Luke 20: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

In the temple courts, the chief priests, scribes, and elders challenge Jesus about the authority behind his actions, and he answers with a question about John's baptism that they refuse to answer. He tells a parable about tenant farmers who beat the vineyard owner's servants and kill his son. Spies then question him about paying taxes to Caesar, and Sadducees question him about a woman married to seven brothers and about the resurrection. Jesus asks how the Christ can be both David's son and David's Lord, and warns his disciples about the scribes while the people listen.

Claim by Claim

1. 20:1
   • On one of those days Jesus was teaching the people in the temple.
   • Jesus was preaching the gospel.
   • The chief priests and the scribes came upon him.
   • The elders came with them.
2. 20:2
   • They spoke to him.
   • They demanded that he tell them by what authority he did these things.
   • They asked who gave him this authority.
3. 20:3
   • Jesus answered them.
   • Jesus said he would also ask them one thing.
   • Jesus told them to answer him.
4. 20:4
   • Jesus asked whether the baptism of John was from heaven or from men.
5. 20:5
   • They reasoned among themselves.
   • They said that if they answered 'From heaven', he would ask why they did not believe John.
6. 20:6
   • They said that if they answered 'Of men', all the people would stone them.
   • They said the people were persuaded that John was a prophet.
7. 20:7
   • They answered that they did not know where it was from.
8. 20:8
   • Jesus said to them that neither would he tell them by what authority he did these things.
9. 20:9
   • Jesus began to speak this parable to the people.
   • A man planted a vineyard.
   • The man let the vineyard out to farmers.
   • The man went away for a long time.
10. 20:10
    • At the season the man sent a servant to the farmers.
    • The servant was sent so that the farmers would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard.
    • The farmers beat the servant.
    • The farmers sent the servant away empty.
11. 20:11
    • The man sent another servant.
    • They beat that servant also.
    • They treated that servant shamefully.
    • They sent that servant away empty.
12. 20:12
    • The man sent a third servant.
    • They wounded that one also.
    • They cast that one out.
13. 20:13
    • The lord of the vineyard said, 'What shall I do?'
    • The lord of the vineyard said he would send his beloved son.
    • The lord of the vineyard said it might be that they would respect his son.
14. 20:14
    • The farmers saw the son.
    • The farmers reasoned among themselves.
    • The farmers said that this was the heir.
    • The farmers proposed to kill him.
    • The farmers said they killed him so that the inheritance would become theirs.
15. 20:15
    • They cast the son out of the vineyard.
    • They killed the son.
    • Jesus asked what the lord of the vineyard would therefore do to them.
16. 20:16
    • Jesus said the lord of the vineyard would come and destroy those farmers.
    • Jesus said the lord of the vineyard would give the vineyard to others.
    • Those who heard it said, 'God forbid.'
17. 20:17
    • Jesus looked at them.
    • Jesus asked what the written text meant.
    • The written text says the stone which the builders rejected became the head of the corner.
18. 20:18
    • Whoever falls on that stone will be broken.
    • Whomever that stone falls on, it will grind him to powder.
19. 20:19
    • The chief priests and the scribes sought to lay hands on him that same hour.
    • They feared the people.
    • They perceived that he had spoken this parable against them.
20. 20:20
    • They watched him.
    • They sent forth spies.
    • The spies were to pretend to be just men.
    • The purpose was to catch him in his words.
    • The purpose was to deliver him to the power and authority of the governor.
21. 20:21
    • They asked him a question.
    • They called him Master.
    • They said they knew he spoke and taught rightly.
    • They said he did not show partiality to any person.
    • They said he taught the way of God truly.
22. 20:22
    • They asked whether it was lawful for them to give tribute to Caesar or not.
23. 20:23
    • Jesus perceived their craftiness.
    • Jesus spoke to them.
    • Jesus asked them why they tempted him.
24. 20:24
    • Jesus told them to show him a penny.
    • Jesus asked whose image and inscription the coin had.
    • They answered that it was Caesar's.
25. 20:25
    • Jesus told them to render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's.
    • Jesus told them to render to God the things that are God's.
26. 20:26
    • They could not catch him in his words before the people.
    • They marveled at his answer.
    • They kept silent.
27. 20:27
    • Certain of the Sadducees came to him.
    • The Sadducees deny that there is any resurrection.
    • They asked him a question.
28. 20:28
    • They called him Master.
    • They said Moses wrote to them that if a man's brother dies having a wife and dies without children, his brother should take the wife.
    • They said the brother should raise up offspring for his dead brother.
29. 20:29
    • There were seven brothers.
    • The first took a wife.
    • The first died without children.
30. 20:30
    • The second took her as wife.
    • The second died childless.
31. 20:31
    • The third took her.
    • In the same way all seven took her.
    • They left no children.
    • They died.
32. 20:32
    • Last of all the woman died also.
33. 20:33
    • They asked whose wife of them she would be in the resurrection.
    • They said seven had her as wife.
34. 20:34
    • Jesus answered them.
    • Jesus said the children of this world marry and are given in marriage.
35. 20:35
    • Jesus said those accounted worthy to obtain that world and the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage.
36. 20:36
    • Jesus said they cannot die any more.
    • Jesus said they are equal to the angels.
    • Jesus said they are the children of God.
    • Jesus said they are the children of the resurrection.
37. 20:37
    • Jesus said Moses showed that the dead are raised.
    • Jesus said Moses showed this at the bush.
    • Jesus said Moses there calls the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.
38. 20:38
    • God is not a God of the dead.
    • God is a God of the living.
    • All live to him.
39. 20:39
    • Certain of the scribes answered.
    • They called him Master.
    • They said he had spoken well.
40. 20:40
    • After that they did not dare to ask him any question at all.
41. 20:41
    • Jesus said to them, asking how they say that the Christ is David's son.
42. 20:42
    • David himself says in the book of Psalms that the LORD said to David's Lord, 'Sit on my right hand'.
43. 20:43
    • The quoted words continue: until I make your enemies your footstool.
44. 20:44
    • Jesus said David therefore calls him Lord.
    • Jesus asked how the Christ is then David's son.
45. 20:45
    • All the people were listening.
    • Jesus spoke to his disciples.
46. 20:46
    • Jesus told them to beware of the scribes.
    • The scribes desire to walk in long robes.
    • The scribes love greetings in the marketplaces.
    • The scribes love the highest seats in the synagogues.
    • The scribes love the chief places at feasts.
47. 20:47
    • The scribes devour widows' houses.
    • The scribes make long prayers for a show.
    • These will receive greater condemnation.

