Luke 4: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, spends forty days in the wilderness without food and turns aside three tests from the devil, answering each with scripture. He returns to Galilee teaching in the synagogues, reads from Isaiah in his hometown of Nazareth, says the words are fulfilled that day, and is driven out of town after speaking of Elijah and Elisha helping outsiders. In Capernaum he teaches with authority, drives out unclean spirits, heals Simon's mother-in-law and many other sick people, and then leaves to preach the kingdom of God in other towns.

Claim by Claim

1. 4:1
   • Jesus was full of the Holy Spirit.
   • Jesus returned from the Jordan.
   • Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness.
2. 4:2
   • Jesus was tempted by the devil for forty days.
   • Jesus ate nothing during those days.
   • When the forty days were ended, Jesus was hungry.
3. 4:3
   • The devil spoke to Jesus.
   • The devil said, if you are the Son of God.
   • The devil told Jesus to command this stone to become bread.
4. 4:4
   • Jesus answered the devil.
   • Jesus said it is written.
   • Jesus said that man shall not live by bread alone.
   • Jesus said that man lives by every word of God.
5. 4:5
   • The devil took Jesus up into a high mountain.
   • The devil showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the inhabited world.
   • The devil showed him the kingdoms in a moment of time.
6. 4:6
   • The devil spoke to Jesus.
   • The devil said he would give Jesus all this authority.
   • The devil said he would give Jesus the glory of the kingdoms.
   • The devil said the authority had been handed over to him.
   • The devil said he gives it to whomever he wishes.
7. 4:7
   • The devil said that if Jesus would worship before him, all of it would be Jesus's.
8. 4:8
   • Jesus answered and said to the devil.
   • Jesus told Satan to get behind him.
   • Jesus said it is written.
   • Jesus said you shall worship the Lord your God.
   • Jesus said you shall serve him only.
9. 4:9
   • The devil brought Jesus to Jerusalem.
   • The devil set Jesus on the pinnacle of the temple.
   • The devil said to Jesus, if you are the Son of God.
   • The devil told Jesus to throw himself down from there.
10. 4:10
    • The devil said it is written.
    • The devil quoted that God will command his angels concerning you.
    • The devil quoted that the angels are to guard you.
11. 4:11
    • The devil quoted that the angels will bear you up in their hands.
    • The devil quoted that this is so you will not strike your foot against a stone.
12. 4:12
    • Jesus answered and said to the devil.
    • Jesus said it has been said.
    • Jesus said you shall not put the Lord your God to the test.
13. 4:13
    • The devil finished every temptation.
    • The devil departed from Jesus for a season.
14. 4:14
    • Jesus returned into Galilee in the power of the Spirit.
    • A report about Jesus went out through all the surrounding region.
15. 4:15
    • Jesus taught in their synagogues.
    • Jesus was glorified by all.
16. 4:16
    • Jesus came to Nazareth.
    • Jesus had been brought up in Nazareth.
    • It was Jesus's custom to go into the synagogue on the sabbath day.
    • Jesus went into the synagogue on the sabbath day.
    • Jesus stood up to read.
17. 4:17
    • The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Jesus.
    • Jesus opened the scroll.
    • Jesus found the place where it was written.
18. 4:18
    • The text said the Spirit of the Lord is upon me.
    • The text said he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.
    • The text said he has sent me to heal the brokenhearted.
    • The text said he has sent me to proclaim release to the captives.
    • The text said he has sent me to proclaim recovery of sight to the blind.
    • The text said he has sent me to set at liberty those who are crushed.
19. 4:19
    • The text said he has sent me to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.
20. 4:20
    • Jesus rolled up the scroll.
    • Jesus gave the scroll back to the attendant.
    • Jesus sat down.
