Matthew 25:33 - Exposition

The sheep on his right hand . The sheep are the type of the docile, the profitable, the innocent, the good (see Romans 2:7 , Romans 2:10 ). The right hand is the place of favour and honour. The goats ( ἐρι ì φια , kids ) on the left. The diminutive is here used for the goats, to convey an impression of their worthlessness. Compare κυνα ì ρια , "whelps," in the conversation of our Lord with the Syro-Phoenician woman ( Matthew 15:26 , Matthew 15:27 ). They are the type of the unruly, the proud ( Isaiah 14:9 , Hebrew), the unprofitable, the evil (see Romans 2:8 , Romans 2:9 ). This judicial distinction between the right and left hands is found in classical writers. Thus Plato, 'De Republica,' 10.13, tells of what a certain man, who revived after a cataleptic attack, saw when his soul left his body. he came to a mysterious place, where were two chasms in the earth, and two openings in the heavens opposite to them, and the judges of the dead sat between these. And when they gave judgment, they commanded the just to go on the right hand, and upwards through the heavens; but the unjust they sent to the left, and downwards; and both the just and unjust had upon them the marks of what they had done in the body. So Virgil makes the Elysian Fields to lie on the right of the palace of Dis, and the penal Tartarus on the left (' AE n.,' 6.540, etc.).