And Jesus, walking by the Sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, 18 Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishers. And he saith unto them: 19 Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. And they 20 straightway left their nets, and followed him. And going on 21 from thence, he saw other two brethren, James the son of Zeb in his preaching; for the popular feeling, thus aroused, would have brought the Jews into immediate collision with the Romans. By his labors and instructions he sought to open their prejudiced minds to the important fact that the Messiah was to be a spiritual, not a temporal King. See note on chap. iii. 7. 18. Sea of Galilee. This body of water went under the names of the Sea of Galilee, Sea of Tiberias, Lake of Gennesareth, or Cinnereth. It is included in Lower Galilee, and is situated east of north from Jerusalem, at the distance of seventy miles. The shape of the lake is oval, its length about sixteen miles, its breadth about six. Its waters are pure and sweet, and abound in fish. It is situated among high, steep hills, and is therefore subject to severe and sudden gusts of wind. Many flourishing cities once stood on its romantic shores, as Tiberias, Bethsaida, Capernaum, Chorazin, and Hippos. Two brethren. It is an interesting circumstance, that several of the Apostles were related to each other, and also to Jesus, thus adding the ties of kindred to the sympathies of religion, and securing union and harmony. Simon called Peter, and Andrew. Peter is the same as Cephas in Hebrew, and signifies a rock. Matt. xvi. 18; John i. 42. They were the sons of John, or Jona. They were already acquainted with Jesus, as appears from John i. 35-42. This was a kind of second call. — Net. A seine, or large drag net. The original word is not the same as that trans lated nets in verse 21. The fishery of this lake afforded a subsistence to a large number of persons. 19. Follow me. Equivalent to saying, "Become my disciples." Matt. viii. 22, ix. 9.-Fishers of men. You shall collect men into the kingdom of the Messiah, from the Jews and Gentiles. This promise was abundantly fulfilled in the multitudes which were converted by the Apostles. This instance is in harmony with Christ's general method of teaching, by which he employs events, trades, objects around him to illustrate and enforce spiritual truth. In classical authors, terms of hunting and fishing are often used in relation to acquiring adherents and disciples. Jesus calls not the rich, learned, refined, or powerful; resorts not to the schools of Jerusalem, but to the fishing-boats of Galilee, to obtain his disciples and apostles. Fishermen could better endure hardships. They had not been so deeply corrupted by worldliness, or spoiled by vain philosophy. They would, being uneducated men, also make it more apparent to the world that their doctrine was from heaven, not of men. Many great movements in society begin in the humbler walks of life. 20. Straightway. They obeyed the invitation without seeking to excuse themselves, or waiting till a more convenient season. - - Followed him. They were probably ignorant to some extent, at this time, of the spiritual character of their Master. 21. James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother. James received edee, and John his brother, in a ship with Zebedee their father, 22 mending their nets; and he called them. And they immediately left the ship and their father, and followed him. 23 And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing the title of James the Elder, or Greater, to distinguish him from James called the Less. John was the Evangelist, designated as the disciple whom Jesus loved. They had probably seen Jesus at Jerusalem, or elsewhere, for he was evidently no stranger to them. Ship. Bet ter, boat, or fishing vessel, or craft, such as were used on this inland water.-Mending their nets. These, according to the original, were small casting nets, and unlike that used by Simon and Andrew, verse 18. It has been ingeniously observed, that the inventor of a fictitious tale would not have been likely to have mentioned so trivial a fact as that they were mending their nets; trivial to one not engaged in that calling, but important to the fisherman himself. The mention of such a fact is one of those minute, but strong and beautiful filaments of truth and reality which are woven into every page of the Gospels; were not our eyes so dulled by custom and familiarity as to pass them over unheeded. 22. Left the ship and their father, and followed him. Matt. x. 37, xix. 27, 29. They felt it to be their duty to leave all, at the command of one whom they considered as a divine messenger, and perhaps as the Messiah; and though they had not yet, and did not have for a long time, correct ideas of the mission of their Master, yet they showed their religious faith and loyalty by adhering to one authorized and sent by God. 23. Synagogues. This word at first meant a collection of people, but, like the English word church, it afterwards was applied to the building where the assembly was held. The origin of Synagogues is unknown. They were probably introduced during or after the Babylonish captivity. They are not mentioned in the Old Testament. At first they were erected without the cities, in the fields, and usually near streams, or on the sea-shore, for the