Verse 27
27. Which of you, by taking thought—anxious solicitude.
can add one cubit unto his stature?—"Stature" can hardly be the thing intended here: first, because the subject is the prolongation of life, by the supply of its necessaries of food and clothing: and next, because no one would dream of adding a cubit—or a foot and a half—to his stature, while in the corresponding passage in Luke (Luke 12:25; Luke 12:26) the thing intended is represented as "that thing which is least." But if we take the word in its primary sense of "age" (for "stature" is but a secondary sense) the idea will be this, "Which of you, however anxiously you vex yourselves about it, can add so much as a step to the length of your life's journey?" To compare the length of life to measures of this nature is not foreign to the language of Scripture (compare Psalms 39:5; 2 Timothy 4:7, &c.). So understood, the meaning is clear and the connection natural. In this the best critics now agree.
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