Matthew 10:19

19 Whenever they hand you over, don't worry about how to speak or what you will say, because what you can say will be given to you at that moment.

Matthew 10:19 Meaning and Commentary

Matthew 10:19

But when they deliver you up
The apostles hearing that they should be delivered up to councils, and brought before governors and kings, might be under some concern how they should behave, and what they should be able to say in vindication of themselves and truth, before such great persons; they not being used to converse with men in such high stations: they were illiterate men, and of no elocution; men of mean birth, low life, most of them poor fishermen; and might fear, on these accounts, that the Gospel would suffer for want of able persons to defend it before the great ones of the earth. Now, in order to remove these their fears and objections, and to strengthen and comfort their minds, our Lord bids them, when this would be their ease, that the Jews would deliver them to the Roman magistrates, to

take no thought how, or what ye shall speak;
not to be anxiously concerned, neither as to the matter, or manner of what they should say in their defence: they should have no occasion, as orators do, to take pains, and rack their thoughts, to prepare a studied, elaborate oration, dressed with all the flowers of rhetoric, filled with the most moving and powerful arguments, and clothed with diction of the strictest propriety and elegance; for they should want neither words, nor things; they should have arguments put into their mouths, and helped to proper language to express them in:

for it shall be given you in the same hour, what ye shall speak;
immediate assistance should be afforded them either by his father, or himself; or rather, the blessed Spirit, who would suggest unto them, at once, things, the most proper to be said, and help them to deliver them in the most proper manner: and these are the most convincing arguments, and that the best elocution, which the Spirit of God helps men to; these vastly exceed all the art of men, and strength of nature. This was greatly verified in Peter and John, two poor fishermen, when before the council, and in Stephen the protomartyr.

Matthew 10:19 In-Context

17 Watch out for people—because they will hand you over to councils and they will beat you in their synagogues.
18 They will haul you in front of governors and even kings because of me so that you may give your testimony to them and to the Gentiles.
19 Whenever they hand you over, don't worry about how to speak or what you will say, because what you can say will be given to you at that moment.
20 You aren't doing the talking, but the Spirit of my Father is doing the talking through you.
21 Brothers and sisters will hand each other over to be executed. A father will turn his child in. Children will defy their parents and have them executed.
Copyright © 2011 Common English Bible