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MATTHEW 12:34 — KING JAMES VERSION 0
Matt 12:33Matt 12:35
“O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.”
You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The brood of vipers epithet — previously applied by John the Baptist to the Pharisees and Sadducees (Matthew 3:7) — is now used by Jesus in direct address. The connection between the heart's content and the mouth's speech grounds the Beelzebul charge in the Pharisees' corrupted hearts: they cannot speak good because they are evil. The abundance of the heart principle makes the Beelzebul charge a self-disclosure of the Pharisees' inner condition.

Church Fathers on Matthew 12:34

After his former answers He here again refutes them in another manner. This He does not in order to do away their charges against Himself, but desiring to amend them, saying, 'Either make the tree good and his fruit good, or make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt.'

Chrysostom · 4th century · Hom. xlii

Thus He holds them in a syllogism which the Greeks call 'Aphycton,' the unavoidable; which shuts in the person questioned on both sides, and presses him with either horn. If, He saith, the Devil be evil, he cannot do good works; so that if the works you see be good, it follows that the Devil was not the agent thereof. For it cannot be that good should come of evil, or evil of good.

Jerome · 4th century

Thus did He at that present refute the Jews, who seeing Christ’s works to be of power more than human, would notwithstanding not allow the hand of God. And at the same time He convicts all future errors of the faith, such as that of those who taking away from the Lord His divinity, and communion of the Father’s substance, have fallen into divers heresies; having their habitation neither uncover the plea of ignorance as the Gentiles, nor yet within the knowledge of the truth.…

Hilary of Poitiers · 4th century
Read all 9 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
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