Комментарии к Библии

Matthew 7:6. A complementary counsel. No connecting word introduces this sentence. Indeed the absence of connecting particles is noticeable throughout the chapter: Matthew 7:1; Matthew 7:6-7; Matthew 7:13; Matthew 7:15. It is a collection of ethical pearls strung loosely together. Yet it is not difficult to suggest a connecting link, thus: I have said, “Judge not,” yet you must know people, else you will make great mistakes, such as, etc. Moral criticism is inevitable. Jesus Himself practised it. He judged the Pharisees, but in the interest of humanity, guided by the law of love. He judged the proud, pretentious, and cruel, in behalf of the weak and despised. All depends on what we judge and why. The Pharisaic motive was egotism; the right motive is defence of the downtrodden or, in certain cases, self-defence. So here.—καταπατήσουσι: future well attested, vide critical note, with subjunctive, ῥήξωσι, in last clause; unusual combination, but not impossible. On the use of the future after μήποτε and other final particles, vide Burton, Syntax of the Moods and Tenses in N. T. Greek, § 199.—τὸ ἅγιον, τοὺς μαργαρίτας: what is the holy thing, and what are the pearls? In a moral aphorism special indications are not to be expected, and we are left to our own conjectures. The “holy” and the “pearls” must define themselves for each individual in his own experience. They are the things which are sacred and precious for a man or woman, and which natural feeling teaches us to be careful not to waste or expose to desecration. For this purpose knowledge of the world, discrimination, is necessary. We must not treat all people alike, and show our valuables, religious experiences, best thoughts, tenderest sentiments, to the first comer. Shyness, reserve, goes along with sincerity, depth, refinement. In all shyness there is implicit judgment of the legitimate kind. A modest woman shrinks from a man whom her instinct discerns to be impure; a child from all hard-natured people. Who blames woman or child? It is but the instinct of self-preservation.—κυσίν, χοίρων. The people to be feared and shunned are those represented by dogs and swine, regarded by Jews as shameless and unclean animals. There are such people, unhappily, even in the judgment of charity, and the shrewd know them and fight shy of them; for no good can come of comradeship with them. Discussions as to whether the dogs and the swine represent two classes of men, or only one, are pedantic. If not the same they are at least similar; one in this, that they are to be avoided. And it is gratuitous to limit the scope of the gnome to the apostles and their work in preaching the gospel. It applies to all citizens of the kingdom, to all who have a treasure to guard, a holy of holies to protect from profane intrusion.—μήποτε, lest perchance. What is to be feared?—καταπατήσουσιν, ῥήξωσιν: treading under foot (ἐν τ. π., instrumental, with, de Wette; among, Weiss) your pearls (αὐτους), rending yourselves. Here again there is trouble for the commentators as to the distribution of the trampling and rending between dogs and swine. Do both do both, or the swine both, or the swine the trampling and the dogs the rending? The latter is the view of Theophylact, and it has been followed by some moderns, including Achelis. On this view the structure of the sentence presents an example of ἐπάνοδος or ὑστέρησις, the first verb referring to the second subject and the second verb to the first subject. The dogs—street dogs, without master, living on offal—rend, because what you have thrown to them, perhaps to propitiate them, being of uncertain temper at the best, is not to their liking; the swine trample under foot what looked like peas or acorns, but turns out to be uneatable.

Before passing from these verses (Matthew 7:1-6) two curious opinions may be noted. (1) That ἅγιον represents an Aramaic word meaning ear-ornaments, answering to pearls. This view, once favoured by Michaelis, Bolten, Kuinoel, etc., and thereafter discredited, has been revived by Holtzmann (H. C.). (2) That ὀφθαλμός (Matthew 7:3; Matthew 7:5) means, not the eye, but a village well. So Furrer. Strange, he says, that a man should need to be told by a neighbour that he has a mote in his eye, or that it should be a fault to propose to take it out! And what sense in the idea of a beam in the eye? But translate the Aramaic word used by Jesus, well, and all is clear and natural. A neighbour given to fault-finding sees a small impurity in a villager’s well and tauntingly offers to remove it. Meantime his own boys, in his absence, throw a beam into his own well (Zeitsch. für M. und R. vide also Wanderungen, p. 222).

Matthew 7:7-11. Admonition to prayer: presupposes deferred answer to prayer, tempting to doubt as to its utility, and consequent discontinuance of the practice. A lesson more natural at a later stage, when the disciples had a more developed religious experience. The whole subject more adequately handled in Luke 11:1-13.

Matthew 7:7. Αἰτεῖτε, ζητεῖτε, κρούετε, threefold exhortation with a view to impressiveness; first literally, then twice in figurative language: seek as for an object lost, knock as at a barred door, appropriate after the parable of the neighbour in bed (Luke 11:5-8). The promise of answer is stated in corresponding terms.—δοθήσεται, εὑρήσετε, ἀνοιγήσεται.

