CRITICAL NOTES
Luke 7:12. Carried out.—Places of burial were outside the towns, to avoid ceremonial defilement.
Luke 7:13. The Lord.—This title for Jesus is much more frequently found in the third and fourth Gospels than in the first and second, and is perhaps an indication of their having been written when Christianity was somewhat widespread.
Luke 7:14. The bier.—An open coffin.
Luke 7:15. He delivered.—This is closely connected with what is said in Luke 7:13, “He had compassion on her.” Cf. 1 Kings 17:23; 2 Kings 4:36.
Luke 7:16. There came a fear on all.—Rather, “fear took hold on all” (R.V.).
Luke 7:17. Judæa.—“It is evident that the miracle of Nain, as being a greater marvel of power than any which Jesus had previously exhibited, raised His fame to the highest pitch. His name was spread abroad, not only in the immediate neighbourhood of the town in which the miracle was wrought, but throughout Judæa also. It was upon this that news of our Lord’s wonder-working power reached the Baptist in his prison” (Speaker’s Commentary). A comparison has often been drawn between the miracles of raising the dead which are recorded in the Gospels. The daughter of Jairus was newly dead, the widow’s son was being borne to the grave, while Lazarus had been dead four days and his body was in the grave, at the time of the working of the respective miracles by which they were recalled to life.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Luke 7:11-18
The Compassionate Lord of Life.—Observe—
I. The meeting of the two processions.—Jesus is coming up to the city, with a considerable crowd following, and meets the funeral coming out of the gate. Face to face stand the Prince of life with His attendants and the waiters on death. The dead man, dead in his youth, and when most needed, the lonely mother, the sympathising or gossiping crowd—these show the ravages of death, the sorrow that shadows all human love and every home, and the unavailing, though well-meant, consolation which men can give. That procession is going one way, and He and His the other. They come in contact, and His power arrests the march, sends the dead back living, and the mourner glad. That meeting may stand for a symbol of His whole coming and work. Why this widow should have been chosen out of all the mourners that laid their dead to rest that day we do not know. The reasons for the distribution of His gifts are generally beyond us.
II. Christ’s unasked pity.—The sight of the extreme grief of the poor mother, whom He knew to be reduced to utter loneliness, and probably to poverty, by the death of her only bread-winner and object of love, went straight to Christ’s heart. Misery appealed to Him even if it was dumb. His perfect manhood was perfectly compassionate, and was hindered from the freest flow of pity by no selfishness. One great glory of this miracle is spontaneousness. Neither request nor faith precedes it. How should they? Death was a final and inexorable evil, and none of the three recorded raisings from the dead was in answer to prayers or belief in His power. The last thing that could have occurred to that weeping mother was that this Stranger, whom she was too much absorbed to notice, could give her back her son. But if there was no prayer, there was sorrow and there was need; and sorrow which He could soothe, and need which He could supply, never made their moan in His hearing in vain. Most of His miracles had some measure of faith in some persons concerned as a precedent condition. But that was a condition established for our sakes, not for His. His love and power were tied to no one manner of working, and unasked, untrusted, probably unobserved, He feels the impulse of pity, which is love turned towards misery, and the impulse moves His all-powerful will. While ordinarily He is still wont to be found of those that seek Him, He still finds and blesses some who seek Him not.
III. Christ the compassionate immediately becomes the consoler.—Very beautiful is it that the soothing words “Weep not” are said before the miracle, as if He would not wait even for a moment before seeking to calm the sorrow. But words which are impotent on other lips, and only make tears run faster, are of sovereign power when He speaks them. Nothing is emptier than the usual well-meant attempts to comfort. What is the use of telling not to weep when all the cause of weeping remains? But if we know that He is with us in trouble, and can hear His whisper of comfort, the sharpness of pain is lulled, though the wound remain. He comforted the widowed heart by the utterance of His sympathy before He gave her back her dead, and therein He reveals Himself to all as the compassionate, and therefore the Consoler even of sorrows that will last as long as life. His “Weep not” is not rebuke nor a vain attempt to stop the expression without touching the source of grief, but is a specimen of His continual work, and a prophecy of the time when “there shall be no more sorrow, nor crying.”
