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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Luke 18:23 - 18:23
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23. περίλυπος ἐγενήθη. St Matthew says, ‘he went away grieving;’ St Mark adds that ‘his brow grew gloomy and cloudy at the command’ (στυγνάσας ἐπὶ τῷ λόγῳ). And thus at the time he made, through cowardice or meanness of mind, what Dante (Inf. X. 27) calls ‘il gran rifiuto,’ ‘the great refusal,’ and the poet sees his shade among the whirling throng of the useless and the facing-both-ways on the confines of the Inferno. Nothing, however, forbids us to hope that the words of Jesus who “loved him” sank into his soul, and brought him to a humbler and holier frame of mind. But meanwhile he lost for his earthly dross that eternal blessedness of self-sacrifice which Christ had offered him. The day came when Saul of Tarsus was like this youth “touching the righteousness which is in the law blameless;” but he had grace to count all things but loss for Christ. Php 3:6-9.
The original narrative or tradition had ἀπῆλθε λυπούμενος· ἦν γὰρ ἔχων κτήματα πολλά (Mar 10:22; Mat 19:22). St Luke gives the sentence a more classical turn.