聖書注解書

Matthew 2:7 f. Λάθρα] Inconsistently enough, as that could only arouse suspicion; but to adopt secret measures is natural to wickedness!

The question after the time of the appearance [of the star] has its reason in this, that the mistrustful Herod already thinks of the possibility of his not seeing the Magi again, and that he will then still have a hold for taking further proceedings against the mysterious child (Matthew 2:16).

ἠκρίβωσε] with the accusative does not mean: he investigated minutely (ἀκριβόω περί τινος may mean this), but: after he had made them come to him secretly, he obtained from them a minute knowledge, and so on. Vulgate appropriately says: “Diligenter didicit.” Comp. Plat. Charm. p. 156 A; Xen. Mem. iv. 2. 10; Eur. Hec. 1192; Lucian, Jov. trag. 27, Piscat. xx.; Herodian, i. 11. 14. But the passages where it means to make exact (Aquila, Isaiah 49:16; Simonides, lxxxiv.; Xen. Cyr. ii. 1. 26) do not apply here. Euth. Zigabenus rightly says: προσεδόκησε γὰρ, ὅτι ὅτε οὗτος (the star) ἐφάνη, τότε πάντως ἐγεννήθη καὶ ὁ Χριστός.

τοῦ φαινομένου ἀστέρος] Grotius: “Non initium, sed continuitas.” Herod asked: How long does the star appear? how long does it make itself visible? namely, since its rising in the east, where ye saw it arise (Matthew 2:9). Thus the present is not to be taken either in the sense of the aorist or of the imperfect (de Wette, Bleek).

πέμψας] not contemporaneous with the εἶπε (de Wette), but prior to it; comp. Matthew 11:2. After he had directed them to Bethlehem (in consequence of Matthew 2:5 f.), he added the commission, etc. Otherwise it would have been ἔπεμψεν … εἰπών.

Matthew 2:9. Ἀκούσαντες τοῦ βασιλ.] After they had heard the king, they set off on their journey. Description of their unsuspicious behaviour. Comp. Theophylact.

καὶ ἰδοὺ, ὁ ἀστήρ, κ.τ.λ.] They travelled by night, in accordance with Eastern custom. See Hasselquist, Reise nach Paläst. p. 152. Bengel appropriately remarks on ἰδού: “Toto itinere non viderant stellam.”

ὃν εἶδον] The aorist in the relative sentence, where we use the pluperfect. See Kühner, II. 1, p. 145; Winer, p. 258 [E. T. 343].

προῆγεν] is the descriptive imperfect, not praecesserat (Hermann, Süskind, Paulus, Kuinoel), as if the star had again first shone upon them after they had come to Bethlehem. This explanation is ungrammatical (Buttmann, neut. Gr. p. 173 [E. T. 200]), and serves only to help to diminish the miraculous element, which is quite opposed to the character of the narrative. The common view alone is in keeping with the words: the star, which they had seen in its rising, went before them on their journey from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, and took up a position over the place (the house) where the child was. Amongst the Greeks also stars are mentioned as extraordinary guides, Elsner, p. 5 f.; Wetstein on the passage.

ἐπάνω οὗ ἦν] See Matthew 2:11, τὴν οἰκίαν. The going and standing of the star is miraculous; hence also the manner in which the particular house is indicated is left undetermined.

Matthew 2:10. Ἐχάρησαν] Euth. Zigabenus correctly says: ὡς εὑρόντες τὸν ἀψευδέστατον ὁδηγόν· ἐπληροφορήθησαν γὰρ λοιπόν, ὅτι καὶ τὸ ζητούμενον εὑρήσουσι.

σφόδρα] Adverbs at the end; comp. Matthew 4:8; Schaefer, ad Demosth. V. p. 367; Bornemann, ad Xen. Anab. ii. 6. 9; Mem. iii. 5. 17.

