{"commentary":{"id":"jamieson-fausset-brown","name":"Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary","website":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamieson-Fausset-Brown_Bible_Commentary","licenseUrl":"https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/","licenseNotes":null,"licenseNotice":null,"englishName":"Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary","language":"eng","textDirection":"rtl","sha256":"db3d4c8b3c1f32ef9d1430a57392e02bda3a17aac1f9bbe398461de021a3cb13","availableFormats":["json"],"listOfBooksApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/books.json","listOfProfilesApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/profiles.json","numberOfBooks":66,"totalNumberOfChapters":1187,"totalNumberOfVerses":17056,"totalNumberOfProfiles":0,"languageName":"English","languageEnglishName":"English"},"book":{"id":"MAT","commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","name":"Matthew","commonName":"Matthew","introduction":"THE author of this Gospel was a publican or tax gatherer, residing at Capernaum, on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. As to his identity with the \"Levi\" of the second and third Gospels, and other particulars, see on Mat 9:9. Hardly anything is known of his apostolic labors. That, after preaching to his countrymen in Palestine, he went to the East, is the general testimony of antiquity; but the precise scene or scenes of his ministry cannot be determined. That he died a natural death may be concluded from the belief of the best-informed of the Fathers--that of the apostles only three, James the Greater, Peter, and Paul, suffered martyrdom. That the first Gospel was written by this apostle is the testimony of all antiquity.\n\nFor the date of this Gospel we have only internal evidence, and that far from decisive. Accordingly, opinion is much divided. That it was the first issued of all the Gospels was universally believed. Hence, although in the order of the Gospels, those by the two apostles were placed first in the oldest manuscripts of the Old Latin version, while in all the Greek manuscripts, with scarcely an exception, the order is the same as in our Bibles, the Gospel according to Matthew is \"in every case\" placed first. And as this Gospel is of all the four the one which bears the most evident marks of having been prepared and constructed with a special view to the Jews--who certainly first required a written Gospel, and would be the first to make use of it--there can be no doubt that it was issued before any of the others. That it was written before the destruction of Jerusalem is equally certain; for as HUG observes [Introduction to the New Testament, p. 316, FOSDICK'S translation], when he reports our Lord's prophecy of that awful event, on coming to the warning about \"the abomination of desolation\" which they should \"see standing in the holy place,\" he interposes (contrary to his invariable practice, which is to relate without remark) a call to his readers to read intelligently--\"Whoso readeth, let him understand\" (Mat 24:15) --a call to attend to the divine signal for flight which could be intended only for those who lived before the event. But how long before that event this Gospel was written is not so clear. Some internal evidences seem to imply a very early date. Since the Jewish Christians were, for five or six years, exposed to persecution from their own countrymen--until the Jews, being persecuted by the Romans, had to look to themselves--it is not likely (it is argued) that they should be left so long without some written Gospel to reassure and sustain them, and Matthew's Gospel was eminently fitted for that purpose. But the digests to which Luke refers in his Introduction (see on Luk 1:1) would be sufficient for a time, especially as the living voice of the \"eye-witnesses and ministers of the Word\" was yet sounding abroad. Other considerations in favor of a very early date--such as the tender way in which the author seems studiously to speak of Herod Antipas, as if still reigning, and his writing of Pilate apparently as if still in power--seem to have no foundation in fact, and cannot therefore be made the ground of reasoning as to the date of this Gospel. Its Hebraic structure and hue, though they prove, as we think, that this Gospel must have been published at a period considerably anterior to the destruction of Jerusalem, are no evidence in favor of so early a date as A.D. 37 or 38--according to some of the Fathers, and, of the moderns, TILLEMONT, TOWNSON, OWEN, BIRKS, TREGELLES. On the other hand, the date suggested by the statement of IRENÆUS [Against Heresies, 3.1], that Matthew put forth his Gospel while Peter and Paul were at Rome preaching and founding the Church--or after A.D. 60--though probably the majority of critics are in favor of it, would seem rather too late, especially as the second and third Gospels, which were doubtless published, as well as this one, before the destruction of Jerusalem, had still to be issued. Certainly, such statements as the following, \"Wherefore that field is called the field of blood unto this day\" (Mat 27:8); \"And this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day\" (Mat 28:15), bespeak a date considerably later than the events recorded. We incline, therefore, to a date intermediate between the earlier and the later dates assigned to this Gospel, without pretending to greater precision.\n\nWe have adverted to the strikingly Jewish character and coloring of this Gospel. The facts which it selects, the points to which it gives prominence, the cast of thought and phraseology, all bespeak the Jewish point of view from which it was written and to which it was directed. This has been noticed from the beginning, and is universally acknowledged. It is of the greatest consequence to the right interpretation of it; but the tendency among some even of the best of the Germans to infer, from this special design of the first Gospel, a certain laxity on the part of the Evangelist in the treatment of his facts, must be guarded against.\n\nBut by far the most interesting and important point connected with this Gospel is the language in which it was written. It is believed by a formidable number of critics that this Gospel was originally written in what is loosely called Hebrew, but more correctly Aramaic, or Syro-Chaldaic, the native tongue of the country at the time of our Lord; and that the Greek Matthew which we now possess is a translation of that work, either by the Evangelist himself or some unknown hand. The evidence on which this opinion is grounded is wholly external, but it has been deemed conclusive by GROTIUS, MICHAELIS (and his translator), MARSH, TOWNSON, CAMPBELL, OLSHAUSEN, CRESWELL, MEYER, EBRARD, LANGE, DAVIDSON, CURETON, TREGELLES, WEBSTER and WILKINSON, &c. The evidence referred to cannot be given here, but will be found, with remarks on its unsatisfactory character, in the Introduction to the Gospels prefixed to our larger Commentary, pp. 28-31.