3. 2. Indignation and Annoyance.
2. Indignation and Annoyance.
T he moral sense is not a mere faculty of discrimination between the qualities which we call right and wrong, which exhausts itself in their perception as different. The judgments it passes are not merely intellectual, but what we call moral judgments; that is to say, they involve approval and disapproval according to the qualities perceived. It would be impossible, therefore, for a moral being to stand in the presence of perceived wrong indifferent and unmoved. Precisely what we mean by a moral being is a being perceptive of the difference between right and wrong and reacting appropriately to right and wrong perceived as such. The emotions of indignation and anger belong therefore to the very self-expression of a moral being as such and cannot be lacking to him in the presence of wrong.
We should know, accordingly, without instruction that Jesus, living in the conditions of this earthly life under the curse of sin, could not fail to be the subject of the whole series of angry emotions, and we are not surprised that even in the brief and broken narratives of his life-experiences which have been given to us, there have been preserved records of the manifestation in
word and act of not a few of them. It is. interesting to note in passing that it is especially in the Gospel of Mark, which rapid and objective as it is in its narrative, is the channel through which has been preserved to us a large part of the most intimate of the details concerning our Lord's demeanor and traits which have come down to us, that we find these records.
It is Mark, for instance, who tells us explicitly (3:5) that the insensibility of the Jews to human suffering exhibited in a tendency to put ritual integrity above humanity, filled Jesus with indignant anger. A man whose hand had withered, met with in the synagogue one Sabbath, afforded a sort of testcase. The Jews treated it as such and "watched Jesus whether he would heal him on the Sabbath day, that they might accuse him." Jesus accepted the challenge. Commanding the man to "rise in the midst" of the assemblage, he put to them the searching question, generalizing the whole case: "Is it lawful to do good or to do evil on the Sabbath, to save life or to kill?"
"But," says the narrative, "they kept silent." Then Jesus' anger rose: "he looked around at them with anger, being grieved at the hardness of their heart." What is meant is, not that his anger was modified by grief, his reprobation of the hardness of their hearts was mingled with a sort of sympathy for men sunk in such a miserable condition. What is meant is simply that the spectacle of their hardness of heart produced in him the deepest dissatisfaction, which passed into angry resentment. 1 Thus the fundamental psychology of anger is curiously illustrated by this account; for anger always has pain at its root, and is a reaction of the soul against what gives it discomfort. 2 The hardness of the Jews' heart, vividly realized, hurt Jesus; and his anger rose in repulsion of the cause of his pain. There are thus two movements of feeling brought before us here. There is the pain which the gross manifestation of the hardness of heart of the Jews inflicted
on Jesus. And there is the strong reaction of indignation which sprang out of this pain. The term by which the former feeling is expressed has at its basis the simple idea of pain, and is used in the broadest way of every kind of pain, whether physical or mental, emphasizing, however, the sensation itself, rather than its expression. 3 It is employed here appropriately, in a form which throws an emphasis on the inwardness of the feeling, of the discomfort of heart produced in Jesus by the sight of man's inhumanity to man. The expression of this discomfort was in the angry look which he swept over the unsympathetic assemblage. It is not intimated that the pain was abiding, the anger evanescent. The glance in which the anger was manifested is represented as fleeting in contrast with the pain of which the anger was the expression. But the term used for this anger is just the term for abiding resentment, set on vengeance. 4 Precisely what is ascribed to Jesus, then, in this passage is that indignation at wrong, perceived as such, wishing and intending punishment to the wrong-doer, which forms the core of what we can vindicatory justice. 5 This is a necessary reaction of every moral being against perceived wrong.
On another occasion Mark (10:14) pictures Jesus to us as moved by a much lighter form of the emotion of anger. His disciples, — doubtless with a view to protecting him from needless drafts upon his time and strength, — interfered with certain parents, who were bringing to him their babies (Lk.
18:15) "that he should touch them." Jesus saw their action, and, we are told, "was moved with indignation." The term employed here 6 expresses, originally, physical (such, for example, as is felt by a teething child), and then mental (Mt. 20:24, 21:15, 26:8; Mk. 10:41, 14:4; Lk. 13:14, cf. II Cor.
7:11) "irritation." Jesus was "irritated," or perhaps we may better render, was "annoyed," "vexed," at his disciples. And (so the term also suggests) he
showed his annoyance, — whether by gesture or tone or the mere shortness of his speech: "Let the children come to me; forbid them not!" 7 Thus we see Jesus as he reacts with anger at the spectacle of inhumanity, so reacting with irritation at the spectacle of blundering misunderstanding, however well-meant.
