Lit., to throw or cast. By this word the expectancy of the disciples is dramatically pictured, as if he represented them as eagerly looking up for peace as something to be flung down upon the earth from heaven. Dr. Morison gives the picture thus: "All are on tiptoe of expectation. What is it that is about to happen? Is it the reign of peace that is just about to be inaugurated and consummated? Is there henceforth to be only unity and amity? As they muse and debate, lo! a sword is flung into the midst."

Lit., part asunder. Wyc., to depart equals part.

Daughter-in-law (νύμφην)

So A. Y. and Rev.; but the full force is lost in this rendering. The word means bride, and though sometimes used in classical Greek of any married woman, it carries a notion of comparative youth. Thus in Homer, "Odyssey," iv., 74:3, the aged nurse, Euryclea, addresses Penelope (certainly not a bride) as νύμφα φίλη (dear bride), of course as a term of affection or petting. Compare "Iliad," iii., 130, where Iris addresses Helen in the same way. The radical and bitter character of the division brought into households by the Gospel is shown by the fact of its affecting domestic relations in their very freshness, The newly-married wife shall be set at variance with her mother-in-law. Wycliffe's rendering is peculiar: And the son's wife against the wife's or husband's mother.

This was no Jewish proverb, crucifixion not being a Jewish punishment; so that Jesus uses the phrase anticipatively, in view of the death which he himself was to die. This was one of those sayings described in John 12:16, which the disciples understood not at the first, but the meaning of which was revealed in the light of later events. The figure itself was borrowed from the practice which compelled criminals to bear their own cross to the place of execution. His cross: his own. All are not alike. There are different crosses for different disciples. The English proverb runs: "Every cross hath its inscription" - the name of him for whom it is shaped.

The word is really a past participle, found. Our Lord looked back in thought to each man's past, and forward to its appropriate consummation in the future. Similarly, he who lost (ἀπολέσας). Plato seems to have fore-shadowed this wonderful thought. "O my friend! I want you to see that the noble and the good may possibly be something different from saving and being saved, and that he who is truly a man ought not to care about living a certain time: he knows, as women say, that we must all die, and therefore he is not fond of life; he leaves all that with God, and considers in what way he can best spend his appointed term" ("Gorgias," 512). Still more to the point, Euripides:

"Who knows if life be not death, and death life ?"

The preposition διά has a distributive force: giving to each his appropriate charge.

Their cities (αὐτῶν)

The towns of those to whom he came - the Galilaeans. Compare Matthew 4:23.

But the correct reading is διά, by. He sent by his disciples. So Rev.

Emphatic. Art thou "the Coming One?" - a current phrase for the Messiah.

Tynd., The halt go.

See on Matthew 5:29. Rev., shall find none occasion of stumbling. Compare Wyc., shall not be slandered.

Rev., more literal and better, as these went their way; or while they, John's disciples, were departing' thus giving the simultaneousness of Jesus' words with the act of departure.

To see (θεάσασθαι)

Rev., to behold. θεᾶσθαι, like θεωρεῖν, expresses the calm, continuous contemplation of an object which remains before the spectator. Compare John 1:14. Another verb is used in Christ's repetition of the question, Matthew 11:8, Matthew 11:9; ἰδεῖν in the ordinary sense of seeing. The more earnest expression suits the first question.