NOTES for Luk 4:19
The prophet's words that he is sent to testify to "the year of Yahweh's favor" ("the acceptable year of the Lord" in the Synodal translation), Jesus plainly applies to Himself. The corresponding prophecy was obviously messianic for everyone, and the "year of favor" was understood as the year of the Messiah's coming. Jesus applies what was said to His own coming, thereby hinting at His own messiahship, about which He almost never spoke directly. Such hints were apparently connected with the fact that His messiahship plainly corresponded neither to popular messianic ideas nor to the expectations connected with them.
On the one hand, Jesus had to let those who listened to Him understand that the messianic age had arrived and that He Himself was the expected Messiah; but at the same time His plans certainly did not include becoming the leader of a mass messianic religious-political movement, to which everything would inevitably have been reduced had He declared His messiahship directly and openly. The hints and the corresponding messianic Old Testament texts were meant not only to make the listeners suppose that the speaker was bearing witness about Himself as the Messiah, but also to make them think about why He was not saying this directly.
In this way Jesus wanted to cut off the idly curious and those who were satisfied only by traditional ideas, or by their own ideas, about the Messiah and about what He should be like. He wanted to attract the attention of those who understood the language of subtle hints and were ready to see a completely unexpected Messiah, whose image did not fit into the usual frames and traditional schemes.
Besides cutting off those who were eager to begin a messianic war immediately, there was another goal here. A person following Jesus had to be ready for surprises, precisely there and then where and when they would least be expected. Both His own path of the cross and resurrection and the path of those who followed Him were unlike anything known and familiar.
Here it was often necessary to act in a situation where logic and traditional models failed completely and could only get in the way. And it was better to prepare His disciples for this from the very beginning, from the very beginning to make them see the traditional and familiar in an unexpected and unfamiliar way. Sometimes such a look could even shock, but it was better to go through the shock at the beginning of the path, so as to become used to it and in the future, when there would be much more that was shocking in life, already accept it as a natural and inevitable part of the Christian's path.