Yet another phase of angry emotion is ascribed to Jesus by Mark, but in this case not by Mark alone. Mark (14:3) tells us that on healing a leper,
Matthew (9:30) that on healing two blind men, Jesus "straitly," "strictly,"
"sternly," "charged" them, — as our English versions struggle with the term, in an attempt to make it describe merely the tone and manner of his injunction to the beneficiaries of his healing power, not to tell of the cures wrought upon them. This term, 8 however, does not seem to mean, in its ordinary usage, to "charge," to "enjoin," however straitly or strictly, but simply to "be angry at," or, since it commonly implies that the anger is great, to "be enraged with," or, perhaps better still, since it usually intimates that the anger is expressed by audible signs, to "rage against." If we are to take it in its customary sense, therefore, what we are really told in these passages is that Jesus, "when he had raged against the leper, sent him away;" that "he raged against the blind men, saying, 'See that no one know it!" If this rage is to be supposed (with our English versions) to have expressed itself only in the words recorded, the meaning would not be far removed from that of the English word "bluster" in its somewhat rare transitive use, as, for example, when an old author writes: "He meant to bluster all princes into perfect obedience." 9 The implication of boisterousness, and indeed of empty noise, which attends the English word, however, is quite lacking from the Greek, the rage expressed by which is always thought of as very real. What it has in common with "bluster" is
thus merely its strong minatory import. The Vulgate Latin accordingly cuts the knot by rendering it simply "threatened," and is naturally followed in this by those English versions (Wycliffe, Rheims) which depend on it. 10
Certainly Jesus is represented here as taking up a menacing attitude, and threatening words are placed on his lips: "See that thou say nothing to any man," "See that no one know it"— a form of speech which always conveys a threat. 11 But "threaten" can scarcely be accepted as an adequate rendering of the term whether in itself or in these contexts. When Matthew tells us
"And he was enraged at them, saying . . ." the rage may no doubt be thought to find its outlet in the threatening words which follow: 12 but the implication of Mark is different: "And raging at him," or "having raged at him" — "he straightway sent him forth." When it is added: "And saith to him, 'See that thou say nothing to any one" a subsequent moment in the transaction is indicated. 13 How our Lord's rage was manifested, we are not told. And this is really just as true in the case of Matthew as in that of Mark.
To say, "he was enraged at them, saying (threatening words)," is not to say merely, "he threatened them": it is to say that a threat was uttered and that this threat was the suitable accompaniment of his rage.
The cause of our Lord's anger does not lie on the surface in either case.
The commentators seem generally inclined to account for it by supposing that Jesus foresaw that his injunction of silence would be disregarded. 14
But this explanation, little natural in itself, seems quite unsuitable to the narrative in Mark where we are told, not that Jesus angrily enjoined the leper to silence, but that he angrily sent him away. Others accordingly seek the ground of his anger in something displeasing to him in the demeanor of the applicants for his help, in their mode of approaching or addressing him, in erroneous conceptions with which they were animated, and the like.
Klostermann imagines that our Lord did not feel that miraculous healings lay in the direct line of his vocation, and was irritated because he had been betrayed by his compassion into undertaking them. Volkmar goes the length of supposing that Jesus resented the over-reverential form of the address of the leper to him, on the principle laid down in Rev. 19:10, "See thou do it not: I am a fellow-servant with thee." Even Keil suggests that Jesus was angry with the blind men because they addressed him openly as "Son of David," not wishing "this untimely proclamation of him as Messiah on the part of those who held him as such only on account of his miracles." It is more common to point out some shortcoming in the applicants: they did not approach him with sufficient reverence or with sufficient knowledge of the true nature of his mission; they demanded their cure too much as a matter of course, or too much as if from a mere marvel-monger; and in the case of the leper at least, with too little regard to their own obligations. A leper should not approach a stranger; certainly he should not ask or permit a stranger to put his hand upon him; especially should he not approach a stranger in the streets of a city (Lk. 5:12) and very particularly not in a house (Mk. 1:43:
"He put him out"), above all if it were, as it might well be here, a private house. That Jesus was indignant at such gross disregard of law was natural and fully explains his vehemence in driving the leper out and sternly admonishing him to go and fulfil the legal requirements. 15 This variety of explanation is the index of the slightness of the guidance given in the passages themselves to the cause of our Lord's anger; but it can throw no doubt upon the fact of that anger, which is directly asserted in both instances and must not be obscured by attributing to the term by which it is expressed some lighter significance. 16 The term employed declares that Jesus exhibited vehement anger, which was audibly manifested. 17 This
anger did not inhibit, however, the operation of his compassion (Mk. 1:41; Mt. 9:27) but appears in full manifestation as its accompaniment. This may indicate that its cause lay outside the objects of his compassion, in some general fact the nature of which we may possibly learn from other instances.
