VIII. THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT. MATTHEW Xviii. 23-35. THERE is nothing in the discourse going before, to lead immediately to the question of Peter's, in answer to which this parable was spoken; while, at the same time, the words, "Then came Peter," seem to mark that the connection is unbroken. It may perhaps be thus traced: Peter must have felt in his Lord's injunctions concerning the manner of dealing with an offending brother (ver. 15-17), that the forgiveness of his fault was necessarily implied as having already taken place; since, till we had forgiven, we could not be in the condition to deal with him thus; for this dealing, even to the exclusion of him from Church-fellowship, is entirely a dealing in love (2 Thess. iii. 14, 15), and with a view to his recovery. (See Sirac xix. 13-17.) Nor does it mean, as we might be too much inclined to understand it, that after the failure of these repeated attempts to win him to a better mind, we should even then be justified in feeling strangeness towards him in our hearts;* for compare the whole course of St. Paul's injunctions concerning the offender in the Corinthian church. Were that too the meaning, the exercise of the law of love would then be limited to three times (see ver. 15-17); and that in opposition to what immediately follows, where it is extended to seventy times seven.† Chrysostom observes, that when Peter in * As neither, on the other hand, does the command to forgive till seventy times seven exclude a dealing, if need be, of severity, provided always it be a dealing in love. Thus Augustine (Serm. 83, c. 7): Si per caritatem imponitur disciplina, de corde lenitas non recedat. Quid enim tam pium quàm medicus ferens ferramentum? Plorat secandus, et secatur: plorat urendus, et uritur. Non est illa crudelitas, absit ut sævitia medici dicatur. Sævit in vulnus, ut homo sanetur, quia si vulnus palpetur, homo perditur. Cf. Serm. 211. † Our Lord's "seventy times seven" of forgiveness makes a wonderful contrast, which has not escaped the notice of St. Jerome (v. 2, p. 565, edit. Bened.) to Lamech's, the antediluvian Antichrist's, seventy and seven-fold of revenge. (Gen. iv. stanced seven, as the number of times that an offending brother should be forgiven, he accounted certainly that he was doing some great thing, -that his charity was taking a large stretch, these seven being four times more than the Jewish masters enjoined.* He increased the number of times with the feeling, no doubt, that the spirit of the new law of love which Christ had brought into the world,-a law larger, freer, more long-suffering, than the old,-required this. There was then in Peter's mind a consciousness of this new law of love,-though an obscure one, since he supposed it possible that love could ever be overcome by hate, good by evil. But there was, at the same time, a fundamental error in the question itself, for in proposing a limit beyond which forgiveness should not extend, there was evidently implied the notion, that a man in forgiving, gave up a right which he might, under certain circumstances, exercise. The purpose of our Lord's answer,-in other words, of the parable,—is to make clear that when God calls on a member of his kingdom to forgive, he does not call on him to renounce a right, but that he has now no right to exercise in the matter: asking for and accepting forgiveness, he has implicitly pledged himself to show it; and it is difficult to imagine how any amount of didactic instruction could have conveyed this truth with at all the force and conviction of the following parable. Therefore," to the end that you may understand what I say the better, is the kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain king, which would take account of his servants." This is the first of the parables in which God appears in his character of King. We are the servants with whom he takes account. Yet this is not, as is plain, the final 24.) Ἑβδομηκοντάκις ἑπτά is not, as Origen and some others understand it, 70+7=77; for that would be rather ẞdoμýkovтa éntákis, but 70×7=490. *They grounded the duty of forgiving three times and not more, on Amos i. 3: ii. 6; also on Job xxxiii. 29, 30; at this last passage see the marginal translation. LIGHTFOOT'S Hor. Heb. in loc. While this is true, there were yet deeper motives for his selection of the number seven. It is the number in the divine law with which the idea of remission (apeois) was ever linked. The seven times seventh year was the year of jubilee (ETOS Tĥs apéσews), Lev. xxv. 28; cf. iv. 6, 17; xvi. 14, 15. It is true that we find it as the number of punishment or retribution for evil also; (Gen. iv. 15; Lev. xxvi. 18, 21, 24, 28; Deut. xxviii. 25; Ps. lxxix. 