Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - Matthew 26:62 - 26:62
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Mat_26:62. With the sublime calm of one who is conscious of his own superior worth, Jesus meekly abstains from uttering a single word before this contemptible tribunal in the way of self-vindication, εἰδὼς δὲ καὶ , ὅτι μάτην ἀποκρινεῖται παρὰ τοιούτοις , Euthymius Zigabenus; whereas the high priest who finds, and that with considerable gratification, that the charge of being a Messianic pretender is now fully substantiated by the language of Jesus just deponed to (see Mat_26:63), quite forgets himself, and breaks out into a passion.
The breaking up of the following utterance into two questions: answerest thou not? what (i.e. how heinous a matter) do these witness against thee? is, so far as the latter question is concerned, neither feeble (de Wette) nor unnatural (Weiss), but entirely in keeping with the passionate haste of the speaker. This being the case, the two clauses should not be run into one. We should neither, on the one hand, following Erasmus, with Fritzsche, take τί in the sense of cur, or (ad Marc. p. 650) the whole sentence as equivalent to τί τοῦτό ἐστιν , ὃ οὗτοί σου καταμαρτυροῦσιν ; nor, on the other, with the Vulgate, Luther, de Wette, Ewald, Bleek, Keim, Weiss, should we adopt the rendering: “nihil respondes ad ea, quae isti adversum te testificantur?” This latter, however, would not be inconsistent with the strict meaning of the terms employed, for it is quite permissible to use ἀποκρίνεσθαί τι in the sense of: to reply to anything (see Ast, Lex. Plat. I. p. 239), and to take τί as equivalent to ὅ , τι (Buttmann, Neut. Gr. p. 216 [E. T. 251], who supposes “hörend” (hearing) to be understood before τί ).