p. 7 | LESSON FOR THE THIRD SABBATH IN JANUARY by C. C. L.

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Tuesday, January 6, 1885

FromAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 62, No. 1

LESSON FOR THE THIRD SABBATH IN JANUARY.

By C. C. L.

(See Instructor of Jan. 7, 1884.)

CRITICAL NOTES.

PARABLE OF THE TARES, MATT. 13:24–30; 36–43.

Tares.—“A noxious plant of the grass family, supposed to mean the darnel, the ‘infelix lolium’ of Virgil, now called Siwan or Zowan by the Arabs. It grows among the wheat everywhere in Palestine, and bears a great resemblance to it, while growing, so much so that before they head out the two plants can hardly be distinguished. The grains are found two or three together in a dozen small husks scattered on a rather long head. The Arabs do not separate the darnel from the wheat unless by means of a fan or sieve after threshing. If left to mingle with the bread, it occasions dizziness, and often acts as an emetic.”—Bib. Dic. of Am. Tract Soc.

His enemy came and sowed tares.—“Roberts states that the exact counterpart of this nocturnal villainy may be found in India at the present day. A man wishing to do his enemy an injury, watches for the time when he shall have finished plowing his field, and in the night he goes into the field, and scatters pandinellu, or ‘pig-paddy.’ ‘This, being of rapid growth, springs up before the good seed, and scatters itself before the other can be reaped, so that it will be some years before the poor owner of the field can rid the soil of the troublesome weed.’”—Hand-Book of Bible Manners, etc.

Mammon, Matt. 6:24.—“A Chaldee name of a deity supposed to preside over wealth; wealth, riches.”—Greenfield. “A word for riches, which our Lord beautifully represents as a person whom the folly of men had deified.”—Emphatic Diaglott.

MATTHEW 25:46: “On the duration of the punishment brought to view in the text, we take no issue. It is to be eternal; but what is to be its nature?—The text says, Everlasting punishment; popular orthodoxy says, Unending misery; the Bible, in other places, says, Eternal death.

“Is death punishment? If so, when a death is inflicted from which there is to be no release, that punishment is eternal or everlasting. Then the application of this scripture to the view we hold is very apparent. The heathen, to reconcile themselves to what they supposed to be their inevitable fate, used to argue that death was no evil. But when they looked forward into the endless future of which that death deprived them, they were obliged to reverse their former decision, and acknowledge that death was an endless injury.”—Nature and Destiny, p. 327. “Augustine says: ‘The laws do not estimate the punishment of a criminal by the brief period during which he is being put to death, but by their removing him forever from the company of living men.’”—Ib., p. 328.

LUKE 20:35, 36: Perhaps this passage may be best explained by a paraphrase: But they which in the investigative Judgment shall be accounted worthy to obtain that eternal world and the first [so Alford] resurrection,—that which is out from among the dead ones,—neither marry, nor are given in marriage: for neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels, being immortal like them; and are the children of God and therefore partakers of the divine nature; and this intimate relation exists because of their being children of the resurrection.

ROMANS 6:23: Death.—The original of this word is thanatos. Classical Greek lexicons give it no other meaning than natural or violent (but always literal) death. Certain New Testament lexicons, however, such as Greenfield’s and Robinson’s, give as a second definition “unhappiness, misery, condemnation, punishment.” Of course these men believed that the punishment of the wicked is not literal death, but eternal misery; hence their natural tendency to invent such a meaning for the word thanatos (death) where it is used to describe the fate of the wicked as would conform to their theology. Let it be remembered that outside of the Bible no such meaning was attached to this word; but in the Septuagint and the New Testament, where it is used with reference to the punishment of the wicked, they say it means unhappiness, etc. Now let the reader carefully examine the texts which they produce as examples of this use of the word; and I feel sure he will see that in every one of them death might have its literal, natural meaning, unless he persists in believing the soul is immortal and cannot die. These are the texts: Deut. 30:19; Prov. 11:19; 12:28; Isa. 25:8; John 8:51; Rom. 6:16, 21, 23; 7:5, 10; 8:2, 6; 2 Cor. 2:16; 3:7; 2 Tim. 1:10; Heb. 2:15; Jas. 5:20; Rev. 2:11; 20:6, etc.

2 THESSALONIANS 1:9: A literal translation of this passage is very forcible: Who a just penalty shall pay,—destruction age-lasting from the face of the Lord, and from the glory of his strength. The view that “from the presence of the Lord” points out the cause of the destruction of the wicked, just as the same expression in Acts 3:19 denotes the cause of the refreshing there referred to, is advocated by such commentators as Chrysostom, Bengel, Dr. Wette, Ewald, Hoffman, etc. The revised version translates, “Who shall suffer punishment, even eternal destruction,” etc.

C. C. L.