Peter, James, and John were fishermen. When Jesus told them that they would catch men, they knew that that was a metaphor for helping people believe the good news about Jesus. (See: [[rc://en/tw/dict/bible/kt/disciple]] and [[rc://en/ta/man/translate/figs-metaphor]])
The Pharisees refer to a group of people as "sinners." What they meant was people who seemed to have no concern for keeping the Law of Moses. However, Luke treats the term "sinners" in an ironic way, because Jesus says that he came to call sinners to repent. By "sinners," Jesus was referring to anyone guilty of sin. (See: [[rc://en/tw/dict/bible/kt/sin]] and [[rc://en/ta/man/translate/figs-irony]])
was often done during times of repentance. It was not done during joyous times. Because the time in which Jesus was with his disciples was a joyous time, he did not tell them to fast until after he was no longer with them. (See: [[rc://en/tw/dict/bible/kt/repent]])
Jesus uses a hypothetical situation to condemn the Pharisees. This passage includes "people in good health" and "righteous people." This does not mean that there are people who do not need Jesus. There are no "righteous people," everybody needs Jesus. (See: [[rc://en/ta/man/translate/figs-hypo]] and [Luke 5:31-32](./29.md))
#### Other possible translation difficulties in this chapter ####
In several parts of this chapter the author left some information implicit that his original readers would have understood and thought about. Modern readers might not know some of those things, so they might have trouble understanding all that the author was communicating. The UDB often shows how that information can be presented so that modern readers will be able to understand those passages. (See: [[rc://en/ta/man/translate/translate-unknown]] and [[rc://en/ta/man/translate/figs-explicit]])
Parts of this chapter are sequences of events that have already happened. In a given passage, Luke sometimes writes as if the events have already happened while other events are still in progress (even though they are complete at the time he writes). This can cause difficulty in translation by creating an illogical order of events. It may be necessary to make these consistent by writing as if all the events have already happened.
Jesus refers to himself as the "Son of Man" in this passage. Some languages may not allow a person to refer to himself in the third person. (See: [[rc://en/tw/dict/bible/kt/sonofman]])
See in Reader
