Also rendered in New Testament refuse, Hebrews 12:19, Hebrews 12:25, where both meanings occur. See also 2 Timothy 2:23, Rev. Our phrase, beg off, expresses the idea here.

I must needs (ἔχω ἀνάγκην)

Lit., I have necessity: a strong expression.

Go (ἐξελθεῖν)

Go out (ἐξ) from the city.

A newly married man had special indulgence allowed him. See Deuteronomy 24:5. Herodotus relates how Croesus refused for his son an invitation to a hunt on this ground. "But Croesus answered, 'Say no more of my son going with you; that may not be in anywise. He is but just joined in wedlock, and is busy enough with that'" (i., 36). The man who had the most plausible excuse returned the surliest and most peremptory answer. Compare 1 Corinthians 7:33.

The former word from πλατύς, broad; the broad streets contrasted with the narrow lanes. Wyc., great streets and small streets.

Following the reading ὡς, as. The best texts substitute ὃ, what. Render as Rev., "What thou didst command is done."

See on Matthew 21:33. It may mean either a hedge, or a place enclosed with a hedge. Here the hedges beside which vagrants rest.

Compel

Compare constrained, Matthew 14:22; Acts 26:11; Galatians 6:12. Not to use force, but to constrain them against the reluctance which such poor creatures would feel at accepting the invitation of a great lord.

May be filled (γεμισθῇ)

A very strong word; properly of loading a ship. "Nature and grace alike abhor a vacuum" (Bengel).

More correctly, his own. An important charge. All must bear the cross, but not all the same cross: each one his own.

The subject of the parable is the life of Christian discipleship, which is figured by a tower, a lofty structure, as something distinguished from the world and attracting attention.

Counteth (ψηφίζει)

Only here and Revelation 13:18. From ψῆφος, a pebble (see Revelation 2:17), used as a counter. Thus Herodotus says that the Egyptians, when they calculate (λογιζονται ψήφοις, reckon with pebbles), move their hand from right to left (ii., 36). So Aristophanes, "Reckon roughly, not with pebbles (ψήφοις), but on the hand" ("Wasps," 656). Similarly calculate, from Latin calculus, a pebble. Used also of voting. Thus Herodotus: "The Greeks met at the altar of Neptune, and took the ballots (τὰς ψήφοις) wherewith they were to give their votes." Plato: "And you, would you vote (ἂν ψῆφον θεῖο, cast your pebble) with me or against me ?" ("Protagoras," 330). See Acts 26:10.

Cost (τὴν δαπάνην)

Allied to δάπτω, to devour. Hence expense, as something which eats up resources.

Sufficient (εἰς ἀπαρτισμόν)

Lit., unto completion. The kindred verb ἀπαρτίζω, not used in New Testament, means to make even or square, and hence to complete.

Lit., "to finish out" (ἐκ).

Behold (θεωροῦντες)

Attentively watching the progress of the building. See on Luke 10:18.

Begin to mock

As his resources come to an end.

With sarcastic emphasis.

Was not able (οὐκ ἴσχυσεν)

From ἰσχύς, strength. See on power, 2 Peter 2:11. To be strong in body or in resources, and so to be worth, as Lat., valere. "This man was not worth enough, or was not good for the completion." In this latter sense, Matthew 5:13, "good for nothing."

Lit., to come together with another king Jer war. So Rev., to encounter another king in war.

"Out he flashed,

And into such a song, such fire for fame,

Such trumpet-blowings in it, coming down

To such a stern and iron-clashing close,

That when he stopped we longed to hurl together."

Tennyson, Idyls of the King.

With ten thousand (ἐν δέκα χιλιάσιν)

Lit., in ten thousands: i.e., in the midst of; surrounded by. Compare Jde 1:14.

On a footing of equality: king treating with king. See on Luke 11:9.

Conditions of peace (τὰ πρὸς εἰρήνην)

Lit., this looking toward peace: preliminaries. Compare Romans 14:19, things which make for peace (τὰ τῆς εἰρήνης, the things of peace).

Bids good-by to. Rev., renounceth. See on Luke 9:61. "In that forsaketh lies the key to the whole passage" (Trench). Christian discipleship is founded in self-renunciation.

See on Matthew 5:13.

Shall it be seasoned

See on Mark 9:50.

