The Great Commentary of Cornelius a Lapide: S. Luke
Chapter 4
Ver. 1. — And Jesus, being full of the Holy Ghost, returned from Jordan, having been there baptized by John a little time before, and having visibly received the Holy Spirit, whose fulness He had already obtained invisibly in the first instant of His conception.
Ver. 2. — Tempted of the devil. In the Greek πειραζόμενος, suffering or sustaining temptation by the devil. See Commentary on
Ver. 5. — In a moment of time. S. Ambrose says, “ It is not so much the quickness of the view which is indicated, as the fleeting frailty of power which is expressed. For in a moment they all pass away. And often the honour of the world is gone ere it is come. For what can be lasting in the world when the worlds themselves are not lasting.”
Ver. 14. — And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee. In the Greek δυνάμει, in the power, strength, or force of the Spirit. Under a strong impulse of the Spirit, Jesus returned to Galilee. For the Holy Ghost was moving Him, and powerfully impelling Him to put forth at this time that spiritual power which He had received from the beginning of His conception, but which He had hitherto shut up and hidden within Himself, and to begin in Galilee with immense ardour and zeal, His ministry of preaching, and confirm it by His admirable holiness of life and His stupendous miracles. Hence Theophylact renders it driven and urged on by the enthusiasm and Divine afflatus of the Holy Ghost.
Ver. 16. — And He came to Nazareth . Note here that while Christ is said, in v. 14, to have gone into Galilee, He is not said to have entered Nazareth, which is situated there, as S. Matthew (ch. iv. 13) has it, but Capernaum, and there to have done the things which S. Matthew relates in chaps. iv. to xiii., all of which S. Luke passes over here, and then He is said to have come to Nazareth. S. Luke wished at the very outset to state the reason why Christ would not teach in Nazareth, namely, that He was despised by His fellow-townsmen as being the son of a carpenter. And though this only happened subsequently, yet Christ foresaw that it would be the case, and therefore turned aside from Nazareth and went to Capernaum, which He made the seat of His ministry, as S. Matthew relates in iv. 13.
And stood up for to read. It was (and still is) the custom among the Jews that each one should read the Hebrew books of Holy Scripture in the synagogue on the Sabbath-day, both that he might learn the law of God from it, and also that he might be stirred up to the worship, love, and service of God. Moreover, it was the part of the Rabbin and the teachers, such as Jesus was, to read the Holy Scripture publicly, to interpret it, to preach, and to teach.
Ver. 17. — And there was delivered unto Him (by the attendant) the book of the prophet Esaias. This was done by the counsel and direction of God, that Jesus might show from Isaiah that He was the Messiah described by that prophet.
And when He had opened the book , He found the place where it was written (Isa. lxi. 1). Christ seems so to have opened the book that, without looking for it, He lighted upon this passage of Isaiah by the will and guidance of God. The Vulgate, “as He unrolled the book,” is better; and Vatablus, “when He had unfolded;” others, " when He had spread out,” for this is the meaning of the Greek. For the books of the Hebrews were not divided into leaves, but consisted of one long piece of parchment which was rolled round a cylinder from beginning to end, as maps are nowadays . In order to read this parchment it was therefore necessary to unroll it, and spread it out.
Ver. 18. — The Spirit of the Lord is upon me: because He hath anointed me. The Holy Spirit, who was in Me from the beginning, descending upon Me here in the baptism which I have now received from John the Baptist, descending visibly in the form of a dove, while the voice of God the Father spoke forth in thunder, “ This is My beloved Son ; hear ye Him,” has by this sign, as by a visible anointing, publicly declared, authorised, and, as it were, consecrated Me as the Teacher, Prophet, Saviour, and Lawgiver of the world, and especially of the Jews to whom I was promised, and therefore — He hath anointed Me to preach the Gospel to the poor , for the rich Scribes and Pharisees despise My lowliness and My poverty.
Observe the words “ hath anointed me ; ” for in Hebrew “ Messiah,” and in Greek Χριστός, mean “anointed.” This anointing of Christ was accomplished secretly in the Incarnation —
(1.) By the grace of the hypostatic union, which made Him in the highest degree holy and divine — nay, made Him God.
