VI. (1) From the protest against the casuistry which tampered with and distorted the great primary commandments, the Sermon on the Mount passes to the defects of character and action which vitiated the religion of Pharisaism even where it was at its best. Its excellence had been that it laid stress,... [ Continue Reading ]
ALMS. — The history of the word is singularly interesting. In the original meaning of the Greek it was the quality of mercy, or rather of “mercifulness,” as something more complete. The practice of the Hellenistic Jews limited the word (_eleemosyna_) to money-gifts. It passed with this meaning untra... [ Continue Reading ]
LET NOT THY LEFT HAND KNOW. — The phrase was probably proverbial, and indicates, in the form of free hyperbole, extremest secrecy. It is possible that there may be some reference to the practice of using the right hand in offering gifts at the altar. The symbolical application, though an afterthough... [ Continue Reading ]
THAT THINE ALMS MAY BE IN SECRET. — Here again we have a principle rather than a rule. Publicity may be a duty, especially in public work. But this — gifts for schools, hospitals, and the like — is hardly contemplated in the word “alms,” which refers rather to acts of mercy, to cases of individual s... [ Continue Reading ]
STANDING IN THE SYNAGOGUES. — The Jewish custom, more or less prevalent throughout the East, and for a time retained at certain seasons in the Christian Church, was to pray standing, with outstretched, uplifted hands, and there was nothing in the attitude as such that made it an act of ostentatious... [ Continue Reading ]
ENTER INTO THY CLOSET. — Literally, _the store-closet of thy house._ The principle, as before, is embodied in a rule which startles, and which cannot be binding literally. Not in synagogue or street, nor by the river-side (Acts 16:13); not under the fig-tree in the court-yard (John 1:50), nor on the... [ Continue Reading ]
USE NOT VAIN REPETITIONS. — The Greek word has a force but feebly rendered in the English. Formed from a word which reproduces the repeated attempts of the stammerer to clothe his thoughts in words, it might be almost rendered, “Do not stutter out your prayers, do not babble them over.” The words de... [ Continue Reading ]
YOUR FATHER KNOWETH. — This truth is rightly made the ground of prayer in one of the noblest collects of the Prayer Book of the English Church — “Almighty God, the Fountain of all wisdom, who knowest our necessities before we ask, and our ignorance in asking.” Comp. St. Paul’s “We know not what we s... [ Continue Reading ]
AFTER THIS MANNER. — Literally, _thus._ The word sanctions at once the use of the words themselves, and of other prayers — prescribed, or unpremeditated — after the same pattern and in the same spirit. In Luke 11:2 we have the more definite, “When ye pray, say,....” OUR FATHER. — It is clear that th... [ Continue Reading ]
THY KINGDOM COME. — Historically, the prayer had its origin in the Messianic expectations embodied in the picture of the ideal king in Isaiah 11:1; Isaiah 42:1; Daniel 7:14. It had long been familiar to all who looked for the consolation of Israel. Now the kingdom of God, that in which He manifests... [ Continue Reading ]
GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD. — A strange obscurity hangs over the words that are so familiar to us. The word translated “daily” is found nowhere else, with the one exception of the parallel passage in Luke 11:3, and so far as we can judge must have been coined for the purpose, as the best equiv... [ Continue Reading ]
FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS. — _Duty_ — _i.e.,_ that which we owe, or ought to do — and _debts_ are, it may be noted, only different forms of the same word. A duty unfulfilled is a debt unpaid. Primarily, therefore, the words “our debts” represent sins of omission, and “trespasses” the transgression of a l... [ Continue Reading ]
LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION. — The Greek word includes the two thoughts which are represented in English by “trials,” _i.e.,_ sufferings which test or try, and “temptations,” allurements on the side of pleasure which tend to lead us into evil. Of these the former is the dominant meaning in the langu... [ Continue Reading ]
The condition implied in the Prayer itself is more distinctly asserted. It is, as we have seen, not an arbitrary condition, but the result of the eternal laws of the divine order. Repentance is the condition of being forgiven, and the temper that does not forgive is _ipso facto_ incompatible with th... [ Continue Reading ]
WHEN YE FAST. — Fasting had risen under the teaching of the Pharisees into a new prominence. Under the Law there had been but the one great fast of the Day of Atonement, on which men were “to afflict their souls” (Leviticus 23:27; Numbers 29:7) and practice had interpreted that phrase as meaning tot... [ Continue Reading ]
ANOINT THINE HEAD, AND WASH THY FACE. — Both these acts were rigidly prohibited by the traditions of the Elders on the Day of Atonement, and by implication on other fast days also. They were the outward signs of joy (Ecclesiastes 9:8), and were therefore looked on as unsuitable for a time of mournin... [ Continue Reading ]
