And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
And I say also unto thee, х Kagoo (G2504) de (G1161) soi (G4671) legoo (G3004)]: q.d., 'As thou hast borne such testimony to Me, even so in return do I to thee;'
That thou art Peter. At his first calling, this new name was announced to him as an honour afterward to be conferred on him (John 1:43). Now he gets it, with an explanation of what it was meant to convey.
And upon this rock. As "Peter" and "Rock" are one word in the dialect familiarly spoken by our Lord-the Aramaic or Syro-Chaldaic, which was the mother tongue of the country-this exalted play upon the word х Keeypaa' (H3710); keefas (G2786), John 1:43] can he fully seen only in languages which have one word for both. Even in the Greek it is imperfectly represented х su (G4771) ei (G1487) Petros (G4074), kai (G2532) epi (G1909) tautee (G5026) tee (G3588) petra (G4073)]. In French, as Webster and Wilkinson remark, it is perfect, Pierre-pierre.
I will build my church - not on the man Simon Bar-jona; but on him as the heaven-taught confessor of such a faith. "My Church," says our Lord, calling the Church His OWN; a magnificent expression, remarks Bengel, regarding Himself-nowhere else occurring in the Gospels. See the notes at Matthew 13:24-30; Matthew 13:36-43, Remark 3.
And the gates of hell, х hadou (G86)] - 'of Hades,' or, the unseen world; meaning, the gates of Death: in other words, 'It shall never perish.' Some explain it of 'the assaults of the powers of darkness;' but though that expresses a glorious truth, probably the former is the sense here.