How hard it is for those who have wealth
to enter the kingdom of God!
Mk 10:17-27
v. 17. As he was setting out on a journey, a
man ran up, knelt down before him, and asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do
to inherit eternal life?”
The first phrase, by setting the incident
in the context of a journey, provides a formal link with the surrounding
material.
Good:
Such an address was quite contrary to the
Jewish convention. As Lohmeyer says, it would almost have been tantamount to
'holy' or 'divine', and like the accompanying gestures would have seemed
altogether too much for one whom the man thought of, after all, as no more than
a Teacher (i.e. rabbi).
Life:
The kingdom of God to come'
Inherit:
Or 'gain entrance to' were current usage
among the rabbis.
v. 18. Jesus answered him, “Why do you call
me good?* No one is good but God alone.
Undeniably a very puzzling verse which has
never been wholly satisfactorily explained; it has caused difficulty to
Christian readers at least since the time of St Matthew, who felt obliged to
alter it radically (Matt. 19:17).
The suggestion has often been made - e.g.
by the Jewish scholar Montefiore - that the words testify to a sense of sin, or
at any rate sinfulness, on the part of Jesus, but even if that were true, it
would not explain how, or in what sense, the words came to be included by St
Mark; for certainly he, and those from whom he got the tradition, believed in
the sinlessness of Jesus.
How did they understand the words? One
popular line of approach has been to stress that Jesus was looking at the
matter from the questioner's point of view, and saying, in effect: '(Though I
am good) you have no right to call me good, for, as far as you know, I am
simply a man.' Though that puts the point too crudely, there is probably some
truth in it, and, bearing in mind what was said about the word good in the last
note, we shall 'perhaps get nearest the truth if we suppose that what alarmed
and offended Jesus was the indiscriminate bandying about of divine or quasi-divine
titles.
Any serious religious quest must be based
on the recognition that the one God is the sole norm and source of all
goodness, even of the goodness of Jesus in the days of his flesh. It sorts well
with this that Jesus immediately goes on to point the man to the Law as the
expression of God's righteous will.
v. 19. You know the commandments: ‘You shall
not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not
bear false witness; you shall not defraud; honor your father and your mother.’”
As shown in the exposition, Jesus did not
suppose that the Law could supply the full answer to the man's question. His
words are a challenge.
The commandments cited are a rough summary
of the so-called 'Second Table' of the Ten Commandments, the Fifth Commandment
being placed last, and the Tenth summarized in the words Do not defraud,
perhaps because fraudulence is a special temptation of the rich. No doubt these
commandments were meant to typify the Law of God as a whole, but it is perhaps
characteristic of Jesus' emphasis that those actually quoted deal with man's
duty to his neighbor.
v. 21. Jesus, looking at him, loved him and
said to him, “You are lacking in one thing. Go, sell what you have, and give to
[the] poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”
Loved him:
That is the normal meaning of the Greek
word (agapao), but here we should perhaps think rather of some definite outward
gesture of affection - 'caressed him' or 'put his arms round him'.
Will have treasure in heaven:
The phrase is rabbinic, and so, in one sense,
is the whole saying which precedes it. According to the rabbis, God would
reward righteousness with treasure in heaven,
and in later
Judaism almsgiving, for those who could afford it, come to be regarded as a -
if not indeed the - principal ingredient of righteousness.
On the other hand, it is one thing to give
regular alms out of one's income (no doubt the man did that already) and quite another
to be asked to give up the sources of the income itself. And, as we have seen,
even the latter demand does not stand by itself; it is the prelude to the
further demand: come, follow me.
v. 24. The disciples were amazed at his
words. So Jesus again said to them in reply, “Children, how hard it is to enter
the kingdom of God!
Some MSS. (the 'western text') have v. 25
before this verse, and this s probably the original order. The disciples'
growing astonishment (cf. vv. 24 with
26) then corresponds to the way Jesus' insistence on the difficulty of
salvation grows and widens its scope. In the R.S.V. order, v. 25, referring
only to the rich, is something of an anti-climax after e general statement of v.
24. If R.S.V. order is right, the words
for “a rich man” in v. 25 may be an interpolation, but there is no MS.
authority for such a suggestion.
In v. 24 the western text includes the
words relegated by R.S.V. to the margin. As the exposition has shown, they are
a perfectly sound comment on the difficulties of the rich. If they are genuine,
the passage as originally concerned exclusively with riches as a barrier to
salvation, but a number of extremely important MSS., followed by the majority
commentators, omit them, and R.S.V. is no doubt right in doing so.
v. 25. It is easier for a camel to pass
through [the] eye of [a] needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom
of God.”
Sayings of other Jewish teachers have
survived which speak of the possibility of some vast object (e.g. an elephant)
getting through the eye of a needle, so the comparison was clearly proverbial,
and there is no substance in the suggestion that camel (camelos) is a mistake
for amilos (' cable'), or for the medieval fancy that there was a gate in Jerusalem,
known as the needle, through which a camel might just squeeze. The fact that
such minimizing interpretations have been brought up is itself an eloquent
comment on the passage! The expression is of course a hyperbole meant to be
memorable by reason of its very grotesqueness, but it would be a mistake on
that account to ignore the utterly serious truth it expresses. ,
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