VINCENT'S WORD STUDIES
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Robertson's Word Pictures in the NT - Greek NT
When he was set (kaqisantov), following Tyndale. Rev., more literally, when he had sat down (compare Wyc., when he had set). After the manner of the rabbis, he seated himself ere he began to teach.
Its root is supposed to be a word meaning great, and its earlier meaning appears to be limited to outward prosperity; so that it is used at times as synonymous with rich. It scarcely varies from this meaning in its frequent applications to the Grecian gods, since the popular Greek ideal of divine blessedness was not essentially moral. The gods were blessed because of their power and dignity, not because of their holiness. "In general," says Mr. Gladstone ("Homer and the Homeric Age") "the chief note of deity with Homer is emancipation from the restraints of moral law. Though the Homeric gods have not yet ceased to be the vindicators of morality upon earth, they have personally ceased to observe its rules, either for or among themselves. As compared with men, in conduct they are generally characterized by superior force and intellect, but by inferior morality."
In its peculiar application to the dead, there is indicated the despair of earthly happiness underlying the thought of even the cheerful and mercurial Greek. Hence the word was used as synonymous with dead. Only the dead could be called truly blessed. Thus Sophocles ("Oedipus Tyrannus"):
"From hence the lesson learn ye To reckon no man happy till ye witness The closing day; until he pass the border Which severs life from death, unscathed by sorrow."
And again ("Oedipus at Colonus"):
"Happiest beyond compare, Never to taste of life: Happiest in order next, Being born, with quickest speed Thither again to turn From whence we came."
Nevertheless, even in its pagan use, the word was not altogether without a moral background. The Greeks recognized a prosperity which waited on the observance of the laws of natural morality, and an avenging Fate which pursued and punished their violation. This conception appears often in the works of the tragedians; for instance, in the "Oedipus Tyrannus" of Sophocles, where the main motive is the judgment which waits upon even unwitting violations of natural ties. Still, this prosperity is external, consisting either in wealth, or power, or exemption from calamity.
With the philosophers a moral element comes definitely into the word. The conception rises from outward propriety to inward correctness as the essence of happiness. But in all of them, from Socrates onward, virtue depends primarily upon knowledge; so that to be happy is, first of all, to know. It is thus apparent that the Greek philosophy had no conception of sin in the Bible sense. As virtue depended on knowledge, sin was the outcome of ignorance, and virtue and its consequent happiness were therefore the prerogative of the few and the learned.
The biblical use of the word lifted it into the region of the spiritual, as distinguished from the merely intellectual, and besides, intrusted to it alone the task of representing this higher conception. The pagan word for happiness (eujdaimonia, under the protection of a good genius or daemon) nowhere occurs in the New Testament nor in the Scriptures, having fallen into disrepute because the word daemon, which originally meant a deity, good or evil, had acquired among the Jews the bad sense which we attach to demon. Happiness, or better, blessedness, was therefore represented both in the Old and in the New Testament by this word makariov. In the Old Testament the idea involves more of outward prosperity than in the New Testament, yet it almost universally occurs in connections which emphasize, as its principal element, a sense of God's approval founded in righteousness which rests ultimately on love to God.
Thus the word passed up into the higher region of Christian thought, and was stamped with the gospel signet, and laden with all the rich significance of gospel blessedness. It now takes on a group of ideas strange to the best pagan morality, and contradictory of its fundamental positions. Shaking itself loose from all thoughts of outward good, it becomes the express symbol of a happiness identified with pure character. Behind it lies the clear cognition of sin as the fountain-head of all misery, and of holiness as the final and effectual cure for every woe. For knowledge as the basis of virtue, and therefore of happiness, it substitutes faith and love. For the aristocracy of the learned virtuous, it introduces the truth of the Fatherhood of God and the corollary of the family of believers. While the pagan word carries the isolation of the virtuous and the contraction of human sympathy, the Gospel pushes these out with an ideal of a world-wide sympathy and of a happiness realized in ministry. The vague outlines of an abstract good vanish from it, and give place to the pure heart's vision of God, and its personal communion with the Father in heaven. Where it told of the Stoic's self-sufficiency, it now tells of the Christian's poverty of spirit and meekness. Where it hinted at the Stoic's self-repression and strangling of emotion, it now throbs with a holy sensitiveness, and with a monition to rejoice with them that rejoice, and to weep with them that weep. From the pagan word the flavor of immortality is absent. No vision of abiding rest imparts patience and courage amid the bitterness and struggle of life; no menace of the destiny of evil imposes a check on human lusts. The Christian word blessed is full of the light of heaven. It sternly throws away from itself every hint of the Stoic's asserted right of suicide as a refuge from human ills, and emphasizes something which thrives on trial and persecution, which glories in tribulation, which not only endures but conquers to world, and expects its crown in heaven.
