Luke 10:10-12

10:10 But whenever ¹  you enter a town ²  and the people ³  do not welcome ⁴  you, go into its streets ⁵  and say, 10:11 ‘Even the dust of your town ⁶  that clings to our feet we wipe off ⁷  against you. ⁸  Nevertheless know this: The kingdom of God has come.’ ⁹  10:12 I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom ¹⁰  than for that town! ¹¹ 

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¹ tn Grk “whatever town you enter,” but this is more often expressed in English as “whenever you enter a town.”

² tn Or “city.”

³ tn Grk “and they”; the referent (the people who live in the town) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁴ sn More discussion takes place concerning rejection (the people do not welcome you), as these verses lead into the condemnation of certain towns for their rejection of God’s kingdom.

⁵ tn The term πλατεῖα (plateia) refers to the “broad street,” so this refers to the main roads of the town.

⁶ tn Or “city.”

⁷ sn See Luke 9:5, where the verb is different but the meaning is the same. This was a sign of rejection.

⁸ tn Here ὑμῖν (Jumin) has been translated as a dative of disadvantage.

⁹ tn Or “has come near.” As in v. 9 (see above), the combination of ἐγγίζω (engizw) with the preposition ἐπί (epi) is decisive in showing that the sense is “has come” (see BDAG 270 s.v. ἐγγίζω 2, and W. R. Hutton, “The Kingdom of God Has Come,” ExpTim 64 [Dec 1952]: 89-91).

¹⁰ sn The allusion to Sodom, the most wicked of OT cities from Gen 19:1-29, shows that to reject the current message is even more serious than the worst sins of the old era and will result in more severe punishment. The noun Sodom is in emphatic position in the Greek text.

¹¹ tn Or “city.”