The Scene
It is late on the night of the Last Supper; the meal is ending, and Gethsemane is minutes away. Jesus reminds the Twelve of their earlier missions (Luke 9:3; 10:4), when he sent them out with no purse, no bag, no sandals — "Did you lack anything?" "Nothing," they answer. Then comes the deliberate reversal: but now let the one with a purse take it, and a bag as well; and let the one who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one. The puzzle is immediate. The teacher who blessed the peacemakers and commanded love of enemies — who within the hour will halt a drawn sword — orders the purchase of a weapon so urgently that a man's last garment should go to pay for it. The disciples produce two swords. He answers, "It is enough." Enough for what? On that question the whole passage turns.
The Scripture
10 verses KJV · ASV · WEB · NIV| Verse | King James (1611) | American Standard (1901) | World English | NIV (2011) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 22:35 | And he said unto them, When I sent you without purse, and scrip, and shoes, lacked ye any thing? And they said, Nothing. | And he said unto them, When I sent you forth without purse, and wallet, and shoes, lacked ye<S>5302, 3361</S> anything? And they said, Nothing. | He said to them, “When I sent you out without purse, bag, and sandals, did you lack anything?” They said, “Nothing.” | Then Jesus asked them, “When I sent you without purse, bag or sandals, did you lack anything?” “Nothing,” they answered. |
| 22:36 | Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it , and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one. | And he said unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise a wallet; and he that hath none, let him sell his cloak, and buy a sword. | Then he said to them, “But now, whoever has a purse, let him take it, and likewise a bag. Whoever has none, let him sell his cloak, and buy a sword. | He said to them, “But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don`t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. |
| 22:37 | For I say unto you, that this that is written must yet be accomplished in me, And he was reckoned among the transgressors: for the things concerning me have an end. | For I say unto you, that this which is written must be fulfilled in me, And he was reckoned with transgressors: for<S>1063, 2532</S> that which concerneth me hath fulfilment. | For I tell you that this which is written must still be fulfilled in me: ‘He was counted with transgressors.’ For that which concerns me is being fulfilled.” | It is written: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors`; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment.” |
| 22:38 | And they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And he said unto them, It is enough. | And they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And he said unto them, It is enough. | They said, “Lord, behold, here are two swords.” He said to them, “That is enough.” | The disciples said, “See, Lord, here are two swords.” “That`s enough!” he replied. |
| Verse | King James (1611) | American Standard (1901) | World English | NIV (2011) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 53:12 | Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. | Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out his soul unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors: yet he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. | Therefore I will give him a portion with the great. He will divide the plunder with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was counted with the transgressors; yet he bore the sins of many and made intercession for the transgressors. | Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. |
| Verse | King James (1611) | American Standard (1901) | World English | NIV (2011) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 22:49 | When they which were about him saw what would follow, they said unto him, Lord, shall we smite with the sword? | And when they that were about him saw what would follow, they said, Lord, shall we smite with the sword? | When those who were around him saw what was about to happen, they said to him, “Lord, shall we strike with the sword?” | When Jesus` followers saw what was going to happen, they said, “Lord, should we strike with our swords?” |
| 22:50 | And one of them smote the servant of the high priest, and cut off his right ear. | And a certain one of them smote the servant of the high priest, and struck off his right ear. | A certain one of them struck the servant of the high priest, and cut off his right ear. | And one of them struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his right ear. |
| 22:51 | And Jesus answered and said, Suffer ye thus far. And he touched his ear, and healed him. | But Jesus answered and said, Suffer ye them thus far. And he touched his ear, and healed him. | But Jesus answered, “Let me at least do this”—and he touched his ear and healed him. | But Jesus answered, “No more of this!” And he touched the man`s ear and healed him. |
| Verse | King James (1611) | American Standard (1901) | World English | NIV (2011) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26:51 | And, behold, one of them which were with Jesus stretched out his hand, and drew his sword, and struck a servant of the high priest's, and smote off his ear. | And behold, one of them that were with Jesus stretched out his hand, and drew his sword, and smote the servant of the high priest, and struck off his ear. | Behold, one of those who were with Jesus stretched out his hand and drew his sword, and struck the servant of the high priest, and cut off his ear. | With that, one of Jesus` companions reached for his sword, drew it out and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear. |
| 26:52 | Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. | Then saith Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into its place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. | Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place, for all those who take the sword will die by the sword. | “Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. |
The Prophecy Beneath It
Jesus does not leave the command unexplained; he grounds it in a verse: "For I tell you, this Scripture must be fulfilled in me: And he was numbered with the transgressors" (Luke 22:37, citing Isaiah 53:12). It is the only place in the Gospels where Jesus expressly quotes a line of the Suffering Servant songs of himself. To be counted with the lawless, he must be found looking lawless: a band taken at night, carrying weapons. Hours later the fulfillment is precise — "Have you come out as against a robber, with swords and clubs?" (Matthew 26:55) — and by morning he hangs between two of the very brigands the word names (Mark 15:27). On the fulfillment reading, then, the swords exist not to be used but to be found: enough steel to class the group with transgressors, far too little to be an army. Two swords are ample for a prophecy and absurd for a defense — which may be exactly what "It is enough" concedes.
