Did Jesus tell the Twelve to take a staff and sandals, or not?

All three Gospels report one instruction with one aim: go as you are, and do not equip yourselves for this journey, for “the workman is worthy of his meat” (Matthew 10:10). Matthew’s verb is ktaomai, ‘get, acquire’ (KJV ‘Provide’): the Twelve were not to go and obtain money, a bag, a spare coat, footwear or a staff for the trip. Mark gives the other side of the same rule: they were to take nothing extra, but they could keep the staff already in their hand and the sandals already on their feet. As Jamieson, Fausset and Brown put it, they were not to procure even a staff ‘expressly for this missionary journey, but to go with what they had’.

Luke uses Mark’s verb, airō, ‘take’, but like Matthew he lists the staff among the things not to be taken as special provision for the road. In the Greek text behind the KJV, Luke 9:3 has the plural, “neither staves”, which John Gill took to forbid extra staves; where manuscripts read the singular, Luke is giving the sense of the command in Matthew’s way. Luke 10:4, sometimes cited as well, belongs to a later mission, the sending of the seventy.

Shoes and sandals

Gill and Adam Clarke point out that Matthew’s word is hypodēmata, ‘shoes’, while Mark’s is sandalia, ‘sandals’. On their view Jesus forbade proper travelling shoes but allowed the light sandals worn every day. Others take Matthew to forbid a spare pair.

Because Luke uses the same verb as Mark, some Christian scholars think the difference is best explained as two ways of reporting the gist of one instruction rather than by the meaning of the verbs. All agree on the point of the command: travel light and trust God to provide through those who receive you.