G. C. Jeffers

I was listening to an episode of the Naked Bible Podcast the other day and they had on the show a guest who spent some time explaining the very enigmatic passage in Luke 22 when Jesus orders his disciples to purchase two swords and then, just a few verses later, orders them to put the swords away when they try to use them on the guards who come to arrest Jesus. Taking the insights gained from him about Luke 22, I want to see how this passage can help us as we continue on in our Lenten journey. 

Luke 22:35-38 (NRSV) reads:

35 He said to them, “When I sent you out without a purse, bag, or sandals, did you lack anything?” They said, “No, not a thing.” 36 He said to them, “But now, the one who has a purse must take it, and likewise a bag. And the one who has no sword must sell his cloak and buy one. 37 For I tell you, this scripture must be fulfilled in me, ‘And he was counted among the lawless’; and indeed what is written about me is being fulfilled.” 38 They said, “Lord, look, here are two swords.” He replied, “It is enough.”

Verse 37 is a quotation of Isaiah 53:12 which reads in the MT: 

Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great,
    and he shall divide the spoil with the strong;
because he poured out himself to death,
    and was numbered with the transgressors;

Isaiah 53:12 in the LXX is a much closer fit. It reads:

Because of this he will cause many to inherit, and he will apportion the spoils of the mighty, because his soul was given over to death, and he was reckoned among the lawless.

Thus, it looks like Luke was using the LXX when quoting Old Testament passages. In both the LXX and in Luke, the word “lawless” is the Greek word anomos (ἀνόμοις). According to Alexander Souter’s Pocket Lexicon to the Greek New Testament (PLGNT), anomos can just as often be translated as “criminals” as a criminal is one who is operating outside of the law. So why would Jesus suggest that he and his disciples would need swords in order to be counted with the criminals? A clue to this is Luke’s use of another Greek word in both Luke 22 and in Like 19 and Luke 10. That word, translated as “robbers” or “thieves,” is lēstēs (λῃστής). Lēstēs are a specific kind of criminal–the violent kind who operate outside of the just requirements of the law.

In telling the Good Samaritan parable in Luke 10:30-37, Jesus uses lēstēs to refer to the criminal that assaulted the man. Here is the passage (NRSV):

30 Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. 31 Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. 32 So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. 34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. 35 The next day he took out two denarii,[k] gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ 36 Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” 37He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

Lēstēs is further used in Luke 19:46 as Jesus symbolically cleanses the temple. Here is the passage (NRSV):

45 Then he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling things there; 46 and he said, “It is written,

‘My house shall be a house of prayer’;
    but you have made it a den of robbers.”

Here Jesus is quoting both Isaiah 56:7 (my house shall be a house of prayer) and Jeremiah 7:11 (but you have made it a den of robbers). The word “robbers,” both in Luke and in the LXX version of Isaiah, is lēstēs. The final use of the word lēstēs in Luke is back in Luke 22 where we started. After telling his disciples to buy swords so that they can be counted among the lawless, he goes to the Mount of Olives with his disciples to pray. Following this scene of anguish, he and his disciples are accosted by the temple police, the chief priests, and members of the Sanhedrin. One of his disciples (named as Peter in John) slices off the ear of the servant of the High Priest after asking if now was the time for the swords. Jesus exclaims “no more of this!” and heals the ear of the man, at which point he addresses those who have come to him with this question:

Have you come out with swords and clubs as if I were a bandit? (Luke 22:52, NRSV). 

The word translated “bandit” is our old friend lēstēs. Following up on the other uses of this word in Luke, we can summarize as follows:

1. The jewish man on the way to Jericho is accosted by lēstēs and left for dead. The leaders of Israel refuse to help him (a priest and a levite pass by), and so (as Jesus’s audience would have thought of him) a rabid, idolatrous, half-breed foreigner (the Good Samaritan) is left to help the man. 
2. The temple, which is in the care of the leaders of Israel (the priests and the levites) has been willingly handed over to the lēstēs while God-fearing foreigners have been kept out. 
3. The leaders of Israel themselves (chief priests and elders) act like lēstēs themselves by approaching Jesus as if he were the lēstēs when, in fact, he is perfectly innocent. 

