Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Luke 18:40
And Jesus stood, and commanded him to be brought unto him: and when he was come near, he asked him,
40 . and when he was come near ] The narrative of St Mark, which is evidently derived from an immediate eye-witness, describes Bartimaeus as ‘springing to his feet and flinging away his outer robe,’ when he was told that Jesus had called him.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Verse 40. And when he was come near] See the remarkable account of the negro and white man, related on Mr 10:50.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
40. commanded, c.Mark (Mr10:49) has this interesting addition: “And they call theblind man, saying unto him, Be of good comfort, rise, He calleththee”just as one earnestly desiring an interview with someexalted person, but told by one official after another that it isvain to wait, as he will not succeed (they know it), yet persists inwaiting for some answer to his suit, and at length the door opens,and a servant appears, saying, “You will be admittedhe hascalled you.” And are there no other suitors to Jesus whosometimes fare thus? “And he, casting away his garment”howlively is this touch, evidently of an eye-witness, expressive of hisearnestness and joy”came to Jesus” (Mar 10:49Mar 10:50).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
And Jesus stood,…. He stood still; he made a full stop, and went no further, when, it is very likely, he was just over against him:
and commanded him to be brought unto him; either by the disciples, or by some of the multitude:
and when he was come near he asked him; the following question.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Stood (). First aorist passive where Mark 10:49; Matt 20:32 have (second aorist active) translated “stood still.” One is as “still” as the other. The first is that Jesus ” stopped.”
Be brought (). First aorist infinitive in indirect command.
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
1) “And Jesus stood, and commanded him to be brought unto him,” (statheis de ho lesous ekeleusen auton achthenai pros auton) “Then Jesus standing (stopped) and commanded him to be brought or led to him,” to where he stood, showing compassion or pity for the afflicted, Mat 9:36; Mat 20:32; Mar 10:49.
2) “And when he was come near,” (engisantos de autou) “Then as he drew (came) near,” close to Jesus, Bartimaeus especially, “casting away his garment,” his outer garment, he arose and came directly to Jesus, the giver of life and light, Mar 10:46; Mar 10:50.
3) “He asked him,” (eperoesen auton) “He (Jesus) asked him,” Mat 20:32; Mar 10:51.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
‘And Jesus stood, and commanded him to be brought to him, and when he was come near, he asked him,’
Jesus could never turn from a plea for help and commanded that the man be brought to Him. And on his approach asked him what he wanted.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
The healing:
v. 40. And Jesus stood, and commanded him to be brought unto Him; and when he was come near, He asked him,
v. 41. saying, What wilt thou that I shall do unto thee? And he said, Lord, that I may receive my sight.
v. 42. And Jesus said unto him, Receive thy sight; thy faith hath saved thee.
v. 43. And immediately he received his sight, and followed Him, glorifying God; and all the people, when they saw it, gave praise unto God. Jesus, as soon as He heard the plaintive cry, stood still in the road and commanded that the blind man be brought to Him. And now willing hands were found without trouble to render the service required. In order to hear the prayer of faith, Jesus asked the man what he desired Him to do for him. The request of the blind man was incidentally a confession, for he called Jesus Lord, confessing Him to be God, just as he had previously expressed his belief that Jesus was the Messiah. Here was a full confession of faith in the person and in the office of Jesus. In the strength of this faith he made his prayer that he might be able to see, that his eyes might be opened. And Jesus, in the depth of His sympathy for all men, in whatever trouble they may be, spoke the almighty word which opened his eyes: Receive thy sight. His faith had gained the boon of the merciful healing for him. “As soon as the word sounds: Receive thy sight, he believes it; therefore, what he believed now happens to him. That is the first lesson which we should learn from this gospel, namely, to believe the Word of God with complete, trustful heart, without wavering. ” At once he received his sight and followed after Jesus, with his mouth overflowing with praise to God. Trusting in God’s mercy and Christ’s love for sinners and His sympathy for those suffering in any way from the curse of sin, he was made whole without delay. And all the people that saw this miracle likewise gave praise to God. Note: A Christian that has received any evidence of the mercy of God, in the countless benefits conferred through the means of God, really never has cause to complain, but should always be found with his mouth singing the praises of Him who has led him out of the darkness of sin and unbelief into His marvelous light.
