CHAPTER 5. THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. This extended utterance of Jesus comes upon us as a surprise. Nothing goes before to prepare us to expect anything so transcendently great. The impressions made on the Baptist, the people in Capernaum Synagogue (Mark 1:27), and the four fishermen, speak to wisdo... [ Continue Reading ]
_Introductory statement by evangelist_. Ἰδὼν δὲ … εἰς τὸ ὄρος. Christ ascended the hill, according to some, because there was more room there for the crowd than below. I prefer the view well put by Euthy. Zig.: “He ascended the near hill, to avoid the din of the crowd (θορύβους) and to give instruct... [ Continue Reading ]
ἀνοίξας τὸ στόμα : solemn description of the beginning of a weighty discourse. ἐδίδασκεν, imperfect, implying continued discourse.... [ Continue Reading ]
μακάριοι. This is one of the words which have been transformed and ennobled by N. T. use; by association, as in the Beatitudes, with unusual conditions, accounted by the world miserable, or with rare and difficult conduct, _e.g._, in John 13:17, “if ye know these things, happy (μακάριοι) are ye if y... [ Continue Reading ]
_The Beatitudes_. Some general observations may helpfully introduce the detailed exegesis of these golden words. 1. They breathe the spirit of the scene. On the mountain tops away from the bustle and the sultry heat of the region below, the air cool, the blue sky overhead, quiet all around, and div... [ Continue Reading ]
οἱ πενθοῦντες. Who are they? All who on any account grieve? Then this Beatitude would give utterance to a thoroughgoing optimism. Pessimists say that there are many griefs for which there is no remedy, so many that life is not worth living. Did Jesus mean to meet this position with a direct negative... [ Continue Reading ]
οἱ πραεῖς : in Sept [18] for עֲנָוִים in Psalms 37:11, of which this Beatitude is an echo. The men who suffer wrong without bitterness or desire for revenge, a class who in this world are apt to go to the wall. In this case we should have expected the Teacher to end with the common refrain: theirs i... [ Continue Reading ]
If the object of the hunger and thirst had not been mentioned this fourth Beatitude would have been parallel in form to the second: Blessed the hungry, for they shall be filled. We should then have another absolute affirmation requiring qualification, and raising the question: What sort of hunger is... [ Continue Reading ]
This Beatitude states a self-acting law of the moral world. The exercise of mercy (ἔλεος, active pity) tends to elicit mercy from others God and men. The chief reference may be to the mercy of God in the final awards of the kingdom, but the application need not be restricted to this. The doctrine of... [ Continue Reading ]
οἱ καθαροὶ τῇ καρδίᾳ : τ. καρδ. may be an explanatory addition to indicate the region in which purity shows itself. That purity is in the heart, the seat of thought, desire, motive, not in the outward act, goes without saying from Christ's point of view. Blessed the _pure_. Here there is a wide rang... [ Continue Reading ]
οἱ εἰρηνοποιοί : not merely those who have peace in their own souls through purity (Augustine), or the peace-loving (Grotius, Wetstein), but the active heroic promoters of peace in a world full of alienation, party passion, and strife. Their efforts largely consist in keeping aloof from sectional st... [ Continue Reading ]
Matthew 5:10-12 being regarded as a transition to a new topic. his seems arbitrary. Delitsch, anxious to establish an analogy with the Decalogue, makes out ten seven from Matthew 5:3 to Matthew 5:9; Matthew 5:10 one, Matthew 5:11 one, and Matthew 5:12, though lacking the μακάριοι, the tenth; its cla... [ Continue Reading ]
μακάριοί ἐστε. The Teacher expatiates as if it were a favourite theme, giving a personal turn to His further reflections “Blessed are ye.” Is it likely that Jesus would speak so early of this topic to disciples? Would He not wait till it came more nearly within the range of their experience? Nay, is... [ Continue Reading ]
χαίρετε καὶ ἀγ. In spite of all, joy, exultation is possible nay, inevitable. I not only exhort you to it, but I tell you, you cannot help being in this mood, if once you throw yourselves enthusiastically into the warfare of God. Ἀγαλλιάω is a strong word of Hellenistic coinage, from ἄγαν and ἅλλομα... [ Continue Reading ]
ἄλας, a late form for ἄλς, ἄλος, masculine. The properties of salt are assumed to be known. Commentators have enumerated four. Salt is pure, preserves against corruption. gives flavour to food, and as a manuring element helps to fertilise the land. The last mentioned property is specially insisted o... [ Continue Reading ]
_Disciple functions_. It is quite credible that these sentences formed part of the Teaching on the Hill. Jesus might say these things at a comparatively early period to the men to whom He had already said: I will make you fishers of men. The functions assigned to disciples here are not more ambitiou... [ Continue Reading ]
