Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadJohn Bengel Commentary - Hebrews 12:20 - 12:20
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Heb 12:20. Τὸ διαστελλόμενον, the interdict, that which was forbidden) that very command, Even if a beast, etc. The participle for the noun, as in the following verse.-κᾄν θηρίον θίγῃ τοῦ ὄρους, λιθοβοληθήσεται, if a beast should touch the mountain, he shall be stoned) The full text of Moses concerning the mountain is, “There shall not a hand touch it, for he shall surely be stoned or shot through with a dart; whether it be man or beast, he shall not live,” Exo 19:13. Here we have a twofold proclamation, that the beast is to be put to death by a dart, man by stoning. The apostle, studying brevity, expresses the subject out of the one sentence, the predicate out of the other, and leaves the rest to be supplied from these very words which are expressed. The expression is elliptical almost in the same way as at ch. Heb 7:5; Act 7:16, notes. It may be called a Semiduplex Oratio,[79] of which there are many examples in the Ordo tempor., p. 83, 88, 213 [Ed. ii. p. 73, 77, 187, 188]. The transcriber, not at all ancient, who added from the LXX. ἢ βολίδι κατατοξευθήσεται,[80] did not consider that with equal justice he might have added from the LXX., λίθοις, with stones, which would correspond to a dart; but with greater justice he might have supplied κἂν ἄνθρωπος, and if a man: for stoning was properly applicable to a man, when guilty, rather than to a beast: shooting with a dart was properly applicable to a beast, rather than to a man.
[79] See App.
[80] Not a single uncial MS. supports this addition. ACDf Vulg. have simply λιθοβοληθήσεται.-ED.