Summary. Jesus tells the parable s
of the importunate widow an d
of the Pharisee and the publican, blesses little children that are brought
to Him, speaks to the rich young ruler concerning sacrifices for His sake, gives His disciples the third prediction
of His Passion, and heals the blind man of Jericho.
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
Luk 18:40 . , to be led to Him; Lk. again careful to bring out the fact of blindness, all the more noticeable when his narrative is compared with parallels. The omission of the interesting particulars in Mk., ver. 49, 50, has been remarked on (Hahn) as proving that Lk. did not know Mk. Again a precarious inference. It is Lk.’s habit to magnify the miracle, therefore he tells the story so as to bring out that it was a case of total blindness, which does not clearly appear in Mk., vide ver. 50.
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
Luke
THE MAN THAT STOPPED JESUS
Luk 18:40 f11 – Luk 18:41
This story of the man that stopped Christ is told by the three ‘Synoptic’ Evangelists, and it derives a special value from having occurred within a week of the Crucifixion. You remember how graphically Mark tells how the blind man hears who is passing and immediately begins to cry with a loud voice to Christ to have mercy upon him; how the officious disciples-a great deal more concerned for the Master’s dignity than He was Himself-tried to silence him; and how, with a sturdy persistence and independence of externals which often goes along with blindness, ‘he cried the more a great deal’ because they did try, and then how he won the distinction of being the man that stopped Christ. When Jesus stood still, and commanded him to be called, the crowd wheeled right round at once, and instead of hindering, encumbered him with help, and bade him to ‘rise, and be of good cheer.’ Then he flings away some poor rag that he had had to cover himself sitting there, and wearing his under-garment only, comes to Christ, and Jesus asks, ‘What do you want?’ A promise in the shape of a question. Bartimaeus knows what he wants, and answers without hesitation, and so he gets his request.
Now, I think in all this incident, and especially in its centre part, which I have read, there are great lessons for us. And the first of them is, I see here a wonderful revelation of Christ’s quick sympathy at a moment when He was most absorbed.
I said that all this occurred within a week of our Lord’s Crucifixion. If you will recall the way in which that last journey to Jerusalem is described in the Evangelists, you will see that there was something very extraordinary about the determination and tension of spirit which impelled Jesus along the road, all the way from Galilee. Mark says that the disciples followed and were amazed. There was something quite unlike what they had been accustomed to, in His face and bearing, and it was so strange to them that they were puzzled and frightened. We read, too, that their amazement and fright prevented them from going very near Him on the road; ‘as they followed they were afraid.’ Then the story goes on to tell how James and John, with their arrogant wish, did draw closer to Him, the rest of them lagging behind, conscious of a certain unaccustomed distance between Him and them, which only the ambitious two dared to diminish. Further, one of the Evangelists speaks of His face being ‘set’ to go to Jerusalem, the gentle lineaments fixed in a new expression of resolution and absorption. The Cross was flinging its shadow over Him. He was bracing Himself up for the last struggle. If ever there was a moment of His life when we might have supposed that He would be oblivious of externals, and especially of the individual sorrows of one poor blind beggar sitting by the roadside, it was that moment. But however plunged in great thoughts about the agonising suffering that He was going to front, and the grand work that He was going to do, and the great victory that He was going to win so soon, He had
‘A heart at leisure from itself
To soothe and sympathise.’
Brethren, is not that a lesson for us all? It is not spiritualising, allegorising, cramming meanings into an incident that are not in it, when we say-Think of Jesus Christ as one of ourselves, knowing that He was going to His death within a week, and then think of Him turning to this poor man. Is not that a pattern for us? We are often more selfish in our sorrows than in our joys. Many of us are inclined, when we are weighed down by personal sorrows, to say, ‘As long as I have this heavy weight lying on my heart, how can you expect me to take an interest in the affairs of others, or to do Christian work, or to rise to the calls of benevolence and the cries of need?’ We do not expect you to do it; but Jesus Christ did it, ‘leaving us an example that we should follow in His steps.’ Next to the blessed influences of God’s own Spirit, and the peace-bringing act of submission, there is no such comfort for sorrow, as to fling ourselves into others’ griefs, and to bear others’ burdens. Our Lord, with His face set like a flint, on the road to the Cross, but yet sufficiently free of heart to turn to Bartimaeus, reads a lesson that rebukes us all, and should teach us all.