Matthew 7:8, teration in form of a general proposition: πᾶς γὰρ, for every one, etc.

Matthew 7:9. ἢ answers to a state of mind which doubts whether God gives in answer to prayer at all, or at least gives what we desire.—τίς ἐξ ὑμῶν ἀν.: argument from analogy, from the human to the divine. The construction is broken. Instead of going on to say what the man of the parable will do, the sentence changes into a statement of what he will not do. Well indicated in W.H.’[47] text by a—after ἄρτον. The anacolouthon could be avoided by omitting the ἐστι of T. R. after τίς and μὴ before λίθον, when the sentence would stand: τίς ἐξ ὐμῶν ἀν., ὁν αἰτῄσει ὁ υἱὸς αὐτοῦ ἄρτον, λίθον ἐπιδώσει αὐτῷ. But the broken sentence, if worse grammar, is better rhetoric.—μὴ λ. ἐπιδώσει, he will not give him a stone, will he? Bread, stone; fish, serpent. Resemblance is implied, and the idea is that a father may refuse his child’s request but certainly will not mock him. Grotius quotes from Plautus: “Altera manu fert lapidem, panem ostentat altera”. Furrer suggests that by ὄφιν is meant not a literal serpent, but a scale-less fish, therefore prohibited to be eaten (Leviticus 11:12); serpent-like, found in the Sea of Galilee, three feet long, often caught in the nets, and of course thrown away like the dogfish of our waters.

[47] Westcott and Hort.

Matthew 7:11, πονηροὶ, morally evil, a strong word, the worst fathers being taken to represent the class, the point being that hardly the worst will treat their children as described. There is no intention to teach a doctrine of depravity, or, as Chrysostom says, to calumniate human nature (οὐ διαβάλλων τὴν ἀνθρωπίνην φύσιν). The evil specially in view, as required by the connection, is selfishness, a grudging spirit: “If ye then, whose own nature is rather to keep what you have than to bestow it on others, etc.” (Hatch, Essays in [48]. Gr., p. 81).—οἴδατε διδόναι soletis dare, Maldon. Wetstein; rather, have the sense to give; with the infinitive as in Php 4:12, 1 Timothy 3:5. Perhaps we should take the phrase as an elegant expression for the simple δίδοτε. So Palairet.—δόματα, four times in N. T. for the attic δῶρον, δώρημα; δομ. ἀγαθὰ, gifts good not only in quality (bread not stone, etc.) but even in measure, generous, giving the children more than they ask.—πόσῳ μᾶλλον, a fortiori argument.—ὁ πατὴρ, etc., the Father whose benignant nature has already been declared, Matthew 5:45.—ἀγαθὰ, good things emphatically, insignia dona, Rosenm., and only good (Jam 1:17, an echo of this utterance). This text is classic for Christ’s doctrine of the Fatherhood of God.

[48] Codex Vaticanus (sæc. iv.), published in photographic facsimile in 1889 under the care of the Abbate Cozza-Luzi.

Matthew 7:12. The golden rule. οὖν here probably because in the source, cf. καὶ in quotation in Hebrews 1:6. The connection must be a matter of conjecture—with Matthew 7:11, a, “Extend your goodness from children to all,” Fritzsche; with Matthew 7:11, b, “Imitate the divine goodness,” Bengel; with Matthew 7:1-5; Matthew 7:6-11 being an interpolation, Weiss and Holtz. (H.C.). Luke 6:31 places it after the precept contained in Matthew 5:42, and Wendt, in his reconstruction of the logia (L. J., i. 61), follows that clue. The thought is certainly in sympathy with the teaching of Matthew 5:38-48, and might very well be expounded in that connection. But the meaning is not dependent on connection. The sentence is a worthy close to the discourse beginning at Matthew 5:17. “Respondent ultima primis,” Beng. Here as there “law and prophets”.—ἵνα with subjunctive after θέλητε, instead of infinitive.—πάντα οὖν … ποιεῖτε αὐτοῖς. The law of nature, says Rosenmüller. Not quite. Wetstein, indeed, gives copious instances of something similar in Greek and Roman writers and Rabbinical sources, and the modern science of comparative religion enables us to multiply them. But recent commentators (including Holtz., H.C.) have remarked that, in these instances, the rule is stated in negative terms. So, e.g., in Tob 4:15, ὃ μισεῖς, μηδενὶ ποιήσῃς, quoted by Hillel in reply to one who asked him to teach the whole law while he stood on one leg. So also in the saying of Confucius: “Do not to others what you would not wish done to yourself,” Legge, Chinese Classics, i. 191 f. The negative confines us to the region of justice; the positive takes us into the region of generosity or grace, and so embraces both law and prophets. We wish much more than we can claim—to be helped in need, encouraged in struggles, defended when misrepresented, and befriended when our back is at the wall. Christ would have us do all that in a magnanimous, benignant way; to be not merely δίκαιος but ἀγαθός.—νόμος καὶ προφῆται: perhaps to a certain extent a current phrase = all that is necessary, but, no doubt, seriously meant; therefore, may help us to understand the statement in Matthew 5:17, “I came not to destroy, but to fulfil”. The golden rule was Law and Prophets only in an ideal sense, and in the same sense only was Christ a fulfiller.—vide Wendt, L. J., ii. 341.

