Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary

Luke 10:15

μὴ ἕως οὐρανοῦ ὑψωθήσῃ; אBDL, La[213] Ti[214] W.H[215]

[213] La. Lachmann.
[214] Ti. Tischendorf.
[215] W.H. Westcott and Hort.

15. καὶ σὺ Καφαρναούμ. Christ’s “own city.”

μὴ ἕως οὐρανοῦ ὑψωθήσῃ; Shalt thou be exalted by inestimable spiritual privileges? “Admitted into a holier sanctuary, they were guilty of a deeper sacrilege.” A better reading (for ἡ … ὑψωθεῖσα) is μὴ ὑψωθήσῃ; “Shalt thou be exalted to heaven? Thou shalt be thrust down …!” It must however be admitted that μὴ may have originated by homoeteleuton from the final μ of Capernaum.

ἕως ᾅδου καταβιβασθήσῃ. Thou shalt be thrust down as far as Hades. The curse must be understood in a general and national sense. The bright little town on the hill by the lake with its marble synagogues doubtless expected to be the prosperous capital of Galilee. Its fate was far different. When our Lord uttered this woe these cities on the shores of Gennesareth were populous and prospering; now they are desolate heaps of ruins in a miserable land. The inhabitants who lived thirty years longer may have recalled these woes in the unspeakable horrors of slaughter and conflagration which the Romans then inflicted on them. It is immediately after the celebrated description of the loveliness of the Plain of Gennesareth that Josephus goes on to tell of the shore strewn with wrecks and putrescent bodies, “insomuch that the misery was not only an object of commiseration to the Jews, but even to those that hated them and had been the authors of that misery,” Jos. B.J. III. 10, § 8. For fuller details see my Life of Christ, II. 101 sq.

Continues after advertising

BibliaPlus

Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary

Luke 10:15

Old Testament

New Testament