Luke 12:50-52 New English Translation

⁵⁰I have a baptism^[a] to undergo,^[b] and how distressed I am until it is finished! ⁵¹Do you think I have come to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!^[c] ⁵²For from now on^[d] there will be five in one household divided, three against two and two against three.

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Footnotes

Luke 12:50 sn The figure of the baptism is variously interpreted, as some see a reference (1) to martyrdom or (2) to inundation with God’s judgment. The OT background, however, suggests the latter sense: Jesus is about to be uniquely inundated with God’s judgment as he is rejected, persecuted, and killed (Pss 18:4, 16; 42:7; 69:1-2; Isa 8:7-8; 30:27-28; Jonah 2:3-6).
Luke 12:50 tn Grk “to be baptized with.”
Luke 12:51 tn Or “hostility.” This term pictures dissension and hostility (BDAG 234 s.v. διαμερισμός).sn For rhetorical reasons, Jesus’ statement is deliberately paradoxical (seeming to state the opposite of Matt 10:13, for example, where the messengers are to bring peace). The conflict implied by the division (the parallel in Matt 10:34 has “sword”) is not primarily eschatological in this context, however, but immediate, and concerns the hostility and discord even among family members that a person’s allegiance to Jesus would bring (vv. 52-53).
Luke 12:52 sn From now on is a popular phrase in Luke: 1:48; 5:10; 22:18, 69; see Mic 7:6.

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