Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
Luke 13:1-9, Pilate's victims, the tower and the fig tree
People tell Jesus about Galileans whose blood Pilate mixed with their sacrifices. He answers with a tower that fell in Siloam, a call to repent, and a fig tree given one more year.
Luke 13:1-9, in every translation this tool compares.
People bring Jesus news of Galileans whom Pilate had killed during their sacrifices. Jesus rejects the idea that those victims, or the eighteen crushed by a collapsing tower at Siloam, were worse sinners than anyone else, and warns that his hearers face the same end unless they turn back to God. He adds a story about a fig tree that has borne no fruit for three years, which the owner wants removed and the gardener begs to tend for one more season.
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- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/passover-pilgrims\/","n":"Passover and the pilgrim crowds","s":"The spring festival that retold God's rescue of Israel from Egypt. Jerusalem filled with pilgrims, and hopes of freedom ran high.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/jerusalem-destroyed-ad-70\/","n":"The war with Rome and the fall of Jerusalem","s":"In AD 66 Judea rose against Rome. By AD 70 Roman armies had starved and burned Jerusalem, destroyed the temple and sacrificed to their standards where it had stood.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/estates-and-laborers\/","n":"Estates, tenants and day laborers","s":"Wealthy owners, often living in town, let their land to tenant farmers for a share of the crop or hired day laborers in the marketplace and paid them a denarius at sundown.","r":""}
No other ancient source mentions the killing or the tower (Bailey; the ESV and CSB Study Bibles), but it fits what Josephus tells of Pilate. Once "Pilate undertook to bring a current of water to Jerusalem, and did it with the sacred money," then sent soldiers in disguise to beat the crowd that protested. What perish means is debated: Wright hears a warning of Roman swords and of walls collapsing on the city's people in a coming siege; the ESV and CSB Study Bibles read final judgment and eternal loss. What the tower was is also disputed. Keener and Strauss suggest the city wall or Pilate's aqueduct, the Zondervan Bible dictionary the walls; the Zondervan archaeology handbook reports a round tower found near the pool of Siloam in 1913 and says "Scholars are almost universally convinced it was not a tower designed for defensive purposes": probably a dovecote raising pigeons for the temple. The worker asks for a fourth year to be sure, and since figs rarely needed manure, he does everything he can (Keener). Whom the tree stands for is debated: Bailey thinks of the nation's leaders, the ESV Study Bible and Strauss of Israel as a whole.
- Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 18.3.1-2, trans. William Whiston
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Luke 13:1-5, 13:6, 13:7 and 13:8
- ESV Study Bible, study notes on Luke 13:1-5 and 13:6-9
- CSB Study Bible, note on Luke 13:1-5
- Kenneth E. Bailey, Poet and Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes, Through Peasant Eyes, ch. 5, Pilate, the Tower, and the Fig Tree
- N. T. Wright, Luke for Everyone, comment on Luke 13:1-9
- Mark L. Strauss, Luke, in Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary, ed. Clinton E. Arnold, on Luke 13:1, 13:2, 13:4, 13:6 and 13:8
- J. D. Douglas and Merrill C. Tenney, Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary, Siloam, tower in
- J. Randall Price and H. Wayne House, Zondervan Handbook of Biblical Archaeology, ch. 12, Luke 13:4 The Tower in Siloam
