Versículo del Día — Martes, 20 de octubre de 2026
Luke 13:4
Luke 13:4. El Versículo del Día, Martes, 20 de octubre de 2026, con una breve reflexión.
O aquellos dieciocho, sobre los cuales cayó la torre en Siloé, y los mató, ¿pensáis que ellos fueron más deudores que todos los hombres que habitan en Jerusalem?
Luke 13:4
Qué significa este versículo
Jesus points to eighteen people killed when a tower in Siloam collapsed and says they were no worse than anyone else in Jerusalem, so a sudden death is no sign of God's judgment on the one who dies, and everyone listening needs to turn back to God.
Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, teaching crowds as he goes, and some people in the crowd bring him a piece of news. Pilate, the Roman governor, had killed some Galileans while they were offering sacrifices, so their blood was mixed with the blood of their animals. It was a shocking story, and the people telling it seem to expect Jesus to say something about why it happened.
Many people at the time assumed that when terrible things happened to someone, it was because that person had done something terrible. Jesus answers that assumption head on. He asks whether those Galileans were worse sinners than other Galileans because they suffered this way, and he says no. Then he adds a warning: unless you repent, you will all perish too.
In verse 4 he brings up a second story, one his listeners would have known. A tower in Siloam, a neighborhood in the southern part of Jerusalem near a well known pool, had fallen and killed eighteen people. Nobody had attacked them. It was an accident, the kind of thing that simply happens, and Jesus asks the same question again: were those eighteen guiltier than everyone else living in Jerusalem?
The word translated "offenders" or "sinners" here literally means "debtors," people who owe something they have not paid. It was a common way to talk about sin, as a debt owed to God, and it sharpens the question. Jesus is asking whether those eighteen owed God more than everyone else in the city, and his answer is that they did not.
So the two stories cover both kinds of tragedy, one caused by a cruel ruler and one caused by a falling building, and in both cases Jesus refuses to read the disaster as a verdict on the people it struck. What he does instead is turn the question around. The real question for his listeners is where they themselves stand with God, since everyone in the crowd owes the same debt.
Right after this, Jesus tells a short parable about a fig tree that has produced no fruit for three years. The owner wants it cut down, but the gardener asks for one more year to tend it. That story shows the other side of the warning: there is still time, and the time is meant to be used.