ἐχάρ. χαρ.] “Etenim ubi nomen per se ipsum verbi significationem neque circumscribit neque intendit, adminiculo opus est vel adjectivi vel pronominis vel articuli, quo rerum genus certum designatur,” Lobeck, Paralip. p. 507. Therefore here χαρὰν μεγάλην σφόδρα. Comp. Mark 5:42 b; Wilke, neutestam. Rhetor. p. 380. The opposite, μεγάλην λύπην λυπεῖσθαι, John 4:11; φοβεῖσθαι φόβον μέγαν, Mark 4:41.

Matthew 2:11. Εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν] As the Magi did not arrive till some time after the birth (Matthew 2:1), it does not follow indeed from εἰς τ. οἰκ. in and by itself that the evangelist makes Jesus be born not in the stable of a friend (Luke), or in a cave (Justin and Apocrypha), but in Joseph’s house. Certainly, however, the latter follows from this, that, according to Matthew, Bethlehem is the dwelling-place of Joseph; see Remark after Matthew 2:23.

τὸ παιδίον μετὰ Μαρίας] The non-mention of Joseph is not to be ascribed to any design.

τοὺς θησαυρούς] the chests which held their treasures, Xen. Anab. v. 4. 27; 1Ma 3:29; 4Ma 4:4. See Wetstein and Valckenaer, ad Herod. iv. 162. To find symbolical references in the individual presents is arbitrary. Tertullian and Chrysostom: Incense and myrrh they presented to Him as to a God; Irenaeus, Origen (in answer to Celsus, who ridiculed the divine worship of a νήπιος), Theophylact, Euth. Zigabenus, Erasmus, Luther: as a king, they presented Him with gold; as a God, with incense and with myrrh, ὡς μέλλοντι γεύσασθαι θανάτου. Comp. the Christian Adamsbuch in Ewald, Jahrb. V. p. 81, which makes the three gifts and their meaning to be derived from Adam.

It was and still is the Eastern custom not to approach princes without presents, Genesis 43:11; 1 Samuel 10:27; 1 Kings 10:2; Aelian, V. H. i. 31; Harmar, Beobacht. üb. d. Orient, II. p. 1 f. That the gifts of the Magi are said to have enabled the poor parents to make out their journey to Egypt (Wetstein, Olshausen, and others), is a strange conceit.

Matthew 2:12. χρηματισθέντες] Vulgate correctly renders: responso accepto: passages in Wetstein, Kypke, Krebs, and Loesner. The question that preceded is presupposed, Luke 2:26; Hebrews 11:7. Comp. on Acts 10:22. Bengel well says: “Sic optarant vel rogarant.” The passive is found in this meaning only in the New Testament and in Josephus (Antt. iii. 8. 8, xi. 8. 4).

ἀνακάμψαι … ἀνεχώρησαν] The latter is not: they turned back (Matthew 2:13-14; Matthew 2:22; Matthew 4:12), but they withdrew, went away, made off; ἀνακάμψαι is “cursum reflectere.” They were not to turn back to Herod, from whom they had come hither, and that with the instruction, Matthew 2:8, but were to select another way to their home, Luke 10:6; Acts 18:21; Hebrews 11:15; Herod. ii. 8; Plat. Phaed. p. 72 B; Diod. Sic. iii. 54.

The divine direction had for its object, that Herod should not at once take measures against the true Child who was pointed at.

REMARK.