The Greek
5The word names a short sword or long knife — a sidearm or utility blade, even the knife that dressed the Passover lamb — not the rhomphaia, the full battle sword. Two machairai among eleven men is no armory; the word itself keeps the scene closer to a traveler's belt than a battlefield. Chrysostom could plausibly ask whether these blades came from the supper table itself.
"It is enough" — the two most contested words in the passage. Greek and Semitic usage both allow either plain sufficiency ("two will do") or an idiom of dismissal that closes a subject, as when God ends Moses' pleading with "Let it suffice thee" (ἱκανούσθω σοι, Deuteronomy 3:26 LXX). Whether Jesus is counting swords or ending a conversation is the crux on which every interpretation divides.
"And he was counted with the lawless." Elogisthē is bookkeeping language — reckoned, classed, entered in a column — and Jesus cites the clause as the express reason for the sword command, his one explicit self-application of the fourth Servant Song. Luke's μετὰ ἀνόμων differs slightly from the Septuagint's ἐν τοῖς ἀνόμοις ἐλογίσθη, a citation standing nearer the Hebrew than the LXX.
A brigand or armed robber — the label Rome attached to violent men. Jesus protests that the arresting party has come out "as against a lēstēs, with swords and clubs," and by morning he is crucified between two lēstai. The word tracks the prophecy's fulfillment: he is seized, tried, and executed under a bandit's classification.
"Let him sell his cloak." The himation was the outer garment even the destitute kept — Torah required a cloak taken in pledge to be returned by nightfall, for "in what else shall he sleep?" (Exodus 22:26-27). To sell it is the language of extremity: whatever is coming outranks a man's last comfort.
Historical Interpretation
4 traditionsThe Early Church
The earliest church read the passage through its ending. Whatever the command to buy a sword meant, the command to sheathe one settled what Christians took from the scene: when Peter struck, Jesus stopped him, healed the wound, and warned that all who take the sword will die by it. Tertullian, writing around 200, turned that moment into a standing rule for the church — the disarming of one apostle disarmed every soldier after him. Chrysostom, two centuries later, asked the practical question of where swords came from at a Passover meal and answered from the table itself — blades for the lamb, seized in a panic of loyalty "which was of their thought only" — and read the healed ear as Christ's miracle-sealed verdict on their use. The early writers spent little energy on why the command was given; their attention rests on how the night ended.
“But how will a Christian man war, nay, how will he serve even in peace, without a sword, which the Lord has taken away? ... the Lord afterward, in disarming Peter, unbelted every soldier.”
Tertullian — On Idolatry, chapter 19 (c. 200; ANF vol. 3)
“But whence were the swords there? They had come forth from the supper, and from the table. It was likely also there should be swords because of the lamb, and that the disciples, hearing that certain were coming forth against Him, took them for defense, as meaning to fight in behalf of their Master, which was of their thought only.”
