Luke 7: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Jesus heals a Roman officer's servant from a distance after the officer says a word from Jesus is enough, and at the town gate of Nain he raises a widow's only son and gives him back to her. John the Baptist sends two disciples to ask whether Jesus is the one who was to come; Jesus points to what he is doing and then speaks to the crowds about John, and about a generation that rejected John for fasting and himself for eating and drinking. At a Pharisee's table, a woman known in the town as a sinner weeps on Jesus' feet, wipes them with her hair, and pours perfume on them; Jesus answers his host with a short story about two canceled debts and tells the woman her sins are forgiven and her faith has saved her.

Claim by Claim

1. 7:1
   • Jesus finished speaking all his words in the hearing of the people.
   • He entered Capernaum.
2. 7:2
   • A certain centurion had a servant.
   • The servant was highly valued by him.
   • The servant was sick.
   • The servant was about to die.
3. 7:3
   • The centurion heard about Jesus.
   • He sent elders of the Jews to Jesus.
   • He asked Jesus to come and save his servant.
4. 7:4
   • The elders came to Jesus.
   • They begged him earnestly.
   • They said the centurion was worthy for Jesus to grant him this.
5. 7:5
   • The elders said the centurion loves their nation.
   • The elders said the centurion himself built the synagogue for them.
6. 7:6
   • Jesus went with them.
   • Jesus came to be not far from the house.
   • The centurion sent friends to Jesus.
   • The centurion's message called Jesus Lord.
   • The centurion's message told Jesus not to trouble himself.
   • The centurion said he was not worthy for Jesus to come under his roof.
7. 7:7
   • The centurion said that for this reason he did not consider himself worthy to come to Jesus.
   • The centurion asked Jesus to say the word.
   • The centurion said his servant would be healed.
8. 7:8
   • The centurion said he too is a man placed under authority.
   • The centurion said he has soldiers under him.
   • The centurion said he tells one soldier to go, and he goes.
   • The centurion said he tells another to come, and he comes.
   • The centurion said he tells his servant to do something, and he does it.
9. 7:9
   • Jesus heard these things.
   • Jesus marveled at the centurion.
   • Jesus turned around.
   • Jesus spoke to the crowd following him.
   • Jesus said he had not found such great faith even in Israel.
10. 7:10
    • Those who had been sent returned to the house.
    • They found the servant in good health.
    • The servant had been sick.
11. 7:11
    • On the following day Jesus went to a city called Nain.
    • Many of his disciples went with him.
    • A large crowd went with him.
12. 7:12
    • Jesus came near the gate of the city.
    • A dead man was being carried out.
    • The dead man was the only son of his mother.
    • His mother was a widow.
    • A considerable crowd from the city was with her.
13. 7:13
    • The Lord saw the woman.
    • He had compassion on her.
    • He told her not to weep.
14. 7:14
    • He came up and touched the bier.
    • Those carrying it stood still.
    • He addressed the dead man as young man.
    • He said, I say to you, arise.
15. 7:15
    • The dead man sat up.
    • He began to speak.
    • Jesus gave him to his mother.
16. 7:16
    • Fear seized everyone.
    • They glorified God.
    • They said a great prophet has risen up among them.
    • They said God has visited his people.
17. 7:17
    • This report about Jesus went out through all Judaea.
    • It went out through all the surrounding region.
18. 7:18
    • John's disciples reported to him about all these things.
19. 7:19
    • John called two of his disciples to him.
    • John sent them to Jesus.
    • John asked whether Jesus is the one who is to come.
    • John asked whether they should look for another.
20. 7:20
    • The men came to Jesus.
    • They said John the Baptist had sent them to him.
    • They asked whether Jesus is the one who is to come.
    • They asked whether they should look for another.
21. 7:21
    • In that same hour Jesus cured many people of infirmities.
    • He cured many of plagues.
    • He cured many of evil spirits.
    • He gave sight to many who were blind.
22. 7:22
    • Jesus answered them.
    • He told them to go and tell John what they had seen and heard.
    • He said the blind see.
    • He said the lame walk.
    • He said lepers are cleansed.
    • He said the deaf hear.
    • He said the dead are raised.
    • He said the poor have the good news preached to them.
23. 7:23
    • Jesus said whoever is not made to stumble because of him is blessed.
24. 7:24
    • John's messengers departed.
    • Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John.
    • Jesus asked what they went out into the wilderness to see.
