Matthew 10:14 - Exposition

Parallel passages: Mark 6:11 ; Luke 9:5 (the twelve); Luke 10:10 , Luke 10:11 (the seventy). And whosoever shall not receive you —on your formal request as heralds of the kingdom— nor hear your words ( Matthew 7:24 , note), when ( as , R evised Version, Luke 10:12 , note) ye depart ( go forth , Revised Version) out of. At the moment of going out (cf. Luke 10:12 ), ἐξερχόμενοι ἔξω ( Matthew 21:17 ; Acts 16:13 ), in this case finally. That house or ( that , Revised Version) city . "The house," rightly further defined by "that" in English, comes in Matthew only; "that city" comes also in the parallel passage, Luke 9:5 , and therefore belongs to the source used by St. Matthew. Shake off the dust of your feet . Treating it as a heathen place, whose pollution must be shaken off. For the very dust from a heathen land was to be reckoned as polluting, since, as Rashi says on Talm. Bab., 'Sabb.,' 15 b (cf. Lightfoot, 'Hor. Hebr.,' in loc. ), "It may be doubted, of all the dust of a heathen land, whether it were not from the sepulchre of the dead." (For the apostolic fulfilment of our Lord's injunction cf. Acts 13:51 and Acts 18:6 ; see also Nehemiah 5:13 .)