Lukechapter 6
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Speaks with:Matthew 5×8Matthew 12×8Matthew 7×7Mark 3×6James 1×4Mark 2×3
Summary
Chapter summary
Sabbath grain and withered hand; Luke uniquely notes the all-night prayer before the choice of the Twelve. Sermon on the Plain. Blessings and woes paralleling Matthew's Beatitudes. Love your enemies; judge not; good tree, good fruit; the two houses on rock and sand.
Context
Gospel · Luke — Luke overview
- A. 1–11 Two Sabbath Confrontations
- B. 12–19 A Night of Prayer; Twelve Chosen
- C. 20–26 Blessings and Woes on the Level Place
- D. 27–38 Love Your Enemies; Give and It Will Be Given
- E. 39–49 Blind Guides, Good Fruit, and Two Houses
The outline
A.Two Sabbath Confrontationsvv. 1 to 11
Read vv. 1 to 11 →B.A Night of Prayer; Twelve Chosenvv. 12 to 19
Read vv. 12 to 19 →C.Blessings and Woes on the Level Placevv. 20 to 26
Read vv. 20 to 26 →D.Love Your Enemies; Give and It Will Be Givenvv. 27 to 38
Read vv. 27 to 38 →E.Blind Guides, Good Fruit, and Two Housesvv. 39 to 49
Read vv. 39 to 49 →
The world behind this chapter
Luke 6The history
The grainfield dispute was about the day, not about theft. The Law permitted a traveller to pick heads of grain by hand from a neighbour's field so long as he used no sickle. The objection was that rubbing grain in the palms on the Sabbath looked like reaping and threshing, two of the categories of work the teachers had defined as forbidden.
Healing on the Sabbath was allowed only when life was in danger. A hand withered for years was not an emergency by that standard, which is why they watched to see what he would do.
Luke sets the sermon on a level place after a night of prayer on the mountain, and shapes it with blessings answered by matching woes — a rhetorical form a Greek-educated reader would recognise from moral discourse.
The instructions about money are startling in that economy. Lending expecting nothing back cut against a system built on reciprocity, where a loan or a gift created an obligation and a network of favours held society together. Giving to a man who cannot repay meant deliberately declining to earn credit.
The closing picture is a builder's: one man digs deep and lays a foundation on rock, the other builds on the surface, and the river bursts against both.
What it meant to them
Luke's blessings are blunter than Matthew's — blessed are you who are poor, you who hunger now, you who weep — and the woes are aimed at exactly the class Theophilus belonged to: woe to you who are rich, who are full now, of whom everyone speaks well.
The command to love enemies and do good to those who hate you was not sentimental in a province under occupation, and Luke's readers would go on to need it under persecution. The measure given, he says, is the measure you will get back — pressed down, shaken together, running over, the way a grain merchant fills an honest basket.
Sources cited
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament
- Kenneth Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Luke 6. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.