Lukas 7:33

7:33 For John the Baptist has come ¹  eating no bread and drinking no wine, ²  and you say, ‘He has a demon!’ ³ 

Lukas 19:31

19:31 If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ just say, ‘The Lord needs ⁴  it.’”

Lukas 20:24

20:24 “Show me a denarius. ⁵  Whose image ⁶  and inscription are on it?” ⁷  They said, “Caesar’s.”

[7:33]  ¹ tn The perfect tenses in both this verse and the next do more than mere aorists would. They not only summarize, but suggest the characteristics of each ministry were still in existence at the time of speaking.

[7:33]  ² tn Grk “neither eating bread nor drinking wine,” but this is somewhat awkward in contemporary English.

[7:33]  ³ sn John the Baptist was too separatist and ascetic for some, and so he was accused of not being directed by God, but by a demon.

[19:31]  ⁴ sn The custom called angaria allowed the impressment of animals for service to a significant figure.

[20:24]  ⁵ tn Here the specific name of the coin was retained in the translation, because not all coins in circulation in Palestine at the time carried the image of Caesar. In other places δηνάριον (dhnarion) has been translated simply as “silver coin” with an explanatory note.

[20:24]  sn A denarius was a silver coin worth approximately one day’s wage for a laborer. The fact that the leaders had such a coin showed that they already operated in the economic world of Rome. The denarius would have had a picture of Tiberius Caesar, the Roman emperor, on it.

[20:24]  ⁶ tn Or “whose likeness.”

[20:24]  sn In this passage Jesus points to the image (Grk εἰκών, eikwn) of Caesar on the coin. This same Greek word is used in Gen 1:26 (LXX) to state that humanity is made in the “image” of God. Jesus is making a subtle yet powerful contrast: Caesar’s image is on the denarius, so he can lay claim to money through taxation, but God’s image is on humanity, so he can lay claim to each individual life.

[20:24]  ⁷ tn Grk “whose likeness and inscription does it have?”