Page images
PDF
EPUB

was, the name, like klept' among the modern Greeks, would probably cease to be dishonorable, would scarcely be refused by themselves.

[ocr errors]

Yet of how different a stamp and character would many of these men, these maintainers of a last protest against a foreign domination, be likely to be from the mean and cowardly purloiner, whom we call the thief.' The bands of these Anoral, while they would number in their ranks some of the worst, would probably include also some that were originally of the noblest, spirits of the nation—even though they had miserably mistaken the moral necessities of their time, and had sought to work out by the wrath of man the righteousness of God. Such a one we may well imagine this penitent λyorýs to have been. Should there be any truth in such a view of his former condition,—and certainly it would go far to explain his sudden conversion,-it is altogether kept out of sight by the name 'thief' which we have given him; and whether there be any truth in it or not, there can be no doubt that he would be more accurately called, the penitent robber.'

§ xlv.—πλύνω, νίπτω, λούω.

WE have but the one English word, 'to wash,' with which to render these three Greek. We must needs confess here to a certain poverty of language, seeing that the three have severally a propriety of their own, one which the inspired writers always

obsérve, and could not be promiscuously and interchangeably used. Thus Tλúvew is always to wash inanimate things, as distinguished from living objects or persons; garments most frequently (εἵματα, Homer, Il. xxii. 155; ἱμάτιον, Plato, Charm. 161 e; and in the Septuagint continually; So σTOλás, Rev. vii. 4); but not exclusively these, which some have erroneously asserted, as witness the only other occasion where the word occurs in the N. T., being there employed to signify the washing or cleansing of nets (díkтvа, Luke v. 2). When David exclaims, πλῦνόν με ἀπὸ τῆς ἀνοuías (Ps. 1. [li.] 3; cf. ver. 9), these words must not be cited in disproof of this assertion that only of things, and not of persons, Tλúvew is used; for the allusion to the hyssop which follows presently after, shows plainly that the royal penitent had the ceremonial aspersions of the Levitical law primarily in his eye, which aspersions would find place upon the garments of the unclean person (Lev. xiv. 19; Numb. xix. 6), however he may have looked through these to another and better sprinkling beyond.

Νίπτειν and λούειν, on the other hand, express the washing of living persons; although with this difference, that víTTE (which displaced in the later period of the language the Attic view), and νίψασθαι, almost always express the washing of a part of the body, the hands (Mark vii. 3), 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 λovev,

6

which is not so much to wash' as 'to bathe,' and Novola, 'to bathe oneself,' imply always, not the bathing of a part of the body, but of the whole (thus λeλovμévoi тò owμa, Heb. x. 23; cf. Acts ix. 37; 2 Pet. ii. 22; Rev. i. 5; Plato, Phæd. 115 a). This limitation of viπτew to persons as contradistinguished from things, which is always observed in the N. T., is not without exceptions, although they are very unfrequent, elsewhere; thus, in Homer, I. xvi. 229, δέπας: Od. i. 112, τραπέζας: Lev. xv. 12, σкeûos. A single verse in the Septuagint (Lev. xv. 11) gives us all the three words, and all used in their exact propriety of meaning: kai ὅσων ἐὰν ἅψηται ὁ γονορρυὴς καὶ τὰς χεῖρας οὐ νένιπται ὕδατι, πλυνεῖ τὰ ἱμάτια, καὶ λούσε ται τὸ σῶμα ὕδατι.

The passage where it is most important to mark the distinction between the last considered words, the one signifying the washing of a part, and the other the washing of the whole, of the body, and where certainly our English Version loses something in clearness from not possessing words which should note the change that finds place in the original, is John xiii. 10: "He that is washed [ó λeλovμévos] needeth not save to wash [ví

ao0a] his feet, but is clean every whit."1 The foot-washing was a symbolic act. St. Peter had

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 sought to preserve the variation of word: 'Wer gebadet ist, der braucht sich nicht als an den Füssen zu waschen.'

not perceived this at the first, and, not perceiving it, 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 Him to wash even his feet, now asked to be washed 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 the great washing, of that forgiveness which reached to the whole man: he was λeλovμévos, and this great absolving act did not need to be repeated, as, indeed, it was not capable of repetition: "Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you." (John xv. 3). But while it was thus with him in respect of the great all-inclusive forgiveness, he did need at the same time to wash his feet (vipaolai TOÙS Tódas), evermore to cleanse himself, which could only 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 sinful world. The whole mystery of our justification, which is once for all, reaching to every need, embracing our whole being, and our sanctification, which must daily go forward, is wrapped up in the antithesis between the two words. This Augustine has expressed clearly and well (In Ev. Joh. xiii. 10): 'Homo in sancto quidem baptismo totus abluitur, non præter pedes, sed totus omnino: veruntamen cum in rebus humanis postea vivitur, utique terra calcatur. Ipsi igitur humani affectus, sine quibus in hâc mortali

tate non vivitur, quasi pedes sunt, ubi ex humanis rebus afficimur. Quotidie ergo pedes lavat nobis, qui interpellat pro nobis: et quotidie nos opus habere ut pedes lavemus in ipsâ Oratione Dominicâ confitemur, cum dicimus, Dimitte nobis debita nostra.'

§ xlvi.—φῶς, φέγγος, φωστήρ, λύχνος, λαμπάς.

ALL these words are rendered either occasionally or always, in our Version, by 'light;' thus, ps, Matt. iv. 16; Rom. xiii. 12; and often; péyyos, Matt. xxiv. 29; Mark xiii. 24; Luke xi. 33, being the only three occasions upon which the word occurs; pwornp, Phil. ii. 15; Rev. xxi. 11, the only two occasions of its occurrence; λúxvos, Matt. vi. 22; John v. 33; 2 Pet. i. 19, and elsewhere; though often also by 'candle,' as at Matt. v. 15; Rev. xxii. 5; and λaμmás, at Acts xx. 8, but elsewhere by 'lamp,' as at Matt. xxv. 1; Rev. viii. 10; or by 'torch,' as at John xviii. 3.

Hesychius and the old grammarians distinguish between pôs and péyyos (which are but different forms of one and the same word), that pôs is the light of the sun or of the day, péyyos the light or lustre of the moon. Any such distinction is very far from being constantly maintained even by the Attic writers themselves, to whom it is said more peculiarly to belong; thus in Sophocles alone péyyos is three or four times applied to the sun (Antig. 800; Ajax, 654, 840; Trachin. 597); while

« PreviousContinue »