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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Mark 9:43 - 9:43
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43. καὶ ἐὰν σκανδαλίσῃ σε ἡ χείρ σου. Seducing simple souls is disastrously easy work; but still more easy is seducing oneself, by letting the body lead the spirit astray. The language in the three instances is parabolic, but the meaning is clear. We sacrifice hand, foot, or eye, to avoid fatal or incurable maladies. We may have to sacrifice things still more precious, to avoid the death of the soul.
κυλλός. Crippled, originally of “bowed legs,” the opposite of βλαισός, “knock-kneed,” but also used of the hand; ἔμβαλε κυλλῇ (Aristoph. Eq. 1083) “toss into a hand crooked to catch something.”
εἰς τὴν ζωήν. In N.T., ζωή occurs more than 100 times, but in Mk only four, twice without (Mar 9:43; Mar 9:45), and twice with (Mar 10:17; Mar 10:30). αἰώνιος. In class. Grk, βίος, the life of a human being, is higher than ζωή, the life which men share with brutes and vegetables. In N.T., βίος has its classical meaning of “human life” or “means of life” (Mar 12:44), but ζωή is greatly promoted, meaning the life which men share with Christ and with God. See on Joh 12:25; 1Jn 1:2; 1Jn 2:16. Trench, Syn. § xxvii; Cremer, Lex. p. 272.
ἀπελθεῖν. Sc. ἀπὸ τῆς ζωῆς. [2099] has βληθῆναι.
[2099] Codex Bezae. 6th cent. Has a Latin translation (d) side by side with the Greek text, and the two do not quite always agree. Presented by Beza to the University Library of Cambridge in 1581. Remarkable for its frequent divergences from other texts. Contains Mark, except Mar 16:15-20, which has been added by a later hand. Photographic facsimile, 1899.
τὴν γέενναν. Excepting Luk 12:5 and Jam 3:6, γέεννα occurs only in Mk and Mt. Not in LXX. The word is a loose transliteration of Ge-Hinnom, “Valley of Hinnom,” where under Ahaz and Manasseh children were thrown into the red-hot arms of Molech (2Ch 28:3; 2Ch 33:6; Jer 7:31). Josiah (2Ki 23:10-14) abolished these horrors and desecrated the place by making it a refuse-heap for offal and rubbish, including the carcases of animals, which were consumed, acc. to late writers, by a fire which never went out. This heap was a mass of corruption, devoured by worms and fire, and hence was regarded as symbolizing punishment in the other world. Isa 66:24 shows the beginning of the idea. It is much plainer in Enoch; “This accursed valley is for those who are accursed for ever; here will all those be gathered together who utter unseemly words against God, and here is the place of their punishment” (xxvii. 2). “A like abyss was opened in the midst of the earth, full of fire, and they were all judged and found guilty and cast into that fiery abyss, and they burned” (xc. 26; cf. xlviii. 9). Cf. 2Es 7:36, Clibanus Gehennae ostendetur et contra eum jucunditatis paradisus; Ps. of Solomon xii. 5, xv. 6; Apocalypse of Baruch lxxxv. 13. The site of the Valley of Hinnom is much disputed; Hastings’ D.B., D.C.G. artt. “Gehenna,” “Hinnom, Valley of.” The loss of the m in “Hinnom” in transliteration to “Gehenna” is repeated in the change from “Mariam” to “Maria.”
The confusion caused in all English Versions prior to R.V. by using “hell” to translate both ᾅδης and γέεννα is well known; Lightfoot, On Revision, p. 87; Trench, On the A.V. p. 21. Hardly any correction in R.V. is more valuable than that of reserving “hell” for γέεννα and simply transliterating ᾅδης.
ἄσβεστον. The fire cannot be extinguished so long as there is fuel to feed it: it “burns as long as sin remains to be consumed” (Swete).
The constr. καλὸν … ἤ, instead of κάλλιον … ἤ, is perhaps Hebraic (Gen 49:12; Hos 2:7) but it is found in Hdt. ix. 26 sub fin., ἡμέας δίκαιον ἔχειν τὸ ἕτερον κέρας ἤπερ Ἀθηναίους.