XII. (1) AT THAT TIME. — St. Luke (Luke 6:1) defines the time more specifically as “the second first sabbath.” The question, what is meant by that term, will be discussed in the Notes on that passage. The facts of the case place it clearly between the Passover and the Feast of Pentecost, between th... [ Continue Reading ]
WHEN THE PHARISEES SAW IT. — In the position in which the narrative stands in the other two Gospels, the Pharisees would appear as belonging to the company that had come down from Jerusalem to watch and accuse the new Teacher (Luke 5:17). He claimed the power to forgive sins, He ate and drank with p... [ Continue Reading ]
HAVE YE NOT READ...? — The question was an appeal to the Pharisees on the ground where they thought themselves strongest. For them it was an argument _à fortiori._ Would they accuse David of sacrilege and Sabbath-breaking because he, in a case of urgent need, set at nought the two-fold law of ordina... [ Continue Reading ]
HOW HE ENTERED INTO THE HOUSE OF GOD. — Strictly speaking, it was in the tabernacle at Nob, where Ahimelech (possibly assisted by Abiathar, Mark 2:26) was ministering as high priest (1 Samuel 21:6). The shewbread, or “bread of oblation,” consisted of twelve loaves, in two rows of six each, which wer... [ Continue Reading ]
THE PRIESTS IN THE TEMPLE PROFANE THE SABBATH. — The work of the priests, as described, _e.g.,_ in Numbers 28:9, viz., slaying victims, placing the shewbread, involved an amount of labour which, in work of any other kind, would have broken the Sabbath rest; yet no one blamed the priests, for they we... [ Continue Reading ]
IN THIS PLACE IS ONE GREATER THAN THE TEMPLE. — Better, _Here is something greater than the Temple._ The Greek adjective is neuter in the better MSS., and the word “here” we may think of as accompanied (like the “destroy this temple” of John 2:19) by a gesture which interpreted the words. The passag... [ Continue Reading ]
I WILL HAVE MERCY, AND NOT SACRIFICE. — Yet a third argument follows from the Old Testament (Hosea 6:6). The teachers or interpreters of the Law had failed to catch the meaning of the simplest utterances of the prophets. “Mercy and not sacrifice,” moral and not positive duties, these made up the tru... [ Continue Reading ]
FOR THE SON OF MAN. — The words contain the ground for the authoritative judgment of the previous verse. They assert that this also came within the limits of His jurisdiction as the Messiah, just as the power to forgive sins had been claimed by Him under the same title. In both instances, however, t... [ Continue Reading ]
HE WENT INTO THEIR SYNAGOGUE — _i.e.,_ that of the Pharisees whom He had just reproved, probably, therefore, the synagogue of Capernaum. The narratives in St. Matthew and St. Mark convey the impression that it was on the same Sabbath. St. Luke, however, as if he had made more careful inquiry, states... [ Continue Reading ]
THERE WAS A MAN WHICH HAD HIS HAND WITHERED. — Two facts are implied: (1.) That the Pharisees expected our Lord to heal the man thus afflicted. They knew that commonly the mere sight of suffering of this kind called out His sympathy, and that the sympathy passed into act. (2.) That they had resolved... [ Continue Reading ]
WILL HE NOT LAY HOLD ON IT? — As the reasoning takes the form of an _argumentum ad hominem,_ it is clear that the act was regarded as a lawful one, even by the more rigid scribes. The Talmud discusses the question, but does not decide it. Some casuists solved the problem by a compromise. The sheep w... [ Continue Reading ]
THEN SAITH HE TO THE MAN. — St. Mark, with his usual vividness, adds the look and gesture and feeling which accompanied the words, “looking round about on them with anger, being grieved at the hardness of their hearts.” IT WAS RESTORED WHOLE — _i.e.,_ as the tense implies, in the act of stretching... [ Continue Reading ]
HELD A COUNCIL AGAINST HIM. — If, as seems probable, these Pharisees included those who had come from Jerusalem, the deliberation was of more importance in its bearing on our Lord’s future work than if it had been a mere meeting of the local members of the party. It is significant that St. Mark adds... [ Continue Reading ]
HE WITHDREW HIMSELF FROM THENCE. — The coalition of the two dominant parties led to a temporary retirement from Capernaum as the usual scene of His labours. In this matter He was setting forth in act, as an example, the rule which He had previously given as a precept (Matthew 10:23). HE HEALED THEM... [ Continue Reading ]
AND CHARGED THEM THAT THEY SHOULD NOT MAKE HIM KNOWN. — In other cases that have come before us we have seen reason to connect this command with the spiritual discipline which was best for those who had been healed. Here the generalised character of the command leads us to look for another explanati... [ Continue Reading ]
