Bible Commentaries

Matthew 4:21. ἄλλους δύο, another pair of brothers, James and John, sons of Zebedee, the four together an important instalment of the twelve. The first pair were casting their nets, the second were mending them, (καταρτίζοντες), with their father.

Matthew 4:22. οἱ δὲ εὐθέως ἀφέντες. They too followed immediately, leaving nets, ship, and father (vide Mark 1:20) behind.

Matthew 4:23-25. Summary account of the Galilean ministry. A colourless general statement serving as a mere prelude to chapters 5–9. It points to a ministry in Galilee, varied, extensive, and far-famed, conceived by the evangelist as antecedent to the Sermon on the Mount; not necessarily covering a long period of time, though if the expression “teaching in their synagogues” be pressed it must imply a good many weeks (vide on Mk.). The ministry embraced three functions: διδάσκων, κηρύσσων, θεραπεύων (Matthew 4:23), teaching, preaching, healing. Jesus was an evangelist, a master, and a healer of disease. Matt. puts the teaching function first in accordance with the character of his gospel. The first gospel is weak in the evangelistic element compared with the third: διδαχή is more prominent than κήρυγμα. The healing function is represented as exercised on a large scale: πᾶσαν νόσον καὶ πᾶσαν μαλακίαν, every form of disease and ailment. Euthy. Zig. defines νόσος as the chronic subversion of health (ἡ χρονία παρατροπὴ τῆς τοῦ σώματος ἕξεως), μαλακία as the weakness in which it begins (ἀρχὴ χαυνώσεως σώματος, προάγγελος νόσου). The subjects of healing are divided into two classes, Matthew 4:24. They brought to Him πάντας τ. κ. ἐχ. ποικίλαις νόσοις, all who were Afflicted with various diseases (such as fever, leprosy, blindness); also those βασάνοις συνεχομένους, seized with diseases of a tormenting nature, of which three classes are named—the καὶ in T. R. before δαιμον. is misleading; the following words are epexegetical: δαιμονιζομένους, σεληνιαζομένους, παραλυτικούς = demoniacs, epileptics (their seizures following the phases of the moon), paralytics. These forms of disease are graphically called torments. (βάσανος, first a touch-stone, lapis Lydius, as in Pindar, Pythia, x. 105: Πειρῶντι δὲ καὶ χρυσὸς ἐν βασάνῳ πρέπει καὶ νόος ὀρθός; then an instrument of torture to extract truth; then, as here, tormenting forms of disease.) The fame, ἡ ἀκοὴ, of such a marvellous ministry naturally spread widely, εἰς ὅλην τὴν Συρίαν, throughout the whole province to which Palestine belonged, among Gentiles as well as Jews. Crowds gathered around the wonderful Man from all quarters: west, east, north, south; Galilee, Decapolis on the eastern side of the lake, Jerusalem and Judaea, Peraea. With every allowance for the exaggeration of a popular account, this speaks to an extraordinary impression.

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 wisdom, power, and personal charm, but not so as to make us take the sermon as a thing of course. Our surprise is all the greater that there is so little antecedent narrative. By an effort of imagination we have to realise that much went before—preaching, teaching, interviews with disciples, conflicts with Pharisees, only once mentioned hitherto (Matthew 3:7), yet here the leading theme of discourse.

The sermon belongs to the didache, not to the kerygma. Jesus is here the Master, not the Evangelist. He ascends the hill to get away from the crowds below, and the disciples, now become a considerable band, gather about Him. Others may not be excluded, but the μαθηταὶ are the audience proper. The discourse may represent the teaching, not of a single hour or day, but of a period of retirement from an exciting, exhausting ministry below, and all over Galilee; rest being sought in variation of work, evangelist and teacher alternately. A better name for these chapters than the Sermon on the Mount, which suggests a concio ad populum, might be The Teaching on the Hill. It may be a combination of several lessons. One very outstanding topic is Pharisaic righteousness. Christ evidently made it His business in one of the hill lessons to define controversially His position in reference to the prevailing type of piety, which we may assume to have been to Him a subject of long and careful study before the opening of His public career. The portions of the discourse which bear on that subject can be picked out, and others not relating thereto eliminated, and we may say if we choose that the resulting body of teaching is the Sermon on the Mount (so Weiss). Perhaps the truth is that these portions formed one of the lessons given to disciples on the hill in their holiday summer school. The Beatitudes might form another, instructions on prayer (Matthew 6:7-15) a third, admonitions against covetousness and care (Matthew 6:19-34) a fourth, and so on. As these chapters stand, the various parts cohere and sympathise wonderfully so as to present the appearance of a unity; but that need not hinder us from regarding the whole as a skilful combination of originally distinct lessons, possessing the generic unity of the Teaching on the Hill. This view I prefer to that which regards the sermon as a compendium of Christ’s whole doctrine (De Wette), or the magna charta of the kingdom (Tholuck), though there is a truth in that title, or as an ordination discourse in connection with the setting apart of the Twelve (Ewald), or in its original parts an anti-Pharisaic manifesto (Weiss-Meyer). For comparison of Matthew’s version of the discourse with Luke’s see notes on Luke 6:20-49.

