Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - Matthew 10:23 - 10:23
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Mat_10:23. Ταύτῃ and τὴν ἄλλην are to be understood δεικτιῶς . Jesus points with the finger in the direction of various towns. Your sphere is large enough to admit of your retreating before persecution in order to save others.
γάρ ] A ground of encouragement for such perseverance.
οὐ μὴ τελέσητε , κ . τ . λ .] You will not have completed your visits to the towns of the people of Israel; i.e., you will not have accomplished in all of them your mission, associated as it will be with such flights from town to town Comp. the analogous use of ἀνύειν (Raphel, Krebs, Loesner, on this passage), explere, in Tibull. i. 4. 69 (Heyne, Obss. p. 47); consummare, in Flor. i. 18. 1 (see Ducker on the passage). The interpretation: to bring to Christian perfection (Maldonatus, Zeger, Jansen, following Hilary; Hofmann, Weissag. u. Erfüll. II. p. 267 f.), is an erroneous makeshift, by way of removing the second coming farther into the future. Observe that here, too, as in Mat_10:5, the apostolic ministry is still confined to Israel.
ἕως ἂν ἔλθῃ ] until the Son of man will have come, i.e. the Messiah, such as He has been promised in Daniel’s vision (Mat_8:20), who will then put an end to your troubles, and receive you into the glory of His kingdom. Jesus means neither more nor less than His second coming (Matthew 24), which He announces even at this early stage, and as being so near, that Mat_24:14, and even Mat_26:28, are not to be reconciled with this view. Different elements of the tradition, which, in the course of experience, came to view the prospect as more remote,—a tradition, however, that was still the product of the existing γενεά (Mat_24:34, Mat_14:28). The interpretations which explain away the final coming, content themselves, some with the idea of a vague coming after or coming to their help (Chrysostom, Theophylact, Euth. Zigabenus, Beza, Kuinoel; even Origen and Theodoret, Heracleon in Cramer’s Cat. p. 78); others with the coming through the Holy Spirit (Calvin, Grotius, Calovius, Bleek), or with supposing that the, as yet too remote, destruction of Jerusalem is referred to (Michaelis, Schott, Glöckler, Ebrard, Gess); and others, again, explaining it allegorically of the victory of Christ’s cause (Baumgarten-Crusius). On the prediction of the second coming itself, see on ch. 24.