Matthew 7:13-14. The two ways (Luke 13:23-25). From this point onwards we have what commentators call the Epilogue of the sermon, introduced without connecting particle, possibly no part of the teaching on the hill, placed here because that teaching was regarded as the best guide to the right way. The passage itself contains no clue to the right way except that it is the way of the few. The allegory also is obscure from its brevity. Is the gate at the beginning or end of the way, or are gate and way practically one, the way narrow because it passes through a narrow doorway? Possibly Christ’s precept was simply, “enter through the narrow gate” or “door” (θύρα, Luke’s word), all the rest being gloss.—πύλης, the large entrance to an edifice or city, as distinct from θύρα, a common door; perhaps chosen by Lk. because in keeping with the epithet στενῆς.—ὅτι, etc.: explanatory enlargement to unfold and enforce the precept.—ἡ ὁδὸς: two ways are contrasted, either described by its qualities and end. The “way” in the figure is a common road, but the term readily suggests a manner of life. The Christian religion is frequently called “the way” in Acts (Matthew 9:2, Matthew 19:9, etc.). The wrong road is characterised as πλατεῖα and εὐρύχωρος, broad and roomy, and as leading to destruction (ἀπώλειαν). The right way (and gate, ἡ πύλη, is to be retained in Matthew 7:14, though omitted in Matthew 7:13) is described as στενὴ καὶ τεθλιμμένη, narrow and contracted, and as leading to life.—ζωήν, a pregnant word, true life, worth living, in which men realise the end of their being—the antithesis of ἀπώλεια. The one is the way of the many, πολλοί εἰσιν οἱ εἰσερ.; the other of the few, ὀλίγοι … οἱ εὑρίσκοντες. Note the word “finding”. The way is so narrow or so untrodden that it may easily be missed. It has to be sought for. Luke suggests the idea of difficulty in squeezing in through the very narrow door. Both points of view have their analogue in life. The practical application of this counsel requires spiritual discernment. No verbal directory will help us. Narrow? Was not Pharisaism a narrow way, and the monastic life and pietism with its severe rules for separation from the “world” in amusement, dress, etc.?

Matthew 7:15-20. Warning against pseudo-prophets. Again, without connecting particle and possibly not a part of the Sermon on the Mount. But the more important question here is: Does this section belong to Christ’s teaching at all, or has it been introduced by the Evangelist that false teachers of after days appearing in the Church might be condemned under the authority of the Master? (Holtz., H.C.). What occasion had Christ to speak of false prophets? The reference can hardly be to the Pharisees or the Rabbis. They were men of tradition, not prophetic, either in the true or in the false sense. But, apart from them, there might be another class of men in evidence in our Lord’s day, who might be so characterised. It was a time of religious excitement; the force of custom broken, the deep fountains of the soul bursting forth; witness the crowds who followed John and Jesus, and the significant saying about the kingdom of heaven suffering violence (Matthew 11:12). Such times call forth true prophets and also spurious ones, so far in religious sympathy with prevalent enthusiasms, but bent on utilising them for their own advantage in gain or influence, men of the Judas type. If such men, as is likely, existed, Jesus would have something to say about them, as about all contemporary religious phenomena.

Matthew 7:15. Προσέχετε ἀπὸ, take heed to and beware of.—οἵτινες, I mean, such as.—ἐν ἐνδύμασι προβάτων. Grotius, Rosenm. and Holtz. (H.C.) take this as referring to the dress worn (ἐν μηλωταῖς, Hebrews 11:37) as the usual badge of a prophet, but not without reference to the plausible manner of the wearer; deceptive and meant to deceive (Zechar. Matthew 13:4); gentle, innocent as sheep; speaking with “unction,” and all but deceiving “the very elect”. The manner more than the dress is doubtless intended. ἔσωθεν δὲ: manner and nature utterly different; within, λύκοι ἅρπαγες; greedy, sometimes for power, ambitious to be first; often for gain, money. The Didache speaks of a type of prophet whom it pithily names a χριστέμπορος (chap. 12), a Christ-merchant. There have always been prophets of this type, “each one to his gain” (Isaiah 56:11), Evangel-merchants, traders in religious revival.