31Then Jesus said to them, “All of you will be made to stumble because of me tonight, for it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’32But after I am raised up, I will go before you into Galilee.”
33But Peter answered him, “Even if all will be made to stumble because of you, I will never be made to stumble.”
34Jesus said to him, “Most certainly I tell you that tonight, before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times.”
35Peter said to him, “Even if I must die with you, I will not deny you.” All of the disciples also said likewise.
31 Then Jesus said to them, “All of you will be made to stumble because of me tonight, for it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’
32 But after I am raised up, I will go before you into Galilee.”
33 But Peter answered him, “Even if all will be made to stumble because of you, I will never be made to stumble.”
34 Jesus said to him, “Most certainly I tell you that tonight, before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times.”
35 Peter said to him, “Even if I must die with you, I will not deny you.” All of the disciples also said likewise.
TYNDALETyndale New Testament (1534)
31 Then sayd Iesus vnto them: all ye shall be offended by me this night. For it is wrytten. I will smyte the shepe herde and the shepe of the flocke shalbe scattered abroode.
32 But after I am rysen ageyne I will goo before you into Galile.
33 Peter answered and sayde vnto him: though all men shulde be offended by the yet wolde I never be offended.
34 Iesus sayde vnto him. Verely I saye vnto the that this same night before the cocke crowe thou shalt denye me thryse.
35 Peter sayde vnto him: Yf I shulde dye with the yet wolde I not denye the Lyke wyse also sayde all the disciples.
Show all 3 translations
GNVGeneva Bible (1599)
31 Then saide Iesus vnto them, All yee shall be offended by me this night: for it is written, I wil smite the shepheard, and the sheepe of the flocke shalbe scattered.
32 But after I am risen againe, I will go before you into Galile.
33 But Peter aunswered, and sayde vnto him, Though that al men should be offended by thee, yet will I neuer be offended.
34 Iesus sayde vnto him, Verely I say vnto thee, that this night, before the cocke crow, thou shalt denie me thrise.
35 Peter saide vnto him, Though I should die with thee, I will in no case denie thee. Likewise also sayd all the disciples.
Zechariah 13:7(v31)“Awake, sword, against my shepherd, and against the man who is close to me,” says Yahweh of Armies. “Strike the shepherd, and the sheep…
Mark 14:27-28(v31)Jesus said to them, “All of you will be made to stumble because of me tonight, for it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the…
John 16:32(v31)Behold, the time is coming, yes, and has now come, that you will be scattered, everyone to his own place, and you will leave me alone. Yet…
Ezekiel 34:5-6(v31)They were scattered, because there was no shepherd. They became food to all the animals of the field, and were scattered. My sheep wandered…
Psalms 69:20(v31)Reproach has broken my heart, and I am full of heaviness. I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; for comforters, but I found…
Show all 53 cross-references
Matthew 28:10(v32)Then Jesus said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Go tell my brothers that they should go into Galilee, and there they will see me.”
Psalms 38:11(v31)My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my plague. My kinsmen stand far away.
Matthew 28:16(v32)But the eleven disciples went into Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had sent them.
Luke 18:33-34(v32)They will scourge and kill him. On the third day, he will rise again.” They understood none of these things. This saying was hidden from…
Matthew 20:19(v32)and will hand him over to the Gentiles to mock, to scourge, and to crucify; and the third day he will be raised up.”
Matthew 24:9-10(v31)Then they will deliver you up to oppression, and will kill you. You will be hated by all of the nations for my name’s sake. Then many will…
Psalms 88:18(v31)You have put lover and friend far from me, and my friends into darkness.
Isaiah 53:10(v31)Yet it pleased Yahweh to bruise him. He has caused him to suffer. When you make his soul an offering for sin, he will see his offspring. He…
Lamentations 1:19(v31)“I called for my lovers, but they deceived me. My priests and my elders gave up the spirit in the city, while they sought food for…
Luke 22:31-32(v31)The Lord said, “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan asked to have all of you, that he might sift you as wheat, but I prayed for you, that your…
John 13:38(v34)Jesus answered him, “Will you lay down your life for me? Most certainly I tell you, the rooster won’t crow until you have denied me three…
Job 6:15-22(v31)My brothers have dealt deceitfully as a brook, as the channel of brooks that pass away; Which are black by reason of the ice, in which the…
Job 19:13-16(v31)“He has put my brothers far from me. My acquaintances are wholly estranged from me. My relatives have gone away. My familiar friends have…
Matthew 11:6(v31)Blessed is he who finds no occasion for stumbling in me.”
Matthew 16:21(v32)From that time, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders, chief priests, and…
Matthew 26:56(v31)But all this has happened that the Scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled.” Then all the disciples left him and fled.
Matthew 27:63-64(v32)saying, “Sir, we remember what that deceiver said while he was still alive: ‘After three days I will rise again.’ Command therefore that…
Mark 14:28(v32)However, after I am raised up, I will go before you into Galilee.”
Mark 16:7(v32)But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He goes before you into Galilee. There you will see him, as he said to you.’ ”
Luke 22:33(v33)He said to him, “Lord, I am ready to go with you both to prison and to death!”
Matthew 28:6-7(v32)He is not here, for he has risen, just like he said. Come, see the place where the Lord was lying. Go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He…
Mark 9:9-10(v32)As they were coming down from the mountain, he commanded them that they should tell no one what things they had seen, until after the Son…
Luke 22:34(v34)He said, “I tell you, Peter, the rooster will by no means crow today until you deny that you know me three times.”
John 21:1-14(v32)After these things, Jesus revealed himself again to the disciples at the sea of Tiberias. He revealed himself this way. Simon Peter, Thomas…
Matthew 26:75(v34)Peter remembered the word which Jesus had said to him, “Before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times.” Then he went out and wept…
John 13:37(v35)Peter said to him, “Lord, why can’t I follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.”
Romans 11:20(v35)True; by their unbelief they were broken off, and you stand by your faith. Don’t be conceited, but fear;
Exodus 19:8(v35)All the people answered together, and said, “All that Yahweh has spoken we will do.” Moses reported the words of the people to Yahweh.
Psalms 17:5(v33)My steps have held fast to your paths. My feet have not slipped.
Psalms 119:116-117(v33)Uphold me according to your word, that I may live. Let me not be ashamed of my hope. Hold me up, and I will be safe, and will have respect…
Proverbs 16:18-19(v33)Pride goes before destruction, and an arrogant spirit before a fall. It is better to be of a lowly spirit with the poor, than to divide the…
Proverbs 20:6(v33)Many men claim to be men of unfailing love, but who can find a faithful man?
Proverbs 28:14(v35)Blessed is the man who always fears; but one who hardens his heart falls into trouble.
Proverbs 28:25-26(v33)One who is greedy stirs up strife; but one who trusts in Yahweh will prosper. One who trusts in himself is a fool; but one who walks in…
Proverbs 29:23(v35)A man’s pride brings him low, but one of lowly spirit gains honor.
Jeremiah 17:9(v33)The heart is deceitful above all things and it is exceedingly corrupt. Who can know it?
Matthew 20:22-24(v35)But Jesus answered, “You don’t know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink, and be baptized with the…
Mark 14:29(v33)But Peter said to him, “Although all will be offended, yet I will not.”
Mark 14:30-31(v34)Jesus said to him, “Most certainly I tell you, that you today, even this night, before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three…
John 13:36-38(v33)Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, where are you going?” Jesus answered, “Where I am going, you can’t follow now, but you will follow…
Romans 12:10(v33)In love of the brothers be tenderly affectionate to one another; in honor preferring one another;
1 Corinthians 10:12(v35)Therefore let him who thinks he stands be careful that he doesn’t fall.
Philippians 2:3(v33)doing nothing through rivalry or through conceit, but in humility, each counting others better than himself;
Philippians 2:12(v35)So then, my beloved, even as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation…
1 Peter 1:17(v35)If you call on him as Father, who without respect of persons judges according to each man’s work, pass the time of your living as…
1 Peter 5:5-6(v33)Likewise, you younger ones, be subject to the elder. Yes, all of you clothe yourselves with humility, to subject yourselves to one another;…
John 21:15(v33)So when they had eaten their breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me more than these?” He said to him,…
1 Corinthians 15:6(v32)Then he appeared to over five hundred brothers at once, most of whom remain until now, but some have also fallen asleep.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this passage (21 sources)
Historical commentary, presented as a primary source — not an endorsement.
Geneva Bible translators1599 · Public DomainOn v31Christ being more careful of his disciples, than of…
Christ being more careful of his disciples, than of himself, forewarneth them of their flight, and putteth them in better comfort.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp1656 · Public DomainOn vv31–3531 Then saith Jesus unto them, All ye shall…
31 Then saith Jesus unto them, All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad.
Ver. 31. All ye shall be offended because of me] Why? what had that righteous one done? Nothing but that his cross lay in their way, whereat they stumbled shamefully, and left him to wonder that he was "left alone," Isa 63:5. Adversity is friendless (αφιλον το ουστυχες), saith one heathen (Ovid); Et cum fortuna statque caditque fides, saith another. Job found his friends like the brooks of Tema, which in a moisture swell, in a drought fail. Tempora si fuerint nubila, solus eris.
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For it is written, I will smite] This our Saviour purposely subjoineth, for their support under the sense of their base deserting him. A foul sin it was, but yet such as was long since set down of them; not without a sweet promise of their recollection, "I will turn my hand upon the little ones," Zec 13:7; or, I will bring back my hand to the little ones ( At reducam manum meam ad parvulos), as Tremellius readeth it.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole1685 · Public DomainOn v31Mark hath the same, Mar 14:27-31, only he saith,…
Mark hath the same, Mar 14:27-31, only he saith, Mar 14:30, This day, even in this night, before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice. Luke hath it not entire, but he hath something of it, Luk 22:31-34, with some addition, thus, And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith may not fail: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren. And he said unto him, Lord, I am ready to go with thee, both into prison and to death. And he said, I tell thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow this day, before that thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me. Those who read the evangelists, must remember that they did not write our Saviour’s words from his mouth, but from their memories; and therefore must be allowed to vary in their expressions, and in circumstances, giving us only an account of the substance of words and actions, as their memories served them; from whence also it is that some of them have some circumstances not in the others. Our Saviour’s design here in general, is to inform his disciples of something which would happen by and by.
All ye (saith he) shall be offended because of me this night. The word offended is of a very large signification in holy writ; here it seems to signify disturbed or troubled, though if we take it strictly for stumbling, so as to sin, it was true enough, for that happened, (as we shall see anon), which made them to forsake Christ and flee, which doubtless was their sin.
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For it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock; shall be scattered abroad. The words are Zec 13:7. The words there are imperative, Smite the shepherd. There are different opinions, whether that text is primarily to be understood of Christ, or it be only a proverbial speech, which the prophet made use of with another reference, which yet Christ doth apply unto himself. I do more incline to think, that Christ here interprets the prophecy to relate primarily to himself, for he doth not say, As it is said, but, It is written; yet, consider it as a proverbial speech, it is true of others also. But certainly our Saviour designed to uphold the spirits of his disciples, by letting them know, that though they should see the Shepherd smitten, that is, himself, who is the good Shepherd, Joh 10:11; and is called by the apostle, the great Shepherd of the sheep, Heb 13:20, the chief Shepherd, 1Pe 5:4; yet they should not be disturbed, for:
1. It was no more than was prophesied concerning him, Zec 13:7.
2. Though at present they were scattered, yet it should not be long, for he should rise again, and then he would go before them into Galilee; which was fulfilled, as we read, Mar 16:7.
Upon these words, Peter, whom by all the gospel history we shall observe to have been of the highest courage, and most forward to speak, saith, Though all men shall be offended because of thee, yet will I never be offended. These doubtless were his present thoughts, this his sudden resolution. Here now seem to come in our Saviour’s words to Peter, mentioned by Luke only, Luk 22:31, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.
You is in the plural number, and to be interpreted by you all, though our Saviour directeth his speech only to Peter, who first spake, whom he calleth by his own name, and doubles it, to signify his earnestness in giving him warning. To sift you.
In sifting there are two things:
1. The shaking of the corn up and down.
2. The separation of the grain from the dust, or the seeds mixed with it: Satan hath desired, or hath obtained leave of my Father, to trouble you all, shaking your faith this and that way.
But I have prayed, that although the workings of your faith be suspended, and the habit of your faith be shaken, yet it may not utterly fail, but the seeds of God may abide in you: you shall not wholly fall away, but be renewed again by repentance; and when thou art converted, when thou hast fallen, and shalt have a sight of thy error, and be humbled for it, endeavour to strengthen thy brethren’s faith.
We may observe from hence:
1. That temptations are siftings. God sifts us to purge away our dross. Satan sifts us, if it were possible, to take away our wheat.
2. That the devil is the great tempter. Others may hold and move the sieve, but he is the master of the work.
3. That he hath a continual desire to be sifting in God’s flour.
4. That he hath a chain upon him; he must ask God’s leave to trouble his people.
5. That God often giveth him leave, but through Christ’s pleadings he shall not conquer: he may sift and trouble a believer, but the believer’s faith shall not fail.
6. That in the hour of temptation we stand in Christ’s strength, by the virtue of his intercession.
7. That lapsed Christians, when the Lord hath restored them, ought to endeavour to strengthen and establish others.
Jesus saith to Peter,
Verily I say unto thee, That this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. Luke saith, thou shalt deny that thou knowest me. Mark saith, before the cock crow twice; and so interprets Matthew, for he denied Christ but once before the cock did crow once. How little do we know ourselves, that cannot tell what our hearts will be three or four hours! Peter was too confident of the contrary, and replies again upon our Saviour, telling him, that if all should deny him, he would not. So also they all said, but what happened we shall hear more by and by.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt1703 · Public DomainOn vv31–33Here our Saviour acquaints his disciples, that by reason…
Here our Saviour acquaints his disciples, that by reason of his approaching sufferings, they should all of them be so exceedingly offended, that they would certainly forsake and leave him; which accordingly came to pass.
Learn thence, That Christ’s dearest friends forsook him, and left him alone in the midst of his greatest distress and danger.
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Observe, 2. What was the cause of this their flight, it was the prevalency of their fear.
Thence note, How sad it is for the holiest and best of men to be left under the power of their own fears in a day of temptation.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill1763 · Public DomainOn vv31–35But after I am risen again,.... This he says…
But after I am risen again,.... This he says for their comfort, that though he, their shepherd, should be apprehended, condemned, and crucified, should be smitten with death, and be laid in the grave, yet he should rise again; and though they should be scattered abroad, yet should be gathered together again by him, their good shepherd; who would after his resurrection, appear to them, be at the head of them, and go before them, as a shepherd goes before his sheep: for it follows,
I will go before you into Galilee; the native place of most, if not all of them. This the women that came to the sepulchre after Christ's resurrection, were bid, both by the angel, and Christ himself, to remind the disciples of, and ordered them to go into Galilee, where they might expect to see him: accordingly they did go thither, and saw and worshipped him; see Mat 28:7.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley1765 · Public DomainOn vv31, 32, 34, 35All ye will be offended at me - Something…
All ye will be offended at me - Something will happen to me, which will occasion your falling into sin by forsaking me. Zech. xiii, 7.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke1810 · Public DomainOn vv31–35Verse 31. All ye shall be offended] Or rather,…
Verse 31. All ye shall be offended] Or rather, Ye will all be stumbled - παντες υμεις σκανδαλισθησεσθε - ye will all forsake me, and lose in a great measure your confidence in me.
This night] The time of trial is just at hand.
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I will smite the shepherd] It will happen to you as to a flock of sheep, whose shepherd has been slain - the leader and guardian being removed, the whole flock shall be scattered, and be on the point of becoming a prey to ravenous beasts.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson1811 · Public DomainOn v33Mat 26:33-35. Peter answered and said — According to…
Mat 26:33-35. Peter answered and said — According to Luk 22:31, our Lord had warned Peter before they left the house, of a violent assault which would be made upon him by Satan; and on Peter’s declaring his readiness to go with Christ to prison and death, Christ had warned him that he would be overcome by the temptation, and would fall. Peter, therefore, now recollecting what Christ had said to him before, and being grieved afresh to find his Master still entertaining such thoughts of him, the vehemence of his temper hurried him to boast a second time of his courageous and close attachment to Jesus. He answered, Though all men shall be offended, &c. — In this protestation, Peter, no doubt, was sincere. Nevertheless, he was greatly to blame for not paying a due attention to his Master’s repeated predictions of his fall; for the preference which he gave himself above his brethren; and for leaning to his own strength, instead of begging assistance of him from whom all human sufficiency is derived. Wherefore, to make him sensible of the pride of his heart, his self- confidence, and carnal security, which Jesus knew would produce unwatchfulness and neglect of prayer, he thought fit to forewarn him of his danger again, and in stronger terms, saying, Verily, this night, before the cock crow — Or rather, before the cock-crowing, that is, before three in the morning, the usual time of cock-crowing; although one cock was heard to crow once after Peter’s first denial of his Lord. Peter — However, not convinced of his weakness, or that any temptation could make him guilty of such base conduct, said — with still greater confidence and vehemence; Though I should die with thee, yet will I not deny thee — And, doubtless, so he thought. Likewise said all the disciples — They all joined Peter in professing their fixed resolution of suffering death, rather than they would deny their Master; yet the event was exactly as Jesus had foretold, and foreknew it certainly would be; nevertheless such was his tenderness, that he would not aggravate their sin by making any reply. From this circumstance we learn how ignorant men frequently are of themselves, and that to be pious and virtuous, it is not sufficient to form the strongest resolutions.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes1834 · Public DomainOn v31Jesus foretells the fall of Peter - This is…
Jesus foretells the fall of Peter - This is also recorded in Mar 14:27-31; Luk 22:31-34; Joh 13:34-38.
Mat 26:31
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Then saith Jesus unto them - The occasion of his saying this was Peter’s bold affirmation that he was ready to die with him, Joh 13:36
Jesus had told them that he was going away - that is, was about to die. Peter asked him whither he was going. Jesus replied that he could not follow him then, but should afterward. Peter, not satisfied with that, said that he was ready to lay down his life for him. Then Jesus distinctly informed them that all of them would forsake him that very night.
All ye shall be offended because of me - See the notes at Mat 5:29. This language means, here, you will all stumble at my being taken, abused, and set at naught; you will be ashamed to own me as a teacher, and to acknowledge yourselves as my disciples; or, my being betrayed will prove a snare to you all, so that you will be guilty of the sin of forsaking me, and, by your conduct, of denying me.
For it is written ... - See Zec 13:7. This is affirmed here to have reference to the Saviour, and to be fulfilled in him.
I will smite - This is the language of God the Father. I will smite means either that I will give him up to be smitten (compare Exo 4:21 with Exo 8:15, etc.), or that I will do it myself. Both of these things were done. God gave him up to the Jews and Romans, to be smitten for the sins of the world Rom 8:32; and he himself left him to deep and awful sorrows - to bear “the burden of the world’s atonement” alone. See Mar 15:34.
The Shepherd - The Lord Jesus - the Shepherd of his people, Joh 10:11, Joh 10:14. Compare the notes at Isa 40:11.
The sheep - This means here particularly “the apostles.” It also refers sometimes to all the followers of Jesus, the friends of God, Joh 10:16; Psa 100:3.
Shall be scattered abroad - This refers to their fleeing, and it was fulfilled in that. See Mat 26:56.
Mat 26:32
But after I am risen ... - This promise was given them to encourage and support them, and also to give them an indication where he might be found.
He did not deny that he would first appear to a part of them before he met them all together (compare Luke 24:13-31, Luk 24:34; 1Co 15:5), but that he would meet them all in Galilee. This was done. See Mar 16:7; Mat 28:16.
Galilee - See the notes at Mat 2:22.
Mat 26:33
Peter answered ... Though all men ... - The word “men” is improperly inserted here by the translators. Peter meant only to affirm this of “the disciples.” This confidence of Peter was entirely characteristic. He was ardent, sincere, and really attached to his Master. Yet this declaration was made evidently:
1.From true love to Jesus;
2.From too much reliance upon his own strength;
3.From ignorance of himself, and of the trials which he was soon to pass through.
And it most impressively teaches us:
1.That no strength of attachment to Jesus can justify such confident promises of fidelity, made without dependence on him.
2.That all promises to adhere to him should be made relying on him for aid.
3.That we little know how feeble we are until we are tried.
4.That Christians may be left to great and disgraceful sins to show them their weakness.
Luke adds that Jesus said to Peter that Satan had desired to have him, that he might sift him as wheat - that is, that he might thoroughly test him. But Jesus says that he had prayed for him that his faith should not fail, and charged him when he was “converted” - that is, when he was “turned” from this sin - to strengthen his brethren; to wit, by teaching them to take warning by his example. See the notes at Luk 22:31-33.
Mat 26:34
This night - This was in the “evening” when this was spoken, after the observance of the Passover, and, we may suppose, near nine o’clock p.m.
Before the cock crow - Mark and Luke add, before the cock crowed twice. The cock is accustomed to crow twice once at midnight, and once in the morning at break of day. The latter was commonly called cock-crowing. See Mar 13:35. This was the time familiarly known as “the cock-crowing,” and of this Matthew and John speak, without referring to the other. Mark and Luke speak of the “second” crowing, and mean the same time, so that there is no contradiction between them.
Deny me thrice - That is, as Luke adds, deny that “thou knowest” me. See Mat 26:74.
Mat 26:35
Will I not deny thee - Will not deny my connection with thee, or that I knew thee.
“All” the disciples said the same thing, and all fled at the approach of danger, “forsaking” their Master and Friend, and practically denying that they knew him, Mat 26:56.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary1859 · Public DomainOn vv31, 33, 34Scandalized in me, &c. For as much as my…
Scandalized in me, &c. For as much as my being apprehended shall make you all run away and forsake me. (Challoner)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures1864 · Public DomainOn v31
FOURTH SECTION
PROMISES TO THE DISCIPLES; AND CHRIST IN GETHSEMANE
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26:31–46
(Mar_14:27-42; Luk_22:31-46; Joh_13:36 to Joh_18:1)
31Then [in going out to the Mount of Olives] saith Jesus unto them, All ye shall [will] be offended because of me [at me] this night: for it is written, I will smite the Shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad (Zec_13:7). 32But after I am risen again, I will go before you into Galilee. 33Peter answered and said unto him, Though all men shall be offended because of thee [at thee],51 yet will I never be offended. 34Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, That this night, before the [a] cock crow 35[crows], thou shalt deny me thrice. Peter said unto him, Though I should die with thee, yet will I not [in no wise, οὐ μή] deny thee.52 [But]53 Likewise also said all the disciples.
36Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder. 37And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and very heavy [full of, or, overwhelmed with, sorrow and anguish, λυπεῖσθαι καὶ ἀδημονεῖν]54. 38Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me. 39And he went a little farther,55 and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt. 40And he cometh unto the disciples, and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter, What,56 could ye not [then, οὕτως] watch with me one hour? 41Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. 42He went away again the second time, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if this cup57 may not pass away from me,58 except I drink it, thy will be done. 43And he came and 44[again] found them asleep again:59 for their eyes were heavy. And he left them, and went away again, and prayed the third time,60 saying the same words. 45Then cometh he to his disciples, and saith unto them, Sleep on now, and take your rest: behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. 46Rise, let us be going: behold, he is at hand that doth betray me.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Mat_26:31. Then saith Jesus unto them, τότε—For a time Jesus remained in the room of the Passover, as is evident from Joh_14:31. At this point comes the departure from the house. The prediction of the flight of the disciples and of Peter’s denial took place, according to Joh_13:37, in the Passover-room itself. Hereupon followed the farewell discourses, John 13-17 spoken partly within the room, and partly on the way to Gethsemane.
Will be offended at Me, σκανδαλισθήσεσθε ἐν ἐμοί—That is, My sufferings ye will make an offence and snare to yourselves.