(2.) By the plenitude of graces which flowed from this union. For other saints are said to be anointed with the grace and the gifts of the Holy Ghost, but Christ was anointed with the Holy Ghost Himself, as though with the very fountain and plenitude of all graces, that the Man Christ might become a superabundant fountain pouring forth its grace into all the apostles, martyrs, virgins, and confessors, so says Basil ( de Spiritu Sancto, ch. xxvi.). Christ was, as I have said, publicly anointed in His baptism, to heal them that are brokenhearted — to heal and console those who, by reason of their sins, and the burden of the law of Moses, as well as their ignorance of the things of God, are afflicted in spirit, and pant for the knowledge of God, His pardon, His grace, and His salvation, and who, therefore, look for the Messiah. Hence Symmachus and Theodotus render it ; so S. Jerome tells us in his Commentary on Isa. lxi., “to bind up the wounds of sinners.”
To preach deliverance to the captives — that I may preach, announce, and bring freedom, through penance and My grace, to those who are held captive by sin and the devil.
And recovering of sight to the blind. The Hebrew and Chaldee versions of Isaiah give “ opening to those bound,” i.e., as Symmachus has it, “ loosening to those bound.” But the Septuagint, and S. Luke following them, render it in the Greek ἀνάβλεψιν, “ looking again.”
that they may see again. For the Hebrews call those that are blind bound , or shut , like the Latin idiom, “ Moles seized in their eyes,” and consequently they call the illumination by which the eyes of the blind are opened “ opening.” The meaning, therefore, is, Christ shall both restore sight to those who are physically, and illumine those who are spiritually, blind, and are ignorant of God and of the way of salvation. He shall teach them the knowledge of God and the way to save their souls. This was what Isaiah (xlii. 7) clearly foretold that the Messiah should do : “I will give Thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles, to open the eyes of the blind.” And hence it is plain that Isaiah in ch. xlii., is not speaking literally of the deliverance from the Babylonian captivity wrought by Cyrus, as Toletus would have it, but of the deliverance from the captivity of sin and of the devil wrought by Christ ; for Cyrus restored sight to no one, but Christ to many. I confess, however, that there is an allusion to Cyrus, he being a type of Christ. To the Hebrews in Babylon who were “bound” he gave “opening and loosening,” as the Hebrew version has it, when he freed them from captivity and sent them back into Judaea.
To set at liberty them that are bruised — into liberty and health. The Arabic has “ to send thee bound into remission.” Pagninus, “that I may send forth the broken by remission.” So also Vatablus. These words are not in Isaiah lxi. 1 in the Hebrew; they have been added paraphrastically by S. Luke or his interpreter , and seem to form another explanation of “ to heal them that are brokenhearted.” So Forerius on Isaiah lxi., and Francis Lucas on this passage. Origen omits “to heal them that are broken-hearted ,” and reads instead, “ to send forth the broken into liberty ; ” and he adds, “ What was so broken or shattered as the man who, when sent away by Jesus, was healed ? ”
For “broken” the Greek has τεθραυσμένους, which Vatablus and others translate “broken.”
Ver. 19. — To preach the acceptable year of the Lord— the pleasing year — in Hebrew שנת רצון, scenat ratson ; in the Septuagint ἐνιαυτὸν εὐδοκίας, that is, as S. Jerome renders it, “the placable year,” or, as others with propriety, “the year of the good pleasure,” of divine benevolence and liberality, such as was the year of the jubilee to which he here alludes. For the year of the jubilee was the type and figure of this evangelical year which Christ brought. So the whole time of the preaching of Christ, and thenceforward all the time of Christianity, is a year of jubilee to those who obey Christ and accept His liberty — a year of grace, mercy, peace, remission, liberality, and salvation, in which, after God’s long anger against us, we are restored to His grace, His favour, His heirship, His glory, and all the former blessings which we had in Paradise in the state of innocence. This is what S. Paul says in 2 Cor. vi. 2, “Behold, now is the acceptable time ; behold, now is the day of salvation.”