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Matthew 5:13-16. 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 ambitious than that alluded to at the time of their call. The new section rests on what goes before, and postulates possession of the attributes named in the Beatitudes. With these the disciples will be indeed the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Vitally important functions are indicated by the two figures. Nil sole et sale utilius was a Roman proverb (Pliny, H. N., 31, 9). Both harmonise with, the latter points expressly to, a universal destination of the new religion. The sun lightens all lands. Both also show how alien it was from the aims of Christ to be the teacher of an esoteric faith.

Matthew 5:13. 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 on by Schanz, who finds a reference to it in Luke 14:35, and thinks it is also pointed to here by the expression τῆς γῆς. The first, purity, is a quality of salt per se, rather than a condition on which its function in nature depends. The second and third are doubtless the main points to be insisted on, and the second more than the third and above all. Salt arrests or prevents the process of putrefaction in food, and the citizens of the kingdom perform the same function for the earth, that is, for the people who dwell on it. In Schanz’s view there is a confusion of the metaphor with its moral interpretation. Fritzsche limits the point of comparison to indispensableness = ye are as necessary an element in the world as salt is; a needlessly bald interpretation. Necessary certainly, but why and for what?—τῆς γῆς might mean the land of Israel (Achelis, Bergpredigt), but it is more natural to take it in its widest significance in harmony with κόσμου. Holtzmann (H. C.) sets κόσμου down to the account of the evangelist, and thinks γῆς in the narrow sense more suited to the views of Jesus.

Matthew 5:14. 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 felicity of the metaphor, which is much more strikingly apt if degeneracy can happen in the natural as well as in the spiritual sphere. Long ago Maundrell maintained that it could, and modern travellers confirm his statement. Furrer says: “As it was observed by Maundrell 200 years ago so it has often been observed in our time that salt loses somewhat of its sharpness in the storehouses of Syria and Palestine. Gathered in a state of impurity, it undergoes with other substances a chemical process, by which it becomes really another sort of stuff, while retaining its old appearance” (Ztscht. für M. und R., 1890). A similar statement is made by Thomson (Land and Book, p. 381). There is no room for doubt as to whether the case supposed can happen in the spiritual sphere. The “salt of the earth” can become not only partially but wholly, hopelessly insipid, losing the qualities which constitute its conservative power as set forth in the Beatitudes and in other parts of Christ’s teaching (e.g., Matthew 18). Erasmus gives a realistic description of the causes of degeneracy in these words: “Si vestri mores fuerint amore laudis, cupiditate pecuniarum, studio voluptatum, libidine vindicandi, metu infamiae damnorum aut mortis infatuati,” etc. (Paraph. in Evan. Matt.).—ἐν τίνι ἁλις: not, with what shall the so necessary salting process be done? but, with what shall the insipid salt be salted? The meaning is that the lost property is irrecoverable. A stern statement, reminding us of Hebrews 6:6, but true to the fact in the spiritual sphere. Nothing so hopeless as apostate discipleship with a bright past behind it to which it has become dead—begun in the spirit, ending in the flesh.—εἰς οὐδὲν, useless for salting, good for nothing else any more (ἔτι).—εἰ μὴ βληθὲν, etc. This is a kind of humorous afterthought: except indeed, cast out as refuse, to be trodden under foot of man, i.e., to make footpaths of. The reading βληθὲν is much to be preferred to βληθῆναι, as giving prominence to καταπατεῖσθαι as the main verb, pointing to a kind of use to which insipid salt can after all be put. But what a downcome: from being saviours of society to supplying materials for footpaths!

Matthew 5:14. τὸ φῶς τ. κ., the light, the sun of the moral world conceived of as full of the darkness of ignorance and sin. The disciple function is now viewed as illuminating. And as under the figure of salt the danger warned against was that of becoming insipid, so here the danger to be avoided is that of obscuring the light. The light will shine, that is its nature, if pains be not taken to hide it.—οὐ δύναται πόλις, etc. As a city situate on the top of a hill cannot be hid, neither can a light fail to be seen unless it be expressly prevented from shining. No pains need to be taken to secure that the light shall shine. For that it is enough to be a light. But Christ knew that there would be strong temptation for the men that had it in them to be lights to hide their light. It would draw the world’s attention to them, and so expose them to the ill will of such as hate the light. Therefore He goes on to caution disciples against the policy of obscuration.

Matthew 5:15. 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 life. There was a projecting stone in the wall on which the lamp was set. The house consisted of a single room, so that the tiny light sufficed for all. It might now and then be placed under the modius, an earthenware grain measure, or under the bed (Mark 4:21), high to keep clear of serpents, therefore without danger of setting it on fire (Koetsveld, De Gelijkenissen, p. 305). But that would be the exception, not the rule—done occasionally for special reasons, perhaps during the hours of sleep. Schanz says the lamp burned all night, and that when they wanted darkness they put it on the floor and covered it with the “bushel”. Tholuck also thinks people might cover the light when they wished to keep it burning, when they had occasion to leave the room for a time. Weiss, on the other hand, thinks it would be put under a cover only when they wished to put it out (Matt.-Evan., p. 144). But was it ever put out? Not so, according to Benzinger (Heb. Arch., p. 124).

