Today I will of necessity be shorter than usual. I have been out running all day. So I am only doing two verses. These two are sort of a bridge between the admonition on sex and the admonition on divorce and vows.
“29 And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it 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. 30 And if 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 that thy whole body should be cast into hell.”
This passage seems at first to be out of place, not a part of the “You have heard...but I say….” formula of the ones before and after it. Yet it fits into the context by the relevance of the message to those other passages. Jesus is telling us to get rid of the things that tempt us to miss the mark of holiness that God has set.
The Greek word rendered offend thee, σκανδαλίζω, is the source of our modern English word scandalize. Its meaning is to cause you to trip, to trip you up. In the context of a journey, a trap that trips you to delay your progress is doing this. The idea is that it is not an accidental trip, but one deliberately caused, and the thing doing the tripping is aware. From this we can assume He is speaking metaphorically when using the eye as His example. Because a mere ocular organ cannot intend to trip you as you journey, it must be something we hold as precious as our sight and as painful to remove by plucking it out as an eye.
The word is used in both verses, reinforcing the connotation of a metaphor. The two body parts mentioned, the eye and the hand, are both important to the daily routine of an individual in the first century Roman Empire. The cultural significance of the right eye and the right hand must also be examined. The Greek word for right is δεξιός, from which the English word dexterous comes. It simply signifies the right side of the human body. But in Middle Eastern culture a person whose right eye was removed was cursed, and someone whose right hand was removed was assumed to be a thief.
The Greek word rendered cast, βάλλω, denotes an aimed and deliberate throw, much like one throws a baseball. This is not just a casual toss, but a vigorous hurling of the object, in this case to ensure one is rid of it.
The Greek word rendered perish, ͗απόλλυμι, means to utterly destroy, erase from existence. The word is not used in the connotation of simply discarding the object, but eradicating it.
The Greek word rendered hell is γέεννα, referring to the Jerusalem city dump in the Wadi Ben Gehinom, or Hinom Valley, on the Southwest side of the hill on which the city is built. In the dump, there was a stench of rotting garbage, smoke form constant fires, and of course lots of refuse. This is another metaphor. for the place of the damned.
So the conclusion one draws from this is that we should examine our habits and hobbies, like the free sex so prevalent today, which we hold dear and derive a false pleasure from, to see if it causes us to trip on our spiritual journey toward God’s perfect holiness. If it does, we must rip it out of our lives and violently throw it as for from us as we can manage so it can be eradicated from our lives. Then we will be able to continue to follow the road of Christ toward the glorious end He has promised.
Ol’ Fuzzy is not employable and was denied for disability benefits. The only thing I have is the blogs. But I don’t qualify for ads on the blogs until September. If you like the scribbles I post, please help me keep it going. You can leave me a gratuity by dropping a buck or two in Ol' Fuzzy's Tip Jar. This is a PayPal account I opened on Wednesday, April 5, 2017.
No comments:
Post a Comment