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shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost 27 farthing. Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time: "Thou 28 shalt not commit adultery." But I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already

retribution who seeks not by penitence and confession to avert it beforehand.-Paid the uttermost farthing, i. e. paid the whole debt. What is here called a farthing was a small brass coin, equal to about four mills of our money.

27. The last paragraph relates to the sixth commandment, to Murder, and the violation of social good will. This one treats of the seventh, of Adultery and Divorcement.- -By them of old time. Should be, to them of old time. But the words are not considered genuine in this place, since they are not found in a large number of the most ancient versions and manuscripts. The distinguished critic Griesbach therefore rejects them as spurious.-Thou shalt not commit adultery. Ex. xx. 14. Our Lord would not, by thus quoting the commandments, weaken their authority, but aims to prove that they should be kept in the spirit as well as the letter, and that the Jewish maxim, that the thoughts and desires were not sinful unless acted out, was false and dangerous. Our Father takes the will for the deed, both in the virtuous and the vicious.

28. To lust after her. Or, more explicitly, in accordance with the original, in order to cherish impure wishes and feelings. "Men, who can only judge by external actions, give the name of a crime merely to the last act; but in the estimation of God, who searches the heart, he hath committed the crime who hath intended to do it, or hath wished it were done. The law of the ten commandments does not expressly prohibit all offences,

but only such as are most atrocious of their kind. Thus it does not prohibit all falsehood to our neighbor, but false witnessing against him; nor every injury to his property, but theft; nor all unlawful commerce between the sexes, but only adultery. Christ however here informs us, that whoever indulges himself in any thing which may lead to that offence is guilty in a certain degree of the crime of adultery." The impure desire is therefore to be abhorred and shunned as being akin to the criminality of the actual deed. 2 Peter ii. 14. "By obscene anecdotes and tales; by songs and jibes; by double meanings and innuendoes; by looks and gestures; by conversation and obscene books and pictures, this law of our Saviour is perpetually violated. If there be any one sentiment of most value for the comfort, the character, the virtuous sociability of the young, one that will shed the greatest charm over society, and make it the most pure, it is that which inculcates perfect delicacy and purity in the intercourse of the sexes. Virtue of any kind never blooms where this is not cherished. Modesty and purity once gone, every flower that would diffuse its fragrance over life withers and dies with it. There is no sin that so withers and blights every virtue, none that so enfeebles and prostrates every ennobling feeling of the soul, as to indulge in a life of impurity. How should purity dwell in the heart, breathe from the life, kindle in the eye, live in the imagination, and dwell in the intercourse of all the young !"-Barnes.

in his heart. And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it 29 from thee; for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if 30 thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee; for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not

29. Right eye. The mention of the eye is naturally connected with the preceding verse, where it speaks of inflaming unlawful emotions by looking on an object of desire. The organ of vision might become an instrument of sin. The Hebrews were accustomed to compare lusts and evil passions, and also good affections, with different members of the human body. The bowels, heart, and eye, were thus used. 2 Cor. vi. 12. vii. 3. Mark vii. 21, 22. Rom. vi. 13. vii. 23.-Offend. Here is an instance where the meaning of the word has changed during two centuries, so that it does not now express what it did at the time our English version was made. It then meant to cause to fall, or to sin; it now means to affront. The original clearly signifies to make to stumble, to seduce, to tempt to sin, or to ensnare. If the right eye, or hand, if the best member in the whole body, led its possessor into sin, it were better to lose it than to perish entirely as to the moral nature. It is said that the right eye was indispensable to a soldier, as war was then conducted, and that to lose it would be more than to part with the other.-Pluck it out. This cannot be understood with any propriety as an injunction to be literally performed, but as a strong mode of saying that the greatest loss was preferable to the loss of holiness; that any hardship was to be endured rather than that a sinful habit should be tolerated; that the dearest object was to be relinquished, if it was a stumblingblock to our virtue. By self-denial,

though it be painful as the plucking out of a right eye, or the cutting off of a hand, must the vicious propensities be restrained. The darling inclination, the easily besetting sin, must be renounced, however great the sacrifice. Mat. xviii. 8, 9. Mark ix. 43–47. Rom. viii. 13.

30. The same in substance as the last verse. Reiteration is one of the figures of good speaking and writing. The deeply moved mind overflows with powerful imagery.—It is profitable, i. e. it is better, it is preferable.

