Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - Matthew 5:29 - 5:29
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Mat_5:29.[409] Unconditional self-denial, however, is required in order not to stumble against the prohibition of adultery in its complete meaning, and thereby to fall into hell. Better for thee that thou decidedly deprive thyself of that which is so dear and indispensable to thee for the temporal life, and the sacrificing of which will be still so painful to thee, than that thou, seduced thereby, and so on. In the typical expression of this thought (comp. on Col_3:5) the eye and hand are named, because it is precisely these that are the media of lust; and the right members, because to these the popular idea gave the superiority over the left, Exo_29:20; 1Sa_11:2; Zec_11:17; Aristotle, de animal. incessu, 4. The non-typical but literal interpretation (Pricaeus, Fritzsche, likewise Ch. F. Fritzsche in his Nov. Opusc. p. 347 f., Arnoldi) is not in keeping with the spirit of the moral strictness of Jesus; and to help it out by supplying a limitation (perhaps in the extreme case, to which, however, it cannot come; comp. Tholuck) is arbitrary. The view, however, which is, indeed, also the proper one, but hyperbolical, according to which the plucking, out is said to represent only the restraining or limiting the use, does not satisfy the strength of the expression. So Olshausen, comp. already Grotius. Only the typical view, which is also placed beyond doubt by the mention of the one eye, satisfies the words and spirit of Jesus. Yet, having regard to the plastic nature of the figures, it is not the thought “as is done to criminals” (Keim), but merely that of thoroughgoing, unsparing self-discipline (Gal_5:24; Gal_6:14; Rom_8:13).
σκανδαλίζει ] a typical designation, borrowed from a trap ( σκανδάλη and σκανδάλεθρον , the trap-spring), of the idea of seducing to unbelief, heresy, sin, etc. Here it is the latter idea. The word is not found in Greek writers, but in the LXX. and Apocrypha, and very frequently in the N. T. Observe the present. What is required is not to take place only after the completion of the seduction.
συμφέρει γάρ σοι , ἵνα , κ . τ . λ .] not even here, as nowhere indeed, does ἵνα stand instead of the infinitive (comp. Mat_18:6), but is to be taken as teleological: “it is of importance to thee (this plucking out of the eye), in order that one of thy members may be destroyed, and not thy whole body be cast into hell.” Thus Fritzsche alone correctly; comp. Käuffer. The alleged forced nature of this explanation is a deception arising from the customary usage of the infinitive in German.
καὶ μὴ ὅλον … γέενναν ] namely, at the closely impending establishment of the kingdom; comp. Mat_10:28. Mat_5:30 is the same thought, solemnly repeated, although not quite in the same words (see the critical remarks). “Sane multos unius membri neglecta mortificatio perdit,” Bengel.
[409] Comp. Mat_18:8 f.; Mar_9:43 ff. Holtzmann assigns the original form to Mark. On the other hand, see Weiss.