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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comRobertson Word Pictures - Matthew 4:24 - 4:24
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The report of him went forth into all Syria (apēlthen hē akoē autou eis holēn tēn Syrian). Rumour (akoē) carries things almost like the wireless or radio. The Gentiles all over Syria to the north heard of what was going on in Galilee. The result was inevitable. Jesus had a moving hospital of patients from all over Galilee and Syria.
“Those that were sick” (tous kakōs echontas), literally “those who had it bad,” cases that the doctors could not cure.
“Holden with divers diseases and torments” (poikilais nosois kai basanois sunechomenous). “Held together” or “compressed” is the idea of the participle. The same word is used by Jesus in Luk 12:50 and by Paul in Phi 1:23 and of the crowd pressing on Jesus (Luk 8:45). They brought these difficult and chronic cases (present tense of the participle here) to Jesus. Instead of “divers” say “various” (poikilais) like fever, leprosy, blindness. The adjective means literally many colored or variegated like flowers, paintings, jaundice, etc. Some had “torments” (basanois). The word originally (oriental origin) meant a touchstone, “Lydian stone” used for testing gold because pure gold rubbed on it left a peculiar mark. Then it was used for examination by torture. Sickness was often regarded as “torture.” These diseases are further described “in a descending scale of violence” (McNeile) as “demoniacs, lunatics, and paralytics” as Moffatt puts it, “demoniacs, epileptics, paralytics” as Weymouth has it, (daimonizomenous kai selēniazomenous kai paralutikous), people possessed by demons, lunatics or “moon-struck” because the epileptic seizures supposedly followed the phases of the moon (Bruce) as shown also in Mat 17:15, paralytics (our very word). Our word “lunatic” is from the Latin luna (moon) and carries the same picture as the Greek selēniazomai from selēnē (moon). These diseases are called “torments.”