278
~ - > Λέγουσιν αὐτῷ, “Tod AaBisd.’
43. Λέγει αὐτοῖς, “Mas οὖν Δαβὶδ
x Cf. nvev-* ἐν * πνεύµατι κύριον αὐτὸν καλεῖ]; λέγων, 44. ‘ Eiwev 6? Κύριος
ματι in . - Gal. v. 5. τῷ κυρίῳ µου,
ὑποπόδιον ὃ τῶν ποδῶν σου. y here, πῶς vids αὐτοῦ ἐστι ; parall.,
Κάθου ἐκ δεξιῶν µου, ἕως ἂν θῶ τοὺς ἐχθρούς σου 45. Ei οὖν Δαβὶδ καλεῖ αὐτὸν κύριον, 46. Καὶ οὐδεὶς ἐδύνατο αὐτῷ ἀποκριθῆναι *
12 al. Se a) (with inf.). αυτον OUKETL.
1S$BDLZ put καλει first, but differ in the order of κυριον αυτον.
20 omitted in NBDZ. 4 αποκ. αντω in NBDLZAS.
it will lead you, said Jesus in effect. The scribes began at the wrong end: at the physical and material, and it landed them in secularity. Ifthey had begun with Lordship it would have led them into the spiritual sphere, and made them ready to accept as Christ one greater than David in the spiritual order, though totally lacking the conventional grandeur of royal persons, only an unpretending Son of Man.
CHAPTER XXIII. THe Great ANTI- PHarisaic Discourse. This is one of the great discourses peculiar to the first Gospel. That some such words were spoken by Jesus in Jerusalem in the Passion week may be inferred from Mk. xii. 38-40, Lk. xx. 45-47. The few sen- tences there reported look like a frag- ment, just enough to show that there must have been more—too meagre (gar zu durftig., De W.) to have been all that Jesus said on such a large topic at such a solemn time. A weighty, deliberate, full, final statement, in the form of a dying testimony, was to be expected from One who had so often criticised the pre- vailing religious system in an occasional manner in His Galilean ministry—a summing up in the head-quarters of scribism of past prophetic censures uttered in the provinces. In sucha final protest repetitions might be looked for (Nésgen). In any case, whether all the words here brought together were spoken at this time or not, the evangelist did well to collect them into one body, and he could not have introduced the collec- tion at a more appropriate place.
Vv. 1-12. Introduction to the dis- course.—Ver. I. Tots ὄχλοις καὶ τ. μαθηταῖς: the discourse is about scribes and Pharisees, but the audience is con- ceived to consist of the disciples and the people. Meyer describes the situation thus: in the foreground Jesus and His
3 wroxate in SBDL al.
disciples ; a little further off the ὄχλος; in the background the Pharisees.—Ver. 2. ἐπὶ τ. Μ. καθέδρας, on the seat of Moses, short for, on the seat of a teacher whose function it was to interpret the Mosaic Law. The Jews spoke of the teacher’s seat as we speak of a professor’s chair.—éxd@toav, in effect, a gnomic aorist = solent sedere (Fritzsche), not a case of the aorist used as a perfect = have taken and now occupy, etc. (Erasmus). Burton (Syntax) sees in this and other aorists in N. T. a tendency towards use of aorist for perfect not yet realised: ‘‘ rhetorical figure on the way to become grammatical idiom, but not yet become such,” § 55.—ot Gap. Wendt (L. ., i., 186) thinks this an addition by the evan- gelist, the statement strictly applying only to the scribes.—Ver. 3. εἴπωσιν, say, in the sense of enjoining; no need therefore of τηρεῖν as in T. Ἐ.- ποιήσατε καὶ τηρεῖτε: The natural order if the pre- vious τηρεῖν be omitted. The diverse tenses are significant, the former pointing to detailed performance, the latter to habitual observance. Christ here recog- nises the legitimacy of the scribal func- tion of interpretation in a broad way, which may appear too unqualified and incompatible with His teaching at other times (Mt. xv. 1-20) (so Holtz., H. C.). Allowance must be made for Christ’s habit of unqualified statement, especially here when He is going to attack in an uncompromising manner the conduct of the Jewish doctors. He means: as teachers they have their place, but be- ware of following their example.—Ver. 4 illustrates the previous statement.— Seopevovor, etc., they bind together, like sheaves, heavy backloads of rules. Think, e¢.g., of the innumerable rules for Sabbath observance similar to that pro- hibiting rubbing ears of corn as work— threshing. — δνσβάστακτα may be a