\n\nBut how stand the facts as to our Greek Gospel? We have not a title of historical evidence that it is a translation, either by Matthew himself or anyone else. All antiquity refers to it as the work of Matthew the publican and apostle, just as the other Gospels are ascribed to their respective authors. This Greek Gospel was from the first received by the Church as an integral part of the one quadriform Gospel. And while the Fathers often advert to the two Gospels which we have from apostles, and the two which we have from men not apostles--in order to show that as that of Mark leans so entirely on Peter, and that of Luke on Paul, these are really no less apostolical than the other two--though we attach less weight to this circumstance than they did, we cannot but think it striking that, in thus speaking, they never drop a hint that the full apostolic authority of the Greek Matthew had ever been questioned on the ground of its not being the original. Further, not a trace can be discovered in this Gospel itself of its being a translation. MICHAELIS tried to detect, and fancied that he had succeeded in detecting, one or two such. Other Germans since, and DAVIDSON and CURETON among ourselves, have made the same attempt. But the entire failure of all such attempts is now generally admitted, and candid advocates of a Hebrew original are quite ready to own that none such are to be found, and that but for external testimony no one would have imagined that the Greek was not the original. This they regard as showing how perfectly the translation has been executed; but those who know best what translating from one language into another is will be the readiest to own that this is tantamount to giving up the question. This Gospel proclaims its own originality in a number of striking points; such as its manner of quoting from the Old Testament, and its phraseology in some peculiar cases. But the close verbal coincidences of our Greek Matthew with the next two Gospels must not be quite passed over. There are but two possible ways of explaining this. Either the translator, sacrificing verbal fidelity in his version, intentionally conformed certain parts of his author's work to the second and third Gospels--in which case it can hardly be called Matthew's Gospel at all--or our Greek Matthew is itself the original.\n\nMoved by these considerations, some advocates of a Hebrew original have adopted the theory of a double original; the external testimony, they think, requiring us to believe in a Hebrew original, while internal evidence is decisive in favor of the originality of the Greek. This theory is espoused by GUERICKS, OLSHAUSEN, THIERSCH, TOWNSON, TREGELLES, &c. But, besides that this looks too like an artificial theory, invented to solve a difficulty, it is utterly void of historical support. There is not a vestige of testimony to support it in Christian antiquity. This ought to be decisive against it.\n\nIt remains, then, that our Greek Matthew is the original of that Gospel, and that no other original ever existed. It is greatly to the credit of DEAN ALFORD, that after maintaining, in the first edition of his Greek Testament the theory of a Hebrew original, he thus expresses himself in the second and subsequent editions: \"On the whole, then, I find myself constrained to abandon the view maintained in my first edition, and to adopt that of a Greek original.\"\n\nOne argument has been adduced on the other side, on which not a little reliance has been placed; but the determination of the main question does not, in our opinion, depend upon the point which it raises. It has been very confidently affirmed that the Greek language was not sufficiently understood by the Jews of Palestine when Matthew published his Gospel to make it at all probable that he would write a Gospel, for their benefit in the first instance, in that language. Now, as this merely alleges the improbability of a Greek original, it is enough to place against it the evidence already adduced, which is positive, in favor of the sole originality of our Greek Matthew. It is indeed a question how far the Greek language was understood in Palestine at the time referred to. But we advise the reader not to be drawn into that question as essential to the settlement of the other one. It is an element in it, no doubt, but not an essential element. There are extremes on both sides of it. The old idea, that our Lord hardly ever spoke anything but Syro-Chaldaic, is now pretty nearly exploded. Many, however, will not go the length, on the other side, of HUG (in his Introduction to the New Testament, pp. 326, &c.) and ROBERTS (\"Discussions of the Gospels,\" &c., pp. 25, &c.). For ourselves, though we believe that our Lord, in all the more public scenes of His ministry, spoke in Greek, all we think it necessary here to say is that there is no ground to believe that Greek was so little understood in Palestine as to make it improbable that Matthew would write his Gospel exclusively in that language--so improbable as to outweigh the evidence that he did so. And when we think of the number of digests or short narratives of the principal facts of our Lord's history which we know from Luke (Luk 1:1-4) were floating about for some time before he wrote his Gospel, of which he speaks by no means disrespectfully, and nearly all of which would be in the mother tongue, we can have no doubt that the Jewish Christians and the Jews of Palestine generally would have from the first reliable written matter sufficient to supply every necessary requirement until the publican-apostle should leisurely draw up the first of the four Gospels in a language to them not a strange tongue, while to the rest of the world it was the language in which the entire quadriform Gospel was to be for all time enshrined. The following among others hold to this view of the sole originality of the Greek Matthew: ERASMUS, CALVIN, BEZA, LIGHTFOOT, WETSTEIN, LARDNER, HUG, FRITZSCHE, CREDNER, DE WETTE, STUART, DA COSTA, FAIRBAIRN, ROBERTS.\n\nOn two other questions regarding this Gospel it would have been desirable to say something, had not our available space been already exhausted: The characteristics, both in language and matter, by which it is distinguished from the other three, and its relation to the second and third Gospels. On the latter of these topics--whether one or more of the Evangelists made use of the materials of the other Gospels, and, if so, which of the Evangelists drew from which--the opinions are just as numerous as the possibilities of the case, every conceivable way of it having one or more who plead for it. The most popular opinion until recently--and perhaps the most popular still--is that the second Evangelist availed himself more or less of the materials of the first Gospel, and the third of the materials of both the first and second Gospels. Here we can but state our own belief, that each of the first three Evangelists wrote independently of both the others; while the fourth, familiar with the first three, wrote to supplement them, and, even where he travels along the same line, wrote quite independently of them. This judgment we express, with all deference for those who think otherwise, as the result of a close study of each of the Gospels in immediate juxtaposition and comparison with the others. On the former of the