¹ tn Grk “before.”

² tn Grk “and he”; because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, the conjunction καί (kai) has not been translated here. Instead a new English sentence is begun in the translation.

³ tn Grk “even from his mother’s womb.” While this idiom may be understood to refer to the point of birth (“even from his birth”), Luke 1:41 suggests that here it should be understood to refer to a time before birth.

sn He will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even before his birth. This is the language of the birth of a prophet (Judg 13:5, 7; Isa 49:1; Jer 1:5; Sir 49:7); see 1:41 for the first fulfillment.

⁴ tn Grk “he”; the referent (Jesus) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁵ tn Here δεῖ (dei, “it is necessary”) indicates divine commission (cf. Luke 2:49).

⁶ sn The good news of the kingdom, the kingdom of the rule of God through the Messiah, is the topic of Jesus’ preaching.

⁷ tn Or “cities.”

⁸ sn Jesus was sent by God for this purpose. This is the language of divine commission.

⁹ tn Grk “because for this purpose I was sent.”

¹⁰ sn The necessity that the Son of Man suffer is the particular point that needed emphasis, since for many 1st century Jews the Messiah was a glorious and powerful figure, not a suffering one.

¹¹ sn Rejection in Luke is especially by the Jewish leadership (here elders, chief priests, and experts in the law), though in Luke 23 almost all will join in.

¹² tn Or “and scribes.” See the note on the phrase “experts in the law” in 5:21.

¹³ sn The description of the Son of Man being rejected…killed, and…raised is the first of six passion summaries in Luke: 9:44; 17:25; 18:31-33; 24:7; 24:46-47.

¹⁴ tn Or “all unanimously” (BDAG 107 s.v. ἀπό 6). "One after another" is suggested by L&N 61.2.

¹⁵ sn To make excuses and cancel at this point was an insult in the culture of the time. Regardless of customs concerning responses to invitations, refusal at this point was rude.

¹⁶ sn I have bought a field. An examination of newly bought land was a common practice. It was this person’s priority.

¹⁷ sn The expression Please excuse me is probably a polite way of refusing, given the dynamics of the situation, although it is important to note that an initial acceptance had probably been indicated and it was now a bit late for a refusal. The semantic equivalent of the phrase may well be “please accept my apologies.”

¹⁸ tn Grk “asked him, saying.” The participle λέγοντες (legontes) is redundant in contemporary English and has not been translated.

¹⁹ tn Grk “his brother”; but this would be redundant in English with the same phrase “his brother” at the end of the verse, so most modern translations render this phrase “the man” (so NIV, NRSV).

²⁰ tn The use of ἵνα (Jina) with imperatival force is unusual (BDF §470.1).

²¹ tn Grk “and raise up seed,” an idiom for procreating children (L&N 23.59).

²² sn A quotation from Deut 25:5. Because the OT quotation does not include “a wife” as the object of the verb, it has been left as normal type. This practice is called levirate marriage (see also Ruth 4:1-12; Mishnah, m. Yevamot; Josephus, Ant. 4.8.23 [4.254-256]). The levirate law is described in Deut 25:5-10. The brother of a man who died without a son had an obligation to marry his brother’s widow. This served several purposes: It provided for the widow in a society where a widow with no children to care for her would be reduced to begging, and it preserved the name of the deceased, who would be regarded as the legal father of the first son produced from that marriage.

²³ tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “then” to indicate the implied sequence of events within the narrative.

²⁴ sn Everything written about me. The divine plan, events, and scripture itself are seen here as being one.

²⁵ sn For a similar threefold division of the OT scriptures, see the prologue to Sirach, lines 8-10, and from Qumran, the epilogue to 4QMMT, line 10.