John Chrysostom — Homily 84 on the Gospel of Matthew, on Matthew 26:51-54 (NPNF 1st series, vol. 10)
Eastern Orthodoxy
The Eastern tradition reads the command as prophecy wearing the dress of instruction. Cyril of Alexandria, preaching through Luke, holds that the words "in appearance had reference to them, but in reality" foretold the doom about to break upon Judea: whoever had a purse should gather what he had and flee, and the destitute would find a sword worth more than a cloak in the war then coming. The reason Jesus gives is Isaiah 53:12, which Cyril sees fulfilled when Christ hangs between thieves, punished as a transgressor. When the disciples answer with actual blades, Cyril hears gentle ridicule in "It is enough" — two swords against a catastrophe that many thousands could not meet. Theophylact of Ohrid, in his Explanation of Luke, likewise hears announcement rather than armament: the saying pointed to the attack now imminent; the disciples misunderstood, producing blades as if for defense; and the answer closed the subject without exposing them.
“He tells them the cause of the evil ... saying, "that He is about according to the Scriptures to be numbered with the transgressors," plainly referring to His being hung upon the cross with the thieves who were crucified with Him, and so enduring a transgressor's punishment.”
Cyril of Alexandria — Commentary on Luke, Sermon 145 (tr. R. Payne Smith)
“But the divine disciples did not understand the deep meaning of what was said, but supposed rather that He meant that swords were necessary ... Observe how, so to say, He even ridicules their speech.”
Cyril of Alexandria — Commentary on Luke, Sermon 145 (tr. R. Payne Smith)
Roman Catholicism
Medieval Catholicism made the verse a constitution. Bernard of Clairvaux, advising Pope Eugenius III in De Consideratione (book 4), argued that both swords belong to the Church — the spiritual wielded by the priest's hand, the material drawn for her by the soldier's, at the priest's bidding and the emperor's command. Boniface VIII hardened the allegory into a legal claim: Unam Sanctam (1302) reads Jesus' "It is enough" as declaring the two swords not too many but sufficient, and vests spiritual and temporal power alike in Peter. Modern Catholic exegesis has retired the allegory. Joseph Fitzmyer, in the Anchor Bible commentary on Luke, treats the sword as a symbol of the crisis opening before the disciples and hears in "It is enough" Jesus breaking off a conversation his followers have misunderstood; the verse, on this reading, says nothing about church and state. The tradition thus preserves both the hardened historical claim and its own scholarly retraction.
“We are informed by the texts of the gospels that in this Church and in its power are two swords; namely, the spiritual and the temporal ... the Lord did not reply that there were too many, but sufficient ... The former is of the priest; the latter is by the hand of kings and soldiers, but at the will and sufferance of the priest.”
Pope Boniface VIII — Unam Sanctam, papal bull (1302)
The Protestant Tradition
Calvin fixed the classic Protestant reading: the command is metaphor, and the disciples' literalism a scandal. Christ speaks "under the comparison of fighting," warning of the severe spiritual contests about to open — a changed era in which the mission that once lacked nothing will meet hatred and tribunals, so that purse, bag, and sword mark new severity, not new equipment. The canonists' double jurisdiction built on the two swords he dismisses as "a detestable mockery." Much modern exegesis keeps the era-change insight while dropping metaphor and allegory alike: the reversal of Luke 9-10 announces a hostile age, and some read the sword literally as a vivid emblem of the road's dangers — though almost none as license to use it. The Anabaptist stream presses the counterweight hardest, setting the sword outside the perfection of Christ on the strength of how the night itself ended.
“It was truly shameful and stupid ignorance, that the disciples, after having been so often informed about bearing the cross, imagine that they must fight with swords of iron.”
John Calvin — Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists, on Luke 22:38 (tr. William Pringle)
“The sword is ordained of God outside the perfection of Christ. ... He Himself forbids the (employment of) the force of the sword saying, "The worldly princes lord it over them ... but not so shall it be with you."”
The Schleitheim Confession (attrib. Michael Sattler) — Article VI, Concerning the Sword (1527)
The Thread
Four readings stay open: fulfillment — the swords exist so Isaiah 53:12 can come true at the arrest, the reason Jesus himself gives; irony — "It is enough" as weary dismissal of a misunderstood subject; preparedness — the reversed mission instructions announcing a hostile age, the sword its emblem and for some its literal equipment; and the medieval two-swords allegory, retired now even by its heirs. Against them all stands the sequel: the one time a sword was used, Jesus healed the wound and said all who take it will die by it. The weighing is left open.