Synonyms of the New Testament
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| § xliv. kle
. THESE words occur together John x. I, 8; but do not con- stitute there1 or elsewhere a tautology, or mere rhetorical amplification (cf. Obad. 5; Plato, Rep. i. 351 c). The
theirs, but the kle by fraud and in secret (Matt. xxiv. 43; John xii. 6; cf. Exod. xxii. 2; ii. 26); the l^sth 1; Jer. vii. 11; Plutarch, De Super. 3: ou] fobei?tai l^sta>j o[ oi]kourw?n); the one is the ‘thief' and steals; the other is the 'robber' and plunders, as his name, from lhi~j or lei ently declares. They are severally the ‘fur’ and ‘latro;’ ‘fures insidianter et occulta fraude decipiunt; latrones audacter aliena diripiunt ' (Jerome, In Osee, 7. 1). ‘Larron,’ however, in French, ‘voleur qui derobe furtivement et
quia ut occidat, ver 10.' 158 SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. § XLIV.
has slipt into the meaning of ‘fur.’ Wiclif, who renders the words, ‘night-thief’ and ‘day-thief,’ has not very happily distinguished them. Our Translators have always rendered kle
‘thief;’ they ought with a like consistency to have ren- dered l^sth rendered ‘thief,’ effacing thus the distinction between the two. We cannot charge them with that carelessness here, of which those would be guilty who should now do the same. Passages out of number in our Elizabethan lite- rature attest that in their day ‘thief’ and ‘robber’ had not those distinct meanings which they since have acquired. Thus Falstaff and his company, who with open violence rob the king's treasure on the king's highway, are ‘thieves’ throughout Shakspeare's Henry IV. Still one must regret that on several occasions in our Version we do not find ‘robbers’ rather than ‘thieves.’ Thus at Matt. xxi. 13 we read: "My house shall be called the house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves;" but it is ‘robbers,’ and not ‘thieves’ that have dens or caves; and it is rightly "den of robbers" at Jer. vii. 11, whence this quotation is drawn. Again, Matt. xxvi. 55: "Are ye come out as against a thief with swords and staves for to take Me?"; but it would be against some bold and violent robber that a party armed with swords and clubs would issue forth, not against a lurking thief. The poor traveller in the parable (Luke x. 30) fell, not among ‘thieves,’ but among ‘robbers;’ violent and bloody men, as their treatment of him plainly declared. No passage has suffered so seriously from this con- founding of ‘thief’ and ‘robber’ as Luke xxiii. 39-43. The whole anterior moral condition of him whom we call ‘the penitent thief’ is obscured for many by the associa- tions which almost inevitably cling to this name. The two malefactors crucified with Jesus, the one obdurate, the § XLIV. SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 159
the band of Barabbas, who for murder and insurrection had been cast with his fellow insurgents into prison (Mark xv. 7). He too was himself a l^sth yet no common malefactor, on the contrary ‘a notable prisoner' (de sidering the fierce enthusiasm of the Jewish populace on his behalf, and combining this with the fact that he was in prison for an unsuccessful insurrection; keeping in mind too the moral estate of the Jews at this period, with false Christs, false deliverers, every day starting up, we can hardly doubt that Barabbas was one of those wild and stormy zealots, who were evermore raising anew the standard of resistance against the Roman domination; flattering and feeding the insane hopes of their country- men, that they should yet break the Roman yoke from off their necks. These men, when hard pressed, would betake themselves to the mountains, and from thence wage a petty war against their oppressors, living by plunder,—if possible, by that of their enemies, if not, by that of any within their reach. The history of Dolcino's ‘Apostolicals,’ as of the Camisards in the Cevennes, illus- trates only too well the downward progress by which such would not merely presently obtain, but deserve, the name of ‘robbers.’ By the Romans they would be called and dealt with as such (see Josephus, Antt. xx. 8, 6, in fine); just as in the great French Revolution the Vendean royalists were styled ‘the brigands of the Loire;’ nay, in that great perversion of all moral sentiment which would mark such a period as this was, the name of robber, ‘klept’ among the modern Greeks, would probably have ceased to be dishonorable, would not have been refused by them- selves. And yet of stamp and character howl different would many of these men, these maintainers of a last protest against a foreign domination, probably be from the mean 160 SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. § XLV.