two topics noticed, the linguistic peculiarities of each of the Gospels have been handled most closely and ably by CREDNER [Einleitung (Introduction to the New Testament)], of whose results a good summary will be found in DAVIDSON'S Introduction to the New Testament. The other peculiarities of the Gospels have been most felicitously and beautifully brought out by DA COSTA in his Four Witnesses, to which we must simply refer the reader, though it contains a few things in which we cannot concur. \n\n\n\nNext: Matthew Chapter 1\n\n","order":40,"numberOfChapters":28,"sha256":"85230502f7845520bbf6f2983f2d40076dbb901c7feac0d1cfa0d62c8b7d54f8","firstChapterNumber":1,"firstChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/MAT/1.json","firstChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"MAT","chapter":1},"lastChapterNumber":28,"lastChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/MAT/28.json","lastChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"MAT","chapter":28},"totalNumberOfVerses":525},"chapter":{"number":6,"content":[{"type":"verse","number":2,"content":["Therefore, when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee--The expression is to be taken figuratively for blazoning it. Hence our expression to \"trumpet.\" \n\nas the hypocrites do--This word--of such frequent occurrence in Scripture, signifying primarily \"one who acts a part\"--denotes one who either pretends to be what he is not (as here), or dissembles what he really is (as in Luk 12:1-2). \n\nin the synagogues and in the streets--the places of religious and secular resort. \n\nthat they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you--In such august expressions, it is the Lawgiver and Judge Himself that we hear speaking to us. \n\nThey have their reward--All they wanted was human applause, and they have it--and with it, all they will ever get.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":3,"content":["But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth--So far from making a display of it, dwell not on it even in thine own thoughts, lest it minister to spiritual pride.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":4,"content":["That thine alms may be in secret, and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly--The word \"Himself\" appears to be an unauthorized addition to the text, which the sense no doubt suggested. (See Ti1 5:25; Rom 2:16; Co1 4:5).\n\nPrayer (Mat 6:5-6).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":5,"content":["And when thou prayest, thou shalt--or, preferably, \"when ye pray ye shall.\" \n\nnot be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets--(See on Mat 6:2). \n\nthat they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have, &c.--The standing posture in prayer was the ancient practice, alike in the Jewish and in the early Christian Church. But of course this conspicuous posture opened the way for the ostentatious.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":6,"content":["But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet--a place of retirement. \n\nand when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly--Of course, it is not the simple publicity of prayer which is here condemned. It may be offered in any circumstances, however open, if not prompted by the spirit of ostentation, but dictated by the great ends of prayer itself. It is the retiring character of true prayer which is here taught.\n\nSupplementary Directions and Model Prayer (Mat 6:7-15).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":7,"content":["But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions--\"Babble not\" would be a better rendering, both for the form of the word--which in both languages is intended to imitate the sound--and for the sense, which expresses not so much the repetition of the same words as a senseless multiplication of them; as appears from what follows. \n\nas the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking--This method of heathen devotion is still observed by Hindu and Mohammedan devotees. With the Jews, says LIGHTFOOT, it was a maxim, that \"Every one who multiplies prayer is heard.\" In the Church of Rome, not only is it carried to a shameless extent, but, as THOLUCK justly observes, the very prayer which our Lord gave as an antidote to vain repetitions is the most abused to this superstitious end; the number of times it is repeated counting for so much more merit. Is not this just that characteristic feature of heathen devotion which our Lord here condemns? But praying much, and using at times the same words, is not here condemned, and has the example of our Lord Himself in its favor.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":8,"content":["Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of before ye ask him--and so needs not to be informed of our wants, any more than to be roused to attend to them by our incessant speaking. What a view of God is here given, in sharp contrast with the gods of the heathen! But let it be carefully noted that it is not as the general Father of mankind that our Lord says, \"Your Father\" knoweth what ye need before ye ask it; for it is not men, as such, that He is addressing in this discourse, but His own disciples--the poor in spirit, the mourners, the meek, hungry and thirsty souls, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, who allow themselves to have all manner of evil said against them for the Son of man's sake--in short, the new-born children of God, who, making their Father's interests their own, are here assured that their Father, in return, makes their interests His, and needs neither to be told nor to be reminded of their wants. Yet He will have His children pray to Him, and links all His promised supplies to their petitions for them; thus encouraging us to draw near and keep near to Him, to talk and walk with Him, to open our every case to Him, and assure ourselves that thus asking we shall receive--thus seeking we shall find--thus knocking it shall be opened to us.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":9,"content":["After this manner--more simply \"Thus.\" \n\ntherefore pray ye--The \"ye\" is emphatic here, in contrast with the heathen prayers. That this matchless prayer was given not only as a model, but as a form, might be concluded from its very nature. Did it consist only of hints or directions for prayer, it could only be used as a directory; but seeing it is an actual prayer--designed, indeed, to show how much real prayer could be compressed into the fewest words, but still, as a prayer, only the more incomparable for that--it is strange that there should be a doubt whether we ought to pray that very prayer. Surely the words with which it is introduced, in the second utterance and varied form of it which we have in Luk 11:2, ought to set this at rest: \"When ye pray, say, Our Father.