greater convenience of ablution; subsequently they were erected in cities, in proportion to the population. Jerusalem had nearly five hundred. Services were held in them on festival and fast days, and the first, second, and seventh days of every week. Saturday was the Jewish Sabbath. The exercises consisted in reading the law and the prophets; prayers, and addresses to the assembly, consisting chiefly of interpretations of Scripture. The whole was closed by a short prayer and benediction, to which the assembly responded, Amen. The officers in a Synagogue were ten in number. The most important were the Rulers, who constituted, according to Lightfoot, the "council of three," and the scribe, or minister, who prayed and preached. Mark v. 22 · Luke iv. 20. The Synagogue opened a fine avenue for Christ and his Apostles to communicate their instructions to the Jewish people, for strangers were often invited to give a word of exhortation. Acts xiii. 15.- Gospel of the kingdom, i. e. Christianity. Gospel is compounded of two Saxon words, meaning good, and message, or news. Jesus preached the good news of Christianity, the glad intelligence of the mercy of God, and the broth all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people. And bis fame went throughout all Syria; and they 24 brought unto him all sick people, that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatic, and those that had erhood and immortality of mankind. The word kingdom is used as implying that its subjects would all recognise and obey God, as the Supreme Lawgiver and Judge. Healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease, i. e. every kind, not every case of sickness. According to Bloomfield, the original word, translated sickness, signifies a thoroughly formed disorder, and that translated disease, an incipient indisposition. Jesus had already, as we learn from John ii., v., begun to work his beneficent miracles. How active was his benevolence! He went about doing good, and proclaiming glad tidings. 24. Syria was at this period a Roman province, lying north and northeast of Palestine, and contiguous to it.. - All sick people. Not literally every one, but great numbers of all kinds. Possessed with devils. Or, to hold to the original, possessed with demons, demoniacs. None probably believe that the Jews supposed that these persons were possessed of devils, in the present acceptation of that word; but with demons, or the departed spirits of wicked, malignant men, evil genii, who entered into the living. Josephus says, "that those called demons are no other than the spirits of the wicked, that enter into men that are alive, and kill them, unless they can obtain some help against them." This was probably a superstition. Wetstein has conclusively shown that it is the unanimous opinion of physicians, whose authority is great upon such a subject, that demoniacs and lunatics See were cases of natural disorders and insanity. The demoniacs sometimes believed, indeed, that they were possessed with evil spirits; but their testimony is not admissible; since the insane often imagine themselves to be what they are not; kings, generals, Christ, and even God. The symptoms, as given in the New Testament, of this class of sufferers, are precisely those of insanity. Their dislike to wearing clothes, their love of living in by-places, and wandering about, their recklessness in attacking persons, their sudden fits of violent convulsions, their fixed idea of being some thing or some body different from themselves, indicate a state of derangement. Luke viii. 27–30; Matt. viii. 28; Mark ix. 20. When cured, the demoniacs are said to be restored to reason. Luke viii. 35. Jesus and his Apostles used the popular language of the times in reference to them. Nor was there any prevarication in it, any more than in our using the word bewitched, though we do not believe in witchcraft; and the expressions, St. Vitus' dance, and St. Anthony's fire, though we suppose that those saints have nothing to do with certain disorders of the human body called by those names. Jesus came not to reform institutions, but men, their makers; not language, but the spirit from which it sprang. When true religion had enlightened mankind, he foresaw, that the superstitions about demons, ghosts, and witches, would disappear, as the unseemly birds of night vanish before the shining of the sun. -Lui 25 the palsy; and he healed them. And there followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judea, and from beyond Jordan. CHAPTER V. The Sermon on the Mount. AND seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain; and natic. Not maniacs, but those af fected by epilepsy, or failing sickness. Matt. xvii. 15. Luna, in Latin, means moon. It was supposed that persons affected by this disorder were made better or worse by the changes of that luminary. The same influence is supposed to affect the insane, and with some reason. Hence the insane are often called lunatics at the present day. Had the palsy. This disorder affects the nerves of locomotion. Sometimes it seizes the whole body. Sometimes it fixes upon particular parts or limbs, and then takes various names according to its location. The cure, by our Master, of these severe chronic complaints afforded him an opportunity to do immense good, and furnished one of the strongest evidences of the divine authority of his mission and ministry. "The works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness of me, was his convincing argument. 