    • Jesus asked whether it was a reed shaken by the wind.
25. 7:25
    • Jesus asked again what they went out to see.
    • Jesus asked whether it was a man clothed in soft garments.
    • Jesus said those who wear splendid clothing and live in luxury are in kings' palaces.
26. 7:26
    • Jesus asked again what they went out to see.
    • Jesus asked whether it was a prophet.
    • Jesus answered yes.
    • Jesus said John is more than a prophet.
27. 7:27
    • Jesus said John is the one about whom it is written.
    • The writing says God sends his messenger before your face.
    • The writing says that messenger will prepare your way before you.
28. 7:28
    • Jesus said that among those born of women there is no greater prophet than John the Baptist.
    • Jesus said the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than John.
29. 7:29
    • All the people who heard him justified God.
    • The tax collectors justified God.
    • They had been baptized with the baptism of John.
30. 7:30
    • The Pharisees and the lawyers rejected the counsel of God for themselves.
    • They had not been baptized by John.
31. 7:31
    • The Lord spoke.
    • He asked to what he should compare the men of this generation.
    • He asked what they are like.
32. 7:32
    • He said they are like children sitting in the marketplace.
    • The children call to one another.
    • The children say, We piped to you and you did not dance.
    • The children say, We mourned to you and you did not weep.
33. 7:33
    • John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine.
    • They say John has a demon.
34. 7:34
    • The Son of Man came eating and drinking.
    • They say he is a gluttonous man.
    • They say he is a drinker of wine.
    • They say he is a friend of tax collectors and sinners.
35. 7:35
    • Wisdom is justified by all her children.
36. 7:36
    • One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him.
    • Jesus entered the Pharisee's house.
    • Jesus reclined at the table.
37. 7:37
    • There was a woman in the city who was a sinner.
    • She learned that Jesus was reclining at table in the Pharisee's house.
    • She brought an alabaster jar of perfumed ointment.
38. 7:38
    • She stood behind Jesus at his feet.
    • She was weeping.
    • She began to wet his feet with her tears.
    • She wiped his feet with the hair of her head.
    • She kissed his feet repeatedly.
    • She anointed his feet with the ointment.
39. 7:39
    • The Pharisee who had invited Jesus saw this.
    • He spoke within himself.
    • He said that if this man were a prophet he would have known who the woman touching him is.
    • He said he would have known what kind of woman she is.
    • He said she is a sinner.
40. 7:40
    • Jesus answered him.
    • Jesus addressed him as Simon.
    • Jesus said he had something to say to him.
    • Simon called Jesus teacher.
    • Simon told him to say it.
41. 7:41
    • A certain moneylender had two debtors.
    • One owed five hundred denarii.
    • The other owed fifty.
42. 7:42
    • The debtors had nothing with which to repay.
    • The creditor forgave both of them.
    • Jesus asked which of them will love him more.
43. 7:43
    • Simon answered.
    • Simon said he supposed it was the one to whom the creditor forgave more.
    • Jesus told him he had judged rightly.
44. 7:44
    • Jesus turned toward the woman.
    • Jesus spoke to Simon.
    • Jesus asked whether Simon sees this woman.
    • Jesus said he entered Simon's house.
    • Jesus said Simon gave him no water for his feet.
    • Jesus said the woman wet his feet with her tears.
    • Jesus said she wiped them with the hair of her head.
45. 7:45
    • Jesus said Simon gave him no kiss.
    • Jesus said the woman has not stopped kissing his feet since he came in.
46. 7:46
    • Jesus said Simon did not anoint his head with oil.
    • Jesus said the woman anointed his feet with perfumed ointment.
47. 7:47
    • Jesus said that for this reason he tells Simon something.
    • Jesus said her sins, which are many, are forgiven.
    • Jesus gave as the ground that she loved much.
    • Jesus said the one to whom little is forgiven loves little.
48. 7:48
    • Jesus said to the woman that her sins are forgiven.
49. 7:49
    • Those reclining at table with him began to speak among themselves.
    • They asked who this is who even forgives sins.
50. 7:50
    • Jesus spoke to the woman.
    • Jesus said her faith has saved her.
    • Jesus told her to go in peace.

Words Worth Explaining

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

7:1

"In the audience of the people" means in the hearing of the people. In 1611 "audience" still meant the act of listening rather than the crowd doing it. Capernaum was a fishing town on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee that served as Jesus' base in the region.

