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Paul.
There is a woman in one of Jesus’ parables who may have been a bit more troublesome than we usually imagine. We call her the persistent widow, and I have often heard her presented as an example of patience in prayer. Keep asking, keep trusting, and eventually God will answer. It sounds encouraging, unless you have prayed for years without an answer.
But recently, while rereading Luke 18, I came across a curious detail that made me smile. The widow is so persistent that the judge worries she might give him a black eye. I mean, that is one possible sense of the original Greek, and if read that way it paints a rather different picture from the patient, long-suffering woman I had carried around in my head.
I guess we should probably meet the judge before deciding whether he deserves one.
Luke tells us that he neither fears God nor cares what people think. That is a damning description of anyone, but particularly of a judge. His responsibility is to administer justice, yet apparently he feels no obligation to God or to the people whose lives depend upon his decisions.
Then a widow appears, demanding justice against someone who has wronged her.
We are not told what happened to her, who her opponent is, or whether she has anyone willing to help. But in the worldview of the Bible, widowhood could leave a woman terribly exposed. Again and again, Israel’s laws and prophets insist that widows must be protected, precisely because they were vulnerable to exploitation.
This judge seems entirely unmoved by any of that. He refuses her request. She comes back. He refuses again, and she returns once more. I can imagine him seeing her approaching, rolling his eyes, and wishing he had taken the day off.
Eventually, he admits to himself that although he neither fears God nor respects anyone, he will do her justice because otherwise she will not leave him alone. The Greek word behind his complaint can literally refer to striking someone beneath the eye. Some scholars think Jesus is using deliberately comic language, while others understand it as the judge fearing embarrassment or simply being worn down.
We cannot know how Jesus’ listeners pictured the scene. But the prospect of a powerful, thoroughly unpleasant judge being made miserable by a woman he has tried to dismiss is difficult not to enjoy.
