x
15. ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν, Ἡ ἀνεκτότερον ἔσται γῇ Σοδόµων καὶ
ia 14. Tondppaw ἐν ἡμέρᾳ κρίσεως, ἢ τῇ πόλει ἐκέίνῃ. «ΧΙ. 10; ry , Sus . = > , xxiii. 34. 16. “Ιδού, ἐγὼ ᾿ ἀποστέλλω Spas ὡς πρόβατα ἐν µέσῳ λύκων "
Rom. x. 15
πι Rom. xvi. γίνεσθε οὖν φρόνιμοι ὡς οἱ ὄφεις, καὶ ™ ἀκέραιοι ὡς αἱ περιστεραί.
19. Phil.
ii. 15. nvideat Ch.
vii. 15. oCh. xx. 19;
xxiii. 34. Mk. x. 34. Lk. xviii. 33. John xix. 1.
(Light., Hor. Heb.): Easy to perform, not easy to perform in a right spirit; too apt to be the outcome of irritation, dis- appointment, and wounded vanity =they did not appreciate me, I abandon them to their fate. Christ meant the act to symbolise the responsibility of the in- habitants for the result=leave the place, feeling that you have done your duty, not in anger but in sadness. The act, if performed, would be a last word of warning (eis μαρτύριον αὐτοῖς, Mark and Luke). Grotius and Bleek understand it as meaning: ‘‘we have nothing more to do with you ”’.—Ver. 15. yf Σ. καὶ Γ.: ῥοάοπι and Gomorrah, a byword for στεαί iniquity and awful doom (15. i. 9), yi, land for people.—avexrérepov: yet the punishment of these wicked cities, tragic though it was, or the punishment still in store, more endurable than that of city or village which rejects the message of the kingdom. This may seem an exaggeration, the utterance of passion rather than of sober judgment, and a dangerous thing to say to raw disciples and apprentice missionaries, But the principle involved is plain: the greater the privilege rejected the greater the criminality. The utterance reveals the high value Jesus set on the good tidings He commissioned the Twelve to preach.
Vv. 16-39. Prophetic picture of future apostolic tribulations. An interpolation of our evangelist after his manner of grouping logia of kindred import. The greater part of the material is given in other connections in Mark, and especially in Luke. No feeling of delicacy should prevent even the preacher from taking this view, as it destroys all sense of the natural reality of the Galilean mission to suppose that this passage formed part of Christ’s instructions to the Twelve in connection therewith. Reading into the early event the thoughts and experiences of a later time was inevitable, but to get a true picture of the life of Jesus and His disciples, we must keep the two as distinct as possible. There may be a
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17. "προσέχετε δὲ ἀπὸ τῶν ἀνθρώπων ' παραδώσουσι γὰρ ὑμᾶς εἰς συνέδρια, καὶ ἐν ταῖς συναγωγαῖς αὐτῶν " µαστιγώσουσιν Spas:
Heb. xii. 6.
doubt as to ver. 16. It stands at the beginning of the instructions to the Seventy in Luke (x. 2), which, according to Weiss (Matth. Evang., p. 263), are really the instructions to the Twelve in their most original form. But it is hard to believe that Jesus took and expressed so pessimistic a view of the Galilean villagers to whom He was sending the Twelve, as is implied in the phrase, ‘‘sheep among wolves,” though He evidently did include occasional un- receptivity among the possible experiences of the mission. He may indeed have said something of the kind with an understood reference to the hostility of Pharisaic religionists, but as it stands unqualified, it seems to bear a colouring imported from a later period.
Ver. 16. ἰδού, something important is going to be said.—éya, emphatic: Jesus is conscious that connection with Him will be a source not only of power, but of trouble to the Twelve.—ev péow: not fo wolves (πρὸς λύκους, Chrys.). They were not sent for that purpose, which would be a mission to destruction, but on an errand of which that would be an inci- dent. év is used here as often, especially in later Greek writers, with a verb of motion to indicate a subsequent chronic state, ‘‘the result of a love of concise- ness” (Winer, § 50, 4, a).—ylveoOe .. . mepiotepal. The serpent, the accepted emblem of wisdom (Gen. iii. 1; Ps. lviii. 5)—wary, sharp-sighted (Grotius); the dove of simplicity (Hos. vii. r1, ‘silly dove,”’ ἄνους, Ξερῖ.).-- ἀκέραιοι (a, κεράν- νυµι), unmixed with evil, purely good. The ideal resulting from the combina- tion is a prudent simplicity; difficult to realise. The proverb seems to have been current among the Jews. ‘“ God says: ‘with me the Israelites are simple as the dove, but against the heathen cunning as the serpent’” (Wiinsche, Beitrdége).—Ver. 17. τῶν ἀνθρώπων: Weiss, regarding ver. 17 as the beginning of an interpolation, takes τῶν generi- cally=the whole race of men conceived of as on the whole hostile to the truth=