bands of these l^stai<, numbering in their ranks some of the worst, would probably include also some that were originally among the noblest, spirits of the nation—even though these had miserably mistaken the task which their time demanded, and had sought by the wrath of man to work out the righteousness of God. Such a one we may well imagine this penitent l^sth Should there be any truth in this view of his former condition,—and certainly it would go far to explain his sudden conversion,—it is altogether obscured by the name ‘thief’ which we have given him; nor can it under any circumstances be doubtful that he would be more fitly called ‘the penitent robber.’ See my Studies in the Gospels, 4th edit pp. 302, sqq.; Dean Stanley, The Jewish Church, vol. iii. 4 66. xlv. plu THERE is a certain poverty in English, which has one only word, ‘to wash,’ with which to render these three Greek; seeing that the three have each a propriety of its own, and one which the inspired writers always observe. Thus plu guished from living objects or persons; oftenest garments (ei!mata, Homer, Il. 1. xxii. 155; i[ma and in the Septuagint continually; so stola 14); but not exclusively garments, as some affirm, for see Luke v. 2, where it expresses the washing or cleans- ing of nets (di exclaims plu?no A. V.]), this is no exception to the rule; for the men- tion of hyssop, which follows, shows plainly that the royal penitent had the ceremonial aspersions of the Le- vitical law primarily in his eye, aspersions therefore upon the garments of the unclean person (Lev. xiv. 9; Num. § XLV. SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 161 xix. 6, 7), however he may have looked through these to another and better sprinkling beyond. Ni and lou washing of living persons; although with this difference, that ni
language the Attic ni express the washing of a part of the body—the hands (Mark vii. 3; Exod. xxx. 19), the feet (John xiii. 5 Plutarch, Thes. 10), the face (Matt. vi 17), the eyes (John ix. 7), the back and shoulders Homer, Od. vi. 224); while lou ‘to bathe,’ and lou?sqai, ‘to bathe oneself,’ implies always, not the washing of a part of the body, but of the whole (thus leloume Acts 27; 2 Pet. ii. 22; Rev. i. 5 Plato, Phaed. 115 a). This limitation of ni , to persons as contra- distinguished from things, which is always observed in the N. T., is not without exceptions, although they are very unfrequent elsewhere; thus, de . Homer, Il. xvi. 229); trape single verse in the Septuagint (Lev. xv. 1) gives us all the three words, and all used in their exact propriety of meaning: kai> o!swn e]a>n a!yhtai o[ gonor]r[uh>j, kai> ta>j
The passage where it is most important to mark the distinction between ni
or lou?sqai, to wash the whole, of the body, and where certainly our English Version loses something in clear- ness from the absence of words which should note the passing from one word to the other in she original, is John xiii. 10: "He that is washed [o[ leloume not save to wash [ni whit."1 The foot-washing was a symbplic act. St. 1 The Latin labours under the same defect; thus in the Vulgate it Stands; 'Qui lotus est, non indiget nisi ut pedes lavet.’ De Wette has 162 SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. § XLV.
understanding, had exclaimed, "Thou shalt never wash my feet." But so soon as ever the true meaning of what his Lord was doing flashed upon him, he who had before refused to suffer his Lord to wash even his feet, now prayed to be asked altogether: "Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head." Christ replies, that it needed not this: Peter had been already made partaker of th great washing, of that forgiveness which included the whole man: he was leloume absolving act did not need to be repeated, was indeed incapable of repetition: "Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you" (John xv. 3). But while it fared thus with him in respect of the all- inclusive forgiveness, he did need to wash his feet (ni be through suffering his Lord to cleanse him, from the defilements which even he, a justified and in part also a sanctified man, should gather as he, moved through a sin- ful world. One might almost suppose, as it has been sug- gested, that there was allusion here to the Levitical ordi- nance, according to which Aaron and his successors in the priesthood were to be washed once for all from head to foot at their consecration to their office (Exod. xxvii. 4; xl. 12); but were to wash their hands and their feet in the brasen laver as often as they afterwards ministered before the Lord (Exod. xxx. 19, 21; xl. 31). Yet this would commend itself more, if we did not find hands and feet, in the same category there, while here they are not merely disjoined, but set over against one another (John. ver. 9, 10). This much however to me is plain, that the whole mystery of our justification, which is once for all, reaching to every need; embracing our whole being, and of our sanctification, which must daily go forward, is wrapped up
sich nicht als an den Fussen zu waschen.’ § XLVI. SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 163
has expressed clearly and well (In Ev. Joh. xiii. 10) ‘Homo in sancto quidem baptismo totus abluitur, non praeter pedes, sed totals omnino veruntamen cum in rebus humanis postea vivitur, utique terra calcatur. Ipsi igitur humani affectus, sine quibus in hac mortalitate non vivitur, quasi pedes sunt, ubi ex humanis rebus afficimur. Quo- tidie ergo pedes lavat nobis, qui interpellat pro nobis: ex quotidie nos opus habere ut pedes lavemu in ipsa Oratione Dominica confitemur, cum dicimus, Dimitte nobis debita nostra.'
