Matthew 8:1
. And when he had come down from the mountain Matthew now returns to the course of the history. He had formerly said, that Christ went up into a mountain, (verse 1) then he threw, as it were, into one heap, many leading points of the doctrine of Christ; and now he adds that, about the time when he preached on the mountain, he healed a certain leper The same event is related by Mark and Luke, though they do not mention the time. It was a striking display of the divine power of Christ, that, by his word alone and a touch of his hand, he suddenly cleansed the man’s leprosy. Now, though leprosy was a different kind of disease from elephantiasis, (488) ( ἐλεφαντίασις,) it is plain enough that it was difficult to cure. When it had continued long and become deeply seated, it rarely happened that any person recovered. Granting that physicians might, by their professional skill, have given some relief, it is manifest that there was nothing human about this miracle.
(488) “The burning ulceration, with which the great adversary of man afflicted the venerable patriarch Job, (Job 2:7,) is generally understood to be the elephantiasis, or leprosy of the Arabians; and derives its name from its rendering the skin of the patient, like that of an elephant, scabrous and dark-colored, and furrowed all over with tubercles, loathsome alike to the individual and to spectators.”— (Horne’s Introduction, vol. iii. p. 328.) This quotation is made, because it seemed proper that a word of comparatively rare occurrence, which Calvin uses, should be defined, and its origin explained; and because that useful work, from which we have quoted, was at hand. Many of the most important topics embraced by the “Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures” have since been handled by writers of greater learning and research. Yet it would be ungrateful not to acknowledge that, at the time of its appearance, it supplied an important desideratum, that it probably led the way to other treatises, and that, as a popular and miscellaneous book of reference on Biblical literature, it is not yet superseded. — Ed.