105
a cal - Ν 1g. ὃς ἐὰν οὖν © λύσῃ µίαν τῶν " ἐντολῶν τούτων τῶν ἐλαχίστων, καὶ g Jobn v.18;
διδάξῃ οὕτω τοὺς ἀνθρώπους, ἐλάχιστος κληθήσεται ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ τῶν οὐρανῶν: ὃς 8 ἂν ποιήσῃ καὶ διδάξῃ, οὗτος µέγας κληθήσεται
ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ τῶν οὐρανῶν.
nn a A 4
ἱπερισσεύσῃ ἡ δικαιοσύνη ὑμῶν] πλεῖον τῶν / ypappatéwy καὶ , > x 3 3 x λ , a > a 1 Φαρισαίων, οὐ μὴ εἰσέλθητε εἰς τὴν βασιλείαν τῶν οὐρανῶν.
20. λέγω γὰρ ὑμῖν, ὅτι ἐὰν μὴ
Vii. 23; x. 35.
Ch. xv. 3; xix. 17; XXxii. 40. Lk. i. 6. John xii. 34.
oath παρα in Eccles. 11.19. Cf.
Rom. ν.15. j sim. ellipt. const. 1 John ii. 2.
1 ypov before η δικ. (= your righteousness) in QBLAal. T. R. as in SUZ.
Ver. 19. ὃς ἐὰν οὖν λύσῃ, etc.: οὖν pointing to a natural inference from what goes before. Christ’s view being such as indicated, He must so judge of the setter aside of any laws however small. When a religious system has lasted long, and is wearing towards its decline and fall, there are always such men. The Baptist was in some respects such a man. He seems to have totally neglected the temple worship and sacred festivals. He shared the prophetic disgust at formal- ism. Note now what Christ’s judgment about such really is. A scribe or Phari- see would regard a breaker of even the least commandments as a miscreant. Jesus simply calls him the ᾖεασέ in the Kingdom of Heaven. He takes for granted that he is an earnest man, with a passion for righteousness, which is the key to his iconoclastic conduct. He recognises him therefore as possessing real moral worth, but, in virtue of his impatient radical-reformer temper, not great, only little in the scale of true mora! values, in spite of his earnestness in action and sincerity in teaching. John the Baptist was possibly in His mind, or some others not known to us from the Gospels.—és 8 ἂν ποιήσῃ καὶ διδάξῃ, etc. We know now who is least: who is great? The man who does and teaches to do all the commands great and small; great not named but under- stood—otros péyas. Jesus has in view O. T. saints, the piety reflected in the Psalter, where the great ethical laws and the precepts respecting ritual are both alike respected, and men in His own time living in their spirit. In such was a sweetness and graciousness, akin to the Kingdom as He conceived it, lacking in the character of the hot-headed law- breaker. The geniality of Jesus made Him value these sweet saintly souls.
Ver. 20. Here is another type still, that of the scribes and Pharisees. We have had two degrees of worth, the little and the great. This new type gives us
the moral zero.—A€yw yap. The γὰρ is somewhat puzzling. We expect δὲ, taking our attention off two types de- scribed in the previous sentence and fixing it on a distinct one. Yet there is a hidden logic latent in the yap. It explains the ἐλάχιστος of the previous verse. The earnest reformer is a small character compared with the sweet wholesome performer, but he is not a moral nullity. That place is reserved for another class. I call him least, not nothing, for the scribe is the zero.— πλεῖον τῶν yp. κ. Φ., a Compendious comparison, τῆς δικαιοσύνης being understood after πλεῖον. Christ’s state- ments concerning these classes of the Jewish community, elsewhere recorded, enable us to understand the verdict He pronounces here. They differed from the two classes named in ver. 18, thus: Class 1 set aside the least command- ments for the sake of the great; class 2 conscientiously did all, great and small; class 3 set aside the great for the sake of the little, the ethical for the sake of the ritual, the divine for the sake of the traditional. That threw them outside the Kingdom, where only the moral has value. And the second is greater, higher, than the first, because, while zeal for the ethical is good, spirit, temper, dispo- sition has supreme value in the Kingdom. These valuations of Jesus are of great importance as a contribution towards defining the nature of the Kingdom as He conceived it.