Luke 4:18

Note

In the synagogue at Nazareth Jesus unrolls the scroll of Isaiah, finds a place and reads it aloud. Luke opens the ministry of Jesus with this reading, and the first task it names is good news for the poor.

After the temptation in the wilderness "Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit" (Luke 4:14). At Nazareth, as was His custom, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read, and "the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him" (Luke 4:17). He found the opening of chapter 61, read it, sat down, and said, "Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing" (Luke 4:21). The hearers marveled at first; but when He spoke of Elijah sent to a widow of Sidon and of Naaman the Syrian cleansed in Elisha's day, they were enraged and tried to throw Him from the brow of the hill (Luke 4:25–30). The scene holds Luke's whole Gospel in small.

Euangelisasthai, the aorist middle infinitive of euangelizomai, says what the anointing was for. Those who receive the news are in the dative, ptōchois, "to the poor" (ptōchos): people with nothing in their hands. "Anointed" (echrisen) is the verb behind the title Christ, so the sentence tells what the Anointed One was anointed to do. "He has sent Me" (apestalken) is a perfect: the sending stands. This verb is the one the Septuagint uses for the Hebrew basar in Isaiah 61:1, and Jesus reads it as the first word of His own mission. The reading is not a copy of Isaiah. The line "to release the oppressed" is drawn from Isaiah 58:6, "to set the oppressed free" (Isaiah 58:6), and Jesus stops before "the day of our God's vengeance" (Isaiah 61:2).

The KJV reads, "he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives." This is the first place in Luke where the KJV renders the verb with "the gospel"; before, it had "glad tidings," "good tidings" and, for John, plain "preached." The words "to heal the brokenhearted" stand in the Greek text the KJV followed and are missing from many of the oldest manuscripts. The BSB leaves them out; the LSV, like the KJV, keeps them: "Sent Me to heal the broken of heart." In the next verse the KJV and the LSV have "the acceptable year of the Lord," the BSB "the year of the Lord's favor": one keeps the sense of a year God accepts, the other names the favor He shows in it.

John Wesley glosses "to the poor" in two words: "Literally and spiritually" Wesley. He also notes how the opening line names the Spirit, the Lord and the Anointed together, and sees the Trinity in it. In the Catena, Cyril takes the anointing as said of His humanity: "For the Divine nature is not anointed, but that which is cognate to us" Cyril. Matthew Henry draws the point for every hearer: "Let sinners attend to the Saviour's invitation when liberty is thus proclaimed" Matthew Henry.

Luke makes this reading the heading over everything Jesus does. That the first line of the heading names the poor means that whoever comes to this news with empty hands has not come too late or with too little: such people are the ones it was sent to first.