tribunal) i.e. he is a murderer. Cf. ver. 2 1.1 As he who looks upon a woman to lust after her is an adulterer, so he that hateth his brother (1 John iv. 15) is a murderer. This verse does not indicate three degrees of human or temporal punishment ; for neither was it the part of the municipal tribunal and the Sanhe drim to punish the emotion of anger or the utterance of Raca, nor was the valley of the son of Hinnom the place for any punishment, much less for any punishment inflicted by any other power than that of the municipal tribunal or the Sanhedrim, still less for punishment on account of the abusive epithet of Fool. The judgment, therefore, and the council, are assigned to the emotion of anger and the utterance of Raca, as to the first and second degree of murder, deserving the first and second degree of punishment in hell: and the fiery Gehenna2 is appropriately assigned to the third degree of murder, the abu sive epithet of Fool, and indicates a more fiery punishment in hell. There is, therefore, a metonymy of the consequent for the antecedent. " He is criminal as far as belongs to the tribunal," etc. ; signifying, he is a murderer in the first, second, and third degree. Civil guilt denotes spiritual guilt, both as to the fault and the punishment. — tiny, shall say) in his heart or with his lips once or continually. — 'Paxa, Raca) A Hebrew word, fre quently used by Hebrews according to Lightfoot, the force of which no Greek word expresses. It denotes a sort of middle term between anger and the appellation of Fool.3 Chrysostom on this passage says, that Raka denotes in Syriac the same as " thou" uttered contemptuously: others derive it from the Syrian
1 For whatever is repugnant to meekness and love, is a principle rising up against life, and so breathes the spirit of murder. — Vers. Germ.
2 " •/iiwcAu — s'l (vallis), s'x'n Hinnom, the valley at the foot of Moriah, and in which Siloa flows (Jerome on x. 28), on the east of Jerusalem, dese crated by the idolatrous fires of Moloch (Jer. vii. 31; Isa. xxx. 33), and called Topheth, from TupJi, the tympanum used to drown the cries of chil dren there immolated." — Wordsworth in loc.
" Josiah therefore polluted it (2 Kings xxiii. 10) ; and thenceforward it was the place for casting out and burning all ofial and the corpses of criminals ; and therefore its name, ij yitvvet. TOV Kvp6;, was used to signify the place of everlasting punishment." — Alford in loc. — (I. B.)
3 Dreamy indolence (oscitantia) was the reproach usually meant to be conveyed by it, or else a headlong and hasty mode of action. — Vers. Germ.