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Mar_16:18. Ὄφεις ἀροῦσι ] They shall lift up serpents (take them into the hand and lift them up). Such a thing is not known from the history of the apostolic times (what took place with the adder on the hand of Paul in Act_28:2 ff. is different); it would, moreover, be too much like juggling for a σημεῖον of believers, and betrays quite the character of apocryphal legend, for which, perhaps, a traditional distortion of the fact recorded in Act_28:2 f. furnished a basis, whilst the serpent-charming so widely diffused in the East (Elsner, Obss. p. 168; Wetstein in loc.; Winer, Realw.) by analogy supplied material enough. The promise in Luk_10:19 is specifically distinct. Others have adopted for αἴρειν the meaning of taking out of the way (Joh_17:5; Mat_24:39; Act_21:36), and have understood it either of the driving away, banishing (Luther, Heumann, Paulus), or of the destroying of the serpents (Euthymius Zigabenus, Theophylact, both of whom, however, give also the option of the correct explanation); but the expression would be inappropriate and singular, and the thing itself in the connection would not be sufficiently marvellous. The meaning: “to plant serpents as signs of victory with healing effect,” in which actual serpents would have to be thought of, but according to their symbolical significance, has a place only in the fancy of Lange excited by Joh_3:14, not in the text. The singular thought must at least have been indicated by the addition of the essentially necessary word σημεῖα (Isa_5:26; Isa_11:12), as the classical writers express raising a signal by αἴρειν σημεῖον (comp. Thuc. i. 49. 1, and Krüger thereon).
κἂν θανάσ . τι πίωσιν κ . τ . λ .] Likewise an apocryphal appendage, not from the direct contemplation of the life of believers in the apostolic age. The practice of condemning to the cup of poison gave material for it. But it is not to be supposed that the legend of the harmless poison-draught of John (comp. also the story of Justus Barsabas related by Papias in Euseb. H. E. iii. 39) suggested our passage (in opposition to de Wette and older expositors), because the legend in question does not occur till so late (except in Abdias, hist. apost. v. 20, and the Acta Joh. in Tischendorf, p. 266 ff., not mentioned till Augustine); it rather appears to have formed itself on occasion of Mat_20:23 from our passage, or to have developed itself[186] out of the same conception whence our expression arose, as did other similar traditions (see Fabricius in Abd. p. 576). On θανάσιμον , which only occurs here in the N. T., equivalent to ΘΑΝΑΤΗΦΌΡΟΝ (Jam_3:8), see Wetstein, and Stallbaum, ad Plat. Rep. p. 610 C.
καλῶς ἕξουσιν ] the sick.[187] Comp. Act_28:8 f.
[186] Lange knows how to rationalize this σημεῖον also. In his view, there is symbolically expressed “the subjective restoration of life to invulnerability.” Christ is held to declare that the poison-cup would not harm His people, primarily in the symbolical sense, just as it did not harm Socrates in his soul; but also in the typical sense: that the life of believers would be ever more and more strengthened to the overcoming of all hurtful influences, and would in many cases, even in the literal sense, miraculously overcome them. This is to put into, and take out of the passage, exactly what pleases subjectivity.
[187] Not the believers who heal (Lange: “they on their part shall enjoy perfect health”). This perverted meaning would need at least to have been suggested by the use of καὶ αὐτοί (and they on their part).