Charles Ellicott Commentary Luke 21:15

"for I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to withstand or to gainsay." — Luke 21:15 (ASV)

I will give you a mouth and wisdom.—The promise, even in its form, reminds us of that given to Moses when he drew back from the task of uttering God’s message to His people (Exodus 4:15–16). Both the inward faculty of thought and the outward power of uttering thought in words should be given.

These words are not without their importance as bearing on the supposed distinction between verbal inspiration and an inspiration confined to thoughts. So far as they go, they are against that distinction.

And indeed, useful as it may seem in theory for addressing some of the difficulties, real or supposed, that attach to the theory of verbal inspiration, it seems clear, even on purely psychological grounds, that since people think through the medium of language, the inspiration that extends to thoughts must also extend, under the same laws and conditions, to the words in which they are expressed.

What those laws and conditions are is a wider question, which is beyond the scope of this discussion.

The answer is to be found in a reverential and careful induction from the facts that the phenomena of inspiration present to us.

Adversaries.—Another favourite word of St. Paul’s (1 Corinthians 16:9; Philippians 1:28, and others), and used by no other writer in the New Testament except St. Luke.