Five-minute study · Day 168 · Luke 9
Luke 9:51
A word worth stopping on: received up ἀνάλημψις analempsis
One sentence reshapes the entire Gospel of Luke. 'And it came to pass, when the time was come that he should be received up, he stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem.' Everything from this verse until 19:44 is the Travel Narrative, ten chapters of teaching, parables, and miracles framed as a single journey toward the cross. The phrase 'received up' translates a rare Greek noun: analempsis. It appears only here in the entire New Testament. Luke chose a word nobody else used, and he used it to name the destination of the longest journey in his Gospel.
Word study: received up
- Greek
- ἀνάλημψις
- Pronounced
- analempsis
- Strong's
- G0354
- Definition
- A taking up, a receiving up, an ascension. From ana (up) and lambanō (to take, to receive). Used exclusively in Luke 9:51 in the New Testament. Refers to Jesus' ascension, and by extension, to the entire complex of events (death, resurrection, ascension) that constitute his 'departure.'
Analempsis occurs only once in the New Testament. The rarity is itself significant. Luke, a careful writer who chose his vocabulary with precision, selected a word for this structural hinge that appears nowhere else in the apostolic writings. BDAG defines it as 'the experience of being taken up,' referring to Jesus' ascension into heaven. The cognate verb analambanō appears in Acts 1:2 and 1:11, describing the actual event of the ascension ('he was taken up'). Luke uses the noun form in his Gospel to anticipate the verb form in his sequel.
Joel Green's commentary on Luke argues that analempsis functions as a comprehensive term. It does not refer only to the ascension. It encompasses the entire sequence of events toward which Jesus is walking: the arrest, the trial, the crucifixion, the resurrection, and the ascension. The 'taking up' is the whole package. Luke frames ten chapters of narrative as a journey toward this composite event, which is why 9:51 is the structural backbone of the Gospel's second half.
The phrase 'steadfastly set his face' (to prosōpon estērisen) echoes Isaiah 50:7, the third Servant Song: 'therefore have I set my face like a flint.' The verb stērizō means to fix firmly, to establish, to make resolute. The face set like flint is the face of someone who has decided and will not be turned. Luke combines this Isaiah echo with the rare analempsis to create a sentence of extraordinary density: Jesus, resolute as the Isaian Servant, has fixed his course toward the ascension, and nothing between Galilee and Jerusalem will divert him.
The structural impact is massive. Luke 9:51 divides the Gospel into two movements. Everything before 9:51 takes place primarily in Galilee: miracles, crowds, initial teaching, the Twelve sent out. Everything after 9:51 is oriented toward Jerusalem: parables of the kingdom, instructions on discipleship, warnings about judgment, the increasingly sharp confrontation with religious authorities. The journey is both geographic and theological. Jesus is walking south. He is also walking toward his death, resurrection, and return to the Father. Analempsis holds all of it.
Historical context · Late 20s or early 30s AD; Luke's Gospel written circa AD 80-85
The Long Walk to Jerusalem
The journey from Galilee to Jerusalem covered roughly 120 kilometers if one took the direct route through Samaria, or significantly longer via the Transjordan route that many Jews preferred to avoid Samaritan territory. Luke 9:52-53 records that Jesus sent messengers ahead to a Samaritan village to prepare for his arrival, and the Samaritans refused him hospitality 'because his face was as though he would go to Jerusalem.' The Samaritan rejection confirms that Jesus took the direct route. His destination was visible in his bearing. His face was set.
Luke's Travel Narrative (9:51-19:44) contains material found in no other Gospel. The parables of the Good Samaritan (10:25-37), the Prodigal Son (15:11-32), the Rich Man and Lazarus (16:19-31), and the Pharisee and the Tax Collector (18:9-14) all appear exclusively in this section. Luke has gathered his most distinctive material and placed it on the road to Jerusalem. The journey is the classroom. The destination gives the teaching its urgency. A man walking toward his execution teaches differently than a man with decades ahead of him.
The literary device of a journey narrative was known in the ancient world. Homer's Odyssey structures ten years of adventure as a journey home. Luke structures ten chapters of Jesus' most concentrated teaching as a journey toward death and glorification. Green notes that Luke's choice of analempsis for the destination gives the journey a vertical dimension. The road goes south to Jerusalem, but it also goes up. The taking-up at the end of the journey is an ascent: through suffering, through death, through resurrection, and finally through the clouds at the ascension described in Acts 1.
Luke alone among the Gospel writers narrates the ascension as a visible event (Luke 24:51, Acts 1:9-11). He is the only evangelist who provides both the noun (analempsis, the destination) and the verb (analambanō, the event). The journey that begins at 9:51 does not end at the cross. It does not end at the empty tomb. It ends in Acts 1, when Jesus is taken up (anelēmphthē) into heaven. Luke's narrative arc is longer than the other Gospels because his definition of the destination is larger.
For reflection
Luke says Jesus set his face. The verb means to fix, to make firm, to establish. There was no wavering in the direction. Ten chapters of teaching, healing, confrontation, and rejection happen on this road, and at no point does Jesus reconsider the destination. He is walking toward analempsis, the taking-up, which includes everything: the cross, the grave, the resurrection morning, the forty days, the ascension. All of it held in one rare word. What have you set your face toward? And have you set it, or are you still negotiating the direction? There is a difference between walking toward something and drifting in its general vicinity. Jesus' posture on this road was fixed, established, resolved. Where does your face point when no one is watching?
The Samaritans could see where Jesus was headed by looking at him. His destination was visible in his bearing. Your direction is visible too, to the people around you, in your schedule, your spending, your conversations, the things you keep circling back to.
Sources: BDAG; Green, 'Luke'