plying change your disposition, put on a disposition royal, heavenly, worthy the kingdom of heaven.1 Thus Jesus Christ Himself, thus His apostles commenced their preaching : thus the Lord commanded John to write at the commencement of the Apocalypse. — fj (SaffiXeia, the kingdom} See Gnomon on ch. iv. 17. — TUV ovpavuv, of the Heavens) expressed in the plural number agreeably with the Hebrew D'Dt?.2 This phrase 35 /3«<r/X£/a TUV ovpavuv, the kingdom of the. Heavens,3 is peculiar to Matthew, who employed it that he might cure the Jews, for whom he was writing, of the notion of an earthly kingdom.
3. O-jrog, K.T.X., this, etc.) There are many circumstances re corded in the New Testament, which had been predicted in the Old. — 'yap, for) The reason why it \vas necessary that John should thus arise at that time (as is described in verses 1, 2), was, that it had been so predicted. — <p uvfi, x.r.X., a voice, etc.) See Gnomon on Luke iii. 4. " A voice," i.e., " it is a voice." — /SoSJi/roj, of one crying 4) i.e., of John. An analogous phrase occurs in Rom. x. 15, viz., o'i x68i$ TUV tbmyyi)j%pfi*M»j the feet of them that preach. — tv <rq tpfipifj, in the wilderness) Not in the temple, or the synagogues. Some construe this passage thus, " Prepare ye in the wilderness, etc," because the accents5 in the original Hebrew of Isaiah require it to be so construed there. But if such had been the evangelist's meaning, he would sub sequently have expressed, in equivalent terms, the parallel phrase nyijn, in the desert.6 As the passage stands, the expressions, "preaching in the wilderness" in ver. 1, and "a voice of one crying in the wilderness" in ver. 3, correspond with each other. It comes to the same thing : for where there is the voice, there
1 In the original, " regnum coelorum" " the kingdom of the heavens." — See f. n. 3, infra.— (I. B.)
2 See Genesis i. 1., etc. — (I. B.)
3 E. V., " The Kingdom of Heaven." I have generally rendered it thus, as being a phrase more familiar to the English reader. — (I. B.)
4 " Clamantis " — crying out, uttering with a loud voice — not weeping. — (I. B.)
5 See p. 132, f.n. 5.— (I. B.)
8 In Isaiah xl. 3, the passage stands thus : " The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God;" where the phrases, in the wilderness, and in the desert, are in parallelism to each other. — (I. B.)