The same term occurs again in John's narrative of our Lord's demeanor at the grave of his beloved friend Lazarus (Jno. 11:33, 38). When Jesus saw
Mary weeping — or rather "wailing," for the term is a strong one and implies the vocal expression of the grief 18 — and the Jews which accompanied her also "wailing," we are told, as our English version puts it, that "he groaned in the spirit and was troubled"; and again, when some of the Jews, remarking on his own manifestation of grief in tears, expressed their wonder that he who had opened the eyes of the blind man could not have preserved Lazarus from death, we are told that Jesus "again groaned in himself." The natural suggestion of the word "groan" is, however, that of pain or sorrow, not disapprobation; and this rendering of the term in question is therefore misleading. It is better rendered in the only remaining passage in which it occurs in the New Testament, Mk. 14:5, by "murmured," though this is much too weak a word to reproduce its implications. In that passage it is brought into close connection with a kindred term 19 which determines its meaning. We read: "But there were some that had indignation among themselves . . . and they murmured against her." Their feeling of irritated displeasure expressed itself in an outburst of temper. The margin of our Revised Version at Jno. 11:33, 38, therefore, very properly proposes that we should for "groaned" in these passages, substitute "moved with indignation," although that phrase too is scarcely strong enough. What John tells us, in point of fact, is that Jesus
approached the grave of Lazarus, in a state, not of uncontrollable grief, but of irrepressible anger. He did respond to the spectacle of human sorrow abandoning itself to its unrestrained expression, with quiet, sympathetic tears: "Jesus wept" (verse 36). 20 But the emotion which tore his breast and clamored for utterance was just rage. The expression even of this rage, however, was strongly curbed. The term which John employs to describe it is, as we have seen, a definitely external term. 21 "He raged." But John modifies its external sense by annexed qualifications: "He raged in spirit,"
"raging in himself" He thus interiorizes the term and gives us to understand that the ebullition of Jesus' anger expended itself within him. Not that there was no manifestation of it: it must have been observable to be observed and recorded; 22 it formed a marked feature of the occurrence as seen and heard. 23 But John gives us to understand that the external expression of our
Lord's fury was markedly restrained: its manifestation fell far short of its real intensity. He even traces for us the movements of his inward struggle:
"Jesus, therefore, when he saw her wailing, and the Jews that had come with her wailing, was enraged in spirit and troubled himself' 24 . . . and wept. His inwardly restrained fury produced a profound agitation of his whole being, one of the manifestations of which was tears.
Why did the sight of the wailing of Mary and her companions enrage Jesus? Certainly not because of the extreme violence of its expression; and even more certainly not because it argued unbelief — unwillingness to submit to God's providential ordering or distrust of Jesus' power to save.
He himself wept, if with less violence yet in true sympathy. with the grief of which he was witness. The intensity of his exasperation, moreover, would be disproportionate to such a cause; and the importance attached to it in the account bids us seek its ground in something less incidental to the main
drift of the narrative. It is mentioned twice, and is obviously emphasized as an indispensable element in the development of the story, on which, in its due place and degree, the lesson of the incident hangs. The spectacle of the distress of Mary and her companions enraged Jesus because it brought poignantly home to his consciousness the evil of death, its unnaturalness, its
"violent tyranny" as Calvin (on verse 38) phrases it. In Mary's grief, he "contemplates" — still to adopt Calvin's words (on verse 33), — "the general misery of the whole human race" and burns with rage against the oppressor of men. Inextinguishable fury seizes upon him; his whole being is discomposed and perturbed; and his heart, if not his lips, cries out, —
"For the innumerable deadIs my soul disquieted." 25
It is death that is the object of his wrath, and behind death him who has the power of death, and whom he has come into the world to destroy. Tears of sympathy may fill his eyes, but this is incidental. His soul is held by rage: and he advances to the tomb, in Calvin's words again, "as a champion who prepares for conflict." The raising of Lazarus thus becomes, not an isolated marvel, but — as indeed it is presented throughout the whole narrative (compare especially, verses 24-26) — a decisive instance and open symbol of Jesus' conquest of death and hell. What John does for us in this particular statement is to uncover to us the heart of Jesus, as he wins for us our salvation. Not in cold unconcern, but in flaming wrath against the foe, Jesus smites in our behalf. He has not only saved us from the evils which oppress us; he has felt for and with us in our oppression, and under the impulse of these feelings has wrought out our redemption. 26
There is another term which the Synoptic Gospels employ to describe our Lord's dealing with those he healed (Mt. 12:16), which is sometimes rendered by our English versions — as the term we have just been
considering is rendered in similar connections (Mk. 1:43; Mt. 9:30) — by "charged" (Mt. 41:16, 16:20; Mk. 3:12, 8:30, 9:21); but more frequently with more regard to its connotation of censure, implying displeasure, "by rebuked" (Mt. 17:18; Mk. 9:21; Lk. 4:35-41, 19:42; Mk. 8:30; Lk. 9:55; Mt.
