Luke 14: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Jesus eats a Sabbath meal at the house of a leading Pharisee, where he asks the legal experts whether Sabbath healing is lawful; they say nothing, and he heals a man with dropsy. Watching the guests grab the best seats, he tells them to take the lowest place, and tells his host to invite people who cannot repay him. He then tells a parable about a banquet whose invited guests all make excuses and are replaced by the poor and by strangers from the roads. Speaking to the crowds traveling with him, he sets out what following him costs, using a builder, a king going to war, and salt that has lost its taste.

Claim by Claim

1. 14:1
   • Jesus went into the house of one of the chief Pharisees to eat bread on the sabbath day
   • Those present were watching him closely
2. 14:2
   • A certain man who had dropsy was there in front of Jesus
3. 14:3
   • Jesus spoke to the lawyers and Pharisees
   • Jesus asked whether it is lawful to heal on the sabbath day or not
4. 14:4
   • They stayed silent
   • Jesus took hold of the man
   • Jesus healed the man
   • Jesus sent the man away
5. 14:5
   • Jesus answered them
   • Jesus asked which of them, having an ass or an ox fall into a pit, would not immediately pull it out on the sabbath day
6. 14:6
   • They were not able to answer him back concerning these things
7. 14:7
   • Jesus noticed how the guests chose out the places of honor
   • Jesus spoke a parable to those who had been invited
8. 14:8
   • Jesus said: when you are invited by someone to a wedding, do not sit down in the place of honor
   • The reason is that someone more honorable than you may have been invited by him
9. 14:9
   • The one who invited both you and him will come and tell you to give this man your place
   • Then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place
10. 14:10
    • Jesus said: when you are invited, go and sit down in the lowest place
    • Then when the one who invited you comes, he will tell you, Friend, go up higher
    • Then you will have honor in the presence of those sitting at the meal with you
11. 14:11
    • Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled
    • The one who humbles himself will be exalted
12. 14:12
    • Jesus also spoke to the man who had invited him
    • Jesus said: when you make a dinner or a supper, do not call your friends
    • Do not call your brothers
    • Do not call your relatives
    • Do not call your rich neighbors
    • The reason is that they may invite you in return and you would be repaid
13. 14:13
    • Jesus said: when you make a feast, invite the poor
    • Invite the crippled
    • Invite the lame
    • Invite the blind
14. 14:14
    • You will be blessed
    • They cannot repay you
    • You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just
15. 14:15
    • One of those sitting at the meal with him heard these things
    • That man said to Jesus that blessed is the one who will eat bread in the kingdom of God
16. 14:16
    • Jesus said to him: a certain man made a great supper
    • The man invited many
17. 14:17
    • The man sent his servant at supper time to those who had been invited
    • The servant was to tell them to come because everything was now ready
18. 14:18
    • They all alike began to make excuses
    • The first said he had bought a field
    • The first said he must go and see it
    • The first asked to be excused
19. 14:19
    • Another said he had bought five yoke of oxen
    • That man said he was going to test them
    • That man asked to be excused
20. 14:20
    • Another said he had married a wife
    • That man said that for this reason he could not come
21. 14:21
    • The servant came and reported these things to his master
    • The master of the house became angry
    • The master told his servant to go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city
    • The master told his servant to bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame
22. 14:22
    • The servant said that what the master commanded had been done
    • The servant said there was still room
23. 14:23
    • The master told the servant to go out into the highways and hedges
    • The master told the servant to compel people to come in
    • The master said this was so that his house would be filled
24. 14:24
    • The master said that none of those men who had been invited would taste his supper
25. 14:25
    • Great crowds were traveling with Jesus
    • Jesus turned and spoke to them
26. 14:26
    • Jesus said: if anyone comes to him and does not hate his father, mother, wife, children, brothers and sisters, and his own life also, he cannot be his disciple
27. 14:27
    • Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Jesus cannot be his disciple
28. 14:28
    • Jesus asked which of them, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost
    • The purpose of counting is to see whether he has enough to finish it
29. 14:29
    • Otherwise, after he has laid the foundation and is unable to finish it, all who see it will begin to mock him
30. 14:30
    • The mockers will say that this man began to build and was not able to finish
31. 14:31
    • Jesus asked what king, going to make war against another king, does not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet the one coming against him with twenty thousand
32. 14:32
    • If he is not able, while the other king is still far away he sends a delegation
    • He asks for terms of peace
33. 14:33
    • In the same way, any one of them who does not forsake all that he has cannot be Jesus' disciple
34. 14:34
    • Salt is good
    • Jesus asked, if the salt loses its savor, with what will it be seasoned
35. 14:35
    • It is fit neither for the land nor for the dunghill
    • Men throw it out
    • Jesus said: let the one who has ears to hear, hear