The poor (oi ptwcoi). Three words expression poverty are found in the New Testament. Two of them, penhv and penicrov, are kindred terms, the latter being merely a poetic form of the other, and neither of these occurs more than once (Luke xxi. 2; 2 Cor. ix. 9). The word used in this verse is therefore the current word for poor, occurring thirty-four times, and covering every gradation of want; so that it is evident that the New Testament writers did not recognize any nice distinctions of meaning which called for the use of other terms. Luke, for instance (xxi. 2, 3), calls the widow who bestowed her two mites both penicran and ptwch. Nevertheless, there is a distinction, recognized by both classical and eccleciastical writers. While oJ penhv is one of narrow means, one who "earns a scanty pittance," ptwcov is allied to the verb ptwssein, to crouch or cringe, and therefore conveys the idea of utter destitution, which abjectly solicits and lives by alms. Hence it is applied to Lazarus (Luke xvi. 20, 22), and rendered beggar. Thus distinguished, it is very graphic and appropriate here, as denoting the utter spiritual destitution, the consciousness of which precedes the entrance into the kingdom of God, and which cannot be relieved by one's own efforts, but only by the free mercy of God. (See on 2 Cor. vi. 10; viii. 9.)
Shall be comforted. See on John xiv. 16.
As a human attribute, Aristotle defines it as the mean between stubborn anger and that negativeness of character which is incapable of even righteous indignation: according to which it is tantamount to equanimity. Plato opposes it to fierceness or cruelty, and uses it of humanity to the condemned; but also of the conciliatory demeanor of a demagogue seeking popularity and power. Pindar applies it to a king, mild or kind to the citizens, and Herodotus uses it as opposed to anger.
These pre-Christian meanings of the word exhibit two general characteristics.
The equanimity, mildness, kindness, represented by the classical word, are founded in self-control or in natural disposition. The Christian meekness is based on humility, which is not a natural quality but an outgrowth of a renewed nature. To the pagan the word often implied condescension, to the Christian it implies submission. The Christian quality, in its manifestation, reveals all that was best in the heathen virtue - mildness, gentleness, equanimity - but these manifestations toward men are emphasized as outgrowths of a spiritual relation to God. The mildness or kindness of Plato or Pindar imply no sense of inferiority in those who exhibit them; sometimes the contrary. Plato's demagogue is kindly from self-interest and as a means to tyranny. Pindar's king is condescendingly kind. The meekness of the Christian springs from a sense of the inferiority of the creature to the Creator, and especially of the sinful creature to the holy God. While, therefore, the pagan quality is redolent of self-assertion, the Christian quality carries the flavor of self-abasement. As toward God, therefore, meekness accepts his dealings without murmur or resistance as absolutely good and wise. As toward man, it accepts opposition, insult, and provocation, as God's permitted ministers of a chastening demanded by the infirmity and corruption of sin; while, under this sense of his own sinfulness, the meek bears patiently "the contradiction of sinners against himself," forgiving and restoring the erring in a spirit of meekness, considering himself, lest he also be tempted (see Gal. vi. 1-5). The ideas of forgiveness and restoration nowhere attach to the classical word. They belong exclusively to Christian meekness, which thus shows itself allied to love. As ascribed by our Lord to himself, see on Matt. xi. 29. Wyc. renders "Blessed be mild men."
A candlestick (thn lucnian). Rev., the stand. Also a part of the furniture of every house, and commonly but one in the house: hence the article. The word, which occurs four times in the Gospels and eight times elsewhere, means, in every case, not a candlestick, but a lamp-stand. In Heb. ix. 2, the golden "candlestick" of the tabernacle is called lucnia; but in the description of this article (Exod. xxv. 31, 39), we read, "Thou shalt make the seven lamps thereof;" and in Zech. iv. 2, where the imagery is drawn from the sanctuary, we have a "candlestick" with a bowl on the top of it, "and his seven lamps thereon, and seven pipes (for the oil) to the lamps which are upon the top thereof."
"The pleasant valley of Hinnom, Tophet thence And black Gehenna called, the type of hell."
As fire was the characteristic of the place, it was called the Gehenna of fire. It should be carefully distinguished from Hades (adhv), which is never used for the place of punishment, but for the place of departed spirits, without reference to their moral condition. This distinction, ignored by the A.V., is made in the Rev.
Officer (uphreth). Denoting a subordinate official, as a herald or an orderly, and in this sense applied to Mark as the "minister" or attendant of Paul and Barnabas (Acts xiii. 5). It furnishes an interesting instance of the expansion of a word from a limited and special meaning into a more general one; and also of the influence of the Gospel in lifting words into higher and purer associations. Formed with the verb ejressw, to row, it originally signified a rower, as distinguished from a soldier, in a war-galley. This word for a galley-slave comes at last, in the hands of Luke and Paul, to stand for the noblest of all offices, that of a minister of the Lord Jesus (Luke i. 2; Acts xxvi. 16; 1 Cor. iv. 1).