Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Luke 7:4

And when they came to Jesus, they besought him instantly, saying, That he was worthy for whom he should do this:

4. instantly ] i.e. urgently, as in the phrase “continuing instant in prayer.”

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

They besought him instantly – Urgently or earnestly.

He was worthy – The centurion. He had showed favor to the Jews, and it was not improper to show him a kindness.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

4. he was worthya testimonymost precious, coming from those who probably were strangers to theprinciple from which he acted (Ec7:1).

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

And when they came to Jesus,…. To that part of the city where he was; either at Peter’s house, where he used to be when in this place; or rather it might be as he was passing along the streets, that they came up to him

they besought him instantly; or with great vehemence and importunity; very studiously and carefully they urged the case, and pressed him much to it:

saying, he was worthy for whom he should do this; or, “for whom thou shouldst do this”, as the Vulgate Latin, Syriac, Persic, and Ethiopic versions read, and some copies; and which reading connects the words best. This speech of theirs savours of their “pharisaic” tenet and notion of merit, and is very different from the sense the poor centurion had of himself.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

Besought (). Imperfect active, began and kept on beseeching. This is the same verb used by Matthew in Mt 8:5 of the centurion himself.

Earnestly (). From haste. So eagerly, earnestly, zealously, for time was short.

That thou shouldst do this for him ( ). Second future middle singular of . Old and common verb, furnish on thy part. H is relative in dative case almost with notion of contemplated result (Robertson, Grammar, p. 961).

Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament

They besought him instantly [ ] . On besought, see on ch. Luk 6:24. Instantly, which commonly means at once, is used in its older meaning, pressingly, from the Latin instare, to urge or press upon. So Rom 12:12, “instant in prayer.” Wyc., prayed busily. That he was worthy [ ] . The A. V. renders oti as a conjunction, that. The Rev., more correctly, takes it as a mark of quotation, besides properly rendering ejstin is, instead of was. Render as Rev., He is worthy that thou shouldst do this; for the best texts read parexh, the second person, thou shouldst do, instead of the third person, parexei, he shall do.

Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament

1) “And when they came to Jesus,” (hoi de paragenomenoi pros ton lesoun) “Then when they came to Jesus,” the elders among the Jews came to Him on behalf of the Gentile centurion of the Roman band.

2) “They besought him instantly, saying,” (parekaloun auton spoudaios, legontes) “They appealed to Him earnestly, repeatedly saying,” seeking help from Jesus, on behalf of the centurion and his sick servant, who was near death with a paralytic or palsied condition, Mat 8:6.

3) “That he was worthy for whom he should do this.” (hoti aksios estin hi parekse touto) “That he is worthy for whom you should grant this request,” a worthy, reputable centurion; Centurions are always mentioned as respectable, reputable men in the New Testament, even when unsaved, Act 10:22. They not only delivered the centurion’s message but also made an appeal of gratitude and compassion on his behalf.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

(4) They besought him instantly.Better, earnestly, or urgently, the adverb instantly having practically lost the meaning which our translators attached to it.

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

4. Instantly Earnestly, pressingly.

Worthy They thought him worthy, though he in his humility did not.

Should do That is, the centurion was worthy to have this favour done him.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

‘And they, when they came to Jesus, besought him earnestly, saying, “He is worthy that you should do this for him, for he loves our nation, and himself built us our synagogue.’

The Jews were very impressed by good works. It was something for which Jews were well known. To them this, together with his reverent attitude towards the God of Israel, made the centurion commendable. It is made clear, however, that in the end what commended him to Jesus was his faith in Him. It did illustrate, however, that a tree is known by its fruit, and that a man of faith will also be a man of works.

Accordingly the elders came to Jesus and put to him the centurion’s plea, assuring him that he was a deserving man having built a synagogue for the Jews. The remains of a synagogue have been discovered in the area which might well be a synagogue built on the site of this very one (which would have been destroyed by Titus).

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

4 And when they came to Jesus, they besought him instantly, saying, That he was worthy for whom he should do this:

Ver. 4. That he was worthy ] So they held him: but he held himself unworthy, Luk 7:6 . God in like manner saith that Jerusalem had received double for her sins, Isa 40:2 . But Jerusalem herself saith, Our God hath punished us less than our sins, Ezr 9:13 . Too much, saith God; Too little, saith she; and yet how sweetly and beautifully doth this kind of contradiction become both!