7:2

A centurion was a Roman army officer commanding a unit of roughly eighty to a hundred men, the backbone of the occupying force. He would have been a Gentile, a non-Jew. The word translated "servant" is the ordinary word for a slave, legally a piece of the household's property; "dear unto him" renders a word meaning precious or highly valued, so the point is that this was not a slave he could simply replace.

7:3

The "elders of the Jews" were the leading men of the local Jewish community who handled the town's affairs and oversaw its synagogue. They were not priests, and they were not officials of the Roman army.

7:4

"They besought him instantly" does not mean they asked him immediately. In 1611 "instantly" meant urgently and insistently, pressing the request hard.

7:5

A synagogue was the local assembly building where Jews gathered for prayer and the reading of the law. Paying for one out of his own pocket marked the officer as a foreigner who supported the Jewish community rather than despising it, the kind of sympathetic outsider Jews called a God-fearer.

7:6

The objection is not only modesty. Under the purity customs of the day a Jew who entered a Gentile's house contracted ritual uncleanness, so the officer's message spares Jesus a step that would have caused him trouble with his own people.

7:7

"Say in a word" means give the order verbally, from where you stand. The officer is asking for a command issued at a distance rather than a visit.

7:8

His argument is about how a chain of command works: an order travels down it and gets carried out without the commander having to be present. He assumes Jesus's authority over illness works the same way.

7:9

"Israel" here means the Jewish people as a whole, the nation in which such trust would be expected as a matter of course. The comparison is with a foreign soldier of the occupying army.

7:11

Nain was a small village in Galilee, roughly a day's walk south of Capernaum and a few miles from Nazareth.

7:12

Burial grounds lay outside a town, so a funeral procession went out through the gate; bodies were buried the same day in that climate. The detail that she was a widow with an only son is not only pathos: a woman with no husband and no son had no one legally obliged to support her and no standing in property, so she was left destitute as well as bereaved.

7:13

"He had compassion on her" translates a strong physical verb, something like being wrenched in the gut. It describes a felt reaction, not a considered attitude.

7:14

A "bier" was the open plank or stretcher on which the wrapped body was carried; there was no closed coffin. Touching a corpse, or the bier carrying one, made a person ritually unclean for seven days under the law of Moses, which is why the bearers stopping dead is part of the picture.

7:16

The "fear" is awe and dread at something uncanny rather than fright at a danger. "God hath visited his people" uses "visit" in its older biblical sense: God stepping in to act on behalf of his people, the way a king visits a province to set things right.

7:17

"Rumour" in 1611 meant simply a report or the news going around. It carried none of the modern suggestion that the story was unreliable.

7:18

This is John the Baptist, who by this point in Luke's account has been arrested and imprisoned by Herod (Luke 3:19 to 20). He is sending messengers out from confinement.

7:19

"He that should come" translates a set phrase, "the Coming One," used as a title for the deliverer the Jewish people expected God to send.

7:21

"Plagues" here does not mean epidemics. The word means scourges or afflictions, bodily torments of the kind a whip inflicts, used of severe illness.

7:22

The "leprosy" of the Bible covered a range of disfiguring skin conditions, not only the disease called leprosy today. The law declared a person with it ritually unclean and shut out of the community, which is why the word is "cleansed" rather than "healed": the cure restored their place among people as well as their skin. The whole list of signs is phrased in the language of Isaiah's descriptions of the age of deliverance (Isaiah 26, 29, 35 and 61).

7:23

"Offended in me" does not mean insulted. The Greek verb means tripped up or made to stumble, like a snare that brings someone down; the sense is being thrown off by what Jesus turns out to be.

7:24

"Wilderness" means dry, empty, uninhabited country, not forest. Reeds grew thick along the Jordan where John had been baptizing, and a reed bending with every gust was a stock image for a man with no backbone.

7:25

"Live delicately" meant living in luxury and ease, not being frail. "Soft raiment" and "gorgeously apparelled" describe expensive fabrics; the contrast is with John's rough clothing, and "kings' courts" points at the palace of Herod, who is the man holding John prisoner.

7:27

The quotation is from the prophet Malachi (Malachi 3:1), with wording drawn also from Exodus 23:20. It pictures a herald sent ahead of a king to get the road into passable shape before the royal party travels it.

7:28

"Born of women" is a Hebrew idiom meaning simply human beings, everyone who has ever been born. It is not a comment about mothers.

7:29

"Publicans" were tax and toll collectors, Jews who bought the right to collect revenue for Rome and made their living from what they could squeeze above the quota. They were widely regarded as both collaborators with the occupying power and thieves. "Justified God" means they declared God to be in the right, acknowledged the justice of his dealings.

