The chapter
Simply Jesus borrows Simon's boat to teach from, then tells him to fish again after a night that caught nothing, and the nets fill. Simon asks him to go away. Instead the whole crew leaves everything and follows. A man covered in leprosy is touched and made clean. A paralysed man is lowered through a roof and told first that his sins are forgiven, which starts the first argument. A tax collector called Levi is called and throws a party, and the chapter ends with a question about fasting answered by two pictures and a line about wine.
Context One small habit of this book is visible from the first line and holds all the way through. At verse 1 the water is the LAKE of Gennesaret, and Luke calls it a lake every time: at 5:1, 5:2, 8:22, 8:23 and 8:33. Mark calls the same water a sea fourteen times and never a lake, and Matthew sixteen times and never a lake. Luke does use the word sea, four times, but never for this water: a coast at 6:17, and a figure of speech at 17:2, 17:6 and 21:25. It is a small correction of scale by someone writing for readers who know what a sea is.
Verses 1-11
Simply The crowd presses in, so Jesus gets into Simon's boat and teaches from the water. Then he tells Simon to put out into the deep and let the nets down. Simon says they worked all night for nothing, but does it, and the catch nearly sinks two boats. Simon falls at his knees and asks him to leave, because he is a sinful man. Jesus tells him not to be afraid, and from now on he will be catching people alive. They bring the boats in, leave everything and follow.
Context The order of events here is this book's own. Simon is not a stranger: Jesus has already been in his house and cured his mother-in-law at 4:38, so the call at verse 10 comes after the household knows him, not before. What Simon says at verse 8 is also worth reading exactly. He does not ask for anything and he does not confess anything specific. He asks Jesus to go away, and gives being a sinful man as the reason, and the answer he gets is about fear rather than about sin.
Verses 12-26
Simply A man full of leprosy says that Jesus can make him clean if he wants to. Jesus touches him and says he wants to. He tells the man to say nothing and to go to the priest as the law requires. Later, four men cannot get a paralysed friend through the crowd, so they go up on the roof and lower him through it. Jesus says his sins are forgiven, and the scribes ask who can forgive sins except God. He tells the man to pick up his mat and go home, and the man does.
Context The roof at verse 19 is not the same roof in every book and not the same in every edition, and both can be checked here. Mark 2:4 has them break the roof up and dig through it, which is a roof of packed earth and branches. Nine of the thirteen offered editions have them lower the man between TILES, which is a different kind of building; four do not name tiles at all, and say only that he came down through the roof or through an opening, and those four are Segond 1910, the Reina Valera 1909, the Petrus Canisiusvertaling and the Bible kralicka. This file reports the split and does not rule on it: whether the difference sits in the manuscripts or in the translators' hands is not something the corpus can settle. What does not change in any of them is the order of the words at verse 20. The friends carry a paralysed man to be walked, and the first thing said to him is about sins.
Verses 27-39
Simply Jesus calls Levi, a tax collector sitting at his booth, and Levi leaves everything and puts on a big dinner for him with a crowd of other tax collectors. The Pharisees ask the disciples why their teacher eats with people like that, and he says that doctors are for the sick. They ask why his disciples do not fast when John's do. He answers that you cannot make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is there, and adds two pictures about patching an old coat and putting new wine in old skins.
Context Verse 39 is only in this Gospel. Mark 2:22 and Matthew 9:17 both end the wine saying at the fresh skins, and both can be opened here to see it. Luke adds one more line, and it argues the other way: nobody who has drunk the old wine wants the new. It is either a joke about the people who have just been asking the questions, or a warning against the whole picture that precedes it, and the text does not say which. That last clause also does not read the same in all thirteen editions, and the differences make four groups. Nine say the old is BETTER. Segond 1910 and the Riveduta 1927 say only that the old is GOOD, with nothing compared. The Petrus Canisiusvertaling says it is BEST. The Luther 1912 says it is MILDER, which is a different adjective altogether. A French reader meets both of the first two, since Segond says good and the Bible libre says better.