Luke 17:31-33

New English Translation

Footnotes

1. Luke 17:31 sn Most of the roofs in the NT were flat roofs made of pounded dirt, sometimes mixed with lime or stones, supported by heavy wooden beams. They generally had an easy means of access, either a sturdy wooden ladder or stone stairway, sometimes on the outside of the house.
2. Luke 17:31 sn The swiftness and devastation of the judgment will require a swift escape. There is no time to come down from one’s roof and pick up anything from inside one’s home.
3. Luke 17:32 sn An allusion to Gen 19:26. The warning about Lot’s wife is not to look back and long to be where one used to be. The world is being judged, and the person who delays or turns back will be destroyed.
4. Luke 17:33 tn Or “tries to preserve”; Grk “seeks to gain.”
5. Luke 17:33 tn Grk “soul.” See the discussion of this Greek term in the note on “life” in Luke 9:24.
6. Luke 17:33 sn The Greek word translated life can refer to both earthly, physical life and inner, transcendent life (one’s “soul”). In the context, if a person is not willing to suffer the world’s rejection and persecution in order to follow Jesus but instead seeks to retain his physical life, then that person will lose both physical life and inner, transcendent life (at the judgment). On the other hand, the one who willingly gives up earthly, physical life to follow Jesus (“loses his life”) will ultimately preserve one’s “soul” (note that the parallel in John’s Gospel speaks of “guarding one’s ‘soul’ for eternal life” (John 12:25).