Luke 15: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Tax collectors and people labeled sinners gather to hear Jesus, and the Pharisees and scribes complain that he welcomes such people and eats with them. In answer, Jesus tells three stories: a shepherd who leaves ninety-nine sheep to find one that is lost, a woman who sweeps her house until she finds one lost coin, and a father whose younger son takes his share of the property, wastes it, and comes home. Each of the first two stories ends with a statement about joy over one sinner who repents, and the third ends with the older son outside, angry, while his father explains why the household is celebrating.

Claim by Claim

1. 15:1
   • Tax collectors and sinners were drawing near to Jesus.
   • All of them came to hear him.
2. 15:2
   • The Pharisees and the scribes murmured.
   • They said that this man welcomes sinners.
   • They said that he eats with sinners.
3. 15:3
   • Jesus spoke a parable to them.
4. 15:4
   • Jesus asked which man among them, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness.
   • He asked whether such a man does not go after the lost sheep.
   • He asked whether such a man does not search until he finds it.
5. 15:5
   • When the man finds the sheep, he lays it on his shoulders.
   • He rejoices as he does so.
6. 15:6
   • When the man comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors.
   • He tells them to rejoice with him.
   • He says he has found his sheep that was lost.
7. 15:7
   • Jesus said that in the same way there will be joy in heaven over one sinner who repents.
   • He said that joy is greater than the joy over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.
8. 15:8
   • Jesus asked what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp.
   • He asked whether she does not sweep the house.
   • He asked whether she does not search carefully until she finds it.
9. 15:9
   • When the woman finds the coin, she calls together her friends and neighbors.
   • She tells them to rejoice with her.
   • She says she has found the coin she had lost.
10. 15:10
    • Jesus said that in the same way there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.
11. 15:11
    • Jesus said that a certain man had two sons.
12. 15:12
    • The younger son said to his father to give him the share of the property that falls to him.
    • The father divided his livelihood between them.
13. 15:13
    • Not many days later the younger son gathered everything together.
    • He traveled away to a distant country.
    • There he scattered his property.
    • He lived wastefully.
14. 15:14
    • After he had spent everything, a severe famine came over that country.
    • He began to be in need.
15. 15:15
    • He went and attached himself to one of the citizens of that country.
    • That citizen sent him into his fields to feed pigs.
16. 15:16
    • He longed to fill his belly with the pods that the pigs were eating.
    • No one gave him anything.
17. 15:17
    • He came to himself.
    • He said that many of his father's hired servants have more than enough bread.
    • He said that he himself is perishing with hunger there.
18. 15:18
    • He said he would get up and go to his father.
    • He said he would tell his father that he had sinned against heaven and before him.
19. 15:19
    • He said he is no longer worthy to be called his father's son.
    • He said his father should make him like one of his hired servants.
20. 15:20
    • He got up and came to his father.
    • While he was still far away, his father saw him.
    • His father was moved with compassion.
    • His father ran to him.
    • His father fell on his neck.
    • His father kissed him.
21. 15:21
    • The son said to his father that he had sinned against heaven and in his sight.
    • The son said he is no longer worthy to be called his son.
22. 15:22
    • The father told his servants to bring out the best robe.
    • The father told them to put the robe on him.
    • The father told them to put a ring on his hand.
    • The father told them to put sandals on his feet.
23. 15:23
    • The father told them to bring the fattened calf.
    • The father told them to kill it.
    • The father said they should eat and celebrate.
24. 15:24
    • The father said this son of his was dead and is alive again.
    • The father said he was lost and has been found.
    • They began to celebrate.
25. 15:25
    • The father's elder son was in the field.
    • As he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing.
26. 15:26
    • The elder son called one of the servants.
    • He asked what these things might be.
27. 15:27
    • The servant told him his brother has come.
    • The servant told him his father has killed the fattened calf.
    • The servant said the reason is that the father received him back safe and well.
28. 15:28
    • The elder son became angry.
    • He was unwilling to go in.
    • His father came out.
    • His father pleaded with him.
29. 15:29
    • The elder son answered his father.
    • He said he had served his father for many years.
    • He said he had never disobeyed a command of his father.
    • He said his father never gave him a young goat.
    • He said he wanted a young goat so he might celebrate with his friends.
30. 15:30
    • The elder son said that this son of his father's has devoured his father's livelihood with prostitutes.
    • He said that when that son came, his father killed the fattened calf for him.
31. 15:31
    • The father called him child.
    • The father said he is always with him.
    • The father said all that is his belongs to the son.
32. 15:32
    • The father said it was fitting to celebrate and be glad.
    • The father said this brother of his was dead and is alive again.
    • The father said he was lost and has been found.

