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Mar_9:42-48. See on Mat_18:6-9. Comp. Luk_17:1-4. Jesus now reverts to the demeanour towards the lowly modest believers, as whose lively type the little child was still standing before Him (Mar_9:36), and administers the warning that none should give offence to such child-like ones (Mar_9:42). To comply with this, we need the most decided sternness towards ourselves and self-denial, so as not to be seduced by ourselves to evil and thereby to incur everlasting torment (Mar_9:43-48). This simple course of the address is often mistaken, and even de Wette (comp. Saunier, p. 111, Köstlin, Baur) thought that Mark had allowed himself to be drawn out of the connection by Luke. The source from which Mark draws is the collection of Logia.
καλόν … μᾶλλον ] namely, than that he should have accomplished such a seduction.
περίκειται and βέβληται bring vividly before us the state of the case, in which he is sunk with the millstone round his neck.
Mar_9:43 ff. Observe, according to the corrected text (see the critical remarks), how in the three references to the everlasting torment (which, indeed, according to Köstlin, p. 349, are alleged to be in the taste of a later time) it is only at the end, in the case of the third, Mar_9:47, that the awful ὅπου ὁ σκώληξ κ . τ . λ ., Mar_9:48, comes in and affectingly winds up the representation.
Mar_9:48. A figurative designation of the extremely painful and endless punishments of hell (not merely the terrors of conscience), in accordance with Isa_66:24 (comp. Sir_7:17; Jdt_16:17). Against the literal understanding of the worm and the fire it may be urged that in reality (in opposition to Augustine, de civit. xxi. 9) the two together are incompatible, and, moreover, that ἁλί , Mar_9:49, the counterpart of πυρί , is to be understood figuratively.