For it is written.—What the Lord knew by immediate prevision, He nevertheless connects with a prophetic word: partly for the sake of the disciples, partly on account of His relation to the law; and further to prove that the course of His suffering was not contrary to Old Testament predictions, but that the carnal notions of the Jews as to a Messiah exempt from suffering were in direct contradiction to the Old Testament. The passage, Zec_13:1 : “Awake, O sword, against My shepherd, and against the man that is My fellow [My equal], saith the Lord of hosts: smile the Shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered; and I will turn Mine hand upon the little ones’—is indeed quoted freely,61 yet not inconsistently with the connection of the text. In the original, Jehovah commands the sword to smite His Shepherd; but here He appears to lift up the sword Himself. The Messianic import of the passage is without reason resolved by Meyer (after Hitzig) into a merely typical significance. For the passage is closely connected with Zechariah’s previous reference to a future time, when prophecy should be silenced, and when he who should arise as a prophet would be exposed to the most bitter sufferings. That prediction stretched forward beyond the prophetless period after Malachi to the period of the new prophets, John the Baptist and Christ. But if we recognize the prophetical spirit in this passage at all, we cannot refer it to John the Baptist. It foretold, however, the universal dispersion of the people in consequence of their rejection of Christ. “The Shepherd indicated by the prophet is the same who, in Mat_11:4, feeds the miser; able sheep, the Jewish people; His death is the sign for the scattering of the flock, yet the Lord immediately stretches out His hand to save the little ones, the faithful, His disciples. Hence the profound meaning of the passage is this: When the Jewish people had rejected their last Deliverer and Saviour, they underwent the punishment of dispersion. This was preparatorily typified in the actual scattering of the disciples on the death of Jesus; just as their eternal salvation in their bodily deliverance when Jesus was taken” (Joh_18:9). Gerlach.62
Mat_26:32. Go before you into Galilee.—Meyer denies the genuineness of this declaration, for the groundless reason, that Jesus could not so definitely predict His own resurrection. The announcement of a particular meeting in Galilee, does not exclude the previous appearances of Jesus to the disciples in Jerusalem. He says this to those who had come with Him from Galilee to the feast: “Before ye shall have returned to your homes, I will rise again.” In Galilee He collected together again all the scattered disciples: Mat_28:16; John 21; 1Co_15:6. Gerlach. [The Lord seems to allude in this comforting prediction to the remaining words of the prophecy of Zec_13:7 : “And I will turn Mine hand upon the little ones.” To go before, προάγειν is a verbum pastorale, as Bengel remarks, comp. Joh_10:4.—P. S.]
Mat_26:34. Before a cock crows.—De Wette: “If Jesus said these words, He meant merely (de Wette’s mere assertion) the division of the night called ἀλεκτοροφωνία קְרִיאַת הַגֶּבֶר; but the Evangelists referred it to a real cock-crowing.” Gerlach: “Before the cock-crowing between midnight and morning. But it came to pass literally, like so many other predictions.” It must be regarded as fixed, that the definite specification of that time of the night was the main point; but since, where cocks were found, their cry would not be wanting, we must hold fast the circumstance, that the cock-crowing was appointed to be the warning sound for Peter. Meyer seems to suppose that the first cock-crowing took place at midnight, and the second about three in the morning. It is not established that the ἀλεκτοροφωνία marked always the time from midnight till three; since the Talmudists reckoned only three divisions of the day, and regarded the fourth, πρωί̈ as the morning of the day following. Comp. Winer, sub Nachtwache.63
Deny Me thrice.—De Wette: Deny knowing Me (!). Better Meyer: Deny that thou belongest to Me. But the denial of faith in Christ, the Son of God, is contained in it; and not merely the denial of a personal relation.
Mat_26:36. Gethsemane.—Most probably גַּת שְׁמָנֵא oil-press. The most approved form is Γεθσημανεί: see de Wette. A piece of land at the foot of the Mount of Olives, which was provided with a press, and perhaps also with a dwelling-house, or at least the usual garden-tower. See Winer and Robinson. Through the Stephen Gate or the Gate of Mary (according to Schulz, identical with the ancient Fish Gate), there is a descent to the valley of Kedron, by which the traveller went over the bridge of the same name into the garden of Gethsemane. Kedron means Black brook; it flowed with perturbed waters, which were still more darkened by the blood of the temple-sacrifices, down through the valley toward the Dead Sea. Gethsemane lay on the right of the path to the Mount of Olives. It scarcely deserves now the name of a garden, as the place is covered with stones, and there are only eight old olive-trees remaining. The place is in possession of the Franciscans, who in 1847 erected a new wall around it, in length two hundred paces, and in breadth one hundred and fifty. There is no ground for doubting the identity of the present and the ancient Gethsemane; yet it must be confessed that there is no reason why the place on the left of the road may not be preferred (Wolff). C. von Raumer: “The olives are not of the time of our Lord; for Titus, during the siege of Jerusalem, had all the trees of the district cut down; and, moreover, the tenth legion were encamped on the western declivity of the mountain. The great age of the eight trees is inferred from the fact, that each of them pays a particular tribute which goes up to the time of the capture of Jerusalem by the Saracens (A. D. 636).64
And He saith to the disciples.—There were eight of them; the three selected ones, and Judas, being excluded. Only those three, who had seen His transfiguration on the Mount, might be witnesses of the conflict of His soul. But this appointment of Christ formed also a kind of watch against premature surprise on the part of the traitor. In the foreground of the garden sat the eight disciples; beyond them are the three confidential ones; into the Holiest Of His Passion He goes alone. These stations are not without symbolical significance.65
Mat_26:37. He began to be overwhelmed with sorrow and anguish (to mourn and to tremble); λυρεῖσθαι καὶ ἀδημονεῖν.—Suidas explains ἀδημονεῖν to be λίαν λυπεῖσθαι, ἀπορεῖν. But the latter expression is probably not an intensification of the for me; it is a kind of contrast to it. Λυπεῖσθαι is the passive: being troubled or afflicted. Thus it signifies, absolutely taken, the experience of an infinitely afflicting influence. All the woe of the world falls upon Him, and oppresses His heart. Mark has the stronger expression: ἐκθαμβεῖσθαι. The contradictory impressions66 which Christ experienced extended to horror and amazement. Ἀδημονεῖν, on the other hand, related to ἀπορεῖν—according to Buttmann from ἄδημος—expresses in the absolute sense the being forsaken of all the world and bereft of every consolation, the uttermost anxiety and experience of woe.
Mat_26:38. My soul is exceeding sorrowful, or girt round with sorrow, περίλυπος.—Compare Joh_12:27. The soul is the intermediate in man between body and spirit. The spirit expresses the relation to God; the body, the relation to earth; the soul, the relation to the world at large, especially the world of spirits. Hence the soul is the specific organ of spiritual experiences and emotions of pleasure and sorrow (Beck, Bibl. Seelenlehre, 10).—Even unto death.—The extremest degree. Even unto death, so that sorrow might bring Me to death, Jon_4:9. “Anguish even unto death, the woes of one struggling with death, I now experience. The words of Psa_22:16; Psa_40:13; seem to have been present to His thoughts.” Gerlach.
Tarry ye here, and watch with Me—Intimation of the deepest agony. Bengel: In magnis tentationibus juvat solitudo, sed tamen ut in propinquo sint amici.
Mat_26:39. And He went a little farther.—Μικρόν belongs to προελθών, a little distance. Luke gives here the vivid and dramatic statements of the spiritual excitement of the Lord,—of the bloody or blood-like sweat which poured from Him,—of His being strengthened by an angel. See Com. on Luk_22:41-44.
If it be possible.—Not as opposing the notion of an unbending decree; but in living harmony with the Father’s government and perfect submission. Luke: εἰ βούλει. The πάντα δυνατά in Mark is no contradiction.
This cup.—The suffering is a cup filled with a bitter potion. See above, Mat_20:22. Meyer (after de Wette): “This suffering and dying now before Me.” The signification of the cup is the same as the signification of the suffering of His soul. But the modern interpretation, of an anguish in the presence of death which extorted a prayer for its removal, is in opposition to all the earlier declarations of Christ, and especially to the institution of the Supper, and the high-priestly prayer, John 17. On this farther on.
But as Thou.—As Thou wilt, let it be. See Mark. Not My will, but Thine be done. “The feeling of profound emotion speaks in broken language.” Meyer. [This passage figures very prominently in the Monothelite controversy as one of the principal proofs that Christ had two wills, a human and a divine, as He had two natures. It should not be overlooked, however, that the contrast is not as between His human and His divine will, but as between His will (as the God-Man in the state of humiliation and intense agony) and the will of His heavenly Father.—P. S.]
Mat_26:40. And findeth them sleeping.—“The sleeping of the disciples, and of these three favorite disciples, under these circumstances, and with so unconquerable a drowsiness, is psychologically mysterious, even after Luke’s explanation, ἀπὸ τῆς λύπης (Mat_22:45); but the certainly genuine words of Jesus, Mat_26:40; Mat_26:45, constrain us to regard the circumstance as historically true.” Meyer. We must connect with this the equally mysterious sleeping of the same three men during the transfiguration; and this will confirm the supposition, that higher spiritual influences and transactions almost overpowered the feeble flesh. Yet the Lord expressly declares that the disciples were morally responsible for being in such a condition. An analogous influence we see under preaching. Sermons stimulate some, and send others to sleep, according to their several dispositions and preparation. The simple law, that extraordinary tension raises the highly developed spiritual life, while it stupefies the less developed, finds here its strongest illustration in the most absolute contrast of spiritual watchfulness and sleep.
He saith unto Peter.—He had promised most was in the greatest danger; and probably he was psychical respects the strongest.—So then, ο ὕτως,—with displeasure: with allusion to his great promises.—Not one hour.—Incidental intimation of the duration of our Lord’s first conflict.
Mat_26:41. That ye enter not into temptation; εἰσέλθητε.—That the situation in which they would soon be placed, might not be a cause of offence to them, through lack of their own preparation. The simple test, which comes from God alone, becomes πειρασμός, an assault dangerous to the soul, partly through the accession of tempting influences from without (“the devil, the world”), and partly through a blameable internal bias (“our own flesh and blood”). The Lord’s words were fully explained when the band soon afterward came upon them.
The spirit indeed is willing.—A general declaration; but, like the passage, Rom_7:22; Rom_7:25, qualified and particularized by its relation to the disciples, and the progress of the Christian life. In the unconverted the willingness of the πνεῦμα is not yet unbound; in mature Christians the σάρξ is purified and governed by the spiritual principle. But, even in the first case, the willingness of the spirit is faintly expressed in indefinite desires; and in the last case, the opposition of the flesh is not absolutely suppressed and abolished until the consummation. The proper conflict between the πνεῦμα, the higher principle of life, and the old ungodly nature, falls into the domain of the Christian discipleship, the life that is being matured. The πνεῦμα is here the human spiritual life, awakened by the Holy Spirit. It is not only willing, but πρόθυμον, ready and willing. The σάρξ which opposes is not simply the sensual nature, but the sensuous nature disordered by the ψυχή. The Scripture presents the σάρξ—that is, the natural life in its inclinations and impulses,—in three stages: 1. As innocent σάρξ (Genesis 2); 2 as sinful σάρξ (Genesis 6.); 3. as sanctified σάρξ (John 6). But the sinful σάρξ is even in the regenerate excited to a diseased contradiction; it is not merely weak, but ἀσθενής as the πνεῦμα is πρόθυμον. Hence, above all things, watchfulness is needed. Calovius: σάρξ is here the homo animalis; πνεῖμα the homo spiritualis. This is too dogmatical. [Stier, Alford, and Nast take flesh here in its original sense as a constituent part of human nature, which in itself is not sinful, but has an inherent weakness, which the soul, standing between the spirit and the flesh, must overcome by deriving strength from the spirit through watching and prayer. They also maintain that Christ Himself is included in this declaration, with the difference that He gave as high and pre-eminent an example of its truth, as the disciples afforded a low and ignoble one: He, in the willingness of the spirit, yielding Himself to the Father’s will to suffer and die, but weighed down by the weakness of the flesh; they, having professed, and really having, a willing spirit to suffer with Him, but, even in the one hour’s watching, overcome by the burden of drowsiness. Observe, it is here πνεῦμα, the higher spiritual being, and not ψυχή, the human soul, the seat of the affections and passions, as in Mat_26:38 and Joh_12:27.—P. S.]
Mat_26:42. Again the second time.—No pleonasm. The ἐκ δευτέρου defines the ἀπελθών; the πάλιν defines the προσηύξατο in a significant manner. In the second supplication, the resignation and self-sacrifice comes more prominently forward.
Mat_26:44. The third time.—Apart from the textual uncertainty, this presents no difliculty. It is in harmony with life, and especially spiritual life, that intense and decisive conflicts develop themselves in a succession of acts, with intermissions of pause. The rhythm here assumes a threefold rise and fall, according to the nature of the spirit and of spiritual conflict, as in the conflict of the Apostle Paul, 2Co_12:8. Luke does not record this threefold repetition literally; but he describes it in the growing intensity of the struggle, the bloody sweat, and the word of the strengthening angel.
Mat_26:45. Sleep on now, and take your rest.—1. Chrysostom, Grotius, Winer, and others: “Jesus needed no longer the co-operation of His disciples, and gives them rest.” But, on the other hand, we read: “The hour is come.” 2. H. Stephanus, Heumann, [also Greswell and Robinson], and others, make it a question: Sleep ye still? but this is opposed by τὸ λοιπόν 3. Grulich (on the Irony of Christ, p. 74): Sleep and take your rest for the time to come, that is, in future, when ye shall have more security. But this would not be τὸ λοιπόν. 4. Euthymius Zigab., [Calvin], and Beza, call it “rebuking irony.” [Also Chrysostom.] Meyer: “The common objection against the ironical view, that it is not in harmony with the present feeling of Jesus, is psychologically arbitrary. The profoundest grief of soul, especially when associated with such clearness of spirit, has its own irony. And what an apathy had Jesus here to encounter!” But if the essential principle of irony is security and perfect composure of spirit, we recognize here the sacred irony which does not speak in contempt of weakness, but in the triumphant consciousness that the fight was already won. Another token is, that it passes over at once into the most solemn language. See the divine irony in Psalms 2 Meanwhile, we must be careful not to overlook the symbolical element in the saying. The disciples had slept in the body, because they slept in the spirit And, because they had not watched, there was a necessity now that they should outwardly watch while they slept on in spirit, until they were awakened by the cock-crowing, the Redeemer’s death, and the resurrection morning.
The hour is at hand.—The great hour of decision. Comp. Luk_22:53.
Shall be betrayed into the hands of sinners.—Grotius: The Romans. Meyer: The Sanhedrin. De Wette, better: The Romans and the Jews. For that the betrayal was twofold, Jesus had before declared.
Mat_26:46. Arise, let us go hence.—“Remark the haste which is expressed in ἐγείρεσθε, ἄγωμεν, ἰδού.” Meyer.
The Relation or the Three Evangelists to John.—The silence of John upon the conflict in Gethsemane has been explained in various ways. According to Olshausen and others, he took for granted an acquaintance with the synoptical narratives. I have explained the omission of this event, as well as of the institution of the Lord’s Supper, from the peculiar composition and aim of the fourth Gospel, with reference to the three already existing.67 So also Meyer. John has something analogous to the agony of Gethsemane in the spiritual conflict of Jesus in the temple, Joh_12:27, though the two are of course not to be identified.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1.The perfect fidelity of Jesus to the law is seen in His not going over the Mount of Olives to Bethany. It was necessary for every one to spend that night in Jerusalem. His calmness is seen in the fact of His going to His accustomed place of prayer (Luk_22:39), although knowing that Judas was acquainted with the place. The time for hiding Himself was past; for throughout the whole land there was no longer freedom for His steps. But no more did Jesus go prematurely to meet danger, which He would have done had He celebrated the Passover a day earlier than usual. “Just at the commencement of His public teaching (Matthew 4), He retired, before His extremest agony, into silence; that there He might in prayer await and overcome in His inmost spirit the fiercest assaults of Satan (Joh_14:30), before He entered upon His external mortal passion.” Gerlach.
2. The Agony of the Saviour in Gethsemane.—The final form of an anxious presentiment which had pervaded His whole public life, and which constantly came out more and more distinctly into utterance: Luk_12:50; Mar_8:12; John 12 There is nothing improbable, though something mysterious and wonderful, in the record that Christ’s agony followed the high festival of His soul in the sacerdotal prayer (John 17). A similar transition in feeling often appears: 1. From joy to sorrow in the entry with palm-branches in Luke, in the temple, John 12, in Gethsemane; 2. from sorrow to joy at the departure from Galilee, at the dismissal of Judas from the company of disciples, John 13, after the cry, “My God, My God,” on the cross. All this shows the elasticity and absolute depth and vigor of His inner life. We distinguish three great conflicts and triumphs in the passion: 1. The victory over the temptation of the kingdom of darkness in His Spirit, at the institution of the holy Supper (Joh_13:31); 2. the victory over temptation in His soul, in Gethsemane; 3. the victory over temptation in His bodily life, on the cross. These three great crises, indeed, are not to be separated abstractly, as if in the one case His spirit only was tried, in the other, His soul, etc. But the assault made the life of the spirit the medium of trial in the one case, in the other, the life of the soul; and the victory which preceded became an advantage in the conflict which followed. And this serves to show the real import of the specific suffering of the soul of our Lord. It is in its nature one of the deepest mysteries of the evangelic history; but it receives some light from the position of the soul-conflict between the spirit-conflict and the conflict of bodily distress, from its relation to the temptation in the wilderness, and by definite declarations of Christ Himself. Interpretations:—1. Origen, De martyrio, c. 29: Christ desired a yet deeper suffering; an ascetically strained view.68 Contra Celsum: He would have averted the destruction of Jerusalem. So Ambrose, Basil, Jerome. 2. He suffered the wrath of God in our stead and our behalf. Melanchthon: Jacuit filius Dei prostratus coram æterno Patre, sentiens tram adversus tua et mea peccata. So Rambach, “the cup of wrath.” 3. Assaults of hell. Knapp: “The last and most terrible attacks of the kingdom of darkness, in which the prince of death sought to wrest from Him the victory.” 4. Ebrard: “His trembling in Gethsemane was not dread of His sufferings, but was part of His passion itself; it was not a transcendental and external assumption of a foreign guilt, but a concrete experience of the full and concentrated power of the world’s sin.” 5. Olshausen: Actual abandonment on the part of God; the human ψυχή of Jesus alone was in conflict here, while the fulness of the divine life had withdrawn. 6. Rationalists like Thiess and Paulus refer it to physical illness and exhaustion,69 to which Schuster adds the distress of abandonment by friends.70 7. De Wette: Fear of death (“a moral weakness!”). 8. Meyer: Horror and shudder in confronting the terror of such cruel sufferings and death. So most modern interpreters. Neander proves against Strauss that a change of feeling in the life of the Saviour is by no means improbable. But we cannot admit a change of thought, least of all a change of the fundamental thoughts of His life. A supplication for the turning away of the suffering of death, even as a conditional and resigned request, is not to be imagined after so many foreannouncements of His passion, after the institution of the Supper, and His continuance in the scene of danger at Gethsemane. This would be to make Jesus directly contradict Himself. The agony in Gethsemane was not dread of the agony on Calvary, but it was a specific agony of itself; therefore He prays, according to Mark, that, if it were possible, the hour of this suffering might pass,—similarly as in John.
It was the hour of nameless woe, of an excitement and commotion of soul,71 in which He would not appear before His disciples, in which He could not appear before His enemies. 1. It was then first a specific conflict of soul (“My soul is surrounded by sorrow,” περί λυπος): He was assaulted by the severest experience of woe and distressing anxiety. And this disposes of the opinions of those who make the suffering either predominantly pneumatic, or predominantly corporeal. 2. It was a counterpart to the temptation in the wilderness. See Luk_4:13. Christ was tempted in the wilderness by the pseudo-messianic and carnal hopes and desires of His people, in connection with the vanities of the world. But in Gethsemane He was tempted by the pseudo-messianic, carnal grief and disappointment of His people, and the whole misery of the world, which culminated in the fearful treachery of Judas, and revealed itself in a milder form in the sleeping of the disciples for sorrow. The whole tempting power of the desperation of humanity pressed hard upon Jesus: that was His λυπεῖσθαι. And in His own internal defence He stood alone, invigorated by no sympathy and help of mortals: that was His ἀδημονεῖν.—Comp. Isa_63:3. In this temptation through the despair of humanity lay indeed the strength of the fiercest assault of hellish powers upon His lonely soul. It was also the judgment of God upon humanity which Jesus experienced in His soul; not God’s judgment upon Himself, but a judgment upon humanity, which He received into His own soul, in order to change it into redemption. Of the former—the despair of the world—Judas’ treachery was the concentrated and terrific expression: it was the demoniac fruit of his demoniac grief, an act of mad contempt of salvation and of self. Hence the Lord again alludes here to the traitor (Mat_26:46). The great double-betrayal of His people and of the whole world committed against His life, was the extreme suffering of the Saviour, the fulfilment of Joseph’s type, sold with fearful anguish on his part by his brothers (Gen_42:21). Thus the agony of Jesus’ soul in the garden was related to the despairing sorrow of the world, as the victory in the wilderness was related to the enticing and disguised pleasures of this world.
3. Not as I will, but as Thou wilt.—Opposed to the Monothelite heresy. This preserves the truth and truly human character of His conflict, without disparaging His constant accordance in all things with the will of the Father. Contrast and suspense do not amount to contradiction. Difference is not discord. See the decrees of the Council of Constantinople, a. d. 680.
4. Christ, in His threefold supplication in Gethsemane, perfected the doctrine of prayer, and sanctified the prayers of sinners. His petition rises from the full expression of His woe to the full expression of submission to the Father’s will. And His being heard consisted in this, that in the Father’s strength He drank the cup, and enjoyed the perfect security of victory before the sharpest conflict took place.
5. It was not the treachery of Judas in its external aspect, but that treachery as the expression of the disciples’ and the world’s sorrow and disappointment and of their despair of Christ’s honor and victory, that constituted the temptation which the Saviour here suffered. But He had overcome this temptation already, when the external and actual betrayal came upon Him.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
I. The Two Sections.—The passage from the Supper to Gethsemane; or, spiritual invigoration experienced in the way of duty: a. The appointment of spiritual strengthening; b. how it is experienced by Christ and by His disciples.—The warning voice of their Master scarcely heard amidst the expressions of the disciples’ self-confidence.—Divine and human care in provision against assaults at hand: 1. Christ is careful, and therefore free from care; 2. His disciples were careless, and therefore burdened with care and anxiety.—Christ in His work of redemption overcame the unfaithfulness of His disciples: 1. Their unbelief in its presumption; 2. their unbelief in its despondency.—The sudden and decisive turning-point: 1. Of destiny; 2. of feeling; 3. of the issue.—The watchman and the sleepers: 1. God and men; 2. Christ and the disciples; 3. the spirit and the earthly cares.
II. The Way to the Mount of Olives.—The fore-announcement of the Lord, and the unbelief of the disciples.—The spirit of Christ and the spirit of Scripture of one accord in their judgment upon the weakness of believers.—The promise of seeing them again in Galilee, bound up with the prediction of their coming fall: 1. A testimony of His supreme hope above His sorrows; 2. of His continued faithfulness to the disciples in their wavering.—The assurances of Peter.—His self-complacent boasts the token of his deep fall.—Mark his presumptuous and boasted superiority: 1. To his enemies: 2. to the other disciples; 3. to the warning word of his Master.—Strong professions, miserable apostacy.72—The last unholy contention of the disciples.—The measure of our false self-estimation the measure of our humiliation in life.—Night and the offence.—The strength of fidelity which can look beyond and overlook the offence of weakness, and turn it to salvation.—The offence of weakness (Peter), and the offence of wickedness (Judas).
