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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Luke 5:20 - 5:20
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
20. ἄνθρωπε. St Mark has “Son,” and St Matthew “Cheer up, son,” which were probably the exact words used by Christ.
ἀφέωνταί σοι. ‘Have been forgiven thee,’ i.e. now and henceforth. The form ἀφέωνται found in the four Evangelists (Mat 9:2; Mar 2:5; 1Jn 2:12) is according to Suidas a Doric form for the 3rd pers. plur. ἀφεῖνται of the perf. pass. ἀφεῖμαι after the analogy of the perf. ἀφέωκα. The Etym. Magnus calls it an Attic form. Hellenistic Greek has forms which have come to it from various dialects (see Winer, p. 96). In this instance our Lord’s power of reading the heart must have shewn Him that there was a connexion between past sin and present affliction. The Jews held it as an universal rule that suffering was always the immediate consequence of sin. The Book of Job had been directed against that hard, crude, Pharisaic generalisation. Since that time it had been modified by the view that a man might suffer, not for his own sins, but for those of his parents (Joh 9:3). These views were all the more dangerous because they were the distortion of half-truths. Our Lord, while He always left the individual conscience to read the connexion between its own sins and its sorrows (Joh 5:14), distinctly repudiated the universal inference (Luk 13:5; Joh 9:3).