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Mat_10:38. To take up his cross means, willingly to undergo the severe trials that fall to his lot (2Co_1:5; Php_3:10). Figurative expression, borrowed from the practice according to which condemned criminals were compelled to take up their own cross and carry it to the place of execution; Mat_27:32; Luk_23:26; Joh_19:16; Artemid. ii. 56, p. 153; Plut. Mor. p. 554 A; Cic. de divin. i. 26; Valer. Max. xi. 7. The form of this expression, founded as it is upon the kind of death which Christ Himself was to die, is one of the indications of that later period from which the passage from Mat_10:24 onward has been transferred to its present connection. Matthew himself betrays the prolepsis in Mat_26:24 f.; comp. Mar_8:34; Luk_14:27.
ὀπίσω μου : in conformity with the Hebrew àçøé . Comp., however, ἀκολ . κατόπιν τινός , Arist. Plut. xiii.