Luke 12: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Jesus warns the crowd and his disciples about hypocrisy, tells them to fear the one who has authority to throw into hell rather than people who can only kill the body, and promises the Holy Spirit will give them words when they are put on trial. Asked to settle an inheritance dispute, he refuses and tells the parable of the rich man whose barns fill up the night he dies, then tells his disciples not to worry about food and clothing but to seek God's kingdom and give to the poor. He calls for servants who stay alert for their master's return, describes different punishments for the servant who knew his master's will and the one who did not, and says he came to bring fire and division rather than peace. He ends by telling the crowd they can read the weather but not the present time, and urges them to settle with an accuser before reaching court.

Claim by Claim

1. 12:1
   • A crowd of many thousands gathered together.
   • The crowd was so large that people were trampling one another.
   • Jesus began to speak to his disciples first of all.
   • Jesus told them to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees.
   • Jesus said that this leaven is hypocrisy.
2. 12:2
   • Nothing is covered that will not be uncovered.
   • Nothing is hidden that will not be made known.
3. 12:3
   • Whatever you have said in the darkness will be heard in the light.
   • What you have spoken in the ear in inner rooms will be proclaimed on the housetops.
4. 12:4
   • Jesus addressed his hearers as his friends.
   • Jesus told them not to fear those who kill the body.
   • Jesus said that after killing the body those people can do nothing more.
5. 12:5
   • Jesus said he would show them whom to fear.
   • Jesus told them to fear the one who, after killing, has authority to throw into hell.
   • Jesus repeated that they should fear that one.
6. 12:6
   • Five sparrows are sold for two small coins.
   • Not one of those sparrows is forgotten before God.
7. 12:7
   • All the hairs of your head are numbered.
   • Jesus told them not to fear.
   • Jesus said they are worth more than many sparrows.
8. 12:8
   • Everyone who confesses Jesus before men will be confessed by the Son of Man before the angels of God.
9. 12:9
   • Whoever denies Jesus before men will be denied before the angels of God.
10. 12:10
    • Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven.
    • Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.
11. 12:11
    • Jesus said they would be brought before synagogues, rulers, and authorities.
    • Jesus told them not to worry about how or what they would answer.
    • Jesus told them not to worry about what they would say.
12. 12:12
    • The Holy Spirit will teach them in that very hour what they ought to say.
13. 12:13
    • Someone from the crowd spoke to Jesus.
    • The man addressed Jesus as Teacher.
    • The man asked Jesus to tell his brother to divide the inheritance with him.
14. 12:14
    • Jesus addressed the man as Man.
    • Jesus asked who appointed him a judge or divider over them.
15. 12:15
    • Jesus spoke to them.
    • Jesus told them to watch out and guard themselves against all covetousness.
    • Jesus said a person's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.
16. 12:16
    • Jesus spoke a parable to them.
    • In the parable, the land of a certain rich man produced abundantly.
17. 12:17
    • The rich man reasoned within himself.
    • The rich man asked what he should do.
    • The rich man said he had nowhere to store his crops.
18. 12:18
    • The rich man said this is what he would do.
    • The rich man said he would pull down his barns.
    • The rich man said he would build bigger ones.
    • The rich man said he would store all his grain and his goods there.
19. 12:19
    • The rich man said he would say to his soul that it had many goods laid up for many years.
    • The rich man told his soul to take its ease.
    • The rich man told his soul to eat.
    • The rich man told his soul to drink.
    • The rich man told his soul to be merry.
20. 12:20
    • God spoke to the rich man.
    • God called him a fool.
    • God said that this night his soul would be required of him.
    • God asked whose the things he had prepared would then be.
21. 12:21
    • So it is with the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.
22. 12:22
    • Jesus spoke to his disciples.
    • Jesus told them not to worry about their life, what they would eat.
    • Jesus told them not to worry about the body, what they would wear.
23. 12:23
    • Life is more than food.
    • The body is more than clothing.
24. 12:24
    • Jesus told them to consider the ravens.
    • The ravens neither sow nor reap.
    • The ravens have neither storehouse nor barn.
    • God feeds the ravens.
    • Jesus said they are worth much more than the birds.
25. 12:25
    • Jesus asked which of them by worrying could add a cubit to his stature.
    • It is unclear whether the addition meant is to bodily height or to length of life.
26. 12:26
    • Jesus said that if they cannot do even the least thing, they should not worry about the rest.
27. 12:27
    • Jesus told them to consider the lilies and how they grow.
    • The lilies do not toil.
    • The lilies do not spin.
    • Jesus said that Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.
28. 12:28
    • God clothes the grass, which is in the field today.
    • That grass is thrown into the oven tomorrow.
