174
εἰ θέλετε δέξασθαι, αὐτός ἐστιν Ἡλίας 6 µέλλων ἔρχεσθαι. ἔχων Gta ἀκούειν,ὶ ἀκουέτω.
πι.
15.6 16. Tim δὲ ὁμοιώσω τὴν γενεὰν
ταύτην; ὁμοία ἐστὶ παιδαρίοις 3 ἐν ἀγοραῖς καθηµένοις,ὸ καὶ προσ-
2 i ; a μ
φωνοῦσι τοῖς ἑταίροις αὐτῶν, 17. καὶ λέγουσιν, Ηὐλήσαμεν ὑμῖν, a a
καὶ οὐκ ὠρχήσασθε' ἐθρηνήσαμεν ὑμῖν, καὶ οὐκ ἐκόψασθε.
1 BD omit ακονειν, which has come in from Mk. and Lk. where the addition of
this word to the phrase is usual. ? παιδιοις in all uncials.
3 xa@ypevors before ev in NBCDL, etc., with ταις before αγοραις in BZ.
“SQBDZ have a προσφωνουντα . . have ετεροις. (Tisch., W.H.).
- λεγουσιν, and for εταιροις BCDLAZ al.
* S$BDZ omit υμιν, which may have been added to assimilate with first clause.
position. Observe ἕως |. goes not with the subject, but with the verb Prophets {and even law) till John prophesied. The suggestion is that he is not a mere con- tinuator of the prophetic line, one more repeating the message: the kingdom will come. His function is peculiar and exceptional. Whatisit? Ver. 14 ex- plains. He is the Elijah of Malachi, herald of the Great Day, usherer in of the kingdom, the man who says not merely “the kingdom will come,” but “the kingdom is here”; says it, and makes good the saying, bringing about a great movement of repentance.—ei θέλετε δέξασθαι : the identification of John with Elijah to be taken cum grano, not as a prosaic statement of fact. Here, as always, Christ idealises, seizes the essential truth. John was all the Elijah that would ever come, worthy to repre- sent him in spirit, and performing the function assigned to Elijah vedivivus in prophecy. Some of the Fathers dis- tinguished two advents of Elijah, one in spirit in the Baptist, another literally at the second coming of Christ. Servile exegesis of the letter. δέξασθαι has no expressed object: the object is the state- ment following. Lutteroth supplies ‘“him’’ = the Baptist. In the θέλετε Weiss finds a tacit allusion to the im- penitence of the people: Ye are not willing because ye know that Elijah’s coming means a summons to repentance. —Ver. 15. A proverbial form of speech often used by Jesus after important utterances, here for the first time in Matt. The truth demanding attentive and intelligent ears (ears worth having ; taking in the words and theiy import) is that John is Elijah. It implies much— that the kingdom is here and the king, and that the kingdom is moral not political.
Vv. 16-19. FYudgment of Fesus on His religious contemporaries (Lk. vii. 31-35). It is advisable not to assume as a matter of course that these words were spoken at the same time as those going before. The discourse certainly appears continuous, and Luke gives this utter- ance in the same connection as our evangelist, from which we may infer that it stood so in the common source. But even there the connection may have been topical rather than temporal ; placed beside what goes before, because containing a reference to John, and because the contents are of a critical nature. Ver. 16. tive ὁμοιώσω: the parable is introduced by a question, as if the thought had just struck Ἠίτη.---τὴν γενεὰν ταύτην. The occasion on which the words following were spoken would make it clear who were referred to. Our guide must be the words themselves. The subjects of remark are not the βιασταὶ of ver. 12, nor the ὄχλοι to whom Jesus had been speaking. Neither are they the whole generation of Jews then living, including Jesus and John (Elsner) ; or even the bulk of the Jewish people, contemporaries of Jesus. It was not Christ’s habit to make severe animadversions on the “ people of the land,” who formed the large majority of the population. He always spoke of them with sympathy and pity (ix. 37, x. 6). γενεά might mean the whole body of men then living, but it might also mean a particular class of men marked out by certain definite characteristics. It is so used in xii. 39, 41, 42, 453 xvi. 4. The class or “ race ’’ there spoken of is in one case the Scribes and Pharisees, and in the other the Pharisees and Sadducees. From internal evidence the reference here also is mainly to the Pharisees. It is a class who spoke of