It is enough. — Here also we note a tone of grave and tender sympathy, not without the gentle play of feeling which the words seem to betoken. To be as their Master in anything, even in shame and suffering, might well be enough for any scholar.
Beelzebub. — The Greek gives the form Beel-zebul. Its history illustrates some interesting phases of Jewish thought. (1.) It appears in the form Baal-zebub, the “Lord of flies” (probably as sending or averting the swarms of flies or locusts that are one of the plagues of the East), as the name of a god worshipped by the Philistines at Ekron, and consulted as an oracle (2 Kings 1:2) in cases of disease. (2.) Later Jews, identifying all heathen deities with evil spirits, saw in the god of their nearest and most hated neighbours the chief or prince of those “demons,” and in their scorn transformed the name into Baal-zebel, which would mean “Lord of dung,” or Baal-zebul, “Lord of the dwelling” — i.e., of the house of the evil spirits who are the enemies of God. Our Lord’s connection of the name with “the master of the house” seems to point to the latter meaning as that present to our Lord’s thoughts. The reference is clearly made to the charge that had already been implied in Matthew 9:34. We do not indeed find the name of Beel-zebub there, nor indeed do we meet with the direct application of that name to our Lord anywhere in the Gospel history; but there was obviously but a single step, easily taken, between the language they had actually used and that which is here reported of them.