Words Worth Explaining

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

20:1

The scribes were the professional experts in the law of Moses, the men who copied it, taught it and ruled on what it required. Together with the chief priests, the senior officials who ran the temple, and the elders, the leading heads of families, they formed the council that governed Jewish religious life in Jerusalem. So this is the whole leadership arriving at once, not a casual group of critics. The temple here means its outer courts, wide public spaces where teachers gathered listeners. The King James "preached the gospel" translates a single Greek verb meaning to announce good news; in 1611 it did not yet suggest delivering a sermon.

20:2

"These things" refers to what Jesus had just done: riding into Jerusalem as a king and driving the traders out of the temple. The temple was the chief priests' own territory, and anyone acting there with that kind of authority was expected to be able to name who had licensed him, the way a modern teacher might be asked who appointed him.

20:4

"From heaven" was a standard respectful way of saying "from God." Devout Jews often avoided saying God's name directly and substituted words like heaven. The question is whether John was acting on God's commission or on his own initiative.

20:6

Stoning was the method of execution named in the law of Moses for certain offenses, and a crowd could also carry it out as mob violence without any trial. The leaders are calculating that publicly denying a popular prophet's commission from God could get them killed on the spot.

20:9

The King James "husbandmen" means farmers, not husbands. Specifically they are tenant farmers. Large estates owned by absentee landlords and worked by tenants who paid rent as a share of the crop were ordinary in first-century Galilee, and so were disputes between those tenants and the owner's collectors. A newly planted vineyard also takes several years before it bears a usable crop, which fits the owner's long absence.

20:10

The servant is not asking a favor. He is coming to collect the rent, which was paid in produce rather than in money.

20:11

"Entreated him shamefully" in 1611 English means treated him shamefully. "Entreat" then meant to handle or deal with someone; it did not mean to beg.

20:13

The Greek word behind "beloved" was also used to mean only, or only and dearly loved, as of an only child.

20:14

Property left with no heir could in practice be claimed by those already occupying and working it. Killing the son, especially if the tenants assumed the distant owner was dead and the son had come to take possession, was a calculated move to keep the land.

20:16

The King James "God forbid" has no word for God behind it. The Greek is a short set phrase meaning roughly "may it never happen," the ordinary way of recoiling from a suggestion.

20:17

The quotation is Psalm 118:22, from a group of psalms sung at the great festivals and familiar to everyone listening. "The head of the corner" is the single most important stone in a building: either the cornerstone that sets the lines of the walls or the stone at the top that locks an arch together. Either way it is the one stone the builders cannot do without.

