Luke 15:11
New International Version
Jesus continued: “There was a man who had two sons.

New Living Translation
To illustrate the point further, Jesus told them this story: “A man had two sons.

English Standard Version
And he said, “There was a man who had two sons.

Berean Standard Bible
Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons.

Berean Literal Bible
And He said, "A certain man had two sons.

King James Bible
And he said, A certain man had two sons:

New King James Version
Then He said: “A certain man had two sons.

New American Standard Bible
And He said, “A man had two sons.

NASB 1995
And He said, “A man had two sons.

NASB 1977
And He said, “A certain man had two sons;

Legacy Standard Bible
And He said, “A man had two sons.

Amplified Bible
Then He said, “A certain man had two sons.

Christian Standard Bible
He also said, “A man had two sons.

Holman Christian Standard Bible
He also said: “A man had two sons.

American Standard Version
And he said, A certain man had two sons:

Aramaic Bible in Plain English
And Yeshua said to them again, “One man had two sons.”

Contemporary English Version
Jesus told them yet another story: Once a man had two sons.

Douay-Rheims Bible
And he said: A certain man had two sons:

English Revised Version
And he said, A certain man had two sons:

GOD'S WORD® Translation
Then Jesus said, "A man had two sons.

Good News Translation
Jesus went on to say, "There was once a man who had two sons.

International Standard Version
Then Jesus said, "A man had two sons.

Literal Standard Version
And He said, “A certain man had two sons,

Majority Standard Bible
Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons.

New American Bible
Then he said, “A man had two sons,

NET Bible
Then Jesus said, "A man had two sons.

New Revised Standard Version
Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons.

New Heart English Bible
He said, "A certain man had two sons.

Webster's Bible Translation
And he said, A certain man had two sons:

Weymouth New Testament
He went on to say, "There was a man who had two sons.

World English Bible
He said, “A certain man had two sons.

Young's Literal Translation
And he said, 'A certain man had two sons,

Additional Translations ...
Audio Bible



Context
The Parable of the Prodigal Son
10In the same way, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of God’s angels over one sinner who repents.” 11Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons. 12The younger son said to him, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.…

Cross References
Luke 15:10
In the same way, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of God's angels over one sinner who repents."

Luke 15:12
The younger son said to him, 'Father, give me my share of the estate.' So he divided his property between them.


Treasury of Scripture

And he said, A certain man had two sons:

Matthew 21:23-31
And when he was come into the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came unto him as he was teaching, and said, By what authority doest thou these things? and who gave thee this authority? …

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Continued Jesus
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Continued Jesus
Luke 15
1. The parable of the lost sheep;
8. of the piece of silver;
11. of the prodigal son.














(11) And he said, A certain man had two sons.--We enter here on one of the parables which are not only peculiar to St. Luke's Gospel, but have something of a different character, as giving more than those we find in the other Gospels, the incidents of a story of common daily life. As with the Good Samaritan, it seems open to us to believe that it rested on a substratum of facts that had actually occurred. It is obvious that in the then social state of Palestine, brought into contact as the Jews were with the great cities of the Roman empire, such a history as that here recorded must have been but too painfully familiar.

In the immediate application of the parable, the father is the great Father of the souls of men; the elder son represents the respectably religious Pharisees; the younger stands for the class of publicans and sinners. In its subsequent developments it applies to the two types of character which answers to these in any age or country. On a wider scale, but with a less close parallelism, the elder son may stand for Israel according to the flesh; the younger for the whole heathen world. Looking back to the genealogies of Genesis 5:10; Genesis 9:18, and even (according to the true construction of the words) Genesis 10:21, they correspond respectively to the descendants of Shem and those of Japheth. It is obvious from the whole structure of the parable that the elder son cannot represent the unfallen part of God's creation; and, so far as it goes, this tells against that interpretation of the ninety and nine sheep, or the nine pieces of silver.

Verse 11. - And he said, A certain man had two sons. It seems probable that this and the two preceding shorter parables were spoken by the Lord on the same occasion, towards the latter part of this slow solemn journeying to the holy city to keep his last Passover. The mention of the publicans and sinners in ver. 1 seems to point to some considerable city, or its immediate vicinity, as the place where these famous parables were spoken. This parable, as it is termed, of the prodigal sou completes the trilogy. Without it the Master's formal apologia for his life and work would be incomplete, and the rebuke of the Pharisaic selfishness and censoriousness would have been left unfinished. In the apologia much had still to be said concerning the limitless love and the boundless pity of God. In the rebuke the two first parables had shown the Pharisee party and the rulers of Israel how they ought to have acted: this third story shows them how they did act. But the Church of Christ - as each successive generation read this exquisite and true story - soon lost sight of all the temporal and national signification at first connected with it. The dweller in the cold and misty North feels that it belongs to him as it does to the Syrian, revelling in his almost perpetual summer, to whom it was first spoken. It is a story of the nineteenth century just as it was a story of the first. We may, with all reverence, think of the Divine Master, as he unfolded each successive scene which portrayed human sin and suffering, and heavenly pity and forgiveness, man's selfish pride and God's all-embracing love, passing into another and broader sphere than that bounded by the Arabian deserts to the south and the Syrian mountains to the north, forgetting for a moment the little Church of the Hebrews, and speaking to the great Church of the future - the Church of the world, to which, without doubt, this Catholic parable of the prodigal, in all its sublime beauty and exquisite pathos, with all its exhaustless wealth of comfort, belongs.

Parallel Commentaries ...


Greek
Then
δέ (de)
Conjunction
Strong's 1161: A primary particle; but, and, etc.

[Jesus] said,
Εἶπεν (Eipen)
Verb - Aorist Indicative Active - 3rd Person Singular
Strong's 2036: Answer, bid, bring word, command. A primary verb; to speak or say.

“[There was] a
τις (tis)
Interrogative / Indefinite Pronoun - Nominative Masculine Singular
Strong's 5100: Any one, some one, a certain one or thing. An enclitic indefinite pronoun; some or any person or object.

man
Ἄνθρωπός (Anthrōpos)
Noun - Nominative Masculine Singular
Strong's 444: A man, one of the human race. From aner and ops; man-faced, i.e. A human being.

who had
εἶχεν (eichen)
Verb - Imperfect Indicative Active - 3rd Person Singular
Strong's 2192: To have, hold, possess. Including an alternate form scheo skheh'-o; a primary verb; to hold.

two
δύο (dyo)
Adjective - Accusative Masculine Plural
Strong's 1417: Two. A primary numeral; 'two'.

sons.
υἱούς (huious)
Noun - Accusative Masculine Plural
Strong's 5207: A son, descendent. Apparently a primary word; a 'son', used very widely of immediate, remote or figuratively, kinship.


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NT Gospels: Luke 15:11 He said A certain man had two (Luke Lu Lk)
Luke 15:10
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