-One of thy members should perish. Men with diseased limbs hesitate not to have them amputated in order to save life. They willingly yield up a less good to retain a greater. So, is the reasoning of our Master, should men do in spiritual things. It is better to crucify the most cherished desires, if sinful, than by their indulgence to endanger the salvation of the soul itself, and lose eternal life.-Hell. This term, in the original, Gehenna, has already been commented on, verse 22. The main idea here conveyed is that of severe punishment, extreme suffering, and no intimation is given as to its place, or its duration, whatever may be said in other texts in relation to these points. Wickedness is its own hell. A wronged conscience, awakened to remorse, is more terrible than fire or worm. In this life and in the next, sin and woe are forever coupled together. God has joined them, and man cannot put them asunder.

31. After showing that the laws

31 that thy whole body should be cast into hell. It hath been said: "Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of 32 divorcement." But I say unto you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery; and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth

of divorce in our own country are an omen of bad import.

of his religion included the heart, as well as the outward conduct, and that no sacrifice was too great 32. The Saviour restricts the to make for virtue, he proceeds to power of divorce to a single case, contrast the practices and opinions and that one where there could be of the times in relation to divorces, no reasonable hope of domestic with the strictness of his principle. peace or confidence. Still his lan-It hath been said. Deut. xxiv. 1. guage may not, perhaps, bear the Jer. iii. 1, 8. Mat. xix. 3-9. literal inference that he allowed of Luke xvi. 18. Mark x. 2-12. divorce in no other possible case. Moses had given a law in reference It has been plausibly said, "that to divorcement, but it was designed Christ may have mentioned Adulfor the then existing condition of tery, rather as an example of that the Jews; it was adapted to the kind or degree of offence which hardness of their hearts. Mark amounted to a dissolution of the x. 5. Jesus would inculcate a marriage bond, than as the only stricter principle. On the interpreinstance in which it was proper tation of the Mosaic law respecting that it should be dissolved."-Causdivorces there was a division of eth her to commit adultery. These opinion among the Jews; one Rab- words are not to be taken literally. binical School holding that a sepa- The man who dismisses his wife ration might take place for any for insufficient reasons does not cause, however slight; another actually cause her to commit that maintaining that it was justifiable crime, but is responsible for it, if only in the case of unfaithfulness he subjects her to a situation where in the marriage relation. Our Lord she is led to commit it. He is a supports the same principle on sharer in the guilt, so far as an ungrounds of his own, and rebukes just divorce has been the cause of those loose notions and practices it, for that was his act.-Marry her common amongst the Jews in rela- that is divorced. That is, her who tion to this most sacred connection. is divorced for any other reason -Writing of divorcement. This than the one mentioned above, or was a bill, or form, stating at a cer- causes as weighty as that. He who tain time the writer had at his marries a woman dismissed from own pleasure divorced and expelled her husband on trivial grounds is his wife, and that she was at liberty partaker of the guilt of adultery, to marry whom she chose. It was inasmuch as a new connection presubscribed by two witnesses, and cludes the restoration of harmony, given to the woman as her bill of and the resumption of the conjugal divorce. Frequency of divorces ties, that have been needlessly and has always been deemed a proof of unjustly severed. The sense of a very corrupt state of society. It the whole verse, according to a was so in the time of our Saviour. sensible commentator, is, that, The increased cases and facilities since divorce should never take

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adultery. Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old 33 time: "Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths." But I say unto you, swear not at all; neither by 34

place except for unfaithfulness, he who dismisses his wife for a less cause, though he should not again be married, exposes her to the danger of an unlawful connection; and he who marries her under such circumstances disregards the relation which, morally, if not legally, exists between her and the husband who divorced her for an insufficient reason."

33. From this to the 38th verse, Jesus takes up the subject of Oaths. In order to understand the drift of his instructions, it is necessary for us to go back to that time and people; for whilst he inculcated a universal religion, his form of address was modified and colored by the circumstances of his hearers. What were those circumstances in the present case? The Jews were in the habit, as their learned men inform us, of dividing oaths into two classes, the lighter and the weightier. The lighter were those which did not contain the name of God, and which, they held, might be broken with impunity, although there was some tacit reference made in them to the Deity. These were frequently inade, according to Philo, in common conversation, amounting in fact to what we call profane swearing. An apocryphal writer refers to the custom, Ecclesiasticus xxiii. 9-13. They also allowed of mental prevarication, a swearing with the lips, and disavowing or annulling of the oath with the heart. That our Saviour did not refer to judicial oaths, as some believe, and prohibit them entirely, is apparent from the specimens he cites, which are unlike any that were ever used in any court of law;