In the same way that the leaders of Israel abandon their duties to help the injured man and abandon their duties to protect the worshippers gathering in the temple (and, indeed, criminally benefit from the schemes going on in the temple), so too they actively work against their duty to welcome the messiah by violently taking him. Jesus is thus identified not with those in power, but with the beaten man and the foreign outcasts. He is the victim of the lēstēs who currently run Israel. Indeed, having invoked Jeremiah 7 with its extremely harsh critique of those who profaned the temple before the exile, Ezekiel 34 would not have been far from the minds of Luke’s readers with its specifically harsh critique of Israel’s leaders. The actions of the leaders of Israel can only be described as robbery!

7 Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: 8 As I live, says the Lord God, because my sheep have become a prey, and my sheep have become food for all the wild animals, since there was no shepherd; and because my shepherds have not searched for my sheep, but the shepherds have fed themselves, and have not fed my sheep; 9 therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: 10 Thus says the Lord God, I am against the shepherds; and I will demand my sheep at their hand, and put a stop to their feeding the sheep; no longer shall the shepherds feed themselves. I will rescue my sheep from their mouths, so that they may not be food for them. 11 For thus says the Lord God: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. 12 As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered (Ezekiel 34:7-12, NRSV). 

Jesus, it seems, points out the true lēstēs–it is the leaders of Israel! Thus we return to the discussion of why it is that Jesus orders his disciples to purchase swords and then denies them the use of those swords. It seems, like many of Jesus’s other actions, he is engaged in the symbolic judgment of Israel. In purchasing the swords, Jesus fulfills the prophecy from Isaiah in which the righteous are counted as lawless, as criminals. How? Because it is the lawless, the criminals who carry such weapons of the world. The lēstēs who assaulted the jewish man were operating lawlessly, anomos. The leaders who exploit the worshippers in the temple are lēstēs and are therefore operating anomos, outside of the law. 

And here, on the Mount of Olives, where God’s presence had lingered before finally leaving Jerusalem in an act of judgment against the leaders of Israel leading into exile (Ezekiel 11:23) and where YHWH himself was prophesied to stand in a return to defeat his enemies (Zech 14:4), Jesus directly accuses Israel’s leaders of being lēstēs, anomos in fact, not just counted as such. Those false shepherds of Israel who seek Jesus’s death, who arrest him secretly at night rather than in broad daylight in front of the crowd, who colluded with the political powers of the day to preserve their own cushy existence, have been judged and found wanting. 

And if that were all, that would be perfectly just. Jesus has issued his prophetic condemnation that will see its first fruits in the resurrection and its consummation at the parousia. But that isn’t it. That can’t be it. Because Isaiah 53:12 continues:

Yet he bore the sin of many,
    and made intercession for the transgressors (MT)

And he himself bore the sins of many, and he was handed over because of their wickedness (LXX)

This same Jesus, who had preached that we are to love our enemies (Luke 6:23ff) does precisely that in Luke 23:34:

Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing” (NRSV). 

More than the Good Samaritan who looks after the victim. More than the judge who sentences criminals for vile acts. More than the shepherd who fights off men and bears to protect his sheep. More even than a father who defends a child. Jesus pursues his enemies to the uttermost and brings them back to himself. 

While we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son (Romans 5:10a). 

As we continue through Lent and, in a few weeks, enter into Passion Week, I pray that we follow Jesus’s initiative and care for victims and resist evil, but even more that we witness to the love of God that reconciles even enemies. As St. Paul reminds us in the Epistle to the Colossians:

Through [Christ] God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on  earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross (Col 1:20, NRSV).