The chapter
Simply Short instructions first: forgive someone seven times in a day if they keep coming back, and do not expect thanks for doing your job. Then ten men with leprosy are cleansed on the road and one comes back, and he is the foreigner. Then the Pharisees ask when the Kingdom will come and get an answer that refuses to give them a date or a place, and the disciples get a long warning about a day that will arrive while everyone is eating and buying and building.
Context This chapter contains one of the places where a reader can see the editions differ without knowing any language, because the numbering itself changes. Three of the thirteen offered editions have no verse 36 at all and run straight from 35 to 37: the World English Bible, the Bible libre and the Nova Biblia Livre. Nine carry a verse 36 with words in it, about two men in a field, one taken and one left. The Petrus Canisiusvertaling carries the number and prints a dash where the words would be. Those three editions that skip it are the same three that lack DAILY at 9:23 and the same three that add the clause about many being called at 14:24, which this file records without explaining, since why editions group is not something the corpus answers.
Verses 1-10
Simply Things that make people stumble are going to happen, but whoever causes them would be better off drowned. If someone wrongs you, tell them; if they change their mind, forgive them, and do it again seven times in one day if that is what happens. The apostles ask for more faith, and are told that faith the size of a mustard seed could move a tree into the sea. Then a small picture: a servant who comes in from the field is not thanked for doing what he was told, and neither should they expect to be.
Context The request at verse 5 is answered by refusing its terms. They ask for MORE faith, as though it were a quantity, and the answer describes the smallest seed they know doing something absurd, so the reply is that size is the wrong axis. The servant at verses 7 to 10 works the same way. The disciples have just been told to forgive seven times a day, which sounds like an achievement, and the story that follows removes any grounds for feeling like one: they are to say they have done their duty and nothing more. Verse 4 is also worth reading exactly. The condition is that the person RETURNS SAYING I REPENT, seven times; the text is not describing forgiveness without a word said.
Verses 11-19
Simply On the border between Samaria and Galilee, ten men with leprosy stand at a distance and shout for mercy. Jesus does not touch them or say anything about healing: he tells them to go and show themselves to the priests, and they are cleansed while walking. One of them turns round, comes back praising God, and falls at his feet to thank him. The text then says the thing it has been holding back: he was a Samaritan. Jesus asks where the other nine are, calls this man a foreigner, and tells him his faith has saved him.
Context The order of the sentences at verses 15 and 16 is the whole point. He comes back, he praises God, he falls at Jesus' feet, he gives thanks, AND THEN the text says he was a Samaritan, as the last three words. A reader who was going to disqualify him has already watched him behave better than the other nine. This is the third and last time this Gospel uses the word Samaritan, after 9:52 where a village refuses him and 10:33 where one stops on a road, and in two of the three the Samaritan is the one doing right. All ten were cleansed, which verse 17 states, so nothing was withheld from the nine who did not come back; what the one gets at verse 19 is a different word, that his faith has SAVED him.
Verses 20-37
Simply The Pharisees ask when the Kingdom is coming. Jesus says it does not arrive in a way you can watch for, and that nobody will be able to point at it and say it is here or there. Then he warns the disciples that they will want to see one of the days of the Son of Man and will not, and that people will try to send them running after sightings. When it comes it will be like lightning, and like the flood in Noah's time and the fire in Lot's: ordinary life, eating and buying and building, until the day itself. Remember Lot's wife, he says.
Context The last clause of verse 21 is one of the most quoted sentences in this Gospel and the editions do not agree on what it says. Eight of the thirteen put the Kingdom WITHIN YOU, inside a person: the World English Bible, the Bible libre, the Riveduta 1927, the Luther 1912, the Nova Biblia Livre, the Biblia Gdanska, the Cornilescu and the Vietnamese 1934. Five put it AMONG YOU or IN YOUR MIDST, standing in the room: Segond 1910, the Reina Valera 1909, La Biblia en Espanol Sencillo, the Petrus Canisiusvertaling and the Bible kralicka. That is a large difference, since one reading makes the Kingdom interior and the other makes it the person the Pharisees are talking to. Three of these five also group together at John 6:11 and two do not, so this file names the editions instead of calling them a family. The two French editions are once again on opposite sides. The two examples that follow are both openable: Genesis 7:7 for Noah entering the ship and Genesis 19:24 to 26 for the fire and for the wife who looked back.