μωρανθῇ. The Vulgate renders the verb _evanuerit_. Better Beza and Erasmus, _infatuatus fuerit_. If the salt become insipid, so as to lack its proper preserving virtue can this happen? Weiss and others reply: It does not matter for the point of the comparison. Perhaps not, but it does matter for the... [ Continue Reading ]
A parabolic word pointing out that such a policy in the natural sphere is unheard of and absurd. καίουσι, to kindle, _accendere_, ordinarily neuter = _urere_; not as Beza thought, a Hebraism; examples occur in late Greek authors (_vide_ Kypke, _Obser. Sac._). The figure is taken from lowly cottage l... [ Continue Reading ]
οὕτω. Do ye as they do in cottage life: apply the parable. λαμψάτω, let your light shine. Don't use means to prevent it, turning the rare exception of household practice into the rule, so extinguishing your light, or at least rendering it useless. Cowards can always find plausible excuses for the po... [ Continue Reading ]
Μὴ νομίσητε : These words betray a consciousness that there was that in His teaching and bearing which might create such an impression, and are a protest against taking a surface impression for the truth. καταλῦσαι, to abrogate, to set aside in the exercise of legislative authority. What freedom of... [ Continue Reading ]
_Jesus defines His position_. At the period of the Teaching on the Hill Jesus felt constrained to define His ethical and religious position all round, with reference to the O. T. as the recognised authority, and also to contemporary presentations of righteousness. The disciples had already heard Him... [ Continue Reading ]
These verses wear on first view a Judaistic look, and have been regarded as an interpolation, or set down to the credit of an over-conservative evangelist. But they may be reconciled with Matthew 5:17, as above interpreted. Jesus expresses here in the strongest manner His conviction that the whole O... [ Continue Reading ]
ὃς ἐὰν οὖν λύσῃ, etc.: οὗν pointing to a natural inference from what goes before. Christ's view being such as indicated, He must so judge of the setter aside of any laws however small. When a religious system has lasted long, and is wearing towards its decline and fall, there are always such men. Th... [ Continue Reading ]
Here is another type still, that of the scribes and Pharisees. We have had two degrees of worth, the little and the great. This new type gives us the moral zero. λέγω γὰρ. The γὰρ is somewhat puzzling. We expect δὲ, taking our attention off two types described in the previous sentence and fixing it... [ Continue Reading ]
Ἠκούσατε. The common people knew the law by hearing it read in the synagogue, not by reading it themselves. The aorist expresses what they were accustomed to hear, an instance of the “gnomic” use. Tholuck thinks there may be an allusion to the tradition of the scribes, called _Shema_. τοῖς ἀρχαίοις... [ Continue Reading ]
_First illustration of Christ's ethical attitude_, taken from the Sixth Commandment. In connection with this and the following exemplifications of Christ's ethical method, the interpreter is embarrassed by the long-continued strifes of the theological schools, which have brought back the spirit of l... [ Continue Reading ]
ἐγὼ δὲ λέγω ὑμῖν. Christ supplies the defect, as a painter fills in a rude outline of a picture (σκιαγραφίαν), says Theophy. He goes back on the roots of crime in the feelings: anger, contempt, etc. πᾶς … αὐτοῦ. Every one; universal interdict of angry passion. ἀδελφῷ : not in blood (the classical me... [ Continue Reading ]
Holtzmann (H. C.) regards these verses, as well as the two following, as an addition by the evangelist. But the passage is at least in thorough harmony with what goes before, as well as with the whole discourse. Ἐὰν οὖν προσφέρῃς, if thou art in the very act of presenting thine offering (present ten... [ Continue Reading ]
There is much more reason for regarding this passage as an interpolation. It is connected only externally (by the references to courts of law) with what goes before, and it is out of keeping with the general drift of the teaching on the hill. It occurs in a different connection in Luke 12:58, there... [ Continue Reading ]
_Second illustration_, taken from the seventh commandment. A grand moral law, in brief lapidary style guarding the married relation and the sanctity of home. Of course the Hebrew legislator condemned lust after another man's wife; it is expressly prohibited in the tenth commandment. But in practical... [ Continue Reading ]
ὁ βλέπων : the looker is supposed to be a husband who by his look wrongs his own wife. γυναῖκα : married or unmarried. πρὸς τὸ ἐπιθυμῆσαι. he look is supposed to be not casual but persistent, the desire not involuntary or momentary, but cherished with longing. Augustine, a severe judge in such matte... [ Continue Reading ]