7:30

"Lawyers" in the King James means experts in the law of Moses, scholars of scripture, not attorneys in a modern court. "The counsel of God" means God's purpose or plan. "Against themselves" is compressed and can be read either as "God's purpose for them" which they threw over, or as "to their own loss"; the Greek admits both.

7:32

The picture is of children playing at the two big public occasions of village life, a wedding and a funeral, and the other children refusing to join either game. "We have piped unto you" means we played the flute, the instrument of wedding celebration; "we have mourned to you" means we sang the wailing dirge of a funeral.

7:33

"He hath a devil" translates a word meaning a demon or evil spirit. As an accusation it worked much as calling someone mad works now: his extreme fasting is being written off as possession rather than holiness.

7:34

"The Son of man" is a phrase that can mean simply "a human being" and is also drawn from a vision in Daniel 7 of a figure given lasting authority; Jesus uses it of himself throughout the Gospels, and its double edge is deliberate. A "winebibber" is a heavy drinker. The two charges, glutton and drunkard, echo the language the law used for a disgraceful son (Deuteronomy 21:20).

7:35

"Justified of" means proved right by, vindicated by; "of" carries the sense of "by" in 1611 English. Who "her children" are is left open: either the people who follow wisdom, whose lives show she was right, or the results wisdom produces.

7:36

"Sat down to meat" means took his place at the meal; "meat" in 1611 meant food of any kind. At a formal dinner guests did not sit on chairs but reclined on low couches, propped on the left elbow with the feet stretched away from the table. That posture is what makes the rest of the scene physically possible: a person could approach a guest's feet from behind without ever coming to the table.

7:37

Calling her "a sinner" in this way marks a publicly known and disgraceful way of life, most likely prostitution, though Luke never says so outright. An "alabaster box" was a flask carved from soft translucent stone, the standard container for expensive perfumed oil; it had a long neck that was snapped off to release the contents, so opening one used it up.

7:38

Three things here would have struck the other guests. A respectable woman kept her hair bound up in public, and letting it down was immodest. Kissing someone's feet was the gesture of a slave or a suppliant, far below an ordinary greeting. And the perfumed oil was a luxury item being poured out on feet rather than a head.

7:39

The host's objection turns on contact. Touching, and being touched by, a woman of her reputation was thought to transmit her uncleanness, and a prophet was assumed to have the insight to see what she was and avoid it.

7:40

"Master" in the King James usually renders a word meaning teacher, the respectful address given to a recognized religious instructor. It does not mean owner. Simon was one of the most common Jewish names of the period.

7:41

"Pence" translates denarii. A denarius was the standard day's pay for an ordinary laborer, so five hundred is roughly twenty months of wages and fifty is about two months. Both sums are real debts; the difference between them is tenfold.

7:42

"Frankly forgave" means canceled the debt outright as a free gift, asking nothing in return. "Frankly" in 1611 meant freely or generously, not candidly. "Forgive" was the ordinary commercial word for writing off what was owed, which is why the story works as a picture of forgiving sins.

7:44

Jesus is listing the ordinary courtesies a host owed a guest and Simon skipped: water to rinse the dust off feet that had walked open roads in sandals, a kiss of greeting on the cheek, and a little olive oil for the head. None of them was lavish. Their absence was a calculated slight, or at least a pointed coolness.

7:45

A kiss on the cheek was the standard greeting between a host and a guest of any standing, roughly what a handshake is now. Its absence was noticeable to everyone in the room.

7:46

The contrast is between two grades of the same gesture. Plain olive oil on the head was cheap, everyday hospitality; the woman used costly scented ointment, and used it on his feet rather than his head.

7:47

The logic of this sentence is genuinely disputed, and the Greek allows both readings. "For she loved much" can mean that her love is the evidence that she has already been forgiven, the way a cured patient's health proves the treatment worked, or it can be read as giving the reason she was forgiven. The parable just told points toward the first, since in it the cancellation comes first and the love follows, but the wording itself leaves the question open.

7:49

The shock is about jurisdiction. In Jewish thinking a person could pardon a wrong done to them personally, but sin against God was God's alone to forgive. Jesus is speaking as though the debt were owed to him.

7:50

The verb translated "saved" is the same one used in this Gospel for being healed and being made whole; it covers rescue of every kind, and the sentence can be heard in all of those senses at once. "Go in peace" is the standard Hebrew farewell, shalom, which means not merely the absence of trouble but soundness and well-being.