\" Nevertheless, since the second form of it varies considerably from the first, and since no example of its actual use, or express quotation of its phraseology, occurs in the sequel of the New Testament, we are to guard against a superstitious use of it. How early this began to appear in the church services, and to what extent it was afterwards carried, is known to every one versed in Church History. Nor has the spirit which bred this abuse quite departed from some branches of the Protestant Church, though the opposite and equally condemnable extreme is to be found in other branches of it.\n\nModel Prayer (Mat 6:9-13). According to the Latin fathers and the Lutheran Church, the petitions of the Lord's Prayer are seven in number; according to the Greek fathers, the Reformed Church and the Westminster divines, they are only six; the two last being regarded--we think, less correctly--as one. The first three petitions have to do exclusively with God: \"Thy name be hallowed\"--\"Thy kingdom come\"--\"Thy will be done.\" And they occur in a descending scale--from Himself down to the manifestation of Himself in His kingdom; and from His kingdom to the entire subjection of its subjects, or the complete doing of His will. The remaining four petitions have to do with OURSELVES: \"Give us our daily bread\"--\"Forgive us our debts\"--\"Lead us not into temptation\"--\"Deliver us from evil.\" But these latter petitions occur in an ascending scale--from the bodily wants of every day up to our final deliverance from all evil.\n\nInvocation: \n\nOur Father which art in heaven--In the former clause we express His nearness to us; in the latter, His distance from us. (See Ecc 5:2; Isa 66:1). Holy, loving familiarity suggests the one; awful reverence the other. In calling Him \"Father\" we express a relationship we have all known and felt surrounding us even from our infancy; but in calling Him our Father \"who art in heaven,\" we contrast Him with the fathers we all have here below, and so raise our souls to that \"heaven\" where He dwells, and that Majesty and Glory which are there as in their proper home. These first words of the Lord's Prayer--this invocation with which it opens--what a brightness and warmth does it throw over the whole prayer, and into what a serene region does it introduce the praying believer, the child of God, as he thus approaches Him! It is true that the paternal relationship of God to His people is by no means strange to the Old Testament. (See Deu 32:6; Psa 103:13; Isa 63:16; Jer 3:4, Jer 3:19; Mal 1:6; Mal 2:10). But these are only glimpses--the \"back parts\" (Exo 33:23), if we may so say, in comparison with the \"open face\" of our Father revealed in Jesus. (See on Co2 3:18). Nor is it too much to say, that the view which our Lord gives, throughout this His very first lengthened discourse, of \"our Father in heaven,\" beggars all that was ever taught, even in God's own Word, or conceived before by His saints, on this subject.\n\nFirst Petition: \n\nHallowed be--that is, \"Be held in reverence\"; regarded and treated as holy. \n\nthy name--God's name means \"Himself as revealed and manifested.\" Everywhere in Scripture God defines and marks off the faith and love and reverence and obedience He will have from men by the disclosures which He makes to them of what He is; both to shut out false conceptions of Him, and to make all their devotion take the shape and hue of His own teaching. Too much attention cannot be paid to this.\n\nSecond Petition: \n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":10,"content":["Thy kingdom come--The kingdom of God is that moral and spiritual kingdom which the God of grace is setting up in this fallen world, whose subjects consist of as many as have been brought into hearty subjection to His gracious scepter, and of which His Son Jesus is the glorious Head. In the inward reality of it, this kingdom existed ever since there were men who \"walked with God\" (Gen 5:24), and \"waited for His salvation\" (Gen 49:18); who were \"continually with Him, holden by His right hand\" (Psa 73:23), and who, even in the valley of the shadow of death, feared no evil when He was with them (Psa 23:4). When Messiah Himself appeared, it was, as a visible kingdom, \"at hand.\" His death laid the deep foundations of it. His ascension on high, \"leading captivity captive and receiving gifts for men, yea, for the rebellious, that the Lord God might dwell among them,\" and the Pentecostal effusion of the Spirit, by which those gifts for men descended upon the rebellious, and the Lord God was beheld, in the persons of thousands upon thousands, \"dwelling\" among men--was a glorious \"coming\" of this kingdom. But it is still to come, and this petition, \"Thy kingdom come,\" must not cease to ascend so long as one subject of it remains to be brought in. But does not this prayer stretch further forward--to \"the glory to be revealed,\" or that stage of the kingdom called \"the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ\" (Pe2 1:11)? Not directly, perhaps, since the petition that follows this--\"Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven\"--would then bring us back to this present state of imperfection. Still, the mind refuses to be so bounded by stages and degrees, and in the act of praying, \"Thy kingdom come,\" it irresistibly stretches the wings of its faith, and longing, and joyous expectation out to the final and glorious consummation of the kingdom of God.\n\nThird Petition: \n\nThy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven--or, as the same words are rendered in Luke, \"as in heaven, so upon earth\" (Luk 11:2) --as cheerfully, as constantly, as perfectly. But some will ask, Will this ever be? We answer, If the \"new heavens and new earth\" are to be just our present material system purified by fire and transfigured, of course it will. But we incline to think that the aspiration which we are taught in this beautiful petition to breathe forth has no direct reference to any such organic fulfilment, and is only the spontaneous and resistless longing of the renewed soul--put into words--to see the whole inhabited earth in entire conformity to the will of God. It asks not if ever it shall be--or if ever it can be--in order to pray this prayer. It must have its holy yearnings breathed forth, and this is just the bold yet simple expression of them. Nor is the Old Testament without prayers which come very near to this (Psa 7:9; Psa 67:1-7; Psa 72:19, &c.).\n\nFourth Petition: \n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":11,"content":["Give us this day our daily bread--The compound word here rendered \"daily\" occurs nowhere else, either in classical or sacred Greek, and so must be interpreted by the analogy of its component parts. But on this critics are divided. To those who would understand it to mean, \"Give us this day the bread of to-morrow\"--as if the sense thus slid into that of Luke \"Give us day by day\" (Luk 11:2, as BENGEL, MEYER, &c.) it may be answered that the sense thus brought out is scarcely intelligible, if not something less; that the expression \"bread of to-morrow\" is not at all the same as bread \"from day to day,\" and that, so understood, it would seem to contradict Mat 6:34. The great majority of the best critics (taking the word to be compounded of ousia, \"substance,\" or \"being\") understand by it the \"staff of life,\" the bread of subsistence, and so the sense will be, \"Give us this day the bread which this day's necessities require.