The Gospel of Luke
Page 12
Luke’s genealogy of Jesus is carefully situated between the baptism and temptation narratives. Unlike Matthew’s genealogy (Matt 1:2–16) that moves forward from Abraham to Jesus, Luke begins with Jesus and goes backward (see Ezra 7:1–5) all the way to Adam. In this way, he emphasizes how Jesus fulfills human history by coming to save all people (Luke 2:30–32; 3:6). He also presents Jesus the Son of God as a new Adam, who conquers temptation instead of giving in to it.
Luke’s genealogy, like Matthew’s (see Matt 1:16), points out the virginal conception of Jesus. He was the son, as was thought, of Joseph. The reader knows that Mary has conceived through the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:35), but characters in the narrative are unaware of this. The people in his hometown of Nazareth will thus ask: “Isn’t this the son of Joseph?” (4:22).
Joseph was the son of Heli.16 Since Matthew gives Joseph’s father as Jacob (Matt 1:16), right away there are difficulties comparing the two genealogies. One explanation, which goes back at least to the fourth century17 and eventually became common up until the early twentieth century, is that Luke is giving Jesus’ genealogy through Mary. Joseph would thus be the son-in-law of Heli, the father of Mary.18 Another explanation, which goes back to the early third century, is that the difference is due to the practice of levirate marriage (Deut 25:5–6), in which a brother of a man who died without children would marry the widow and raise up children for the deceased (see Luke 20:27–33). Eusebius draws on the earlier historian Julius Africanus to explain that Heli and Jacob were half brothers (having the same mother but different fathers, descending from two different sons of David). When Heli died childless, Jacob married his widow with Joseph as the offspring. Luke gives the legal father, Heli, and Matthew gives the biological father, Jacob.19
[3:24–37]
Genealogies often convey a theological message through the use of numerical symbolism, and one could shape the genealogy accordingly (e.g., by skipping generations). Matthew’s genealogy is organized in three groups of fourteen generations (Matt 1:17), emphasizing Jesus’ Davidic lineage, since fourteen is the numerical equivalent of the name “David” in Hebrew. Luke’s genealogy emphasizes the number seven, the number of perfection. Enoch, who “walked with God” (Gen 5:22, 24), was known to be “seventh” from Adam (Jude 14; see Gen 5:3–18; 1 Chron 1:1–3). However, of greater perfection is Jesus, presented by Luke as the seventy-seventh from Adam (see Gen 4:24; Matt 18:22). Several key figures occupy the position of a multiple of seven in the list: Abraham (twenty-first), David (thirty-fifth), and someone named Joshua, which in Greek is the same as Jesus (forty-ninth = seven times seven).20
Like Matthew, Luke highlights that Jesus is a descendant of David (1:27, 32, 69; 2:4). Aware of the expectation of a Davidic messiah, families in the Davidic line carefully preserved their genealogical records in the first century,21 so Luke probably based his genealogy on records from Jesus’ family. Unlike Matthew, who traces Jesus’ Davidic lineage through Solomon (Matt 1:6–7), Luke does so through Nathan. This “Nathan” is not the prophet (2 Sam 7:2) but a little-known son of David (2 Sam 5:14; 1 Chron 3:5; 14:4). A reference in Zechariah to the “house of Nathan” right after a reference to the “house of David” (Zech 12:12) suggests that there was an expectation that the line of Davidic descent would pass not through Solomon but through Nathan. The reversal theme again appears: Jesus descends not through the line of Davidic kings, but rather from an obscure line, thus “making a fresh start, comparable with God’s original choice of David himself.”22
[3:38]
At Jesus’ baptism, a heavenly voice announced Jesus as God’s “Son” (Luke 3:22). Here, at the end of the genealogy, there is Adam, the son of God (see Gen 1:26–27; 5:1). There is a parallel between Adam and Jesus, though Jesus’ divine sonship is of another order (Luke 1:35). In the temptation passage that follows, Jesus as the new Adam will be victorious over the devil, unlike the first Adam who fell (Gen 3). The comparison will continue in Luke’s passion narrative.23 As Paul does in his letters (Rom 5:12–19; 1 Cor 15:21–22, 45–49), Luke teaches a theology of Adam as a †type of Jesus. In the second century, St. Irenaeus comments on the Adam-Christ †typology, explaining that Jesus, “receiving the ancient fathers, . . . regenerated them to the life of God. . . . For this reason Luke, when he began the genealogy of the Lord, carried it back to Adam, pointing out that they did not regenerate him for the Gospel of life, but he them.” Irenaeus continues with Eve-Mary typology: “The knot of Eve’s disobedience was untied by Mary’s obedience. For what the virgin Eve tied by her unbelief, this Mary untied by her belief.”24
The Temptation of Jesus (4:1–13)
1Filled with the holy Spirit, Jesus returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert 2for forty days, to be tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and when they were over he was hungry. 3The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” 4Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’” 5Then he took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a single instant. 6The devil said to him, “I shall give to you all this power and their glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I may give it to whomever I wish. 7All this will be yours, if you worship me.” 8Jesus said to him in reply, “It is written:
‘You shall worship the Lord, your God,
and him alone shall you serve.’”