Matthew 5:16. 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 policy of obscuration—reasons of prudence and wisdom: gradual accustoming of men to new ideas; deference to the prejudices of good men; avoidance of rupture by premature outspokenness; but generally the true reason is fear of unpleasant consequences to oneself. Their conduct Jesus represents as disloyalty to God—ὅπως, etc. The shining of light from the good works of disciples glorifies God the Father in heaven. The hiding of the light means withholding glory. The temptation arises from the fact—a stern law of the moral world it is—that just when most glory is likely to accrue to God, least glory comes to the light-bearer; not glory but dishonour and evil treatment his share. Many are ready enough to let their light shine when honour comes to themselves. But their “light” is not true heaven-kindled light; their works are not καλὰ, noble, heroic, but πονηρὰ (Matthew 7:17), ignoble, worthless, at best of the conventional type in fashion among religious people, and wrought often in a spirit of vanity and ostentation. This is theatrical goodness, which is emphatically not what Jesus wanted. Euthy. Zig. says: οὐ κελεύει θεατρίζειν τὴν ἀρετὴν.

Note that here, for the first time in the Gospel, Christ’s distinctive name for God, “Father,” occurs. It comes in as a thing of course. Does it presuppose previous instruction? (So Meyer.) One might have expected so important a topic as the nature and name of God to have formed the subject of a distinct lesson. But Christ’s method of teaching was not scholastic or formal. He defined terms by discriminating use; Father, e.g., as a name for God, by using it as a motive to noble conduct. The motive suggested throws light on the name. God, we learn, as Father delights in noble conduct; as human fathers find joy in sons who acquit themselves bravely. Jesus may have given formal instruction on the point, but not necessarily. This first use of the title is very significant. It is full, solemn, impressive: your Father, He who is in the heavens; so again in Matthew 5:45. It is suggestive of reasons for faithfulness, reasons of love and reverence. It hints at a reflected glory, the reward of heroism. The noble works which glorify the Father reveal the workers to be sons. The double-sided doctrine of this logion of Jesus is that the divine is revealed by the heroic in human conduct, and that the moral hero is the true son of God. Jesus Himself is the highest illustration of the twofold truth.

Matthew 5:17-20. 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 teach in the synagogues (Matthew 4:23) in a manner that at once arrested attention and led hearers to recognise in Him a new type of teacher (Mark 1:27), entirely different from the scribes (Mark 1:22). The sentences before us contain just such a statement of the Teacher’s attitude as the previously awakened surprise of His audiences would lead us to expect. There is no reason to doubt their substantial authenticity though they may not reproduce the precise words of the speaker; no ground for the suggestion of Holtzmann (H. C.) that so decided a position either for or against the law was not likely to be taken up in Christ’s time, and that we must find in these vv. and anti-Pauline programme of the Judaists. At a first glance the various statements may appear inconsistent with each other. And assuming their genuineness, they might easily be misunderstood, and give rise to disputes in the apostolic age, or be taken hold of in rival interests. The words of great epoch-making men generally have this fate. Though apparently contradictory they might all proceed from the many-sided mind of Jesus, and be so reported by the genial Galilean publican in his Logia. The best guide to the meaning of the momentous declaration they contain is acquaintance with the general drift of Christ’s teaching (vide Wendt, Die Lehre Jesu, ii., 330). Verbal exegesis will not do much for us. We must bring to the words sympathetic insight into the whole significance of Christ’s ministry. Yet the passage by itself, well weighed, is more luminous than at first it may seem.

Matthew 5:17. 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 mind is implied in the bare suggestion of this as a possibility! To the ordinary religious Jew the mere conception would appear a profanity. A greater than the O. T., than Moses and the prophets, is here. But the Greater is full of reverence for the institutions and sacred books of His people. He is not come to disannul either the law or the prophets. ἢ before τ. προφ. is not = καὶ. “Law” and “Prophets” are not taken here as one idea = the O. T. Scriptures, as law, prophets and psalms seem to be in Luke 24:44, but as distinct parts, with reference to which different attitudes might conceivably be taken up. ἢ implies that the attitude actually taken up is the same towards both. The prophets are not to be conceived of as coming under the category of law (Weiss), but as retaining their distinctive character as revealers of God’s nature and providence. Christ’s attitude towards them in that capacity is the same as that towards the law, though the Sermon contains no illustrations under that head. “The idea of God and of salvation which Jesus taught bore the same relations to the O. T. revelation as His doctrine of righteousness to the O. T. law” (Wendt, Die L. J., ii., 344).—πληρῶσαι: the common relation is expressed by this weighty word. Christ protests that He came not as an abrogator, but as a fulfiller. What rôle does He thereby claim? Such as belongs to one whose attitude is at once free and reverential. He fulfils by realising in theory and practice an ideal to which O. T. institutions and revelations point, but which they do not adequately express. Therefore, in fulfilling He necessarily abrogates in effect, while repudiating the spirit of a destroyer. He brings in a law of the spirit which cancels the law of the letter, a kingdom which realises prophetic ideals, while setting aside the crude details of their conception of the Messianic time.