Not a desert place, but uncultivated plains; pasturage. Note that the sheep are being pastured in the wilderness. A traveller, cited anonymously by Trench, says: "There are, indeed, some accursed patches, where scores of miles lie before you like a tawny Atlantic, one yellow wave rising before another. But far from infrequently there are regions of wild fertility where the earth shoots forth a jungle of aromatic shrubs" ("Parables").

Matthew, If so be that he find it.

On his shoulders

Lit., his own shoulders. "He might have employed a servant's aid, but love and joy make the labor sweet to himself" (Bengel). The "Good Shepherd" is a favorite subject in early Christian art. "We cannot go through any part of the catacombs, or turn over the pages of any collection of ancient Christian monuments, without coming across it again and again. We know from Tertullian that it was often designed upon chalices. We find it ourselves painted in fresco upon the roofs and walls of the sepulchral chambers; rudely scratched upon gravestones, or more carefully sculptured on sarcophagi; traced in gold upon glass, moulded on lamps, engraved on rings; and, in a word, represented on every species of Christian monument that has come down to us....It was selected because it expressed the whole sum and substance of the Christian dispensation....He is sometimes represented alone with his flock; at other times accompanied by his apostles, each attended by one or more sheep. Sometimes he stands amidst many sheep; sometimes he caresses one only; but most commonly - so commonly as almost to form a rule to which other scenes might be considered the exceptions - he bears a lost sheep, or even a goat, upon his shoulders" (Northcote and Brownlow, "Roma Sotterranea"). A beautiful specimen is found in the mausoleum of Galls Placidia, at Ravenna, erected about 450 a.d. It is a mosaic in green and gold. The figure is a beautiful one, youthful in face and form, as is usual in the early mosaics, and surrounded by his sheep. Facing this appears, over the altar, the form of Christ seated beside a kind of furnace, on the other side of which stands a little open bookcase. He is engaged in casting heretical books into the fire. Are they, indeed, the same - the Shepherd Christ of the Gospels, and the polemic Christ of the ecclesiastics

"Not with the sheep. Our life is his joy" (Gregory, cited by Trench).

See on Matthew 3:2.

Used by Luke only. A coin worth about eighteen cents, commonly with the image of an owl, a tortoise, or a head of Pallas. As a weight, 65.5 grains. A common weight in dispensing medicines and writing prescriptions. Wyc., transcribing the Greek word, dragmes. Tynd., grotes.

Female friends, for the noun is used in the feminine form.

Ilost

Through her own carelessness. Of the sheep, Jesus says "was lost." "A sheep strays of itself, but a piece of money could only be lost by a certain negligence on the part of such as should have kept it" (Trench). In the one case, the attention is fastened on the condition of the thing lost; in the other, upon the sorrow of the one who has lost.

According to the Jewish law of inheritance, if there were but two sons, the elder would receive two portions, the younger the third of all movable property. A man might, during his lifetime, dispose of all his property by gift as he chose. If the share of younger children was to be diminished by gift or taken away, the disposition must be made by a person presumably near death. No one in good health could diminish, except by gift, the legal portion of a younger son. The younger son thus was entitled by law to his share, though he had no right to claim it during his father's lifetime. The request must be regarded as asking a favor (Edersheim).

Unto them

Even to the elder, who did not ask it.

Everything was taken out of the father's hands.

Took his journey (ἀπεδήμησεν)

Answering to our phrase went abroad.

Wasted (διεσκόρπισεν)

The word used of winnowing grain. See on Matthew 25:24.

With riotous living (ζῶν ἀσώτως)

Lit., living unsavingly. Only here in New Testament. The kindred noun, ἀσωτία, is rendered by the Rev., in all the three passages where it occurs, riot (Ephesians 5:18; Titus 1:6; 1 Peter 4:4). See note on the last passage.

See on cost, Luke 14:28.

In that land

Want is characteristic of the "far country." The prodigal feels the evil of his environment. "He (with a shade of emphasis) began to be in want."

To be in want (ὑστερεῖσθαι)

From ὕστερος, behind. Compare our phrase of one in straitened circumstances, to fall behind.

The verb means to glue or cement. Very expressive here, implying that he forced himself upon the citizen, who was unwilling to engage him, and who took him into service only upon persistent entreaty. "The unhappy wretch is a sort of appendage to a strange personality" (Godet). Compare Acts 9:26. Wyc., cleaved. See, also, on Acts 5:13.

To feed swine

As he had received him reluctantly, so he gave him the meanest possible employment. An ignominious occupation, especially in Jewish eyes. The keeping of swine was prohibited to Israelites under a curse.

