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Mat_4:19-20. Δεῦτε ὀπίσω μου ] come here after me! ìÀëåÌ àÇçÂøÇé (2Ki_6:19; 1Ki_11:5), be my pupils. The disciples were in constant attendance on their teacher; Schoettgen, Hor. in loc.
ποιήσω … ἀνθρώπων ] I will put you in a position to gain men, that they may become members of the kingdom of the Messiah. Words borrowed from the domain of hunting and fishing (Jer_16:16) often denote the winning over of souls for themselves or others. Wetstein and Loesner, Hemsterhusius, ad Lucian. Dial. Mort. viii.; Burmann, ad Phaedr. iv. 4. Comp. on 2Co_11:20. Here the typical phraseology suggested itself from the circumstances.
εὐθέως ] belongs to ἀφέντες , not to ἠκολ .
ἠκολ .] as disciples.
καταρτίζ ., either arranging (Bengel) or repairing (Vulgate and most commentators). We cannot determine which; Luke has ἀπέπλυναν .
REMARK.
The want of harmony between Mat_4:18 ff. and Joh_1:35 ff. is to be recognised, and is not (as the Fathers of the church, Kuinoel, Gratz, Olshausen, Hoffmann, Krabbe, Neander, Ebrard, Arnoldi, Luthardt, Bleek, Riggenbach, Lange, Ewald, Hausrath, Märcker, have attempted) to be removed by supposing that in Matthew it is a second calling of the apostles in question that is recorded, viz. that they had already been at an earlier date (Joh_1:35 ff.) disciples of Jesus in the wider sense of the word, but that now for the first time they had become so in the narrower sense—that is, had become apostles. Comp. on John, remark after ch. 1. Matthew does not even agree with Luk_5:4 ff. See remarks on the passage, and Keim, Gesch. J. II. p. 215. We must in any case (in answer to Baur, Hilgenfeld) seek the true history of the occurrence in John, in whose account a merely preliminary adherence to Jesus is the less to be thought of, that immediately afterwards οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ go with Him to Cana (ii. 2), to Capernaum (ii. 12), and to Jerusalem (ii. 17, 22). This also in, answer to Liicke on John, I. p. 466 f., and to Wieseler, who distinguishes a threefold act in the selection of the disciples: the preliminary calling in Joh_1:35 ff.; the setting apart to be constant attendants, Mat_4:18 ff; Mat_9:9 ff.; and the selection of the Twelve to be apostles, Mat_10:2-4. Wieseler (chronol. Synopse, p. 278) lays especial weight on the circumstance that John names τοὺς δώδεκα for the first time in Joh_6:67. But John in general, with the exception of this passage (and the Joh_6:70 and Joh_6:71 belonging to it), only once again expressly mentions the τοὺς δώδεκα (viz. in Joh_20:21), which is determined by the antithetic interest in the context. Especially in Joh_6:67 are the Twelve opposed to those others, many of whom had deserted Him. Previously, however, John had no opportunity, where this or any other antithetical relation might give him occasion, to give prominence to the number of the Twelve.
Besides, the history of the calling in Matthew, if it were not in contradiction to John, would by no means bear in itself a mythical character (Strauss finds in it a copy of the call of Elisha by Elijah, 1Ki_19:19 ff.), but is to be explained from the great, directly overwhelming impression made by the appearance of Jesus on minds prepared for it, which Matthew himself experienced (Mat_9:9); and this also is to be applied to the Johannine account. This narrative, which Schenkel and Keim relegate to the sphere of free invention, does not exclude the profound and certainly original words, “fishers of men,” which may have proceeded from the mouth of Jesus to His first called disciples on that day, Joh_1:40; and upon the basis of these words the narrative of the call, as it is preserved in Matthew and Mark, might easily be formed.