The narrative regarding the Magi, as it bears in Matthew the stamp of real history, has its profound truth in the ideal sphere, in which the Messianic idea, which was afterwards set forth, realized in all its glory in the historical life of Jesus, surrounded the little known childhood of this life with the thoughtful legends—its own creation—preserved in Matthew and Luke. The ideal truth of these legends lies in their corresponding relation to the marvellous greatness of the later life of the Lord and His world-embracing work; they are thereby very definitely distinguished from the legendary poetry, which assumed various shapes in the Apocryphal narratives of the infancy. Whether, moreover, any real fact may have lain at the basis of the narrative of the Magi,[368] and what the nature of this is, cannot be more minutely ascertained. Certainly Eastern astrologers may, according to the divine appointment, have read in the stars the birth of the Jewish Messiah, who was to be the light of the heathen, and with this knowledge have come to Jerusalem; but how easily did the further miraculous formation of the history lay hold of the popular belief in the appearance of a miraculous star at the birth of the Messiah (see Fabricius, Cod. pseudepigr. I. p. 584 f.; Schoettgen, II. p. 531; Bertholdt, Christol. § 14),—a belief which probably had its basis in Numbers 24:17 compared with Isaiah 60:1 ff. (Schoettgen, II. p. 151 f.), as well as in the Messianic expectation that foreign nations would bring gifts to the Messiah (Psalms 72; Isaiah 60), as on other occasions, also, rich temple gifts had arrived from the East (Zechariah 6:9 ff.). It was easy to connect with this, by way of antithesis to this divine glorifying of the child, the crafty and murderous interference of Herod as the type of decided hostility, with which the ruling power of the world, necessarily and conformably to experience, entered with cunning and violence the lists against the manifested Messiah (Luke 1:51 f.), but in vain. If we were to regard the whole narrative, with its details, as actual fact (see amongst the moderns, especially Ebrard and Gerlach), the matter would be very easily decided; the difficulties also which have been raised against so extraordinary an astral phenomenon, both in itself and from the science of optics, would be authoritatively removed by means of its miraculous nature (Eusebius, Demost. ev. 9; John of Damascus, de fide orthod. ii. 7), but there would still remain unexplained the impolitic cunning and falsehood of the otherwise so sly and crafty Herod, who allows the Magi to depart without even a guide to make sure of his designs, and without arrangements of any other kind, his expenditure of vigilance and bloodshed, which was as unnecessary as it was without result, and the altogether irreconcilable contradiction between our account and the history narrated by Luke,[369] according to which the child Jesus received homage of an altogether different kind, and is not threatened by any sort of persecution, but at the date when the Magi must have arrived, had been for a long time out of Bethlehem (Luke 2:39). Considering the legendary character of the star phenomenon, it is not adapted to serve as a chronological determination of the birth of Christ, for which purpose it has been used, especially by Wieseler and Anger, who calculate, according to it, the beginning of the year 750 as the date of that birth. (Ideler, Münter, Schubert, Huschke, Ebrard, 747; Kepler, 748; Lichtenstein and Weigl, 749; Wurm, 751; Seyffarth, 752.)

[368] Schleiermacher, Schr. d. Lukas, p. 47, L. J. p. 75, assigned a symbolical character to the narrative. According to Bleek, the symbolical point of view (“the first destinies of the Christian church being, as it were, reflected”) predominated at least in the mind of the first author; but the preference in point of historical truth is due to Luke. According to de Wette, the narratives contained in ch. 2 are to be regarded more with a dogmatico-religious than with a strictly historical eye; the dangers surrounding the child Jesus are a type of the persecutions awaiting the Messiah and His church, and an imitation of the dangers which threatened the life of the child Moses, and so on. According to Weisse, what is set forth is the recognition which Christianity met with amongst the heathen, the hatred it experienced amongst the Jews, and then how it took refuge amongst the Hellenists in Egypt. According to Ewald, the inner truth of the narrative is the heavenly Light, and the division amongst men, on the other hand, into the faith of the heathen and the hatred of the Jews. According to Hilgenfeld, it is the expression of the world-historical importance of Jesus, and of the recognition which, amid the hostility of the Jews, He was to find precisely amongst the heathen. According to Köstlin, the narrative has an apologetic object, to declare Jesus in a miraculous manner to be βασιλεὺς τῶν Ἰουδαίων, at the basis of which, perhaps, was the constellation of the year 747. According to Keim, it is an ideal history, the true form of which stands before the eyes of the Christians of all ages, and which proceeded from the fundamental thought of the conflict of the Messiah with the pseudo-Messias (Herod).