8:20; Mk. 4:39; Lk. 4:39, 8:24). 27 This term, the fundamental meaning of which is "to mete out due measure," with that melancholy necessity which carries all terms which express doing justice to sinful men downwards in their connotation, is used in the New Testament only in malam partem, and we may be quite sure is never employed without its implication of censure. 28 What is implied by its employment is that our Lord in working certain cures, and, indeed, in performing others of his miracles — as well as in laying charges on his followers — spoke, not merely "strongly and peremptorily," 29 but chidingly, that is to say, with expressed displeasure. 30
There is in these instances perhaps not so strong but just as clear an ascription of the emotion of anger to our Lord as in those we have already noted, and this suggests that not merely in the case of the raising of Lazarus but in many other instances in which he put forth his almighty power to rescue men from the evils which burdened them, our Lord was moved by an ebullition of indignant anger at the destructive powers exhibited in disease or even in the convulsions of nature. 31 In instances like Mt. 12:16; Mk. 12;
Mt. 16:20; Mk. 8:30; Lk. 9:21, the censure inherent in the term may almost seem to become something akin to menace or threat: "he chided them to the end that they should not make him known"; he made a show of anger or displeasure directed to this end. In the cases where, however, Jesus chided the unclean spirits which he cast out it seems to lie in the nature of things that it was the tyrannous evil which they were working upon their victims that was the occasion of his displeasure. 32 When he is said to have
"rebuked" a fever which was tormenting a human being (Lk. 4:39) or the natural elements — the wind and sea — menacing human lives (Mt. 8:26;
Mk. 4:39; Lk. 8:24), there is no reason to suppose that he looked upon these natural powers as themselves personal, and as little that the personification is only figurative; we may not improperly suppose that the displeasure he exhibited in his upbraiding them was directed against the power behind these manifestations of a nature out of joint, the same malignant influence which he advanced to the conquest of when he drew near to the tomb of Lazarus. 33 In any event the series of passages in which this term is employed to ascribe to Jesus acts inferring displeasure, greatly enlarges the view we have of the play of Jesus' emotions of anger. We see him chiding his disciples, the demons that were tormenting men, and the natural powers which were menacing their lives or safety, and speaking in tones of rebuke to the multitudes who were the recipients of his healing grace (Mt. 12:16).
And that we are not to suppose that this chiding was always mild we are advised by the express declaration that it was in one instance at least,
"vehement" (Mk. 3:12). 34
Perhaps in no incidents recorded in the Gospels is the action of our Lord's indignation more vividly displayed than in the accounts of the cleansings of the Temple. In closing the account which he gives of the earlier of these,
John tells us that "his disciples remembered that it was written, The zeal of thine house shall eat me up" (Jno. 2:17). The word here employed — "zeal"
— may mean nothing more than "ardor"; but this ardor may burn with hot indignation, — we read of a "zeal of fire which shall devour the adversaries" (Heb. 10:27). And it seems to be this hot indignation at the pollution of the house of God — this "burning jealousy for the holiness of the house of God" 35 — which it connotes in our present passage. In this
act, Jesus in effect gave vent "to a righteous anger," 36 and perceiving his wrathful zeal 37 his followers recognized in it the Messianic fulfilment of the words in which the Psalmist represents himself. as filled with a zeal for the house of Jehovah, and the honor of him who sits in it, that "consumes him like a fire burning in his bones, which incessantly breaks through and rages all through him." 38 The form in which it here breaks forth is that of indignant anger towards those who defile God's house with trafficking, and it thus presents us with one of the most striking manifestations of the anger of Jesus in act.
