Luke 9:40

Luke opens with “it came to pass”, the familiar phrase built on the verb gínomai, to come about, which he often uses to begin a new scene (Luke 1:8, Luke 2:1). Here it carries us from the Transfiguration (Luke 9:28–36), where Jesus was glorified before Peter, James and John, spoke with Moses and Elijah, and was owned by the Father’s voice. Luke ties the two scenes closely together: it is “the next day”, and they have only just “come down from the hill.”

Scripture often makes a mountain the place where God meets his servants, as he met Moses at Sinai (Exodus 19), while the plains below are where people live, trade and gather. Jesus often withdrew to pray in a solitary place and then went back out to the towns and the crowds (Mark 1:35–39), and he does the same here. At the foot of the hill “much people met him.” The word for people is óchlos, a crowd or throng, and Luke’s phrase is ochlos polys, a great crowd. The verb synantáō means to meet with someone. News of his teaching and healing had spread, crowds gathered wherever he went, and he had compassion on them (Matthew 9:36). He kept on with the work he had been sent to do in city after city (Luke 4:43–44).

The move from glory to need is a picture of his whole mission. The Son who came down from that hill to a crowd in distress is the Son who came down from heaven, emptied himself and took the form of a servant (Philippians 2:5–8), and was named Emmanuel, God with us (Matthew 1:23). The glory the three disciples saw on the mountain led the next morning straight to a suffering child.

Out of that crowd a man “cried out.” The verb anaboáō is formed from ana, up, and boaō, to cry aloud, and it means to raise the voice and shout. The father called out to be heard above the throng. Luke marks the moment with “behold”, idoú, and calls him “a man of the company”, anḗr apó óchlos, a man from the crowd, using the same word for the crowd as in verse 37.

He calls Jesus “Master.” The Greek is didáskalos, teacher or instructor, the ordinary word for one who teaches. The father comes to Jesus as a teacher, and he comes expecting what the disciples were unable to give, since he has already brought the boy to them (verse 40). His plea, “I beseech thee”, uses déomai, to beg or make request. He asks Jesus to “look upon” his son. That verb, epiblépō, is formed with epí, upon, and means to look on someone, here with the care and pity a father longs for. He asks first for Jesus to look at the boy, trusting that if Jesus looks he will help.

Matthew and Mark also tell of this healing (Matthew 17:14–21, Mark 9:14–29). Each Gospel adds something of its own, and Luke’s is the father’s reason for begging.

The father describes the attacks in plain and painful words. “A spirit taketh him”: the word is pneûma, which means breath or wind and, by extension, a spirit, whether human, angelic, demonic or divine. Here it is an evil spirit, which verse 42 calls “the unclean spirit” and “the devil”. “Taketh” is lambánō, to seize. Then “he suddenly crieth out”, with exaíphnēs, suddenly, and krázō, to cry out or scream. “It teareth him” uses sparássō, to mangle or convulse, which Strong’s gives as “convulse with epilepsy”. The Greek says it tears him “with foam”, metá aphrós, and the KJV’s “that he foameth again” means he foams at the mouth as the fit takes him. “Bruising him” is syntríbō, a strong word meaning to crush or shatter, so the boy was left battered. Last, the spirit “hardly departeth from him”, mógis apochōréō: it leaves him only with great difficulty.

The spirit is the one who takes, tears, bruises and departs, so the verse shows a hostile will at work against a child, striking suddenly and again and again before his father’s eyes. In that day afflictions like this were commonly put down to demons, and the families of the afflicted often carried shame and isolation as well. Scripture shows that some suffering has a spiritual cause. Paul says “we wrestle not against flesh and blood” (Ephesians 6:12), Peter tells believers to be sober and vigilant against the devil (1 Peter 5:8), and James tells us to resist him (James 4:7). And the Son of God came to end this kind of work: “For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8).

Luke gives the bare fact, “and they could not”, and the other Gospels give Jesus’ own reason. The father “besought” the disciples, the same verb déomai he uses of Jesus in verse 38, asking them “to cast him out.” Ekbállō means to throw out or drive out, with ek giving the direction out. The Gospels use it for driving out demons, and it also covers ordinary sending out. The disciples’ result is ou with dýnamai: they were unable. The nine who had stayed below had been given power and authority over devils a short while before (Luke 9:1–2), so their failure was public and painful, and it left the father with nowhere to turn but Jesus.

