
Luke 12 — Greek text and reception
Each card preserves the Greek reading and its textual and reception notes. This source provides a Greek study edition; Hebrew counterparts and Hebrew–Greek classifications are not supplied.
Chapter 12
Fear God, seek the kingdom, and remain ready
Verse 12:1
Greek–English Saints Priority
Meanwhile, as the crowd gathered in its tens of thousands, so that they were trampling one another, He began to speak first to His disciples: “Guard yourselves against the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.
Textual & Reception Notes
μυριάδες is literally ‘tens of thousands,’ here describing the crowd’s immense numbers; no exact census total is inferred.
Verse 12:2
Greek–English Saints Priority
Nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, or hidden that will not become known.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:3
Greek–English Saints Priority
Therefore whatever you have said in the darkness will be heard in the light, and what you have spoken into the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed on the housetops.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:4
Greek–English Saints Priority
I tell you, My friends, do not fear those who kill the body and after that have nothing more they can do.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:5
Greek–English Saints Priority
But I will show you whom to fear: fear the One who, after killing, has authority to cast into Gehenna. Yes, I tell you, fear Him.
Textual & Reception Notes
Gehenna transliterates γέεννα and is kept distinct from Hades in ten:fifteen.
Verse 12:6
Greek–English Saints Priority
Are not five sparrows sold for two assaria? Yet not one of them is forgotten before God.
Textual & Reception Notes
An assarion is an ancient small coin; the two assaria are retained without a modern currency conversion.
Verse 12:7
Greek–English Saints Priority
Indeed, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear; you are worth more than many sparrows.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:8
Greek–English Saints Priority
And I tell you, everyone who acknowledges Me before people, the Son of Man will also acknowledge before the angels of God.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:9
Greek–English Saints Priority
But whoever denies Me before people will be denied before the angels of God.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:10
Greek–English Saints Priority
And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:11
Greek–English Saints Priority
When they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and authorities, do not be anxious about how or what you should say in your defense, or what you should say,
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:12
Greek–English Saints Priority
for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what must be said.”
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:13
Greek–English Saints Priority
Someone from the crowd said to Him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:14
Greek–English Saints Priority
But He said to him, “Man, who appointed Me a judge or divider over you?”
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:15
Greek–English Saints Priority
And He said to them, “See to it that you guard against every kind of greed, because a person’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:16
Greek–English Saints Priority
Then He told them a parable: “The land of a certain rich man yielded abundantly.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:17
Greek–English Saints Priority
And he reasoned within himself, saying, ‘What shall I do, since I have nowhere to gather my crops?’
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:18
Greek–English Saints Priority
And he said, ‘This is what I will do: I will pull down my storehouses and build larger ones, and gather all the grain and my goods there.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:19
Greek–English Saints Priority
And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years. Rest, eat, drink, be glad!”’
Textual & Reception Notes
ψυχή is rendered ‘soul’ in the self-address and its answer in verse twenty, while ‘life’ suits the concern about food in verse twenty-two. The range belongs to one Greek word.
Verse 12:20
Greek–English Saints Priority
But God said to him, ‘Fool! This very night they are demanding your soul from you. And the things you have prepared—whose will they be?’
Textual & Reception Notes
The source has an indefinite plural, ‘they demand,’ rather than explicitly naming God, angels, or other agents as those who reclaim the soul.
Verse 12:21
Greek–English Saints Priority
So it is with the one who stores up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:22
Greek–English Saints Priority
And He said to His disciples, “For this reason I tell you: do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:23
Greek–English Saints Priority
For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:24
Greek–English Saints Priority
Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, and they have neither storeroom nor storehouse, yet God feeds them. How much more valuable you are than the birds!
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:25
Greek–English Saints Priority
And which of you by being anxious can add a cubit to his span of life?
Textual & Reception Notes
ἡλικία can denote age, lifespan, or stature; πῆχυς is a cubit, a length measure. ‘A cubit to his span of life’ keeps the measure while reading it metaphorically of lifespan. ‘To his stature’ remains an alternative.
Verse 12:26
Greek–English Saints Priority
So if you cannot do even the smallest thing, why are you anxious about the rest?
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:27
Greek–English Saints Priority
Consider the lilies, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his glory was clothed like one of these.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:28
Greek–English Saints Priority
But if God so clothes the grass that is in the field today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will He clothe you, you of little faith!
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:29
Greek–English Saints Priority
And do not seek what you will eat and what you will drink, and do not be unsettled,
Textual & Reception Notes
μετεωρίζεσθε evokes being held aloft or unsettled; here anxiety or suspense is in view. It is not a command against all planning.
