What Does Luke 4:20 Mean?

(20) **And he closed the book.**—Better, *rolled up, *as describing the actual manner of closing. The description is characteristic as indicating (1) that it probably came in the first instance from an eye-witness-and (2) the calmness and deliberation with which our Lord acted. **And sat down.**—This conveys to us the idea of falling back to a place of comparative obscurity among the congregation. To the Jew it implied just the opposite. The chair near the place from which the lesson was read was the pulpit of the Rabbi, and to sit down in that chair (as in Matthew 5:1; Matthew 23:2) was an assumption by our Lord, apparently for the first time in that synagogue, of the preacher’s function. This led to the eager, fixed gaze of wonder which the next clause speaks of. **Fastened on him.**—The Greek word so rendered is noticeable as being used twelve times by St. Luke, (chiefly in the Acts), and twice by St. Paul (2Corinthians 3:7; 2Corinthians 3:13), and by no other writer of the New Testament. It had been used by Aristotle in his scientific writings, and was probably a half-technical word which St. Luke’s studies as a physician had brought into his vocabulary, and which St. Paul learnt, as it were, from him.