It is far, however, from being the only instance in which the action of Jesus' anger is recorded for us. And the severity of his language equals the decisiveness of his action. He does not scruple to assault his opponents with the most vigorous denunciation. Herod he calls "that fox" (Lk. 13:32); the unreceptive, he designates briefly "swine" (Mt. 7:6) ; those that tempt him he visits with the extreme term of ignominy — Satan (Mk. 8:33). The opprobrious epithet of "hypocrites" is repeatedly on his lips (Mt. 15:7, 23: passim; Lk. 13:15), and he added force to this reprobation by clothing it in violent figures, — they were "blind guides," "whited sepulchres," and, less tropically, "a faithless and perverse generation," a "wicked and adulterous generation." He does not shrink even from vituperatively designating them ravening wolves (Mt. 7:15), serpents, brood of vipers (Mt. 12:34), even children of the evil one: "Ye are," he declares plainly, "of your father, the Devil" (Jno. 8:44). The long arraignment of the Pharisees in the twentythird chapter of Matthew with its iterant, "Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!" and its uncompromising denunciation, fairly throbs with indignation, and brings Jesus, before us in his sternest mood, the mood of the nobleman in the parable (Lk. 19:27), whom he represents as
commanding: "And as for these my enemies, bring them hither and slay them before me." 39
The holy resentment of Jesus has been made the subject of a famous chapter in Ecco Homo. 40 The contention of this chapter is that he who loves men must needs hate with a burning hatred all that does wrong to human beings, and that, in point of fact, Jesus never wavered in his consistent resentment of the special wrong-doing which he was called upon to witness. The chapter announces as its thesis, indeed, the paradox that true mercy is no less the product of anger than of pity: that what differentiates the divine virtue of mercy from "the vice of insensibility" which is called
"tolerance," is just the under-lying presence of indignation. Thus — so the reasoning runs, — "the man who cannot be angry cannot be merciful," and it was therefore precisely the anger of Christ which proved that the unbounded compassion he manifested to sinners "was really mercy and not mere tolerance." The analysis is doubtless incomplete; but the suggestion, so far as it goes, is fruitful. Jesus' anger is not merely the seamy side of his pity; it is the righteous reaction of his moral sense in the presence of evil.
But Jesus burned with anger against the wrongs he met with in his journey through human life as truly as he melted with pity at the sight of the world's misery: and it was out of these two emotions that his actual mercy proceeded.
1. The preposition in the participle sullupoumenos merely emphasizes the inwardness of the emotion (Thayer-Grimm, Lexicon, etc. sub voc. suv, 2:4).
Cf. Fritsche in loc.: "Beza and Rosenmiiller have properly seen that the preposition suv is not without force. But their interpretation: 'when he had looked indignantly about him at the same time grieving, etc.' would require ama lupouµevos and does not render the force of sullupouµevo,. We have no doubt, therefore, that the preposition suv, should be referred to the mind of Jesus, 1: e., 'when he had looked about him with anger, grieving in his mind . . . he said'"
2. "It is" says James Denney (DCG., I. p. 60) justly, "the vehement repulsion of that which hurts,"
3. See Schmidt, Synonymik etc. II, 1878, § 83. 14, 588 sq. Trench, Synonyms of the New Testament7 1871, p. 224: "This lupa, unlike the grief which the three following words [pentheo, phraneo, kopto] express, a man may so entertain in the deep of his heart, that there shall be no outward manifestation of it, unless he himself be pleased to reveal it ( Rom. is. 2) ."
4. See Schmidt, as above III, 1879, § 142: orga is "wrath (Zorn) as it is directed to punishment or vengeance" (p. 512) ; "orga stands in closer relation to the vengeance which is to be inflicted than thumos" (p. 553); "it accordingly can be nothing else than the violently outbreaking natural impulse, uncontrolled by the reason, which we call by the word 'wrath'
(Zorn) ; and the idea that such an impulse seeks its end, and therefore the thought of vengeance or punishment which this impulse seeks to wreak on the guilty one, lies close" (p. 555). Cf. Trench, p. 124. Lutgert, as cited, pp.
