
Mark 9:22	But if You can do anything, have compassion on us and help us	asked of Jesus by a father	a son thrown into fire and water	Jesus rebuked the spirit and lifted the boy by the hand (Mark 9:25 to 27)
Luke 7:13	When the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her	Jesus	a widow whose only son was being carried out	He said, Do not weep, touched the coffin and gave her son back to her (Luke 7:14 to 15)
Luke 10:33	he looked at him and had compassion	the Samaritan in a parable	a man beaten and left half dead	He bandaged his wounds and took care of him (Luke 10:34)
Luke 15:20	his father saw him and was filled with compassion	the father in a parable	his son, still in the distance	He ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him

A table of twelve rows, one for each use of splanchnizomai, giving the verse, its Berean words, who is moved, what moved them and what followed.

Mark 6:34, Mark 8:2, Mark 9:22, Luke 7:13, Luke 10:33, Luke 15:20

In six of the twelve verses the one who is moved has first seen the need. Jesus saw the crowds (Matthew 9:36 and 14:14, Mark 6:34) and the widow (Luke 7:13), the Samaritan looked at the wounded man (Luke 10:33), and the father saw his son (Luke 15:20). Matthew Henry, in his Commentary on the Whole Bible, wrote on Luke 7:13 that "His eye affected his heart".

Crowds Without a Shepherd and Without Bread

Five of the twelve uses concern a crowd: twice it was like sheep without a shepherd, twice it had nothing to eat, and once Jesus healed its sick.

When He saw the crowds, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into His harvest.”

Matthew 9:36 to 38BSB

Jesus' compassion for the crowds turns at once into a charge to His disciples to pray for workers for the harvest.

John Chrysostom, in his thirty-second homily on Matthew, wrote that Christ did not wait "for the sick to come to Him". He read the shepherdless sheep as a charge against Israel's rulers: "This is His charge against the rulers of the Jews, that being shepherds they acted the part of wolves."

Matthew 14:14 and Mark 6:34 tell of the same landing by the sea, and the meal for the five thousand followed when the hour was already late (Mark 6:35 to 44).

Theophylact of Ohrid, in his Commentary on Matthew, wrote of the crowd of Matthew 15:32 that "The multitude did not dare to ask for bread, as they had come for healing. But He Who loves mankind takes thought for them". That crowd numbered four thousand men, in addition to women and children (Matthew 15:38).

Read the page on the Feeding of the Five Thousand

The Widow at Nain

Luke 7:13 is the one verse in Luke's narrative where Jesus is moved with compassion, and the one He pitied was a widow at her son's funeral.

Then He went up and touched the coffin, and those carrying it stood still. “Young man,” He said, “I tell you, get up!” And the dead man sat up and began to speak! Then Jesus gave him back to his mother. A sense of awe swept over all of them, and they glorified God. “A great prophet has appeared among us!” they said. “God has visited His people!”

Luke 7:14 to 16BSB

The raising answers the mother's grief, and the people praise God for what they have seen.

“The dead man was being buried, and many friends were conducting him to his tomb. Christ, the life and resurrection, meets him there. He is the Destroyer of death and of corruption. He is the One in whom we live and move and are. He is who has restored the nature of man to that which it originally was and has set free our death-fraught flesh from the bonds of death. He had mercy upon the woman, and that her tears might be stopped, he commanded saying, ‘Weep not.’ Immediately the cause of her weeping was done away.”

Cyril of Alexandria · Commentary on Luke, Homily 36 · on Luke 7:12 to 13Patristic

A Father Asks for Compassion

Mark 9:22 is the one place in the Gospels where someone asks Jesus to be moved with compassion.

“It often throws him into the fire or into the water, trying to kill him. But if You can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.”

Mark 9:22BSB

The father asks for the very thing the Gospels say moved Jesus, while his words "if You can" doubt Jesus' power.

Jesus took up the doubt before He answered the plea, and the father cried, "I do believe; help my unbelief!" (Mark 9:23 to 24).

