6:22 “Blessed are you when people 1 hate you, and when they exclude you and insult you and reject you as evil 2 on account of the Son of Man!
1 tn This is a generic use of ἄνθρωπος (anqrwpo"), referring to both males and females.
2 tn Or “disdain you”; Grk “cast out your name as evil.” The word “name” is used here as a figure of speech to refer to the person as a whole.
sn The phrase when they exclude you and insult you and reject you as evil alludes to a person being ostracized and socially isolated because of association with the Son of Man, Jesus.
3 sn Your house is forsaken. The language here is from Jer 12:7 and 22:5. It recalls exilic judgment.
4 sn A quotation from Ps 118:26. The judgment to come will not be lifted until the Lord returns. See Luke 19:41-44.
5 tn Here δέ (de) has been translated as “so” to indicate the implied result of previous action(s) in the narrative.
6 tn Grk “said.”
7 tn This is a mixed condition, with ἄν (an) in the apodosis.
8 tn Grk “faith as,” “faith like.”
9 sn A black mulberry tree is a deciduous fruit tree that grows about 20 ft (6 m) tall and has black juicy berries. This tree has an extensive root system, so to pull it up would be a major operation.
10 tn The passives here (ἐκριζώθητι and φυτεύθητι, ekrizwqhti and futeuqhti) are probably a circumlocution for God performing the action (the so-called divine passive, see ExSyn 437-38). The issue is not the amount of faith (which in the example is only very tiny), but its presence, which can accomplish impossible things. To cause a tree to be uprooted and planted in the sea is impossible. The expression is a rhetorical idiom. It is like saying a camel can go through the eye of a needle (Luke 18:25).
11 tn The verb is aorist, though it looks at a future event, another rhetorical touch to communicate certainty of the effect of faith.