The verb means, first, to give, or hand over to another. So, to surrender a city or a person, often with the accompanying notion of treachery. The Rev., therefore, rightly renders, was delivered up.

Wyc., dwelt. The article with the participle (lit., the people, the one sitting) signifying something characteristic or habitual' the people whose characteristic it was to sit in darkness. This thought is emphasized by repetition in a stronger form; sitting in the region and shadow of Death. Death is personified. This land, whose inhabitants are spiritually dead, belongs to Death as the realm of his government.

Originally, to discharge the duty of a herald (κήρυξ); hence to cry out, proclaim, (see on 2 Peter 2:5). The standing expression in the New Testament for the proclamation of the Gospel; but confined to the primary announcement of the message and facts of salvation, and not including continuous instruction in the contents and connections of the message, which is expressed by διδάσκειν (to teach). Both words are used in Matthew 4:23; Matthew 9:35; Matthew 11:1).

The small lake of Gennesaret, only thirteen miles long and six wide in its broadest part, is called the sea, by the same kind of popular usage by which Swiss and German lakes are called See; as the Knigsee, the Trauensee. So, also, in Holland we have the Zuyder Zee. The Latin mare (the sea) likewise becomes meet in Holland, and is used of a lake, as Haarlemmer Meer; and in England, mere, as appears in Windermere, Grasmere, etc.

A net (ἀμφίβληστρον)

From ἀμφὶ, around, and Βάλλω, to throw. Hence the casting-net, which, being east over the shoulder, spreads into a circle (ἀμφὶ). The word is sometimes used by classical Greek writers to denote a garment which encompasses the wearer. In Matthew 4:20, the word net again occurs, but representing a different Greek word (δίκτυον) which is the general name for all kinds of nets, whether for taking fish or fowl. Still another word occurs at Matthew 13:47, σαγήνη, the draw-net. See farther on that passage.

Not necessarily repairing; the word means to adjust, to "put to rights." It may mean here preparing the nets for the next fishing.

The description of the ailments to which our Lord's power was applied gains in vividness by study of the words in detail. In Matthew 4:23, the Rev. rightly transposes sickness and disease; for νόσος (A. V., sickness) carries the notion of something severe, dangerous, and even violent (compare the Latin noceo, to hurt, to which the root is akin). Homer always represents νόσος as the visitation of an angry deity. Hence used of the plague which Apollo sent upon the Greeks ("Iliad," 1:10). So Sophocles ("Antigone," 421) calls a whirlwind θείαν νόσον (a divine visitation). Disease is, therefore, the more correct rendering as expressing something stronger than sickness or debility. Sickness, however, suits the other word, μαλακίαν. The kindred adjective, μαλακος, means soft, as a couch or newly-ploughed furrow, and thus easily runs into our invidious moral sense of softness, namely, effeminacy or cowardice, and into the physical sense of weakness, sickness. Hence the word emphasizes the idea of debility rather than of violent suffering or danger.

In Matthew 4:24 we have, first, a general expression for ailments of all kinds: all that were sick (lit., all who had themselves in evil case; πάντας τοὺς κακῶς ἔχοντας). Then the idea of suffering is emphasized in the word taken (συνεχομένους), which means literally held-together or compressed; and so the Rev. holden is an improvement on taken, in which the A. V. has followed Wyc. and Tynd. The word is used of the multitude thronging Christ (Luke 8:45). Compare, also, "how am I straitened (Luke 12:50); and I am in a strait (Philippians 1:1-3). Then follow the specific forms of suffering, the list headed again by the inclusive word νόσοις, diseases, and the καὶ following having the force of and particularly. Note the word torments (βασάνοις). Βάσανος originally meant the "Lydian stone," or touchstone, on which pure gold, when rubbed, leaves a peculiar mark. Hence, naturally, a test; then a test or trial by torture. "Most words," says Professor Campbell ("On the Language of Sophocles") have been originally metaphors, and metaphors are continually falling into the rank of words," used by the writer as mere vehicles of expression without any sense of the picturesque or metaphorical element at their core. Thus the idea of a test gradually passes entirely out of Βάσανος leaving merely the idea of suffering or torture. This is peculiarly noticeable in the use of this word and its derivatives throughout the New Testament; for although suffering as a test is a familiar New Testament truth, these words invariably express simply torment or pain. Wycliffe renders, "They offered to him all men having evil, taken with divers sorrows and torments;" and Tyndale, "All sick people that were taken with divers diseases and gripings." Lunatic, or moon-struck, (σεληνιαζομένους), is rendered by Rev. epileptic, with reference to the real or supposed influence of the changes of the moon upon the victims of epilepsy.