Article April 22, 1939 Issue

Bible Notes

"O generation of vipers" (Matt. 3:7) — It should be observed that the Greek word "gennemata," which is here rendered "generation," does not properly correspond to our modern use of the term with reference to "the mass of beings living at one period" (Webster's Dictionary). The word means rather "offspring or progeny" (Thayer: Greek Lexicon, p. 113) or "brood," and indeed "generation" was used in the latter sense in the early seventeenth century, when the Kind James Version was first published. Goodspeed has: "You brood of snakes;" Weymouth: "O brood of vipers;" and Moffatt and the Twentieth Century New Testament: "You brood of vipers."

"Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance" (Matt. 3:8) — The Greek term "axios" (meet for), which comes from a root meaning "to draw down a scale or balance," meant originally "of corresponding weight," and so "of equal or corresponding value," and gradually came to have the sense of "worthy of" or "corresponding to" (cf. Thayer: op. cit., p. 52); and since "karpos" (fruit) is often used metaphorically in the sense of "work, act, deed" (op. cit., p. 326), one might translate: "Produce deeds to match the repentance you profess." Compare the following renderings: "Produce fruit that answers to your repentance" (Moffatt); "Produce fruit that will be consistent with your professed repentance" (Goodspeed); "Let your lives then prove your change of heart" (Weymouth); "Let your life, then, prove your repentance" (Twentieth Century New Testament).

"Whose shoes I am not worthy to bear" (Matt. 3:11) — To bear anyone's shoes, that is to bring and take them away, or to fasten them on or take them off (compare Mark 1:7), was regarded by the Jews, the Greeks, and the Romans as "the business of slaves of the lowest rank" (Meyer: Commentary on Matthew, p. 114). Consequently the phrase employed by John the Baptist would suggest both the deep humility of the speaker and also the exaltation of the Messiah, whom he announced.

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