A.T. Robertson Commentary Luke 9:59

"And he said unto another, Follow me. But he said, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father." — Luke 9:59 (ASV)

And he said unto another (ειπεν δε προς ετερον). Matthew 8:21 omits Christ's "Follow me" (ακολουθε μο) and makes this man a volunteer instead of responding to the appeal of Jesus. There is no real opposition, of course. In Matthew's account the man is apologetic as in Luke. Plummer calls him "one of the casual disciples" of whom there are always too many. The scribes knew how to give plausible reasons for not being active disciples.

First (πρωτον). One of the problems of life is the relation of duties to each other, which comes first. The burial of one's father was a sacred duty (Genesis 25:9), but, as in the case of Tobit 4:3, this scribe's father probably was still alive. What the scribe apparently meant was that he could not leave his father while still alive to follow Jesus around over the country.