Luke 4:14,15

1 st. Luke 4:14-15.

The 14th verse is, as we have shown, the complement of Luke 4:1 (see Luke 4:1).

The verb, he returned, comprehends, according to what precedes, the two returns mentioned John 1:44; John 4:1, and even a third, understood between John 5:6. The words, in the power of the Spirit, do not refer, as many have thought, to an impulse from above, which urged Jesus to return to Galilee, but to His possession of the divine powers which He had received at His baptism, and with which He was now about to teach and act; comp. filled with the Spirit, Luke 4:1. Luke evidently means that He returned different from what He was when He left. Was this supernatural power of Jesus displayed solely in His preaching, or in miracles also already wrought at this period, though not related by Luke? Since the miracle at Cana took place, according to John, just at this time, we incline to the latter meaning, which, considering the term employed, is also the more natural. In this way, what is said of His fame, which immediately spread through all the region round about, is readily explained. Preaching alone would scarcely have been sufficient to have brought about this result. Meyer brings in here the report of the miraculous incidents of the baptism; but these probably had not been witnessed by any one save Jesus and John, and no allusion is made to them subsequently.

The 15th verse relates how, after His reputation had prepared the way for Him, He came Himself (αὐτός); then how they all, after hearing Him, ratified the favourable judgment which His fame had brought respecting Him (glorified of all).

The synagogues, in which Jesus fulfilled His itinerant ministry, were places of assembly existing from the return of the captivity, perhaps even earlier. (Bleek finds the proof of an earlier date in Psalms 74:8.) Wherever there was a somewhat numerous Jewish population, even in heathen countries, there were such places of worship. They assembled in them on the Sabbath-day, also on the Monday and Tuesday, and on court and market days. Any one wishing to speak signified his intention by rising (at least according to this passage; comp. also Acts 13:16). But as all teaching was founded on the Scriptures, to speak was before anything else to read. The reading finished, he taught, sitting down (Acts 13:16, Paul speaks standing). Order was maintained by the ἀρχισυνάγωγος, or presidents of the synagogue. Luke 4:14-15 form the fourth definite statement in the account of the development of the person and work of Jesus; comp. Luke 2:40; Luke 2:52, and Luke 3:23.