According to the teaching of Christ in the Synoptists (Mt 12"'-, Mk 3-«'-, Lk 12'»), the 'blas- phemy against the Holy Ghost ' was a sin of such surpassing heinousness that it was unpardonable. Not so. He says, the blasnlieray against the Son of Man. Now, the Son of Man was God's Messiah, His pre-eminent representative ; and blaspliemy against Him would have been, in theocratic con- ception, put parallel with blasphemy against God Himself (Ex 22""). What, then, was tliis lalasphemy a;;ainst tlie Holy Ghost, this sin of unwonted a;;;rravation, so heinous that, contrary to Jewish notions, even death brought the sinner no nearer to pardon (Lightfoot, Hor. Heb. on Mt 12'")? In the context Christ is referring to special acts of His in which the Holy Spirit, as a moral power, manifested Himself obviously and unmistaKably. Any man who, with such demonstration before his eyes, declared tliis power to be immoral (Mk 3**), openly denouncing as evil tliat which was plainly good, exhibited a state of heart which was hopeless and beyond the scope of divine illumination or divine influence ; he was the most higlihandod, wilful, preauinptuous desniser of the divine. In liis position of Wnsphemer lie could not be forgiven ; for God to put such a sin behind His back was in the moral nature of things a contradiction and an impo-ssibility. Not so culpable was the blas[iliemy even against the Son of Man ; for in His state of humiliation, with the mists of the flesh about Him, Ilia dignity was not so obvious, so unmistak:ililo. so irresistibly convincing. In this case there might be 'defect'; in the other there was 'de- fiance.' So much for the strict context and the special occasion. When we reach out beyond tlieso and seek to find a more general application, wc liavo need of great diffidence. One point,
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BLESSEDNESS
however, seems clear : the context debars ns from making the blasphemy simply the equivalent of continued impenitence in any sin, as if Christ had meant to say that any conscious sin, persisted in, becomes blasphemy aj^ainst the Holy Ghost. It is hard to conceive that Christ in these words merely put into another form the maxim ' no repentance, no pardon.' At the same time we cannot wholly agree with those who assert that there is ' no con- nexion' whatever between the blasphemy against the manifest Holy Ghost and the sin against the light of spiritual experience in He 6*"', and that these sins are 'akogetlier dissimilar ' (S. Da^-idson in Kitto, Encyc, s.v. ' Blasphemy '). Nor do we know enough to be sure that the ' sin unto death ' in
1 J n 5" ' stands apart ' entirely from the sin with whicli Christ is dealing. Yet, on the whole, it seems reasonable and consistent with the OT sacrilicial theory (cf. Keil, as above) to affirm that any sin which is explainable by the defect of the flesh, its mere willingness and its weakness, is not to be classed with the wilful, strong-armed, arrogant blaspheming of good as evil. And it is observable that the crucifixion of Christ, which in He 6' is a metaphor for apostasy, is in Ac 3", in its literal sense, attributed by St. Peter to dyma, ignorance. Doubtless, there is a time and a place wherein willingness shades off into wilfulness, and weakness into presumption ; neglect of the divine Illumination is the inclined plane towards the detestation of it ; and when the heart can deliber- ately say, ' Evil, be thou my good,' its utterance Ls not far from blasphemy of the Holy Ghost.
J. Massie. BLAST (from blmsan ' to blow ') is used in AV :
1. Of the blowing of a wind instrument, Jos 6° 'when they make a long b. with the ram's horn.'
2. The blowing of the breath of J", Ex 15* ' with the b. of thy nostrils the waters were gathered together' (Heb. nn rHah, 'breath'; cf. Is 30^ ' breath,' 33" ' breath,' 37' AV 'blast,' RV ' spirit,'
2 K 19' AV ' blast,' RV ' spirit '). 3. The breath, i.e. the tyranny of violent peoples. Is 25^ (nn). i. Blowing that withers or curses, 2 S 22'*, Job 4", Ps 18"> (nsj-} nishdmah). So blasted = ' blighted ' Gn 41«-»'-» 2 K W^, Is 37"; and blasting = ' blight' Dt 28^, 1 K 8", 2 Ch 6=«, Ara 4', Hag 2". The reference is to the effect of the sirocco east wind. See Hos 13" for its effect on water, and Jon 4' on man. Says Thomson, ' it rushes down every gorge, bending and breaking the trees, and tugging at each individual leaf. . . . The eyes inflame, the lips blister, and the moisture of the body evaporates, . . you become languid, ner- vous, irritable, and despairing' (Land and Book, ii. 262). In Ps 18", Pr. Bk. ' blasting ' = blast.
J. Hastings. BLASTUS (BXdoToO.— A chamberlain of Herod AORIPPA I. (wh. see), mentioned Ac 12*'. It was through his intervention, presumably secured by bribery, that the people of Tyre and Sidon prevailed upon the king to receive an embassy from them at Coesarea. He is described as 'chamberlain,' rbv ivl ToO xmrCn'o! toS fia<n\i<its. Neither the name nor the incident of the embassy occurs in Josephus — a proof of the complete independence of the two accounts (but see on the other side, Krenkel, Josephus und Ltuxis, p. 203). A. C. Headlam.