III. Gethsemane.—The Mount of Olives and the Oil-Press (Gethsemane), symbols of the production and maturity of the Christian life: 1. The mount is a figure of the Church, in which the spiritual life grows; 2. the oil-press is a figure of suffering, through which the spiritual life is purged or set free.—The three great things of eternal significance connected with the Mount of Olives: 1. The palm-entry into Jerusalem; 2. Gethsemane; 3. the ascension.—Gethsemane the turning-point between the old and the new Paradise.—The reserve and the familiarity of Jesus in His agony.—The concealment of the agony: 1. It is altogether hidden from the world; 2. the greater number of His disciples see only the signs of this suffering; 3. the confidential ones only see it in amazement and trembling; 4. only God views Him stretched out, as a worm in the dust.—The soul of Jesus oppressed by the distress of all, and bereft of the help of all.—Or, the soul of the agonized treader of the wine-press (Isa_63:3); alone in His suffering, over whom all the billows roll (Psa_22:21; Isa_54:11); resigned entirely to God, and hidden in Him (Psa_27:5).—How Christ in the garden overcame the sorrow of all the world: 1. Human sorrow, in its vain imaginations and despair; 2. devilish sorrow, in its betrayal and mockery.—The conflict in the wilderness, and the conflict in the garden.—The three great conflicts of Jesus: at the Supper, in Gethsemane, and on Calvary.—Gethsemane and Calvary.—The horror of Jesus in prospect of the kiss of Judas.—The Judas-kiss evermore the bitterest cup of the Lord and of His Church.—The world gave Him toil; His disciples gave Him trouble.—The suffering of Christ the suffering of priestly sympathy with the misery of the world: 1. He feels its perfect woe; hence His suffering. 2. He experiences the whole power of sin in this woe; hence the dread assault and conflict. 3. He begins to expiate its whole guilt in this woe: hence His persevering prayer.—Even in the agony of His soul He is the Christ: 1. The prophetic Revealer of all the depths of man’s misery; 2. the high-priestly Expiator of them; 3. the kingly Deliverer from them.—The severest suffering is but a cup: 1. Rigorously measured; 2. surrounded and adorned by the cup; 3. prepared, presented and blessed by the Father.—Christ in the apparent annihilation of the work of His life: the seeming invalidation of His mission; the seeming dissolution of His company; the seeming succumbing of His disciples under grief, despondency, and self-reprobation; the seeming contempt of His love.—His faithful heart the dove with the olive-branch high above the floods.—Christ in His great conflict of prayer: teaches us to pray; makes our prayer acceptable; and becomes its Mediator.—Prayer is most acceptable in its absolute submission to the will of God.—The disciples as the outposts and watchmen of the Church.—The sleep of the disciples; or, the death-like collapse which follows over-strained self-confidence.—The two divisions of the disciples: a watch-company toward the world, and a watch-company around the Lord.—The Lord’s request to His disciples a token of infinite humility.—The three words of the Lord to the disciples: 1. Watch with Me; 2. watch for yourselves; 3. sleep on now (whether waking or sleeping, ye will sleep till the awakening of My resurrection).—Watch and pray, because of: 1. Temptation; 2. weakness.—The three witnesses of His transfiguration and His humiliation (of the glorious beams and the bloody sweat).—The divine majesty with which the Lord comes out of His human sorrow.—The strength and solidity which the soul acquires from communion with Christ in all the conflicts of life and death.
Selections from other Homiletical Commentators
I. The Way to the Mount of Olives.—Starke:—From Cramer: He is a true friend who warns of danger; but flesh and blood is too secure, and will not take warning, 1Th_5:3.—How easily may even the best men lapse into sin! Jam_3:2.—Osiander: The cross and tribulation a great offence to the weak.—Professions: not to promise good is unbelief; to promise without earnest will is hypocrisy; to promise in reliance upon our own strength is presumption.—Hedinger: Good-will must guard carefully against arrogance.—Trust none less than thine own heart, Jer_17:9.—Canstein: Nothing is so hidden from us as our own hearts.—We never come to know thoroughly our own weakness and unsteadiness.—The imagination which we have formed concerning ourselves prevents our seeing what we are and what we are not.—Hard work it is to wean a man away from his false imaginations about himself.—To contradict the voice of truth is the sum of shame.
Lisco:—The Searcher of hearts.—Peter trusts more the strength of his feeling than the word of Jesus.
Gerlach:—The Lord quotes the language of Scripture oftener in His sufferings than in any other circumstances. So in the temptation in the wilderness, Mat_4:1-11.
Heubner:—This prediction of the Lord shows His supreme peace and victory over self.—The suffering Messiah was a riddle to them.—Christ is the only bond of His people: take Him away, and all is dissolved.—He would give them all a proof of His unlimited knowledge of men’s hearts: that was of importance for their whole life.—The over-hasty, the presumptuous, and the self-confident, are those whom God suffers to fall.—There is a great difference between arrogance of flesh and alacrity of spirit.—The honest humility with which the disciples relate their own faults.—Warning to us all not to take offence at the Lord in anything.
II. Gethsemane:—Starke:—The transfiguration upon the high mountain; the humiliation in the deep valley.—It is not wise for every one to reveal everywhere and indiscriminately his heart and all its impulses, Gen_22:5; for there are weak people, who cannot bear the strong.—Osiander: We can disburden ourselves most confidently in the ears of out God when we have no one, or but few, near us.—Canstein: Christ enters upon His passion with prayer; He carries it on and ends it with prayer; and so teaches us that our own sufferings cannot be overcome and made to subserve our salvation without much prayer.—The three Apostles called in Gal_2:9 pillars: Peter, the first who opened to Jews and Gentiles the door of the kingdom of heaven; James, the first martyr; John, the longest liver, to whom the most glorious revelations were vouchsafed.—The trials of Abraham, Paul, Luther (great saints, great trials).—Canstein: The faithful God ministers trials according to the measure of the ability of those who are to bear them (1Co_10:13).—When it is time to fight and to pray, we ought not to sleep.—God lets His weak children for a long time see others in the conflict, before they themselves are exposed to the contest.—The cup of Christ’s suffering has consecrated the cup of our cross.—Trust not to men, Psa_118:7.—Our best security against temptation is to watch and pray.—The daily contest of the spirit with the flesh absolutely necessary, Gal_5:17.—Thy will be done.—We may pray for mitigation.—When Jesus is suffering in His members, our eyes are, alas! commonly full of sleep.—Perseverance in prayer without fainting, Luk_18:1.—A faithful father warns his children of danger.—He who feels safe in the time of danger may easily be ruined; he who is cautious and self-distrustful will escape.—When one hour of trial is passed, we must prepare for another.—When we in God’s strength have overcome the first assaults and terrors of death, all is more and more tolerable, until the cross itself is gloriously triumphed over.—Jesus our Forerunner.—Christ went freely and joyfully to meet His passion, for an example to us, Php_2:5.
Lisco:—Heb_5:7. The threefold prayer reminds us of the threefold victory over Satan, when he tempted Jesus, Mat_4:1.
Gerlach:—From Luther: “We men, born and bound in sin, have an impure, hard, and leprous skin, which does not soon feel. But, because Christ’s body, His flesh and blood, is fresh, and pure, and sound, without sin, while ours are full of sin, we feel the terror of death in a far less degree from what He felt it.” The disciples should watch with Him, and they should pray; but with Him they could not pray; in His mediatorial conflict no man could stand by and help Him.—He desired the fellowship of these as the first-fruits of the men who were to be redeemed by Him.—In this severe agony of the passion, the divine will ever more and more penetrates and exalts the human.
Heubner:—It was a garden, as in Genesis 3—Not all the disciples were fitted to be witnesses of this profound and mysterious humiliation of our Lord.—Rambach: It is not expedient that the child of God should reveal to every one the depths of his heart.—It is the highest grace to be companion of the most secret sorrows of Jesus.—Jesus is the source of consolation and encouragement for all burdened and heavy-laden souls.—The greater the anguish, the greater the joy.—Rieger: And He went to a little distance. So the high-priest went into the Holiest.—The Son of God bows down to the uttermost before His Father, to make us acceptable.—O that we better learned the lesson to bow down before God!—Jacob’s wrestling in the night, Hos_12:4-5.—Sleepiness and inconsiderateness among Christians, monitors of fall.—Christ awakens out of sleep.—The second petition takes for granted an answer of God, that His will was fixed on this (as indeed did the first); hence the more direct expression of resignation.—In prayer we do not depend upon many and beautifully arranged words; the heart is the gr[illegible] thing (as in the prayers of Moses, David, Daniel, and Christ).—The Holy One falls absolutely into the power of the unholy.—Is at hand: the betrayal, now brought to its consummation, troubled the soul of Jesus afresh.—There is a difference between the mere expectation, albeit certain, and the fulfilled reality.—Kapff: Jesus suffering in Gethsemane: 1. Its depth; 2. its cause; 3. its fruit.
Footnotes:
[51]Mat_26:33.—Εἰ (καὶ) πάντες σκανδαλισθήσονται ἐν σοί. Καί is omitted in A., B., C., D., etc., Lachmann, and Tischendorf.
[52]Mat_26:35.—Codd. A., E., G., al., read the somewhat milder subj. ἀπαρνήσ ω μαι [for ἀπαρνήσ ο μαι]. Probably a gloss.
[53]Mat_26:35.—Several uncial Codd. add δέ. Probably from Mar_14:31. [But implies here an extenuation of the guilt of Peter, as much as to say, Peter made these professions, but we all did the same, and have nothing to boast of. But Lachmann, Tischendorf, and Alford omit it—P. S.]
[54]Mat_26:37.—[Lange: zu trauern (schaudern) und zu bangen (beben) Doddridge complains that “the words which our translators use here, are very flat, and fall short of the emphasis of those terms in which the Evangelists describe this awful scene.” The verb ἀδημονεῖν is derived by some from δῆμος, people, and the alpha privativum, hence, to feel lonely, solitary; expression of a sorrow that makes man unfit for company and shunning it, and pressing like a weight of lead upon the soul. F. H. Scrivener (A Supplement to the Authorized English Version of the N. T., London, 1845, vol. i. p. 304) thinks that no single Greek word can be more expressive of deep dejection than ἀδημονεῖν, and renders it: “to be overwhelmed with anguish.” Tyndale and Coverdale: grievously troubled. Conant less forcibly: troubled. Meyer teems to agree with Suidas’ definition of ἀδημ.=λίαν λυπεῖσθαι, and adds: “Es bezeichnet die unheimliche Beunruhigung der Angst und Verlegenheit.” I regret, that the scholarly work of Scrivener, just alluded to, has not sooner come to hand. It would have been of considerable assistance to me in the Critical Notes on the English Version.—P. S.]
[55]Mat_26:39.—The reading προσελθών [for προελθών] is probably a writing error. [Cod. Sinait. likewise reads προσελθών.]
[56]Mat_26:40.—[What! is an interpolation and, as Conant remarks, “violates the tone of feeling and manner of the Saviour.” The οὕτως can best be rendered by then. Lange: So also.— P. S.]
[57]Mat_26:42.—Many Codd., A., B., C., etc., [also Cod. Sinait.], read here only τοῦτο without ποτήριον, which seems to be supplemented from Mat_26:39, and is omitted by Lachmann, Tischendorf, [and Alford].
[58]Mat_26:42.—Codd. B., D., etc., [also Cod. Sinait], omit the words: ἀπ̓ ἐμοῦ from me. [Lange puts them in brackets.]
[59]Mat_26:43.—Lachmann, Tischendorf, [Tregelles, Alford], read with the best authorities, [including Cod. Sinait.] πάλιν εὗρεν (again found) αὐτούς [instead of εὑρίσκει αὐτοὺς πάλιν finds them again].
[60]Mat_26:44.—A., D., K., omit ἐκ τρίου. Lachmann puts it in brackets, Tischendorf omits it. [In the large ed of 1859 Tischondorf retains the words in the text, but Alford omits them. Cod. Sinait. has them, but between τὸν αὐτόν and λόγον, instead of before τὸν αὐτόν.—P. S.]
[61][The quotation is verbatim after the Alexandrian MS. of the LXX., except that the imperative πάταξον, strike, is changed into the future πατάξω, I will strike, God who commands the striking into God who strikes Himself.— P. S.]
[62][Comp. here Stier, Reden Jesu, vi. 176 sqq., who goes at length into the meaning of this prophecy, and especially the word עֲמִיתִי, “my fellow,” “my equal,” i.e., the Messiah. Also Nast ad loc.—P. S.]
[63][The difficulty derived from the Mishna, that the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the priests everywhere, were forbidden to keep fowls, because they scratched up unclean worms, is easily removed, first, in view of the inconsistency of the Talmud on this point (see Lightfoot), and secondly, by the consideration that such a prohibition could in no case affect the Roman residents, over whom the Jews had no power. The scarcity of cocks in Jerusalem is, however, intimated by the absence of the definite article before ἀλέκτωρ in all the four Gospels. Hence it should be omitted in the English Version, Mat_26:34; Mat_26:74-75; Mar_14:30; Mar_14:68; Mar_14:72; Luk_22:34; Luk_22:60-61; Joh_13:38; Joh_18:27. At any rate the whole history of Peter’s denial is evidently drawn from real life, and presents one of the strongest evidences for the originality and truthfulness of the Gospel records.—P. S.]
[64][Dr. Wordsworth, following the ancient fathers and the older Protestant commentators, sees a providential and prophetical adaptation of the names of Scripture localities generally, and of Gethsemane in particular, to the events which occurred there. In this oil press, in which the olives were crashed and braised, Christ was bruised for oar sins, that oil might flow from His wounds to heal our souls. Comp. Matthew Henry: “There He trod the wine-press of His Father’s wrath, and trod it alone.” In like manner Wordsworth allegorizes on Bethlehem, the house of bread, where the bread of life was born; Nazareth, where He grew up as a branch; Bethsaida, the house of fishing, where He called the apostles; Capernaum, the house of consolation, where He dwelt; Bethany, the place of palm-dates, which speaks of the palms and hosannahs of His triumphal entry into Jerusalem; Bethphage, the house of figs, which is a memento of the withering of the barren fig-tree; the Mount of Olives, whence Christ ascended to heaven, to hold forth the olive branch of peace between God and man.—P. S.]
[65][The Edinb. transl. has insignificance.—P. S.]
[66][Not: passions, as in the Edinb. transl.—P. S.]
[67][The Edinb. edition altogether misunderstand this passage, and translates: “The issue (as if Ausfall was the same with Ausgang!) of this event ... are illustrated by John in his own way.” John does not illustrate these events at all, but passes them by in complete silence. But Lange illustrates this silence in his Leben Jesu, to which he here al ludes.—P. S.]
[68][Origen explains the words: “My soul is sorrowful unto death. Sorrow is begun in me, but not to endure forever, but only till the hour of death; when I shall die for sin, I shall die also for all sorrow, whose beginnings only are in me.”—P. S.]
[69][In German: körperliche Abspannung, which is just the reverse of “corporeal intensity of feeling,” as the Edinb, edition renders it.—P. S.]
[70][Renan, in his Life of Jesus, Matthew 23, adds the sad memory of “the clear fountains of Galilee, where He might have refreshed Himself; the vineyard and fig-tree, under which He might have been seated; and (hear, hear!) the young maidens who might perhaps have consented to love Him!” Only a French novel-writer would profane this sacred scene by such erotic sentimentalism. Renan places the agony in Gethsemane several days before the night of the Passion, contrary to the unanimous testimony of the Synoptists as well as the inherent probability of the case. But his opinions on such subjects are worth nothing at all.—P. S.]
[71][In German: Gemüthserschütterung. Gemüth is here, like the Greek θυμός (from θύω, to rush on, to storm; to burn in sacrifice), the inmost soul, as the principle of life, feeling, and thought, especially as the seat of strong feeling and passion. The Edinb edition obliterates the meaning of the original by turning it into: unrest and amazement which is no translation at all. The next sentences are still more diluted and mutilated, or entirely omitted.—P. S.]
[72][In German: Die starken Zusagen und die kläglichen Absagen,—a paronomasia which I cannot imitate in English.—P. S.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Daniel D. Whedon1874 · Public DomainOn vv31, 32, 33, 35§ 125. — THE INTIMATION TO THE DISCIPLES AND…
§ 125. — THE INTIMATION TO THE DISCIPLES AND TO PETER OF THEIR DESERTION AND HIS DENIALS, Mat_26:31-35.
This passage Matthew inserts out of its true order. It is to be considered not as occurring after, but before leaving the table, and before the extended discourses recorded by John. To take in the full account of all the intimations given to the reluctant Peter of his denials, we must read in the following order: Joh_13:36-38; Mat_26:31-33; Luk_22:31-33; Mat_26:34-35. We thus find that before leaving the supper-table our Lord gave Peter three warnings of his folly. This of Matthew is the second. As it is the self-confidence of Peter that induces the first warning of our Lord, so, through all the three, Peter retains his protestations that he will prefer death rather than unfaithfulness.
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31. Shall be offended — Literally, shall be entrapped into wrong. Shall be made to fail in your fidelity to me.
I will smite the Shepherd — Our Lord here quotes Zechariah as an illustration, or, as some of the best commentators suppose, as a direct prediction of his desertion in his affliction by his disciples.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges1878 · Public DomainOn vv31, 32, 34, 3531–35. All shall be offended
31–35. All shall be offended
Mar_14:26-31; Luk_22:32-34. Cp. Joh_16:32
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31. I will smite the shepherd] Zec_13:7. The words do not literally follow the Hebrew. The context describes the purification of Jerusalem in the last days—“in that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem”—the discomfiture of the false prophets, and the victory of Jehovah on the Mount of Olives.
It may be fitly remembered that the Valley of Jehoshaphat (in N.T. the Valley of Kedron) according to the most probable view derived its name—the Valley of the Judgment of Jehovah—not from the king of Judah, but from the vision of Joel (Mat_3:2; Mat_3:9-17), of which the prophecy of Zechariah is the repetition in a later age. If so, there is deep significance in the words recurring to the mind of Christ, as He trod the very field of Jehovah’s destined victory. Nor is it irreverent to believe that the thought of this vision brought consolation to the human heart of Jesus as He passed to His Supreme self-surrender with the knowledge that He would be left alone, deserted even by His chosen followers.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers1878 · Public DomainOn vv31–35(31) All ye shall be offended because of me.—We…
(31) All ye shall be offended because of me.—We may think of the words as spoken at some early stage of that evening walk. It corresponds in substance with Joh_16:32, but seems to have been uttered more abruptly.
I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered.—The citation of this prophecy, from Zec_13:7. is every way suggestive, as showing that our Lord’s thoughts had dwelt, and that He led the disciples to dwell, on that chapter as applicable to Himself. To one who dealt with prophecy as St. Matthew dealt with it, much in that chapter that is perplexing to the historical critic would be full of divinest meaning. It told of a “fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness;” of One with “wounds” in His hands, who was “wounded in the house of His friends;” of the Shepherd to whom Jehovah spake as to His “fellow.”
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary1880 · Public DomainOn vv31–35Then saith Jesus. The warning, according to the other…
Then saith Jesus. The warning, according to the other evangelists, was given in the upper chamber, unless, as is very unlikely, it was twice repeated. (see Luk_22:31-34 Joh_13:36-38) The "then" of St. Matthew must not be taken strictly as denoting exact chronological sequence, but as marking a change of scene or a new incident. All ye shall be offended because of me (en emoi , in me). There is an emphasis on "all ye;" even ye eleven, who have been steadfast hitherto. One, Judas, had already departed; but Christ warns the eleven that they too shall for a time lose their faith in him, and sin by forsaking their Lord. His apprehension and trial would prove a rock of offence to them. It is written. In Zec_13:7, where the prophet"s words are, "Awake, O sword, against my Shepherd, and against the Man that is my Fellow, saith the Lord of hosts; smite the Shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered." It is here shown that all that happened took place according to "the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God." That Christ may be the Saviour he must be a sacrifice. In Zechariah the Lord gives the command to the sword; hence Christ can say, I will smite. The Shepherd is Christ, the sheep are the disciples, who, at the sight of the officers coming to seize him, "all forsook him, and fled" (ver. 56). The prophecy in Zechariah is remarkably full of references to Christ, his nature and his position.
Vers. 31-46. The Mount of Olives.
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I THE CONVERSATION BY THE WAY.
1. The Lord"s prediction that all should forsake him. Partly in the upper room, partly on the way, the Lord had uttered those most sacred and precious words which St. John was led by the Holy Spirit to preserve in those chapters which have well been called the holiest of the holy. St. Matthew relates only one thing which passed as they went in the late evening, in the solemn light of the Paschal moon, their hearts, we may be sure, filled with awful forebodings and strange mysterious anticipations, to the well known spot. The Lord had said long ago, "Blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me." The people of Nazareth had been so offended; (Mat_13:57) now, he said, his chosen disciples would be offended, and on that very night. He who should become the Headstone of the corner would be for a time even to them a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence. It must be so, the Lord said, for so it had been written, applying to himself that prophecy of Zechariah which has so many mysterious allusions to the Passion, "I will smite the Shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad." The disciples would remember afterwards that that Shepherd in the prophecy is called by the Lord of hosts "the Man that is my fellow;" and they would feel that those words could be true only of One who, "being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God." That very night the sheep would be scattered, but only for a short time; for it is written in the same place, "I will turn mine hand upon the little ones." The Lord would rise again. He would gather together his little flock; he would go before them, as a shepherd goeth before his sheep. They should see him again in Galilee.
2. Peter"s assertion of his fidelity. Peter, self confident as ever, asserted his unshaken loyalty; he, at least, would never be offended. And when the Lord repeated his warning, showing his knowledge of the future even in its minute details, he became more earnest and excited, "Though I should die with thee, yet will I not deny thee." "Likewise also said all the disciples." Let us learn to distrust ourselves. When we are weak, then we are strong.
II GETHSEMANE.
