At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, ‘Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.’
Then he told this parable: ‘A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, “See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?” He replied, “Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig round it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.” ’
Luke 13:1-9 NRSV
Luke 13 opens with a blood discourse, or meditation on social relationships using the rhetoric of blood, that forms the basis for an urgent warning of pending judgment. Read in light of the events of our own day, Luke 13 raises important questions about the efficacy of repentance and the possibility of clemency in a world that demands justice through blood, both in the literal and figurative senses.
Placed on the lips of Jesus, the chapter references two obscure tragedies. The first is the slaughter of Galileans gathered at the Temple. The second, a construction accident in the area of Siloam in the city of Jerusalem. In each case, the calamity that befalls the victims appears random.
Apart from a smattering of references to Pilate’s ruthless governance in the works of Josephus, little is known about the historical veracity of these events. Perhaps the violence at the Temple had to do with Pilate’s response to famed Galilean resistance to Roman occupation. Perhaps the incident with the tower was an accident resulting from poor management and oversight, and was only of local interest. Whatever the case, Jesus takes up both of these stories to render a difficult teaching that at once threatens judgment but also presents repentance as the path to a way of life together defined by mercy.
A curious feature of this passage is the detail it includes in verse 1 about Pilate’s “mingling” of the Galileans’ blood with that of their sacrifices. There was, of course, a strong blood taboo at the time of Jesus issuing from its ability to give life (Leviticus 17:10-14) and to contaminate (Numbers 19:11-22). The fact that sacrificial animal blood was mixed with the blood of corpses means that all involved had been polluted.
Not only have bodies been profaned but the space set aside for worship has also been desecrated. Jesus uses this sanguinary scene to warn his hearers of a coming judgment. “Unless you repent,” he cautions, “you will all perish as they did” (13:3). In the absence of repentance, not only will they die but they will die with their blood “out of place,” actively spilling out and mixing with other substances.
However, the concern isn’t ultimately about defiled blood or the manner in which these groups died. Rather, Jesus uses these poignant episodes involving death with “blood out of place” and by catastrophe to set up a meditation on the relationship between shared guilt and the possibility of clemency following repentance. It isn’t explicit what “sin” and “offense” (verses 2, 4) entail in the passage, but Jesus invites his hearers to contemplate both in the mirror of the lives and deaths of the Galileans and tower workers who perished.
Reading beyond the surface of the text, one imagines that Jesus is confronting murmuring among the people, who were likely speculating about how the Galileans who perished with their blood mixed with the sacrifices were “more sinful” than their neighbors, or about how the eighteen workers who died in the accident were harboring some secret offense that those who survived didn’t carry.
The point is that “sin,” or that state of being estranged from God and neighbor, and “offense,” those harmful actions that require punishment under a retributive system, are common to all without distinction. Everyone, the text suggests, are both sinner and offender. This comes to the fore in the repeated rhetorical questions that Jesus poses to his audience: “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the other people living in Jerusalem?” (13:2, 4)
If the people reply with, “Yes, the Galileans were worse sinners and the workers worse offenders,” then the burden falls on them to theorize a hierarchy of sin and offense that would allow them to escape the conclusion that they, too, deserve death after the pattern of the two groups. This isn’t possible. And so, Jesus exposes, in subtle fashion, that in theorizing such a hierarchy, they will catch themselves in its snare.
One alternative to a disorienting retributive hierarchy, the text suggests, is repentance, offered to the living, not the dead. This is the honest acceptance of one’s own sin that leads to a turning from the destructive habits of assigning greater or lesser guilt to others. The activity of repentance, in turn, becomes the basis for the possibility of reconciliation between God and offender, between offender and the offended.
It is difficult to write this reflection on Luke 13 and not also consider the volumes of blood being spilled across the world today.
This is the blood of workers, like those at Siloam, at a major plastics manufacturer in Erwin, Tennessee, whose bodies were mingled with muddy water and debris following the floods of Hurricane Helene.
This is the blood of Congolese Christians, like those Galileans at the Temple, who were reported to have recently been abducted by Allied Democratic Forces and beheaded in a Protestant church in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
This is the blood of a 67-year-old man convicted of double murder and executed by firing squad at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia, South Carolina.
And there is the blood of thousands of women, men, and children mixed with rubble and dust in Kharkiv and Kyiv, in Gaza and among the Rohingya villages of Myanmar. As it is put in the Torah, their blood cries out from the ground!
Jesus’s question again confronts the reader: “Do you think that because these people suffered in this way that they were worse sinners and offenders than all other living people?”
Given the repetition of violence upon violence in our own day—missile for missile, drone strike for drone strike, bullet for bullet—it appears that the contemporary reply to this ancient question is a resigned, “Yes, there are worse offenders and sinners, and those who suffer natural disasters, beheadings, desecrations, forced deportations, and the firing squad’s bullet simply got what they deserved. Their lives are discardable.”
And yet, Luke 13 presents another path. It is the way of repentance and mutual turning. This is the call beyond cycles of retribution and into a world where service and restoration displace systems fueled by violence. Jesus presents an image of what this restoration might look like in his closing parable of the fig tree (13:6-9).
In the parable, a landowner comes to his gardener, asking about a fig tree that has been barren for three years. Useless to the landowner, he demands that it be cut down. But the gardener pleads forbearance. “Sir, let it alone for one more year,” he requests, “until I dig around it and put manure on it” (13:8).
The gardener promises to give of his labor to nurture the plant, originally deemed disposable, to health and fertility. It may well be that the tree was dispatched after a year. It may be that the landowner forgot about it, and that it was allowed to live, unproductive, into a ripe old age. The text doesn’t say.
What this parable of the fig tree does offer is a vision of justice, however limited and obscure, rooted not in punishment and efficiency but in the common turning toward one another in service for the upbuilding of all, even those lives deemed disposable.
Jesus challenges us to recognize that we are, in different ways, both guilty and innocent, ensnared in systems of harm yet capable of repentance and renewal. If his prophetic call is heeded, then another way opens up, one where the spilling of blood isn’t met with the spilling of more blood but where reconciliation forms the basis for a renewed and restored life together.