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

4. ] If the re [64] . reading be retained, it must be remembered that it is not the second person of (for which , , are no precedents, being peculiar conventional forms), but third pers. fut. act . The second person in – does not occur in later Greek, with the above exceptions.

[64] The Textus Receptus or received text of the Greek Testament. Used in this Edition when elz and Steph agree

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

Luk 7:4 . , earnestly; though he was a Pagan, they Jews, for reason given. , for . is the 2nd person singular, future, middle, in a relative clause expressing purpose instead of the more usual subjunctive ( vide Burton, 318).

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

Luke

WORTHY-NOT WORTHY

Luk 7:4 , Luk 7:6 – Luk 7:7 .

A Roman centurion, who could induce the elders of a Jewish village to approach Jesus on his behalf, must have been a remarkable person. The garrison which held down a turbulent people was not usually likely to be much loved by them. But this man, about whom the incident with which our texts are connected is related, was obviously one of the people of whom that restless age had many, who had found out that his creed was outworn, and who had been drawn to Judaism by its lofty monotheism and its austere morality. He had gone so far as to build a synagogue, and thereby, no doubt, incurred the ridicule of his companions, and perhaps the suspicions of his superiors. What would the English authorities think of an Indian district officer that conformed to Buddhism or Brahminism, and built a temple? That is what the Roman officials would think of our centurion. And there were other beautiful traits in his character. He had a servant ‘that was dear to him.’ It was not only the nexus of master and servant and cash payments that bound these two together. And very beautiful is this story, when he himself speaks about this servant. He does not use the rough word which implies a bondservant, and which is employed throughout the whole of the rest of the narrative, but a much gentler one, and speaks of him as his ‘boy.’ So he had won the hearts of these elders so far as to make them swallow their dislike to Jesus, and deign to go to Him with a request which implied His powers at which at all other times they scoffed.

Now, we owe to Luke the details which show us that there was a double deputation to our Lord-the first which approached Him to ask His intervention, and the second which the centurion sent when he saw the little group coming towards his house, and a fresh gush of awe rose in his heart. The elders said, ‘He is worthy’; he said, ‘I am not worthy.’ The verbal resemblance is, indeed, not so close in the original as in our versions, for the literal rendering of the words put into the centurion’s mouth is ‘not fit.’ But still the evident antithesis is preserved: the one saying expresses the favourable view that partial outsiders took of the man, the other gives the truer view that the man took of himself. And so, putting away the story altogether, we may set these two verdicts side by side, as suggesting wider lessons than those which arise from the narrative itself.

I. And, first, we have here the shallow plea of worthiness.

These elders did not think loftily of Jesus Christ. The conception that we have of Him goes a long way to settle whether it is possible or not for us to approach Him with the word ‘worthy’ on our lips. The higher we lift our thought of Christ, the lower becomes our thought of ourselves. These elders saw the centurion from the outside, and estimated him accordingly. There is no more frequent, there is no more unprofitable and impossible occupation, than that of trying to estimate other people’s characters. Yet there are few things that we are so fond of doing. Half our conversation consists of it, and a very large part of what we call literature consists of it; and it is bound to be always wrong, whether it is eulogistic or condemnatory, because it only deals with the surface.

Here we have the shallow plea advanced by these elders in reference to the centurion which corresponds to the equally shallow plea that some of us are tempted to advance in reference to ourselves. The disposition to do so is in us all. Luther said that every man was born with a Pope in his belly. Every man is born with a Pharisee in himself, who thinks that religion is a matter of barter, that it is so much work, buying so much favour here, or heaven hereafter. Wherever you look, you see the working of that tendency. It is the very mainspring of heathenism, with all its penances and performances. It is enshrined in the heart of Roman Catholicism, with its dreams of a treasury of merits, and works of supererogation and the like. Ay! and it has passed over into a great deal of what calls itself Evangelical Protestantism, which thinks that, somehow or other, it is all for our good to come here, for instance on a Sunday, though we have no desire to come and no true worship in us when we have come, and to do a great many things that we would much rather not do, and to abstain from a great many things that we are strongly inclined to, and all with the notion that we have to bring some ‘worthiness’ in order to move Jesus Christ to deal graciously with us.

