All Commentaries on Matthew 12:21 Go To Matthew 12
Jerome
AD 420
Knowing, that is, their designs against Him withdrew Himself, that He might remove from the Pharisees all opportunity of sin.
For the way is broad and wide which leads to destruction, and many walk in it; and being many, they will not hear the voice of the Saviour, because they are not in the narrow but in the broad way.
He that holds not out his hand to a sinner, nor bears his brother’s burden, he breaks a bruised reed; and he who despises a weak spark of faith in a little one, he benches a smoking flax.
Ep. 121, 2: Or the reverse; He calls the Jews a bruised reed, whom tossed bythe wind and shaken from one another, the Lord did not immediately condemn, but patiently endured; and the smoking flax He calls the people gathered out of the Gentiles, who, having extinguished the light of the natural law, were involved in the wandering mazes of thick darkness of smoke, bitter and hurtful to the eyes; this He not only did not extinguish, by reducing them to ashes, but on the contrary from a small spark and one almost dead He raised a mighty flame.
