Matthew 12:22-24
22. Then was brought unto him one possessed with a devil--"a demonized person." blind and dumb, and he healed him, insomuch that the blind and the dumb both spake and saw. 23. And all the people were amazed, and said, Is not this the son of David?--The form of the interrogative requires this to be rendered, "Is this the Son of David?" And as questions put in this form (in Greek) suppose doubt, and expect rather a negative answer, the meaning is, "Can it possibly be?"--the people thus indicating their secret impression that this must be He; yet saving themselves from the wrath of the ecclesiastics, which a direct assertion of it would have brought upon them. (On a similar question, see on Joh 4:29; and on the phrase, "Son of David," see on Mt 9:27). 24. But when the Pharisees heard it--Mark (Mr 3:22) says, "the scribes which came down from Jerusalem"; so that this had been a hostile party of the ecclesiastics, who had come all the way from Jerusalem to collect materials for a charge against Him. (See on Mt 12:14). they said, This fellow--an expression of contempt. doth not cast out devils, but by Beelzebub--rather, "Beelzebul" (see on Mt 10:25). the prince of the devils--Two things are here implied--first, that the bitterest enemies of our Lord were unable to deny the reality of His miracles; and next, that they believed in an organized infernal kingdom of evil, under one chief. This belief would be of small consequence, had not our Lord set His seal to it; but this He immediately does. Stung by the unsophisticated testimony of "all the people," they had no way of holding out against His claims but by the desperate shift of ascribing His miracles to Satan.
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