Luke 10:1-42

The Seventy. The Good Samaritan. Martha and Mary

1-16. Choice and mission of the Seventy (peculiar to Lk). Another step in the organisation of the Church. The Seventy receive a subordinate commission, similar to that of the apostles, to preach and to cast out devils (Luke 10:9; Luke 10:17). Two motives may be discerned in the sending forth of so numerous a body of missionaries. (1) The time before His Passion was now short, and Jesus wished the message of salvation to reach as many Israelites as possible. (2) He wished to train His followers to act alone after His departure. Probably the Twelve did not accompany the Seventy. Jesus kept them with Him for special personal training.

The number 70 is significant. It was the number of the Sanhedrin. As Jesus had already set up twelve new Patriarchs of the New Israel, so now He establishes a new Sanhedrin. The Jews deduced this number from the seventy elders of Numbers 11:16; Numbers 11:24. Or the number may symbolise the nations of the earth. The Jews held, agreeably to Genesis 10, that the human race was made up of 70 peoples, 14 descended from Japhet, 30 from Ham, and 26 from Shem. If, as is not unlikely, the appointment of the Seventy took place about the Feast of Tabernacles, the ritual of the feast may have had something to do with the number, for then 70 bullocks were offered on behalf of the Gentile nations. The rabbis said, 'They offer seventy bullocks for the seventy nations, to make atonement for them, that the rain may fall upon the fields of all the world.' The charge to the Seventy reads like an abridged report of St. Matthew's charge to the Twelve. It contains only one v., and that an unimportant one (Luke 10:8), which is not in St. Matthew. St. Luke, however, is not dependent upon St. Matthew, for he arranges the sayings in quite a different order. The close similarity of the two charges is best accounted for by supposing that Christ gave nearly the same directions to the Seventy as to the Twelve. It should be observed, however, that He does not confine their mission to the Israelites. In Peræa the Gentiles were numerous.