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Mat_18:6. Comp. Mar_9:42; Luk_17:2.
σκανδαλίσῃ ] Opposite of δέξηται , meaning: will have been to him the occasion of his fall, especially of his apostasy from the faith (Mat_5:29, Mat_11:6).
τῶν μικρῶν τούτων ] not to be understood, any more than παιδίον τοιοῦτο , Mat_18:5, of literal children (Holtzmann), and consequently not to be used as proof of the faith of little children (Baur, Delitzsch), but as meaning: one of those little ones,—a way of designating modest, simple-minded, unassuming believers, that had just been suggested by seeing in the child then present a model of such simplicity. This is not quite the same as τῶν μικρῶν τούτων , Mat_10:42 (Mat_25:40), where the expression is not borrowed from the illustration of a child.
συμφέρει αὐτῷ , ἵνα , κ . τ . λ .] For the construction; comp. note on Mat_5:29. “But whoever will have offended one of those little ones,”—it is of service to him, with a view to, i.e. in hunc finem ut. That, which such a person may have come to deserve, is thus expressed in the form of a divine purpose, which his evil deed must help him to bring about; comp. Joh_11:50. A comparative reference of συμφέρει (Jerome: “quam aeternis servari cruciatibus;” others: than again to commit such a sin) is a pure importation.
μύλος ὀνικός ] The larger mills (in contradistinction to the χειρομύλαι , Mat_24:41) were driven by an ass; Buxtorf, Lex. Talm. p. 2252. Comp. also Anth. Pal. ix. 301; Ovid, A. A. iii. 290.
The καταποντισμός (Wesseling, ad Diod. Sic. xvi. 35; Hermann, Privatalterth. § 72, 26; Casaubon, ad Suet. Oct. 67) was not a Jewish method of putting to death, neither was it a practice in Galilee (Joseph. Antt. xiv. 15. 10), but belonged to the Greeks, Romans, Syrians, and Phoenicians. Consequently it here expresses in a manner all the more vivid and awe-inspiring that punishment of death to which the man in question has become liable, and which is intended to represent the loss of eternal life; comp. Mat_18:7-9.