Words Worth Explaining

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

15:1

"Publicans" were tax collectors: local men who bought or held the right to collect Rome's tolls and taxes from their own people, keeping whatever they could squeeze above the quota. They were widely despised as collaborators and cheats. "Sinners" here is close to a social label rather than a private judgment: people whose trade or way of life kept them outside strict observance of the law, and who were therefore avoided by the scrupulous.

15:2

The Pharisees were a strict lay movement devoted to keeping the law of Moses in daily life, including its rules about food and purity. The scribes were the trained scholars and copyists who interpreted that law. The complaint is not only about talking to such people: in that world sharing a meal was a public declaration that you accepted someone as an equal and a friend, so "eateth with them" is the sharper half of the charge.

15:3

A parable is a short comparison story drawn from ordinary life, told to make a point by analogy. The word does not mean a fable or an invented moral tale so much as a case laid alongside the matter under discussion.

15:4

In 1611 "wilderness" meant uninhabited, uncultivated country, the rough open grazing land where flocks were pastured. It does not mean sandy desert. A hundred sheep was a respectable but not huge flock, the holding of an ordinary owner rather than a rich one.

15:5

A sheep that has been lost and is exhausted or frightened will not be driven along, so the shepherd has to carry it, draped across the back of his shoulders with the legs held in front. It is heavy work and the detail is meant to be noticed.

15:7

"Repenteth" translates a Greek word meaning to change one's mind and turn around, a reversal of direction rather than merely feeling sorry. "Just persons" is the older English for righteous, meaning people who keep the law as they should.

15:8

The coin is a drachma, a Greek silver piece worth roughly a day's wage for a laborer. Ten of them is a real sum, not small change. "Candle" in 1611 English covered any small light, and what she lights is a clay oil lamp; village houses of the period had few windows and beaten earth or stone floors, so a dropped coin genuinely needed lamplight and a broom to find.

15:10

"In the presence of the angels of God" is a careful way of saying "in God's presence". Jewish speech of the period often avoided naming God directly, using a substitute expression instead.

15:12

Under the inheritance customs of the time property normally passed at the father's death, and the eldest son received a double share (so with two sons the younger would get a third). Asking for the share while the father was alive and well was an extraordinary demand, in effect treating him as already dead. "His living" in the King James is the older sense of the word: the property and income a man lives on.

15:13

"Riotous living" in 1611 English means wasteful, spendthrift living. The Greek adverb behind it likewise says he lived without saving anything, squandering rather than specifying what vices he squandered it on.

15:14

A famine meant not just hunger but the collapse of casual employment and charity at the same moment, since everyone's surplus vanished at once. "He began to be in want" is the older phrase for starting to go without necessities.

15:15

Pigs were unclean animals under the law of Moses, forbidden as food and not kept by Jews. For a Jewish man to hire himself out as a pig herder to a foreigner was about as far down as work could go.

15:16

The "husks" are carob pods, the hard dark seed pods of the carob tree, used as cheap animal fodder. People ate them only in desperation.

15:17

"Hired servants" are day laborers, taken on by the day for wages and not part of the household. They ranked below household slaves, who at least had a permanent place, food and shelter. The son is proposing the lowest rung in his father's establishment. "Bread" in the King James often stands for food in general, not just the loaf.

15:18

Jews of the period often avoided saying "God" out of reverence and said "heaven" instead. "I have sinned against heaven" means against God, and the same substitution stands behind "joy shall be in heaven" earlier in the chapter.

15:20

"Fell on his neck" is the King James idiom for throwing one's arms around someone. A landowner of standing did not normally run in public; it required hitching up the long robe and exposing the legs, and was thought undignified for an older man.

15:22

Each item is a mark of standing rather than mere clothing. The best robe is the household's finest garment, the one a guest of honor would be given. The ring is a signet ring, used to stamp a seal on documents, so handing it over grants authority to act for the family. Servants and slaves went barefoot; shoes on the feet mark him out as a free son of the house.

15:23

The fatted calf was a young animal deliberately penned and fed up for a major occasion. Meat was rare in an ordinary diet, and a whole calf yields far more than one family can eat, so killing it means a feast for the whole village.

15:25

"Musick and dancing" here is communal celebration, the ordinary form a village feast took, not a private entertainment.

15:29

The King James "kid" is a young goat. The contrast is one of scale and expense: a goat feeds a small group of friends, while the calf his father killed feeds a village.

15:30

Notice the wording: he says "this thy son", refusing to call him a brother, and the father answers in verse 32 by saying "this thy brother". "Thy living" again means the father's property. "Harlots" means prostitutes, and it is worth seeing that the story itself never said this; the older brother supplies the detail.

15:31

The word the father uses is not the ordinary word for son but a tender word meaning child, the sort of address a parent uses to his own.

15:32

"Meet" in 1611 English means fitting or proper, the right thing to do. It has nothing to do with meeting someone.