Verse 12:30
Greek–English Saints Priority
for the nations of the world seek after all these things, and your Father knows that you need them.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:31
Greek–English Saints Priority
But seek His kingdom, and these things will be added to you.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:32
Greek–English Saints Priority
Do not fear, little flock, because your Father was pleased to give you the kingdom.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:33
Greek–English Saints Priority
Sell your possessions and give alms. Make for yourselves purses that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in the heavens, where no thief draws near and no moth destroys.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:34
Greek–English Saints Priority
For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:35
Greek–English Saints Priority
Let your loins be girded and your lamps burning,
Textual & Reception Notes
Girded loins depict clothing gathered up for readiness; the bodily image is retained.
Verse 12:36
Greek–English Saints Priority
and be like people waiting for their own master to return from the wedding feast, so that when he comes and knocks, they may open to him at once.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:37
Greek–English Saints Priority
Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds keeping watch when he comes. Amen, I tell you: he will gird himself, have them recline at table, and come and serve them.
Textual & Reception Notes
δοῦλοι denotes slaves, not simply hired workers. The master’s act of serving them reverses the expected household roles.
Verse 12:38
Greek–English Saints Priority
Whether he comes in the second watch or in the third and finds them so, blessed are they.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:39
Greek–English Saints Priority
But know this: if the master of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have allowed his house to be broken into.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:40
Greek–English Saints Priority
You also must be ready, because the Son of Man comes at an hour you do not expect.”
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:41
Greek–English Saints Priority
Peter said, “Lord, are You telling this parable to us, or also to everyone?”
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:42
Greek–English Saints Priority
And the Lord said, “Who, then, is the faithful steward, the prudent one, whom his master will appoint over his household staff to give out their ration of grain at the proper time?
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:43
Greek–English Saints Priority
Blessed is that slave whom his master finds doing so when he comes.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:44
Greek–English Saints Priority
Truly, I tell you, he will appoint him over all his possessions.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:45
Greek–English Saints Priority
But if that slave says in his heart, ‘My master is taking a long time to come,’ and begins to beat the male and female servants, and to eat and drink and become drunk,
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:46
Greek–English Saints Priority
the master of that slave will come on a day he does not expect and at an hour he does not know, and will cut him in two and assign his portion with the unfaithful.
Textual & Reception Notes
διχοτομήσει is literally ‘will cut in two’; it is not softened into dismissal or a general reprimand. ἄπιστοι can mean unfaithful people or unbelievers.
Verse 12:47
Greek–English Saints Priority
That slave who knew his master’s will and did not prepare or act according to his will shall receive many blows.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:48
Greek–English Saints Priority
But the one who did not know and did things deserving blows shall receive few. From everyone to whom much was given, much will be required; and from the one to whom they entrusted much, they will ask all the more.
Textual & Reception Notes
The indefinite ‘they entrusted’ and ‘they will ask’ reproduce the source’s plural constructions without identifying an unexpressed agent.
Verse 12:49
Greek–English Saints Priority
I came to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!
Textual & Reception Notes
The compressed τί θέλω εἰ construction is rendered as an ardent wish. A more formally interrogative reading, ‘What do I wish if it is already kindled?’ is possible; the relation between wish and condition needs further syntactic review.
Verse 12:50
Greek–English Saints Priority
But I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how I am constrained until it is accomplished!
Textual & Reception Notes
‘Baptism’ and ‘be baptized’ preserve the repeated root; the saying presents an impending experience without naming it in this verse.
Verse 12:51
Greek–English Saints Priority
Do you think I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:52
Greek–English Saints Priority
For from now on five in one house will be divided, three against two and two against three.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:53
Greek–English Saints Priority
They will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:54
Greek–English Saints Priority
He also said to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you say at once, ‘A rainstorm is coming,’ and so it happens.
Textual & Reception Notes
NA28 reads ὅταν ἴδητε [τὴν] νεφέλην (SBLGNT ὅταν ἴδητε νεφέλην); the rendering above follows SBLGNT and would read “When you see the cloud rising” under NA28 (collated against TAGNT edition marks, not a printed NA28 apparatus).
Verse 12:55
Greek–English Saints Priority
And when you see a south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat,’ and it happens.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:56
Greek–English Saints Priority
Hypocrites! You know how to assess the appearance of the earth and the sky, but how is it that you do not know how to assess this time?
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:57
Greek–English Saints Priority
And why do you not also judge for yourselves what is right?
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:58
Greek–English Saints Priority
For as you go with your adversary before a ruler, make an effort on the way to be released from him, lest he drag you before the judge, and the judge hand you over to the officer, and the officer throw you into prison.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 12:59
Greek–English Saints Priority
I tell you, you will certainly not come out from there until you have paid even the last lepton.”
Textual & Reception Notes
A lepton is an ancient small coin. The strong negative οὐ μή is expressed as ‘certainly not.’