οἱ ὑγιαίνοντες. ‘Those in sound health.’ Our Lord’s words had both an obvious and a deeper meaning. As regards the ordinary duties and respectability of life these provincial scribes and Pharisees were really “whole” as compared with the flagrant “sinfulness” of the tax-gatherers and “sinners.” In another and even a more dangerous sense they were themselves “sinners” who fancied only that they had no need of Jesus (Revelation 3:17-18). They did not yet feel their own sickness, and the day had not yet come when they were to be told of it both in parables (Luke 18:11-13) and in terms of terrible plainness (Matthew 23), “Difficulter ad sanitatem pervenimus, quia nos aegrotare nescimus.” Sen. Ep. 50. 4.

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Old Testament