12; Prov. vi. 31; Dan. iv. 16; Rev. xv. 1;) yet this should not disturb or perplex, but rather confirm us in this view, since there lies ever in punishment the idea of restoration of disturbed relations, and so of forgiveness. (Ezek. xvi. 42.) It is the storm which violently restores the disturbed equilibrium of the moral atmosphere. Gregory of Nyssa then has a true insight into the reason why Peter should have named seven times, when he observes (Opp. v. 1, p. 159): Παρετήρησεν ὁ Πέτρος, ὅτι κανὼν παραδόσεως ἀρχαῖος ἐστι, τὸν ἑβδομάδα ἔμφασιν ἔχειν τινος ἀφέσεως ἁμαρτημάτων, ἀναπαύσεως τελείας, οὗ σημεῖον τὸ σαββατόν ἐστιν, ἡ ἑβδόμη ἡμέρα ἀπὸ γενέσεως. 7 reckoning, not identical with that of Matt. xxv. 19; 2 Cor. v. 10; but rather such a reckoning as that of Luke xvi. 2. To this he brings us by the preaching of the law,-by the setting of our sins before our face, -by awakening and alarming our conscience that was asleep before,by bringing us into adversities,-by casting us into perils of death, so that we seem to see it near before us (2 Kin. xx. 4); he takes account with us when he makes us feel that we could not answer him one thing in a thousand,—that our trespasses are more than the hairs of our heads; when through one means or another he brings our careless carnal security to an utter end. (Ps. 1. 21.) Thus David was summoned before God by the word of Nathan the prophet (2 Sam. xii.); thus the Ninevites by the preaching of Jonah, thus the Jews by John the Baptist. "And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought unto him which owed him ten thousand talents;” he had not to go far, before he lighted on this one; he had only "begun to reckon." This perhaps was the first into whose accounts he looked; there may have been others with yet larger debts behind. This one was brought unto him," he never would have come of himself; far more likely he would have made that ten into twenty thousand; for the secure sinner goes on treasuring up (Rom. ii. 5) an ever mightier sum, to be one day required of him. The sum here is immense, whatever talents we suppose these to have been, though it would differ very much in amount, according to the talent which we assumed; if, indeed, the Hebrew, it would then be a sum perfectly enormous;* yet only therefore the fitter to express the greatness of every man's transgression in thought, word, and deed, against his God. In the case before us, the immensity of the sum may be best explained by supposing the defaulter to have been one of the chief servants of the king, a farmer or administrator of the royal revenues;† or seeing that in the despotisms of the East, every individual, from the highest to * How great a sum it was, we can most vividly realize to ourselves by comparing it with other sums of which mention is made in Scripture. In the construction of the tabernacle, twenty-nine talents of gold were used; (Exod. xxxviii. 24;) David prepared for the temple three thousand talents of gold, and the princes five thousand; (1 Chron. xxix. 4-7 ;) the queen of Sheba presented to Solomon, as a royal gift, one hundred and twenty talents; (1 Kin. x. 10;) the king of Assyria laid upon Hezekiah thirty talents of gold; (2 Kin. xviii. 14;) and in the extreme impoverishment to which the land was brought at the last, one talent of gold was laid upon it, after the death of Josiah, by the king of Egypt. (2 Chron. xxxvi. 3.) In the Jewish parable (SCHOETTGEN's Hor. Heb. v. 1, p. 155), which bears resemblance to that before us, in so far as the sins of men are there represented under the image of enormous debt, which it is impossible to pay-it is the tribute due from an entire city, which is owing to the king, and which, at the entreaty of the inhabitants, he remits. the lowest, stands in an absolutely servile relation to the monarch, is in fact his servant or slave, there is nothing in that name to hinder us from supposing him to be one, to whom some chief post of honor and dignity in the kingdom had been committed,-a satrap who should have remitted the revenues of his province to the royal treasury. This is far more probable than that he is such an one as those servants in the parable of the Talents, to whom moneys were committed that they might trade with them: the greatness of the debt renders such a supposition very unlikely. Nor would the sale of the defaulter, with the confiscation of all his goods, have gone far to pay such a debt, unless he had been one living in great splendor and pomp; though, it is true, the words of the original do not imply that the king expected the debt to be discharged with the proceeds of the sale, but that whatever those proceeds were, they were to be rendered into his treasury. The sale of the debtor's wife and children,—for the king commanded them to be sold with him,-rested upon the theory that they were a part of his property. Thus, according to Roman law, the children being part of the property of the father, they were sold into slavery with him. That it was allowed under the Mosaic law to sell an insolvent debtor, is implicitly stated, Lev. xxv. 39; and ver. 41, makes it probable that his family also came into bondage with him; and we find allusion to the same custom in other places. (2 Kin. iv. 1; Neh. v. 6; Isai. 1. 