translation_id: net-engnet

book_id: LUK

label: NET study note

text: The chief priests and the experts in the law with the elders came up. The description is similar to Luke 19:47 . The leaders are really watching Jesus at this point.


text: The leadership is looking back to acts like the temple cleansing ( 19:45-48 ). How could a Galilean preacher do these things ?


text: John, like Jesus, was not a part of the official rabbinic order. So the question “ John’s baptism – was it from heaven or from men? ” draws an analogy between John the Baptist and Jesus. See Luke 3:1-20; 7:24-27 . The phrase John’s baptism refers to the baptism practiced by John.


text: Very few questions could have so completely revealed the wicked intentions of the religious leaders. Jesus’ question revealed the motivation of the religious leaders and exposed them for what they really were – hypocrites. They indicted themselves when they cited only two options and chose neither of them. The point of Luke 20:1-8 is that no matter what Jesus said in response to their question they were not going to believe it and would in the end use it against him.


text: Neither will I tell you. Though Jesus gave no answer, the analogy he used to their own question makes his view clear. His authority came from heaven.


text: The vineyard is a figure for Israel in the OT ( Isa 5:1-7 ). The nation and its leaders are the tenants, so the vineyard here may well refer to the promise that resides within the nation. The imagery is like that in Rom 11:11-24 .


text: The leasing of land to tenant farmers was common in this period.


text: This slave (along with the next two) represent the prophets God sent to the nation, who were mistreated and rejected.


text: The slaves being sent empty-handed suggests that the vineyard was not producing any fruit – and thus neither was the nation of Israel.


text: Throwing the heir out of the vineyard pictures Jesus’ death outside of Jerusalem.


text: The statement that the owner will come and destroy those tenants is a promise of judgment; see Luke 13:34-35; 19:41-44 .


text: The warning that the owner would give the vineyard to others suggests that the care of the promise and the nation’s hope would be passed to others. This eventually looks to Gentile inclusion; see Eph 2:11-22 .


text: May this never happen! Jesus’ audience got the point and did not want to consider a story where the nation would suffer judgment.


text: Teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Very few comments are as deceitful as this one; they did not really believe this at all. The question was specifically designed to trap Jesus.


text: Jesus’ answer to give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s was a both/and, not the questioners’ either/or. So he slipped out of their trap.


text: The Sadducees controlled the official political structures of Judaism at this time, being the majority members of the Sanhedrin. They were known as extremely strict on law and order issues (Josephus, J. W. 2.8.2 [2.119], 2.8.14 [2.164-166]; Ant. 13.5.9 [13.171-173], 13.10.6 [13.293-298], 18.1.2 [18.11], 18.1.4 [18.16-17], 20.9.1 [20.199]; Life 2 [10-11]). They also did not believe in resurrection or in angels, an important detail in v. 36 . See also Matt 3:7, 16:1-12, 22:23-34 ; Mark 12:18-27 ; Acts 4:1, 5:17, 23:6-8 .


text: This remark is best regarded as a parenthetical note by the author.


text: A quotation from Deut 25:5 . Because the OT quotation does not include “a wife” as the object of the verb, it has been left as normal type. This practice is called levirate marriage (see also Ruth 4:1-12 ; Mishnah, m. Yevamot; Josephus , Ant. 4.8.23 [4.254-256]). The levirate law is described in Deut 25:5-10 . The brother of a man who died without a son had an obligation to marry his brother’s widow. This served several purposes: It provided for the widow in a society where a widow with no children to care for her would be reduced to begging, and it preserved the name of the deceased, who would be regarded as the legal father of the first son produced from that marriage.


text: The point is a dilemma. In a world arguing a person should have one wife, whose wife will she be in the afterlife? The question was designed to show that (in the opinion of the Sadducees) resurrection leads to a major problem.


text: Life in the age to come is different than life here (they neither marry nor are given in marriage ). This means Jesus’ questioners had made a false assumption that life was the same both now and in the age to come.


text: Angels do not die, nor do they eat according to Jewish tradition ( 1 En. 15:6; 51:4; Wis 5:5; 2 Bar. 51:10; 1QH 3.21-23).


text: See Exod 3:6 . Jesus used a common form of rabbinic citation here to refer to the passage in question.


text: A quotation from Exod 3:6 .


text: He is not God of the dead but of the living. Jesus’ point was that if God could identify himself as God of the three old patriarchs, then they must still be alive when God spoke to Moses; and so they must be raised.


text: Teacher, you have spoken well! The scribes, being Pharisees, were happy for the defense of resurrection and angels, which they (unlike the Sadducees) believed in.


text: The attempt to show Jesus as ignorant had left the experts silenced. At this point they did not dare any longer to ask him anything.


text: If the religious leaders will not dare to question Jesus any longer, then he will question them.


text: It was a common belief in Judaism that Messiah would be David’s son in that he would come from the lineage of David. On this point the Pharisees agreed and were correct. But their understanding was nonetheless incomplete, for Messiah is also David’s Lord. With this statement Jesus was affirming that, as the Messiah, he is both God and man.


text: The Lord said to my Lord. With David being the speaker, this indicates his respect for his descendant (referred to as my Lord ). Jesus was arguing, as the ancient exposition assumed, that the passage is about the Lord’s anointed. The passage looks at an enthronement of this figure and a declaration of honor for him as he takes his place at the side of God. In Jerusalem, the king’s palace was located to the right of the temple to indicate this kind of relationship. Jesus was pressing the language here to get his opponents to reflect on how great Messiah is.


text: A quotation from Ps 110:1 .


text: There is later Jewish material in the Talmud that spells out such greetings in detail. See D. L. Bock, Luke (BECNT), 2:1642; H. Windisch, TDNT 1:498.


text: See Luke 14:1-14 .


text: See the note on synagogues in 4:15 .


text: How they were able to devour widows’ houses is debated. Did they seek too much for contributions, or take too high a commission for their work, or take homes after debts failed to be paid? There is too little said here to be sure.