Matthew 6:8 - Exposition

Be not ye therefore like. Revised Version omits "ye," as the emphatic personal pronoun is not expressed. The connexion of thought is—Seeing you are expected to shun heathen error (Meyer), do not allow yourselves to reproduce heathen practices. By observing these you would be taking a definite way of becoming like (passive, or rather middle, ὁμοιωθῆτε ) those who ordinarily practise them. For ; i.e. you stand on a different footing altogether from the heathen; you are intimately related to One above, who knows your wants, even before you express them to him. Your Father; Revised Version margin, "some ancient authorities read God your Father. " So )*, B, sah. ( ὁθεός is bracketed by Westcott and Hort). The insertion is at first sight suspicious, but as there is no trace of such an addition in Matthew 6:1 , Matthew 6:4 , Matthew 6:6 , Matthew 6:14 . 18 (in Matthew 6:32 only )*), it is hard to see why it should have been interpolated here. Its omission, on the other hand, is easily accounted for by its absence in those passages. The internal evidence, therefore, corroborates the strong external evidence of )*, B. Our Lord here said "God" to emphasize the majesty and power of "your Father." Knoweth ; i.e. intuitively ( οἶδεν ); el. Matthew 6:32 .