Charles Ellicott Commentary Luke 15:25

"Now his elder son was in the field: and as he came and drew nigh to the house, he heard music and dancing." — Luke 15:25 (ASV)

He heard musick and dancing.—This brings in a new feature. The father, like the chief actors in the other parables, had called together his “friends and neighbors,” and they were rejoicing after the manner of the East. There was “musick,” literally, a symphony, or concert, implying voices as well as instruments.

The word for “musick” occurs nowhere else in the New Testament, but it is found in the LXX version of Daniel 3:5; Daniel 3:10, where indeed the Hebrew, or rather the Aramaic, word is but the Greek word transliterated. The word for “dancing” is also found only here in the New Testament. It is the same word used in classical Greek for the chorus of the Greek drama, from which we get our English word “choir.” It probably implied, i.e., song as well as dancing.

Spiritually, these outward signs of gladness correspond to the overflowing, demonstrative joy that thrills through the hearts of those whose sympathies with God’s work in human souls are keen and strong. Those who live only in the colder religionism of outward service, however, are so insensible to this joy that they cannot understand it. They ask now, as the elder son asked and as the Pharisees were asking in their hearts, what does it mean? Why this departure from the even tenor of people’s accustomed life?