Further, do we not see here a beautiful concrete instance, on the lower plane, of the power of earnest desire.
No enemy could have stopped Christ on that road; no opposition could have stopped Him, no beseeching on the part of loving and ignorant friends, repeating the temptation in the wilderness-or the foolish words of Peter, ‘This shall not be unto Thee,’ could have stopped Him. He would have trodden down all such flimsy obstacles, as a lion ‘from the thickets of Jordan’ crashes through the bulrushes, but this cry stopped Him, ‘Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me, and the Cross and all else that He was hastening to, great as it was for the world, had to wait its turn, for something else had to be done first. There was noise enough on the road, the tramp of many feet, the clatter of many eager tongues, but the voice of one poor man sitting in the dust there by the roadside, found its way through all the noise to Christ’s ears. ‘Which things are an allegory.’ There is an ocean of praise always, as I might so say breaking upon Christ’s Throne, but the little stream of my petitions flows distinguishable through all that sea. As one of our poets says, we may even think of Him as ‘missing my little human praise’ when the voice of one poor boy was not heard. Surely amidst all the encouragements that we have to believe that our cry is not sent up into an empty heaven, nor into deaf ears, and that all the multitude of creatures that wait before that Throne do not prevent the individualising knowledge and the individualising love of Jesus Christ from coming straight to every one of us, this little incident is not the least instructive and precious. He that heard Bartimaeus will hear us.
In like manner, may I not say that here we have an illustration of how Christ, who has so much besides to do, would suspend other work, if it were needful, in order to do what we need? As I have said, the rest had to wait. Bartimaeus stopped Christ. And our hand, if it be the hand of faith, put out to the hem of the garment as Jesus of Nazareth passeth by, will so far stop Him as that He will do what we wish, if what we wish is in accordance with our highest good. There was another man in Jericho who stopped Christ, on that same journey; for not only the petition of Bartimaeus, but the curiosity-which was more than curiosity-of Zacchaeus, stopped Him, and He who stood still, though He had His face set like a flint to go to Jerusalem, because Bartimaeus cried, stood still and looked up into the sycamore tree where the publican was-the best fruit that ever it bore-and said, ‘Zacchaeus; come down, I must abide at thy house.’ Why must He abide? Because He discerned there a soul that He could help and save, and that arrested Him on His road to the Cross.
So, dear friends, amidst all the work of administering the universe which He does, and of guiding and governing and inspiring His Church, which He does, if you ask for the supply of your need He would put that work aside for a moment, if necessary, to attend to you. That is no exaggeration; it is only a strong way of putting the plain truth that Christ’s love individualises each of its objects; and lavishes itself upon each one of us; as if there were no other beings in the universe but only our two selves.
And then, remember too, that what Bartimaeus got was not taken from anyone else. Nobody suffered because Jesus paused to help him. They sat down in ranks, five thousand of them, and as they began to eat, those that were first served would be looked upon with envious eye by the last ‘ranks,’ who would be wondering if the bits of bread and the two small fishes were enough to go round. But the first group was fed full and the last group had as much, and they took up ‘of the fragments that remained, twelve baskets full.’
‘Enough for all, enough for each,
Enough for evermore.’
‘What wilt thou that I shall do unto thee?’ He had asked the same question a little while before, under very different circumstances. When James and John came and tried to beguile Him into a blind promise, because they knew that It was not likely that they would get what they asked if they said it out at first. He avoided the snare with that same question, To them the question was a refusal; they had said: ‘Master, we will that Thou wouldst do whatever we should desire’; and He said: ‘What is it that ye desire? Let Me know that first.’ But when blind Bartimaeus cried, Jesus smiled down upon him-though his sightless eyeballs could not see the smile, there would be a smile in the cadence of His words-and He said: ‘What wouldst thou that I should do for thee?’ To this suppliant that question was a promise-’I will do what you want.’ He puts the key of the royal treasure-house into the hand of faith, and says, ‘Go in and help yourself. Take what you will.’
