Charles Ellicott Commentary Matthew 10:25

"It is enough for the disciple that he be as his teacher, and the servant as his lord. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more them of his household!" — Matthew 10:25 (ASV)

It is enough—Here we also note a tone of grave and tender sympathy, not without the gentle play of feeling which the words seem to indicate. To be as their Master in anything, even in shame and suffering, might well be enough for any disciple.

Beelzebub—The Greek gives the form Beelzebul. Its history illustrates some interesting phases of Jewish thought:

1. It appears in the form Baal-zebub, the “Lord of flies” (probably as sending or averting the swarms of flies or locusts that are one of the plagues of the East), as the name of a god worshiped by the Philistines at Ekron and consulted as an oracle in cases of disease (2 Kings 1:2).
2. Later Jews, identifying all heathen deities with evil spirits, saw in the god of their nearest and most hated neighbors the chief or prince of those “demons.” In their scorn, they transformed the name into Baal-zebel, which means “Lord of dung,” or Baal-zebul, “Lord of the dwelling”—that is, of the house of the evil spirits who are the enemies of God.

Our Lord’s connection of the name with “the master of the house” seems to point to the latter meaning as the one present to His thoughts. The reference is clearly made to the charge that had already been implied in Matthew 9:34.

We do not, in fact, find the name of Beelzebub there, nor do we meet with the direct application of that name to our Lord anywhere in the Gospel history. However, there was obviously only a single, easily taken step between the language they had actually used and what is reported of them here.