Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Matthew 27:34

οἶνον μετὰ χολῆς μ., wine mingled with gall. Mk. has ἐσμυρνισμένον οἶν., wine drugged with myrrh, a drink given by a merciful custom before execution to deaden the sense of pain. The wine would be the sour wine or posca used by Roman soldiers. In Mk. Jesus declines the drink, apparently without tasting, desiring to suffer with clear mind. In Mt. He tastes (γευσάμενος) and then declines, apparently because unpalatable, suggesting a different motive in the offerers, not mercy but cruelty; maltreatment in the very drink offered. To this view of the proceeding is ascribed the μετὰ χολῆς of Mt.'s text, not without the joint influence of Psalms 69:22 (Meyer and Weiss). Harmonists strive to reconcile the two accounts by taking χολή as signifying in Hellenistic usage any bitter liquid (quamvis amaritiem, Elsner), and therefore among other things myrrh. Proverbs 5:4, Lament. Matthew 3:15 (Sept [152]), in which χολή stands for wormwood, לַעֲנָה, are eited in proof of this. Against the idea that Mt's text has been altered from Mk.'s under the influence of Psalms 69:22, is the retention of οἶνος (ὄξος in Ps. and in T. R.) and the absence of any reference to the passage in the usual style “that it might be fulfilled,” etc.

[152] Septuagint.

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Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Matthew 27:34

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