    • Jesus said God will much more clothe them.
    • Jesus called them people of little faith.
29. 12:29
    • Jesus told them not to seek what they would eat or what they would drink.
    • Jesus told them not to be of anxious, unsettled mind.
30. 12:30
    • The nations of the world seek after all these things.
    • Their Father knows that they need these things.
31. 12:31
    • Jesus told them to seek the kingdom of God.
    • Jesus said these things will be added to them.
32. 12:32
    • Jesus told the little flock not to fear.
    • It is their Father's good pleasure to give them the kingdom.
33. 12:33
    • Jesus told them to sell their possessions.
    • Jesus told them to give alms.
    • Jesus told them to make for themselves purses that do not wear out.
    • Jesus told them to have treasure in the heavens that does not fail.
    • In that place no thief comes near.
    • In that place no moth destroys.
34. 12:34
    • Where a person's treasure is, there his heart will be also.
35. 12:35
    • Jesus told them to keep their loins girded.
    • Jesus told them to keep their lamps burning.
36. 12:36
    • Jesus told them to be like men waiting for their master to return from the wedding feast.
    • The purpose is that when the master comes and knocks, they may open to him immediately.
37. 12:37
    • Blessed are the servants whom the master finds watching when he comes.
    • Jesus said truly to them that the master will gird himself.
    • The master will have the servants recline at table.
    • The master will come and serve them.
38. 12:38
    • If the master comes in the second watch or in the third watch and finds them so, those servants are blessed.
39. 12:39
    • Jesus told them to know this.
    • If the master of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would have watched.
    • If he had known, he would not have allowed his house to be broken into.
40. 12:40
    • Jesus told them to be ready.
    • The Son of Man comes at an hour they do not expect.
41. 12:41
    • Peter spoke to Jesus.
    • Peter addressed him as Lord.
    • Peter asked whether Jesus was telling this parable to them or to everyone.
42. 12:42
    • The Lord answered.
    • The Lord asked who is the faithful and wise steward.
    • The master will put that steward in charge of his household.
    • The steward is to give them their portion of food at the proper time.
43. 12:43
    • Blessed is that servant whom his master finds doing so when he comes.
44. 12:44
    • Jesus said truly that the master will put him in charge of all his possessions.
45. 12:45
    • Jesus described a case where that servant says in his heart that his master delays his coming.
    • In that case the servant begins to beat the menservants and the maidservants.
    • In that case the servant begins to eat and drink and get drunk.
46. 12:46
    • The master of that servant will come on a day he does not expect.
    • The master will come at an hour he does not know.
    • The master will cut him in pieces.
    • The master will appoint him his portion with the unbelievers.
47. 12:47
    • That servant knew his master's will.
    • That servant did not prepare himself and did not act according to his master's will.
    • That servant will be beaten with many blows.
48. 12:48
    • The one who did not know, but did things worthy of blows, will be beaten with few blows.
    • From everyone who has been given much, much will be required.
    • From the one to whom much has been entrusted, they will ask more.
49. 12:49
    • Jesus said he came to cast fire on the earth.
    • Jesus said, concerning that fire, what he wills if it is already kindled.
    • It is unclear whether this is a wish that the fire were already kindled or a question about what he desires.
50. 12:50
    • Jesus said he has a baptism to be baptized with.
    • Jesus said he is constrained until it is accomplished.
51. 12:51
    • Jesus asked whether they supposed he came to give peace on the earth.
    • Jesus said no.
    • Jesus said he came rather to bring division.
52. 12:52
    • From now on five in one household will be divided.
    • Three will be against two.
    • Two will be against three.
53. 12:53
    • Father will be divided against son.
    • Son will be divided against father.
    • Mother will be divided against daughter.
    • Daughter will be divided against mother.
    • Mother-in-law will be divided against her daughter-in-law.
    • Daughter-in-law will be divided against her mother-in-law.
54. 12:54
    • Jesus also spoke to the crowds.
    • When they see a cloud rising in the west, they immediately say a shower is coming.
    • It happens that way.
55. 12:55
    • When the south wind blows, they say there will be heat.
    • It happens that way.
56. 12:56
    • Jesus called them hypocrites.
    • They know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky.
    • Jesus asked why they do not interpret the present time.
57. 12:57
    • Jesus asked why they do not judge for themselves what is right.
58. 12:58
    • Jesus described going with one's adversary before a ruler.
    • Jesus told him to make an effort on the way to be released from the adversary.
    • Otherwise the adversary may drag him to the judge.
    • The judge may hand him over to the officer.
    • The officer may throw him into prison.
59. 12:59
    • Jesus said he would not come out from there until he had paid the very last small coin.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