98, 99, is careful to point out that Jesus' anger is never personal, and never passes into revengeful feelings on his own behalf.
5. Cf. "the wrath of the Lamb" Rev. 6:18. Thomas Goodwin (Works, IV. p.
144) wishes us to understand that when such emotional movements are attributed to the Exalted Christ, they have their full quality as human emotions, affecting the whole Christ body as well as spirit. "Therefore, when as we read of the 'wrath of the Lamb,' as Rev. 6:18, namely, against his enemies, as her of his pity and compassion towards his friends and members, why should this be attributed only to his deity, which is not capable of wrath, or to his soul and spirit only? And why may it not be thought he is truly angry as a man, in the whole man, and so with such a wrath as his body is afflicted with, as well as that he is wrathful in his soul only, seeing he hath taken up our whole nature, on purpose to subserve his divine nature in all the executions of it?"
6. 'Aganakteo: see Schmidt, Synonymik etc. III, 1879, pp. 360-562:
'Aganaktein and aganaktasis designate, to wit, the displeasure (Unwillen) which we feel at an act in which we see a wrong (Unrecht) or which outrages our human sentiment and feeling" (p. 561). "Jesus" comments
Lagrange in loc. "was irritated by their hardness."
7. Swete in loc.: "We hear the Lord's indignant call, as it startles the disciples in the act of dismissing the party."
8. 'Embrimaomai: see especially the detailed discussion of this word by Fr.
Cumlich in the Theologische Studien und Kritiken, 1862, pp. 260-269. "It is, now, exegetically certain that Jesus here (Jno. 11:33) was angry. Only this, open and vehement anger, and no other meaning belongs philologically to eubrimasthai" (p. 260, opening the discussion). "From what has been said, it is sufficiently clear that, 1) bremo, just like fremo
always expresses, transferred to man, nothing but the active affection of anger, never 'a general [mental movement],' least of all 'sorrow; 2) that moreover brima, and its frequentatively heightened and yet at the same time interiorizing (en) intensive embrimasthai, expresses only a strong, or the strongest degree of wrath, which, precisely on account of this strength being incapable of being held in, breaks out externally, but still gives vent to itself rather in uncontrollable sound than word" (pp. 265-6, closing the discussion). Cf. p. 209: "Embrimasthai designates primarily a single emotion, and this one is a vehement ebullition of his anger, a real infremere." Cf. Meyer on Jno. 11:33: "The words brimaomai and embrimaomai are never used otherwise than of hot anger in the Classics, the Septuagint, and the New Testament (Mt. 9:30; Mk. 1:43, 14:5 ), save when they denote snorting or growling proper (Aeschyl, Sept. 461, Lucean,
Necyom. 20."
9. Fuller (Webster), about 1801, cited in The Oxford Dictionary of the English Language, I. 951, where other citations also are given.
10. Certain late grammarians (see Stephens' Thesaurus sub voc. embrimasthai and brimoomai) define brimosmai "to threaten"; and some of the lexicographers do the like: Hesychius for example defines brima as "threat," and Suidu embrimasthai itself as "to speak with anger and to blame with harshness," the latter part of which is repeated in the Etym.
Mag. A scholiast on Aristophansa, Eq. 855 defines brimasthai as "to be angry and to threaten."
11. Mt. 8:4, 9:30, 18:10, 24:6; Mk. 1:44; I Thess. 5:15; Rev. 19:10, 22:9 only.
12. So that Zahn (on Mt. 9:30, p. 385) is misled into explaining: "He admonished them in a menacing tone." Something more than this is said.
13. Meyer on Mk. 1:43 quite accurately connects the embrimasamenos auto with exebalen only, translating: "after he had been angry at him," though he supposes the exebalen to have been accompanied by "a vehement begone now! away hence!" and accordingly arbitrarily paraphrases the embrimansamenos "wrathfully addressed him." On Mt. 9:30 he accurately translates: "He was displeased with them, and said."
14. J. A. Alexander, in Mt. 9:30, puts this view in its most attractive form:
"It can only mean a threatening in case of disobedience, charging them on pain of his serious displeasure and disapprobation." It comes to the same thing when Westcott (on Jno. 11:33) says: "There is the notion of coercion springing out of displeasure." Cf. Morrison: "Peremptorily charged them"
(Mk. 1:43) ; Zahn: "He enjoined them in a menacing tone" (Mt. 9:30).