    • The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on Jesus.
21. 4:21
    • Jesus began to speak to them.
    • Jesus said that today this scripture is fulfilled in their ears.
22. 4:22
    • All bore witness to Jesus.
    • They marveled at the gracious words proceeding out of his mouth.
    • They said, is this not Joseph's son?
23. 4:23
    • Jesus spoke to them.
    • Jesus said they would surely quote this proverb to him.
    • The proverb was, physician, heal yourself.
    • Jesus said they would tell him to do here in his own country whatever they had heard was done in Capernaum.
24. 4:24
    • Jesus said, truly I say to you.
    • Jesus said no prophet is accepted in his own country.
25. 4:25
    • Jesus said, I tell you truly.
    • Jesus said there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah.
    • Jesus said the heaven was shut up three years and six months.
    • Jesus said a great famine came over all the land.
26. 4:26
    • Jesus said Elijah was sent to none of those widows.
    • Jesus said Elijah was sent to Zarephath in the region of Sidon.
    • Jesus said Elijah was sent to a woman who was a widow.
27. 4:27
    • Jesus said there were many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet.
    • Jesus said none of those lepers was cleansed.
    • Jesus said Naaman the Syrian was cleansed.
28. 4:28
    • All in the synagogue heard these things.
    • All in the synagogue were filled with wrath.
29. 4:29
    • They rose up.
    • They thrust Jesus out of the city.
    • They led Jesus to the brow of the hill on which their city was built.
    • Their purpose was to throw Jesus down headlong.
30. 4:30
    • Jesus passed through the midst of them.
    • Jesus went his way.
31. 4:31
    • Jesus came down to Capernaum.
    • Capernaum is a city of Galilee.
    • Jesus taught them on the sabbath days.
32. 4:32
    • They were astonished at his teaching.
    • His word was with authority.
33. 4:33
    • In the synagogue there was a man who had a spirit of an unclean demon.
    • The man cried out with a loud voice.
34. 4:34
    • The spirit told Jesus to let them alone.
    • The spirit asked what they had to do with Jesus of Nazareth.
    • The spirit asked whether Jesus had come to destroy them.
    • The spirit said it knew who Jesus was.
    • The spirit said Jesus is the Holy One of God.
35. 4:35
    • Jesus rebuked the spirit.
    • Jesus told it to be silent.
    • Jesus told it to come out of the man.
    • The demon threw the man down in the midst of them.
    • The demon came out of the man.
    • The demon did not hurt the man.
36. 4:36
    • Amazement came upon them all.
    • They spoke to one another.
    • They asked what this word is.
    • They said that with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits.
    • They said the unclean spirits come out.
37. 4:37
    • The report about Jesus went out into every place of the surrounding country.
38. 4:38
    • Jesus rose up and left the synagogue.
    • Jesus entered Simon's house.
    • Simon's wife's mother was afflicted with a great fever.
    • They asked Jesus about her.
39. 4:39
    • Jesus stood over her.
    • Jesus rebuked the fever.
    • The fever left her.
    • She arose immediately.
    • She ministered to them.
40. 4:40
    • The sun was setting.
    • All who had any sick with various diseases brought them to Jesus.
    • Jesus laid his hands on every one of them.
    • Jesus healed them.
41. 4:41
    • Demons also came out of many people.
    • The demons cried out and said, you are Christ the Son of God.
    • Jesus rebuked them.
    • Jesus did not allow them to speak.
    • The demons knew that he was the Christ.
42. 4:42
    • When it was day, Jesus departed.
    • Jesus went into a deserted place.
    • The crowds sought Jesus.
    • The crowds came to Jesus.
    • The crowds tried to keep Jesus from departing from them.
43. 4:43
    • Jesus spoke to them.
    • Jesus said he must preach the kingdom of God to other cities also.
    • Jesus said he was sent for this purpose.
44. 4:44
    • Jesus was preaching in the synagogues of Galilee.

