Luke 13

Two incidents of mass death open the chapter, both deployed toward the same lesson. The Galileans killed by Pilate during sacrifice: were they worse sinners? No. Unless you repent you will likewise perish. The eighteen killed by the falling tower at Siloam: were they worse offenders? No. Unless you repent you will likewise perish. The logic refuses to let tragedy serve as evidence of special guilt and simultaneously refuses to let it serve as evidence of immunity. The parable of the barren fig tree follows immediately: a man comes three years looking for fruit on a fig tree in his vineyard and finds none; he tells the vinedresser to cut it down. The vinedresser intercedes — give it one more year, I will dig around it and put on fertilizer; if it bears fruit next year, well and good; if not, you can cut it down. The parable has no explicit application; Luke leaves the comparison unstated.

The Sabbath healing occupies the center of the chapter. A woman who has been bent double for eighteen years — Luke attributes her condition to a spirit of infirmity — is straightened when Jesus lays hands on her and declares her freed from her ailment; she immediately glorifies God. The synagogue ruler objects on Sabbath grounds. Jesus calls him a hypocrite, points out that each of them unties his ox or donkey on the Sabbath to water it, and asks whether this woman, a daughter of Abraham bound by Satan for eighteen years, ought not be loosed on the Sabbath. His opponents are put to shame; the crowd rejoices. Two brief parables follow about the kingdom being small at origin and large at expansion — the mustard seed, the leaven — and then the hard teaching on the narrow door and the last who will be first and the first last. Jerusalem is addressed in the closing lament: how often would he have gathered your children as a hen gathers her brood, and you would not. Behold, your house is left desolate.