When the disciples later asked Jesus privately why they had failed, he traced it to their unbelief and told them that faith as a grain of mustard seed would remove mountains (Matthew 17:19–21). In Mark he says, “This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting” (Mark 9:28–29). Their authority was real, and it was always his, received and used through faith in him and prayer to the Father. Jesus said, “without me ye can do nothing” (John 15:5), and that is what the nine learned at the foot of the hill. A case that defeats us is a call to lean on him more fully.

Jesus answers with a lament. Geneá means the people of one time, an age, and he speaks to the whole of it. Ápistos, faithless, means unbelieving, lacking faith. “Perverse” is diastréphō, to distort, twist or turn aside, so a perverse generation is one bent out of the right way. The words recall the LORD’s charge against Israel in Deuteronomy, “a very froward generation, children in whom is no faith” (Deuteronomy 32:20), and the psalm’s “stubborn and rebellious generation” (Psalm 78:8). God bore long with Israel through all their turning away, and the Son bears with this generation too. Paul later calls believers to be blameless in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation (Philippians 2:15).

“How long shall I be with you, and suffer you?” To suffer here is to bear with, to put up with. The question shows a patience tried by unbelief, and in the same words it shows the Lord still with them and still bearing with them. He was carrying more than weariness, for he knew that his road ended in suffering and death for the very people who resisted him.

Then, in the same breath, “Bring thy son hither.” The lament ends in a command, and it brings the boy to the one person who can help him. That is where the healing begins.

Even “as he was yet a coming”, before the boy had reached Jesus, the demon struck once more. “The devil threw him down, and tare him.” The word for devil here is daimónion, a demon. “Threw him down” is rhḗgnymi, and “tare” is sysparássō, to convulse violently, the same torment the father had described in verse 39.

Then “Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit.” Epitimáō means to express strong disapproval, or to command with the threat of what follows if the command is disobeyed. The spirit is akáthartos pneûma, an unclean, impure spirit. Exorcists of that day often used incantations and rituals, and Jesus simply spoke with his own authority, and the spirit that had defied the disciples went out. People had already said of him, “with authority commandeth he even the unclean spirits, and they do obey him” (Mark 1:27), and Luke has recorded the same amazement at his authority over demons (Luke 4:36).

He “healed the child.” Iáomai means to cure or make whole, and with the spirit gone Jesus made whole the body it had bruised. Then he “delivered him again to his father.” Apodídōmi means to give back, and the boy, paîs, is given back to his father, patḗr. Jesus restored the child’s body, his place in his family and his father’s joy. Peter later summed up this ministry when he said that Jesus “went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him” (Acts 10:38). It is the mission Jesus announced at the start of his ministry (Luke 4:18–19), and it shows his care for the lowly and afflicted.

The deliverance of this one boy points to the victory Jesus won for all who believe. At the cross he spoiled principalities and powers and triumphed over them openly (Colossians 2:15). Through death he destroyed the one who had the power of death, the devil, and set free those who all their lives were held in bondage by the fear of death (Hebrews 2:14–15). He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29) and the servant who bore our griefs and carried our sorrows (Isaiah 53:4–5). The wages of sin is death, and the gift of God is eternal life through him (Romans 6:23). He died for us while we were yet sinners (Romans 5:8), and God, rich in mercy, made us alive together with Christ (Ephesians 2:4–5).

The healing of the boy’s body looks ahead to the day when Christ will change our bodies to be like his own glorious body (Philippians 3:21). The son given back to his father is a picture of what Christ does for us, bringing us to God as adopted sons (Ephesians 1:5). He came that we might have life, and have it more abundantly (John 10:10). All power in heaven and in earth is his, and he sends his disciples out under that authority (Matthew 28:18–20), so they work in his strength and can do all things through him (Philippians 4:13).

This passage shows us a Lord who comes down. He left the mountain of glory for a crowd and a tormented child, as he left heaven for us. He hears a father’s cry, as the LORD has always heard his people when they cry to him (Psalm 34:17–18), and he looks upon the one who suffers when he is asked to. The unclean spirits obey his word.

The passage also shows the limit of every borrowed strength, even the strength of disciples he himself had sent, and the patience of a Lord grieved by unbelief who still says, “Bring thy son hither.” The father brought his only son to Jesus with nothing to offer but his need, and Jesus gave the boy back to him whole. Whatever we bring to him, he receives in the same way.