\" In this case, the rendering of our authorized version (after the Vulgate, LUTHER and some of the best modern critics)--\"our daily bread\"--is, in sense, accurate enough. (See Pro 30:8). Among commentators, there was early shown an inclination to understand this as a prayer for the heavenly bread, or spiritual nourishment; and in this they have been followed by many superior expositors, even down to our own times. But as this is quite unnatural, so it deprives the Christian of one of the sweetest of his privileges--to cast his bodily wants in this short prayer, by one simple petition, upon his heavenly Father. No doubt the spiritual mind will, from \"the meat that perisheth,\" naturally rise in thought to \"that meat which endureth to everlasting life.\" But let it be enough that the petition about bodily wants irresistibly suggests a higher petition; and let us not rob ourselves--out of a morbid spirituality--of our one petition in this prayer for that bodily provision which the immediate sequel of this discourse shows that our heavenly Father has so much at heart. In limiting our petitions, however, to provision for the day, what a spirit of childlike dependence does the Lord both demand and beget!\n\nFifth Petition: \n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":12,"content":["And forgive us our debts--A vitally important view of sin, this--as an offense against God demanding reparation to His dishonored claims upon our absolute subjection. As the debtor in the creditor's hand, so is the sinner in the hands of God. This idea of sin had indeed come up before in this discourse--in the warning to agree with our adversary quickly, in case of sentence being passed upon us, adjudging us to payment of the last farthing, and to imprisonment till then (Mat 5:25-26). And it comes up once and again in our Lord's subsequent teaching--as in the parable of the creditor and his two debtors (Luk 7:41, &c.), and in the parable of the unmerciful debtor (Mat 18:23, &c.). But by embodying it in this brief model of acceptable prayer, and as the first of three petitions more or less bearing upon sin, our Lord teaches us, in the most emphatic manner conceivable, to regard this view of sin as the primary and fundamental one. Answering to this is the \"forgiveness\" which it directs us to seek--not the removal from our own hearts of the stain of sin, nor yet the removal of our just dread of God's anger, or of unworthy suspicions of His love, which is all that some tell us we have to care about--but the removal from God's own mind of His displeasure against us on account of sin, or, to retain the figure, the wiping or crossing out from His \"book of remembrance\" of all entries against us on this account. \n\nas we forgive our debtors--the same view of sin as before; only now transferred to the region of offenses given and received between man and man. After what has been said on Mat 5:7, it will not be thought that our Lord here teaches that our exercise of forgiveness towards our offending fellow men absolutely precedes and is the proper ground of God's forgiveness of us. His whole teaching, indeed--as of all Scripture--is the reverse of this. But as no one can reasonably imagine himself to be the object of divine forgiveness who is deliberately and habitually unforgiving towards his fellow men, so it is a beautiful provision to make our right to ask and expect daily forgiveness of our daily shortcomings and our final absolution and acquittal at the great day of admission into the kingdom, dependent upon our consciousness of a forgiving disposition towards our fellows, and our preparedness to protest before the Searcher of hearts that we do actually forgive them. (See Mar 11:25-26). God sees His own image reflected in His forgiving children; but to ask God for what we ourselves refuse to men, is to insult Him. So much stress does our Lord put upon this, that immediately after the close of this prayer, it is the one point in it which He comes back upon (Mat 6:14-15), for the purpose of solemnly assuring us that the divine procedure in this matter of forgiveness will be exactly what our own is.\n\nSixth Petition: \n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":13,"content":["And lead us not into temptation--He who honestly seeks and has the assurance of, forgiveness for past sin, will strive to avoid committing it for the future. But conscious that \"when we would do good evil is present with us,\" we are taught to offer this sixth petition, which comes naturally close upon the preceding, and flows, indeed, instinctively from it in the hearts of all earnest Christians. There is some difficulty in the form of the petition, as it is certain that God does bring His people--as He did Abraham, and Christ Himself--into circumstances both fitted and designed to try them, or test the strength of their faith. Some meet this by regarding the petition as simply an humble expression of self-distrust and instinctive shrinking from danger; but this seems too weak. Others take it as a prayer against yielding to temptation, and so equivalent to a prayer for support and deliverance when we are tempted; but this seems to go beyond the precise thing intended. We incline to take it as a prayer against being drawn or sucked, of our own will, into temptation, to which the word here used seems to lend some countenance--\"Introduce us not.\" This view, while it does not put into our mouths a prayer against being tempted--which is more than the divine procedure would seem to warrant--does not, on the other hand, change the sense of the petition into one for support under temptation, which the words will hardly bear; but it gives us a subject for prayer, in regard to temptation, most definite, and of all others most needful. It was precisely this which Peter needed to ask, but did not ask, when--of his own accord, and in spite of difficulties--he pressed for entrance into the palace hall of the high priest, and where, once sucked into the scene and atmosphere of temptation, he fell so foully. And if so, does it not seem pretty clear that this was exactly what our Lord meant His disciples to pray against when He said in the garden--\"Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation\"? (Mat 26:41).\n\nSeventh Petition: \n\nBut deliver us from evil--We can see no good reason for regarding this as but the second half of the sixth petition. With far better ground might the second and third petitions be regarded as one. The \"but\" connecting the two petitions is an insufficient reason for regarding them as one, though enough to show that the one thought naturally follows close upon the other. As the expression \"from evil\" may be equally well rendered \"from the evil one,\" a number or superior critics think the devil is intended, especially from its following close upon the subject of \"temptation.