the LXX. use the word paprvptov in Ruth iv. 7.1 The priests did not follow our Lord : He sends the leper to them from Galilee to Jerusalem : He was much in Galilee at that time. — avrofs, to them) that a testimony might be exhibited to them of the Messiah's presence, and of His not derogating from the law, and that they too might thus be enabled to give testimony to these facts.
5. TLpoffriXdtv ' AvTifj exarovrapxog, There came unto Him a centu rion) The centurion did not actually come to Him in person ; nor would our Lord have praised him, as He did just afterwards, in his presence. — See ver. 10, and of. ch. xi. 7. Others, indeed, were praised by our Lord in their presence, but not until after previous humiliation, and not so singularly and in comparison with others as the centurion is here praised in contradistinction to all Israel. And the same reverence, which induced the cen turion to declare himself unworthy that our Lord should come under his roof, prevented him from going to Him in person. — See ver. 8, and Luke vii. 7, 10.2 He appears to have come out of his house in the first instance, but to have gone back before he had reached our Lord. The will, therefore, on his part was held in Divine estimation as equivalent and even pre ferable to the deed : and this estimation is nobly expressed by St Matthew in the sublime style of a divine rather than a human historian. Jesus and the centurion conversed truly in spirit.
6. Asywv, saying] cf. ch. xi. 3, and Luke xiv. 18. — vapaXv- nxoc, a paralytic) Paralysis is a disease difficult to Physicians.
7. 'EXdaiv, coming) In His Divine wisdom, our Lord puts forth those addresses by which He elicits the profession of the faith ful, and thus as it were anticipates them : which is the reason why men of those times received a swifter, greater, and more frequent effect from heavenly words than they do now. He declares Himself ready to come to the centurion's servant. He does not promise that He will do so to the nobleman's son. By
1 Sc. xetl TOVTO — yv pxpTvpiov ev 'lapxfa. — E. V. And this was a testimony in Israel.— (1. B.)
2 D. Hauber has f»lly proved, in den harmon. Anmerk. p. 72, that the history here given in Matthew is one and the same as that in Luke. — Harm, p. 255.