9Then he led him to Jerusalem, made him stand on the parapet of the temple, and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, 10for it is written:
‘He will command his angels concerning you,
to guard you,’
11and:
‘With their hands they will support you,
lest you dash your foot against a stone.’”
12Jesus said to him in reply, “It also says, ‘You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.’” 13When the devil had finished every temptation, he departed from him for a time.
OT: Deut 6:13, 16; 8:2–3; Ps 91:11–12
NT: Heb 2:18; 4:15. // Matt 4:1–11; Mark 1:12–13
Catechism: Jesus filled with the Spirit, 695; Jesus’ temptations, 538–40, 566, 2119; the devil’s claim to kingdoms, power, and glory, 2855; first commandment, 2084, 2096
Lectionary: First Sunday Lent (Year C)
[4:1]
The temptation narrative in Luke 4 continues the sequence of episodes from Luke 3. Although there is a shift from John to Jesus, the location is basically the same: the Jordan and the desert (see 3:2–3). Moreover, the Spirit descended upon Jesus at his baptism, so now Jesus is filled with the holy Spirit and led by the Spirit.
[4:2]
As the “son of Adam” (3:38), Jesus is tempted by the devil as was Adam (Gen 3). The word “devil” (diabolos), meaning “slanderer,” is used in the †Septuagint to translate the Hebrew satan, meaning “adversary” (e.g., 1 Chron 21:1). With the article, it here refers to the chief adversary, the fallen angel (Luke 10:18), “the ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan” (Rev 12:9, referring to Gen 3). Elsewhere in Luke, Jesus frequently mentions him and his nefarious activity (8:12; 11:18; 13:16; 22:31, 53), and his role in Jesus’ betrayal will specifically be noted (22:3).
Besides recalling Adam’s temptation, the passage echoes Israel’s exodus and desert experience. All three—Adam, Israel, and Jesus—are tested as God’s firstborn son (for Israel, see Exod 4:22; Deut 8:5). Having passed through water like Israel in the exodus, Jesus is tested throughout forty days in the desert, as the people of Israel were tested for forty years (Num 14:33–34; Deut 8:2).25 Israel, like Adam in the garden, failed the test. Specifically, the three temptations over which Jesus is triumphant echo three failures of Israel: (1) when “in the desert they gave in to their cravings” (Ps 106:14) in their demands for food (Exod 16:3); (2) when “they forgot the God who had saved them” (Ps 106:21) and practiced idolatry (Exod 32:1–6); and (3) when they “tested” God (Ps 95:9; Exod 17:7).26 Theref
ore, Jesus, who has come for Israel’s consolation and redemption (Luke 2:25, 38) and is in solidarity with the people (3:21), fasts for forty days, eating nothing during those days, like Moses before him (Exod 34:28; Deut 9:18, 25; 10:10).