1. The agony. The Lord, in the full knowledge of his coming Passion, sought a place for solitary prayer. He came to the well known garden whither he "ofttimes resorted." He took with him the three best beloved of the apostles, bidding the others rest. Then came that awful and mysterious agony: "He began to be sorrowful and sore troubled." He bade the disciples remain at a distance; even the three chosen ones, whose companionship and sympathy he desired, might not draw too near to the Lord in his anguish. "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me." Where apostles might not walk, we may not presume to intrude. We cannot comprehend the full meaning of that most awful agony. We are sure that it was not the mere fear of death which so crushed the holy Saviour"s soul. He shared, doubtless, perfect Man as he was, our human horror of death; and in him, we must remember, that horror would be increased by his complete foreknowledge of all the circumstances of that bitter Passion which was now so close at hand. Again, the shrinking from death seems to stand in some relation to the sense of life; the feebler that sense of life, the less men fear to die. But the Lord was not only in the full strength of early manhood, with a bodily frame which had never been weakened by sickness; but he was the Life, the essential, self-existent Life; he had life in himself, therefore it seems the conflict with death must have been in him far more terrible than in ordinary men. Moreover, death must have had an awful aspect in the sight of Christ, because it is the wages, the consequence of sin; and this close connection with sin must have invested death with a horrible character to the All-holy One. But it was not the fear of death which caused that bloody sweat, that utter anguish. Saints and martyrs, and even ungodly men, have met death without flinching; and we know with what calm majestic fortitude the Lord endured the cross. On Palm Sunday the impenitence of Jerusalem had wrung from him a burst of holy tears; and now, when the intense wickedness of men, the wickedness of his own apostles, of the leaders of his own chosen people, was gathering round him, he may well have recoiled in horror from that dark and wretched prospect. He had loved those unhappy men, even Judas, even Caiaphas. He had come down from heaven to save them, and they were rushing into deadly sin, into utter ruin. They had rejected his love and mercy. Alas! thousands more would do the like, would crucify the Lord afresh, would sin wilfully against knowledge and against light, and would die in their sins. He knew it would be so, and he was "exceeding sorrowful, even unto death." And he saw, behind Judas and Caiaphas and the rest, the awful form of the evil one. Satan had entered into them. "The prince of this world cometh," he had said. Satan had nothing in Christ, no hold upon that pure and spotless innocence; but all around he exercised his terrible power with fiendish malignity, by the agency of those wicked men whom he had ensnared to their ruin. It may well be that the nearness and activity of the evil spirit helped to bring that shuddering horror over the Saviour"s soul. But, once more, "He was made sin for us, though he was without sin." We cannot penetrate into the awful mysteries which those words seem to imply. We know that "the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all." We know that he "bare our sins in his own body on the tree," and we believe that it was that terrible burden of sin the sin of the whole world that crushed him to the earth. Sin was to his pure soul most utterly loathsome, most horrible; and, in some mysterious way, it now came close around him, enveloping him with its hateful nearness: all the sins of the whole world, from the first sin of Adam to the last sin with which the last of living men will pollute the creation of God, all came in one burden of accumulated horror upon "the Lamb of God, which taketh away beareth the sins of the world." It was a burden which only he could bear. Only the Sinless One, only he who, though he became perfect Man, was in the truth of his being, perfect God, could put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. Only he could bear that crushing burden; but it caused him the most intense suffering, unutterable anguish. It was not good for most of the apostles to witness that agony; they could not bear it. He left them at the entrance of the garden. He took the three with him. They had seen the glory of the Transfiguration; the recollections of that effulgent brightness, of those glimpses of the Godhead, might strengthen them in the presence of this more than human sorrow. It seems that the sympathy of these loved and trusted friends, even their very nearness, was some relief to the suffering Lord, as it is with us in our own hour of deep distress. Dying men love to have their dearest friends present with them, watching with them, though they can give no help beyond that sympathizing presence. So it was with Christ the Lord, so true was his humanity. But the extremest anguish he must bear alone; the prayer of completest self-sacrifice he must pray alone. Only the Father and the blessed angels might behold that bloody sweat and hear that most earnest prayer. Not even the three might follow him now. He would have them near; he came to them again and again, as if for sympathy; but the most dread struggle he must face alone. He went a little further into the garden. "He was withdrawn from them," St. Luke says, "about a stone"s cast." The evangelist uses a strong word he tore himself from them. It seems as if the dear Lord could scarcely endure that awful loneliness, and yet he must be alone. That bitter anguish reveals to us the greatness of his blessed love.
2. The threefold prayer.
(1) The first prayer. The Lord kneeled down upon the ground; then he fell upon his face in the intensity of his supplication. "O my Father," he said, "if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt. The Lord is an example to us in all things. In this overpowering, agony he offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears pain and trouble bring, the Christian to his God. The greater the pain, the more heartrending the trouble, the more earnestly he will pray. The Lord prayed that the cup of anguish might pass from him, if it were possible. The other evangelists give a slightly different report of his words: "Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me" (St. Luke); "Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take await this cup from me" (St. Mark). With God all things are possible. But it was not possible to take away that cup of woe if men were to be saved, as God willed them to be saved, through the cross and Passion of the Lord. It was not possible, for the cup passed not away. There were, it seems, inscrutable reasons which made that tremendous sacrifice necessary for the salvation of man and the glory of God. God will not always take the cup of suffering from us. It may be necessary that we should suffer, for our own good or for the good of others; our sufferings may be contained in God"s eternal purpose. Yet we may pray for their removal; we may ask God to spare us this or that trial, which seems too great for us to bear. Only we must pray all the Lord"s prayer, not part only. His perfect human nature involved a human will. That will was distinct from the Divine will; it was a pure, holy, human will; but, like our will, it shrank from pain and death. The Lord yielded it up in entire submission to his Father"s will: "Not as I will, but as thou wilt." He who is learning to pray that prayer from the bottom of his heart is very near to Christ.
(2) The return to the three apostles. There is a restlessness in intense grief which, like other sinless human weaknesses, was experienced by our Lord. He came to the disciples as if seeking for their sympathy, their affection, in his loneliness and exceeding sorrow But they were asleep. The same three had slept upon the Mount of the Transfiguration. It seems very strange. But we must remember that it was now very late at night, and the spiritual strain upon the apostles during that Thursday evening had been immense. They had heard the Lord speak again and again, clearly and certainly, of his own approaching death; they had heard of the treachery of one of their own number. They had listened, it must have been in rapt awe-stricken attention, to those wondrous utterances of exhortation, comfort, instruction, recorded in St. John"s Gospel. Now the three were left alone, in the silence of the night; they were worn out with excitement, sorrow, watching; and they slept. It must have been a perturbed sleep, like the deep sleep of Abram, when the horror of great darkness fell upon him. The Lord came to them; he found them sleeping, just when his holy human nature, sorely tried, needed the affectionate sympathy of human friends. He addressed the one who a short time before had expressed his love so strongly. "What!" he said to Peter, "could you not watch with me one hour?" The words imply a lengthened prayer. The evangelist has recorded only the essence, the central petition, of that long prayer of agony, The Lord had prayed already for a full hour. They imply too that the Lord, in his perfect humanity, felt some comfort, some stay, in the thought that those earthly friends who were dearest to him were not only near at hand, but awake, watching; as men in extreme sickness, in great suffering, like to feel that these who watch in the sick chamber are awake, conscious of their state, even though unable to help them. But the good Lord thought not only of himself, as we too often do in sickness; he thought of his disciples. Temptation was close at hand. They needed watchfulness; they needed prayer. They must keep all their faculties awake; they must be thoughtful, vigilant, prepared for the hour of danger. And they must pray. True prayer implies the vigorous exercise of all the highest faculties. It is not easy, but often very difficult; it requires effort, thought, sustained attention. It needs the constant aid of God the Holy Spirit, the great Teacher of prayer. The apostles needed now all the help of prayer and watchfulness, lest they should enter into temptation. The temptation must come; nay, it was already at hand. But they must pray not to enter into it, not to yield themselves to it, not to enter with their own will and consent into the snare which Satan was laying for them. The mere fact of temptation does not imply sin. The Lord himself was tempted. The sin lies in entering into it with our eyes open, with the consent of our will. And the remedy is watchfulness and prayer; a man cannot enter into temptation in this sense while he prays, if only his prayer is the waking, thoughtful, earnest prayer of faith. "At once to pray and to sin," says Stier, "is impossible. Who could with a wakeful and recollected spirit say unto God, Not as thou wilt"? Who, when the word of Jesus bids us watch, and the Spirit of Jesus teaches us to pray, may answer him and say, "Lord, but I cannot, I am too weak"?" The Lord adds the reason which makes watchfulness and prayer so necessary the weakness of the flesh. It was weak even in himself, though in him that flesh which he had graciously assumed that he might save us, was without sin; he had come "in the likeness of sinful flesh;" but in him the flesh was only weak, it was not sinful. It was weak; it shrank from pain and death. Even he, in the days of his flesh, offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears. How much more necessary are prayer and watchfulness for us, whose flesh is not only weak, but also sinful, defiled by many sins? The spirit is willing. In him it was more than willing; it was ready, zealous. It will be so with his saints in proportion as the spirit, the highest part of our composite human nature, which was breathed into man by God himself, realizes its powers and its privileges, offering up itself to be dwelt in and purified by the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit of God, and, by means of that gracious indwelling, living in that fellowship which is with God the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. But with us the spirit is not always willing. The flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; and, alas! we are not always led by the spirit, but often by that sinful flesh of ours. And even when in some sense the spirit is willing, when "to will is present with me," how often do we find in our hearts that conflict so wonderfully described in Romans 7., "how to perform that which is good I find not;" "for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I" I Then what need have we, whose flesh is not only weak, but exceeding sinful, to obey Christ"s commandment, to follow Christ"s example: "Watch and pray"!
(3) The second prayer. The Lord found no help in human sympathy; again he sought it in communion with his Father. His second prayer was calmer. The angel, of whom St. Luke tells us, appeared, perhaps, after the first prayer, strengthening him. "He was heard in that he feared". (Heb_5:7) As the angels ministered to him, the Almighty Son of God, after his temptation, so now in his agony one angel comforted him, the Comforter of all. He submitted to receive strength and comfort from his angels. They will calm our spirits in our death agony if we are truly his. The Lord offered up the prayer of holy resignation, "O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done." Perfect peace can be found only in perfect resignation to the blessed will of God. Again he came to the three disciples, seeking their sympathy, and doubtless seeking to prepare them against the coming temptation. But again they were asleep, for their eyes were heavy. God can comfort; his angels can by his appointment succour and defend us; man can do little for us in the hour of death.
(4) The third prayer. "He went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the same words." His people often follow his example. They are conscious of great poverty of thought; they find it hard to express the yearnings of their souls in words, especially in times of deep affliction. Often they can only repeat again and again the same simple ejaculation. It is enough. God regards not the form of words, but the earnestness of the supplication. Again, for the last time, the Lord returned to the three apostles. "Sleep on now," he said, "and take your rest." He needed their sympathy no longer; the time for watching with him was past. His hour was come, and he was ready. He had schooled his human will by a mighty effort into complete resignation, into absolute harmony with the Father"s will. The struggle was over; he had "trodden the wine press alone;" he was calm in perfect self-mastery. The disciples could help him no more, even by sympathy; they might take their rest while they could. The Lord, in his tenderness, had compassion on their weakness. Possibly there may have been a certain interval of time between those words and the appearance of the traitor. The Lord, perhaps, stood or sat watching his sleeping apostles, and awaiting the approaching band. When he saw them near he roused the sleepers: "Rise," he said, "let us be going;" and he went forward in majestic calmness to meet the danger.
LESSONS.
1. The Lord"s dread agony calls upon us for deep and reverent sympathy.
2. It calls upon us for confession and hatred of those sins which added to his burden of woe.
3. It calls upon us for resignation and submission of our earthly will to the holy will of God.
4. It teaches us in our extremest sufferings always to pray to pray more earnestly.
Vers. 31-35. Strength and weakness.
After the admonitory incident of the last Passover, which separated the unhappy Iscariot from the apostleship, Jesus, journeying with the eleven towards the Mount of Olives, proceeded to caution them against the weakness which he discerned in them. He is not our truest friend who conceals from us our faults.
I IN JESUS WE SEE THE ENSHRINEMENT OF DIVINE STRENGTH.
1. In his all-comprehensive knowledge.
(1) What was "written" was perfectly familiar to him. He was supremely "mighty in the Scriptures." The "Sword of the Spirit" is a trusty weapon, both for defence in parrying the thrusts of Satan and for offence in putting the armies of the aliens to the rout.
(2) He knew himself to be the "Shepherd" of Israel. That Shepherd is Jehovah. (see Psa_23:1 Psa_80:1) That Shepherd is Messiah. (see Isa_40:11 Eze_34:23 Zec_13:7) Jesus identifies himself as that glorious Personage. (see Joh_10:11 Heb_13:20 1Pe_5:4) As the Shepherd here is the "Fellow" of the "Lord of hosts," he only can be intended who is "equal with God.
(3) He knew everything about his sheep. He could foretell the incident of the denial by Peter. He could oppose the limit before the second cock-crowing of that night to Peter"s "never." He could forecast his desertion by "all." He knows us infinitely better than we know ourselves.
(4) Knowledge is power. Perfect knowledge can never be taken at a disadvantage. It cannot be surprised. It has boundless resources.
2. In his all-enduring compassion.
(1) With what patience does he endure the unfaithfulness of his disciples! Though he knew they would desert him, yet does he not spurn them from his presence. His kind heart can see, even in the excess of their self-confidence, a sincere and warm affection. The case is different from that of Judas. His sin was deliberate; Peter"s was a sin of surprise. That of Judas arose from the state of his heart; the act of Peter was against his habitual feelings and principles. Though he foresaw that all the disciples would leave him to tread the winepress alone, his gentleness made no rejoinder to their protestations of devotion to him even to the death.
(2) The Shepherd submits to be smitten for the sheep. For himself he had no need to die. The formidableness of that "sword" of Divine justice now "awaking" from its slumber of forbearance was fully in his view. He saw the malignity of those human hands into which it was given to be wielded against him. Yet did he not seek to evade its edge. He could already see those "wounds in his hands" with which he was to be "wounded in the house of his friends". (see Zec_13:6) He could have avoided them; but his sheep must be redeemed.
(3) The "scattered" ones must again be gathered into their fold. To this end the smitten Shepherd must rise again from the dead. "But after I am raised up I will go before you into Galilee." This implies that he would deliver himself out of the hands of his enemies and theirs. "I will go before you," equivalent to "I will bring my hand again to the little ones". (see Zec_13:7) "I will go before you," viz. as the Shepherd before his gathered flock. (see Joh_10:4) "Into Galilee." He even mentioned the particular hill which was to be the place of their meeting. (see Mat_28:16)
(4) We have "strong consolation" in the "mercy" which "endureth forever.
II IN THE DISCIPLES WE SEE AN EMBODIMENT OF WEAKNESS,
1. Their weakness appears in their self-confidence.
(1) Peter had more faith in himself than he had in the Scriptures of God. They anticipated the offence which the sheep were to take when the Shepherd should be smitten. In the face of this Peter said, "If all shall be offended in thee, I will never be offended." It is easy to talk boldly and carelessly of death at a distance.
(2) "If all shall be offended." Those who think too well of themselves are apt to be suspicious of others. (see Gal_6:1)
(3) Peter"s self-confidence grew with his unbelief. For when Jesus said unto him," Verily I say unto thee, That this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. Peter saith unto him, Even it I must die with thee, yet will I not deny thee." He should have been diffident in respect to words which never failed when the most stupendous miracles depended on them.
(4) The foremost in self-confidence are the first to fall. Such was the case with Peter. Then"Beware of Peter"s word, Nor confidently say, "I never will deny thee, Lord, But, "Grant I never may." Man"s wisdom is to seek His strength in God alone; And e"en an angel would be weak Who trusted in his own.
2. Their weakness appears in their unbelief.
(1) They could see that Jesus was in peril of his life. This they inferred rather from their knowledge of the hostility of the rulers than from their faith in the Scriptures of prophecy or from the prophetic words of Christ. They could not see who it was that was in peril. Had they seen the Father in the Son, the peril would not have affrighted them. Note: Offences will come among the disciples of Jesus in times of peril. The cross of Christ is evermore the stumbling block. (1Co_1:23) Satan is busy when our faith is weak.
(2) They could not see what it truly is to die with Christ. To die with him is to die to self and the world voluntarily to crucify our entire evil nature. Because, for lack of faith, they were unprepared thus to die with Jesus, they "forsook him, and fled." The heart can await the hour of temptation when the truth is rooted in it.
(3) They could not see that their Lord would rise again from the dead. This unbelief was not for want of being told about the Resurrection, either by the prophets or by Christ himself. They were foolish in the slowness of their hearts to believe. (see Luk_24:25, Luk_24:26) Had they understood and realized the resurrection of Christ on the third day after his Passion, their faith would have steadied them. (cf. 1Co_15:58)
(4) If all the apostles forsook their Lord, who has not reason to fear? Did not the apostles represent all the flock which they were afterwards to bring together? Who can boast? The Lord permits us to be tried, that we may see ourselves as we are, and be humbled by our experience. The strength of pride is but for a moment. J.A.M.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator1887 · Public DomainOn v33Though all men shall be offended because of Thee,…
Mat_26:33-35
Though all men shall be offended because of Thee, yet will I never be offended.
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Enthusiasm and its dangers
I. The confidence of inexperience, aided by lack of imagination. How often is this repeated before our eyes! Castles in the air are built by inexperienced virtue, to be demolished, alas! at the first touch of the realities of vice. The country lad who has been brought up in a Christian home, and is coming up to some great business house in London, makes vigorous protestations of what he will, and will not, do in a sphere of life, of the surroundings of which he can, as yet, form no true idea whatever; the emigrant, who is looking forward to spend his days in a young colony, where the whole apparatus of Christian and civilized life is as yet in its infancy, or is wanting altogether, makes plans of a situation, of which he cannot at all as yet, from the nature of the case, take the measure; the candidate for holy orders, who anticipates his responsibilities from afar, gathering them from books and from intercourse with clergymen, makes resolutions which he finds have to be revised by the light of altogether unforeseen experiences.
II. An insufficent sense of the power of new forms of temptation. A man living in a comparatively private position is exemplary. His little failures do but serve to set forth the sterling worth of his general character. He seems to be marked out for some promotion. All predict that he will be a great success, since he has shown on a small scale excellencies which will certainly distinguish him, and will adorn a larger sphere. He is promoted, and he turns out a hopeless failure. How extraordinary! cries out the world. Who could have anticipated this? exclaim his friends. And yet the explanation may be a very simple one. He may have been brought, by the change of circumstances, for the first time in his life, under the influence of a temptation hitherto unknown to him. He may have been tempted in his earlier years by appeals to avarice, illicit desires, or personal vanity; but never, as yet, has he felt the pressure of the fear of man. In that place of prominence he, for the first time, feels the fear of a mass of human opinion which he does not in his conscience and his heart respect, but which he fears only because it is a mass. And this fear is too much for him, too much for his sense of justice, too much for his consistency and his former self. Alas! that new temptation has found a weak place in his moral nature; it has sprung a leak in him; and the disappointment is as keen to-day as the expectations of yesterday were unduly sanguine.
III. St. Peters over-confidence would seek to have been due in part to his natural temperament, and to his reliance on it. A sanguine impetuosity was the basis of his character. In this instance, there was probably a mixture of these dispositions-genuine love of our Lord, stirred to vehemence by the recent defection of Judas, combined with eagerness, the product of temperament. The exact proportions of the combinations we know not; but, at any rate, nature had more to do with his language than grace. And while grace is trustworthy in times of trial, nature may be expected to give way. An instance of this confusion between grace and nature is to be found in the enthusiasm which led to the Crusades. No well-informed and fair-minded man can question the genuine love of our Lord Jesus Christ, which filled such men as Peter the Hermit, and still more that great teacher and writer, St. Bernard. They exerted, these men, some seven centuries ago, an influence upon the populations of Central Europe, to which the modern world affords absolutely no sort of parallel, and at their voice thousands of men, in all ranks of life, left their homes to rescue, if it might be, the sacred soil on which the Redeemer had lived and died, from the hands of the infidel. Who can doubt that of these not a few were animated by a love which is always noble-that of giving the best they had to give from their lives to the God who had made and redeemed them. But alas! who can doubt that many, perhaps a larger multitude, were really impelled by very different considerations which gathered round this central idea, and seemed to receive from it some sort of consecration, and that a love of adventure, a love of reputation, a desire to escape from the troublous times at home, the ambitious hope of acquiring influence or power which might be of use elsewhere than in Palestine, which might found or consolidate a dynasty, also entered into the sum of moral forces, which precipitated the crusading hosts on the coasts of Syria? And how many a crusader could analyse, with any approach to accuracy, the motives which swayed him in an enterprise where there was, indeed, so much of the smoke and dust of earth to obscure the love and light of heaven?
IV. The lessons to be leant from this event.
1. Estimate enthusiasm at its proper value. It is the glow of the soul; the lever by which men are raised above their average level and enterprise, and become capable of a goodness and benevolence which would otherwise be beyond them.
2. Measure well our religious language, especially the language of fervour and devotion. When religious language outruns practice or conviction, the general character is weakened. If Peter had said less as they left the supper-room, he might have done better afterwards in the hall of the palace of the high priest. (Canon Liddon.)
Fickleness of the human heart
In a vessel filled with muddy water, the thickness visibly subsides to the bottom, and leaves the water purer and clearer, until at last it seems perfectly limpid. The slightest motion, however, brings the sediment again to the top, and makes the water thick and turbid as before. Here we have an emblem of the human heart. The heart is full of the mud of sinful lusts and carnal desires, and the consequence is, that no pure water-that is, good and holy thoughts-can flow from it. It is, in truth, a miry pit and slough of sin, in which all sorts of ugly reptiles are bred and crawl. Many a one, however, is deceived by it, and never imagines his heart half so wicked as it really is, because at times its lusts are at rest, and sink, as it were, to the bottom. On such occasions his thoughts appear to be holy and devout, his desires pure and temperate, his words charitable and edifying, and his works useful and Christian. But this lasts only so long as he is not moved; I mean, so long as he is without opportunity or incitement to sin. Let that occur, and worldly lusts rise so thick that his whole thoughts, words, and works show no trace of anything but slime and impurity. This man is meek as long as he is not thwarted; but cross him, and he is like powder, ignited by the smallest spark, and blazing up with a loud report and destructive force. Another is temperate so long as he has no social companions; a third chaste, while the eyes of men are upon him. (Scriver.)
Dangers of impulsiveness
I. Prone to over-estimate self, and underrate others-though all men-yet not I.
II. Natural instability-frequent reactions-can do, but not wait.
III. Violence and rapidity of its changes.
IV. Readiness with which it takes its character from immediately surrounding circumstances. Learn:
1. Let the cool and prudent be gentle in judging of the more fiery.
2. Let the impulsive take warning from this example.
3. Let the man who repents some sin of haste, take encouragement and hope. (Analyst.)
I. No strength of attachment to Jesus can justify such confident promises of fidelity, made without dependence upon Him.
II. That all promises to adhere to Him should be made relying on Him for aid.
III. That we little know how feeble we are till we are tried.
IV. That Christians may be left to great and disgraceful sins to show them their weakness. (A. Barnes, D. D.)
Peters self-confidence
It is a common remark that in the absence of danger all men are heroes. Self-distrust does not enter into our calculations. Presuming upon the strength and permanence of present emotion, we hurl defiance at danger, and challenge circumstances to shake our magnanimity. Peter was not alone in this boast, but his conduct was marked by a more signal exhibition, both of self-confidence and of frailty, than that of his fellow-disciples. Fully, however, to estimate his fall-
I. Look at some of the concomitant circumstances by which his offence was aggravated.
1. He was one of the three disciples whom Jesus honoured with a peculiar intimacy.
2. He appears to have had an earlier and a stronger conviction of our Saviours Messiahship than his brother disciples (Mat_16:13-17).
3. The particular crisis at which his offence was committed. Almost immediately after another of the twelve had betrayed Him, and when, humanly speaking, his Master stood most in need of his support.
II. These facts serve to illustrate the extent of his self-deception, and to impress more forcibly this most important lesson, that No reasonable dependence is to be placed on our mere untried feelings and resolutions; but that the only satisfactory evidence we can possess of the genuineness and stability of our religious principles, is that which our conduct affords. When Peter protested his fidelity, his constancy had not been put to the test. His character rendered him in an especial degree liable to this species of self-deception, still, his case may be selected as a striking illustration of the fallaciousness of mere untried feelings and resolutions, as a satisfactory evidence of religious character, and of the folly and danger of trusting to them as any security for future conduct. Few things are more common. Let us not mistake passion for principle (Joh_14:21; 1Jn_5:3). (J. H. Smith.)
Protesting too much
When the subtle and ambitious John, of Gischala, pursuing his own dark course, as it is traced in the History of the Jews, joined outwardly the party of Arianus, and was active beyond others in council and camp, he yet kept up a secret correspondence with the Zealots, to whom be betrayed all the movements of the assailants. To conceal this secret he redoubled his assiduities, and became so extravagant in his protestations of fidelity to Arianus and his party, that he completely overacted his part, and incurred suspicion. His intended dupes began gradually to look with a jealous eye on their too obsequious, most obedient, and most devoted servant. (F. Jacox.)