And then notice that the religion of barter, which thinks to earn God’s favour by deeds, and is, alas! the only religion of multitudes, and subtly mingles with the thoughts of all, tends to lay the main stress on the mere external arts of cult and ritual. ‘He loveth our nation, and hath built us a synagogue’; not, ‘He is gentle, good, Godlike.’ ‘He has built a synagogue.’ That is the type of work which most people who fall into the notion that heaven is to be bought, offer as the price. I have no doubt that there are many people who have never caught a glimpse of any loftier conception than that, and who, when they think-which they do not often do-about religious subjects at all, are saying to themselves, ‘I do as well as I can,’ and who thus bring in some vague thought of the mercy of God as a kind of make-weight to help out what of their own they put in the scale. Ah, dear brethren! that is a wearying, an endless, a self-torturing, an imprisoning, an enervating thought, and the plea of ‘worthiness’ is utterly out of place and unsustainable before God.

II. Now let me turn to the deeper conviction which silences that plea.

‘I am not worthy that Thou shouldest enter under my roof, wherefore neither thought I myself worthy to come unto Thee.’ This man had a loftier conception of who and what Christ was than the elders had. To them He was only one of themselves, perhaps endowed with some kind of prophetic power, but still one of themselves. The centurion had pondered over the mystic power of the word of command, as he knew it by experience in the legion, or in the little troop of which he, though a man under the authority of his higher officers, was the commander; and he knew that even his limited power carried with it absolute authority and compelled obedience. And he had looked at Christ, and wondered, and thought, and had come at last to a dim apprehension of that great truth that, somehow or other, in this Man there did lie a power which, by the mere utterance of His will, could affect matter, could raise the dead, could still a storm, could banish disease, could quell devils. He did not formulate his belief, he could not have said exactly what it led to, or what it contained, but he felt that there was something divine about Him. And so, seeing, though it was but through mists, the sight of that great perfection, that divine humanity and human divinity, he bowed himself and said, ‘Lord! I am not worthy.’

When you see Christ as He is, and give Him the honour due to His name, all notions of desert will vanish utterly.

Further, the centurion saw himself from the inside, and that makes all the difference. Ah, brethren! most of us know our own characters just as little as we know our own faces, and find it as difficult to form a just estimate of what the hidden man of the heart looks like as we find it impossible to form a just estimate of what we look to other people as we walk down the street. But if we once turned the searchlight upon ourselves, I do not think that any of us would long be able to stand by that plea, ‘I am worthy.’ Have you ever been on a tour of discovery, like what they go through at the Houses of Parliament on the first day of each session, down into the cellars to see what stores of explosive material, and what villains to fire it, may be lurking there? If you have once seen yourself as you are, and take into account, not only actions but base tendencies, foul, evil thoughts, imagined sins of the flesh, meannesses and basenesses that never have come to the surface, but which you know are bits of you, I do not think that you will have much more to say about ‘I am worthy.’ The flashing waters of the sea may be all blazing in the sunshine, but if they were drained off, what a frightful sight the mud and the ooze at the bottom would be! Others look at the dancing, glittering surface, but you, if you are a wise man, will go down in the diving-bell sometimes, and for a while stop there at the bottom, and turn a bull’s-eye straight upon all the slimy, crawling things that are there, and that would die if they came into the light.

‘I am not worthy that Thou shouldest enter under my roof.’ But then, as I have said, most of us are strangers to ourselves. The very fact of a course of action which, in other people, we should describe with severe condemnation, being ours, bribes us to indulgence and lenient judgment. Familiarity, too, weakens our sense of the foulness of our own evils. If you have been in the Black Hole all night, you do not know how vitiated the atmosphere is. You have to come out into the fresh air to find out that. We look at the errors of others through a microscope; we look at our own through the wrong end of the telescope; and the one set, when we are in a cynical humour, seem bigger than they are; and the other set always seem smaller.

Now, that clear consciousness of my own sinfulness ought to underlie all my religious feelings and thoughts. I believe, for my part, that no man is in a position to apprehend Christianity rightly who has not made the acquaintance of his own bad self. And I trace a very large proportion of the shallow Christianity of this day as well as of the disproportion in which its various truths are set forth, and the rising of crops of erroneous conceptions just to this, that this generation has to a large extent lost-no, do not let me say this generation, you and I -have to a large extent lost, that wholesome consciousness of our own unworthiness and sin.