1; lviii. 6; Jer. xxxiv. 8-11; Amos ii. 6; viii. 6.) Michaelis* states that the later Jewish doctors declared against it, except in cases where a thief should be sold to make good the damage which he had done, and is inclined to think that there was no such practice among the Jews in our Lord's time, but that this dealing with the servant is borrowed from the practice of neighboring countries. There is much to make this probable: it is certain that the imprisoning of a debtor, which also we twice meet with in this parable (ver. 30, 34), formed no part of the Jewish law; indeed, where the creditor possessed the power of selling him into * According to Plutarch (Reg. et Imp. Apothegm.), it was exactly this sum of ten thousand talents with which Darius sought to buy off Alexander, that he should not prosecute his conquests in Asia ;-as also the payment of the same sum was imposed by the Romans, on Antiochus the Great, after his defeat by them: and when Alexander, at Susa, paid the debts of the whole Macedonian army, they amounted to only twice this sum, though every motive was at work to enhance the amount. (See DROYSEN's Gesch. Alexanders, p. 500.) Von Bohlen (Das. Alt. Ind., v. 2, p. 119) gives some curious and almost incredible notices of the quantities of gold in the East.-I do not know whether the immensity of the sum may partly have moved Origen to his strange supposition, that it can only be the man of sin (2 Thes. ii.) that is here indicated, or stranger still, the Devil! Compare THILO'S Cod. Apocryphus, vol. 1, p. 887, and NEANDER's Kirch. Gesch., v. 5, p. 1122. † Mos. Recht., v. 3, p. 58-60. "The tormentors" bondage, it would have been totally superfluous. also (ver. 34), those who make inquisition by torture, have a foreign appearance, and would incline us to look for the locality of the parable elsewhere than in Judea. For the spiritual significance, God may be said to sell those, whom he altogether alienates from himself, rejects, and delivers for ever into the power of another. By the selling here may be indicated such "everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and the glory of his power." Compare Ps. xliv. 12, "Thou sellest thy people for nought." The servant, hearing the dreadful doom pronounced against him by his lord, betakes himself to supplication, the one resource that remains to him; he "fell down and worshipped him." The formal act of worship, or adoration, consisted in prostration on the ground, and kissing of the feet and knees; and here Origen bids us to note the nice observance of proprieties in the details of the parable. This servant "worshipped" the king, for that honor was paid to royal personages; but it is not said that the other servant worshipped, he only "besought," his fellow-servant. His words, "Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay thee all,” are characteristic of the extreme fear and anguish of the moment, which made him ready to promise impossible things, even mountains of gold, if only he might be delivered from the present danger. When words of a like kind find utterance from the lips of the sinner, now first convinced of his sin, they show that he has not yet attained to a full insight into his relations with his God-that he has yet much to learn; as namely this that no future obedience can make up for past disobedience; since that future God claims as his right, as only his due: it could not then, even were it perfect, which it will prove far from being, make compensation for the past. We may hear then in the words, the voice of selfrighteousness, imagining that, if only time were allowed, it could make good all the shortcomings of the past. The words are exceedingly important, as very much explaining to us the later conduct of this man. It is clear that he had never come to a true recognition of the immensity of his debt. Little, in the subjective measure of his own estimate, was forgiven him, and therefore he loved little, or not at all. It is true that by his demeanor and his cry he did recognize his indebtedness, else would there have been no setting of him free: and he might have gone on, and had he been true to his own mercies, he would have gone on, to an ever fuller recognition of the grace shown him: but as it was, in a little while he lost sight of it altogether. However, at the earnestness of his present prayer "the lord of that servant was moved with compassion, and loosed him, and forgave him the debt." The severity of God only endures till the sinner is brought |