always, in our Version, by light'; thus, fw?j at Matt. iv. 16; Rom. xiii. 12, and often; fe 29; Mark xiii. 24; Luke xi. 33 (it does not occur again); fwsth lu where; though this often by ‘candle’ (Matt, v. 15; Rev. xxii. 5); and lampa>j at Acts xx. 8, though elsewhere rendered ‘lamp' (Matt. xxv. 1; Rev. viii. 10), and 'torch' (John xviii. 3). The old grammarians distinguish between fw?j and fe same word), that fw?j, is the light of the sun or of the day, fe to whom this distinction must belong, if to any, them- selves only imperfectly observe it. Thus, in Sophocles
800; Ajax, 654, 840; Trachin. 597); while in Plato we meet fw?j selh Ezek. xxxii. 7). This much right the grammarians have, that fe luminaries of the night, fw?j that of the sun or of the 164 SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. § XLVI.
another h[merino>n fw?j and nukterina> fe many other finer distinctions of the Greek language, is so far observed in the N. T., that the light of the moon, on the only occasions that it is mentioned, is fe (Matt. xxiv. 19; Mark xii. 24; cf. Joel ii. 10; iiii. 15), as fw?j is that of the sun (Rev. xxii. 5). It will follow that fw?j, rather than fe sko and generally that the former will be the more absolute designation of light; thus Hab. iii. 4: kai> fe [tou? qeou?] w[j fw?j e@stai: compare Euripides, Helen. 530: fhsi> d ] e]n fa Doderlein, Lat Synom. vol. ii. p. 69. Fwsth Phil. ii. 15: "Among whom ye shine as lights in the world " (w[j fwsth?rej e]n ko to improve on this, which yet fails to mark with entire precision what St. Paul intends. The fwsth?rej here are the heavenly bodies, ‘luminaria’ (Vulg.), ‘Himmels- lichter’ (De Wette), and mainly the sun and moon, the ‘lights,’ or ‘great lights’ (=’luces,’ Cicero, poet.), of which Moses speaks, Gen. i. 14, 16; where tOrxom; is rendered fwsth?rej in the Septuagint. Compare Ecclus. xliii. 7, where he moon is fwsth where fwsth?rej ou]ranou? is exactly equivalent to fws- th?rej e]n ko material world, the ster world, which h s been already expressed by the genea>
on our version of Rev. xxi. 11: "Her light [o[ fwsth>r aui]th?j] was like unto a stone most precious." Our Trans- lators did well in going back to this, Wiclif's rendering, and in displacing "her shining," which had been admitted into the inter mediate Versions, and which must have conveyed a wrong impression to the English reader. Not § XLVI. SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 165 that the present rendering is altogether satisfactory, being itself not wholly unambiguous. Some may still be tempted to understand ‘her light’ as the light which the Heavenly City diffused; when, indeed, fwsth that which diffused light to the Heavenly City, her luminary or light-giver; ‘lumen ejus,’ as in the Vulgate. What this light-giver was, we learn from ver. 23: "the Lamb is the light thereof;" o[ lu =o[ fwsth In rendering lu scarcely made the most of the words at their command. Had they rendered lampa (John xviii. 3), but always, this would have left ‘lamp,’ now wrongly appropriated by lampa gether dismissing ‘candle,’ they might then have rendered
are so many occasions where ‘candle’ would manifestly be inappropriate, and where, therefore, they are obliged to fall back on ‘light,’ that the distinction between fw?j and lu The advantages of such a re-distribution of the words would be many. In the first place, it would be more accurate. Lu ‘candeo,’ the white wax light, and then any kind of taper), but a hand-lamp, fed with oil. Neither is lampa a ‘lamp,’ but a ‘torch,’ and this not only in the Attic, but in the later Hellenistic Greek as ell (Polybius, iii. 93. 4; Herodias, iv. 2; Plutarch, Timol. 8; Alex. 38; Judg. vii. 16; xv. 4); and so, I believe, always in the N.T. In proof that at Rev. viii. 10, lampa ‘torch’ (‘Fackel,’ De Wette), see Aristotle, De Mund. 4. Our early translators, who rendered it ‘brand’ or ‘fire- brand’ (John xviii. 4), showed that they understood the force of the word. It may be urged that in the parable of the Ten Virgins the lampa and must needs therefore be lamps. But this does not 166 SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. § XLVII. follow. In the East the torch, as well as the lamp, is fed. in this manner: ‘The true Hindu way of lighting up is by torches held by men, who feed the flame with oil from a sort of bottle [the a]ggei?on of Matt. xxv. 4], constructed for the purpose' (Elphinstone, Hist. of India, vol. i. p. 333). More passages than one would gain in perspicuity by such a re-arrangement; and mainly through the clear distinction between fw?j and lu apparent. On of these is John v. 35: "He was a burning and a shining light,"—so our Translation; but in the original, e]kei?noj h#n o[ lu the Vulgate has it: ‘Ille erat lucerna ardens et lucens;’ not obliterating as we have done, the whole antithesis between Christ the fw?j a]lhqino that Eternal Light, which, as it was never kindled, so should never be quenched, and the Baptist, a lamp kindled by the hands of Another, in whose brightness men might for a season rejoice, and which must then be extinguished again. In the use of lu tacitly contrasted here with fw?j, and there avowedly with fwsfo transferred to the highest sphere of the spiritual world, which our post had in his mind when he wrote those glorious lines: ‘Nigh's candles are burnt out, and jocund Day Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops.’ § xlvii. xa THERE has often been occasion to observe the manner in which Greek words taken up into Christian use are glorified and transformed, seeming to have waited for this adoption of them, to come to their full rights, and to reveal all the depth and the riches of meaning which they contained, or might be made to contain. Xa hardly too much to say that the Greek mind has in no word uttered itself and all that was at its heart more § XLVII. SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 167
our pains to trace briefly the steps by which it came to its highest honours. Xa all that property in a thing which causes it to give joy to the hearers or beholders of it, as Plutarch (Cum Princ.
p. 217); and then, seeing that to Greek there was nothing so joy-inspiring as grace or beauty, it implied the presence of this, the German ‘Anmuth;’ thus Homer, Od. ii. 12; vi. 237; Euripides, Troad. 1108, parqe Lucian, Zeux. 2, xa the Septuagint (Ps. xlv. 3; Prov. x. 3), the Hebrew NHe being commonly rendered by it; yet no invariably; being translated by a]re xis. 19); by e]pi use in the Apocrypha (Ecclus. xxiv. 16 xl. 22, xa see Luke iv. 22, and perhaps Ephes. iv. 9. But xa the grace or beauty of a thing, as a quality appertaining to it; but the gracious or beautiful thing, act, thought, speech, or person it might be, itself—the grace embodying and uttering itself, where there was room or call for this, in gracious outcomings toward such as might be its objects; not any longer ‘favour’ in the sense of beauty, but ‘the favour’; for our word here a little helps us to trace the history of the Greek. So continually in classical Greek we have xa Septuagint (Esth. vi. 3); and so also xa human grace and favour in the N.T. (thus Acts ii. 47; xxv. 3; 2 Cor. ix. 19). There is a further sense which the word obtained, namely the thankfulness which the favour calls out in return; this also frequent in the N. T. (Luke xvii. 9; Rom. vi. 17; 2 Cor. viii. 16; though with it, as we are only treating the word in its relations to 168 SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. § XLVII. e@leoj, we have nothing to do. It is at that earlier point which we have just been fixing that xa obtained its highest consecration; not indeed to have its meaning change but to have that meaning ennobled, glorified, lifted up from the setting forth of an earthly to the setting forth of a heavenly benefit, from signifying the favour and grace and goodness of man to man, to setting forth the favour, grace and goodness of God to man, and thus, of necessity, of the worthy to the unworthy, of the holy to the sinful, being now not merely the German ‘Gunst’ or 'Huld,' to which the word had corresponded hitherto, but ‘Gnade’ as well. Such was a meaning to which it had never raised itself before, and this not even in the Greek Scriptures of the elder Covenant; for the Hebrew word which most nearly approaches in meaning to the xa xa by e@leoj (Gen. x iv. 12; Job vi. 14; Dan. i. 9; and often). Already, it is true, if not there, yet in another quarter there were preparations for this glorification of meaning to which xa already in the ethical terminology of the Greek schools xa expectation of return—the word being thus predisposed to receive its new emphasis, its religious, I may say its dogmatic, significance; to set forth the entire and abso- lute freeness of the lovingkindness of God to men. Thus Aristotle, defining xa very point, that it is conferred freely, with no expectation of return, and finding its only motive in the bounty and free-heartedness of the giver (Rhet. ii. 7): e@stw dh> xa Agreeing with this we have xa i. 31. 6 (cf. Rom. iii. 24, dwrea>n t^? au]tou? xa xii. 3, 6; xv. 15; Ephes. ii. 8; iv. 7); so too xa § XLVII. SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 169
