Luke 10:1-12

The Seventy sent forth, peculiar to Lk. Many questions have been raised as to this narrative, e.g., as to its historicity, as to the connection between the instructions to the new missionaries and those to the Twelve, and as to the time and place of their election, and the sphere of their mission. On these points only the briefest hints can be given here. As to the first, the saying about the paucity of labourers, found also in Mt. (Matthew 9:38), implies that Jesus was constantly on the outlook for competent assistants, and that He would use such as were available. The cases mentioned in the closing section of last chapter confirm this inference. Whether He would send them out simultaneously in large numbers, twelve, or seventy, or piecemeal, one or more pairs now, and another small group then, is a matter on which it is precarious to dogmatise, as is done by W. Grimm when he says (Das Proemium des Lucas-Evang.) that Jesus did not send out twelve all at once, but two and two now and then, and besides the Twelve others of the second order, and that these piecemeal missions consolidated in the tradition into two large ones of twelve and seventy. As to the instructions : there would be such in every instance, and they would be substantially the same whether given once, twice, or twenty times, summed up in a few compact sentences, so racy and memorable as to be easily preservable even by oral tradition. It is, however, quite probable that versions of these instructions were to be found in documents, say in Mk. and in Mt.'s Logia; and Lk., as Weiss suggests, may have taken the instructions to the Twelve from the former, and those to the Seventy from the latter. Finally, as to time, place, and sphere, nothing certain can be determined, and there is room for various conjectures. Hahn, e.g., suggests, as the place of the appointment, Jerusalem; the time, the feast of tabernacles, mentioned in John 7:2; and the sphere of the mission, the towns and villages of Judaea or southern Palestine. There was certainly need for a mission there. The mission of the Twelve was in Galilee.