Only, of course, we must remember that there are limitations in the very nature of the case, imposed not arbitrarily, but because the very nature of the truest gifts creates them, and these limitations to some of us sound as if they took all the blessedness out of the act of prayer. ‘We know,’ says one of the Apostles, ‘that if we ask anything according to His will He heareth us.’ Some of us think that that is a very poor kind of charter, but it sets the necessary limit to the omnipotence of faith. ‘What wouldst thou that I should do for thee?’ Unless our answer always, and at bottom, is, ‘Not my will, but Thine,’ we have not yet learnt the highest blessing, nor the truest meaning, of prayer. For to pray does not mean to insist, to press our wishes on God, but it means, first, to desire that our wills may be brought into harmony with His. The old Rabbis hit upon great truths now and then, and one of them said, ‘Make God’s will thy will, that He may make thy will His will.’ If any poor, blind Bartimaeus remembers that, and asks accordingly, he has the key to the royal treasury in his possession, and he may go in and plunge his hand up to the wrist in jewels and diamonds, and carry away bars of gold, and it will all be his.
When this man, who had no sight in his eyeballs, knew that whatever he wanted he should have, he did not need to pause long to consider what it was that he wanted most. If you and I had that Aladdin’s lamp given to us, and had only to rub it for a mighty spirit to come that would fulfil our wishes, I wonder if we should be as sure of what we wanted. If we were as conscious of our need as the blind man was of his, we should pause as little in our response to the question: ‘What wouldst thou that I should do for thee?’ ‘Lord! Dost Thou not see that mine eyes are dark? What else but sight can I want?’ Jesus still comes to us with the same question. God grant that we may all say; ‘Lord, how canst Thou ask us? Dost Thou not see that my soul is stained, my love wandering, my eyeballs dim? Give me Thyself!’ If we thus ask, then the answer will come as quickly to us as it did to this blind man: ‘Go thy way! Thy faith hath saved thee,’ and that ‘Go thy way’ will not be dismissal from the Presence of our Benefactor, but our ‘way’ will be the same as Bartimaeus’ was, when he received his sight, and ‘followed Jesus in the way.’
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
stood = stopped.
commanded . . . brought. The other man the Lord commanded to be “called” (Mar 10:49). The two were called by Himself (Mat 20:32).
to be brought unto. Greek. acid pros. Used by Luke also in Luk 4:40; Luk 19:35. He uses prosago in Luk 9:41. Act 16:20; Act 27:27.
come near. The one in Mar 10:50. The two were already near (Mat 20:32).
asked. Greek. eperotao. Compare App-134.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Mat 20:31-34, Mar 10:48-52
Reciprocal: Mar 10:49 – stood Joh 1:38 – What
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
0
It would have been a hardship for the blind man to get into the immediate presence of Jesus unaided, therefore the people were commanded to lead him to the spot.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Jesus evidently asked His question to elicit the blind man’s faith. He certainly knew what he wanted. The title "Lord" here obviously reflects more than simple respect. It expressed the man’s faith. Jesus’ words would have left no doubt that He was responsible for the miracle. He hastened to clarify that the man’s faith was the instrumental cause of the healing. Luke stressed this again for his readers’ benefit (cf. Luk 7:50; Luk 8:48; Luk 17:19). Divine power was the efficient cause of the healing.
The responses to the instantaneous (Luk 1:64; et al.) healing were what they should have been. The man began following Jesus, and he glorified God (cf. Luk 18:23). Likewise the observers’ reaction was to praise God. Only Luke recorded the glorifying and praising of God that took place then (cf. Luk 2:20; Luk 5:25; et al.). This reflects his interest in the joyful outcome of salvation (cf. Luk 5:26; Luk 17:18; Act 2:47; Act 3:9).
Luke probably included this incident partially to contrast the faith of the blind man with the unbelief of the religious leaders. Again the humble received salvation while others who failed to realize their need for Jesus’ grace did not. The incident would have been a lesson to the disciples as well as the multitudes.