Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Matthew 2:16-18

The massacre. Τότε : ominous then. When he was certain that the Magi were not going to come back to report what they had found at Bethlehem, Herod was enraged as one who had been befooled (ἐνεπαίχθη). Maddened with anger, he resolves on more truculent measures than he at first intended: kill all of a certain age to make sure of the one such is his savage order to his obsequious hirelings. Incredible? Anything is credible of the man who murdered his own wife and sons. This deed shocks Christians; but it was a small affair in Herod's career, and in contemporary history. ἐν Βηθ. καὶ ἐν πᾶσι τοῖς ὁρίοις αὐτής, in Bethlehem, and around in the neighbourhood, to make quite sure. ἀπὸ διετοῦς καὶ κατωτέρω : the meaning is clear all children from an hour to two years old. But διετοῦς may be taken either as masculine, agreeing with παιδός understood = from a two-year-old child, or as a neuter adjective used as a noun = from the age of two years, a bimatu as in Vulg [9] There are good authorities on both sides. For a similar phrase, vide 1 Chronicles 27:23, ἀπὸ εἰκοσαετοῦς. Herod made his net wide enough; two years ensured an ample margin. κατὰ τ. χ.… μάγων. Euthy. Zig. insists that these words must be connected, not with διετοῦς, but with κατωτέρω, putting a comma after the former word, and not after the latter. If, he argues, Herod had definitely ascertained from the Magi that the child must be two years old, he would not have killed those younger. They made Mary's child younger; Herod kept their time and added a margin: πλάτος ἔτερον αὐτὸς προσέθηκε. It does not seem to matter very much. Herod would not be very scrupulous. He was likely to add a margin in either case; below if they made the age two years, above if they made it less.

[9] Vulgate (Jerome's revision of old Latin version).

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Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Matthew 2:16-18

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