The leper of Mark 1:40 was unsure whether Jesus was willing, and this father was unsure whether He was able. Jesus answered both men with a deed.

Three Parables and Two Questions

Two questions have followed from the verb: whether the Samaritan of Luke 10 pictures Christ, and whether God Himself feels compassion.

In all three parables the one who is moved with compassion acts first. The master forgives before the servant has done anything, the Samaritan helps a man who cannot help himself, and the father runs to a son who has not yet spoken.

Read the page on Seventy Times Seven

Read the page on the Good Samaritan

Read the page on the Prodigal Son

Ambrose of Milan read the Samaritan as a picture of Christ. In his Commentary on Luke he wrote that "That extraordinary Samaritan did not himself shun him whom the priest and the Levite had shunned". He also read the name itself: "Indeed, 'guard' is signified by the name Samaritan". Bonaventure's Commentary on Luke gives the same reading: "The person moreover coming to aid out of mercy is rightly understood as Christ the Lord".

Against this reading, Luke sets the parable between the lawyer's question, "And who is my neighbor?" (Luke 10:29), and Jesus' charge, "Go and do likewise" (Luke 10:37), so its point falls on the hearer.

John Calvin rejected the reading in his Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists. He wrote that it "has been admitted by almost universal consent" and that "This Samaritan they imagine to be Christ". He answered that "we ought to have a deeper reverence for Scripture than to reckon ourselves at liberty to disguise its natural meaning".

Against Calvin, the Gospels give the Samaritan the verb they give to Jesus, so the likeness the fathers saw rests on a word of the text.

The verb names a feeling, and the second question is whether God feels compassion as Jesus did in His human nature. Hosea 11:8 has God say, "My heart is turned within Me; My compassion is stirred!"

Anselm's Proslogium, chapter 8, holds that "God is compassionate, in terms of our experience, because we experience the effect of compassion". It adds that "God is not compassionate, in terms of his own being, because he does not experience the feeling (affectus) of compassion". Thomas Aquinas wrote in the Summa Theologica that "Mercy is especially to be attributed to God, as seen in its effect, but not as an affection of passion". The Westminster Confession calls God "without body, parts, or passions" and in the same article "gracious, merciful, longsuffering, abundant in goodness and truth".

Their question concerns the divine nature, and it leaves standing the compassion Christ felt in His human nature.

A High Priest Who Sympathizes

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who was tempted in every way that we are, yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

Hebrews 4:15 to 16BSB

The writer joins Jesus' sympathy with human weakness to the mercy His people may receive at the throne of grace.

Hebrews uses another verb here, sympathesai, to sympathize, but it says of Jesus as high priest what the Gospels showed in His ministry. The one who was moved by the needs He saw is the one to whom His people may come to receive mercy.

Sources

Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.

The tagged Greek text of the New Testament, with Strong's numbers and morphology, for the twelve verses of G4697 and for Luke 1:78, Matthew 20:30, Luke 10:37 and Hebrews 4:15.
James Strong, A Concise Dictionary of the Words in the Greek Testament (1890), entries 4697 and 4698.
John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew, Homily 32, on Matthew 9:36.
Theophylact of Ohrid, Commentary on Matthew, on Matthew 15:32.
Origen, Fragments on Matthew 2.2 to 3, on Mark 1:41.
Jerome, on Matthew 20:34, in Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea.
Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on Luke, Homily 36, on Luke 7:12 to 13.
Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), on Luke 7:13.
Ambrose of Milan, Commentary on Luke, on Luke 10:33.
Bonaventure, Commentary on Luke, chapter 10, on Luke 10:33.
John Calvin, Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists, volume 3, on Luke 10:30, translated by William Pringle for the Calvin Translation Society.
Anselm, Proslogium, chapter 8, translated by Sidney Norton Deane (Open Court, 1903), in the modernized text of the Fordham Medieval Sourcebook.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I q.21 a.3, English Dominican translation (1920)
The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), chapter 2, article 1, in Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, volume 3.

Every cited work: the sources registry →