LUKE 7:11-17

 

 

                             Raised in Nain (collage, 2009)

Luke 7:11

“Soon afterward, he went to a city called Nain, and his disciples and a great crowd went with him.”

Riesner and others believe that “the present-day Arabic village Nein, eight kilometers southeast of Nazareth” is the location of this site.

Luke 7:12

He draws near the gate of the city and meets a large funeral procession coming out. They are carrying a bier with the body of a young man on it, the only son of a widow.

Geldenhuys reports, “Tombs in the rock have been found before the eastern gate of the village along the road leading to Capernaum.” But actually, no remains of gates have yet been found, causing Riesner to state: “Nain was hardly a city (polis); the city gate mentioned in Luke 7:11-12 could have been no more than the outlet of a street.” But he admits, “Excavations have not yet been possible.”

As Marshall explains, “The only difficulty about the identification [i.e. of Nein as Nain] is the lack of a gate to the town, but the fact that none has so far been discovered may be due simply to the inadequate archaeological investigation of the site.”

“Luke draws particular interest in those whom Jesus heals as people. He eschews labeling people in terms of their disease, avoiding the one-word descriptors so prevalent in the other Synoptics (see Lk 5:18,24; 7:12; 18:5). He includes details for understanding the impact of the malady not only on the sufferers but also on the larger family structure: the dead boy from Nain is a widow's only son (Lk 7:12), and the demon-possessed boy is his father's only child...” (Wahlen)

Luke 7:13

At this point in the narrative, the Lord sees the widow and has compassion on her.

“Regarding the absolute use of the noun kyrios, Matthew and Mark do not use the term in a transcendent sense within their narrative frameworks of the saying of Jesus...Luke, on the other hand does employ such usage. For instance, in Luke 7:13 we read 'And the Lord [ho kyrios] had compassion on her...Luke, as a Gentile writing exclusively to a Gentile audience, shows no reticence in using ho kyrios of Jesus, thereby implying the transcendent religious sense of the term.” (Witherington and Yamazaki-Ransom).

Nicholson says regarding this verse, “No one has asked Jesus for mercy or demonstrated great faith; rather he approaches the woman's son of his own accord and raises the son from the dead. This demonstrates that it is Jesus' nature to have mercy; he does not wait for a request before he feels compelled to respond to a need.”

Luke 7:14-15

Jesus touches the bier, stopping the procession. He then simply says, “Young man, I say to you, arise.”

“Jesus is not reluctant to touch a corpse, and his touch restores life (Mt 9:23-26; Lk 7:11-17)...The Gospels thus present Jesus encountering a stream of ritually impure and potentially polluting people, but in the encounter their contagion does not defile Jesus; rather, his holiness purges their pollution, renders them clean, and integrates them again into the mainstream of Jewish society...” (deSilva)

“Jesus acts without drama, ritual, or even prayer. The same word of Jesus that from a distance healed a centurion's slave (v. 7) here has the power to raise the dead.” (Craddock)

Luke 7:16-17

“Luke says, the people 'feared,' 'glorified God,' and said that 'God has visited his people' (Lk 7:16). This terminology suggests theophany ('fear' [Lk 1:12; 5:26]; 'visited' [Lk 1:68,19:44; cf. Ex 4:31]); that is, God has appeared in Jesus' mighty act.” (Dennis)

Craddock suggests, “The phrase 'has arisen among us' may possibly be a faint allusion to Jesus' resurrection, but more likely it is drawn from Deut. 18:18; 'I will raise up for them a prophet like you [Moses] from among their brethren.' The second expression, 'God has visited his people,' is also a favorite of Luke (1:68; 19:44; Acts 15:14). God's visitation may be in wrath (Ex. 20:5) or in mercy (Ps. 106:4), but for Luke it is always an act of grace.”

Geldenhuys concludes from these verses: “What He did here for the widowed mother and son He will one day do for all the faithful in a perfect and final form. He will bring full comfort, He will raise all His people in incorruptibility, and will reunite us, in the heavenly realm, with our loved ones who have died in Him.”

Context within Luke's Gospel

“Luke's narrative of Jesus' ministry begins with various hints at an enthusiastic response of the people to Jesus' preaching (Lk 4:36-37; 5:26; 6:17-18; 7:11) and ends with an account of their collaboration with the religious leaders in the plot against Jesus (Lk 23:13:23).” (Novakovic)

“Apart from its own witness to the nature of Messiah's mission, it is the prologue necessary for understanding the following episode...In the context of the popular misunderstanding of Jesus' mission the rising doubts of John the Baptist (7:18-36) can be better appreciated.” (Ellis)

Or as Marshall puts it, “This narrative, like the previous one, provides the 'text' on which the 'commentary' regarding the person and work of Jesus in 7:18-35 is based.”

Old Testament Context

Litwak discusses passages in Luke's Gospel in which Jesus is compared to Elijah or Elisha. These include Luke 1:16-17,76; 4:27; 7:1-10,27; 9:7-8,19-20.

More specifically, many scholars comment on the relationship between this passage and the raising from the dead accomplished through Elijah in I Kings 17. K.L. Anderson gives one of the fullest expositions of the parallels between these two miraculous narratives, and so I will quote his words in some length:

“The account was composed with clear echoes of Elijah's raising up the son of the widow of Zarephath. Jesus came to town and met the widow at the gate (Lk 7:12; cf. 1 Kings 17:10) and raised the dead son to life (Lk 7:14-15; cf. 1 Kings 17:22). Precisely the same words from [the Greek version of] 1 Kings 17:23 appear in Luke 7:15: 'and he gave him to his mother.' The crowd's twofold interpretation of the miracle fits Luke's christological portrait of Jesus: 'A great prophet has risen among us' and 'God has visited his people' (Lk 7:16).

With regard to the first interpretation, in his inaugural appearance at Nazareth Jesus invoked the prophetic ministries of Elijah and Elisha as a pattern (Lk 4:14-30), and specifically referenced Elijah's dealings with the Zarephath widow (Lk 4:26). Preceding Jesus' resurrection miracle in Luke 7:11-17 is an incident that also resembles the ministry of the two OT prophets. Jesus reached beyond Israel by healing the slave of a Gentile (Lk 7:1-10)...”

From Anderson's words above, one might get the mistaken idea that Luke created this story from scratch in order to provide a clearer parallel between Jesus and Elijah. But as Craddock says, “Luke does not bring I Kings 17 to the reader's attention; it remains beneath the surface, and if the reader does not know the Old Testament, the Elijah story will not come to mind at all...But if Luke's readers did know the Greek Old Testament, passages such as 7:11-17 could give a sense of continuity, of being at home, and knowing a truth at a powerful level of recognition.”