Words Worth Explaining

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

4:1

"Holy Ghost" and "Holy Spirit" translate the same phrase: in 1611 English "ghost" simply meant spirit, with none of the modern sense of a haunting. "Jordan" is the Jordan River, where John had been baptizing. The "wilderness" is the dry, thinly settled hill country west of the river, rocky scrub with little water rather than sand.

4:2

"tempted of the devil" means tempted by the devil; KJV "of" often carries the sense of "by." The verb covers both enticing someone to do wrong and testing someone to see what they are made of, and the Greek here holds both. "Devil" translates diabolos, a word meaning slanderer or accuser.

4:3

The desert floor was scattered with small, round, pale limestone stones that looked very like the flat loaves of bread people ate. The suggestion is deliberately close to something reasonable: a starving man producing food.

4:4

"It is written" is the standard formula for quoting scripture. The words come from Deuteronomy 8:3, said of Israel's forty years in the wilderness. The oldest manuscripts of Luke stop at "bread alone"; the added clause "but by every word of God" stands in the later manuscripts the KJV translators used, and completes the sentence as Deuteronomy has it.

4:5

The word translated "world" means the inhabited earth, in everyday first-century usage the settled lands under Roman rule.

4:6

KJV "power" here means authority, the right to rule, not physical strength. "That is delivered unto me" means it has been handed over to me; the Greek does not say by whom.

4:7

To "worship" someone is to bow down and treat them like God. The devil wanted Jesus to treat him that way.

4:8

"Get thee behind me" means get out of my way, away with you. "Satan" is a Hebrew word meaning adversary or accuser, used here as the devil's name. The quotation is from Deuteronomy 6:13. Some ancient manuscripts of Luke lack the words "Get thee behind me, Satan" at this point.

4:9

"Pinnacle" translates a word meaning little wing: some high projecting point of the temple complex in Jerusalem. The exact spot is unknown, but from the southeast corner the ground fell away hundreds of feet into the Kidron valley.

4:10

The devil quotes scripture in his turn: Psalm 91:11-12, a psalm promising God's protection to the person who trusts him. "Give his angels charge over thee" means put his angels in charge of you.

4:12

"Tempt" here means put to the test, force a proof, not entice to sin. The quotation is Deuteronomy 6:16, which recalls Israel demanding water at Massah as a test of whether God was really with them.

4:13

"For a season" is misleading to a modern ear. The Greek says until an opportune time: the devil is waiting for a suitable moment, not simply staying away a while.

4:14

In 1611 "fame" meant report or rumor, the talk that spreads about a person, with no sense of celebrity status.

4:15

A synagogue was the local assembly and meeting house where Jewish communities gathered, chiefly on the Sabbath, to read and explain the scriptures and to pray. Every sizable town had one, unlike the temple, of which there was only one, in Jerusalem. "Being glorified of all" means praised by everyone.

4:16

The Sabbath was the seventh day of the week, running from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, kept as a day of rest and public assembly. In synagogue practice the scripture was read standing, and a competent adult male member of the congregation could be invited to read and comment on it.

4:17

"The book" was a scroll, rolled around two staves rather than bound in pages, so "opened" means unrolled to the right column. "Esaias" is the Greek form of the Hebrew name Isaiah. The KJV keeps the Greek spellings of Old Testament names throughout the New Testament, which is why Elijah appears below as "Elias" and Elisha as "Eliseus."

4:18

To anoint was to pour oil on someone's head, the ceremony that installed a king or a priest and marked him as chosen and commissioned for a task. The Hebrew for anointed one is mashiach, from which we get Messiah; the Greek is christos, from which we get Christ. "Preach the gospel" means announce good news; "gospel" is an old English word meaning exactly that. "Them that are bruised" means those broken or crushed by ill-treatment. The reading is Isaiah 61:1-2, with a line from Isaiah 58:6 folded in.

4:19

"The acceptable year of the Lord" means the year when the Lord shows favor. The phrase recalls the jubilee year described in Leviticus 25, when debts were canceled, people sold into slavery for debt were released, and land returned to the families that had lost it. The quotation breaks off in the middle of Isaiah's sentence, which goes on "and the day of vengeance of our God."

4:20

"Minister" here does not mean a clergyman. In 1611 the word meant servant or attendant, and it refers to the synagogue official who kept the scrolls, produced them for the reading, and put them away. Sitting down was the posture a teacher took to expound what had been read, so it signals that he is about to speak, not that he has finished.

4:21

"Fulfilled in your ears" is a Greek idiom meaning in your hearing, while you were listening.

