Daily Bible Reading 3rd October 2026 // Luke 13:1-9
1 There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 2 And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? 3 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. 4 Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? 5 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”
6 And he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. 7 And he said to the vine dresser, ‘Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?’ 8 And he answered him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig round it and put on manure. 9 Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”
It is also to be noticed that in the general teaching of Scripture, and in the words of Christ, 'an intimate connection between suffering and sin; but it is the sin of the whole race which is linked with the suffering of the whole race; and not of necessity the sin of the individual with his particular share and portion in this the world's woe…. Christ affirms, and all Scripture affirms, that the sum total of the calamity which oppresses the human race is the consequence of the sum total of its sin; nor does He deny the relation in which a man's actual sins may stand to his sufferings. What He does deny is, the power of other men to trace the connection and thus their right in any particular case to assert it' (Trench). The message, then, is clear: they were to see, in these sudden and unlooked for catastrophes, and recognize, a call to repentance - partly because these things should remind them of the uncertainty of life, and partly to awaken in them a sense and consciousness of sin. Such was the word of warning to the Jews of Jesus' day. And it is significant, perhaps, that the two calamities mentioned in these verses as happening to the Galileans and the Judaeans were reflected with remarkable and graphic unusualness in the judgment that did finally fall on that generation, when it refused to repent. It was indeed 'likewise' that they perished, for the very same forms of violent death overtook them. 'As the tower of Siloam fell and crushed eighteen of the dwellers of Jerusalem, exactly so multitudes of its inhabitants in that last siege and assault were crushed beneath the ruins of their temple and city; numbers also were pierced through with Roman missiles... in the courts of the temple, in the very act of preparing their sacrifices, so that literally their blood, like that of the Galileans, was mingled with their sacrifices' (Trench).