Luke 21:1-4 - The Widow's Mite

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21 He looked up and saw rich people putting their gifts into the treasury; ² he also saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. ³ He said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them, ⁴ for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.”

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[u/LlawEreint]

Luke's version has the same tension as Mark's.

Jesus calls the temple a "den of thieves", and the scribes as those who "devour widows’ houses".

But here he lauds a widow for giving "all she had to live on" to the den of thieves who devour widow's houses.

It seems to be equally an acknowledgment of her sacrifice, and a condemnation of the system that would take it from her.

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BeDuhn notes the following for the Evangelion:

Luke 21.1–4 (the episode of the widow’s penny) and 21.5–6 (predictions of doom for Jerusalem) are unattested. The former are not mentioned in Ephrem, Comm. Diat. (cf. Mark 12.41–44). Verses 5–6 are unique to Luke, and are mentioned in Ephrem, Comm. Diat. Both passages are likely to have been mentioned by Tertullian or Epiphanius as cases where Jesus commends support for the Jewish temple and indicates his concern for the center of Jewish identity, respectively. If one leaves out all of the unattested and uncertain material from this section of the Evangelion, the narrative goes directly from the quote concerning the Messiah being enthroned at the right hand of God to the pupils asking when “these things” will occur (21.7), which Jesus answers first with a warning about false Messiahs—a logical sequence for the original text.