THAT IT MIGHT BE FULFILLED. — The quotation of Isaiah 42:1 (not from the LXX., but in a free translation from the Hebrew) in reference to this reserve and reticence, and therefore in a sense which seems to us to fall far short of its full meaning, shows how deep an impression it had made on the mind... [ Continue Reading ]
BEHOLD MY SERVANT. — The mysterious “servant of the Lord,” who is the central figure of the last part of Isaiah’s prophecies, appears sometimes as the representative of Israel’s righteousness, sometimes of its sins, now as one who bore his witness as a prophet and messenger of God, now as standing a... [ Continue Reading ]
HE SHALL NOT STRIVE, NOR CRY. — The words point to the pervading calmness which had impressed itself upon the mind of the Evangelist, and which stood out in marked contrast to the wrangling of Jewish scribes, the violence of Roman officers, yet more, it may be, to that of false prophets and leaders... [ Continue Reading ]
A BRUISED REED SHALL HE NOT BREAK. — The prophet’s words described a character of extremest gentleness. The “bruised reed” is the type of one broken by the weight of sorrow, or care, or sin. Such a one men in general disregard or trample on. The Christ did not so act, but sought rather to bind up an... [ Continue Reading ]
AND IN HIS NAME SHALL THE GENTILES TRUST. — Better, _shall hope._ The Hebrew gives “in his law,” but St. Matthew follows the LXX.... [ Continue Reading ]
The narrative that follows is again a stumbling-block in the way of harmonists. St. Luke (Luke 11:14) places it after the feeding of the five thousand; St. Mark (Mark 3:22) immediately after the mission of the Twelve. A like narrative has met us in Matthew 9:32, and it is probable enough that the ch... [ Continue Reading ]
IS NOT THIS THE SON OF DAVID? — The people use (as the blind man had done in Matthew 9:27) the most popular of all the synonyms of the Christ.... [ Continue Reading ]
BEELZEBUB THE PRINCE OF THE DEVILS. — (See Notes on Matthew 9:34; Matthew 10:25.) The words appear to have been whispered by the Pharisees among the people. They were not addressed to Jesus. The charge is significant as showing that the Pharisees admitted the reality of the work of healing which the... [ Continue Reading ]
JESUS KNEW THEIR THOUGHTS. — The Searcher of Hearts saw the meaning of the whispers and the looks of real or affected horror, and now enters on a full answer to the charge. Of all the accusations brought against Him this was the one that caused the greatest Pain, and drew forth the most indignant an... [ Continue Reading ]
IF SATAN CAST OUT SATAN. — In the Greek the name has the article in both places, as pointing to the one great adversary. It is not that one Satan casts out another, but that he, on the assumption of the Pharisees, casts out himself. Satan is not personally identified with the demon, the deaf or dumb... [ Continue Reading ]
BY WHOM DO YOUR CHILDREN CAST THEM OUT? — The “children” of the Pharisees are their disciples, and in this case, such as practised exorcism, like the sons of Sceva in Acts 19:13. The belief in demoniacal possession had as its natural accompaniment the claim on the part of those who could control the... [ Continue Reading ]
BY THE SPIRIT OF GOD. — In Luke 11:20 we have as an equivalent phrase, “the finger of God.” So in Old Testament language the fulness of the prophet’s inspiration was expressed in the words, “the hand of the Lord was strong upon me” (Ezekiel 3:14). The second hymn in the Ordination Service reproduces... [ Continue Reading ]
HOW CAN ONE ENTER INTO A STRONG MAN’S HOUSE. — The parable implied in the question appears in a fuller form in Luke 11:21. Here it will be enough to note that the “strong man” is Satan. The “house” is the region which is subject to him — _i.e.,_ either the world at large, or the spirits of individua... [ Continue Reading ]
HE THAT IS NOT WITH ME IS AGAINST ME. — The words seem at first at variance with the answer to the sons of Zebedee, when they reported that they had seen one casting out devils in the name of Christ, and had forbidden him “because he followed not” with them. Then they heard,” Forbid him not: for he... [ Continue Reading ]
THE BLASPHEMY AGAINST THE HOLY GHOST. — Better, _against the Spirit,_ the word “Holy” not being found in any MSS. of authority. The question, What is the nature of the terrible sin thus excluded from forgiveness? has, naturally enough, largely occupied the thoughts of men. What, we ask, is this blas... [ Continue Reading ]
NEITHER IN THIS WORLD, NEITHER IN THE WORLD TO COME. — The distinction was hardly the same for our Lord’s Jewish listeners as it has come to be with us. For them “this world” — better, perhaps, _this age_ — was the time before the coming of the Christ; “the age to come” was that which was to follow... [ Continue Reading ]
