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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comVincent Word Studies - Matthew 11:12 - 11:12
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Suffereth violence (βιάζεται)
Lit., is forced, overpowered, taken by storm. Christ thus graphically portrays the intense excitement which followed John's ministry; the eager waiting, striving, and struggling of the multitude for the promised king.
The violent take it by force (βιασταὶ ἁρπάζουσιν αὐτήν)
This was proved by the multitudes who followed Christ and thronged the doors where he was, and would have taken him by force (the same word) and made him a king (Joh 6:15). The word take by force means literally to snatch away, carry off. It is often used in the classics of plundering. Meyer renders, Those who use violent efforts, drag it to themselves. So Tynd., They that make violence pull it unto them. Christ speaks of believers. They seize upon the kingdom and make it their own. The Rev., men of violence, is too strong, since it describes a class of habitually and characteristically violent men; whereas the violence in this case is the result of a special and exceptional impulse. The passage recalls the old Greek proverb quoted by Plato against the Sophists, who had corrupted the Athenian youth by promising the easy attainment of wisdom: Good things are hard. Dante has seized the idea:
“Regnum coelorum (the kingdom of heaven) suffereth violence
From fervent love, and from that living hope
That overcometh the divine volition;
Not in the guise that man o'ercometh man,
But conquers it because it will be conquered,
And conquered, conquers by benignity.”
Parad., xx., 94-99.