Words Worth Explaining

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

14:1

The Pharisees were a religious movement known for strict, detailed observance of the law of Moses, especially rules about purity, tithing and the Sabbath. The Sabbath ran from Friday evening to Saturday evening and was a day of rest; a festive midday meal after the synagogue gathering was customary, and the food would have been prepared the day before. The King James "to eat bread" is a Hebrew way of saying to have a meal, not a comment on the menu. The verb behind "they watched him" suggests watching with an eye to catching someone out, not simple curiosity.

14:2

"Dropsy" was the ordinary English medical term until about 1900 for what is now called edema: a buildup of fluid that swells the limbs and abdomen. It is a symptom of failing kidneys, liver or heart rather than a disease in itself, and in the ancient world it was regarded as painful and usually fatal.

14:3

The King James "lawyers" does not mean attorneys in the modern sense. These were scholars of the law of Moses, professional interpreters of scripture and of the traditions built up around it. The question at issue is not whether healing is a good thing but whether the work involved counts as work forbidden on the Sabbath; the accepted rule allowed action to save a life in immediate danger, and a man with dropsy was not dying that day.

14:4

"They held their peace" means simply that they said nothing.

14:5

The Greek manuscripts differ here. Some read "a son or an ox," which is what most modern translations follow; others read "a donkey or an ox," the pairing found in the law of Moses about animals fallen on the road. The two words are close in Greek, and there is no way to settle which was original. The pit would be a cistern or water hole, often uncovered.

14:7

Guests at a formal meal reclined on couches set around low tables, and the places were ranked, with the seats nearest the host counting as the most honored. The King James "chief rooms" means top places at the table, not separate rooms of a house; "room" in 1611 English often meant simply a space or position.

14:8

"Bidden" means invited throughout this chapter, and "the highest room" again means the most honored place at the table. At a large wedding feast the guests would not all arrive at once, so someone of higher rank could easily turn up after you had already settled in.

14:9

Honor and shame in this society were public and carried real weight. Being told to move down the table in front of the whole company was a genuine social injury that others would remember, not a passing embarrassment.

14:10

In 1611 "worship" still carried its older, everyday sense of honor or respect paid to a person, which survives in the English title "your worship" for a magistrate. It does not mean religious worship here. "Them that sit at meat" means the other guests reclining at the table.

14:11

"Exalteth" means lifts up. "Abased" means brought low.

14:12

Invitations in this society worked as a system of obligation: accepting hospitality created a debt that had to be repaid with an invitation of equal or greater value, and the guest list advertised where a household stood socially. The King James "recompence" means repayment. A "dinner" here is the earlier, lighter meal of the day and a "supper" the main evening one.

14:13

People with disabilities, blindness or visible deformity were poor by default in a society with no other provision for them, and they could offer no return invitation. Some religious groups of the period, including the community at Qumran, also excluded such people from their formal meals on purity grounds.

14:14

"The resurrection of the just" refers to the widely held Jewish expectation that God would raise the dead at the end of the present age. Pharisees held this belief; other groups, notably the Sadducees, denied it.