IV. To compassion and comforting succeeds the stupendous act of life-giving.—Christ’s look and word to the mother showed His heart, if not His purpose, and so the bearers halt in silent obedience and expectation. Jesus spake two words—“Young man, arise”—as if waking him from sleep, and the young man “sat up.” How bewildered he would be, finding himself there on the bier, in the blazing light, and with this crowd around him! He “began to speak”—some confused exclamations, probably, like those of a suddenly awakened man, not knowing where he was or how he came there. Like the other cases of resurrection, this one suggests many questions—Was return to life a kindness to the young man? how did the experience during death fit in with that of earth? and others which might be raised but not answered. As to the first of these, no doubt, this and all the cases are presented as done out of compassion for the mourners; but we cannot suppose that that motive is irreconcilable with regard for the persons raised, and we may be assured that the gain to the mother was not attained by loss to the son. Probably the restoration of his bodily life was the beginning of his spiritual life.
The whole incident may be regarded as a revelation of Christ’s power, or as a revelation of death’s impotence. Christ stands forth as the Prince and Giver of life. His word is enough. Wherever that dead man was, he heard and obeyed. The ease with which the miracle is done contrasts with the effort of Elijah and Elisha in their analogous acts. The assumption of authority by Christ is of a piece with all His tone. The whole is His proclamation that He is “Lord both of the dead and living.” It is prophetic too, for it foreshadows the day when they that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God. The miracle also teaches the impotence of death, which is but His servant, and vanishes at His bidding. It demonstrates the partial operation of death, as affecting not the person, but only the body. It shows that when a man dies he is not ended, but that personality, consciousness, and all that make the man are wholly unaffected thereby. “He gave him to his mother.” Who can paint that reunion? May we not venture to see in Christ’s action here some dim forecast of the future, when, amid the joy of heaven, we too may hope to be reunited to our dear ones, lost awhile. Surely He who brought this young man back from the dead to soothe a widow’s sorrow, and found joy in giving him back to a mother’s arms, will do the like with us, and let lonely and yearning hearts clasp again their beloved.—Maclaren.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Luke 7:11-17
Luke 7:11-17. At the Gate of Nain.—In this most touching story we see Jesus as a true friend. From a true friend we expect compassion, comfort, help.
I. A friend needed.
II. A friend found.—He offers to the widow pity, comfort, help.
III. A friend still needed and still near.—Jesus is the same. Heaven has made no change in His friendship. He by His spirit still raises the spiritually dead, and by His mighty word will yet raise the physically dead.—Spence.
I. The compassion of Jesus.
II. The pains taken by Jesus in all that He did.
III. The power shown by Jesus.—Brown.
The Lord of Life.
I. Two crowds (Luke 7:11-12).—In the midst of the one a dead man. In the midst of the other the Life of the world. In the first death in its hardest, cruelest form; for the dead man was just entering on man’s life, and his only real mourner was his widowed mother.
II. The meeting.—The pity of Jesus—pity of sight, of speech, of touch, a whole body of pity. The power of Jesus—power brought forth by pity. A true picture this of the Saviour.—Lindsay.
I. The Saviour’s tender sympathy.
II. The Saviour’s words of power.
III. The Saviour’s spreading fame.—W. Taylor.
The Divine Consoler.
I. The widow mourning.
II. The widow comforted.—By
(1) a word of compassion;
(2) a word of power.—Watson.
Luke 7:11. The Beauty of the Narrative.—The exquisite literary skill of St. Luke is nowhere more clearly manifested than in telling of this incident; it and the walk to Emmaus will stand comparison with the masterpieces of literary style in any language. Abundant particulars are given which serve to call up a very vivid picture: the city, the gate, the multitude that followed Jesus, the long funeral procession that met them, the open bier, the man’s age and circumstances, his mother’s condition, the feeling manifested by Christ, His actions and words, His gestures, the eager attention of the bystanders, the astonishment at the miracle, and the excited comments passed upon it, are all touched upon. Yet there is no wearisome elaboration of details and no height of colouring. The story is told without using adjectives—the great resource to which modern word-painters betake themselves. So far from St. Luke’s work being of the word-painting order, it is simply a clear conception of the whole scene with all its details, expressed in a perfectly simple, natural manner.