Matthew 5:18-19. 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. T. is a Divine revelation, and that therefore every minutest precept has religious significance which must be recognised in the ideal fulfilment.—Ἀμὴν, formula of solemn asseveration, often used by Jesus, never by apostles, found doubled only in fourth Gospel.—ἕως ἂν παρέλθῃ, etc.: not intended to fix a period after which the law will pass away, but a strong way of saying never (so Tholuck and Weiss).—ἰῶτα, the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet.—κεραία, the little projecting point in some of the letters, e.g., of the base line in Beth; both representing the minutiae in the Mosaic legislation. Christ, though totally opposed to the spirit of the scribes, would not allow them to have a monopoly of zeal for the commandments great and small. It was important in a polemical interest to make this clear.—οὐ μὴ π., elliptical = do not fear lest. Vide Kühner, Gram., § 516, 9; also Goodwin’s Syntax, Appendix ii.—ἕως ἄν π. γεν., a second protasis introduced with ἕως explanatory of the first ἕως ἂν παρέλθῃ; vide Goodwin, § 510; not saying the same thing, but a kindred: eternal, lasting, till adequately fulfilled; the latter the more exact statement of Christ’s thought.

Matthew 5:19. 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. The Baptist was in some respects such a man. He seems to have totally neglected the temple worship and sacred festivals. He shared the prophetic disgust at formalism. Note now what Christ’s judgment about such really is. A scribe or Pharisee would regard a breaker of even the least commandments as a miscreant. Jesus simply calls him the least in the Kingdom of Heaven. He takes for granted that he is an earnest man, with a passion for righteousness, which is the key to his iconoclastic conduct. He recognises him therefore as possessing real moral worth, but, in virtue of his impatient radical-reformer temper, not great, only little in the scale of true moral values, in spite of his earnestness in action and sincerity in teaching. John the Baptist was possibly in His mind, or some others not known to us from the Gospels.—ὃς δʼ ἂν ποιήσῃ καὶ διδάξῃ, etc. We know now who is least: who is great? The man who does and teaches to do all the commands great and small; great not named but understood—οὗτος μέγας. Jesus has in view O. T. saints, the piety reflected in the Psalter, where the great ethical laws and the precepts respecting ritual are both alike respected, and men in His own time living in their spirit. In such was a sweetness and graciousness, akin to the Kingdom as He conceived it, lacking in the character of the hot-headed law-breaker. The geniality of Jesus made Him value these sweet saintly souls.

Matthew 5:20. 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 on a distinct one. Yet there is a hidden logic latent in the γὰρ. It explains the ἐλάχιστος of the previous verse. The earnest reformer is a small character compared with the sweet wholesome performer, but he is not a moral nullity. That place is reserved for another class. I call him least, not nothing, for the scribe is the zero.—πλεῖον τῶν γρ. κ. φ., a compendious comparison, τῆς δικαιοσύνης being understood after πλεῖον. Christ’s statements concerning these classes of the Jewish community, elsewhere recorded, enable us to understand the verdict He pronounces here. They differed from the two classes named in Matthew 5:18, thus: Class 1 set aside the least commandments for the sake of the great; class 2 conscientiously did all, great and small; class 3 set aside the great for the sake of the little, the ethical for the sake of the ritual, the divine for the sake of the traditional. That threw them outside the Kingdom, where only the moral has value. And the second is greater, higher, than the first, because, while zeal for the ethical is good, spirit, temper, disposition has supreme value in the Kingdom. These valuations of Jesus are of great importance as a contribution towards defining the nature of the Kingdom as He conceived it.

Nothing, little, great: there is a higher grade still, the highest. It belongs to Christ Himself, the Fulfiller, who is neither a sophistical scribe, nor an impatient reformer, nor a strict performer of all laws great and small, walking humbly with God in the old ways, without thought, dream or purpose of change, but one who lives above the past and the present in the ideal, knows that a change is impending, but wishes it to come gently, and so as to do full justice to all that is divine, venerable, and of good tendency in the past. His is the unique greatness of the reverently conservative yet free, bold inaugurator of a new time.