But on the other hand, let me remind you that the centurion’s deeper conviction is not yet the deepest of all, and that whilst the Christianity which ignores sin is sure to be impotent, on the other hand the Christianity which sees very little but sin is bondage and misery, and is impotent too. And there are many of us whose type of religion is far gloomier than it should be, and whose motive of service is far more servile than it ought to be, just because we have not got beyond the centurion, and can only say, ‘I am not worthy; I am a poor, miserable sinner.’

III. And so I come to the third point, which is not in my text, but which both my texts converge upon, and that is the deepest truth of all, that worthiness or unworthiness has nothing to do with Christ’s love.

When these elders interceded with Jesus, He at once rose and went with them, and that not because of their intercession or of the certificate of character which they had given, but because His own loving heart impelled Him to go to any soul that sought His help. So we are led away from all anxious questionings as to whether we are worthy or no, and learn that, far above all thoughts either of undue self-complacency or of undue self-depreciation, lies the motive for Christ’s gracious and healing approach in.

‘His ceaseless, unexhausted love,

Unmerited and free.’

This is the truth to which the consciousness of sinfulness and unworthiness points us all, for which that consciousness prepares us, in which that consciousness does not melt away, but rather is increased and ceases to be any longer a burden or a pain. Here, then, we come to the very bed-rock of everything, for

‘Merit lives from man to man,

But not from man, O Lord, to Thee.’

Jesus Christ comes to us, not drawn by our deserts, but impelled by His own love, and that love pours itself out upon each of us. So we do not need painfully to amass a store of worthiness, nor to pile up our own works, by which we may climb to heaven. ‘Say not, who shall ascend up into heaven,’ to bring Christ down again, ‘but the word is nigh thee, that if thou wilt believe with thine heart, thou shalt be saved.’ Worthiness or unworthiness is to be swept clean out of the field, and I am to be content to be a pauper, to owe everything to what I have done nothing to procure, and to cast myself on the sole, all-sufficient mercy of God in Jesus Christ our Lord.

And then comes liberty, and then comes joy. If the gift is given from no consideration of men’s deserts, then the only thing that men have to do is to exercise the faith that takes it. As the Apostle says in words that sound very hard and technical, but which, if you would only ponder them, are throbbing with vitality, ‘It is of faith that it might be by grace.’ Since He gives simply because He loves, the only requisites are the knowledge of our need, the will to receive, the trust that, in clasping the Giver, possesses the gift.

The consciousness of unworthiness will be deepened. The more we know ourselves to be sinful, the more we shall cleave to Christ, and the more we cleave to Christ, the more we shall know ourselves to be sinful. Peter caught a glimpse of what Jesus was when he sat in the boat, and he said, ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!’ But Peter saw both himself and his Lord more clearly, that is more truly, when, subsequent to his black treachery, his brother Apostle said to him concerning the figure standing on the beach in the grey morning, ‘It is the Lord,’ and he flung himself over the side and floundered through the water to get to his Master’s feet. For that is the place for the man who knows himself unworthy. The more we are conscious of our sin, the closer let us cling to our Lord’s forgiving heart, and the more sure we are that we have that love which we have not earned, the more shall we feel how unworthy of it we are. As one of the prophets says, with profound meaning, ‘Thou shalt be ashamed and confounded, and never open thy mouth any more because of thy transgression, when I am pacified towards thee for all that thou hast done.’ The child buries its face on its mother’s breast, and feels its fault the more because the loving arms clasp it close.

And so, dear brethren, deepen your convictions, if you are deluded by that notion of merit; deepen your convictions, if you see your own evil so clearly that you see little else. Come into the light, come into the liberty, rise to that great thought, ‘Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but by His mercy He saved us.’ Have done with the religion of barter, and come to the religion of undeserved grace. If you are going to stop on the commercial level, ‘the wages of sin is death’; rise to the higher ground: ‘the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.’

Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren

to. Greek. pros. App-104.

besought. Stronger word than in Luk 7:3. App-134.:6.

instantly = pressingly, or urgently.

was = is: giving the exact words.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

4.] If the re[64]. reading be retained, it must be remembered that it is not the second person of (for which , , are no precedents, being peculiar conventional forms), but third pers. fut. act. The second person in – does not occur in later Greek, with the above exceptions.

