5. Peace to this house. The usual oriental salutation. See Judg. xix. 20.
6. If a son of peace be there. So Rev. A Hebraism, referring to the character of the head of the house, and the tone of the household. Compare Job xxi. 9.
Cu. X.] LUKE.
(Sk) Or r=y
7. The workman is worthy, etc. See on Matt. x. 10.
11. Dust (covoprov). From xovs, dust, and épvups, to stir up. Strictly, dust that is razsed by walking.
Cleaveth. See on Matt. xix. 5. Frequent in medical lan- guage of the uniting of wounds.
Wipe off (aroudocopeda). See on Lukev. 2. Only here in New Testament.
13. Mighty works. See on Matt. xi. 20.
Sackcloth (cake). From the Hebrew sak: what is knotted together ; net-shaped ; coarsely woven. It was made of goats’ or camels’ hair (Apoce. vi. 12), and was a material similar to that upon which Paul wrought in tent-making. The same word in Hebrew is used to describe a grain-sack, and this coarse material of which it is made (Gen. xlii. 25; Josh. ix. 4). So the Greek cay7 means a pack or baggage. The same root, according to some etymologists, appears in cayjvn, a drag-net (see Matt. xiii. 47), and odyos, Latin sagum, a coarse, soldier's cloak. Jt was employed for the rough garments for mourners (Esth. iv. 1; 1 Kings xxi. 27), in which latter passage the sackcloth is put next the flesh in token of extreme sorrow. Compare 2 Kings vi. 80; Job xvi. 15.
Ashes (a7r08). Asa sign of mourning. Defiling one’s self with dead things, as ashes or dirt, as a sign of sorrow, was common among the Orientals and Greeks. Thus Homer de- scribes Achilles on hearing of the death of Patroclus:
‘Grasping in both hands The ashes of the hearth, he showered them o’er His head, and soiled with them his noble face.” liad, xviii., 23.
B52 WORD STUDIES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. [Ca.'X.
And Priam, mourning for Hector:
“In the midst the aged man Sat with a cloak wrapped round him, and much dust Strewn on his head and neck, which, when he rolled Upon the earth, he gathered with his hands.” Iliad, xxiv., 162-5.
See 1 Sam. iv. 12; 2 Sam.i, 25 xii 19; Job 1. 12; Hzek. xvii. 80; Apoe. xviii. 19. In Judith iv. 14, 15, in the mourn- ing over the ravages of the Assyrians, the priests minister at the altar, girded with sackcloth, and with ashes on their mitres. Sir Gardner Wilkinson, describing a funeral at Thebes, says: “ Men, women, and children, with the body exposed above the waist, throw dust on their heads, or. cover their faces with mud” (‘Modern Egypt and Thebes”). Stifling with ashes was a Persian mode of punishment. Compare Apocrypha, 2 Mace. xiii. 5-7, Herodotus relates that Nitocris, an Egyptian queen, after having drowned the murderers of her brother, threw herself into an apartment full of ashes, in order to escape the vengeance of their friends.
14. But (wav). Rev., howbeit. See on Matt. xi. 22.
15. Which art exalted to heaven. For 7, the article, ren- dered which, the best texts give ua), the interrogative particle; and for the participle having been exalted, the future shalt be exalted. Kender, as Rev., Shalt thou be exalted, ete. 2
Hell. Rev., Hades. See on Matt. xvi. 18.
16. Despiseth (aeret). See on Luke vii. 30, and compare Gal. ii. 215 iii. 15.
17. The seventy. “The fuller development of the new dis- pensation begins with the mission of the seventy, and not with the mission of the apostles. Its ground-work, from Luke’s point of sight, is the symbolic evangelization of every nation upon ‘earth, and not the restoration of the twelve tribes of Israel. Ac- cording to Jewish tradition, there were seventy or seventy-two
Cu. X.] LUKE. 353
different nations and tongues in the world. Inch. x. 1, some read seventy-two instead of seventy” (Westcott, “Int. to the Study of the Gospels”).