LAY NOT UP FOR YOURSELVES TREASURES. — Literally, with a force which the English lacks, _treasure not up your treasures._ WHERE MOTH AND RUST DOTH CORRUPT. — The first word points to one form of Eastern wealth, the costly garments of rich material, often embroidered with gold and silver. (Comp. “Yo... [ Continue Reading ]
TREASURES IN HEAVEN. — These, as in the parallel passage of Luke 12:33, are the good works, or rather the character formed by them, which follow us into the unseen world (Revelation 14:13), and are subject to no process of decay. So men are “rich in good works” (1 Timothy 6:18), “rich in faith” (Jam... [ Continue Reading ]
WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS. — The words imply the truth, afterwards more definitely asserted, that it is impossible to “serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24). Men may try to persuade themselves that they will have a treasure on earth and a treasure in heaven also, but in the long-run, one or the other wi... [ Continue Reading ]
THE LIGHT OF THE BODY.-Literally, _the lamp of the body._ So in Proverbs 20:27, “The spirit of man is the candle (or ‘lamp’) of the Lord” — that which, under the name of “conscience,” the “moral sense,” the “inner man” discerns spiritual realities, distinguishes right from wrong, gives the light by... [ Continue Reading ]
IF THINE EYE BE EVIL. — If the spiritual faculty, whose proper work it is to give light, be itself diseased — if it discerns not singly but doubly, and therefore dimly — then the whole life also is shrouded in gloom. If that is the case with the higher life, what will be the state of the lower! If t... [ Continue Reading ]
NO MAN CAN SERVE TWO MASTERS. — Literally, _can be the slave of two masters._ The clauses that follow describe two distinct results of the attempt to combine the two forms of service which are really incompatible. In most cases, there will be love for the one, and a real hatred for the other. The ma... [ Continue Reading ]
TAKE NO THOUGHT. — The Greek word some times thus translated, and sometimes by “care” or “be careful” (1 Corinthians 7:32; Philippians 2:20; Philippians 4:6), expresses anxiety, literally, the care which _distracts_ us. And this was, in the sixteenth century, the meaning of the English phrase “take... [ Continue Reading ]
BEHOLD THE FOWLS OF THE AIR. — Better, _birds._ As the words were spoken we may venture to think of them as accompanied by the gesture which directed attention to the turtle-doves, the wood-pigeons, and the finches, which are conspicuous features in a Galilean landscape. Our modern use of the word h... [ Continue Reading ]
ONE CUBIT UNTO HIS STATURE. — The Greek for the last word admits either this meaning (as in Luke 19:3, and perhaps Luke 2:52) or that of age (as in John 9:21; John 9:23, and Hebrews 11:24). Either gives an adequate sense to the passage. No anxiety will alter our bodily height, and the other conditio... [ Continue Reading ]
WHY TAKE YE THOUGHT FOR RAIMENT? — The question might well be asked of every race of the whole family of man. Yet we ought not to forget its special pointedness as addressed to a people who reckoned their garments, not less than their money, as part of their capital, and often expended on them the l... [ Continue Reading ]
I SAY UNTO YOU. — The formula of emphasis is not without a special force here (comp. Matthew 18:10; Matthew 18:19). Man’s gaze was drawn to the “gorgeous apparel,” the gold-embroidered robes of kings and emperors. Jewish traditions as to the glory of Solomon represented even his attendants as clothe... [ Continue Reading ]
THE GRASS OF THE FIELD. — The term is used generically to include the meadow-flowers which were cut down with the grass, and used as fodder or as fuel. The scarcity of wood in Palestine made the latter use more common there than in Europe. The “oven” in this passage was the portable earthen vessel u... [ Continue Reading ]
THEREFORE... — The command which, in Matthew 6:25; Matthew 6:28, had before been given as general and abstract, is now enforced as the conclusion of a process of thought more or less inductive. A change in the tense, which we fail to express in English, indicates more special and personal applicatio... [ Continue Reading ]
AFTER ALL THESE THINGS DO THE GENTILES SEEK. — The tone is one of pity rather than of censure, though it appeals, not without a touch of gentle rebuke (as before in Matthew 6:5) to the national pride of Israelites: “You look down upon the heathen _nations,_ and think of yourselves as God’s _people,_... [ Continue Reading ]
SEEK YE FIRST THE KINGDOM OF GOD. — The context shows that the words point to the “seeking” of prayer, rather than of act, though the latter meaning is, of course, not excluded. What is thus to be sought is “the kingdom of God” (the change from the less personal “kingdom of heaven” is significant),... [ Continue Reading ]
TAKE THEREFORE NO THOUGHT FOR THE MORROW. — No precept of divine wisdom has found so many echoes in the wisdom of the world. Epicurean self-indulgence, Stoic apathy, practical common-sense, have all preached the same lesson, and bidden men to cease their questionings about the future. That which was... [ Continue Reading ]