Longing desire. Imperfect tense, he was longing, all the while he was tending the swine.

Filled his belly (γεμίσαι τὴν κοιλίαν)

The texts vary. The Rev. follows the reading χορτασθῆναι, "He would fain have been filled," using the same word which is employed of filling those who hunger and thirst after righteousness (Matthew 5:6, see note), and of the five thousand (Matthew 14:20). He had wanted the wrong thing all along, and it was no better now. All he wanted was to fill his belly.

Husks (κερατίων)

Carob-pods. The word is a diminutive of κέρας, a horn, and means, literally, a little horn, from the shape of the pod. The tree is sometimes called in German Bockshornbaum, Goat's-horn-tree. "The fleshy pods are from six to ten inches long, and one broad, lined inside with a gelatinous substance, not wholly unpleasant to the taste when thoroughly ripe" (Thomson, "Land and Book"). The shell or pod alone is eaten. It grows in Southern Italy and Spain, and it is said that during the Peninsular War the horses of the British cavalry were often fed upon the pods. It is also called Saint John's bread, from a tradition that the Baptist fed upon its fruit in the wilderness. Edersheim quotes a Jewish saying, "When Israel is reduced to the carob-tree, they become repentant."

A striking expression, putting the state of rebellion against God as a kind of madness. It is a wonderful stroke of art, to represent the beginning of repentance as the return of a sound consciousness. Ackermann ("Christian Element in Plato") observes that Plato thinks of redemption as a coming to one's self; an apprehending of one's self as existent; as a severing of the inmost being from the surrounding element. Several passages of Plato are very suggestive on this point. "He who bids a man know himself, would have him know his soul" ("Alcibiades," i., 130). "' To see her (the soul) as she really is, not as we now behold her, marred by communion with the body and other miseries, you should look upon her with the eye of reason, in her original purity, and then her beauty would be discovered, and in her image justice would be more clearly seen, and injustice, and all the things which we have described. Thus far we have spoken the truth concerning her as she appears at present; but we must remember also that we have seen her only in a condition which may be compared to that of the sea-god Glaucus, whose original image can hardly be discerned, because his natural members are broken off and crushed, and in many ways damaged by the waves; and incrustations have grown over them of sea-weed and shells and stones, so that he is liker to some sea-monster than to his natural form. And the soul is in a similar condition, disfigured by ten thousand ills: but not there, Glaucon, not there must we look.'

"'Where, then?'

"'At her love of wisdom. Let us see whom she affects, and what converse she seeks, in virtue of her near kindred with the immortal and eternal and divine; also, how different she would become, if wholly following this superior principle, and borne by a divine impulse out of the ocean in which she now is, and disengaged from the stones and shells and things of earth and rock, which, in wild variety, grow around her, because she feeds upon earth, and is crusted over by the good things of this life as they are termed. Then would you see her as she is'" ("Republic," 611).

Have bread enough and to spare (περισσεύονται ἄρτων)

Lit., abound in loaves. Wyc., plenty of loaves.

Perish

Better, I am perishing. The best texts insert ὧδε, here, in contrast with the father's house, suggested by the father's servants.

An affecting touch in the Greek: his own father.

Ran

Trench cites an Eastern proverb: "Who draws near to me (God) an inch, I will draw near to him an ell; and whoso walks to meet me, I will leap to meet him."

Kissed

See on Matthew 26:49.

He omits make me a servant. The slavish spirit vanishes in the clasp of the father's arms. Bengel suggests that the father would not suffer him to utter the news. I once heard Norman McLeod say in a sermon, "Before the prodigal son reached his home he thought over what he should do to merit restoration. He would be a hired servant. But when his father came out and met him, and put his arms round him, and the poor boy was beginning to say this and that, the just shut his mouth, and said, 'I take you to my heart, and that's enough.'"

Bond-servants. There is a fine touch in throwing in the bond-servants immediately after thy son (Luke 15:21).

Bring forth

Some texts add quickly (ταχὺ). So Rev.

The best robe (στολὴν τὴν πρώτην)

Lit., a robe, the first. Properly of a long, flowing robe, a festive garment. See Mark 16:5; Luke 20:45:59

Ring

See on James 2:2. Compare Genesis 41:42.

Shoes

Both the ring and the shoes are marks of a free man. Slaves went barefoot.

The article denoting one set apart for a festive occasion. Tynd., "that fatted calf."