Hawthorne
remarks that Italian asseverations of any questionable fact, though uttered with rare earnestness of manner, never vouch for themselves as coming from any depth, like roots drawn out of the substance of the soul, with some of the soil clinging to them. Their energy expends itself in exclamation. The vaulting ambition of their hyperboles overleaps itself, and falls on the other side.
Truth not in need of an oath
Reality cares not to be tricked out with too taking an outside; and deceit, when she intends to cozen, studies disguise. Least of all should we be taken with swearing asseverations. Truth needs not the varnish of an oath to make her plainness credited. (Owen Feltharn.)
Lie following lie
Lie engenders lie. Once committed, the liar has to go on in his course of lying. It is the penalty of his transgression, or one of the penalties. To the habitual liar, bronzed and hardened in the custom, till custom becomes second nature, the penalty may seem no very terrible price to pay. To him, on the other hand, who, without deliberate intent, and against his innermost will, is overtaken with such a fault, the generative power of a first lie to beget others, the necessity of supporting the first by a second and a third, is a retribution keenly to be felt, while penitently owned to be most just. (F. Jacox.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson1891 · Public DomainOn vv31–3431. Shall be offended. Compare Mark 14:26–31; Luke 22:31–34;…
31. Shall be offended. Compare Mark 14:26–31; Luke 22:31–34; John 13:37, 38. It is written. Zech. 13:7. The Shepherd. Christ. The sheep. His disciples.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary1892 · Public DomainOn v31Mat_26:32. I will go before you.—As a shepherd. A…
CRITICAL NOTES
Mat_26:32. I will go before you.—As a shepherd. A pastoral expression (Bengel). See preceding verse.
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Mat_26:34. Before the cook crow.—The crowing of cocks during the stillness of the night is quite a feature in Oriental life, and nowhere more so than in and around Jerusalem. The great time for cock-crowing was, and is, in the third watch of the night. See Mar_13:35 (Morison).
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Mat_26:31-35
Foresight and blindness.—When the disciples follow their Master from the Passover-chamber to the Mount of Olives (Mat_26:30), they share His company, but hardly His thoughts. Much is seen by Him which is hidden from them. This is brought out here in two principal ways: in connection, first, with the general warning which He addresses to them all; in connection, secondly, with the special warning which He addresses to St. Peter alone.
I. The warning to all—His words in this way show, first, how much He knew of what was to happen that night. “All ye shall be offended in Me this night” (Mat_26:31). Nothing looked less like this than things did when He spoke. Had not these disciples followed Him long? Through many vicissitudes (Luk_22:28)? At very great cost (Mat_19:27)? Had they not also joined in, if not actually started, the acclamations which accompanied His entry into Jerusalem (Mat_21:6-9)? And been with Him in all His subsequent word-encounters and triumphs (Mat_22:15-46)? How strange, therefore, the announcement, that in a few hours, they would be acting inconsistently with all this! Ashamed to be seen in His company! Scandalised at the accusation (!) of belonging to Him at all! Still more strange, therefore, to hear it said that this had been predicted of old; and that the reason of it all was to be found in that which had also been predicted of Him. He was to be “smitten,” and they were to be “scattered” (Mat_26:31; Zec_13:7 : see also 1Ki_22:17). All this, though incredible to them, was foreseen by Him as quite close. Much the same was it, in the next place, with what was to follow that night. Most significant, most profound, are His words on this point. As to Himself, on the one hand: that He was to die, and yet live; to need “raising again”; to attain to it also; and to follow it up by departing for Galilee with a view to their good (Mat_26:32). As to them, on the other hand: that, though they were to be scattered, they were not to be so for ever; that, if presently “offended” with Him, they should confess Him afterwards, and follow Him as before. All this, again, though thus fore proclaimed by Him, was past believing to them. This is shown very plainly by the language of the most forward among them. To him there is no need whatever of the language they have heard; of the primary warning; of the subsequent re-assurance; least of all, of the first. Things in the future, in his judgment, will not be as they have heard them described. He, at any rate, whatever others do, is not going to do as is said (see Mat_26:33). He is as confident, in a word, in his ignorance as Christ is in His light.
II. The special warning to one.—See here, again, on the one side, how clear was the pre-vision of Christ! How definite, also, His words! He declares that this confident Peter himself shall be an example—a leading example—of what He has said. That he shall not only be “offended” with Him, but “offended” so much as to “deny” that he had ever known Him at all. That he shall do this three times in succession. That he shall do it also, before the departed sunlight shall shine again on the world. And this He declares, also—if such a thing can be—with even greater solemnity than before; almost implying, in fact, that He is never to be trusted again if not trusted in this (Mat_26:34). See, on the other hand, how this second warning was met. How it was met by St. Peter himself. With a stronger defiance than ever. Stronger in substance. Even if I have to stand alone, he had said before in effect, I will never deny Thee (Mat_26:33). What he says now is, that he will never do so, even if he has to die for it with Jesus (Mat_26:35). Not even, he says, if denial is death, will I stoop to such depth. Stronger, also, in form. Such a second defiance is, on that very account, a more significant thing in itself. Such a second defiance as this, also, being in reply to such a second and closer and more earnest remonstrance, is more significant still. The lips that do this will do anything in that unconvincable line. How it was met, also, by the other disciples! They, too, are as much proof as was Peter himself to this second warning of Christ. Instead of being moved by it to side with the Saviour against His disciple, they side with him against Christ; and proceed, as it were, in a kind of chorus, to add their “nays” unto his (end of Mat_26:35). “The Teacher is wrong,” they say, “and the disciple is right. None of us stand in need of the warning on which He has thus doubly insisted. None of us are really going to act in the manner described.” Was there ever such a close juxtaposition of darkness and light? Of light which exceeded all the light of mankind? Of darkness which thought itself light?
1. How affecting is this scene, on the one hand! The Saviour knows, the Saviour feels, all that is coming upon Him! He may be almost said, therefore, to be crucified in anticipation, as well as in fact! Yet He is so far, in all this, from having the sympathy of His own disciples, that He cannot even persuade them that there is any necessity for it. None needed it more, none was farther from it, than He was at this time.
2. How instructive is this story!—How great is the difference between true courage and the mere absence of fear! How difficult it is to teach those who think that they know (Pro_26:12)! And how ready such persons are to set about teaching those by whom they profess to be taught! Of all things to be distrusted, is trust in ourselves! Of all gifts to be coveted, that of a teachable heart!
HOMILIES ON THE VERSES
Mat_26:31. Christ deserted by His disciples.—
I. The great events of time developed according to Divine prediction.
II. The loneliness of Jesus Christ in the final scene, an incidental proof of His Divine mediation.
III. Christ’s Divine power of looking beyond the process to the great result.
IV. Though Jesus was deserted by His disciples, yet the disciples were not deserted by Him.—J. Parker, D.D.
Mat_26:34. Peter and Judas.—What is the difference between the sin of Peter and the sin of Judas?
I. Let us see what was the difference of their general lives.—We know that Peter loved our Lord sincerely, and that he followed Him with a real desire to do His will; whereas, what we know of Judas, even before his great sin, is unfavourable. It is of importance to observe this, because, in fact, our particular sins take their colour from the general character of our lives. What we call sin of infirmity, a sudden yielding to some very strong temptation, can hardly be said to exist in a man whose life is generally careless or sinful. He who takes no heed at any time to strengthen his nature has no right to plead its weakness; he who is the slave of all common temptations has no right to say that this one temptation overcame him because of its greatness.
II. Yet the acts of Peter and of Judas were in themselves different.—The act of Peter was done without premeditation. Assuredly had he felt himself in any danger of denying his Lord, he would have gone away to his own home rather than have sought admission to the palace of the high priest. But Judas sin was deliberate; it had been resolved upon, not some minutes only before it was committed, but some hours, and even some days.
III. And so, after the two sins were committed, what followed in either case?—One look at our Lord recalled Peter to himself, to that very self, that better and habitual self, which our Lord had pronounced to be clean. He went out and wept bitterly. But of all this in the case of Judas we hear nothing: with him there was remorse indeed, but not repentance—an unblessed sorrow, working an unblessed death.—T. Arnold, D.D.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
William B. Godbey1900 · Public DomainOn v31Mat 26:31-35; Mar 14:27-31; Luk 22:31-38;Joh 13:36-38. N.B. —…
JESUS PREDICTS THE FALL OF PETER AND THE DISPERSION OF THE APOSTLES
Mat 26:31-35; Mar 14:27-31; Luk 22:31-38;Joh 13:36-38. N.B. — They are all still at the supper-table except Judas, who, at nightfall, went away alone — and not alone, for Satan went with him. “Simon Peter says to Him, Lord, whither art Thou going? Jesus responded to him, Whither I go, thou art not able to follow Me now; but shall follow Me hereafter. Peter says to Him, Lord, wherefore am I not able to follow Thee now? I will lay down my life for Thee.” Peter absolutely and sincerely meant all he said, and yet in a few hours denied Him, illustrating the horrific instability of unsanctified humanity. After Peter received the fiery baptism, he was more than a match for earth and hell, living a hero and dying a martyr. What an admonition is Peter’s case to all to get sanctified!
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Mat 26:31. “Then Jesus says to them, All you will be offended in Me this night. For it has been written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered.” (Zec 13:7) The application of this is very plain and simple, as it was fulfilled in Gethsemane about three hours after this utterance. “And after I am risen, I will go before you into Galilee.” Jesus had repeatedly predicted to them that He would meet them in Galilee, His native land and that of most of His apostles, whither they all went soon after His resurrection, and He met them on the bank of the Galilean Sea, after a night of toil in dragging their nets through the waters; but then, to their unutterable surprise, pursuant to His mandate, casting the net on the right side of the ship, they caught one hundred and fifty-three large fish. He also met them on one of the mountains of Galilee, not named.
“Peter, responding, said to Him, If all shall be offended in Thee, I will never be offended.” Peter was no hypocrite. He meant all he said; yet before the crowing of the cock that very night, he denied that he knew Him.
Luk 22:31. “The Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan sought after you, to sift you like wheat.” Here the pronoun “you” is humas, the plural number, including not only Peter, but all of the apostles. All the depravity in human nature belongs to Satan, because he put it there in the fall. All sin is the crop of Satan’s own sowing. So long as there is anything in you which Satan can sift out, you are not ready for heaven. Satan could not sift Jesus, because when he came to Him, he found nothing in Him belonging to him. After the apostles were all sanctified at Pentecost, Satan’s sifting was fruitless toil, as the celestial flame had consumed all the chaff, straw, cheat, cockle, and trash, leaving nothing but the pure wheat, ready for the Lord’s mill. “But I prayed for you, that your faith may not fail.” “You” is in the singular number, meaning Peter alone, as the especial subject of the Savior’s prayer in this case, lest he might be gobbled up by Satan. Jesus here tells them, “You will all be offended in Me this night.” This word is from scandalon, “a stumbling-block,” showing that they all ran over a great stumbling-block, which jostled them exceedingly, and Peter, the most sanguine of all, became more seriously upset than any of his comrades. This word, however, does not convey the idea of a total apostasy, but a stumbling and temporary backsliding, the prayer of Jesus prevailing, so that the faith, though terribly tried, did not utterly let go. “And you, having turned, then strengthen your brethren.” “When thou art converted,” E. V., is too strong a rendering of epistrepsas, which simply means “having turned,” being in the active voice; i. e., “Having turned from your backsliding, strengthen your brethren.” Peter was the senior apostle, his house in Capernaum being headquarters of Jesus during the two and a half years of His ministry in Galilee. Therefore he wielded a very potent influence over his brethren, who, of course, being jostled by his backsliding, would need confirmation by his confession and testimony. “And he said to Him, Lord, I am ready to go with Thee to prison, and to death.” Mar 14:30 : “And Jesus says to him, Truly I say unto thee, that this night, before the cock crows twice, thou shall deny Me thrice. And he continued to say the more positively, If it may be necessary for me to die along with Thee, I will not deny Thee. And all the others said likewise.” You see how sanguine Peter was, feeling perfectly sure; and yet when the emergency came he failed. A significant illustration of the bold utterances of unsanctified Christians, believing indubitably that they will do just what they say; but signally failing, because they have an indwelling enemy stronger than they.
Luk 22:35-38. “And He said to them, When I sent you out without purse, valise, and sandals, did you lack anything? And they said, Nothing. Then He said to them, But now, let the one having purse take it, likewise also valise; and let every one not having a sword, sell his cloak and purchase one. For I say unto you, that it behooveth that which has been written yet to be fulfilled in Me, And He was numbered with the transgressors [Isa 53:12]; and those things concerning Me have an end. And they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And He said to them, It is sufficient.” While our Savior was with them on the earth, He miraculously fed, clothed, and protected them when it was necessary. Consequently they could go without these provisions, incident to human life, indiscriminately. But now that He is going away to leave them, they must take heed and give the necessary attention to the temporalities essential to their physical support and protection. The Orientals wear two garments — the cheiton, interior, and the himation, exterior. The outer garment they frequently carried while traveling and laid aside when at labor, keeping it for night and storms. Jesus here tells them, if necessary, to sell the himation and buy a sword. I never could understand why He told them to take a sword till I traveled in that country and saw the necessity of carrying weapons. I did not carry any, as I did not know how to use them; but a sanctified preacher in our company carried a revolver, our dragman also being armed with a revolver and a dagger. In some places we were compelled to hire an armed escort to keep the robbers off. “Why were you compelled to do it?” Our guide refused to go without the armed escort. Going round in Jerusalem, men, as a rule, had no visible weapons; but traveling through the country, all we met were armed with guns, swords, or huge clubs, almost as large as an American rifle, and convenient to kill a man with a single stroke. The guide-books advise all travelers to go armed, but not to use their weapons, their utility being that of intimidation, as robbers abound everywhere, who do not content themselves by simply taking your money, but take everything you possess, leaving you utterly destitute of clothing, baggage, etc. In that day there were no firearms, the sword being the most common weapon of defense; also regarded as a badge of itinerancy. You see, when they pointed out these two swords, He said they were sufficient. The presumption is that the sword was a prudential, peace, and safety provision, for the intimidation of robbers and for personal security in case of emergency, as persons openly avowing the absence of all protecting weapons in their peregrinations would soon fall a prey to the robbers. Along the road from Jerusalem down to Jericho, where the traveler (Luke 10) was attacked by the robbers, the Roman Government had a garrison of armed men to protect the travelers, as the robbers were so troublesome.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0On v33fall away
fall away
See how you translated this in Matthew 26:31.
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Truly I say to you
"I tell you the truth." This adds emphasis to what Jesus says next.
before the rooster crows
Roosters often crow about the time the sun comes up, so the hearers might have understood these words as a metonym for the sun coming up. However, the actual crowing of a rooster is an important part of the story later on, so keep the word "rooster" in the translation. (See: Metonymy)
rooster
a male chicken, a bird that calls out loudly around the time the sun comes up
crows
This is the common English word for what a rooster does to make his loud call.
you will deny me three times
"you will say three times that you are not my follower"
Tyndale Open Study Notes2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0On vv31, 32, 3526:31 God will strike: In Zech 13:7-9, the Shepherd,…
26:31 God will strike: In Zech 13:7-9, the Shepherd, God’s partner, is struck down (understood by Jesus as a prediction of his own death), and out of the scattered sheep emerge a purged, purified remnant of faithful ones (Zech 13:8-9). In the short term, the disciples would soon be scattered and deny association with Jesus (Matt 26:34, 56, 69-75).
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On v31 Christ being more careful of his disciples, than of…
Christ being more careful of his disciples, than of himself, forewarneth them of their flight, and putteth them in better comfort.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv31–35 31 Then saith Jesus unto them, All ye shall…
31 Then saith Jesus unto them, All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad.
Ver. 31. All ye shall be offended because of me] Why? what had that righteous one done? Nothing but that his cross lay in their way, whereat they stumbled shamefully, and left him to wonder that he was "left alone," Isa 63:5. Adversity is friendless (αφιλον το ουστυχες), saith one heathen (Ovid); Et cum fortuna statque caditque fides, saith another. Job found his friends like the brooks of Tema, which in a moisture swell, in a drought fail. Tempora si fuerint nubila, solus eris.
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For it is written, I will smite] This our Saviour purposely subjoineth, for their support under the sense of their base deserting him. A foul sin it was, but yet such as was long since set down of them; not without a sweet promise of their recollection, "I will turn my hand upon the little ones," Zec 13:7; or, I will bring back my hand to the little ones ( At reducam manum meam ad parvulos), as Tremellius readeth it.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On v31 Mark hath the same, Mar 14:27-31, only he saith,…
Mark hath the same, Mar 14:27-31, only he saith, Mar 14:30, This day, even in this night, before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice. Luke hath it not entire, but he hath something of it, Luk 22:31-34, with some addition, thus, And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith may not fail: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren. And he said unto him, Lord, I am ready to go with thee, both into prison and to death. And he said, I tell thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow this day, before that thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me. Those who read the evangelists, must remember that they did not write our Saviour’s words from his mouth, but from their memories; and therefore must be allowed to vary in their expressions, and in circumstances, giving us only an account of the substance of words and actions, as their memories served them; from whence also it is that some of them have some circumstances not in the others. Our Saviour’s design here in general, is to inform his disciples of something which would happen by and by.
All ye (saith he) shall be offended because of me this night. The word offended is of a very large signification in holy writ; here it seems to signify disturbed or troubled, though if we take it strictly for stumbling, so as to sin, it was true enough, for that happened, (as we shall see anon), which made them to forsake Christ and flee, which doubtless was their sin.
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For it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock; shall be scattered abroad. The words are Zec 13:7. The words there are imperative, Smite the shepherd. There are different opinions, whether that text is primarily to be understood of Christ, or it be only a proverbial speech, which the prophet made use of with another reference, which yet Christ doth apply unto himself. I do more incline to think, that Christ here interprets the prophecy to relate primarily to himself, for he doth not say, As it is said, but, It is written; yet, consider it as a proverbial speech, it is true of others also. But certainly our Saviour designed to uphold the spirits of his disciples, by letting them know, that though they should see the Shepherd smitten, that is, himself, who is the good Shepherd, Joh 10:11; and is called by the apostle, the great Shepherd of the sheep, Heb 13:20, the chief Shepherd, 1Pe 5:4; yet they should not be disturbed, for:
1. It was no more than was prophesied concerning him, Zec 13:7.
2. Though at present they were scattered, yet it should not be long, for he should rise again, and then he would go before them into Galilee; which was fulfilled, as we read, Mar 16:7.
Upon these words, Peter, whom by all the gospel history we shall observe to have been of the highest courage, and most forward to speak, saith, Though all men shall be offended because of thee, yet will I never be offended. These doubtless were his present thoughts, this his sudden resolution. Here now seem to come in our Saviour’s words to Peter, mentioned by Luke only, Luk 22:31, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.
You is in the plural number, and to be interpreted by you all, though our Saviour directeth his speech only to Peter, who first spake, whom he calleth by his own name, and doubles it, to signify his earnestness in giving him warning. To sift you.
In sifting there are two things:
1. The shaking of the corn up and down.
2. The separation of the grain from the dust, or the seeds mixed with it: Satan hath desired, or hath obtained leave of my Father, to trouble you all, shaking your faith this and that way.
But I have prayed, that although the workings of your faith be suspended, and the habit of your faith be shaken, yet it may not utterly fail, but the seeds of God may abide in you: you shall not wholly fall away, but be renewed again by repentance; and when thou art converted, when thou hast fallen, and shalt have a sight of thy error, and be humbled for it, endeavour to strengthen thy brethren’s faith.
We may observe from hence:
1. That temptations are siftings. God sifts us to purge away our dross. Satan sifts us, if it were possible, to take away our wheat.
2. That the devil is the great tempter. Others may hold and move the sieve, but he is the master of the work.
3. That he hath a continual desire to be sifting in God’s flour.
4. That he hath a chain upon him; he must ask God’s leave to trouble his people.
5. That God often giveth him leave, but through Christ’s pleadings he shall not conquer: he may sift and trouble a believer, but the believer’s faith shall not fail.
6. That in the hour of temptation we stand in Christ’s strength, by the virtue of his intercession.
7. That lapsed Christians, when the Lord hath restored them, ought to endeavour to strengthen and establish others.
Jesus saith to Peter,
Verily I say unto thee, That this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. Luke saith, thou shalt deny that thou knowest me. Mark saith, before the cock crow twice; and so interprets Matthew, for he denied Christ but once before the cock did crow once. How little do we know ourselves, that cannot tell what our hearts will be three or four hours! Peter was too confident of the contrary, and replies again upon our Saviour, telling him, that if all should deny him, he would not. So also they all said, but what happened we shall hear more by and by.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv31–33 Here our Saviour acquaints his disciples, that by reason…
Here our Saviour acquaints his disciples, that by reason of his approaching sufferings, they should all of them be so exceedingly offended, that they would certainly forsake and leave him; which accordingly came to pass.
Learn thence, That Christ’s dearest friends forsook him, and left him alone in the midst of his greatest distress and danger.
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Observe, 2. What was the cause of this their flight, it was the prevalency of their fear.
Thence note, How sad it is for the holiest and best of men to be left under the power of their own fears in a day of temptation.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv31–35 But after I am risen again,.... This he says…
But after I am risen again,.... This he says for their comfort, that though he, their shepherd, should be apprehended, condemned, and crucified, should be smitten with death, and be laid in the grave, yet he should rise again; and though they should be scattered abroad, yet should be gathered together again by him, their good shepherd; who would after his resurrection, appear to them, be at the head of them, and go before them, as a shepherd goes before his sheep: for it follows,
I will go before you into Galilee; the native place of most, if not all of them. This the women that came to the sepulchre after Christ's resurrection, were bid, both by the angel, and Christ himself, to remind the disciples of, and ordered them to go into Galilee, where they might expect to see him: accordingly they did go thither, and saw and worshipped him; see Mat 28:7.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv31, 32, 34, 35 All ye will be offended at me - Something…
All ye will be offended at me - Something will happen to me, which will occasion your falling into sin by forsaking me. Zech. xiii, 7.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv31–35 Verse 31. All ye shall be offended] Or rather,…
Verse 31. All ye shall be offended] Or rather, Ye will all be stumbled - παντες υμεις σκανδαλισθησεσθε - ye will all forsake me, and lose in a great measure your confidence in me.
This night] The time of trial is just at hand.
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I will smite the shepherd] It will happen to you as to a flock of sheep, whose shepherd has been slain - the leader and guardian being removed, the whole flock shall be scattered, and be on the point of becoming a prey to ravenous beasts.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On v33 Mat 26:33-35. Peter answered and said — According to…
Mat 26:33-35. Peter answered and said — According to Luk 22:31, our Lord had warned Peter before they left the house, of a violent assault which would be made upon him by Satan; and on Peter’s declaring his readiness to go with Christ to prison and death, Christ had warned him that he would be overcome by the temptation, and would fall. Peter, therefore, now recollecting what Christ had said to him before, and being grieved afresh to find his Master still entertaining such thoughts of him, the vehemence of his temper hurried him to boast a second time of his courageous and close attachment to Jesus. He answered, Though all men shall be offended, &c. — In this protestation, Peter, no doubt, was sincere. Nevertheless, he was greatly to blame for not paying a due attention to his Master’s repeated predictions of his fall; for the preference which he gave himself above his brethren; and for leaning to his own strength, instead of begging assistance of him from whom all human sufficiency is derived. Wherefore, to make him sensible of the pride of his heart, his self- confidence, and carnal security, which Jesus knew would produce unwatchfulness and neglect of prayer, he thought fit to forewarn him of his danger again, and in stronger terms, saying, Verily, this night, before the cock crow — Or rather, before the cock-crowing, that is, before three in the morning, the usual time of cock-crowing; although one cock was heard to crow once after Peter’s first denial of his Lord. Peter — However, not convinced of his weakness, or that any temptation could make him guilty of such base conduct, said — with still greater confidence and vehemence; Though I should die with thee, yet will I not deny thee — And, doubtless, so he thought. Likewise said all the disciples — They all joined Peter in professing their fixed resolution of suffering death, rather than they would deny their Master; yet the event was exactly as Jesus had foretold, and foreknew it certainly would be; nevertheless such was his tenderness, that he would not aggravate their sin by making any reply. From this circumstance we learn how ignorant men frequently are of themselves, and that to be pious and virtuous, it is not sufficient to form the strongest resolutions.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On v31 Jesus foretells the fall of Peter - This is…
Jesus foretells the fall of Peter - This is also recorded in Mar 14:27-31; Luk 22:31-34; Joh 13:34-38.
