Luk 7:33-34 | NET2full | STEP | For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine , and you say , ‘He has a demon !’

Luke 7:33-34

33 For John the Baptist has come ^{▼▼tn The perfect tenses in both this verse and the next do more than mere aorists would. They not only summarize, but suggest the characteristics of each ministry were still in existence at the time of speaking.} eating no bread and drinking no wine, ^{▼▼tn Grk “neither eating bread nor drinking wine,” but this is somewhat awkward in contemporary English.} and you say, ‘He has a demon!’ ^{▼▼sn Some interpreters have understood eating no bread and drinking no wine as referring to the avoidance of excess. More likely it represents a criticism of John the Baptist being too separatist and ascetic, and so he was accused of not being directed by God, but by a demon.} 34 The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look at him, ^{▼▼tn Grk “Behold a man.”} a glutton and a drunk, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ ^{▼▼sn Neither were the detractors happy with Jesus (the Son of Man), even though he represented the opposite of John’s asceticism and associated freely with people like tax collectors and sinners in celebratory settings where the banquet imagery suggested the coming kingdom of God. Either way, God’s messengers were subject to complaint.}