4:22

"Bare him witness" means spoke about him, testified concerning him, and is usually read as approval. The question "Is not this Joseph's son?" can be heard either as admiring wonder at a local boy or as dismissal of one; the Greek leaves both open.

4:23

"Thy country" means your home district or hometown, not your nation. Capernaum was a fishing town on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee, roughly twenty miles from Nazareth. Luke has not yet narrated anything Jesus did there; the reader hears of it first from these neighbors.

4:24

"Verily" translates amen, a Hebrew word of affirmation, used here to introduce a statement rather than to close a prayer: truly, I tell you. "Accepted" means received or made welcome.

4:25

Elias is Elijah. The story is in 1 Kings 17-18: a drought and famine in the reign of Ahab. "The heaven was shut up" pictures the sky as closed so that no rain falls.

4:26

Sarepta is Zarephath, a town on the Phoenician coast belonging to the city of Sidon, outside Israelite territory. The widow Elijah was sent to was not an Israelite (1 Kings 17:8-24).

4:27

Eliseus is Elisha. "Leprosy" in the Bible covers a range of disfiguring skin conditions, not only the disease called leprosy today. It rendered a person ritually unclean and shut them out of normal community life, which is why the text says "cleansed" rather than healed. Naaman was the commander of the army of Syria, Israel's northern neighbor (2 Kings 5).

4:28

The anger is a reaction to the two examples: in both, God's help went past the Israelites who needed it and landed on outsiders, one of them an enemy soldier.

4:29

Nazareth was built on a hillside. Shoving a man over a height was a rough, unofficial way of killing, not a legal execution carried out after trial.

4:31

"Came down" is literal geography. Nazareth sits in the hills, while Capernaum lies on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, several hundred feet below sea level.

4:32

"Doctrine" in 1611 meant simply teaching, the content of what someone taught, without the later sense of a fixed system of beliefs. "His word was with power" means his speech carried authority, the weight of someone entitled to say it.

4:33

The KJV uses "devil" for two different Greek words: one for the devil himself, and one, as here, for the lesser spirits normally called demons in modern English. "Unclean" belongs to the vocabulary of ritual purity: such a spirit is impure and defiling, not merely dirty.

4:34

"Let us alone" renders an exclamation, something like "Ha!" or "Leave off!" "What have we to do with thee" is a fixed Hebrew idiom of protest: what business have you with us, why are you interfering with us.

4:35

"Rebuked" translates a forceful word: a sharp command backed by authority, not a scolding. "Hold thy peace" means be silent; the Greek word is literally be muzzled.

4:36

"What a word is this!" means what kind of utterance is this. "Word" here refers to the thing he had just said, the command itself.

4:37

Again the King James "fame" means the news and reports spreading about him.

4:38

Simon is Simon Peter; Luke has not yet described his call or given him the name Peter. "Besought" means asked urgently, pleaded. "A great fever" reflects an ancient medical distinction between great and slight fevers, so the phrase marks the case as severe.

4:39

"Rebuked the fever" addresses the illness with the same sharp command used for the spirit in verse 35. "Ministered unto them" means waited on them, served them their food.

4:40

Sunset ended the Sabbath. Until then the restrictions on carrying loads, which included carrying a sick person, were in force, so the crowd waits for the sun to go down before bringing the sick. "Divers diseases" means various, differing diseases; "divers" is an older form of diverse.

4:41

"Christ" is a title, not a surname: it is Greek for anointed one, the equivalent of the Hebrew Messiah. "Suffered them not" means did not allow them; "suffer" in 1611 English means permit.

4:42

"Desert place" means a deserted, uninhabited spot, open country with nobody in it, not a sandy desert. "Stayed him" means held him back, tried to keep him there.

4:43

"Preach" means proclaim publicly, the way a herald announces news, not deliver a sermon in a building. "The kingdom of God" refers to God's reign or rule as king, a state of affairs being established rather than a territory on a map.

4:44

Manuscripts differ here. Some read "the synagogues of Galilee," which the KJV follows; others read "the synagogues of Judea," which most modern translations follow. In Luke "Judea" often means the Jewish homeland as a whole rather than the southern province alone.