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Mat_1:19. Ἀνήρ ] Although only her betrothed, yet, from the standpoint of the writers, designated as her husband. The common assumption of a proleptic designation (Gen_29:21) is therefore unfounded. It is different with τὴν γυναῖκά σου in Mat_1:20.
δίκαιος ] not: aequus et benignus. So (after Chrysostom and Jerome) Euth. Zigabenus ( διὰ τὴν πρᾳότητα καὶ ἀγαθωσύνην ), Luther, Grotius, Kuinoel, Fritzsche, B.-Crusius, Bleek. For δίκαιος , like öÇãÌÇé÷ , means generally, he who is as he ought to be (Hermann, ad Soph. Ajac. 543; Kühner, ad Xen. Memor. iv. 4. 5; Gesen. Thes. III. p. 1151); therefore rightly constituted, and, in a narrower sense, just, but never kind, although kindness, compassion, and the like may be in given cases the concrete form in which the δικαιοσύνη expresses itself. Here, according to the context, it denotes the man who acts in a strictly legal manner. Δίκαιος down to δειγματίσαι contains two concurring motives. Joseph was an upright man according to the law, and could not therefore make up his mind to retain Mary, as she was pregnant without him; at the same time he could not bring himself to abandon her publicly; he therefore resolved to adopt the middle way, and dismiss her secretly. Observe the emphasis of λάθρα .
δειγματίσαι ] to expose; see on Col_2:15. Here the meaning is: to expose to public shame. This, however, does not refer to the punishment of stoning (Deu_22:23), which was to be inflicted; nor to a judicial accusation generally (the common view), because δειγματίσαι must mean a kind of dismissal opposed to that denoted by λάθρα ; comp. de Wette. Therefore: he did not wish to compromise her, which would have been the result had he given her a letter of divorce, and thus dismissed her φανερῶς .
λάθρα ] secretly, in private, i.e. by means of a secret, private interview, without a letter of divorce. This would, indeed, have been in opposition to the law in Deu_24:1, which applied also to betrothed persons (Maimonides, Tract. àéùåÉú , c. 1; Wetstein in loc.; Philo, de leg. spec. p. 788); but he saw himself liable to a collision between the two cases,—of either, in these circumstances, retaining the bride, or of exposing her to public censure by a formal dismissal; and from this no more legal way of escape presented itself than that on which he might with the more propriety lay hold, that the law itself in Deut. l.c. speaks only of married persons, not of betrothed. De Wette thinks, indeed, of dismissal by a letter of divorcement, but under arrangements providing for secrecy. But the letter of divorce of itself, as it was a public document (see Saalschütz, M. R. p. 800 ff.; Ewald, Alterth. p. 272 [E. T. p. 203 ff.]), is in contradiction with the λάθρα .
On the distinction between θέλω and βούλομαι ,—the former of which expresses willing in general, the action of the will, of the inclination, of desire, etc., in general; while βούλομαι denotes a carefully weighed self-determination,—see Buttmann, Lexil. I. p. 26 ff. [E. T., Fishlake, p. 194 ff.], partly corrected by Ellendt, Lex. Soph. I. p. 316. Observe the aorist ἐβουλήθη : he adopted the resolution.