and from his own example in answering to an oath, Mat. xxvi. 64; and from that of his Apostle Paul in using them, Rom. i. 9. Gal. i. 20. 1 Thess. ii. 5. 2 Cor. i. 18, 23. He aims to sweep away the minute and pernicious distinctions introduced into promissory oaths and bonds, to inculcate greater simplicity and sincerity of conversation. By them of old time. Rather, according to Griesbach, to them of old time.—Thou shalt not forswear thyself. Lev. xix. 12. Num. xxx. 2. Deut. xxiii. 23. Thou shalt not perjure thyself; thou shalt not take an oath in form, and do it with a mental reservation, so as to deceive the other party, and be guilty of trifling with the venerable majesty of God.-But perform unto the Lord thine oaths. Deal honestly in the matter. Be true to the obligation assumed in making the oath. So much for what Moses taught. What does Jesus teach?

34. But I say unto you, swear not at all; neither by heaven. That is to say, abolish this practice; abandon the common irreverent oaths, in which there is a tacit understanding and purpose to deceive. The sense is more clearly brought out by Griesbach, who leaves out the usual semicolon, and puts in only a comma. For as the punctuation was determined, not by the original inspired writers, but by their fallible successors in the church, it is lawful to change it as the sense seems to require. Our Lord is not made to say, swear not at all, which would be plainly one sense; but swear not at all by heaven, and the other pernicious forms which he mentions, which is plainly quite a

35 heaven, for it is God's throne; nor by the earth, for it is his footstool; 36 neither by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King; neither

shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair 37 white or black. But let your communication be: Yea, yea; Nay, nay; 38 for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. Ye have heard

different sense. If it had been his object to prohibit oaths altogether, he would certainly have said, swear not at all,—and said no more; but as he goes on to specify what they were not to swear by, he leaves it plainly to be inferred that there is at least one oath, that by God himself, that established in the Mosaic code, which it is lawful to take. If a legislator prohibits the importation of certain articles of commerce, we conclude that the articles which he does not specify in the prohibition may be lawfully imported. For it is God's throne. Is. Ixvi. 1. Acts vii. 49. Jesus shows, Mat. xxiii. 22, that in swearing by heaven there is a secret appeal to the Being who dwelleth therein, and that in a trivial matter such an oath should not be used, for it is profaneness; especially should not be used as if a mental reservation could be made, and the performance of the oath could be innocently trifled with, for that would be perjury. To call heaven God's throne, and the earth his footstool, is to use figures in accommodation to man's imperfect idea of the allsurrounding Deity. The Hebrew Scriptures abound in similar in

stances.

35. He who swears by the earth makes a solemn and binding oath, and is responsible for its fulfilment, for he virtually appeals to Him before whose infinite greatness the mighty globe itself is but a footstool. And he who swears by Jerusalem calls Him to witness whose city Jerusalem peculiarly is, as the capital of his chosen people,

and the place of his worship. The ancient Arabs called God simply "the King." The Jews often addressed him with this title. Ps. xcv. 3. Is. xli. 21.

36. The oaths enumerated by Jesus were common amongst the Heathen likewise, as well as among the Jews. Juvenal, Horace, Virgil, Ovid, Martial, and Pliny, to mention no more, might be cited in illustration of the custom. As God is the architect of the head, and it is wholly in his hands, so that the very color of the hair is determined by his will exclusively, it follows that in swearing by the head reference is made to the Deity, and the oath is therefore weighty and not to be used on every insignificant occasion; and binding and not to be broken with impunity.

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37. Your communication. cording to Robinson, in his Greek Lexicon of the New Testament, your answer, your reply. When in common conversation you make a reply, do not try to confirm your assertion with an oath, as if that would add any weight to it, but let your yes be yes, and your no be no. Let your simple affirmation or ne gation be sufficient. Do not expose yourself to profaneness and perjury. For whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. Or, the evil one. If you go beyond this simplicity of speech, you fall into evil. It was a proverb among the Jews, to characterize a man of veracity, that his yes was yes, and his no, no. 2 Cor. i. 17, 18, 19. James v. 12. In conclusion, upon this paragraph relating to oaths, we are to bear in

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