14:15

The coming age of God's rule was often pictured in Jewish writing of the period as a great banquet. The man's remark is a conventional and comfortable one, the kind of pious saying anyone at the table could agree with.

14:16

A wealthy host invited guests twice: a first invitation well in advance, which people accepted, and then a servant sent on the day to announce that the food was ready. The guests in this story have already said yes. They are pulling out at the last moment, when the animals have been slaughtered and the food cannot be kept.

14:17

Invitations to a large meal came in two stages. The first, days or weeks ahead, secured an acceptance so the host knew how much food to prepare; the second, on the day, told the guests who had already accepted that the meal was served. Backing out at the second stage was a public insult, because the animal had already been slaughtered and the expense already incurred.

14:18

Nobody bought land without inspecting it first, so this is not an emergency. These are polite refusals dressed up as necessities, and backing out at this stage was a public insult to the host, the kind of thing that would be talked about for years.

14:19

A yoke is a pair of oxen harnessed to work together. Five yoke means ten animals, enough to work a substantial farm, so the man is wealthy. "Prove them" means test them for strength and whether they pull well as a team; a buyer would normally do this before purchase, not after.

14:20

The law of Moses excused a newly married man from military service and other public duties for a year, so this excuse has the shape of a legal exemption. Unlike the other two, this man does not even ask to be excused.

14:21

Streets and lanes are inside the town walls, so this first sweep gathers the town's own poor.

14:23

"The highways and hedges" are outside the town: the roads and the paths beside field walls where travelers, migrant workers and the homeless would be found. "Compel" translates a Greek word meaning to press or urge strongly. Custom required a poor stranger to refuse an unexpected invitation from a wealthy household at least once as a matter of politeness, so insistent pressing was how a genuine invitation was made.

14:24

"You" is plural in Greek here, although the master is speaking to a single servant, which is one reason readers have long taken the last line as spoken past the characters of the story to the people at the table with Jesus.

14:25

"Multitudes" means very large crowds.

14:26

"Hate" here reflects a Hebrew and Aramaic way of speaking in which the word covers preferring one thing far less than another, not hostility or ill feeling. The same idiom appears when scripture says Jacob loved Rachel and "hated" Leah, meaning he loved her less. Matthew's version of the same saying puts it as loving father or mother more than Jesus. The force of the idiom is deliberate shock: family loyalty was the strongest tie in that society.

14:27

A man condemned to crucifixion was made to carry the crossbeam of his own cross through the streets to the place of execution. Under Roman rule this was a familiar public sight in Judea, and the image was not a figure of speech about ordinary hardship but a picture of a man walking to a shameful death.

14:28

The tower is likely a farm building: a stone watchtower over a vineyard or field, expensive enough that a landowner would need to reckon whether he could see it through. Half-built walls stood as a visible, permanent advertisement of the owner's miscalculation.

14:31

Ten thousand and twenty thousand are counts of soldiers. The second king had twice as many men.

14:32

The King James "ambassage" is an old form of "embassy" and means a delegation of envoys. "Conditions of peace" are the terms on which the weaker king asks to be allowed to settle, which in practice meant terms of surrender.

14:33

"Forsaketh" means gives up or leaves behind.

14:34

In the King James, "his" is simply the old form of "its." "Savour" means taste. Salt in that region was often gathered from deposits around the Dead Sea rather than refined, so it came mixed with gypsum and other minerals; when the sodium chloride dissolved away in damp storage, what was left looked like salt and tasted of nothing.

14:35

Spoiled salt cannot be used as a soil dressing, and it cannot even be thrown on the manure heap, which was collected and spread on the fields as fertilizer. Salt was also packed under the floor of clay ovens, where it helped the dung fuel burn, and the old salt was scraped out and discarded onto the road once it stopped working. "He that hath ears to hear" is a stock phrase for a saying that requires thought rather than a plain instruction.