While women appear as notable characters in all of the Gospels,
they play an especially prominent role in Luke’s Gospel. This is evident in
Luke’s frequent pairing of stories about men with parallel stories about women.
In the chapters preceding this week’s text, Luke couples the
angelic announcement to Zechariah about the birth of John the Baptist (1:5–25)
with the annunciation to Mary concerning the birth of Jesus (1:26–38); he
combines the prophecy of Simeon in the Temple (2:25–35) with the prophecy of
Anna the prophetess (2:36–38); and he includes not only a list of Jesus’ male
disciples (6:12–16), but also a list of his female disciples (8:1–3). This
pattern of male/female parallels continues throughout this Gospel, and Luke
7:1–17, where Jesus’ healing of a Centurion’s servant is coupled with the
raising of a widow’s son, provides another instance of this tendency.
Beyond the male/female parallel, there may be another reason
why Luke places these two stories side by side. You may recall that in Jesus’
inaugural sermon in Nazareth he alluded to miracles performed by Elijah and
Elisha (see Luke 4:25–27). It seems significant that the miracles that Jesus
performs here in Luke 7:1–17 bear some relationship to those very same Elijah
and Elisha traditions. Jesus’ healing of the centurion’s servant subtly recalls
Elisha’s healing of Naaman the Syrian in 2 Kings 5:1–15, where Naaman, a
well-respected Gentile official, is healed by Elisha at a distance.
More obviously, Jesus’ raising of the widow of Nain’s son
draws upon 1 Kings 17:8–24, where Elijah raises the widow of Zarephath’s son.
Both stories begin at “the gate of the town,” and like Elijah, Jesus raises the
only son of a widow. Further, both miracles include the line “gave him to his
mother” and conclude by identifying the miracle worker as a “prophet” or “man
of God.”
By drawing on these Elijah and Elisha narratives, Luke
locates Jesus in the tradition of the great miracle-working prophets of the
Hebrew Bible, and by incorporating stories about Gentiles and women (especially
a widow), he adds texture to his portrait of Jesus as one especially concerned
with those on the margins of society.
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