Luke 7:12. “The only son.”—The special circumstances of this bereavement are carefully noted:
1. The man was young.
2. He was an only Song of Song of Solomon 3. His mother was a widow. In several places in Scripture grief for an only son is taken as the very type of grief—as an expression of the keenest distress the soul can feel. “O daughter of My people, gird thee with sackcloth, and wallow thyself in ashes: make thee mourning, as for an only son, most bitter lamentation” (Jeremiah 6:26). Cf. also Zechariah 12:10; Amos 8:10. Indeed, to a Jewish mind this form of bereavement was specially grievous, since it was regarded as often a direct punishment for sin.
“And she was a widow.”—St. Luke has told us the sum of her misery in a few words. The mother was a widow, with no further hope of having children; nor with any upon whom she might look in the place of him that was dead. To him alone she had given suck. He alone made her home cheerful. All that is sweet and precious to a mother, was he alone to her! A young man (Luke 7:14)—that is in the flower of his age; just ripening into manhood; just entering upon the time of marriage; the scion of his race; the branch of succession; the sight of his mother’s eyes; the staff of her declining years.—Gregory of Nyssa.
Luke 7:13. “Had compassion.”—In some cases Christ wrought a miracle when asked by a sufferer, in some cases when asked by their friends, and in some cases, as here, of His own accord. No request was presented to Him—the only appeal was that of the sorrow which filled the mother’s heart, and touched the spectators with sympathy. What comfort there is in this thought—that our needs, our helplessness, our grief, speak louder than our prayers and fill the heart of Christ with compassion. Some sought blessings from the Saviour; but this was a case in which He sought out the sufferer, with the purpose of stanching her sorrow. The purpose for which Christ wrought miracles is often unwisely said to have been to attest His mission by displaying the Divine power which He possessed. But clearly this was not His motive on the present occasion: His one idea was to do good—to comfort the sorrowful.
“Weep not.”—He felt authorised to administer consolation; in the unexpected, almost accidental, meeting with the funeral procession, He recognised a signal given Him by the Father to put forth His power to comfort human sorrow and to overcome death.
This Case a Special Appeal to Christ’s Pity.—It is not wonderful that Christ had compassion in sorrow like this. Could He forget, as He looked at this weeping mother, that He was Himself the son of a widow, and the stay of her widowhood? or fail to foresee the day, only some months distant, the noon of which would see His own mother’s heart pierced with the sword as she stood by His dolorous cross, of which the eve should weep over her as she followed His body to its rocky grave? But forasmuch as He Himself must die that dead men may live, and forasmuch as His mother was soon to weep over His grave that all mourning mothers might thenceforth weep less bitterly, therefore He went forward to this widow, and with a voice in which there must have trembled a strange tenderness said unto her, “Weep not!”—Dykes.
An Authoritative Summons.—Here is something quite unusual. A man at once compassionate and wise does not try to check natural grief. He rather endeavours to find some consideration that will abate and moderate it. But here is no argument, no consolatory words; only a simple, weighty, authoritative summons, “Weep not!” This arouses attention, stirs expectation of something to come.—Laidlaw.
Luke 7:14. “Touched the bier.”—The gesture of touching the bier was a very significant one: it was symbolical of His power to arrest with His finger the triumph of death, and revealed almost unconsciously the majesty with which He was clothed. “Life had met death, wherefore the bier stopped.”
“Young man, I say to thee.”—By this word Christ proved the truth of the saying of Paul, that “God calleth those things which are not as though they were” (Romans 4:17). He addresses the dead man, and makes Himself be heard, so that death is changed into life. We have here:
(1) a striking emblem of the future resurrection, as Ezekiel is commanded to say, “O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord” (Ezekiel 37:4); and
(2) we are taught in what manner Christ quickens us spiritually by faith. It is when He infuses into His word a secret power, so that it enters into dead souls, as He Himself declares, “The hour cometh, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they who hear shall live” (John 5:25).—Calvin.
Sleep and Death.—In sleep as in death there is a sundering of the connection between soul and body, though in the one case it is but temporary, while in the other it is permanent. Yet just as the sound of the human voice is sufficient to restore the connection in the case of one buried in sleep, so the Saviour’s word avails to restore connection, even in the case of the dead.—Godet.