[4:3]
The first temptation, to command this stone to become bread, addresses Jesus’ physical need for food. However, it runs deeper since it also regards Jesus’ identity as the Son of God (see Luke 3:22). Will Jesus use his divine sonship to serve his own needs or those of others? Clearly, Jesus’ mission is directed toward others: “He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives” (4:18). His mission includes satisfying the hungry (6:21), multiplying bread (9:16–17), and, ultimately, changing bread into his body (22:19).
[4:4]
Jesus responds by quoting Scripture—One does not live by bread alone (see Deut 8:3)—a verse that recalls God’s gift of manna to the Israelites in response to their hunger (Exod 16:4–35). Literally, the word translated “one” is a “human being” (anthrōpos). Jesus is indeed “Son of God,” but he experienced temptation in the human nature he shares with all of humanity (Heb 2:14). The result is that because he was “tested . . . yet without sin” (Heb 4:15), “he is able to help those who are being tested” (Heb 2:18).
[4:5–7]
The devil then tempts Jesus with a vision of all the kingdoms of the world (oikoumenē), whose power (or “authority,” RSV) and glory he promises to give to Jesus on condition that he worship him.27 Jesus will indeed receive power, glory, and more (see Luke 21:27; 22:69), not from the devil but from God the Father (see 10:22), and his kingdom will last forever (see 1:32–33). However, in God’s plan of salvation, Jesus must first experience the suffering of the cross (24:26). The temptation thus attempts to shortcut Jesus’ mission. Moreover, it focuses on power understood in a worldly sense, like that of Caesar Augustus, who can issue decrees concerning the whole “world” (oikoumenē, 2:1). However, Jesus is not a king like these earthly rulers but one who proclaims the kingdom of God (4:43). He has an authority more far-reaching than theirs (4:32, 36; 5:24; 20:8). His glory will be that of God the Father (9:26).
[4:8]
Again, Jesus replies quoting Deuteronomy: You shall worship the Lord, your God, / and him alone shall you serve (see Deut 6:13). The word “worship” answers the devil’s temptation. Jesus quotes from the same chapter in which is found the †Shema prayer recited twice daily by devout Jews: “Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone!” (Deut 6:4). Since Jesus is the Son of God (Luke 1:32, 35; 3:22) and has already been identified as Lord (1:43; 2:11), he can indeed be “worshiped,” as the disciples will do at the end of the Gospel (24:52 NRSV).
[4:9]
Luke has the same three temptations as Matthew, but recounts them in a different order because of the different role the passage has in the overall Gospel narrative. In Matthew, the third and climactic temptation is the one just considered, which takes place on a mountain (Matt 4:8) and finds its answer in Matthew’s concluding mountain scene, where Jesus is worshiped (28:16–17). In Luke, the climactic temptation occurs in the temple in Jerusalem, the place where Luke’s Gospel both begins (Luke 1:9) and ends (24:53). Rather than throwing himself down from the temple’s highest point, the parapet,28 Jesus at the end of the Gospel is “taken up to heaven” (24:51). The temptation involves his identity as Son of God, and with his ascension Jesus is vindicated as “Son of the Most High” (1:32).
[4:10–11]
In order to bolster his third temptation, the devil tries Jesus’ tactic of quoting Scripture, citing two consecutive verses of a psalm (Ps 91:11–12). However, the devil has chosen the wrong psalm, as its following verse predicts his own demise: “You can tread upon the asp and the viper, / trample the lion and the dragon” (Ps 91:13). Jesus not only fulfills this verse, which recalls the promise of victory after the fall (Gen 3:15), but will refer to it when he shares with his disciples this “power ‘to tread upon serpents’ . . . and upon the full force of the enemy” (Luke 10:19).
[4:12]
Not engaging the devil’s misinterpretation of the psalm, Jesus again replies quoting Deuteronomy: You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test (see Deut 6:16). Israel had tested the Lord God at Massah (Deut 6:16; see Exod 17:7). However, Jesus is the Lord (Luke 1:43; 2:11) being put to the test here, so with these words, he puts an end to the devil’s temptations.