EITHER MAKE THE TREE GOOD. — Like most proverbs and parables, the words present different phases, and admit of various applications. As spoken to men of neutral, half-hearted character, they might seem a call, not without a touch of indignant rebuke, to consistency. “At least be thorough; lot princi... [ Continue Reading ]
O GENERATION OF VIPERS. — Better, as in Matthew 3:7, _brood of vipers._ Here the law which had been pressed in its logical bearing in the preceding verse, is brought in to explain the bitter and evil words of the Pharisees. As long as they were what they were, nothing else was to be looked for. Noth... [ Continue Reading ]
A GOOD MAN OUT OF THE GOOD TREASURE. — A whole parable is wrapt up in this last word. Every thought and desire of a man is added to the ever accumulating store of such desires or thoughts in the inner chamber of his heart, and thence passes out into word or deed. In the ideal division of the context... [ Continue Reading ]
EVERY IDLE WORD THAT MEN SHALL SPEAK. — The teaching, though general in form, still looks back to the hard, bitter words of the Pharisees which had been the starting-point of the discourse. Our Lord does not speak, as we might have expected, of “every evil word,” but of “every idle — i.e., useless a... [ Continue Reading ]
BY THY WORDS THOU SHALT BE JUSTIFIED. — Stripped of the after-thoughts which have gathered round it in the later controversies of theologians, the word “justified” means, as its position here shows, the opposite of “condemned,” the being “acquitted” either on a special charge or on a general trial o... [ Continue Reading ]
MASTER, WE WOULD SEE A SIGN FROM THEE. — The order varies slightly from that in St. Luke, in which the demand for a sign follows on the parable of the unclean spirit returning to his house. In both, however, the sequence of thought appears the same. The tone of authority, as of one who is the judge... [ Continue Reading ]
AN EVIL AND ADULTEROUS GENERATION. — The true relation between Israel and Jehovah had been represented by the prophets as that of the wife to her husband (Jeremiah 3; Ezekiel 16:23; Hosea 1:2). The adulterous generation was therefore one that was unfaithful to its Lord — demanding a sign, instead of... [ Continue Reading ]
AS JONAS WAS THREE DAYS AND THREE NIGHTS. — To understand the words rightly, we have to remember the prominence which our Lord gives to the history of Jonah, and to the repentance of the men of Nineveh, in this and in the parallel passage of Luke 11:29, and in answer to another demand for a sign in... [ Continue Reading ]
THE MEN OF NINEVEH SHALL RISE... — The reasoning is parallel with that of the references to Tyre and Sidon, Sodom and Gomorrah in Matthew 11:21, but with this difference, that there the reference was to what might have been, here to what actually had been. The repentance of the heathen, and their se... [ Continue Reading ]
THE QUEEN OF THE SOUTH. — Literally, _a queen of the south,_ as before, _men of Nineveh,_ the Greek having no article. Rhetorically, the absence of the article is in this case more emphatic than its presence.... [ Continue Reading ]
WHEN THE UNCLEAN SPIRIT IS GONE OUT OF A MAN. — The parable comes in abruptly, possibly because here, as elsewhere, we have a part and not the whole of a discourse, striking passages noted and put together, now in this order, now in that, while the links that joined them are missing. The inner conne... [ Continue Reading ]
EMPTY, SWEPT, AND GARNISHED. — The words have a two-fold symbolism, as representing (1) the state of the possessed man, and (2) that of the nation of which he is made the type. The latter belongs to the interpretation of the parable as a whole. The former portrays the state of the man who has been d... [ Continue Reading ]
SEVEN OTHER SPIRITS MORE WICKED THAN HIMSELF. — The number seven, as in the case of Mary Magdalene (Mark 16:9; Luke 8:2), represents a greater intensity of possession, showing itself in more violent paroxysms of frenzy, and with less hope of restoration. In applying the parable to the religious life... [ Continue Reading ]
HIS MOTHER AND HIS BRETHREN. — Who were these “brethren of the Lord?” The question is one which we cannot answer with any approximation to certainty. The facts in the Gospel records are scanty. In what we gather from the Fathers we find not so much traditions as conjectures based upon assumptions. T... [ Continue Reading ]
BEHOLD MY MOTHER AND MY BRETHREN. — The words assert in its strongest form the truth which we all acknowledge, that though natural relationships involve duties which may not be neglected, spiritual relationships, the sense of brotherhood in a great cause, of devotion to the same Master, are above th... [ Continue Reading ]
WHOSOEVER SHALL DO THE WILL. — This is, then, what Christ recognises as the ground of a spiritual relationship. Not outward, but inward fellowship; not the mere fact of baptism, but that which baptism signifies; that doing the will of God, which is the essence of holiness — this is that which makes... [ Continue Reading ]