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Mat_16:26. Mat_16:25, compared with Mat_16:24, involved the thought that the earthly life must be sacrificed for sake of gaining the eternal. The reason of this thought is now brought forward.
ὠφελεῖται ] represents as already present the man’s condition at the day of judgment, not an Attic future (Bleek).
τὴν δὲ ψυχ . αὐτοῦ ζημιωθῇ ] but will have lost his soul, that is to say, by his having rendered himself unfit for eternal life, by having, therefore, lost his soul as far as the Messianic ζωή is concerned, and become liable to eternal death. ζημιωθῇ is the opposite of κερδήσῃ . It must not on this ground, and because of the ἀντάλλαγμα which follows, be explained as meaning, to sustain damage in his soul (Luther), but: animae detrimentum pati (Vulgate), comp. Herod. vii. 39: τοῦ ἑνὸς τὴν ψυχὴν ζημιώσεαι , thou wilt lose thine only one through death.
ἤ ] It avails a man nothing if he, and so on, it might be that (at the judgment) he would have something to give to God with which to purchase back his lost soul ( ἀντάλλαγμα , Eur. Or. 1157, frequently met with in the LXX. and Apocrypha). There exists no such means of exchange (commutationem, Vulgate), nothing which, in the sight of God and according to His holy standard, would be of such value as to serve as an ἀντάλλαγμα for the soul. “Non sufficit mundus,” Bengel. Comp. Ritschl in the Jahrb. f. D. Th. 1863, p. 234 ff.