[369] The assumption (Paulus, Olshausen, Wieseler, Lichtenstein, Ebrard) that the presentation in the temple took place before the arrival of the Magi, breaks down at once before Luke 2:39. See, besides, Strauss, I. p. 284 ff. The accounts in Matthew and Luke are irreconcilable (Schleiermacher, L. J. pp. 65 ff., 75). This is also recognised by Bleek, who gives the preference to Luke.

Matthew 2:13. Ἀναχωρ. δὲ αὐτῶν] The divine direction and flight into Egypt must be conceived as taking place immediately after the departure of the Magi.

Matthew 2:16. φαίνεται] historic present.

The continuation of the narrative in connection with the legend of the murder of the children by Herod makes Jesus take refuge in Egypt, not because it was near at hand, not subject to Herod, and inhabited by many Jews, but because a residence in Egypt, and that as an antitype to that of the Israelites in that country, was in accordance with the passage in Hosea 11:1 (Matthew 2:15). A later age named Matarea, near Leontopolis, as the locality (see Paulus, Merkw. Reisen in d. Orient, III. p. 256; Schubert, Reise in d. Morgenl. II. p. 170).

ἕως ἂν εἴπω σοί] until I shall have told thee (ἄν, of a case occurring), that is, that thou shouldst come back again. Ellipsis of the common “it” is, since the time of Homer (Nägelsbach on the Iliad, pp. 60, 120, ed. 3), in universal use.

τοῦ ἀπολέσαι] Expression of the intention; see Kühner, II. p. 204; Buttm. neut. Gr. p. 232 [E. T. 270].

Matthew 2:15. Τὸν υἱόν μου] refers in Hosea 11:1 (quoted according to the original text) to the people of Israel (Exodus 4:22; Jeremiah 31:9). The Septuagint has τὰ τέκνα αὐτοῦ (Israelis). Upon the ἵνα πληρωθῇ, see on Matthew 1:22. Here it refers to the arrival of Jesus in Egypt and His residence there, which could not but take place as an antitype to the historical meaning of Hosea 11:1, in order that that declaration of the prophet might receive its Messianic fulfilment.

Matthew 2:16. Ἐνεπαίχθη] mocked, made a fool of. Sophocles, Ant. 794; Lucian, Trag. 331; Jacobs, ad Anthol. XI. p. 108; Luke 18:32; and frequently in N. T., LXX., and Apocrypha. The words are from Herod’s point of view.

ἀπὸ διετοῦς] Whether this is to be taken as masculine, a bienni, from two years onwards (Syr., Ar., Erasmus, Beza, Bengel, Fritzsche, Bleek), or as neuter, a bimatu, from the age of two years (Vulg., Castalio, Calvin, Er. Schmid, Rosenmüller, Gratz), is not determined by the similar passages, Numbers 1:3; Numbers 20:29; Numbers 3 Esdr. Matthew 8:1; 1 Chronicles 27:23; 2 Chronicles 31:16. It is in favour, however, of the latter view, that although several are spoken of, yet the singular always stands (not ἀπὸ διετῶν); so likewise the analogy of ἐπὶ διετές, Dem. 1135. 4; Aesch. in Ctes. 122; ἐπὶ τριετές, Arist. H. A. v. 14. Comp. likewise Arist. H. A. ii. 1, and ἀπὸ τριετοῦς, Plat. Legg. vii. p. 794 A.

καὶ κατωτέρω] (beginning) from two years old and (continuing) downwards. The opposite expression is: καὶ ἐπάνω (Numbers 1:3; 2 Chronicles 31:16). The boys of two years old and younger, in order the more unfailingly to attain his purpose.

ἠκρίβωσε] he had obtained precise knowledge (Matthew 2:7). He had therefore ascertained from the Magi that, agreeably to the time of the appearance of the star, the child could not be more than two years old at the most.

ἐν πᾶσι τοῖς ὁρίοις αὐτ.] The houses and courts outside of Bethlehem which yet belonged to its borders.