Mat 26:31
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Then saith Jesus unto them - The occasion of his saying this was Peter’s bold affirmation that he was ready to die with him, Joh 13:36
Jesus had told them that he was going away - that is, was about to die. Peter asked him whither he was going. Jesus replied that he could not follow him then, but should afterward. Peter, not satisfied with that, said that he was ready to lay down his life for him. Then Jesus distinctly informed them that all of them would forsake him that very night.
All ye shall be offended because of me - See the notes at Mat 5:29. This language means, here, you will all stumble at my being taken, abused, and set at naught; you will be ashamed to own me as a teacher, and to acknowledge yourselves as my disciples; or, my being betrayed will prove a snare to you all, so that you will be guilty of the sin of forsaking me, and, by your conduct, of denying me.
For it is written ... - See Zec 13:7. This is affirmed here to have reference to the Saviour, and to be fulfilled in him.
I will smite - This is the language of God the Father. I will smite means either that I will give him up to be smitten (compare Exo 4:21 with Exo 8:15, etc.), or that I will do it myself. Both of these things were done. God gave him up to the Jews and Romans, to be smitten for the sins of the world Rom 8:32; and he himself left him to deep and awful sorrows - to bear “the burden of the world’s atonement” alone. See Mar 15:34.
The Shepherd - The Lord Jesus - the Shepherd of his people, Joh 10:11, Joh 10:14. Compare the notes at Isa 40:11.
The sheep - This means here particularly “the apostles.” It also refers sometimes to all the followers of Jesus, the friends of God, Joh 10:16; Psa 100:3.
Shall be scattered abroad - This refers to their fleeing, and it was fulfilled in that. See Mat 26:56.
Mat 26:32
But after I am risen ... - This promise was given them to encourage and support them, and also to give them an indication where he might be found.
He did not deny that he would first appear to a part of them before he met them all together (compare Luke 24:13-31, Luk 24:34; 1Co 15:5), but that he would meet them all in Galilee. This was done. See Mar 16:7; Mat 28:16.
Galilee - See the notes at Mat 2:22.
Mat 26:33
Peter answered ... Though all men ... - The word “men” is improperly inserted here by the translators. Peter meant only to affirm this of “the disciples.” This confidence of Peter was entirely characteristic. He was ardent, sincere, and really attached to his Master. Yet this declaration was made evidently:
1.From true love to Jesus;
2.From too much reliance upon his own strength;
3.From ignorance of himself, and of the trials which he was soon to pass through.
And it most impressively teaches us:
1.That no strength of attachment to Jesus can justify such confident promises of fidelity, made without dependence on him.
2.That all promises to adhere to him should be made relying on him for aid.
3.That we little know how feeble we are until we are tried.
4.That Christians may be left to great and disgraceful sins to show them their weakness.
Luke adds that Jesus said to Peter that Satan had desired to have him, that he might sift him as wheat - that is, that he might thoroughly test him. But Jesus says that he had prayed for him that his faith should not fail, and charged him when he was “converted” - that is, when he was “turned” from this sin - to strengthen his brethren; to wit, by teaching them to take warning by his example. See the notes at Luk 22:31-33.
Mat 26:34
This night - This was in the “evening” when this was spoken, after the observance of the Passover, and, we may suppose, near nine o’clock p.m.
Before the cock crow - Mark and Luke add, before the cock crowed twice. The cock is accustomed to crow twice once at midnight, and once in the morning at break of day. The latter was commonly called cock-crowing. See Mar 13:35. This was the time familiarly known as “the cock-crowing,” and of this Matthew and John speak, without referring to the other. Mark and Luke speak of the “second” crowing, and mean the same time, so that there is no contradiction between them.
Deny me thrice - That is, as Luke adds, deny that “thou knowest” me. See Mat 26:74.
Mat 26:35
Will I not deny thee - Will not deny my connection with thee, or that I knew thee.
“All” the disciples said the same thing, and all fled at the approach of danger, “forsaking” their Master and Friend, and practically denying that they knew him, Mat 26:56.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv31, 33, 34 Scandalized in me, &c. For as much as my…
Scandalized in me, &c. For as much as my being apprehended shall make you all run away and forsake me. (Challoner)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v31
FOURTH SECTION
PROMISES TO THE DISCIPLES; AND CHRIST IN GETHSEMANE
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26:31–46
(Mar_14:27-42; Luk_22:31-46; Joh_13:36 to Joh_18:1)
31Then [in going out to the Mount of Olives] saith Jesus unto them, All ye shall [will] be offended because of me [at me] this night: for it is written, I will smite the Shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad (Zec_13:7). 32But after I am risen again, I will go before you into Galilee. 33Peter answered and said unto him, Though all men shall be offended because of thee [at thee],51 yet will I never be offended. 34Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, That this night, before the [a] cock crow 35[crows], thou shalt deny me thrice. Peter said unto him, Though I should die with thee, yet will I not [in no wise, οὐ μή] deny thee.52 [But]53 Likewise also said all the disciples.
36Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder. 37And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and very heavy [full of, or, overwhelmed with, sorrow and anguish, λυπεῖσθαι καὶ ἀδημονεῖν]54. 38Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me. 39And he went a little farther,55 and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt. 40And he cometh unto the disciples, and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter, What,56 could ye not [then, οὕτως] watch with me one hour? 41Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. 42He went away again the second time, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if this cup57 may not pass away from me,58 except I drink it, thy will be done. 43And he came and 44[again] found them asleep again:59 for their eyes were heavy. And he left them, and went away again, and prayed the third time,60 saying the same words. 45Then cometh he to his disciples, and saith unto them, Sleep on now, and take your rest: behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. 46Rise, let us be going: behold, he is at hand that doth betray me.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Mat_26:31. Then saith Jesus unto them, τότε—For a time Jesus remained in the room of the Passover, as is evident from Joh_14:31. At this point comes the departure from the house. The prediction of the flight of the disciples and of Peter’s denial took place, according to Joh_13:37, in the Passover-room itself. Hereupon followed the farewell discourses, John 13-17 spoken partly within the room, and partly on the way to Gethsemane.
Will be offended at Me, σκανδαλισθήσεσθε ἐν ἐμοί—That is, My sufferings ye will make an offence and snare to yourselves.
For it is written.—What the Lord knew by immediate prevision, He nevertheless connects with a prophetic word: partly for the sake of the disciples, partly on account of His relation to the law; and further to prove that the course of His suffering was not contrary to Old Testament predictions, but that the carnal notions of the Jews as to a Messiah exempt from suffering were in direct contradiction to the Old Testament. The passage, Zec_13:1 : “Awake, O sword, against My shepherd, and against the man that is My fellow [My equal], saith the Lord of hosts: smile the Shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered; and I will turn Mine hand upon the little ones’—is indeed quoted freely,61 yet not inconsistently with the connection of the text. In the original, Jehovah commands the sword to smite His Shepherd; but here He appears to lift up the sword Himself. The Messianic import of the passage is without reason resolved by Meyer (after Hitzig) into a merely typical significance. For the passage is closely connected with Zechariah’s previous reference to a future time, when prophecy should be silenced, and when he who should arise as a prophet would be exposed to the most bitter sufferings. That prediction stretched forward beyond the prophetless period after Malachi to the period of the new prophets, John the Baptist and Christ. But if we recognize the prophetical spirit in this passage at all, we cannot refer it to John the Baptist. It foretold, however, the universal dispersion of the people in consequence of their rejection of Christ. “The Shepherd indicated by the prophet is the same who, in Mat_11:4, feeds the miser; able sheep, the Jewish people; His death is the sign for the scattering of the flock, yet the Lord immediately stretches out His hand to save the little ones, the faithful, His disciples. Hence the profound meaning of the passage is this: When the Jewish people had rejected their last Deliverer and Saviour, they underwent the punishment of dispersion. This was preparatorily typified in the actual scattering of the disciples on the death of Jesus; just as their eternal salvation in their bodily deliverance when Jesus was taken” (Joh_18:9). Gerlach.62
Mat_26:32. Go before you into Galilee.—Meyer denies the genuineness of this declaration, for the groundless reason, that Jesus could not so definitely predict His own resurrection. The announcement of a particular meeting in Galilee, does not exclude the previous appearances of Jesus to the disciples in Jerusalem. He says this to those who had come with Him from Galilee to the feast: “Before ye shall have returned to your homes, I will rise again.” In Galilee He collected together again all the scattered disciples: Mat_28:16; John 21; 1Co_15:6. Gerlach. [The Lord seems to allude in this comforting prediction to the remaining words of the prophecy of Zec_13:7 : “And I will turn Mine hand upon the little ones.” To go before, προάγειν is a verbum pastorale, as Bengel remarks, comp. Joh_10:4.—P. S.]
Mat_26:34. Before a cock crows.—De Wette: “If Jesus said these words, He meant merely (de Wette’s mere assertion) the division of the night called ἀλεκτοροφωνία קְרִיאַת הַגֶּבֶר; but the Evangelists referred it to a real cock-crowing.” Gerlach: “Before the cock-crowing between midnight and morning. But it came to pass literally, like so many other predictions.” It must be regarded as fixed, that the definite specification of that time of the night was the main point; but since, where cocks were found, their cry would not be wanting, we must hold fast the circumstance, that the cock-crowing was appointed to be the warning sound for Peter. Meyer seems to suppose that the first cock-crowing took place at midnight, and the second about three in the morning. It is not established that the ἀλεκτοροφωνία marked always the time from midnight till three; since the Talmudists reckoned only three divisions of the day, and regarded the fourth, πρωί̈ as the morning of the day following. Comp. Winer, sub Nachtwache.63
Deny Me thrice.—De Wette: Deny knowing Me (!). Better Meyer: Deny that thou belongest to Me. But the denial of faith in Christ, the Son of God, is contained in it; and not merely the denial of a personal relation.
Mat_26:36. Gethsemane.—Most probably גַּת שְׁמָנֵא oil-press. The most approved form is Γεθσημανεί: see de Wette. A piece of land at the foot of the Mount of Olives, which was provided with a press, and perhaps also with a dwelling-house, or at least the usual garden-tower. See Winer and Robinson. Through the Stephen Gate or the Gate of Mary (according to Schulz, identical with the ancient Fish Gate), there is a descent to the valley of Kedron, by which the traveller went over the bridge of the same name into the garden of Gethsemane. Kedron means Black brook; it flowed with perturbed waters, which were still more darkened by the blood of the temple-sacrifices, down through the valley toward the Dead Sea. Gethsemane lay on the right of the path to the Mount of Olives. It scarcely deserves now the name of a garden, as the place is covered with stones, and there are only eight old olive-trees remaining. The place is in possession of the Franciscans, who in 1847 erected a new wall around it, in length two hundred paces, and in breadth one hundred and fifty. There is no ground for doubting the identity of the present and the ancient Gethsemane; yet it must be confessed that there is no reason why the place on the left of the road may not be preferred (Wolff). C. von Raumer: “The olives are not of the time of our Lord; for Titus, during the siege of Jerusalem, had all the trees of the district cut down; and, moreover, the tenth legion were encamped on the western declivity of the mountain. The great age of the eight trees is inferred from the fact, that each of them pays a particular tribute which goes up to the time of the capture of Jerusalem by the Saracens (A. D. 636).64
And He saith to the disciples.—There were eight of them; the three selected ones, and Judas, being excluded. Only those three, who had seen His transfiguration on the Mount, might be witnesses of the conflict of His soul. But this appointment of Christ formed also a kind of watch against premature surprise on the part of the traitor. In the foreground of the garden sat the eight disciples; beyond them are the three confidential ones; into the Holiest Of His Passion He goes alone. These stations are not without symbolical significance.65
Mat_26:37. He began to be overwhelmed with sorrow and anguish (to mourn and to tremble); λυρεῖσθαι καὶ ἀδημονεῖν.—Suidas explains ἀδημονεῖν to be λίαν λυπεῖσθαι, ἀπορεῖν. But the latter expression is probably not an intensification of the for me; it is a kind of contrast to it. Λυπεῖσθαι is the passive: being troubled or afflicted. Thus it signifies, absolutely taken, the experience of an infinitely afflicting influence. All the woe of the world falls upon Him, and oppresses His heart. Mark has the stronger expression: ἐκθαμβεῖσθαι. The contradictory impressions66 which Christ experienced extended to horror and amazement. Ἀδημονεῖν, on the other hand, related to ἀπορεῖν—according to Buttmann from ἄδημος—expresses in the absolute sense the being forsaken of all the world and bereft of every consolation, the uttermost anxiety and experience of woe.
Mat_26:38. My soul is exceeding sorrowful, or girt round with sorrow, περίλυπος.—Compare Joh_12:27. The soul is the intermediate in man between body and spirit. The spirit expresses the relation to God; the body, the relation to earth; the soul, the relation to the world at large, especially the world of spirits. Hence the soul is the specific organ of spiritual experiences and emotions of pleasure and sorrow (Beck, Bibl. Seelenlehre, 10).—Even unto death.—The extremest degree. Even unto death, so that sorrow might bring Me to death, Jon_4:9. “Anguish even unto death, the woes of one struggling with death, I now experience. The words of Psa_22:16; Psa_40:13; seem to have been present to His thoughts.” Gerlach.
Tarry ye here, and watch with Me—Intimation of the deepest agony. Bengel: In magnis tentationibus juvat solitudo, sed tamen ut in propinquo sint amici.
Mat_26:39. And He went a little farther.—Μικρόν belongs to προελθών, a little distance. Luke gives here the vivid and dramatic statements of the spiritual excitement of the Lord,—of the bloody or blood-like sweat which poured from Him,—of His being strengthened by an angel. See Com. on Luk_22:41-44.
If it be possible.—Not as opposing the notion of an unbending decree; but in living harmony with the Father’s government and perfect submission. Luke: εἰ βούλει. The πάντα δυνατά in Mark is no contradiction.
This cup.—The suffering is a cup filled with a bitter potion. See above, Mat_20:22. Meyer (after de Wette): “This suffering and dying now before Me.” The signification of the cup is the same as the signification of the suffering of His soul. But the modern interpretation, of an anguish in the presence of death which extorted a prayer for its removal, is in opposition to all the earlier declarations of Christ, and especially to the institution of the Supper, and the high-priestly prayer, John 17. On this farther on.
But as Thou.—As Thou wilt, let it be. See Mark. Not My will, but Thine be done. “The feeling of profound emotion speaks in broken language.” Meyer. [This passage figures very prominently in the Monothelite controversy as one of the principal proofs that Christ had two wills, a human and a divine, as He had two natures. It should not be overlooked, however, that the contrast is not as between His human and His divine will, but as between His will (as the God-Man in the state of humiliation and intense agony) and the will of His heavenly Father.—P. S.]
Mat_26:40. And findeth them sleeping.—“The sleeping of the disciples, and of these three favorite disciples, under these circumstances, and with so unconquerable a drowsiness, is psychologically mysterious, even after Luke’s explanation, ἀπὸ τῆς λύπης (Mat_22:45); but the certainly genuine words of Jesus, Mat_26:40; Mat_26:45, constrain us to regard the circumstance as historically true.” Meyer. We must connect with this the equally mysterious sleeping of the same three men during the transfiguration; and this will confirm the supposition, that higher spiritual influences and transactions almost overpowered the feeble flesh. Yet the Lord expressly declares that the disciples were morally responsible for being in such a condition. An analogous influence we see under preaching. Sermons stimulate some, and send others to sleep, according to their several dispositions and preparation. The simple law, that extraordinary tension raises the highly developed spiritual life, while it stupefies the less developed, finds here its strongest illustration in the most absolute contrast of spiritual watchfulness and sleep.
He saith unto Peter.—He had promised most was in the greatest danger; and probably he was psychical respects the strongest.—So then, ο ὕτως,—with displeasure: with allusion to his great promises.—Not one hour.—Incidental intimation of the duration of our Lord’s first conflict.
Mat_26:41. That ye enter not into temptation; εἰσέλθητε.—That the situation in which they would soon be placed, might not be a cause of offence to them, through lack of their own preparation. The simple test, which comes from God alone, becomes πειρασμός, an assault dangerous to the soul, partly through the accession of tempting influences from without (“the devil, the world”), and partly through a blameable internal bias (“our own flesh and blood”). The Lord’s words were fully explained when the band soon afterward came upon them.
The spirit indeed is willing.—A general declaration; but, like the passage, Rom_7:22; Rom_7:25, qualified and particularized by its relation to the disciples, and the progress of the Christian life. In the unconverted the willingness of the πνεῦμα is not yet unbound; in mature Christians the σάρξ is purified and governed by the spiritual principle. But, even in the first case, the willingness of the spirit is faintly expressed in indefinite desires; and in the last case, the opposition of the flesh is not absolutely suppressed and abolished until the consummation. The proper conflict between the πνεῦμα, the higher principle of life, and the old ungodly nature, falls into the domain of the Christian discipleship, the life that is being matured. The πνεῦμα is here the human spiritual life, awakened by the Holy Spirit. It is not only willing, but πρόθυμον, ready and willing. The σάρξ which opposes is not simply the sensual nature, but the sensuous nature disordered by the ψυχή. The Scripture presents the σάρξ—that is, the natural life in its inclinations and impulses,—in three stages: 1. As innocent σάρξ (Genesis 2); 2 as sinful σάρξ (Genesis 6.); 3. as sanctified σάρξ (John 6). But the sinful σάρξ is even in the regenerate excited to a diseased contradiction; it is not merely weak, but ἀσθενής as the πνεῦμα is πρόθυμον. Hence, above all things, watchfulness is needed. Calovius: σάρξ is here the homo animalis; πνεῖμα the homo spiritualis. This is too dogmatical. [Stier, Alford, and Nast take flesh here in its original sense as a constituent part of human nature, which in itself is not sinful, but has an inherent weakness, which the soul, standing between the spirit and the flesh, must overcome by deriving strength from the spirit through watching and prayer. They also maintain that Christ Himself is included in this declaration, with the difference that He gave as high and pre-eminent an example of its truth, as the disciples afforded a low and ignoble one: He, in the willingness of the spirit, yielding Himself to the Father’s will to suffer and die, but weighed down by the weakness of the flesh; they, having professed, and really having, a willing spirit to suffer with Him, but, even in the one hour’s watching, overcome by the burden of drowsiness. Observe, it is here πνεῦμα, the higher spiritual being, and not ψυχή, the human soul, the seat of the affections and passions, as in Mat_26:38 and Joh_12:27.—P. S.]
Mat_26:42. Again the second time.—No pleonasm. The ἐκ δευτέρου defines the ἀπελθών; the πάλιν defines the προσηύξατο in a significant manner. In the second supplication, the resignation and self-sacrifice comes more prominently forward.
Mat_26:44. The third time.—Apart from the textual uncertainty, this presents no difliculty. It is in harmony with life, and especially spiritual life, that intense and decisive conflicts develop themselves in a succession of acts, with intermissions of pause. The rhythm here assumes a threefold rise and fall, according to the nature of the spirit and of spiritual conflict, as in the conflict of the Apostle Paul, 2Co_12:8. Luke does not record this threefold repetition literally; but he describes it in the growing intensity of the struggle, the bloody sweat, and the word of the strengthening angel.
Mat_26:45. Sleep on now, and take your rest.—1. Chrysostom, Grotius, Winer, and others: “Jesus needed no longer the co-operation of His disciples, and gives them rest.” But, on the other hand, we read: “The hour is come.” 2. H. Stephanus, Heumann, [also Greswell and Robinson], and others, make it a question: Sleep ye still? but this is opposed by τὸ λοιπόν 3. Grulich (on the Irony of Christ, p. 74): Sleep and take your rest for the time to come, that is, in future, when ye shall have more security. But this would not be τὸ λοιπόν. 4. Euthymius Zigab., [Calvin], and Beza, call it “rebuking irony.” [Also Chrysostom.] Meyer: “The common objection against the ironical view, that it is not in harmony with the present feeling of Jesus, is psychologically arbitrary. The profoundest grief of soul, especially when associated with such clearness of spirit, has its own irony. And what an apathy had Jesus here to encounter!” But if the essential principle of irony is security and perfect composure of spirit, we recognize here the sacred irony which does not speak in contempt of weakness, but in the triumphant consciousness that the fight was already won. Another token is, that it passes over at once into the most solemn language. See the divine irony in Psalms 2 Meanwhile, we must be careful not to overlook the symbolical element in the saying. The disciples had slept in the body, because they slept in the spirit And, because they had not watched, there was a necessity now that they should outwardly watch while they slept on in spirit, until they were awakened by the cock-crowing, the Redeemer’s death, and the resurrection morning.
The hour is at hand.—The great hour of decision. Comp. Luk_22:53.
Shall be betrayed into the hands of sinners.—Grotius: The Romans. Meyer: The Sanhedrin. De Wette, better: The Romans and the Jews. For that the betrayal was twofold, Jesus had before declared.
Mat_26:46. Arise, let us go hence.—“Remark the haste which is expressed in ἐγείρεσθε, ἄγωμεν, ἰδού.” Meyer.
The Relation or the Three Evangelists to John.—The silence of John upon the conflict in Gethsemane has been explained in various ways. According to Olshausen and others, he took for granted an acquaintance with the synoptical narratives. I have explained the omission of this event, as well as of the institution of the Lord’s Supper, from the peculiar composition and aim of the fourth Gospel, with reference to the three already existing.67 So also Meyer. John has something analogous to the agony of Gethsemane in the spiritual conflict of Jesus in the temple, Joh_12:27, though the two are of course not to be identified.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1.The perfect fidelity of Jesus to the law is seen in His not going over the Mount of Olives to Bethany. It was necessary for every one to spend that night in Jerusalem. His calmness is seen in the fact of His going to His accustomed place of prayer (Luk_22:39), although knowing that Judas was acquainted with the place. The time for hiding Himself was past; for throughout the whole land there was no longer freedom for His steps. But no more did Jesus go prematurely to meet danger, which He would have done had He celebrated the Passover a day earlier than usual. “Just at the commencement of His public teaching (Matthew 4), He retired, before His extremest agony, into silence; that there He might in prayer await and overcome in His inmost spirit the fiercest assaults of Satan (Joh_14:30), before He entered upon His external mortal passion.” Gerlach.
