The guests at the banquet
Blind people among the crowd and at the table. No change in sight is described. Luke 14:12-24.
What led up to it
Jesus is eating on the Sabbath at the house of a leading Pharisee, and the guests have been choosing the places of honour.
What happens
Jesus tells His host to invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind, who cannot repay him. Then He tells a parable of a great banquet whose invited guests make excuses. The master sends his servant into the streets to bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.
In their shoes
The same four groups are named twice, once as an instruction and once in a story. In both, blind people are not objects of charity outside the door. They are guests at the table, wanted for their company, with nothing expected in return.
The place and the time
What the old books and the archaeologists can add. Each paragraph names its source.
A formal meal in Jesus's day was taken after sunset, with guests reclining on couches set around three sides of a square, the fourth side left open for the servants, and a shared dish into which each guest dipped. For a great feast the guests were invited beforehand, and a second summons went out on the day when the meal was ready; places were set by rank. Edersheim cites a rabbinic saying that no one in Jerusalem went to a feast until the invitation had been given and repeated. That is why, in the parable, the excuses come when the servant announces that all is ready.
Source: Smith's Bible Dictionary (1884 edition), entry "Meals"; Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (1883), Book V, chapter V.
The scene is a Sabbath meal at a leading Pharisee's house, just after Jesus healed a man with dropsy in front of the guests and watched them choose the best places. When Jesus spoke of feasting the poor, a guest answered with the common hope of a great feast at the coming of God's kingdom, and the parable was told in reply to him.
Source: Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (1883), Book IV, chapter XVI; Luke 14:1-15.
Edersheim reads the three invitations as widening circles: first the leading people of the city, who make excuses; then the poor, crippled, blind and lame from the city's streets and lanes; then people outside the city altogether, on the highways and under the hedges. "Compel them to come in" he takes as earnest, pressing invitation, not force, since such guests would hardly believe they were wanted. Matthew Henry reads the same groups as the outcasts of Israel and then the Gentiles.
Source: Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (1883), Book IV, chapter XVI; Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706-1721), on Luke 14.
Inviting the poor to a feast was not a new idea. The Law already required that the poor, the stranger, the fatherless and the widow share in the festival meals (Deuteronomy 14:29, 26:12), and Smith's notes the poor "were also invited to feasts." Jesus was pressing a command His hearers knew.
Source: Smith's Bible Dictionary (1884 edition), entry "Beggar, Begging"; Deuteronomy 14:29, 26:12.
What was Jesus teaching? Both commentators on the shelf read the first saying as a rebuke of hospitality that expects repayment, and the parable as a warning that those first invited to God's kingdom were refusing it while the people nobody invited were being gathered in. Neither treats the passage as being about blind people as such; the blind stand here with the poor, the crippled and the lame as the guests God wants at His table. Matthew Henry adds that the gospel has often had its greatest success among "the maimed, and the halt, and the blind."
Source: Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706-1721), on Luke 14; Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (1883), Book IV, chapter XVI.
The passage
Luke 14:12-24
12 Then Jesus said to the man who had invited Him, “When you host a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or brothers or relatives or rich neighbors. Otherwise, they may invite you in return, and you will be repaid.
13 But when you host a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind,
14 and you will be blessed. Since they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
15 When one of those reclining with Him heard this, he said to Jesus, “Blessed is everyone who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God.”
16 But Jesus replied, “A certain man prepared a great banquet and invited many guests.
17 When it was time for the banquet, he sent his servant to tell those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’
18 But one after another they all began to make excuses. The first one said, ‘I have bought a field, and I need to go see it. Please excuse me.’
19 Another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out. Please excuse me.’
20 Still another said, ‘I have married a wife, so I cannot come.’
21 The servant returned and reported all this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the city, and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.’
22 ‘Sir,’ the servant replied, ‘what you ordered has been done, and there is still room.’
23 So the master told his servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedges and compel them to come in, so that my house will be full.
24 For I tell you, not one of those men who were invited will taste my banquet.’”