Luke 7:2 - Exposition

And a certain centurion's servant ; literally, slave. The difference is important, as we shall see in the picture presented to us of the centurion's character. A centurion was an officer in the Roman army: the grade answers to the modem European captain—German, hauptmann ; the command included a hundred soldiers. Scholars are not agreed respecting the special service of this particular officer. Some consider he was a Greek or Syrian holding a commission under the prince of the country, the tetrach Herod Antipas; others, that he was in the service of the empire, with a small detachment of the garrison of Caesarea, doing duty at the important lake-city, probably in connection with the revenue. It is clear that Roman garrisons at this period were dotted about the various centres of population in these semi-dependent states. At Jerusalem we know a considerable Roman force was stationed, professedly to keep order in the turbulent capital, but really, no doubt, to overawe the national party. Was sick, and ready to die . St. Matthew calls the disease paralysis, and adds that the sufferer was in extreme pain. The disorder was probably some dangerous form of rheumatic fever, which not unfrequently attacks the region of the heart, and is accompanied with severe pain, and proves in many instances fatal. The ordinary, paralysis would scarcely be accompanied with the acute pain mentioned by St. Matthew.