2. Fair weather (edd/a), Colloquial. Looking at the even- ing sky, a man says to his neighbor, “Fine weather: ” and in the morning (ver. 3), “Storm to-day ” (orjpepov vera).
3. Lowering (ctvyvdtwv). The verb means to have a gloomy look. Dr. Morison compares the Séotch gloaming or glooming. Oranmer, the sky is glooming red. The word is used only here and at Mark x. 22, of. the young ruler, turning from Christ with his face overshadowed with gloom. A, V., he was sad. Rev., his countenance fell.
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9, 10. Note the accurate employment of the two words for basket. See on xiv. 20.
15. Thou art the Christ. Compare on i. 1. Note the emphatic and definite force of the article in Peter’s confession, and also the emphatic position of the pronoun (02, thou) : * Thow art the anointed, the Son of the God, the living.”
17. Blessed (uaxdptos). See on ch. v. 8.
18. Thou art Peter (od «i Iérpos). Christ responds to Peter’s emphatic thow with another, equally emphatic. Peter says, “ Thow art the Christ.’ Christ replies, “ Zhow art Peter.” Ilérpos (Peter) is used as a proper name, but without - losing its meaning as a common noun. The name was bestowed on Simon at his first interview with Jesus (John i. 42) under the form of its Aramaic equivalent, Cephas. In this passage atten- tion is called, not to the giving of the name, but to its meaning. In classical Greek the word means a piece of rock, as in Homer, of Ajax throwing a stone at Hector (“ Iliad,” vii., 270), or of Patroclus grasping and hiding in his hand a jagged stone (“ Ll- iad,” xvi., 734).
On this rock (él tadry Th TETpQ). The word is feminine, and means a rock, as distinguished from a stone or a fragment of rock (aérpos, above). Used of a ledge of rocks or a rocky peak. In: Homer (“ Odyssey,” ix., 243), the rock (arérpnv) which Poly- phemus places at the door of his cavern, is a mass which two-and- twenty wagons could not remove ; and the rock which he hurled at the retreating ships of Ulysses, created by its fall a wave in the sea which drove the ships back toward the land (“ Odyssey,” ix., 484). The word refers neither to Christ as a rock, distin- guished from Simon, a stone, nor to Peter's confession, but to Peter himself, in a sense defined by his previous confession, and as enlightened by the “ Father in Heaven.”
The reference of 7érpa to Christ is forced and unnatural. The obvious reference of the word is to Peter. The emphatic
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this naturally refers to the nearest antecedent ; and besides, the metaphor is thus weakened, since Christ appears here, not as the foundation, but as the architect: “On this rock will I build.” Again, Christ is the great foundation, the ‘chief corner-stone,” but the New Testament writers recognize no impropriety in applying to the members of Christ’s church certain terms which are applied to him. For instance, Peter himself (1 Pet. ii. 4), calls Christ a living stone, and, in ver. 5, addresses the church as living stones. In Apoce. xxi. 14, the names of the twelve apostles appear in the twelve foundation- stones of the heavenly city; and in Eph. ii. 20, it is said, “Ye are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets (z.¢., laid by the apostles and prophets), Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone.”
Equally untenable is the explanation which refers wétpa to Simon’s confession. Both the play upon the words and the natural reading of the passage are against it, and besides, it does not conform to the fact, since the church is built, not on confessions, but on confessors—living men.
“The word érpa,” says Edersheim, “was used in the same sense in Rabbinic language. According to the Rabbins, when God was about to build his world, he could not rear it on the generation of Enos, nor on that of the flood, who brought destruction upon the world; but when he beheld that Abraham would arise in the future, he said: ‘Behold, I have found a rock to build on it, and to found the world,’ whence, also, Abraham is called a rock, as it is said: ‘Look unto the rock whence ye are hewn.’ The parallel between Abraham and Peter might be carried even further. If, from a misunder- standing of the Lord’s promise to Peter, later Christian legend represented the apostle as sitting at the gate of heaven, Jewish legend represents Abraham as sitting at the gate of Gehenna, So as to prevent all who had the seal of circumcision from falling into its abyss ” (“Life and Times of Jesus”).