12:1

Leaven is yeast, or more precisely a lump of fermented dough held back from the last batch and worked into the new one. A very small piece changes the whole mass, which made it a stock image for an influence that spreads unseen. The Pharisees were a lay movement devoted to keeping the law of Moses in ordinary daily life, with their own detailed traditions about purity, tithing and the sabbath. They were widely respected teachers and held no formal governing power.

12:3

Houses had flat roofs reached by an outside stair, used for sleeping, drying grain and talking across to neighbors, so a rooftop was in effect a public platform. The "closets" of the King James are not wardrobes but the windowless inner storerooms of a house, the most private space it had.

12:5

The word is Gehenna, taken from the valley of Hinnom just outside Jerusalem, a place with a grim history that had become the standard name for the place of final punishment. It is a different word from Hades, which means the general realm of the dead.

12:6

The coin is the assarion, a small copper piece worth roughly a sixteenth of a day's wage for a laborer. Sparrows were the cheapest meat in the market, sold strung together for people who could afford nothing else.

12:8

"Son of Man" is the title Jesus regularly uses of himself in the Gospels. In ordinary Aramaic the phrase can simply mean "a human being," but it also echoes the figure in Daniel 7 who is given lasting authority, and both senses stay in play.

12:10

"Holy Ghost" in the King James does not mean an apparition. In 1611 "ghost" was the ordinary English word for spirit, and this is exactly what modern translations call the Holy Spirit.

12:11

The synagogue was the local assembly, and it was also a local court: it could hear charges and order floggings. "Magistrates and powers" covers the layers of authority above that, from local rulers to the Roman administration.

12:13

Property passed to the sons, with the eldest taking a double share and often controlling the undivided estate. Asking a respected teacher to arbitrate a family property dispute was normal. The man is not requesting a ruling on the law so much as asking Jesus to lean on his brother.

12:16

A parable is a short story from everyday life told to make one point clear.

12:18

A barn was a building for storing grain. It kept the grain dry and safe from mice and rain.

12:19

The word the King James renders "soul" here is the ordinary Greek word for a person's life or self, the same word in God's reply in the next verse. The man is talking to himself, not to some inner part of himself.

12:22

"Take no thought" in the King James does not mean "give it no consideration." In 1611 it meant to be anxious or worried about something, which is the sense of the Greek.

12:23

In the King James "meat" means food of any kind, not flesh in particular, and "raiment" means clothing.

12:24

Ravens were among the birds Israelites were forbidden to eat, so they had no market value and no use to anyone. The choice of bird sharpens the comparison.

12:25

The King James is literal here. The Greek says "add one cubit," a cubit being about eighteen inches, the length of a forearm, and the noun for what is being added can mean either bodily height or length of life. Both readings are ancient: "stature" takes it as height, "a single hour to your life" takes it as lifespan. The next verse calling it the smallest of things fits a span of time better than half a yard of height, but the wording itself does not settle it.

