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Luke 05 General Notes
Special concepts in this chapter
"You will catch men"
The New Testament often talks about making disciples or followers of Christ. This is a major ministry of the church. There are many different figures used to describe this in the New Testament. In this chapter, Jesus uses the metaphor of fishing to explain that the disciples of Christ are to gather together other people to become Christ's disciples. Jesus helps Simon the fisherman to catch a very large number of fish to show that Jesus will enable Simon and other disciples to gather many people to follow Christ. (See: rc://en/tw/dict/bible/kt/disciple and rc://en/ta/man/translate/figs-metaphor)
"Sinful people"
The Pharisees refer to a group of people as "sinners." What they meant was people who seemed to have no concern for keeping the Law of Moses. However, Luke treats the term "sinners" in an ironic way, because Jesus says that he came to call sinners to repent. By "sinners," Jesus was referring to anyone guilty of sin. (See: rc://en/tw/dict/bible/kt/sin and rc://en/ta/man/translate/figs-irony)
Fasting and Feasting
Fasting was often done during times of repentance. It was not done during joyous times. Because the time in which Jesus was with his disciples was a joyous time, he did not tell them to fast until after he was no longer with them. (See: rc://en/tw/dict/bible/kt/repent)
Important figures of speech in this chapter
Hypothetical Situation
Jesus uses a hypothetical situation to condemn the Pharisees. This passage includes "people in good health" and "righteous people." This does not mean that there are people who do not need Jesus. There are no "righteous people," everybody needs Jesus. (See: rc://en/ta/man/translate/figs-hypo and Luke 5:31-32)
Other possible translation difficulties in this chapter
Implicit information
In several parts of this chapter the author left some information implicit that his original readers would have understood and thought about. Modern readers might not know some of those things, so they might have trouble understanding all that the author was communicating. The UDB often shows how that information can be presented so that modern readers will be able to understand those passages. (See: rc://en/ta/man/translate/translate-unknown and rc://en/ta/man/translate/figs-explicit)
Past Events
Parts of this chapter are sequences of events that have already happened. In a given passage, Luke sometimes writes as if the events have already happened while other events are still in progress (even though they are complete at the time he writes). This can cause difficulty in translation by creating an illogical order of events. It may be necessary to make these consistent by writing as if all the events have already happened.
"Son of Man"
Jesus refers to himself as the "Son of Man" in this passage. Some languages may not allow a person to refer to himself in the third person. (See: rc://en/tw/dict/bible/kt/sonofman)