Luke 7:29-30

7:29 (Now ¹  all the people who heard this, even the tax collectors, ²  acknowledged ³  God’s justice, because they had been baptized ⁴  with John’s baptism. 7:30 However, the Pharisees ⁵  and the experts in religious law ⁶  rejected God’s purpose ⁷  for themselves, because they had not been baptized ⁸  by John. ⁹ ) ¹⁰ 

Luke 7:34

7:34 The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look at him, ¹¹  a glutton and a drunk, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ ¹² 

Luke 7:39

7:39 Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, ¹³  he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, ¹⁴  he would know who and what kind of woman ¹⁵  this is who is touching him, that she is a sinner.”

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¹ tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “now” to indicate the parenthetical nature of the comment by the author.

² sn See the note on tax collectors in 3:12.

³ tn Or “vindicated God”; Grk “justified God.” This could be expanded to “vindicated and responded to God.” The point is that God’s goodness and grace as evidenced in the invitation to John was justified and responded to by the group one might least expect, tax collector and sinners. They had more spiritual sensitivity than others. The contrastive response is clear from v. 30.

⁴ tn The participle βαπτισθέντες (baptisqente") has been translated as a causal adverbial participle.

⁵ sn See the note on Pharisees in 5:17.

⁶ tn That is, the experts in the interpretation of the Mosaic law (see also Luke 5:17, although the Greek term is not identical there, and Luke 10:25, where it is the same).

⁷ tn Or “plan.”

⁸ tn The participle βαπτισθέντες (baptisqente") has been translated as a causal adverbial participle; it could also be translated as means (“for themselves, by not having been baptized”). This is similar to the translation found in the NRSV.

⁹ tn Grk “by him”; the referent (John the Baptist) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

¹⁰ sn Luke 7:29-30 forms something of an aside by the author. To indicate this, they have been placed in parentheses.

¹¹ tn Grk “Behold a man.”

¹² sn Neither were they happy with Jesus (the Son of Man), even though he was the opposite of John and associated freely with people like tax collectors and sinners. Either way, God’s messengers were subject to complaint.

¹³ tn The word “this” is not in the Greek text, but is implied. Direct objects were frequently omitted in Greek when clear from the context.

¹⁴ tn This is a good example of a second class (contrary to fact) Greek conditional sentence. The Pharisee said, in effect, “If this man were a prophet (but he is not)…”

¹⁵ sn The Pharisees believed in a form of separationism that would have prevented them from any kind of association with such a sinful woman.