Compassion
For years I read past the strangest thing the father does in Luke 15:20, until the Greek told me what his body was already doing.
KING JAMES VERSION
And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion (σπλαγχνίζομαι · splanchnizomai), and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.
LUKE 15 : 20
But splanchnizomai comes from the word for the guts, the inward parts. It does not name a mood. It names the body lurching. The old man’s insides turned over at the sight of the boy, and that is what put him on the road, running.
For most of my life I read right past the running.
The son comes home. He has his little speech ready, the one he practiced on the road. He is still a long way off when the father sees him. And the next thing the father does, before the speech, before the robe and the ring and the fatted calf, is run.
I never thought much about it. A father is glad his boy is home. Of course he runs.
But a grown man in that country did not run. Running was for children and for servants. A man with land and standing did not hike up his robe and tear down the road in front of the whole village. It was beneath him. It cost him his dignity in front of everyone watching. And this father, the moment he sees the boy on the horizon, throws all of that away and goes.
Luke tells us why. He says that when the father saw him a great way off, he had compassion.
Now compassion is a fine word. It is the word we reach for when we see something sad on the news, or pass somebody on a cold corner. It names a feeling. It sits up in the chest somewhere, quiet and kind, and it keeps a respectful distance.
But the word Luke wrote is not that word. The word is splanchnizomai. It comes from the word for the inward parts, the guts, what the old translators called the bowels. To the people Luke wrote for, that was where the deepest things were felt. Not the head. Not even the heart the way we use it on a greeting card. Lower than that. In the body.
So the verse is not telling us the father felt sorry for his boy from across the field. It is telling us that something turned over inside him. His insides lurched. The sight of that thin, ragged figure coming up the road hit the old man low and hard, in the gut, and doubled him over, and put him on his feet, and sent him running.
And here is the thing I had been missing for years. The compassion came first. The gut turned over first. The running was not the love. The running was what the love did once it had a hold of him.
I think a lot of us carry a picture of God standing at the far end of the road with His arms folded. Dignified. Composed. Waiting to hear the speech. Waiting to find out if we really mean it this time.
That is not the God in this story.
The God in this story sees you while you are still a long way off, with your speech half ready and your nerve half gone, and something in Him turns over. He does not stand and wait for you to cross the rest of the distance and prove yourself. The distance undoes Him. And He comes apart from His own dignity and runs.
You can keep the speech if you want it.
He is already running.
MEDITATE ON THIS
He did not feel for me from across the field. Something turned over in Him, and He ran.
A PRAYER
Father, I have pictured You waiting for me with Your arms folded, and I have kept my distance to match. Let me believe that You saw me a long way off. Stop me on the road before I can finish my speech. In Jesus’ name, amen.
— Mark
The Work Behind This Entry
The Greek and the word-study work below was done with an AI research partner; the seeing and the reading are mine.
The Word
Splanchnizomai (σπλαγχνίζομαι) is the verb Luke uses, Strong’s G4697. It is built on splanchna (G4698), the word for the inward parts, the viscera, what the old English Bibles called the bowels. In the ancient world that was the seat of the deepest feeling, the place a strong emotion was felt in the body. The standard New Testament dictionaries give the verb as to be moved in the inward parts, and so to be moved with compassion. It is a gut word, not a head word.
How the Translations Render It
The KJV has had compassion. The ESV and NASB give felt compassion. The NIV reaches a little further with was filled with compassion. All of them are true to the kindness in the word, and all of them lose the body in it. There is no clean English verb for the guts turning over, so the translations land on compassion and leave the reader to supply the force.
Where the Word Shows Up
Splanchnizomai appears twelve times in the New Testament, all of them in the first three Gospels. In nine of those the one feeling it is Jesus. In the other three it is a figure in a parable who stands for God: the master in Matthew 18, the Samaritan in Luke 10, and this father in Luke 15. The King James renders the verb three ways.
- moved with compassion (5 times): Matthew 9:36; Matthew 14:14; Matthew 18:27; Mark 1:41; Mark 6:34.
- had compassion (4 times): Matthew 20:34; Luke 7:13; Luke 10:33; Luke 15:20.
- have compassion (3 times): Matthew 15:32; Mark 8:2; Mark 9:22.
Going Deeper
BibleHub on Luke 15:20 · Blue Letter Bible lexicon entry for splanchnizomai, G4697 · BibleGateway parallel translations of Luke 15:20
A Note on the Reading
That splanchnizomai is a word of the body, reaching down into the guts rather than naming a polite feeling, is the settled reading of the standard New Testament dictionaries. That the father’s gut turning over is what launched the run, and that Luke is showing us the disposition of God toward a sinner coming home, is my reading. A careful person could accept every word of the study and still hear the verse as saying only that the father felt a deep compassion. The sequence I am leaning on, the gut first and the legs second, is my synthesis from sitting with the parable. There is also an older background to splanchna worth knowing: the same word named the inner organs of a sacrificed animal, the parts drawn out at the altar. I have kept that out of the entry, because the gut-as-seat-of-feeling sense is doing the real work here, but a reader who wants the fuller picture should know it is there.