Luke 12:14

14. Man A word of solemn rebuke.

A judge or a divider Jesus uses of himself words which were used in reply to Moses. Exodus 2:14. The judge is an official magistrate, and an arbitrator is voluntarily chosen. It was customary for contestants to choose a Rabbi for arbitrator. The custom came into use as early as the Captivity, when the Jews preferred to have their own cases tried, not by foreign courts, but by their own Jewish referees. An excellent but over-churchly commentator on this passage, draws a lesson from these words against those who assume, in Church or State, official functions to which they have not been regularly called, that is, in a so styled apostolic succession. But if Jesus had accepted this man’s request, it would have been no assumption of office at all, but the performance of a voluntary kindness. One would expect such a commentator to know that some of the noblest early bishops of the Christian Church, Ambrose and Augustine, felt obliged to undergo the onerous task of arbitration against their own wills, but in obedience to conscience, and according to the doctrine of Paul. Our Lord refused: first, in order to admonish this man of his folly in thinking of lawsuits in the midst of a discourse on the judgment day of God; and second, because as Son of God, in a brief mission for mankind, the hours of his brief ministry could not be devoted to secular matters between man and his fellow.