25. Decapolis. Or, "the ten cities," from two Greek words having this meaning. This region was sitnated east of the Lake of Galilee. The names of the ten cities were, according to Pliny, Scythopolis, Hippos, Gadara, Dion, Pella, Gerasa, Philadelphia, Canatha, Damascus, and Raphana; but Ptolemy makes Capitolias one of the towns, and Josephus substitutes Otopos for Canatha. The vast throngs which assembled from the most distant parts of the land were drawn together, probably, by the astonishing news of Christ's miraculous power, with the wish to be cured of their diseases; with the sentiment of curiosity, wonder, ambition, highly exalted national hopes, and all the various motives that could actuate the human heart under circumstances so extraordinary. Multitudes no doubt came hoping to see him declare himself the Messiah, unfurl the banner of that mighty name, and strike for the liberties of Palestine, and the subjugation of the world. How widely they would be disappointed in their hopes is apparent from the following chapter. CHAP. V. As has been already said, the Jews were in expectation of a temporal, not a spiritual Messiah. The vast multitudes that thronged around the Saviour, and witnessed his miracles, and heard his words, were probably inflamed with the same worldly desires. And as the masses of living beings swelled larger and larger, these persuasions would be immensely deepened by sympathy. Heart would beat to heart, and deep call unto deep; all the strongest passions of human and Jewish nature were setting, like an tide, in one direction, with an irresistible momentum. We can, by throwing ourselves into the scene, and imagining the circumstances under which Jesus spoke, gain some idea of the moral intrepidity, which impelled him to dissipate these brilliant but false anticipations, and, in the face of thousands, ready to raise the war-cry of a military leader, ocean when he was set, his disciples came unto him. And he opened 2 his mouth, and taught them, saying: Blessed are the poor in 3 spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they 4 and rush to conflict, rapine, and dominion, to deliver first the Beatitudes, and then his searching comments upon the opinions and practices of the Scribes and Pharisees. The object of the Sermon on the Mount, as it has usually been called, was to give the collected multitudes some notions of the nature of his kingdom. He defines it as a kingdom within, a reign of the spirit. He settles the long vexed question of Happiness. He prostrates their worldly hopes, by showing that his followers must look for spiritual rewards only, rewards within themselves; the happiness that arose, not from riches, honors, or pleasures, but from meekness, humility, righteousness, peace, and purity. The groundwork of his system, the fundamental precepts, he lays down in a series of bold and beautiful paradoxes; at least, such they seem to most men, so small are their spiritual attainments. Then he proceeds to inculcate an infinitely higher toned morality and piety than that preached and practised by the teachers of the day. He proclaimed what may be called the Magna Charta of the spiritual life for all mankind, in this sublime address. It affords in itself alone an unanswerable argument for the truth of Christianity. 1-12. For a parallel passage see Luke vi. 20-26. 1. Seeing the multitudes, i. e. the multitudes mentioned in the last verse of the foregoing chapter. That was a reason for his speaking. He saw thousands around him, and he took the opportunity to explain his doctrines. What is here condensed in one continuous discourse was probably also delivered in parts to different people upon other occa sions. He went up into a mountain. Or, according to the original, the mountain. Some well known mountain or hill in the vicinity of Capernaum. Its location cannot now be determined. From this elevation he could more conveniently address the vast concourse. And when he was set. Was seated. While teaching, the Jewish Rabbins were accustomed to sit, but their pupils kept a standing posture. Luke iv. 20; John viii. 2; Acts xvi. 13. - His disciples came unto him. The disciples were learners, or those who were taught. Probably the multitude are included in the term, as they were for the time his pupils, his disciples. So upon other occasions, those who followed his instructions, though not of the twelve, nor of his immediate attendants, were denominated disciples. John vi. 66. Nevertheless, others have understood by disciples those only who attached themselves to Jesus in the belief that he was the expected Messiah. 2. He opened his mouth. These words are pleonastic, or redundant, i. e. they do not add any thing to the meaning of the sentence. Pleonasm is a common figure of speech in the Bible. 3. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Some are in favor of the use of happy in this connexion; but blessed is a more forcible and solemn word, and, as Carpenter observes, has reference to the appointment and blessing of God. There is no verb in the original, and the translation would be more spirited thus, Blessed the poor in spirit. The declarations from verse 3 to 12 are sometimes called Beatitudes, because each of them begins with the word blessed, |