[64] TheTextus Receptus or received text of the Greek Testament. Used in this Edition when elz and Steph agree

Fuente: The Greek Testament

Luk 7:4. , worthy) The centurion himself thought differently of himself, Neither thought I myself worthy, Luk 7:7.-) The Others read ; but the construction supports the Subjunctive: , .[69]

[69] ABCDL read . Dignus est ut hoc illi prstes, Vulg. Rec. Text has without any very old authority.-ED. and TRANSL.

Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament

worthy: Luk 7:6, Luk 7:7, Luk 20:35, Mat 10:11, Mat 10:13, Mat 10:37, Mat 10:38, Rev 3:4

Reciprocal: Gen 23:8 – entreat Luk 4:38 – they Act 10:2 – which Act 10:22 – of good 2Ti 4:2 – be Jam 5:16 – Confess

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

THREE ESTIMATES OF CHARACTER

He was worthy. I am not worthy. I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.

Luk 7:4-9

I. The elders estimate of the centurion.The elders of the Jews besought the Lord for this centurion, saying that he was worthy for whom He should do this. The four Roman centurions mentioned in the New Testament are a great contrast to the Roman governors. The centurion in charge of the Crucifixion when he had seen it all said, Truly this Man was the Son of God. Cornelius, mentioned in Acts 10, was a just man, and one that feareth God. Julius (Acts 27) courteously entreated Paul, and gave him liberty. The centurion in our text was one of the most lovable men in the New Testament. A citizen of the great Roman Empire, an officer in the all-victorious army, he is clothed with humility, and puts on charity.

II. The centurions estimate of himself.I am not worthy but say in a word, and my servant shall be healed. A sense of our own unworthiness and a sense of the preciousness of Christ always go together, and are never separated. Those who have the highest views of Christ have the lowest views of themselves. Put yourself very low, then Christ will be very high.

III. The Lords estimate of the centurion.The Lords estimate of this man was, that his faith was a finer flower of human trust than He had seen in Israel. Then our Lord added, And I say unto you, That many shall come from the east and west, from heathen lands, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the Kingdom of Heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness.

Rev. F. Harper.

Illustrations

(1) Professor Stalker said he had often been struck by the fact that, while among soldiers the proportion of religious men is not large, yet the quality of those who are Christians is exceptionally good, there being a downrightness and cleanness about their profession of the Gospel, if they make it at all, which is rare among other classes of the community. He once asked a soldier what was the reason of this, and he had no difficulty in answering: In the Army, he said, if a man intends to be religious, he must be so out-and-out; if he is not, his comrades will soon, either by ridicule or cajolery, drive religion out of him; but they respect a man who knows his own mind and sticks to what he has professed.

(2) In his Private Devotions Bishop Andrewes says: I need more grief, O God; I plainly need it. I can sin much, but I cannot correspondingly repent. O Lord, give me a molten heart. Give me tears; give me a fountain of tears. Give me the grace of tears. Drop down, ye heavens, and bedew the dryness of my heart. Give me, O Lord, this saving grace. No grace of all the graces were more welcome to me. If I may not water my couch with my tears, nor wash Thy Feet with my tears, at least give me one or two little tears that Thou mayest put into Thy bottle and write in Thy book!

Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary

4

Jesus had taught the principle of favoring those only who were worthy (Mat 7:6), hence that point was stressed in their appeal for his help.

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

Luk 7:4. He is worthy. The correct reading makes this verse a quotation of their language. The intercession of the elders is true to nature: a rich man, a man of authority and position, a man of their party, though not to the manner born, would enlist their good offices.

Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament

Verse 4

Instantly; urgently.

Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament

The village leaders explained to Jesus why they were interceding for the centurion. Their affection for him is obvious and quite untypical, as was a Roman soldier’s affection for the Jews. Any person in this centurion’s position could have enriched himself honestly. [Note: B. S. Easton, The Gospel according to St. Luke, p. 95.] Consequently the fact that he was so generous with the Jewish residents of Capernaum shows his selfless concern for their welfare. Early Jewish Christian readers should have concluded that since Jews thought this Gentile worthy of Jesus’ help they should see no problem with accepting similar people into the church.

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)