Others, of course, transfer the matter from Christ to the Evangelists; thus even Weiss can write (on Mt. 9:39) : "Perhaps the Evangelist is thinking with respect to this ebullition of the resultlessness of such prohibitions, which is so strongly emphasized by Mark (cf. 7:36)."
15. Three or four such comments on Mk. 1:43 as the following, when read consecutively, are instructive. Weiss: "But obviously Mark thinks of the healing as taking place in a house (exebalen), perhaps, according to the connection with verse 39, in a synagogue. Entrance into the house of another was, no doubt, forbidden to lepers, according to Lev. 13:48 cf.
Num. 5:2 (see Ewald on the passages, and Alterth. p. 180), but not altogether access to the synagogues: in any case the resort of the people to Jesus and his healing of the sick broke through the restrictions of the law, and from this also is explicable Jesus' demeanor of haste and vehemence."
Wohlenberg: "After or with the manifestation of vehement anger, Jesus sends the man forthwith away (exebalen) from his presence . . . and nothing
indicates that Mark conceived the occurrence to have taken place in a house. An intensely angry emotion was exhibited by Jesus towards the healed man, because he observed in him a false and perverse idea of the transaction." Keil: "The occasion, however, of the angry expulsion of the healed man, we certainly are not to seek in the leper's breach of the law through entering the house of another (Lev. 46 cf., Num. 5:2) but chiefly in his state of mind" . . . Edersheim (Life and Times, etc., I. 496) : "This ['cast him out'], however, as Godet has shown (Comm. on St. Luke, German trans. p. 137), does not imply that the event took place either in a house or in a town, as most commentators suppose. It is, to say the least, strange that the Speaker's Commentary, following Weiss, should have located it in a synagogue' It could not possibly have occurred there, unless all Jewish ordinances and customs had been reversed."
16. As e.g. Lagrange on Mk. 1:43: "'Embrimaomai: (again 14:5; Mt. 9:30; Jno. 11:33, 38) cannot mean anger here, but only a certain severity. Jesus speaks in a tone which does not admit of reply."
17. Zahn on Mt. 9:30 (p. 385) reminds us that the word suggests "the audible expression of wrath." Cf. Mk. 14:4-5 where we are told that "there were some that had indignation (aganaktountes), among themselves — and they murmured (enebrimonto) against her." The inward emotion is expressed by aganakteo, its manifestation in audible form by embrimaomai.
18. See above, note 19; and cf. Gumlich, TSK, 1882, p. 258.
19. 'Aganakteo: see above, notes 41 and 52.
20. Dakruo (not klaio as in verse 33): see above, note 18.
21. See above: note 43.
22. So Hengstenberg, in particular, and many after him.
23. John Hutchison, The Monthly Interpreter, 1885, II. p. 288: "A storm of wrath was seen to sweep over him."
24. Kai etaraxen eauton. Many commentators insist on the voluntariness of Jesus' emotion, expressed by this phrase. Thus John Hutchison, as above, p.
288: "It was an act of his own free will, not a passion hurrying him on, but a voluntarily assumed state of feeling which remained under his direction and control. . . . In a word there was no ataxia in it." For the necessary limitations of this view see Calvin on this passage. Cf. Lutgert as cited, p.
145.
25. Cf. John Hutchison, as above, p. 375: "He was gazing into 'the skeleton face of the world,' and tracing everywhere the reign of death. The whole earth to him was but 'the valley of the shadow of death,' and in these tears which were shed in his presence, he saw that 'Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe, Are brackish with the salt of human tears.'"
26. The classical exposition of the whole passage is F. Gumlich's, Die Rathsel der Erweckung Lazari, in the Theologische Studien und Knitlken,
1882, pp. 65-110, and 248-336. See also john Hutchison, in The Monthly Interpreter, 1885, II. pp. 281-296 and 374-386.
27. 'Epitimao: See Schmidt, Synonymik etc. I. 1876, § 4, 11, p. 147:
"epitman is properly to impute something to one (as a fault) . . . And indeed it denotes harsh and in general vehement reproaches with reference to unworthy deeds or customs, construed ordinarily with the dative of the person: to condemn with harsh words, to heap reproaches on." Cf. also
Trench, § 4 (p. 12).
28. Swete, on Mk. 1:25: "epitiman, Vg. comminari, Wycliffe and Rheims 'threaten,' other English Versions, 'rebuke': the strict meaning of the word is 'to mete-out due measure,' but in the N. T. it is used only of censure."