\" But the comprehensive character of these brief petitions, and the place which this one occupies, as that on which all our desires die away, seems to us against so contracted a view of it. Nor can there be a reasonable doubt that the apostle, in some of the last sentences which he penned before he was brought forth to suffer for his Lord, alludes to this very petition in the language of calm assurance--\"And the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work (compare the Greek of the two passages), and will preserve me unto his heavenly kingdom\" (Ti2 4:18). The final petition, then, is only rightly grasped when regarded as a prayer for deliverance from all evil of whatever kind--not only from sin, but from all its consequences--fully and finally. Fitly, then, are our prayers ended with this. For what can we desire which this does not carry with it? \n\nFor thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen--If any reliance is to be placed on external evidence, this doxology, we think, can hardly be considered part of the original text. It is wanting in all the most ancient manuscripts; it is wanting in the Old Latin version and in the Vulgate: the former mounting up to about the middle of the second century, and the latter being a revision of it in the fourth century by JEROME, a most reverential and conservative as well as able and impartial critic. As might be expected from this, it is passed by in silence by the earliest Latin fathers; but even the Greek commentators, when expounding this prayer, pass by the doxology. On the other hand, it is found in a majority of manuscripts, though not the oldest; it is found in all the Syriac versions, even the Peschito--dating probably as early as the second century--although this version lacks the \"Amen,\" which the doxology, if genuine, could hardly have wanted; it is found in the Sahidic or Thebaic version made for the Christians of Upper Egypt, possibly as early as the Old Latin; and it is found in perhaps most of the later versions. On a review of the evidence, the strong probability, we think, is that it was no part of the original text.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":14,"content":["For if ye forgive men, &c.--See on Mat 6:12.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":15,"content":["But if ye forgive not, &c.--See on Mat 6:12.\n\nFasting (Mat 6:16-18). Having concluded His supplementary directions on the subject of prayer with this Divine Pattern, our Lord now returns to the subject of Unostentatiousness in our deeds of righteousness, in order to give one more illustration of it, in the matter of fasting.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":16,"content":["Moreover, when ye fast--referring, probably, to private and voluntary fasting, which was to be regulated by each individual for himself; though in spirit it would apply to any fast. \n\nbe not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces--literally, \"make unseen\"; very well rendered \"disfigure.\" They went about with a slovenly appearance, and ashes sprinkled on their head. \n\nthat they may appear unto men to fast--It was not the deed, but reputation for the deed which they sought; and with this view those hypocrites multiplied their fasts. And are the exhausting fasts of the Church of Rome, and of Romanizing Protestants, free from this taint? \n\nVerily I say unto you, They have their reward.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":17,"content":["But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face--as the Jews did, except when mourning (Dan 10:3); so that the meaning is, \"Appear as usual\"--appear so as to attract no notice.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":18,"content":["That thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret: and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly--The \"openly\" seems evidently a later addition to the text of this verse from Mat 6:4, Mat 6:7, though of course the idea is implied.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":19,"content":["CONCLUDING ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE KINGDOM--HEAVENLY-MINDEDNESS AND FILIAL CONFIDENCE. (Mat. 6:19-34)\n\nLay not up for ourselves treasures upon earth--hoard not. \n\nwhere moth--a \"clothes-moth.\" Eastern treasures, consisting partly in costly dresses stored up (Job 27:16), were liable to be consumed by moths (Job 13:28; Isa 50:9; Isa 51:8). In Jam 5:2 there is an evident reference to our Lord's words here. \n\nand rust--any \"eating into\" or \"consuming\"; here, probably, \"wear and tear.\" \n\ndoth corrupt--cause to disappear. By this reference to moth and rust our Lord would teach how perishable are such earthly treasures. \n\nand where thieves break through and steal--Treasures these, how precarious!\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":20,"content":["But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven--The language in Luke (Luk 12:33) is very bold--\"Sell that ye have, and give alms; provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not,\" &c. \n\nwhere neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal--Treasures these, imperishable and unassailable! (Compare Col 3:2).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":21,"content":["For where your treasure is--that which ye value most. \n\nthere will your heart be also--\"Thy treasure--thy heart\" is probably the true reading here: \"your,\" in Luk 12:34, from which it seems to have come in here. Obvious though this maxim be, by what multitudes who profess to bow to the teaching of Christ is it practically disregarded! \"What a man loves,\" says LUTHER, quoted by THOLUCK, \"that is his God. For he carries it in his heart, he goes about with it night and day, he sleeps and wakes with it; be it what it may--wealth or pelf, pleasure or renown.\" But because \"laying up\" is not in itself sinful, nay, in some cases enjoined (Co2 12:14), and honest industry and sagacious enterprise are usually rewarded with prosperity, many flatter themselves that all is right between them and God, while their closest attention, anxiety, zeal, and time are exhausted upon these earthly pursuits. To put this right, our Lord adds what follows, in which there is profound practical wisdom.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":22,"content":["The light--the lamp. \n\nof the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single--simple, clear. As applied to the outward eye, this means general soundness; particularly, not looking two ways. Here, as also in classical Greek, it is used figuratively to denote the simplicity of the mind's eye, singleness of purpose, looking right at its object, as opposed to having two ends in view. (See Pro 4:25-27). \n\nthy whole body shall be full of light--illuminated. As with the bodily vision, the man who looks with a good, sound eye, walks in light, seeing every object clear; so a simple and persistent purpose to serve and please God in everything will make the whole character consistent and bright.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":23,"content":["But if thine eye be evil--distempered, or, as we should say, If we have got a bad eye. \n\nthy whole body shall be full of darkness--darkened. As a vitiated eye, or an eye that looks not straight and full at its object, sees nothing as it is, so a mind and heart divided between heaven and earth is all dark. \n\nIf therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!