Luke 12:1-12

Exhortation to fearless utterance, addressed to the disciples (cf. Matthew 10:17-33). ἐν οἷς, in these circumstances, i.e., while the assaults of the Pharisees and scribes on Jesus were going on (Luke 11:53). μυριάδων : a hyperbolical expression for an “innumerable multitude,” pointing, if the words are to be taken in earnest, to the largest crowd mentioned anywhere in the Gospels. Yet this immense gathering is not accounted for: it does not appear where or why it collected, but the ἐν οἶς suggests that the people had been drawn together by the encounter between Jesus and His foes. πρῶτον from its position naturally qualifies προσέχετε, implying that hypocrisy was the first topic of discourse (Meyer). But it may also be taken with μαθητὰς, as implying that, while Jesus meant to speak to the crowd, He addressed Himself in the first place to His disciples (Schanz, J. Weiss, Holtzmann). Bornemann points out that while Mt. places τρῶτον after imperatives, Lk. places it also before, as in Luke 9:61; Luke 10:5. ἀπὸ τῆς ζύμης τ. φ.: this is the logion reported in Matthew 16:6 and Mark 8:15, connected there with the demand for a sign; here to be viewed in the light of the discourse in the Pharisee's house (Luke 11:37 f.). In the two first Gospels the warning expresses rather Christ's sense of the deadly character of the Pharisaic leaven; here it is a didactic utterance for the guidance of disciples as witnesses of the truth. ἥτις ἐστὶν ὑπόκρισις : not in Mt. and Mk.; might be taken as an explanatory gloss, but probably to be viewed as part of the logion. Hypocrisy, the leading Pharisaic vice = wearing a mask of sanctity to hide an evil heart; but from what follows apparently here to be taken in a wider sense so as to include dissimulation, hiding conviction from fear of man as in Galatians 2:13 (so J. Weiss in Meyer). In Lk.'s reports our Lord's sayings assume a form adapted to the circumstances of the writer's time. Hypocrisy in the sense of Galatians 2:13 was the temptation of the apostolic age, when truth could not be spoken and acted without risk.