20:18

The two halves of the saying draw on other stone images from Israel's scriptures: a stone people trip over and break themselves on (Isaiah 8:14-15) and a stone that falls and smashes what it lands on (Daniel 2:34-35). "Grind him to powder" translates a word used for crushing or winnowing something to dust.

20:19

"Lay hands on him" here means arrest him, not simply touch him.

20:20

"Just men" in 1611 English means honest, upright men. The governor is the Roman prefect, Pontius Pilate. Only the Roman authorities could try a political charge and carry out an execution, so what the spies want is a sentence that can be reported to Rome as rebellion.

20:21

"Neither acceptest thou the person of any" renders a Hebrew idiom, literally to lift up someone's face, meaning to show favoritism, as a corrupt judge might toward a rich or powerful party. The compliment is designed to make it awkward for him to give a cautious, politically safe answer.

20:22

The tax in question is the annual head tax paid directly to Rome by every adult in Judea. It was imposed when Judea came under direct Roman rule in AD 6 and immediately provoked an armed revolt; many Jews regarded paying it as conceding that a foreign emperor, rather than God, owned the land. So a yes would discredit Jesus with the crowd, and a no could be reported to the governor as incitement.

20:24

The King James "penny" is the denarius, a Roman silver coin worth roughly a day's pay for a laborer. "Superscription" means the inscription stamped around the coin's face. The denarius then circulating carried the head of the emperor Tiberius and lettering naming him son of the deified Augustus, along with a priestly title, so handling one was a small daily reminder of who ruled.

20:25

"Render" translates a Greek verb meaning give back or pay back, the word used for settling a debt or returning what already belongs to someone, rather than simply handing something over.

20:27

The Sadducees were the aristocratic party centered on the temple, drawn largely from the leading priestly families, and they worked with the Roman administration. They treated the five books of Moses as the binding standard and rejected the later traditions the Pharisees accepted; finding no clear teaching there about the dead rising, they denied it. That is why the test case they bring is built out of a law of Moses.

20:28

The rule is in Deuteronomy 25:5-6. It is sometimes called levirate marriage, from the Latin word for a husband's brother. If a man died childless, his brother was to marry the widow, and the first son she bore counted legally as the dead man's, so that his name and his share of the family land did not vanish. "Raise up seed" means produce offspring.

20:33

The Sadducees are not asking a sincere question. They have constructed a deliberately absurd case, seven husbands for one woman, in order to make the idea of resurrection look ridiculous by dragging the marriage law into it.

20:34

"The children of this world" is literally "the sons of this age." In Hebrew and Aramaic idiom, "son of" often means belonging to or marked by something rather than descended from it, and the same idiom lies behind "the children of the resurrection" in verse 36. "This age" and the age to come were the standard Jewish way of naming the present order and the one expected to follow it. Note also that "marry" is said of the men and "are given in marriage" of the women, who were handed over by a father or guardian; the pair of verbs covers both sides of the arrangement.

20:36

"Equal unto the angels" translates a single Greek word meaning angel-like. The point of likeness is the one the sentence names, deathlessness. The Sadducees were also reported to be skeptical about angels, which sharpens the comparison.

20:37

"At the bush" means in the passage about the burning bush, Exodus 3. Scrolls had no chapter or verse numbers, so a passage was cited by a well-known phrase from it, much as we might say "in the Lord's Prayer."

20:41

"Christ" is the Greek word for Messiah, the anointed one, the title of the king God had promised would come from David's family. "David's son" means a descendant of David, not a literal child of his.

20:42

The quotation is Psalm 110:1. The King James prints the first "LORD" in capital letters to signal that the Hebrew there has the personal name of God, while the second "Lord" translates a different word meaning master or sovereign. So the line runs: God said to my master. Sitting at a king's right hand was the place of the second in command.

20:43

Putting a defeated enemy under the victor's feet was a standard ancient image of total conquest. Kings were sometimes portrayed with footstools carved with the figures of the peoples they had beaten.

20:46

Each item is a visible marker of rank. Long robes were the flowing garments of men of standing, impractical for manual work and so a statement that the wearer did none. The "greetings in the markets" were public salutations by title, being hailed with honor in the street. The best synagogue seats faced the congregation, so whoever sat in them was seen by everyone. "The chief rooms at feasts" means the chief places, the couches nearest the host at a banquet, not separate rooms.

20:47

A widow with no adult son or male relative had no standing to manage property herself and commonly relied on a legal expert to act as trustee or advisor. "Devour widows' houses" points at that relationship going wrong: excessive fees, mismanagement, or taking outright the estate that was her only security. "Damnation" in 1611 English means condemnation, a sentence passed at judgment; it did not carry the narrow modern sense of hell.