2. The Agony of the Saviour in Gethsemane.—The final form of an anxious presentiment which had pervaded His whole public life, and which constantly came out more and more distinctly into utterance: Luk_12:50; Mar_8:12; John 12 There is nothing improbable, though something mysterious and wonderful, in the record that Christ’s agony followed the high festival of His soul in the sacerdotal prayer (John 17). A similar transition in feeling often appears: 1. From joy to sorrow in the entry with palm-branches in Luke, in the temple, John 12, in Gethsemane; 2. from sorrow to joy at the departure from Galilee, at the dismissal of Judas from the company of disciples, John 13, after the cry, “My God, My God,” on the cross. All this shows the elasticity and absolute depth and vigor of His inner life. We distinguish three great conflicts and triumphs in the passion: 1. The victory over the temptation of the kingdom of darkness in His Spirit, at the institution of the holy Supper (Joh_13:31); 2. the victory over temptation in His soul, in Gethsemane; 3. the victory over temptation in His bodily life, on the cross. These three great crises, indeed, are not to be separated abstractly, as if in the one case His spirit only was tried, in the other, His soul, etc. But the assault made the life of the spirit the medium of trial in the one case, in the other, the life of the soul; and the victory which preceded became an advantage in the conflict which followed. And this serves to show the real import of the specific suffering of the soul of our Lord. It is in its nature one of the deepest mysteries of the evangelic history; but it receives some light from the position of the soul-conflict between the spirit-conflict and the conflict of bodily distress, from its relation to the temptation in the wilderness, and by definite declarations of Christ Himself. Interpretations:—1. Origen, De martyrio, c. 29: Christ desired a yet deeper suffering; an ascetically strained view.68 Contra Celsum: He would have averted the destruction of Jerusalem. So Ambrose, Basil, Jerome. 2. He suffered the wrath of God in our stead and our behalf. Melanchthon: Jacuit filius Dei prostratus coram æterno Patre, sentiens tram adversus tua et mea peccata. So Rambach, “the cup of wrath.” 3. Assaults of hell. Knapp: “The last and most terrible attacks of the kingdom of darkness, in which the prince of death sought to wrest from Him the victory.” 4. Ebrard: “His trembling in Gethsemane was not dread of His sufferings, but was part of His passion itself; it was not a transcendental and external assumption of a foreign guilt, but a concrete experience of the full and concentrated power of the world’s sin.” 5. Olshausen: Actual abandonment on the part of God; the human ψυχή of Jesus alone was in conflict here, while the fulness of the divine life had withdrawn. 6. Rationalists like Thiess and Paulus refer it to physical illness and exhaustion,69 to which Schuster adds the distress of abandonment by friends.70 7. De Wette: Fear of death (“a moral weakness!”). 8. Meyer: Horror and shudder in confronting the terror of such cruel sufferings and death. So most modern interpreters. Neander proves against Strauss that a change of feeling in the life of the Saviour is by no means improbable. But we cannot admit a change of thought, least of all a change of the fundamental thoughts of His life. A supplication for the turning away of the suffering of death, even as a conditional and resigned request, is not to be imagined after so many foreannouncements of His passion, after the institution of the Supper, and His continuance in the scene of danger at Gethsemane. This would be to make Jesus directly contradict Himself. The agony in Gethsemane was not dread of the agony on Calvary, but it was a specific agony of itself; therefore He prays, according to Mark, that, if it were possible, the hour of this suffering might pass,—similarly as in John.
It was the hour of nameless woe, of an excitement and commotion of soul,71 in which He would not appear before His disciples, in which He could not appear before His enemies. 1. It was then first a specific conflict of soul (“My soul is surrounded by sorrow,” περί λυπος): He was assaulted by the severest experience of woe and distressing anxiety. And this disposes of the opinions of those who make the suffering either predominantly pneumatic, or predominantly corporeal. 2. It was a counterpart to the temptation in the wilderness. See Luk_4:13. Christ was tempted in the wilderness by the pseudo-messianic and carnal hopes and desires of His people, in connection with the vanities of the world. But in Gethsemane He was tempted by the pseudo-messianic, carnal grief and disappointment of His people, and the whole misery of the world, which culminated in the fearful treachery of Judas, and revealed itself in a milder form in the sleeping of the disciples for sorrow. The whole tempting power of the desperation of humanity pressed hard upon Jesus: that was His λυπεῖσθαι. And in His own internal defence He stood alone, invigorated by no sympathy and help of mortals: that was His ἀδημονεῖν.—Comp. Isa_63:3. In this temptation through the despair of humanity lay indeed the strength of the fiercest assault of hellish powers upon His lonely soul. It was also the judgment of God upon humanity which Jesus experienced in His soul; not God’s judgment upon Himself, but a judgment upon humanity, which He received into His own soul, in order to change it into redemption. Of the former—the despair of the world—Judas’ treachery was the concentrated and terrific expression: it was the demoniac fruit of his demoniac grief, an act of mad contempt of salvation and of self. Hence the Lord again alludes here to the traitor (Mat_26:46). The great double-betrayal of His people and of the whole world committed against His life, was the extreme suffering of the Saviour, the fulfilment of Joseph’s type, sold with fearful anguish on his part by his brothers (Gen_42:21). Thus the agony of Jesus’ soul in the garden was related to the despairing sorrow of the world, as the victory in the wilderness was related to the enticing and disguised pleasures of this world.
3. Not as I will, but as Thou wilt.—Opposed to the Monothelite heresy. This preserves the truth and truly human character of His conflict, without disparaging His constant accordance in all things with the will of the Father. Contrast and suspense do not amount to contradiction. Difference is not discord. See the decrees of the Council of Constantinople, a. d. 680.
4. Christ, in His threefold supplication in Gethsemane, perfected the doctrine of prayer, and sanctified the prayers of sinners. His petition rises from the full expression of His woe to the full expression of submission to the Father’s will. And His being heard consisted in this, that in the Father’s strength He drank the cup, and enjoyed the perfect security of victory before the sharpest conflict took place.
5. It was not the treachery of Judas in its external aspect, but that treachery as the expression of the disciples’ and the world’s sorrow and disappointment and of their despair of Christ’s honor and victory, that constituted the temptation which the Saviour here suffered. But He had overcome this temptation already, when the external and actual betrayal came upon Him.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
I. The Two Sections.—The passage from the Supper to Gethsemane; or, spiritual invigoration experienced in the way of duty: a. The appointment of spiritual strengthening; b. how it is experienced by Christ and by His disciples.—The warning voice of their Master scarcely heard amidst the expressions of the disciples’ self-confidence.—Divine and human care in provision against assaults at hand: 1. Christ is careful, and therefore free from care; 2. His disciples were careless, and therefore burdened with care and anxiety.—Christ in His work of redemption overcame the unfaithfulness of His disciples: 1. Their unbelief in its presumption; 2. their unbelief in its despondency.—The sudden and decisive turning-point: 1. Of destiny; 2. of feeling; 3. of the issue.—The watchman and the sleepers: 1. God and men; 2. Christ and the disciples; 3. the spirit and the earthly cares.
II. The Way to the Mount of Olives.—The fore-announcement of the Lord, and the unbelief of the disciples.—The spirit of Christ and the spirit of Scripture of one accord in their judgment upon the weakness of believers.—The promise of seeing them again in Galilee, bound up with the prediction of their coming fall: 1. A testimony of His supreme hope above His sorrows; 2. of His continued faithfulness to the disciples in their wavering.—The assurances of Peter.—His self-complacent boasts the token of his deep fall.—Mark his presumptuous and boasted superiority: 1. To his enemies: 2. to the other disciples; 3. to the warning word of his Master.—Strong professions, miserable apostacy.72—The last unholy contention of the disciples.—The measure of our false self-estimation the measure of our humiliation in life.—Night and the offence.—The strength of fidelity which can look beyond and overlook the offence of weakness, and turn it to salvation.—The offence of weakness (Peter), and the offence of wickedness (Judas).
III. Gethsemane.—The Mount of Olives and the Oil-Press (Gethsemane), symbols of the production and maturity of the Christian life: 1. The mount is a figure of the Church, in which the spiritual life grows; 2. the oil-press is a figure of suffering, through which the spiritual life is purged or set free.—The three great things of eternal significance connected with the Mount of Olives: 1. The palm-entry into Jerusalem; 2. Gethsemane; 3. the ascension.—Gethsemane the turning-point between the old and the new Paradise.—The reserve and the familiarity of Jesus in His agony.—The concealment of the agony: 1. It is altogether hidden from the world; 2. the greater number of His disciples see only the signs of this suffering; 3. the confidential ones only see it in amazement and trembling; 4. only God views Him stretched out, as a worm in the dust.—The soul of Jesus oppressed by the distress of all, and bereft of the help of all.—Or, the soul of the agonized treader of the wine-press (Isa_63:3); alone in His suffering, over whom all the billows roll (Psa_22:21; Isa_54:11); resigned entirely to God, and hidden in Him (Psa_27:5).—How Christ in the garden overcame the sorrow of all the world: 1. Human sorrow, in its vain imaginations and despair; 2. devilish sorrow, in its betrayal and mockery.—The conflict in the wilderness, and the conflict in the garden.—The three great conflicts of Jesus: at the Supper, in Gethsemane, and on Calvary.—Gethsemane and Calvary.—The horror of Jesus in prospect of the kiss of Judas.—The Judas-kiss evermore the bitterest cup of the Lord and of His Church.—The world gave Him toil; His disciples gave Him trouble.—The suffering of Christ the suffering of priestly sympathy with the misery of the world: 1. He feels its perfect woe; hence His suffering. 2. He experiences the whole power of sin in this woe; hence the dread assault and conflict. 3. He begins to expiate its whole guilt in this woe: hence His persevering prayer.—Even in the agony of His soul He is the Christ: 1. The prophetic Revealer of all the depths of man’s misery; 2. the high-priestly Expiator of them; 3. the kingly Deliverer from them.—The severest suffering is but a cup: 1. Rigorously measured; 2. surrounded and adorned by the cup; 3. prepared, presented and blessed by the Father.—Christ in the apparent annihilation of the work of His life: the seeming invalidation of His mission; the seeming dissolution of His company; the seeming succumbing of His disciples under grief, despondency, and self-reprobation; the seeming contempt of His love.—His faithful heart the dove with the olive-branch high above the floods.—Christ in His great conflict of prayer: teaches us to pray; makes our prayer acceptable; and becomes its Mediator.—Prayer is most acceptable in its absolute submission to the will of God.—The disciples as the outposts and watchmen of the Church.—The sleep of the disciples; or, the death-like collapse which follows over-strained self-confidence.—The two divisions of the disciples: a watch-company toward the world, and a watch-company around the Lord.—The Lord’s request to His disciples a token of infinite humility.—The three words of the Lord to the disciples: 1. Watch with Me; 2. watch for yourselves; 3. sleep on now (whether waking or sleeping, ye will sleep till the awakening of My resurrection).—Watch and pray, because of: 1. Temptation; 2. weakness.—The three witnesses of His transfiguration and His humiliation (of the glorious beams and the bloody sweat).—The divine majesty with which the Lord comes out of His human sorrow.—The strength and solidity which the soul acquires from communion with Christ in all the conflicts of life and death.
Selections from other Homiletical Commentators
I. The Way to the Mount of Olives.—Starke:—From Cramer: He is a true friend who warns of danger; but flesh and blood is too secure, and will not take warning, 1Th_5:3.—How easily may even the best men lapse into sin! Jam_3:2.—Osiander: The cross and tribulation a great offence to the weak.—Professions: not to promise good is unbelief; to promise without earnest will is hypocrisy; to promise in reliance upon our own strength is presumption.—Hedinger: Good-will must guard carefully against arrogance.—Trust none less than thine own heart, Jer_17:9.—Canstein: Nothing is so hidden from us as our own hearts.—We never come to know thoroughly our own weakness and unsteadiness.—The imagination which we have formed concerning ourselves prevents our seeing what we are and what we are not.—Hard work it is to wean a man away from his false imaginations about himself.—To contradict the voice of truth is the sum of shame.
Lisco:—The Searcher of hearts.—Peter trusts more the strength of his feeling than the word of Jesus.
Gerlach:—The Lord quotes the language of Scripture oftener in His sufferings than in any other circumstances. So in the temptation in the wilderness, Mat_4:1-11.
Heubner:—This prediction of the Lord shows His supreme peace and victory over self.—The suffering Messiah was a riddle to them.—Christ is the only bond of His people: take Him away, and all is dissolved.—He would give them all a proof of His unlimited knowledge of men’s hearts: that was of importance for their whole life.—The over-hasty, the presumptuous, and the self-confident, are those whom God suffers to fall.—There is a great difference between arrogance of flesh and alacrity of spirit.—The honest humility with which the disciples relate their own faults.—Warning to us all not to take offence at the Lord in anything.
II. Gethsemane:—Starke:—The transfiguration upon the high mountain; the humiliation in the deep valley.—It is not wise for every one to reveal everywhere and indiscriminately his heart and all its impulses, Gen_22:5; for there are weak people, who cannot bear the strong.—Osiander: We can disburden ourselves most confidently in the ears of out God when we have no one, or but few, near us.—Canstein: Christ enters upon His passion with prayer; He carries it on and ends it with prayer; and so teaches us that our own sufferings cannot be overcome and made to subserve our salvation without much prayer.—The three Apostles called in Gal_2:9 pillars: Peter, the first who opened to Jews and Gentiles the door of the kingdom of heaven; James, the first martyr; John, the longest liver, to whom the most glorious revelations were vouchsafed.—The trials of Abraham, Paul, Luther (great saints, great trials).—Canstein: The faithful God ministers trials according to the measure of the ability of those who are to bear them (1Co_10:13).—When it is time to fight and to pray, we ought not to sleep.—God lets His weak children for a long time see others in the conflict, before they themselves are exposed to the contest.—The cup of Christ’s suffering has consecrated the cup of our cross.—Trust not to men, Psa_118:7.—Our best security against temptation is to watch and pray.—The daily contest of the spirit with the flesh absolutely necessary, Gal_5:17.—Thy will be done.—We may pray for mitigation.—When Jesus is suffering in His members, our eyes are, alas! commonly full of sleep.—Perseverance in prayer without fainting, Luk_18:1.—A faithful father warns his children of danger.—He who feels safe in the time of danger may easily be ruined; he who is cautious and self-distrustful will escape.—When one hour of trial is passed, we must prepare for another.—When we in God’s strength have overcome the first assaults and terrors of death, all is more and more tolerable, until the cross itself is gloriously triumphed over.—Jesus our Forerunner.—Christ went freely and joyfully to meet His passion, for an example to us, Php_2:5.
Lisco:—Heb_5:7. The threefold prayer reminds us of the threefold victory over Satan, when he tempted Jesus, Mat_4:1.
Gerlach:—From Luther: “We men, born and bound in sin, have an impure, hard, and leprous skin, which does not soon feel. But, because Christ’s body, His flesh and blood, is fresh, and pure, and sound, without sin, while ours are full of sin, we feel the terror of death in a far less degree from what He felt it.” The disciples should watch with Him, and they should pray; but with Him they could not pray; in His mediatorial conflict no man could stand by and help Him.—He desired the fellowship of these as the first-fruits of the men who were to be redeemed by Him.—In this severe agony of the passion, the divine will ever more and more penetrates and exalts the human.
Heubner:—It was a garden, as in Genesis 3—Not all the disciples were fitted to be witnesses of this profound and mysterious humiliation of our Lord.—Rambach: It is not expedient that the child of God should reveal to every one the depths of his heart.—It is the highest grace to be companion of the most secret sorrows of Jesus.—Jesus is the source of consolation and encouragement for all burdened and heavy-laden souls.—The greater the anguish, the greater the joy.—Rieger: And He went to a little distance. So the high-priest went into the Holiest.—The Son of God bows down to the uttermost before His Father, to make us acceptable.—O that we better learned the lesson to bow down before God!—Jacob’s wrestling in the night, Hos_12:4-5.—Sleepiness and inconsiderateness among Christians, monitors of fall.—Christ awakens out of sleep.—The second petition takes for granted an answer of God, that His will was fixed on this (as indeed did the first); hence the more direct expression of resignation.—In prayer we do not depend upon many and beautifully arranged words; the heart is the gr[illegible] thing (as in the prayers of Moses, David, Daniel, and Christ).—The Holy One falls absolutely into the power of the unholy.—Is at hand: the betrayal, now brought to its consummation, troubled the soul of Jesus afresh.—There is a difference between the mere expectation, albeit certain, and the fulfilled reality.—Kapff: Jesus suffering in Gethsemane: 1. Its depth; 2. its cause; 3. its fruit.
Footnotes:
[51]Mat_26:33.—Εἰ (καὶ) πάντες σκανδαλισθήσονται ἐν σοί. Καί is omitted in A., B., C., D., etc., Lachmann, and Tischendorf.
[52]Mat_26:35.—Codd. A., E., G., al., read the somewhat milder subj. ἀπαρνήσ ω μαι [for ἀπαρνήσ ο μαι]. Probably a gloss.
[53]Mat_26:35.—Several uncial Codd. add δέ. Probably from Mar_14:31. [But implies here an extenuation of the guilt of Peter, as much as to say, Peter made these professions, but we all did the same, and have nothing to boast of. But Lachmann, Tischendorf, and Alford omit it—P. S.]
[54]Mat_26:37.—[Lange: zu trauern (schaudern) und zu bangen (beben) Doddridge complains that “the words which our translators use here, are very flat, and fall short of the emphasis of those terms in which the Evangelists describe this awful scene.” The verb ἀδημονεῖν is derived by some from δῆμος, people, and the alpha privativum, hence, to feel lonely, solitary; expression of a sorrow that makes man unfit for company and shunning it, and pressing like a weight of lead upon the soul. F. H. Scrivener (A Supplement to the Authorized English Version of the N. T., London, 1845, vol. i. p. 304) thinks that no single Greek word can be more expressive of deep dejection than ἀδημονεῖν, and renders it: “to be overwhelmed with anguish.” Tyndale and Coverdale: grievously troubled. Conant less forcibly: troubled. Meyer teems to agree with Suidas’ definition of ἀδημ.=λίαν λυπεῖσθαι, and adds: “Es bezeichnet die unheimliche Beunruhigung der Angst und Verlegenheit.” I regret, that the scholarly work of Scrivener, just alluded to, has not sooner come to hand. It would have been of considerable assistance to me in the Critical Notes on the English Version.—P. S.]
[55]Mat_26:39.—The reading προσελθών [for προελθών] is probably a writing error. [Cod. Sinait. likewise reads προσελθών.]
[56]Mat_26:40.—[What! is an interpolation and, as Conant remarks, “violates the tone of feeling and manner of the Saviour.” The οὕτως can best be rendered by then. Lange: So also.— P. S.]
[57]Mat_26:42.—Many Codd., A., B., C., etc., [also Cod. Sinait.], read here only τοῦτο without ποτήριον, which seems to be supplemented from Mat_26:39, and is omitted by Lachmann, Tischendorf, [and Alford].
[58]Mat_26:42.—Codd. B., D., etc., [also Cod. Sinait], omit the words: ἀπ̓ ἐμοῦ from me. [Lange puts them in brackets.]
[59]Mat_26:43.—Lachmann, Tischendorf, [Tregelles, Alford], read with the best authorities, [including Cod. Sinait.] πάλιν εὗρεν (again found) αὐτούς [instead of εὑρίσκει αὐτοὺς πάλιν finds them again].
[60]Mat_26:44.—A., D., K., omit ἐκ τρίου. Lachmann puts it in brackets, Tischendorf omits it. [In the large ed of 1859 Tischondorf retains the words in the text, but Alford omits them. Cod. Sinait. has them, but between τὸν αὐτόν and λόγον, instead of before τὸν αὐτόν.—P. S.]
[61][The quotation is verbatim after the Alexandrian MS. of the LXX., except that the imperative πάταξον, strike, is changed into the future πατάξω, I will strike, God who commands the striking into God who strikes Himself.— P. S.]
[62][Comp. here Stier, Reden Jesu, vi. 176 sqq., who goes at length into the meaning of this prophecy, and especially the word עֲמִיתִי, “my fellow,” “my equal,” i.e., the Messiah. Also Nast ad loc.—P. S.]
[63][The difficulty derived from the Mishna, that the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the priests everywhere, were forbidden to keep fowls, because they scratched up unclean worms, is easily removed, first, in view of the inconsistency of the Talmud on this point (see Lightfoot), and secondly, by the consideration that such a prohibition could in no case affect the Roman residents, over whom the Jews had no power. The scarcity of cocks in Jerusalem is, however, intimated by the absence of the definite article before ἀλέκτωρ in all the four Gospels. Hence it should be omitted in the English Version, Mat_26:34; Mat_26:74-75; Mar_14:30; Mar_14:68; Mar_14:72; Luk_22:34; Luk_22:60-61; Joh_13:38; Joh_18:27. At any rate the whole history of Peter’s denial is evidently drawn from real life, and presents one of the strongest evidences for the originality and truthfulness of the Gospel records.—P. S.]
[64][Dr. Wordsworth, following the ancient fathers and the older Protestant commentators, sees a providential and prophetical adaptation of the names of Scripture localities generally, and of Gethsemane in particular, to the events which occurred there. In this oil press, in which the olives were crashed and braised, Christ was bruised for oar sins, that oil might flow from His wounds to heal our souls. Comp. Matthew Henry: “There He trod the wine-press of His Father’s wrath, and trod it alone.” In like manner Wordsworth allegorizes on Bethlehem, the house of bread, where the bread of life was born; Nazareth, where He grew up as a branch; Bethsaida, the house of fishing, where He called the apostles; Capernaum, the house of consolation, where He dwelt; Bethany, the place of palm-dates, which speaks of the palms and hosannahs of His triumphal entry into Jerusalem; Bethphage, the house of figs, which is a memento of the withering of the barren fig-tree; the Mount of Olives, whence Christ ascended to heaven, to hold forth the olive branch of peace between God and man.—P. S.]
[65][The Edinb. transl. has insignificance.—P. S.]
[66][Not: passions, as in the Edinb. transl.—P. S.]
[67][The Edinb. edition altogether misunderstand this passage, and translates: “The issue (as if Ausfall was the same with Ausgang!) of this event ... are illustrated by John in his own way.” John does not illustrate these events at all, but passes them by in complete silence. But Lange illustrates this silence in his Leben Jesu, to which he here al ludes.—P. S.]
[68][Origen explains the words: “My soul is sorrowful unto death. Sorrow is begun in me, but not to endure forever, but only till the hour of death; when I shall die for sin, I shall die also for all sorrow, whose beginnings only are in me.”—P. S.]
[69][In German: körperliche Abspannung, which is just the reverse of “corporeal intensity of feeling,” as the Edinb, edition renders it.—P. S.]
[70][Renan, in his Life of Jesus, Matthew 23, adds the sad memory of “the clear fountains of Galilee, where He might have refreshed Himself; the vineyard and fig-tree, under which He might have been seated; and (hear, hear!) the young maidens who might perhaps have consented to love Him!” Only a French novel-writer would profane this sacred scene by such erotic sentimentalism. Renan places the agony in Gethsemane several days before the night of the Passion, contrary to the unanimous testimony of the Synoptists as well as the inherent probability of the case. But his opinions on such subjects are worth nothing at all.—P. S.]
[71][In German: Gemüthserschütterung. Gemüth is here, like the Greek θυμός (from θύω, to rush on, to storm; to burn in sacrifice), the inmost soul, as the principle of life, feeling, and thought, especially as the seat of strong feeling and passion. The Edinb edition obliterates the meaning of the original by turning it into: unrest and amazement which is no translation at all. The next sentences are still more diluted and mutilated, or entirely omitted.—P. S.]
[72][In German: Die starken Zusagen und die kläglichen Absagen,—a paronomasia which I cannot imitate in English.—P. S.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv31, 32, 33, 35 § 125. — THE INTIMATION TO THE DISCIPLES AND…
§ 125. — THE INTIMATION TO THE DISCIPLES AND TO PETER OF THEIR DESERTION AND HIS DENIALS, Mat_26:31-35.
This passage Matthew inserts out of its true order. It is to be considered not as occurring after, but before leaving the table, and before the extended discourses recorded by John. To take in the full account of all the intimations given to the reluctant Peter of his denials, we must read in the following order: Joh_13:36-38; Mat_26:31-33; Luk_22:31-33; Mat_26:34-35. We thus find that before leaving the supper-table our Lord gave Peter three warnings of his folly. This of Matthew is the second. As it is the self-confidence of Peter that induces the first warning of our Lord, so, through all the three, Peter retains his protestations that he will prefer death rather than unfaithfulness.
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31. Shall be offended — Literally, shall be entrapped into wrong. Shall be made to fail in your fidelity to me.
