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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Matthew 19:18 - 19:18
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18. ποίας; What commandments? written or unwritten? human or divine? the law of Moses or the traditions of the elders? or perhaps the young ruler expected a specimen of the rules with which this new Rabbi would instruct his disciples to ‘fence round’ the law. In N.T. ποῖος may perhaps always be distinguished from τίς; in later Greek (see Sophocles, Lex. sub voc.) and in the modern vernacular the distinction is lost.
τὸ οὐ φονεύσεις κ.τ.λ. For the use of the article prefixed to a sentence cp. εἶπεν αὐτῷ· τὸ εἰ δύνῃ, Mar 9:23; ὁ πᾶς νόμος ἐν ἑνὶ λόγῳ πεπλήρωται ἐν τῷ ἀγαπήσεις τὸν πλησίον σου, Gal 5:14. See Winer, p. 135.
οὐ φονεύσεις. In Hebrew a negative is never used with the imperative; prohibitions being always expressed by means of the future (or imperfect). This idiom is here followed in the Greek, οὐ φον.—prohibition, τίμα—positive command (Rœd.-Gesen. Hebr. Gram., p. 280) the future is however also used in pure Greek to express the imperative notion, as e.g. λέγʼ εἴ τι βούλει, χειρὶ δʼ οὐ ψαύσεις ποτέ, Eur Med. 1320 (Donaldson Grk. Gram. p. 407).
Comp. this enumeration with that in ch. Mat 15:19. Here, as there, the commandments proceed in order from the 6th to the 9th. Here, as there, the enumeration stops at covetousness—the rich ruler’s special failing. The fifth commandment not named in ch. 15 had probably an individual application here. Neither St Mark nor St Luke preserve the same order