_Counsel to the tempted_, expressing keen perception of the danger and strong recoil from a sin to be shunned at all hazards, even by excision, as it were, of offending members; two _named_, eye and hand, eye first as mentioned before. ὁ ὀφ. ὁ δεξιὸς : the _right_ eye deemed the more precious (1 Sam... [ Continue Reading ]
_Third illustration_, subordinate to the previous one, connected with the same general topic, sex relations, therefore introduced less formally with a simple ἐρρέθη δὲ. This instance is certainly directed against the scribes rather than Moses. The law (Deuteronomy 24:1) was meant to mitigate an exis... [ Continue Reading ]
_Fourth illustration: concerning oaths_. A new theme, therefore formally introduced as in Matthew 5:21. πάλιν points to a new _series_ of illustrations (Weiss, Mt.-Evan., p. 165). The first series is based on the Decalogue. Thou shalt not swear falsely (Leviticus 19:12), and thou shalt perform unto... [ Continue Reading ]
ὅλως : emphatic = παντελῶς, don't swear _at all_. Again an unqualified statement, to be taken not in the letter as a new law, but in the spirit as inculcating such a love of truth that so far as we are concerned there shall be no need of oaths. In civil life the most truthful man has to take an oath... [ Continue Reading ]
_Fifth illustration_, from the law of compensation.... [ Continue Reading ]
contains the theme, he following vv. Christ's comment. Ὀφθαλμὸν … ὀδόντος. An exact quotation from Exodus 21:24. Christ's criticism here concerns a precept from the oldest code of Hebrew law. Fritzsche explains the accusatives, ὀφθαλμὸν, ὀδόντα, by supposing εἶναι to be understood: “Ye have heard th... [ Continue Reading ]
μὴ ἀντιστῆναι : resist not, either by endeavouring to prevent injury or by seeking redress for it. τῷ πονηρῷ, not the devil, as Chrys. and Theophy. thought; either the evil doer or the evil doing or done. Opinion is much divided between the last two meanings. The sense is the same in either case. Th... [ Continue Reading ]
Matthew 5:40, κριθῆναι = κρίνεσθαι in 1 Corinthians 6:1, to sue at law as in A. V [30] Grotius takes it as meaning extra-judicial strife, while admitting that the word is used in the judicial sense in the Sept [31], _e.g._, Job 9:3; Ecclesiastes 6:10. Beza had previously taken the same view. χιτῶνα,... [ Continue Reading ]
ἀλλαρεύσει : compel thee to _go_ one mile in A. V [32] and R. V [33] Hatch (_Essays in Biblical Greek_, p. 37) thinks it means compel thee to _carry his baggage_, a very probable rendering in view of the history of the word as he gives it. A Persian word, originally, introduced into the Greek, Latin... [ Continue Reading ]
This counsel does not seem to belong to the same category as the preceding three. One does not think of begging or borrowing as an injury, but at most as a nuisance. Some have doubted the genuineness of the _logion_ as a part of the Sermon. But it occurs in Luke's redaction (Matthew 6:30), transform... [ Continue Reading ]
ἠκούσατε ὅτι ἐρρέθη : said where, by whom, and about whom? The sentiment Jesus supposes His hearers to have heard is not found in so many words in the O. T. The first part, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour,” occurs in Leviticus 19:18. The contrary of the second part is found in Exodus 23:4, where huma... [ Continue Reading ]
_Sixth and final illustration: from the Law of Love_. To an old partial form of the law Jesus opposes a new universal one.... [ Continue Reading ]
ἐχθροὺς may be taken in all senses: national, private, religious. Jesus absolutely negatives hatred as inhuman. But the sequel shows that He has in view the enemies whom it is most difficult to love διωκόντων : those who persecute on account of religion. The clauses imported into the T. R. from Luke... [ Continue Reading ]
Characteristically lofty inducements to obey the new law; likeness to God (Matthew 5:45); moral distinction among men (Matthew 5:46-47). υἱοὶ τοῦ πατρὸς ὑμῶν : in order that ye may be indeed sons of God: _noblesse oblige_; God's sons must be Godlike. “Father” again. The new name for God occurs sixte... [ Continue Reading ]
μισθὸν : here, and three times in next chapter; one of several words used in this connection of thought περισσὸν (Matthew 5:47), τέλειοι (Matthew 5:48) having a legal sound, and capable of being misunderstood. The scribes and Rabbis had much to say about merit and reward _vide_ Weber, _Die Lehren de... [ Continue Reading ]
ἀσπάσησθε, “Salute,” a very slight display of love from our Western point of view, a mere civility; more significant in the East; symbolic here of friendly relations, hence Tholuck, Bleek and others interpret, “to act in a friendly manner,” which, as Meyer remarks, is, if not the _significatio_, at... [ Continue Reading ]
_Concluding exhortation_. οὖν, from an ancient form of the participle of the verb εἶναι (Klotz, _Devar._) = “things being so;” either a collective inference from all that goes before (Matthew 5:21-47) or as a reflection on the immediately preceding argument. Both come to the same thing. Godlike love... [ Continue Reading ]