Charles Ellicott Commentary Luke 2:49

"And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? knew ye not that I must be in my Father`s house?" — Luke 2:49 (ASV)

Did you not know . . .?—This is, so to speak, the holy Child’s defense against the implied reproach in His mother’s question. Had they reflected, there would have been no need for seeking; they would have known what He was doing and where He was.

About my Father’s business.—Literally, in the things that are My Father’s—that is, in His work. The vague breadth of the words also covers, perhaps, the meaning “in My Father’s house,” the rendering adopted in the old Syriac version.

These words are the first recorded utterance of the Son of Man. They are a prophecy of that consciousness of direct Sonship—closer and more ineffable than that of any other of the sons of men—which later becomes the dominant idea His whole life manifests.

We find in a Gospel, in other respects very unlike St. John’s, the seed of what emerges so fully there in such words as, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I also work” (John 5:17), “I and My Father are One” (John 10:30).

These words are obviously emphasized as an answer to Mary’s words, “Thy father.” Subject to His parents as He had been before and was afterwards, there was a higher Fatherhood for Him than that of any earthly adoption.