12:27

Spinning meant twisting raw wool or flax into thread by hand, constant daily labor and usually women's work. Solomon was Israel's proverbially wealthy king, remembered for the scale of his display.

12:28

Dried grass and stubble were the ordinary fuel for a clay baking oven. The plant that looks glorious in the morning is firewood the next day.

12:30

"The nations" translates the word usually rendered "Gentiles," the peoples other than Israel. Here it carries the wider sense of the world at large, those who do not know the God just called Father.

12:31

"The kingdom of God" means God ruling as king. It is not a place on a map.

12:32

"Little flock" is shepherd talk. Jesus is calling his followers a small group of sheep with someone watching over them.

12:33

Much of a household's wealth was held in cloth: good robes, hangings and bedding were valuable and were passed on by inheritance. That is why moths stand beside thieves as a threat to treasure.

12:35

The King James is literal. Men wore a long loose robe, and to work or move quickly they pulled the hem up and tucked it into the belt, "girding the loins." The phrase means simply to be ready for action. The lamps are small oil lamps that need refilling and trimming to burn through a night.

12:36

Wedding celebrations ran for days and the feasting went late, so the household could not know which night the master would return, or which hour of it. Doors were barred from the inside, so someone had to be awake to open.

12:37

"Gird himself" is the same picture as in verse 35: he hitches up his own robe the way a working servant would. Diners reclined on couches at a proper meal, so "make them to sit down to meat" means settle them at table for dinner and wait on them, which was a slave's job.

12:38

The night was divided into watches. On the Jewish reckoning of three watches, the second runs roughly from ten at night until two in the morning and the third from two until dawn: the dead middle of the night, when staying awake is hardest.

12:39

"The goodman of the house" simply means the master or owner of the house. "Broken through" is literal: house walls were mud brick, and a thief dug through the wall rather than forcing the door.

12:42

A steward was the head of the household staff, very often a slave himself, trusted with the keys, the accounts and the rationing out of food to everyone else. The scene assumes a large household run for an owner who is away.

12:45

The "menservants and maidens" of the King James are the household's other slaves, the very people the steward was given authority over.

12:46

"Cut him in sunder" is literal: the Greek verb means to cut in two. It may describe an actual punishment or may be a violent idiom for cutting someone off from the household, and translators differ. The word behind "unbelievers" can mean either those who do not believe or those who cannot be trusted, and the second sense fits a story about a servant who broke faith.

12:47

Stripes are lashes from a whip or rod. Beating was the standard punishment for a household slave, and the number of strokes was set to match the offense, which is the distinction being drawn here.

12:49

The second half of this sentence is genuinely hard in Greek. The King James gives it word for word, "what will I, if it be already kindled." The construction is usually taken as a wish, "how I wish it were already burning," but it can also be read as a question about what he wants, and the grammar does not decide between them.

12:50

The root sense of the word baptism is dipping or being plunged in, and it is used here for something he will be submerged in and overwhelmed by. "Straitened" is old English for hemmed in and under pressure, not narrow-minded.

12:52

Grown sons often brought their wives into the father's house, so three generations lived under one roof. That is why a mother-in-law and daughter-in-law are in the list.

12:53

The list is close to a quotation of Micah 7:6, where a family turning on itself is the sign of a society coming apart. Households were extended: a married son normally brought his wife into his parents' house, which is why the mother-in-law and the son's wife are named as a pair.

12:54

Weather moving in from the west comes off the Mediterranean and brings rain. This is everyday local knowledge, the sort of thing any farmer could read at a glance.

12:55

A wind from the south comes off the desert and brings dry heat, the counterpart to the rain-bearing wind off the sea.

12:56

The word behind "this time" is not the general word for passing time but the one for a particular moment, a season with something at stake in it, the way we say "the moment has come."

12:58

The picture is a debt case on its way to court. The "officer" of the King James is the court's collection officer, whose duties included holding a debtor in prison until the family paid what was owed. Settling on the road was the last chance to stay out of his hands.

12:59

The mite is the lepton, the smallest coin in circulation, worth only a few minutes of a laborer's work. The point is the final fraction of the debt, not a token payment.