Plummer on Lk. 4:35: "In N. T. epitimrao has no other meaning than 'rebuke'; but in classical Greek it means — 1. 'lay a value on, rate'; 2. 'lay a penalty on, sentence'; 3. 'chide, rate, rebuke.'" "The verb is often used of rebuking violence (verse 41, 8:24, 9:42; Mt. 8:26, 18:18; Mk. 4:39; Jud. ix); yet must not on that account be rendered 'restrain' (Fritzsche on Mt. 8:26,
325)." Morrison accordingly thinks that "rated" might give the essential meaning of the word. Lagrange (on Mk. 1:28) unduly weakens the term.
29. Morrison on Mk. ill. 12.
30. Hahn on Lk. 4:35: "epitimasen auto, that is, he vehemently commanded him, charged him with strong, chiding words (cf. verses 39, 41, 8:24, 9:21,
42, 55), an expression by which Luke would say that Jesus spoke the following words in a tone of highest displeasure": cf. on verse 39.
31. Cf. Gumlich, TSK, 1862 p. 287: "Similar movements of anger, epitiman instead of embrimasthai directly before or after a miracle, we find also elsewhere in him: threats (Bedrohen) to the wind and the sea (Mt. 8:26), most frequently in the case of healings of possessed people of a difficult kind (Mt. 8:28, 7:18; Mk. 9:21, 1:25, 3:12; Lk. 4:41)."
32. In Mk. 8:33; Lk. 9:55 the objects of his displeasure were his followers.
33. Cf. Zahn, Das Evangelium des Johannes, 1908, p. 480, note 82: "Since Jesus, without prejudice to his faith in the all-embracing providence and universal government of God, looked upon all disease, and not merely possession, as the work of Satan (Lk. 13:16, 10:19, cf. Acts xvi 38; II Cor.
12:7), and held him to be the author not only of isolated miseries, but of the death of man in general (Jno. 8:44) ; Heb. 2:14 does not go beyond Jesus' circle of ideas." — Also Henry Norris Bernard, The Mental Characteristics of the Lord Jesus Christ, 1888, pp. 90-91: "The miracles of Christ formed part of that warfare which was ever waging between the Son of God and the
power of evil which he was manifested to destroy. The rage of the elements, the roaring wind, and the surging waves ever seeking to engulf the fishers' boat: the fell sickness racking with pain man's body; the paralysis of the mental powers destroying man's intellect, and leaving him a prey to unreasoning violence, or to unclean desires; the death which shrouded him in the unknown darkness of the tomb— these things were to the Saviour's vision but objective forms of the curse of sin which it was his mission to remove. The Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Satan were brought together in opposition. The battle between the Lord's Christ and the great adversary was ever going on. Man's infirmities and his sicknesses, in the eyes of Christ, were the outward symbol of the sin which was their cause.
So the inspired writer, in the healing of the sick, and in the casting out of devils, sees direct blows given, which, in the end, shall cause Satan's empire to totter to its fall. Every leper cleansed, every blind man restored to sight, every helpless paralytic made to walk, every distracted man brought back to the sweetness of life and light of reason, above all the dead recalled to life — each, in the salvation accorded them, furnished a proof that a greater than Satan was here, and that the Kingdom of God was being manifested upon earth."
34. Cf. Swete in loc.; also Lagrange: "polla, taken adverbially, does not mean in Mk. 'often,' nor even 'in a prolonged fashion,' but 'earnestly;
'strongly; 'greatly' (except perhaps in 1:45) ; cf. 5:10, 23, 43, 6:20, 9:26; the Vulgate has, therefore, well rendered it vehementer (here and 16:43)."
35. Westcott in loc.
36. Zahn in loc.: p. 168.
37. Meyer in loc.: "In this wrathful zeal which they saw had taken bold of Jesus, they thought they saw the Messianic fulfilment of that word of the
psalm. . . .
38. Delitzsch in loc.
39. Cf. James Denney, article "Anger," and E. Daplyn, article "Fierceness," in Hastings' DCG. Also Lutgert, as cited, p. 97 where instances of our
Lord's expressions of anger, "which occupy a large place in the Synoptics" are gathered together, and p. 99 where it is pointed out that "Jesus grounds his declarations of woe, not on what his opponents had done to him, but purely on their sins against the law and the prophets . . . Jesus' anger remains therefore pure because it bums against what is done against God, and not against what has happened to himself."
40. Chapter 21: "The Law of Resentment."