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Mat_18:28. A hundred denarii, about forty Rhenish Gulden, or 23 thalers [about £3, 9s. sterling] (a denarius being not quite equal to a drachma), what a paltry debt compared with those talents of which there were a hundred times a hundred!
ἔπνιγε ] Creditors (as the Roman law allowed them to do) often dragged their debtors before the judge, holding them by the throat. Clericus and Wetstein on this passage.
ἀπόδος , εἴ τι ὠφείλεις ] εἴ τι is not to be taken, as is often done, as though it were equivalent to ὅ , τι . For where εἴ τι , like si quid, is used in the sense of quicquid (see Kühner, ad Xen. Anab. i. 10. 18), εἰ always has a conditional force, which would be out of place in the present instance; but, with Fritzsche and Olshausen, to trace the expression to Greek urbanity, would be quite incongruous here. Neither, however, are we to affirm, with Paulus and Baumgarten-Crusius, that the conditional expression is rather more severe in its tone, from representing the man as not being even certain in regard to the debt; for the certainty of the debt is implied in the terms of the passage, and, moreover, in the κρατήσας αὐτ . ἔπνιγε was necessarily to be presupposed on the part of the δοῦλος . No, the εἰ is simply the expression of a pitiless logic: PAY, if thou owest anything ( ἀπόδος being emphatic). From the latter the former follows as matter of necessity. If thou owest anything (and such is the case), then thou must also pay,—and therefore I arrest thee!