PARABLE OF THE IMPORTUNATE WIDOW
LUKE 18:1-8
"Praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints." -Ephesians 6:18
"But I call to God, and the LORD will save me. Evening and morning and at noon I utter my complaint and moan, and he hears my voice." Psalm 55:16-17
"He regards the prayer of the destitute and does not despise their prayer." Psalm 102:17
"Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer." Romans 12:12
Prayer is to the soul what the nerves of the body are to the mind—its medium of communication with a world that else were unperceived and unrealized. BI
Luke frames the purpose of this parable explicitly in the first lines:
"And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart." Luke 18:1
"It is a necessity in the nature of the case for them at all times to be praying and not to be losing courage." -Wuest translation
I like the present progressive sense of the second translation, "It is a necessity...to be praying and not to be losing courage." The task is relentless, seemingly endless.
From here, we are launched into an illustration of an unjust judge giving into justice only because he's selfishly wants the woman to shut up and go away. Christ argues that if this is the case in such a corrupt circumstance, then how much more will our God of perfect justice grant ultimate justice to those who are suffering now.
The argument itself also has this progressive sense.
"Now, there was a widow in that city, and she kept on coming to him at recurring intervals, saying, Protect me by an equitable administration of justice from my opponent in a lawsuit." -Luke 18, Wuest translation
It's a distracting illustration and an odd argument structurally, but it would have been less so to his audience. The Fourfold Gospel points out the specifics of the form:
"The application is an argument a fortiori, and presents a triple antithesis: 1. In the petitioned--a just God and an unrighteous judge. 2. In the petitioners--a despised widow and the beloved elect. 3. In the petition--the frequent visits of the one, and the continual cries of the many." -Fourfold
The Wikipedia entry notes that it was commonly used in Jewish law:
"Argumentum a fortiori Latin: "from a/the stronger [thing]") is a form of argumentation which draws upon existing confidence in a proposition to argue in favor of a second proposition that is held to be implicit in the first. The second proposition may be considered "weaker," and therefore the arguer utilizes the former as the "stronger" proposition from which the second proposition is deduced.
In the English language, the phrase a fortiori is most often used as an adverbial phrase meaning "by even greater force of logic" or "all the more so."
A fortiori arguments are regularly used in Jewish law under the name kal va-chomer, literally "mild and severe", the mild case being the one we know about, while trying to infer about the more severe case. -Wikipedia
"And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” Luke 18:7-8
Re: "faith," The reference is not to personal faith, but to belief in the whole body of revealed truth.-Scofield
"Though a beloved people cry continually unto a just God, yet will he in mercy be longsuffering to their enemies, and because of the long suffering he will seem to delay his answer, but the delay will not be extended a moment longer than necessary. When the season of repentance is past, and the measure of iniquity is full (Gen. xv. 16), then the Lord's answer will be speedy, immediate. But despite this admonition to pray without discouragement, and this promise to answer with all speed, God's patience with the wicked, and his consequent delays in answering the prayers of the just, will prove such a trial to his people as to leave it questionable whether any of them will have faith enough to pray until the coming of the Lord. We find an echo of this passage at II. Pet. 3:1-13." -Fourfold
"And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. Matthew 24:12-13
“But if God is so good as you represent Him, and if He knows all that we need, and better far than we do ourselves, why should it be necessary to ask Him for anything?” I answer, What if He knows prayer to be the thing we need first and most? What if the main object in God’s idea of prayer be the supplying of our great, our endless need—the need of Himself? What if the good of all our smaller and lower needs lies in this, that they help to drive us to God? Hunger may drive the runaway child home, and he may or may not be fed at once, but he needs his mother more than his dinner. Communion with God is the one need of the soul beyond all other need; prayer is the beginning of that communion, and some need is the motive of that prayer.G. Macdonald, LL.
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