Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Matthew 5:14 - 5:14

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Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Matthew 5:14 - 5:14


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

14. τὸ φῶς τοῦ κόσμου. See Joh 8:12, where Jesus says of Himself ἐγώ εἰμι τὸ φῶς τοῦ κόσμου. Cp. Php 2:15, φαίνεσθε ὡς φωστῆρες ἐν κόσμῳ.

τοῦ κόσμου, i.e. of the whole world, not of Israel only; or of the dark and evil world. κόσμος has an interesting history: (1) ‘order,’ ‘propriety’ (Homer); (2) ‘the divine order and arrangement of nature’ (Heracleitus and Anaxagoras); (3) ‘celestial order’ (Plato); (4) ‘order celestial and terrestrial’—the universe (Plato, see Bruder’s Concordance); (5) ‘the habitable world,’ ἡ πίστις ὑμῶν καταγγέλλεται ἐν ὅλῳ τῷ κόσμῳ, Rom 1:8; (6) the world around us, society; (7) especially ‘the evil world’, so frequently in John as μισεῖ ὑμᾶς ὁ κόσμος, Mat 15:19; (8) in modern Greek a ‘crowd,’ ‘rabble.’ κόσμος ἄπειρος ‘a countless multitude’ would have seemed to Heracleitus a contradiction in terms (Geldart, Mod. Greek, 94). In LXX. κόσμος is not used in this later sense of ‘the world,’ it there means ‘ornament’ or ‘order (host) of heaven’: καὶ συνετελέσθησαν καὶ πᾶς ὁ κόσμος αὐτῶν, Gen 2:1.

πόλις ἐπάνω ὄρους κειμένη. Stanley remarks (S. and P. 337) that in Northern Palestine ‘the plain and mountain-sides are dotted with villages … situated for the most part (not like those of Judæa, on hilltops, or Samaria, in deep valleys, but) as in Philistia, on the slopes of the ranges which intersect or bound the plain.’ The image in the text therefore recalls Judæa rather than Galilee, Bethlehem rather than Nazareth. Some however have conjectured that the lofty Safed was in sight, and was pointed to by our Lord. Land and Book, 273.

κρυβῆναι. This 2nd aor. form is late: in Soph. Aj. 1145, κρυφεὶς is now read for κρυβείς.