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Mar_10:28-31. See on Mat_19:27-30; Luk_18:28-30. Matthew is in part more complete (Mar_10:28 coming certainly under this description), in part abridging (Mar_10:29), but, even with this abridgment, more original. See on Mat_19:29.
ἤρξατο ] “spe ex verbis salvatoris concepta,” Bengel.
The question in Matthew, τί ἄρα ἔσται ἡμ ., is obvious of itself, even although unexpressed (not omitted by Mark in the Petrine interest, as Hilgenfeld thinks), and Jesus understood it.
Mar_10:29 f. The logical link of the two clauses is: No one has forsaken, etc., if he shall not have (at some time) received, i.e. if the latter event does not occur, the former has not taken place; the hundredfold compensation is so certain, that its non-occurrence would presuppose the not having forsaken. The association of thought in Mar_4:22 (not in Mat_26:42) is altogether similar. Instead of the ἤ , there is introduced in the second half of the clause καί ; which is: and respectively. The principle of division of Mar_10:30 is: He is (1) to receive a hundredfold now, in the period prior to the manifestation of the Messiah, namely, a hundred times as many houses, brothers, etc.; and (2) to receive in the coming period (“jam in adventu est,” Bengel), after the Parousia, the everlasting life of the Messiah’s kingdom.
The plurals, which express the number a hundred, plainly show that the promised compensation in the καιρὸς οὗτος is not to be understood literally, but generally, of very abundant compensation. Nevertheless, the delicate feeling of Jesus has not said γυναῖκας also. So much the more clumsy was Julian’s scoff (see Theophylact) that the Christians were, moreover, to receive a hundred wives! The promise was realized, in respect of the καιρὸς οὗτος , by the reciprocal manifestations of love,[138] and by the wealth in spiritual possessions, 2Co_6:8-10; by which passage is illustrated, at the same time, in a noble example, the μετὰ äéùãìå ͂ ν (comp. Mat_5:10 ff; Mat_10:23; Mat_13:21; Mat_23:34). The latter does not mean: after persecutions (Heinsius conjectured μετὰ διωγμόν , as also a few min. read), but: inter persecutiones (in the midst of persecutions, where one “omnium auxilio destitui videtur,” Jansen), designating the accompanying circumstances (Bernhardy, p. 255), the shadow of which makes prominent the light of the promise.
Mar_10:31. But many—so independent is the greater or lower reception of reward in the life eternal of the earlier or later coming to me—many that are first shall be last, and they that are last shall in many cases be first (see on Mat_19:30; Mat_20:16); so that the one shall be equalized with the other in respect of the measuring out of the degree of reward. A doctrine assuredly, which, after the general promise of the great recompense in Mar_10:29 f., was quite in its place to furnish a wholesome check to the ebullition of greediness for reward in the question of the disciples, Mar_10:28 (for the disciples, doubtless, belonged to the πρῶτοι ). There is therefore the less reason to attribute, with Weiss, a different meaning to the utterance in Mark from that which it has in Matthew.
[138] Comp. Luther’s gloss: “He who believeth must suffer persecution, and stake everything upon his faith. Nevertheless he has enough; whithersoever he comes, he finds father, mother, brethren, possessions more than ever he could forsake.” See, e.g., on μητέρας , Rom_16:13; on τέκνα , 1Co_4:14 ff.; on ἀδελφούς , all the Epistles of the New Testament and the Acts of the Apostles (also Act_2:44).