[4:13]
The devil, thwarted three times by Jesus, thus departed from him. Jesus’ experience provides a lesson to his followers: “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). However, the devil will have his opportunity after a time, when he enters into Judas (Luke 22:3) at the dark “hour” of Jesus’ passion (22:53).
Reflection and Application (4:1–13)
Spiritual training. Jesus’ three temptations have been compared29 to the three temptations—for sensual gratification (gluttony, lust), for power and riches (avarice), and for ostentatious display (pride, vainglory)—against which Christians are warned in 1 John: “the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life” (1 John 2:16 RSV). These correspond to the original temptations in Genesis: “The woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise” (Gen 3:6 RSV). Remedies for these three temptations are the three practices especially observed during Lent: fasting, almsgiving, and prayer. Scripture commends such exercises of spiritual training (Matt 6:1–18; 1 Cor 9:25–27; 1 Tim 4:7–8). By fasting and other acts of self-denial, we learn self-control. By almsgiving, we practice detachment from material things and avoid creating false needs for ourselves. By prayer, especially using the Scriptures as Jesus did, we humble ourselves before God, relying on his grace.
1. Tacitus, Histories 5.9, trans. Clifford H. Moore, 4 vols., LCL (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925–37), 2:191.
2. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 18.237, 252.
3. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 18.26, 34.
4. Jer 1:1–3; Ezek 1:1–3; Hosea 1:1; Mic 1:1; Zeph 1:1; Hag 1:1; Zech 1:1.
5. 1QS (Rule of the Community) V, 13–14, in The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition, ed. Florentino García Martínez and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 1:81.
6. See 1QS VIII, 14, which cites Isa 40:3.
7. Richard Bauckham, “The Messianic Interpretation of Isaiah 10:34,” in The Jewish World around the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010), 193–205, referring to 4Q161 8–10 III, 2–18, and 4Q285 5.
8. Several Church Fathers (e.g., Jerome, Commentary on Matthew 3.11) also understood John’s saying at a symbolic level as referring to the custom of removing a sandal when someone relinquished the opportunity to marry a widow (see Deut 25:8–10; Ruth 4:5–8). John would be saying that not he but his kinsman Jesus is the bridegroom (see Luke 5:34; John 3:29). See Luis Alonso Schökel, Símbolos matrimoniales en la Biblia (Estella, Spain: Verbo Divino, 1997), 114–18; David Lyle Jeffrey, Luke, Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2012), 59–62.
9. Matthew and Mark call this half brother “Philip” (Matt 14:3; Mark 6:17), but Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 18.109–10, 136–37, identifies him as another half brother named Herod, not Philip the tetrarch (Luke 3:1). Some have proposed that he was called Herod Philip, “Herod” being the dynastic name common to various sons of Herod the Great.
10. Jewish Antiquities 18.109–19.
11. Quoted in Maria Dowling, Fisher of Men: A Life of John Fisher, 1469–1535 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 138.
12. Luke 5:16; 6:12; 9:18, 28–29; 11:1; 22:41–45.
13. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, trans. Adrian J. Walker (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 25–26.
14. Jon D. Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 200–202.
15. See the sidebars, “King Herod and Herod the Tetrarch,” p. 36, and “The Birth of Jesus,” p. 65.
16. The word “son” actually does not occur here nor in the remainder of the genealogy, but it is implied throughout from its use at the beginning of the genealogy.
17. Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Commentary on the Gospels, trans. H. A. G. Houghton (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2017), 6–7.
18. For the suggested reasons explaining this, see John Nolland, Luke 1–9:20, WBC 35A (Dallas: Word, 1989), 169–70. Joachim, the name of Mary’s father from the second-century Protevangelium of James, is often then explained as another name for Heli.
19. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 1.7; 6.31.
20. Richard Bauckham, Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in the Early Church (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1990), 315–78. See also Christophe Guignard, “Jesus’ Family and Their Genealogy according to the Testimony of Julius Africanus,” in Infancy Gospels: Stories and Identities, ed. Claire Clivaz et al. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 67–93.