Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Matthew 16:17

μακάριος : weighty word chosen to express a rare and high condition, virtue, or experience (“hoc vocabulo non solum beata, sed etiam rara simul conditio significatur,” Beng.). It implies satisfaction with the quality of Peter's faith. Jesus was not easily satisfied as to that. He wanted no man to call Him Christ under a misapprehension; hence the prohibition in Matthew 16:20. He congratulated Peter not merely on believing Him to be the Messiah, but on having an essentially right conception of what the title meant. Σ. Βαριωνᾶ : full designation, name, and patronymic, suiting the emotional state of the speaker and the solemn character of the utterance, echo of an Aramaic source, or of the Aramaic dialect used then, if not always, by Jesus. σὰρξ καὶ αἷμα : synonym in current Jewish speech for “man”. “Infinitâ frequentiâ hanc formulam loquendi adhibent Scriptores Judaici, eaque homines Deo opponunt.” Lightfoot, Hor. Heb. Vide Matthew 16:23. There is a tacit contrast between Peter's faith and the opinions of the people just recited, as to source. Flesh and blood was the source of these opinions, and the fact is a clue to the meaning of the phrase. The contrast between the two sources of inspiration is not the very general abstract one between creaturely weakness and Divine power (Wendt, Die Begriffe Fleisch und Geist, p. 60). “Flesh and blood” covers all that can contribute to the formation of religious opinion of little intrinsic value tradition, custom, fashion, education, authority, regard to outward appearance. Hilary, and after him Lutteroth, takes the reference to be to Christ's flesh and blood, and finds in the words the idea: if you had looked to my flesh you would have called me Christ, the Son of David, but higher guidance has taught you to call me Son of God. ὁ πατήρ μου : this is to be taken not in a merely ontological sense, but ethically, so as to account for the quality of Peter's faith. The true conception of Christhood was inseparable from the true conception of God. Jesus had been steadily working for the transformation of both ideas, and He counted on the two finding entrance into the mind together. No one could truly conceive the Christ who had not learned to think of God as the Father and as His Father. There were thus two revelations in one: of God as Father, and of Christ by the Father. Peter had become a Christian.

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Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Matthew 16:17

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