The Lord of Life and Death.—There is incomparable majesty in the phrase, “I say unto thee.” He to whom it was addressed seemed to have passed away beyond the reach of the human voice; no lamentations of his mother and friends could reach his ear. Yet the Saviour spoke as one whose words resounded through the world of the grave and could give commands which even the dead must hear and obey. “The Lord of life and death speaks with command. No finite power could have said so without presumption or with success. That is the voice that shall one day call up our vanished bodies from those elements in which they are resolved, and raise them out of their dust. Neither sea, nor death, nor hell can offer to detain their dead when He charges them to be delivered” (Hall).
The Compassionate Heart, Mouth, Feet, and Hand.—Here was a conspiration of all parts to mercy: the heart had compassion, the mouth said “Weep not,” the feet went to the bier, the hand touched it, the power of the Deity raised the dead.—Ibid.
Luke 7:15. “Sat up and began to speak.”—The return of life is marked by movement and speech: the rigid corpse resumed its vital functions, the mute tongue was loosened. The young man thus restored by the creative power of Christ became as it were His possession—he belonged by the gift of life for a second time to the Saviour. But Christ gives him over to his mother.
A Spiritual Resurrection also.—The feeling of sympathy expressed by our Saviour for the mother is put forth as the motive which created the resolution in Jesus to raise up the person reposing on the bier. But this does not exclude the idea of this action having a reference also to the resuscitated person. Man as a sentient being can never be only a means, as would here be the case were we to regard the joy of the mother as the only object of the raising of the youth from the dead. Her joy, on the contrary, is only the immediate but more unessential result of this action, recognisable by those who were present; the secret result of this resuscitation was the spiritual raising up of the youth to a more exalted state of existence, through which only the joy of the mother assumed a true and everlasting character.—Olshausen.
Luke 7:16. “Fear.”—This effect is often mentioned in connection with the miracles of Jesus. Cf. Luke 5:26; Luke 8:37; Mark 4:41. It is the natural shrinking of sinful human nature from the evident presence of the power of an all-holy God. Like feeling is recorded in the case of almost all appearances of angels recorded in Holy Scripture. Cf. also Simon Peter’s words and action in Luke 5:8.
“Prophet.”—The use of this name in connection with the work wrought by Jesus indicates the true idea of the prophetic office. The prophet is not a mere predictor of future events: he is the representative of God and spokesman for God; he brings benefits from God to man, and proofs of the Divine interposition in the government of the world.
“Visited His people.”—After a long interval of silence and apparent inactivity (cf. Luke 1:68-69). The miracle now wrought reminded the people of those of Elijah and Elisha. Yet there was a notable difference between the two. For though these prophets raised the dead, they did so laboriously; Jesus immediately and with a word: they confessedly as servants and creatures, by a power not their own; Jesus by that inherent “virtue which went out of Him” in every cure which He wrought. “Elijah, it is true, raises the dead; but he is obliged to stretch himself several times upon the body of the child whom he raises, he struggles, he feels his limited power, he is agitated; it is very evident that he invokes another power to help him, that he recalls from the kingdom of death a soul that is not altogether subject to his word, and that he is not himself the controller of death and of life. Jesus Christ raises the dead in the same way that He does the most ordinary of actions: He speaks with authority to those who are plunged in an eternal sleep; and it is very evident that He is the God of the dead as of the living, never more tranquil than when He does the greatest deeds” (Massillon).
The Three Miracles of raising the Dead.—The comparison of the three miracles of raising the dead (referred to above in the Critical Notes), as illustrating various degrees of spiritual deadness from which Christ can awaken the soul, has often been made by the older writers. It is strikingly expressed by Doune: “If I be dead within doors (If I have sinned in my heart), why suscitavit in domo, Christ gave a resurrection to the ruler’s daughter within doors, in the house. If I be dead in the gate (If I have sinned in the gates of my soul), in my eyes, or ears, or hands in actual sins, why suscitavit in portâ, Christ gave a resurrection to the young man at the gate of Nain. If I be dead in the grave (in customary and habitual sins), why suscitavit in sepulchro, Christ gave a resurrection to Lazarus in the grave too.”