xi. 6, where St. Paul sets xa another in directest antithesis, showing chat they mutually exclude one another, it being of the essence of whatever is owed to xa Augustine urges so often, ‘gratia, nisi gratis sit, non est gratia;'—or indeed demerited, as the faithful man will most freely acknowledge. But while xa and is that glorious attribute of God which these sins call out and display, his free gift in their forgiveness, e@leoj has special and immediate regard to the misery which is the consequence of these sins, being the tender sense of this misery displaying itself in the effort, which only the continued perverseness of man can hinder or defeat, to assuage and entirely remove it; so Bengel well: ‘Gratia tollit culpam, misericordia miseriam.’ But here, as in other cases, it may be worth our while to consider the anterior uses of this word, before it as assumed into this its highest use as the mercy of Him, whose mercy is over all his works. Of e@leoj we have his definition in Aristotle (Rhet. ii. 8): e@stw dh> e@leoj, lu fainome kak&? fqartik&? kai> luphr&? tou? a]naci au]to>j prosdokh at once perceived that much will have here to be modified, and something removed, when we come to speak of the
whose presence is fulness of joy; He does not demand unworthy suffering (lu a]naci which is the Stoic definition of e@leoj, Diogenes Laertius, vii. 63),1 to move Him, seeing that absolutely unworthy
alterius injuria laborantis. Nemo enim parricidae aut proditoris supplicio misericordia commovetur.' 70 SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. § XLVII. suffering there is done in a world of sinners; neither can He, who is lifted up above all chance and change, contem- plate, in beholding misery, the possibility of being Him- self involved in the same. It is nothing wonderful that the Manichaeans and others who desired a God as unlike man as possible, cried out against the attribution of e@leoj to Him; and found here a weapon of their warfare against that Old Testament, whose God was not ashamed to pro- claim Himself a God of pity and compassion (Ps. lxxviii. 38; lxxxvi. 15; and often). They were favoured here in the Latin by the word ‘misericordia,’ and did not fail to appeal to its etymology, and to demand whether the ‘miserum cor’ could find place in Him; compare Virgil,
runner, who observes in respect of this ‘vitium pusilli animi,' as he calls it (De Clemen. ii. 6), ‘Misericordia vicina est misericae; habet enim aliquid trahitque ex ea.' Augus- tine answered rightly that this and all other words used to express human affections did require certain modifications, a clearing away from them of the infirmities of human passions, before they could be ascribed to the most High; but that such for all this were only their accidents, the- essentials remaining unchanged. Thus De Div. Quaest. 2: ‘Item de misericordia, si auferas compassionem cum eo, queen miseraris, participatae miseriae, ut remaneat tran- quilla bonitas subveniendi et a miseria liberandi, insinuatur divinae misericord qualiscunque cognitio :' cf. De Civ. Dei, ix. 5; Anseln, Proslogium, 8; and Suicer, Thes. s. v. In man's pity there will always be an element of grief, so that by John of Damascus e@leoj is enumerated as one of the four forms of lu , the other three being a@xoj, a@xqoj, and fqo We may say then hat the xa and gift, displayed in the forgiveness of sins, is extended to men, as they are guilty, his e@leoj, as they are miserable. The lower creation may be, and is, the object of God's §XLVII. SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 171
also upon it (Job xxxviii. 41; Ps. cxlvi . 9; Jon. iv. 11; Rom. viii. 20-23), but of his xa needs, he only is capable of receiving it. In the Divine mind, and in the order of our salvation as conceived therein, the e@leoj precedes the xa loved the world with a pitying love (herein was the e@leoj), that He gave his only begotten Son (herein the xa the world through Him might be saved cf. Ephes. ii. 4; Luke i. 78, 79). But in the order of the manifestation of God's purposes of salvation the grace must go before the mercy, the xa e@leoj. It is true that the same persons are the subjects of both, being at once the guilty and the miserable; yet the righteousness of God, which it is quite as necessary should be maintained as his love, demands that he guilt should be done away, before the misery can be assuaged; only the forgiven may be blessed. He must pardon, before He can heal; men must be justified before they can be sanc- tified. And as the righteousness of God absolutely and in itself requires this, so no less that righteousness as it has expressed itself in the moral constitution of man, linking as it there has done misery with guilt, and making the first the inseparable companion of the second. From this it follows that in each of the apostolic salutations where these words occur, xa Tim. i. 2; Tit. i. 4; 2 John 3; Zech. xii. 10; cf. Wisd. 9); nor could this order have been reversed. Xa on the same grounds in the more usual Pauline salutations precedes ei]rh the distinction between the words of this §, see some excellent words in Delitzsch, An die Ebraer, p. 163. 172 SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. XLVIII.
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