--As the conscience is the regulative faculty, and a man's inward purpose, scope, aim in life, determines his character--if these be not simple and heavenward, but distorted and double, what must all the other faculties and principles of our nature be which take their direction and character from these, and what must the whole man and the whole life be but a mass of darkness? In Luke (Luk 11:36) the converse of this statement very strikingly expresses what pure, beautiful, broad perceptions the clarity of the inward eye imparts: \"If thy whole body therefore be full of light, having no part dark, the whole shall be full of light, as when the bright shining of a candle doth give thee light.\" But now for the application of this.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":24,"content":["No man can serve--The word means to \"belong wholly and be entirely under command to.\" \n\ntwo masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other--Even if the two masters be of one character and have but one object, the servant must take law from one or the other: though he may do what is agreeable to both, he cannot, in the nature of the thing, be servant to more than one. Much less if, as in the present case, their interests are quite different, and even conflicting. In this case, if our affections be in the service of the one--if we \"love the one\"--we must of necessity \"hate the other\"; if we determine resolutely to \"hold to the one,\" we must at the same time disregard, and (if he insist on his claims upon us) even \"despise the other.\" \n\nYe cannot serve God and mammon--The word \"mamon\"--better written with one m--is a foreign one, whose precise derivation cannot certainly be determined, though the most probable one gives it the sense of \"what one trusts in.\" Here, there can be no doubt it is used for riches, considered as an idol master, or god of the heart. The service of this god and the true God together is here, with a kind of indignant curtness, pronounced impossible. But since the teaching of the preceding verses might seem to endanger our falling short of what is requisite for the present life, and so being left destitute, our Lord now comes to speak to that point.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":25,"content":["Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought--\"Be not solicitous.\" The English word \"thought,\" when our version was made, expressed this idea of \"solicitude,\" \"anxious concern\"--as may be seen in any old English classic; and in the same sense it is used in Sa1 9:5, &c. But this sense of the word has now nearly gone out, and so the mere English reader is apt to be perplexed. Thought or forethought, for temporal things--in the sense of reflection, consideration--is required alike by Scripture and common sense. It is that anxious solicitude, that oppressive care, which springs from unbelieving doubts and misgivings, which alone is here condemned. (See Phi 4:6). \n\nfor your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on--In Luke (Luk 12:29) our Lord adds, \"neither be ye unsettled\"--not \"of doubtful mind,\" as in our version. When \"careful (or 'full of care') about nothing,\" but committing all in prayer and supplication with thanksgiving unto God, the apostle assures us that \"the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus\" (Phi 4:6-7); that is, shall guard both our feelings and our thoughts from undue agitation, and keep them in a holy calm. But when we commit our whole temporal condition to the wit of our own minds, we get into that \"unsettled\" state against which our Lord exhorts His disciples. \n\nIs not the life more than meat--food. \n\nand the body than raiment?--If God, then, gives and keeps up the greater--the life, the body--will He withhold the less, food to sustain life and raiment to clothe the body?\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":26,"content":["Behold the fowls of the air--in Mat 6:28, \"observe well,\" and in Luk 12:24, \"consider\"--so as to learn wisdom from them. \n\nfor they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?--nobler in yourselves and dearer to God. The argument here is from the greater to the less; but how rich in detail! The brute creation--void of reason--are incapable of sowing, reaping, and storing: yet your heavenly Father suffers them not helplessly to perish, but sustains them without any of those processes. Will He see, then, His own children using all the means which reason dictates for procuring the things needful for the body--looking up to Himself at every step--and yet leave them to starve?\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":27,"content":["Which of you, by taking thought--anxious solicitude. \n\ncan add one cubit unto his stature?--\"Stature\" can hardly be the thing intended here: first, because the subject is the prolongation of life, by the supply of its necessaries of food and clothing: and next, because no one would dream of adding a cubit--or a foot and a half--to his stature, while in the corresponding passage in Luke (Luk 12:25-26) the thing intended is represented as \"that thing which is least.\" But if we take the word in its primary sense of \"age\" (for \"stature\" is but a secondary sense) the idea will be this, \"Which of you, however anxiously you vex yourselves about it, can add so much as a step to the length of your life's journey?\" To compare the length of life to measures of this nature is not foreign to the language of Scripture (compare Psa 39:5; Ti2 4:7, &c.). So understood, the meaning is clear and the connection natural. In this the best critics now agree.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":28,"content":["And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider--observe well. \n\nthe lilies of the field, how they grow: they toil not--as men, planting and preparing the flax. \n\nneither do they spin--as women.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":29,"content":["And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these--What incomparable teaching!--best left in its own transparent clearness and rich simplicity.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":30,"content":["Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass--the \"herbage.\" \n\nof the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven--wild flowers cut with the grass, withering by the heat, and used for fuel. (See Jam 1:11). \n\nshall He not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?--The argument here is something fresh. Gorgeous as is the array of the flowers that deck the fields, surpassing all artificial human grandeur, it is for but a brief moment; you are ravished with it to-day, and to-morrow it is gone; your own hands have seized and cast it into the oven: Shall, then, God's children, so dear to Him, and instinct with a life that cannot die, be left naked? He does not say, Shall they not be more beauteously arrayed? but, Shall He not much more clothe them? that being all He will have them regard as secured to them (compare Heb 13:5). The expression, \"Little-faithed ones,\" which our Lord applies once and again to His disciples (Mat 8:26; Mat 14:31; Mat 16:8), can hardly be regarded as rebuking any actual manifestations of unbelief at that early period, and before such an audience. It is His way of gently chiding the spirit of unbelief, so natural even to the best, who are surrounded by a world of sense, and of kindling a generous desire to shake it off.