Matthew 5:1-2. 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 instruction without distraction; for He passed from the healing of the body to the cure of souls. This was His habit, passing from that to this and from this to that, providing varied benefit.” But we must be on our guard against a double misunderstanding that might be suggested by the statement in Matthew 5:1, that Jesus went up to the mountain, as if in ascetic retirement from the world, and addressed Himself henceforth to His disciples, as if they alone were the objects of His care, or to teach them an esoteric doctrine with which the multitude had no concern. Jesus was not monastic in spirit, and He had not two doctrines, one for the many, another for the few, like Buddha. His highest teaching, even the Beatitudes and the beautiful discourse against care, was meant for the million. He taught disciples that they might teach the world and so be its light. For this purpose His disciples came to Him when He sat down (καθίσαντος αὐτοῦ) taking the teacher’s position (cf. Mark 4:1; Mark 9:35; Mark 13:3). Lutteroth (Essai d’Interprétation, p. 65) takes καθίσαντος as meaning to camp out (camper), to remain for a time, as in Luke 24:49, Acts 18:11. He, I find, adopts the view I have indicated of the sermon as a summary of all the discourses of Jesus on the hill during a sojourn of some duration. The hill, τὸ ὄρος, may be most naturally taken to mean the elevated plateau rising above the seashore. It is idle to inquire what particular hill is intended.

Matthew 5:2. ἀνοίξας τὸ στόμα: solemn description of the beginning of a weighty discourse.—ἐδίδασκεν, imperfect, implying continued discourse.

Matthew 5:3-12. 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 divine tranquillity within. We are near heaven here.

2. The originality of these sayings has been disputed, especially by modern Jews desirous to credit their Rabbis with such good things. Some of them, e.g., the third, may be found in substance in the Psalter, and possibly many, or all of them, even in the Talmud. But what then? They are in the Talmud as a few grains of wheat lost in a vast heap of chaff. The originality of Jesus lies in putting the due value on these thoughts, collecting them, and making them as prominent as the Ten Commandments. No greater service can be rendered to mankind than to rescue from obscurity neglected moral commonplaces.

3. The existence of another version of the discourse (in Lk.), with varying forms of the sayings, has raised a question as to the original form. Did Christ, e.g., say “Blessed the poor” (Lk.) or “Blessed the poor in spirit” (Matt.)? This raises a larger question as to the manner of Christ’s teaching on the hill. Suppose one day in a week of instruction was devoted to the subject of happiness, its conditions, and heirs, many things might be said on each leading proposition. The theme would be announced, then accompanied with expansions. A modern biographer would have prefaced a discourse like this with an introductory account of the Teacher’s method. There is no such account in the Gospels, but there are incidental notices from which we can learn somewhat. The disciples asked questions and the Master answered them. Jesus explained some of His parables to the twelve. From certain parts of His teaching, as reported, it appears that He not only uttered great thoughts in aphoristic form, but occasionally enlarged. The Sermon on the Mount contains at least two instances of such enlargement. The thesis, “I am not come to destroy but to fulfil” (Matthew 5:17), is copiously illustrated (Matthew 5:21-48). The counsel against care, which as a thesis might be stated thus: “Blessed are the care-free,” is amply expanded (Matthew 5:25-34). Even in one of the Beatitudes we find traces of explanatory enlargement; in the last, “Blessed are the persecuted”. It is perhaps the most startling of all the paradoxes, and would need enlargement greatly, and some parts of the expansion have been preserved (Matthew 5:10-12). On this view both forms of the first Beatitude might be authentic, the one as theme, the other as comment. The theme would always be put in the fewest possible words; the first Beatitude therefore, as Luke puts it, Μακάριοι οἱ πτωχοί, Matthew preserving one of the expansions, not necessarily the only one. Of course, another view of the expansion is possible, that it proceeded not from Christ, but from the transmitters of His sayings. But this hypothesis is not a whit more legitimate or likely than the other. I make this observation, not in the spirit of an antiquated Harmonistic, but simply as a contribution to historical criticism.

4. Each Beatitude has a reason annexed, that of the first being “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”. They vary in the different Beatitudes as reported. It is conceivable that in the original themes the reason annexed to the first was common to them all. It was understood to be repeated like the refrain of a song, or like the words, “him do I call a Brahmana,” annexed to many of the moral sentences in the Footsteps of the Law in the Buddhist Canon. “He who, when assailed, does not resist, but speaks mildly to his tormentors—him do I call a Brahmana.” So “Blessed the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”, “blessed they who mourn, for,” etc.; “blessed the meek, the hungry, for,” etc. The actual reasons annexed, when they vary from the refrain, are to be viewed as explanatory comments.

5. It has been maintained that only certain of the Beatitudes belong to the authentic discourse on the mount, the rest, possibly based on true logia of Jesus spoken at another time, being added by the evangelist, true to his habit of massing the teaching of Jesus in topical groups. This is the view of Weiss (in Matt. Evan., and in Meyer). He thinks only three are authentic—the first, third, and fourth—all pointing to the righteousness of the kingdom as the summum bonum: the first to righteousness as not yet possessed; the second to the want as a cause of sorrow; the third to righteousness as an object of desire. This view goes with the theory that Christ’s discourse on the hill had reference exclusively to the nature of true and false righteousness.

