Luke 12

Luke 12 is the 12th chapter of the Gospel of Luke in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It records a number of teachings and parables told by Jesus Christ when "an innumerable multitude of people had gathered together", but addressed "first of all" to his disciples. The book containing this chapter is anonymous, but early Christian tradition uniformly affirmed that Luke the Evangelist composed this Gospel as well as the Acts of the Apostles.

The original text was written in Koine Greek. Some early manuscripts containing the text of this chapter are:

This chapter is divided into 59 verses.

Scottish minister William Robertson Nicoll calls this passage (verses 1–12) an "exhortation to fearless utterance". Henry Alford suggests that this discourse consists "for the most part of sayings repeated from other occasions".

Nicoll suggests that this is "the largest crowd mentioned anywhere in the Gospels" but Jesus speaks "first of all" to his disciples, only turning to the multitude in verses 14–21, in response to a question from someone in the crowd, and again in verses 54–59. Peter asks (at verse 41) whether the parable of the faithful servant is addressed solely to the disciples or to the wider multitude (παντας, pantas: 'everyone').

The Jerusalem Bible notes that an alternative reading would connect the word "first" with the succeeding statement: First of all, be on your guard ... (Greek: πρωτον προσεχετε εαυτοις, proton prosechete eautois). Protestant commentator Heinrich Meyer likewise argues that "πρῶτον, before all, is to be taken with προσέχετε"; it does not belong to what precedes". The Matthew Bible (1537) and Ruth Magnusson Davis' New Matthew Bible translation (2016) pick up this reading:

This verse matches Luke 8:17:

Eric Franklin suggests that, in particular, it is Pharisaic hypocrisy which will be revealed, while David Robert Palmer translates the initial words of this verse, οὐδὲν δέ, ouden de, as "But there is nothing ...", arguing that "the particle δέ is meant to make a contrast here, between hypocrisy, in verse 1, and the disclosure of verse 2".