1. In those days. The phrase is indefinite, but always points back to a preceding date ; in this case to the date of the settlement of the family at Nazareth. “In those days,” @e., some time during thie nearly thirty years since that settlement.
John. Hebrew, meaning God has dealt graciously. Compare the German (otthold.
Cu. III.] 4 MATTHEW. 23
Came (rapayiverat). Rev., cometh. The verb is used in what is called the Azstorical present, giving vividness to the nar- rative, as Carlyle (“ French Revolution”): ‘“ But now also the National Deputies from all ends of France ae in Paris with their commissions.” ‘“ In those days appears John the Baptist.”
Preaching («npticcwr). See on 2 Pet. ii. 5.
Wilderness (77 épnuw). Not suggesting absolute barrenness but unappropriated territory affording free range for shepherds and their flocks. Hepworth Dixon (“The Holy Land”) says, ‘“‘ Even in the wilderness nature is not so stern as man. Here and there, in clefts and basins, and on the hillsides, grade on grade, you observe a patch of corn, a clump of olives, a single palm.”
2. Repent (ueravocire). A word compounded of the preposi- tion perd, after, with ; and the verb voéw, to perceive, and to think, as the result of perceiving or observing. In this com- pound the preposition combines the two meanings of time and change, which may be denoted by after and different ; so that the whole compound means to think differently after. Merd- voua (repentance) is therefore, primarily, an after-thought, different from the former thought; then, a change of mind which issues in regret and in change of conduct. These latter ideas, however, have been imported into the word by scriptural usage, and do not lie in it etymologically nor by primary usage. Repentance, then, has been rightly defined as “‘ Such a virtuous alteration of the mind and purpose as begets a like virtuous change in the life and practice.” Sarrow is not, as is popularly conceived, the primary nor the prominent notion of the word. Paul distinguishes between sorrow (humm) and repentance (weTa- voia), and puts the one as the outcome of the other. ‘Godly
-sorrow worketh repentance” (2 Cor. vii. 10).
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The kingdom of heaven. Lit., the kingdom of the heavens ( Bacthela Tov odpavov). An expression peculiar to Matthew. ~The more usual one is the kingdom of God. Itisa kingdoin
24 WORD STUDIES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. (Cu. III.
of heaven because its origin, its end, its king, the character and destiny of its subjects, its laws, institutions, and privileges—all are heavenly. In the teaching of Christ and in the apostolic writings the kingdom of the Messiah is the actual consumma- tion of the prophetic idea of the rule of God, without any national limitation, so that participation therein rests only on faith in Jesus Christ, and on the moral renewal which is condi- tioned by the same. It is the combination of all rights of Christian citizenship in this world, and eternal blessedness in the next. All its senses are only different sides of the same great idea—the subjection of all things to God in Christ.
Voice. John’s personality is thrown into shadow behind Christ. ‘* What would be the duty of a merely human teacher of the highest moral aim, entrusted with a great spiritual mis- sion and lesson for the benefit of mankind? The example of St. John Baptist is an answer to this inquiry. Such a teacher would represent himself as a mere ‘voice,’ crying aloud in the moral wilderness around him, and anxious, beyond aught else, to shroud his own insignificant person beneath the majesty of his message” (Liddon, ‘ Our Lord’s Divinity ”’).
6. Were baptized (€Gamrifovro). See on Mark vii. 4.
Confessing their sins (€fouodoyovmevos Tas dwaptias abtav). The words imply: 1. That confession was connected with bap- tism. They were baptized while in the act of confessing. 2. An open confession, not a private one to John (é€, compare Acts xix.18; Jas.v.16). 3. An imdiwidual confession ; possi- bly a specific one. (See Luke iii. 10-15.)