6. A final much less important question in reference to the Beatitudes is that which relates to their number. One would say at a first glance eight, counting Matthew 5:10 as one, Matthew 5:11-12 being an enlargement. The traditional number, however, is seven

Matthew 5:3. 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 ye do them”. Notable in this connection is the expression in 1 Timothy 1:11, “The Gospel of the glory of the happy God”. The implied truth is that the happiness of the Christian God consists in being a Redeemer, bearing the burden of the world’s sin and misery. How different from the Epicurean idea of God! Our word “blessed” represents the new conception of felicity.—οἱ πτωχοὶ: πτωχός in Sept[17] stands for אֶבִיוֹן Psalm 109:16, or עָנִי Ps. 40:18: the poor, taken even in the most abject sense, mendici, Tertull. adv. Mar. iv. 14. πτωχός and πένης originally differed, the latter meaning poor as opposed to rich, the former destitute. But in Biblical Greek πτωχοί, πένητες, πραεῖς, ταπεινοί are used indiscriminately for the same class, the poor of an oppressed country. Vide Hatch, Essays in Biblical Greek, p. 76. The term is used here in a pregnant sense, absolute and unqualified at least to begin with; qualifications come after. From πτώσσω, to cower in dispiritment and fear, always used in an evil sense till Christ taught the poor man to lift up his head in hope and self-respect; the very lowest social class not to be despaired of, a future possible even for the mendicant. Blessedness possible for the poor in every sense; they, in comparison with others, under no disabilities, rather contrariwise—such is the first and fundamental lesson.—τῷ πνεύματι. Possibilities are not certainties; to turn the one into the other the soul or will of the individual must come in, for as Euthy. Zig. quaintly says, nothing involuntary can bless (οὐδὲν τῶν ἀπροαιρέτων μακαριστόν). “In spirit” is, therefore, added to develop and define the idea of poverty. The comment on the theme passes from the lower to the higher sphere. Christ’s thought includes the physical and social, but it does not end there. Luke seems to have the social aspect in view, in accordance with one of his tendencies and the impoverished condition of most members of the apostolic Church. To limit the meaning to that were a mistake, but to include that or even to emphasise it in given circumstances was no error. Note that the physical and spiritual lay close together in Christ’s mind. He passed easily from one to the other (John 4:7-10; Luke 10:42, see notes there). τῷ πν. is, of course, to be connected with πτωχοὶ, not with μακάριοι. Poor in spirit is not to be taken objectively, as if spirit indicated the element in which the poverty is manifest—poor intellect: “homines ingenio et eruditione parum florentes” (Fritzsche) = the νηπίοι in Matthew 11:25; but subjectively, poor in their own esteem. Self-estimate is the essence of the matter, and is compatible with real wealth. Only the noble think meanly of themselves. The soul of goodness is in the man who is really humble. Poverty laid to heart passes into riches. A high ideal of life lies beneath all. And than ideal is the link between the social and the spiritual. The poor man passes into the blessedness of the kingdom as soon as he realises what a man is or ought to be. Poor in purse or even in character, no man is beggared who has a vision of man’s chief end and chief good.—αὐτὼν, emphatic position: theirs, note it well. So in the following verses αὐτοὶ and αὐτῶν.—ἐοτι, not merely in prospect, but in present possession. The kingdom of heaven is often presented in the Gospels apocalyptically as a thing in the future to be given to the worthy by way of external recompense. But this view pertains rather to the form of thought than to the essence of the matter. Christ speaks of the kingdom here not as a known quantity, but as a thing whose nature He is in the act of defining by the aphorisms He utters. If so, then it consists essentially in states of mind. It is within. It is ourselves, the true ideal human.

[17] Septuagint.

Matthew 5:4. 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, and to affirm that there is no sorrow without remedy? If not, then He propounds a puzzle provoking thoughtful scholars to ask: What grief is that which will without fail find comfort? There can be no comfort where there is no grief, for the two ideas are correlative. But in most cases there is no apparent necessary connection. Necessary connection is asserted in this aphorism, which gives us a clue to the class described as οἱ πενθοῦντες. Their peculiar sorrow roust be one which comforts itself, a grief that has the thing it grieves for in the very grief. The comfort is then no outward good. It lies in a right state of soul, and that is given in the sorrow which laments the lack of it. The sorrow reveals love of the good, and that love is possession. In so far as all kinds of sorrow tend to awaken reflection on the real good and ill of human life, and so to issue in the higher sorrow of the soul, the second Beatitude may be taken absolutely as expressing the tendency of all grief to end in consolation.—παρακληθήσονται, future. The comfort is latent in the very grief, but for the present there is no conscious joy, but only poignant sorrow. The joy, however, will inevitably come to birth. No noble nature abides permanently in the house of mourning. The greater the sorrow, the greater the ultimate gladness, the “joy in the Holy Ghost” mentioned by St. Paul among the essentials of the Kingdom of God (Romans 14:17).