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":31,"content":["Therefore take no thought--solicitude. \n\nsaying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":32,"content":["(For after all these things do the Gentiles seek)--rather, \"pursue.\" Knowing nothing definitely beyond the present life to kindle their aspirations and engage their supreme attention, the heathen naturally pursue present objects as their chief, their only good. To what an elevation above these does Jesus here lift His disciples! \n\nfor your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things--How precious this word! Food and raiment are pronounced needful to God's children; and He who could say, \"No man knoweth the Father but the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him\" (Mat 11:27), says with an authority which none but Himself could claim, \"Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.\" Will not that suffice you, O ye needy ones of the household of faith?\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":33,"content":["But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you--This is the great summing up. Strictly speaking, it has to do only with the subject of the present section--the right state of the heart with reference to heavenly trod earthly things; but being couched in the form of a brief general directory, it is so comprehensive in its grasp as to embrace the whole subject of this discourse. And, as if to make this the more evident, the two keynotes of this great sermon seem purposely struck in it--\"the KINGDOM\" and \"the RIGHTEOUSNESS\" Of the kingdom--as the grand objects, in the supreme pursuit of which all things needful for the present life will be added to us. The precise sense of every word in this golden verse should be carefully weighed. \"The kingdom of God\" is the primary subject of the Sermon on the Mount--that kingdom which the God of heaven is erecting in this fallen world, within which are all the spiritually recovered and inwardly subject portion of the family of Adam, under Messiah as its Divine Head and King. \"The righteousness thereof\" is the character of all such, so amply described and variously illustrated in the foregoing portions of this discourse. The \"seeking\" of these is the making them the object of supreme choice and pursuit; and the seeking of them \"first\" is the seeking of them before and above all else. The \"all these things\" which shall in that case be added to us are just the \"all these things\" which the last words of Mat 6:32 assured us \"our heavenly Father knoweth that we have need of\"; that is, all we require for the present life. And when our Lord says they shall be \"added,\" it is implied, as a matter of course, that the seekers of the kingdom and its righteousness shall have these as their proper and primary portion: the rest being their gracious reward for not seeking them. (See an illustration of the principle of this in Ch2 1:11-12). What follows is but a reduction of this great general direction into a practical and ready form for daily use.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":34,"content":["Take therefore no thought--anxious care. \n\nfor the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself--(or, according to other authorities, \"for itself\")--shall have its own causes of anxiety. \n\nSufficient unto the day is the evil thereof--An admirable practical maxim, and better rendered in our version than in almost any other, not excepting the preceding English ones. Every day brings its own cares; and to anticipate is only to double them.\n\nSERMON ON THE MOUNT--concluded.\n\n\n\n\nNext: Matthew Chapter 7\n\n"]}],"introduction":"FURTHER ILLUSTRATION OF THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE KINGDOM--ITS UNOSTENTATIOUSNESS. (Mat. 6:1-18)\n\nTake heed that ye do not your alms--But the true reading seems clearly to be \"your righteousness.\" The external authority for both readings is pretty nearly equal; but internal evidence is decidedly in favor of \"righteousness.\" The subject of the second verse being \"almsgiving\" that word--so like the other in Greek--might easily be substituted for it by the copyist: whereas the opposite would not be so likely. But it is still more in favor of \"righteousness,\" that if we so read the first verse, it then becomes a general heading for this whole section of the discourse, inculcating unostentatiousness in all deeds of righteousness--Almsgiving, Prayer, and Fasting being, in that case, but selected examples of this righteousness; whereas, if we read, \"Do not your alms,\" &c., this first verse will have no reference but to that one point. By \"righteousness,\" in this case, we are to understand that same righteousness of the kingdom of heaven, whose leading features--in opposition to traditional perversions of it--it is the great object of this discourse to open up: that righteousness of which the Lord says, \"Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven\" (Mat 5:20). To \"do\" this righteousness, was an old and well-understood expression. Thus, \"Blessed is he that doeth righteousness at all times\" (Psa 106:3). It refers to the actings of righteousness in the life--the outgoings of the gracious nature--of which our Lord afterwards said to His disciples, \"Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be My disciples\" (Joh 15:8). \n\nbefore men, to be seen of them--with the view or intention of being beheld of them. See the same expression in Mat 5:28. True, He had required them to let their light so shine before men that they might see their good works, and glorify their Father which is in heaven (Mat 5:16). But this is quite consistent with not making a display of our righteousness for self-glorification. In fact, the doing of the former necessarily implies our not doing the latter. \n\notherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven--When all duty is done to God--as primarily enjoining and finally judging of it--He will take care that it be duly recognized; but when done purely for ostentation, God cannot own it, nor is His judgment of it even thought of--God accepts only what is done to Himself. So much for the general principle. Now follow three illustrations of it.\n\nAlmsgiving (Mat 6:2-4).\n\n"},"thisChapterLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/MAT/6.json","thisChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"MAT","chapter":6},"nextChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/MAT/7.json","nextChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"MAT","chapter":7},"previousChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/MAT/5.json","previousChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"MAT","chapter":5},"numberOfVerses":33}