Luke 9:51

forms the introduction to the great division, Luke 9:51 to Luke 18:15. It makes all that follows up to the terminus ad quem stand under the solemn heading: the beginning of the end. From this time forth Jesus has the close of His earthly career in view. His face is fixedly set towards Jerusalem and heaven. This conception of Jesus, as from this point onwards looking forward to the final crisis, suggests various reflections.

1. The reference to the last act of the drama comes in at a very early place in Lk.'s history.

2. The part of the story lying behind us does not adequately account for the mood of Jesus. We do not see why He should be thinking so earnestly of a final crisis of a tragic character, or even why there should be such a crisis at all. That the religious guides of Israel more or less disapproved of His ways has appeared, but it has not been shown that their hostility was of a deadly character. The dinner in Simon's house speaks to relations more or less friendly, and the omission of the sharp encounter in reference to hand-washing, and of the ominous demand for a sign from heaven, greatly tends to obscure the forces that were working towards a tragic end, and had the cross for their natural outcome. It does not seem to have entered into Lk.'s plan to exhibit Christ's death as the natural result of the opinions, practices, prejudices and passions prevalent in the religious world. He contemplated the event on the Godward, theological side, or perhaps it would be more correct to say on the side of fulfilment of O. T. prophecy. The necessity of Christ's death, the δεῖ (Luke 9:22) = the demand of O. T. Scripture for fulfilment, vide Luke 24:26.

3. In the long narrative contained in the next eight Chapter s, Jesus does not seem to be constantly thinking of the end. In Mk. and Mt. it is otherwise. From the period at which Jesus began to speak plainly of His death He appears constantly preoccupied with the subject. His whole manner and behaviour are those of one walking under the shadow of the cross. This representation is true to life. In Lk., on the other hand, while the face of Jesus is set towards Jerusalem, His mind seems often to be thinking of other things, and the reader of the story forgets about the cross as he peruses its deeply interesting pages.

συμπληροῦσθαι, etc., when the days of His assumption were in course of accomplishment, implying the approach of the closing scenes of Christ's earthly experience; here and in Acts 2:1, only, of time; in Luke 8:23 in the literal sense. ἀναλήψεως α. His assumption into heaven, as in Acts 1:2. The substantive in this sense is a ἅπ. λεγ. in N. T. It occurs in the Test., xii. Patr. The verb occurs in a similar sense in various places in the Sept [96] The assumption into heaven includes the crucifixion in Lk.'s conception, just as the glorification of Jesus includes the Passion in the Johannine conception. “Instabat adhuc passio, crux, mors, sepulchrum; sed per haec omnia ad metam prospexit Jesus, cujus sensum imitatur stylus evangelistae,” Bengel. The ἀνάληψις was an act of God. ἐστήρισεν, He made His face firm (from στῆριγξ, akin to στερεός, Thayer's Grimm), as if to meet something formidable and unwelcome, the cross rather than what lay beyond, here in view. Hahn, who does not believe that Lk. is here referring to Christ's final journey to Jerusalem, tones down the force of this word so as to make it express in Oriental fashion the idea of Jesus addressing Himself to a journey not specially momentous.

[96] Septuagint.