Matthew Chapter 18 verse 28 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 28. - Went out - straightway from his lord's presence, where he had been so mercifully treated, while the remembrance of his free and undeserved forgiveness must have been still fresh. Found. Lighted upon by chance, as it were. Here, rather, was providentially offered an opportunity of showing that his lord's goodness was not thrown away, but had entered his heart and controlled his conduct towards others. One of his fellow servants. An official of the king, but probably in an inferior position to that which he himself occupied. Seeing this man, he is reminded of a paltry debt which this person owed him. He remembers this fact; he forgets his late experience. An hundred pence (denarii; see on Matthew 20:2); equivalent to some £3 of our money, and a sum not a millionth part of his own debt to his master; the proportion, as some say, may be stated more accurately as 1 to 1,250,000. The enormous difference between these two amounts represents the disproportion between the offences of our neighbours against us and those of which we are guilty towards God; and how small is the forgiveness on our side compared with that which God freely accords to our infinite debt to him! We must consider also the parties to whom these debts are owing - on one side, the worm man; on the other, Almighty God. Took him by the throat (ἔπνιγε); was throttling him. Thus precluding all prayer and remonstrance. Such brutal treatment was not what he himself had experienced. Pay me that thou owest; ὅτι ὀφείλεις: quod debes. Many manuscripts and late editors (e.g., Lachmann, Tregelles, Tischendorf, Alford, Westcott and Hort) soften the demand by reading εἴ τι ὀφείλεις, si quid debes, "if thou owest aught," as though the creditor were ashamed of mentioning the paltry sum due; or else it is simply a fashion of speaking, not to be pressed as if any doubt was intimated concerning the debt. It might almost be rendered, "Pay, since thou owest something." Not thus had his lord addressed him in the first instance.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(28) Which owed him an hundred pence.--Here the calculation is simpler than in Matthew 18:24. The "hundred pence" are a hundred Roman denarii (the denarius being equal to sevenpence-halfpenny), a hundred days' wages of the labourer and soldier, enough to provide a meal for 2,500 men (John 6:7). There is a considerable truthfulness in the choice of such a sum, which has, perhaps, been too little noticed. Had our Lord been seeking simply a rhetorical antithesis between the infinitely great and the infinitely little, it would have been easy to select some small coin, like the denarius, the as, or the quadrans, as the amount of the fellow-servant's debt. But to the fishermen of Galilee the "hundred pence" would appear a really considerable sum, and when they came to interpret the parable they would thus be led to feel that it recognised that the offences which men commit against their brothers may, in themselves, be many and grievous enough. It is only when compared with their sins against God that they sink into absolute insignificance.He laid hands on him.--We are shocked, and are meant to be shocked, by the brutal outrage with which the creditor enforces his claim, but it doubtless was but too faithful a picture of what the disciples had often witnessed, or, it may be, even practised. We are tempted to ask whether this really represents any phenomena of the spiritual life. Can a man who has really been justified and pardoned become thus merciless? The experience of every age, almost of every household, shows that the inconsistency is but too fatally common. The man is not consciously a hypocrite, but he is as yet "double minded" (James 1:8), and the baser self is not conquered. In the language of the later teaching of the New Testament the man's faith is not one which "worketh by love" (Galatians 5:6). He is justified, but not as yet sanctified.