I will smite the Shepherd — Our Lord here quotes Zechariah as an illustration, or, as some of the best commentators suppose, as a direct prediction of his desertion in his affliction by his disciples.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv31, 32, 34, 35 31–35. All shall be offended
31–35. All shall be offended
Mar_14:26-31; Luk_22:32-34. Cp. Joh_16:32
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31. I will smite the shepherd] Zec_13:7. The words do not literally follow the Hebrew. The context describes the purification of Jerusalem in the last days—“in that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem”—the discomfiture of the false prophets, and the victory of Jehovah on the Mount of Olives.
It may be fitly remembered that the Valley of Jehoshaphat (in N.T. the Valley of Kedron) according to the most probable view derived its name—the Valley of the Judgment of Jehovah—not from the king of Judah, but from the vision of Joel (Mat_3:2; Mat_3:9-17), of which the prophecy of Zechariah is the repetition in a later age. If so, there is deep significance in the words recurring to the mind of Christ, as He trod the very field of Jehovah’s destined victory. Nor is it irreverent to believe that the thought of this vision brought consolation to the human heart of Jesus as He passed to His Supreme self-surrender with the knowledge that He would be left alone, deserted even by His chosen followers.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv31–35 (31) All ye shall be offended because of me.—We…
(31) All ye shall be offended because of me.—We may think of the words as spoken at some early stage of that evening walk. It corresponds in substance with Joh_16:32, but seems to have been uttered more abruptly.
I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered.—The citation of this prophecy, from Zec_13:7. is every way suggestive, as showing that our Lord’s thoughts had dwelt, and that He led the disciples to dwell, on that chapter as applicable to Himself. To one who dealt with prophecy as St. Matthew dealt with it, much in that chapter that is perplexing to the historical critic would be full of divinest meaning. It told of a “fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness;” of One with “wounds” in His hands, who was “wounded in the house of His friends;” of the Shepherd to whom Jehovah spake as to His “fellow.”
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv31–35 Then saith Jesus. The warning, according to the other…
Then saith Jesus. The warning, according to the other evangelists, was given in the upper chamber, unless, as is very unlikely, it was twice repeated. (see Luk_22:31-34 Joh_13:36-38) The "then" of St. Matthew must not be taken strictly as denoting exact chronological sequence, but as marking a change of scene or a new incident. All ye shall be offended because of me (en emoi , in me). There is an emphasis on "all ye;" even ye eleven, who have been steadfast hitherto. One, Judas, had already departed; but Christ warns the eleven that they too shall for a time lose their faith in him, and sin by forsaking their Lord. His apprehension and trial would prove a rock of offence to them. It is written. In Zec_13:7, where the prophet"s words are, "Awake, O sword, against my Shepherd, and against the Man that is my Fellow, saith the Lord of hosts; smite the Shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered." It is here shown that all that happened took place according to "the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God." That Christ may be the Saviour he must be a sacrifice. In Zechariah the Lord gives the command to the sword; hence Christ can say, I will smite. The Shepherd is Christ, the sheep are the disciples, who, at the sight of the officers coming to seize him, "all forsook him, and fled" (ver. 56). The prophecy in Zechariah is remarkably full of references to Christ, his nature and his position.
Vers. 31-46. The Mount of Olives.
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I THE CONVERSATION BY THE WAY.
1. The Lord"s prediction that all should forsake him. Partly in the upper room, partly on the way, the Lord had uttered those most sacred and precious words which St. John was led by the Holy Spirit to preserve in those chapters which have well been called the holiest of the holy. St. Matthew relates only one thing which passed as they went in the late evening, in the solemn light of the Paschal moon, their hearts, we may be sure, filled with awful forebodings and strange mysterious anticipations, to the well known spot. The Lord had said long ago, "Blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me." The people of Nazareth had been so offended; (Mat_13:57) now, he said, his chosen disciples would be offended, and on that very night. He who should become the Headstone of the corner would be for a time even to them a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence. It must be so, the Lord said, for so it had been written, applying to himself that prophecy of Zechariah which has so many mysterious allusions to the Passion, "I will smite the Shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad." The disciples would remember afterwards that that Shepherd in the prophecy is called by the Lord of hosts "the Man that is my fellow;" and they would feel that those words could be true only of One who, "being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God." That very night the sheep would be scattered, but only for a short time; for it is written in the same place, "I will turn mine hand upon the little ones." The Lord would rise again. He would gather together his little flock; he would go before them, as a shepherd goeth before his sheep. They should see him again in Galilee.
2. Peter"s assertion of his fidelity. Peter, self confident as ever, asserted his unshaken loyalty; he, at least, would never be offended. And when the Lord repeated his warning, showing his knowledge of the future even in its minute details, he became more earnest and excited, "Though I should die with thee, yet will I not deny thee." "Likewise also said all the disciples." Let us learn to distrust ourselves. When we are weak, then we are strong.
II GETHSEMANE.
1. The agony. The Lord, in the full knowledge of his coming Passion, sought a place for solitary prayer. He came to the well known garden whither he "ofttimes resorted." He took with him the three best beloved of the apostles, bidding the others rest. Then came that awful and mysterious agony: "He began to be sorrowful and sore troubled." He bade the disciples remain at a distance; even the three chosen ones, whose companionship and sympathy he desired, might not draw too near to the Lord in his anguish. "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me." Where apostles might not walk, we may not presume to intrude. We cannot comprehend the full meaning of that most awful agony. We are sure that it was not the mere fear of death which so crushed the holy Saviour"s soul. He shared, doubtless, perfect Man as he was, our human horror of death; and in him, we must remember, that horror would be increased by his complete foreknowledge of all the circumstances of that bitter Passion which was now so close at hand. Again, the shrinking from death seems to stand in some relation to the sense of life; the feebler that sense of life, the less men fear to die. But the Lord was not only in the full strength of early manhood, with a bodily frame which had never been weakened by sickness; but he was the Life, the essential, self-existent Life; he had life in himself, therefore it seems the conflict with death must have been in him far more terrible than in ordinary men. Moreover, death must have had an awful aspect in the sight of Christ, because it is the wages, the consequence of sin; and this close connection with sin must have invested death with a horrible character to the All-holy One. But it was not the fear of death which caused that bloody sweat, that utter anguish. Saints and martyrs, and even ungodly men, have met death without flinching; and we know with what calm majestic fortitude the Lord endured the cross. On Palm Sunday the impenitence of Jerusalem had wrung from him a burst of holy tears; and now, when the intense wickedness of men, the wickedness of his own apostles, of the leaders of his own chosen people, was gathering round him, he may well have recoiled in horror from that dark and wretched prospect. He had loved those unhappy men, even Judas, even Caiaphas. He had come down from heaven to save them, and they were rushing into deadly sin, into utter ruin. They had rejected his love and mercy. Alas! thousands more would do the like, would crucify the Lord afresh, would sin wilfully against knowledge and against light, and would die in their sins. He knew it would be so, and he was "exceeding sorrowful, even unto death." And he saw, behind Judas and Caiaphas and the rest, the awful form of the evil one. Satan had entered into them. "The prince of this world cometh," he had said. Satan had nothing in Christ, no hold upon that pure and spotless innocence; but all around he exercised his terrible power with fiendish malignity, by the agency of those wicked men whom he had ensnared to their ruin. It may well be that the nearness and activity of the evil spirit helped to bring that shuddering horror over the Saviour"s soul. But, once more, "He was made sin for us, though he was without sin." We cannot penetrate into the awful mysteries which those words seem to imply. We know that "the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all." We know that he "bare our sins in his own body on the tree," and we believe that it was that terrible burden of sin the sin of the whole world that crushed him to the earth. Sin was to his pure soul most utterly loathsome, most horrible; and, in some mysterious way, it now came close around him, enveloping him with its hateful nearness: all the sins of the whole world, from the first sin of Adam to the last sin with which the last of living men will pollute the creation of God, all came in one burden of accumulated horror upon "the Lamb of God, which taketh away beareth the sins of the world." It was a burden which only he could bear. Only the Sinless One, only he who, though he became perfect Man, was in the truth of his being, perfect God, could put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. Only he could bear that crushing burden; but it caused him the most intense suffering, unutterable anguish. It was not good for most of the apostles to witness that agony; they could not bear it. He left them at the entrance of the garden. He took the three with him. They had seen the glory of the Transfiguration; the recollections of that effulgent brightness, of those glimpses of the Godhead, might strengthen them in the presence of this more than human sorrow. It seems that the sympathy of these loved and trusted friends, even their very nearness, was some relief to the suffering Lord, as it is with us in our own hour of deep distress. Dying men love to have their dearest friends present with them, watching with them, though they can give no help beyond that sympathizing presence. So it was with Christ the Lord, so true was his humanity. But the extremest anguish he must bear alone; the prayer of completest self-sacrifice he must pray alone. Only the Father and the blessed angels might behold that bloody sweat and hear that most earnest prayer. Not even the three might follow him now. He would have them near; he came to them again and again, as if for sympathy; but the most dread struggle he must face alone. He went a little further into the garden. "He was withdrawn from them," St. Luke says, "about a stone"s cast." The evangelist uses a strong word he tore himself from them. It seems as if the dear Lord could scarcely endure that awful loneliness, and yet he must be alone. That bitter anguish reveals to us the greatness of his blessed love.
2. The threefold prayer.
(1) The first prayer. The Lord kneeled down upon the ground; then he fell upon his face in the intensity of his supplication. "O my Father," he said, "if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt. The Lord is an example to us in all things. In this overpowering, agony he offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears pain and trouble bring, the Christian to his God. The greater the pain, the more heartrending the trouble, the more earnestly he will pray. The Lord prayed that the cup of anguish might pass from him, if it were possible. The other evangelists give a slightly different report of his words: "Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me" (St. Luke); "Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take await this cup from me" (St. Mark). With God all things are possible. But it was not possible to take away that cup of woe if men were to be saved, as God willed them to be saved, through the cross and Passion of the Lord. It was not possible, for the cup passed not away. There were, it seems, inscrutable reasons which made that tremendous sacrifice necessary for the salvation of man and the glory of God. God will not always take the cup of suffering from us. It may be necessary that we should suffer, for our own good or for the good of others; our sufferings may be contained in God"s eternal purpose. Yet we may pray for their removal; we may ask God to spare us this or that trial, which seems too great for us to bear. Only we must pray all the Lord"s prayer, not part only. His perfect human nature involved a human will. That will was distinct from the Divine will; it was a pure, holy, human will; but, like our will, it shrank from pain and death. The Lord yielded it up in entire submission to his Father"s will: "Not as I will, but as thou wilt." He who is learning to pray that prayer from the bottom of his heart is very near to Christ.
(2) The return to the three apostles. There is a restlessness in intense grief which, like other sinless human weaknesses, was experienced by our Lord. He came to the disciples as if seeking for their sympathy, their affection, in his loneliness and exceeding sorrow But they were asleep. The same three had slept upon the Mount of the Transfiguration. It seems very strange. But we must remember that it was now very late at night, and the spiritual strain upon the apostles during that Thursday evening had been immense. They had heard the Lord speak again and again, clearly and certainly, of his own approaching death; they had heard of the treachery of one of their own number. They had listened, it must have been in rapt awe-stricken attention, to those wondrous utterances of exhortation, comfort, instruction, recorded in St. John"s Gospel. Now the three were left alone, in the silence of the night; they were worn out with excitement, sorrow, watching; and they slept. It must have been a perturbed sleep, like the deep sleep of Abram, when the horror of great darkness fell upon him. The Lord came to them; he found them sleeping, just when his holy human nature, sorely tried, needed the affectionate sympathy of human friends. He addressed the one who a short time before had expressed his love so strongly. "What!" he said to Peter, "could you not watch with me one hour?" The words imply a lengthened prayer. The evangelist has recorded only the essence, the central petition, of that long prayer of agony, The Lord had prayed already for a full hour. They imply too that the Lord, in his perfect humanity, felt some comfort, some stay, in the thought that those earthly friends who were dearest to him were not only near at hand, but awake, watching; as men in extreme sickness, in great suffering, like to feel that these who watch in the sick chamber are awake, conscious of their state, even though unable to help them. But the good Lord thought not only of himself, as we too often do in sickness; he thought of his disciples. Temptation was close at hand. They needed watchfulness; they needed prayer. They must keep all their faculties awake; they must be thoughtful, vigilant, prepared for the hour of danger. And they must pray. True prayer implies the vigorous exercise of all the highest faculties. It is not easy, but often very difficult; it requires effort, thought, sustained attention. It needs the constant aid of God the Holy Spirit, the great Teacher of prayer. The apostles needed now all the help of prayer and watchfulness, lest they should enter into temptation. The temptation must come; nay, it was already at hand. But they must pray not to enter into it, not to yield themselves to it, not to enter with their own will and consent into the snare which Satan was laying for them. The mere fact of temptation does not imply sin. The Lord himself was tempted. The sin lies in entering into it with our eyes open, with the consent of our will. And the remedy is watchfulness and prayer; a man cannot enter into temptation in this sense while he prays, if only his prayer is the waking, thoughtful, earnest prayer of faith. "At once to pray and to sin," says Stier, "is impossible. Who could with a wakeful and recollected spirit say unto God, Not as thou wilt"? Who, when the word of Jesus bids us watch, and the Spirit of Jesus teaches us to pray, may answer him and say, "Lord, but I cannot, I am too weak"?" The Lord adds the reason which makes watchfulness and prayer so necessary the weakness of the flesh. It was weak even in himself, though in him that flesh which he had graciously assumed that he might save us, was without sin; he had come "in the likeness of sinful flesh;" but in him the flesh was only weak, it was not sinful. It was weak; it shrank from pain and death. Even he, in the days of his flesh, offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears. How much more necessary are prayer and watchfulness for us, whose flesh is not only weak, but also sinful, defiled by many sins? The spirit is willing. In him it was more than willing; it was ready, zealous. It will be so with his saints in proportion as the spirit, the highest part of our composite human nature, which was breathed into man by God himself, realizes its powers and its privileges, offering up itself to be dwelt in and purified by the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit of God, and, by means of that gracious indwelling, living in that fellowship which is with God the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. But with us the spirit is not always willing. The flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; and, alas! we are not always led by the spirit, but often by that sinful flesh of ours. And even when in some sense the spirit is willing, when "to will is present with me," how often do we find in our hearts that conflict so wonderfully described in Romans 7., "how to perform that which is good I find not;" "for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I" I Then what need have we, whose flesh is not only weak, but exceeding sinful, to obey Christ"s commandment, to follow Christ"s example: "Watch and pray"!
(3) The second prayer. The Lord found no help in human sympathy; again he sought it in communion with his Father. His second prayer was calmer. The angel, of whom St. Luke tells us, appeared, perhaps, after the first prayer, strengthening him. "He was heard in that he feared". (Heb_5:7) As the angels ministered to him, the Almighty Son of God, after his temptation, so now in his agony one angel comforted him, the Comforter of all. He submitted to receive strength and comfort from his angels. They will calm our spirits in our death agony if we are truly his. The Lord offered up the prayer of holy resignation, "O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done." Perfect peace can be found only in perfect resignation to the blessed will of God. Again he came to the three disciples, seeking their sympathy, and doubtless seeking to prepare them against the coming temptation. But again they were asleep, for their eyes were heavy. God can comfort; his angels can by his appointment succour and defend us; man can do little for us in the hour of death.
(4) The third prayer. "He went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the same words." His people often follow his example. They are conscious of great poverty of thought; they find it hard to express the yearnings of their souls in words, especially in times of deep affliction. Often they can only repeat again and again the same simple ejaculation. It is enough. God regards not the form of words, but the earnestness of the supplication. Again, for the last time, the Lord returned to the three apostles. "Sleep on now," he said, "and take your rest." He needed their sympathy no longer; the time for watching with him was past. His hour was come, and he was ready. He had schooled his human will by a mighty effort into complete resignation, into absolute harmony with the Father"s will. The struggle was over; he had "trodden the wine press alone;" he was calm in perfect self-mastery. The disciples could help him no more, even by sympathy; they might take their rest while they could. The Lord, in his tenderness, had compassion on their weakness. Possibly there may have been a certain interval of time between those words and the appearance of the traitor. The Lord, perhaps, stood or sat watching his sleeping apostles, and awaiting the approaching band. When he saw them near he roused the sleepers: "Rise," he said, "let us be going;" and he went forward in majestic calmness to meet the danger.
LESSONS.
1. The Lord"s dread agony calls upon us for deep and reverent sympathy.
2. It calls upon us for confession and hatred of those sins which added to his burden of woe.
3. It calls upon us for resignation and submission of our earthly will to the holy will of God.
4. It teaches us in our extremest sufferings always to pray to pray more earnestly.
Vers. 31-35. Strength and weakness.
After the admonitory incident of the last Passover, which separated the unhappy Iscariot from the apostleship, Jesus, journeying with the eleven towards the Mount of Olives, proceeded to caution them against the weakness which he discerned in them. He is not our truest friend who conceals from us our faults.
I IN JESUS WE SEE THE ENSHRINEMENT OF DIVINE STRENGTH.
1. In his all-comprehensive knowledge.
(1) What was "written" was perfectly familiar to him. He was supremely "mighty in the Scriptures." The "Sword of the Spirit" is a trusty weapon, both for defence in parrying the thrusts of Satan and for offence in putting the armies of the aliens to the rout.
(2) He knew himself to be the "Shepherd" of Israel. That Shepherd is Jehovah. (see Psa_23:1 Psa_80:1) That Shepherd is Messiah. (see Isa_40:11 Eze_34:23 Zec_13:7) Jesus identifies himself as that glorious Personage. (see Joh_10:11 Heb_13:20 1Pe_5:4) As the Shepherd here is the "Fellow" of the "Lord of hosts," he only can be intended who is "equal with God.
(3) He knew everything about his sheep. He could foretell the incident of the denial by Peter. He could oppose the limit before the second cock-crowing of that night to Peter"s "never." He could forecast his desertion by "all." He knows us infinitely better than we know ourselves.
(4) Knowledge is power. Perfect knowledge can never be taken at a disadvantage. It cannot be surprised. It has boundless resources.
2. In his all-enduring compassion.
(1) With what patience does he endure the unfaithfulness of his disciples! Though he knew they would desert him, yet does he not spurn them from his presence. His kind heart can see, even in the excess of their self-confidence, a sincere and warm affection. The case is different from that of Judas. His sin was deliberate; Peter"s was a sin of surprise. That of Judas arose from the state of his heart; the act of Peter was against his habitual feelings and principles. Though he foresaw that all the disciples would leave him to tread the winepress alone, his gentleness made no rejoinder to their protestations of devotion to him even to the death.
(2) The Shepherd submits to be smitten for the sheep. For himself he had no need to die. The formidableness of that "sword" of Divine justice now "awaking" from its slumber of forbearance was fully in his view. He saw the malignity of those human hands into which it was given to be wielded against him. Yet did he not seek to evade its edge. He could already see those "wounds in his hands" with which he was to be "wounded in the house of his friends". (see Zec_13:6) He could have avoided them; but his sheep must be redeemed.
(3) The "scattered" ones must again be gathered into their fold. To this end the smitten Shepherd must rise again from the dead. "But after I am raised up I will go before you into Galilee." This implies that he would deliver himself out of the hands of his enemies and theirs. "I will go before you," equivalent to "I will bring my hand again to the little ones". (see Zec_13:7) "I will go before you," viz. as the Shepherd before his gathered flock. (see Joh_10:4) "Into Galilee." He even mentioned the particular hill which was to be the place of their meeting. (see Mat_28:16)
(4) We have "strong consolation" in the "mercy" which "endureth forever.
II IN THE DISCIPLES WE SEE AN EMBODIMENT OF WEAKNESS,
1. Their weakness appears in their self-confidence.
(1) Peter had more faith in himself than he had in the Scriptures of God. They anticipated the offence which the sheep were to take when the Shepherd should be smitten. In the face of this Peter said, "If all shall be offended in thee, I will never be offended." It is easy to talk boldly and carelessly of death at a distance.
(2) "If all shall be offended." Those who think too well of themselves are apt to be suspicious of others. (see Gal_6:1)
(3) Peter"s self-confidence grew with his unbelief. For when Jesus said unto him," Verily I say unto thee, That this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. Peter saith unto him, Even it I must die with thee, yet will I not deny thee." He should have been diffident in respect to words which never failed when the most stupendous miracles depended on them.
(4) The foremost in self-confidence are the first to fall. Such was the case with Peter. Then"Beware of Peter"s word, Nor confidently say, "I never will deny thee, Lord, But, "Grant I never may." Man"s wisdom is to seek His strength in God alone; And e"en an angel would be weak Who trusted in his own.
2. Their weakness appears in their unbelief.
(1) They could see that Jesus was in peril of his life. This they inferred rather from their knowledge of the hostility of the rulers than from their faith in the Scriptures of prophecy or from the prophetic words of Christ. They could not see who it was that was in peril. Had they seen the Father in the Son, the peril would not have affrighted them. Note: Offences will come among the disciples of Jesus in times of peril. The cross of Christ is evermore the stumbling block. (1Co_1:23) Satan is busy when our faith is weak.
(2) They could not see what it truly is to die with Christ. To die with him is to die to self and the world voluntarily to crucify our entire evil nature. Because, for lack of faith, they were unprepared thus to die with Jesus, they "forsook him, and fled." The heart can await the hour of temptation when the truth is rooted in it.
(3) They could not see that their Lord would rise again from the dead. This unbelief was not for want of being told about the Resurrection, either by the prophets or by Christ himself. They were foolish in the slowness of their hearts to believe. (see Luk_24:25, Luk_24:26) Had they understood and realized the resurrection of Christ on the third day after his Passion, their faith would have steadied them. (cf. 1Co_15:58)
(4) If all the apostles forsook their Lord, who has not reason to fear? Did not the apostles represent all the flock which they were afterwards to bring together? Who can boast? The Lord permits us to be tried, that we may see ourselves as we are, and be humbled by our experience. The strength of pride is but for a moment. J.A.M.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On v33 Though all men shall be offended because of Thee,…
Mat_26:33-35
Though all men shall be offended because of Thee, yet will I never be offended.
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Enthusiasm and its dangers
I. The confidence of inexperience, aided by lack of imagination. How often is this repeated before our eyes! Castles in the air are built by inexperienced virtue, to be demolished, alas! at the first touch of the realities of vice. The country lad who has been brought up in a Christian home, and is coming up to some great business house in London, makes vigorous protestations of what he will, and will not, do in a sphere of life, of the surroundings of which he can, as yet, form no true idea whatever; the emigrant, who is looking forward to spend his days in a young colony, where the whole apparatus of Christian and civilized life is as yet in its infancy, or is wanting altogether, makes plans of a situation, of which he cannot at all as yet, from the nature of the case, take the measure; the candidate for holy orders, who anticipates his responsibilities from afar, gathering them from books and from intercourse with clergymen, makes resolutions which he finds have to be revised by the light of altogether unforeseen experiences.
II. An insufficent sense of the power of new forms of temptation. A man living in a comparatively private position is exemplary. His little failures do but serve to set forth the sterling worth of his general character. He seems to be marked out for some promotion. All predict that he will be a great success, since he has shown on a small scale excellencies which will certainly distinguish him, and will adorn a larger sphere. He is promoted, and he turns out a hopeless failure. How extraordinary! cries out the world. Who could have anticipated this? exclaim his friends. And yet the explanation may be a very simple one. He may have been brought, by the change of circumstances, for the first time in his life, under the influence of a temptation hitherto unknown to him. He may have been tempted in his earlier years by appeals to avarice, illicit desires, or personal vanity; but never, as yet, has he felt the pressure of the fear of man. In that place of prominence he, for the first time, feels the fear of a mass of human opinion which he does not in his conscience and his heart respect, but which he fears only because it is a mass. And this fear is too much for him, too much for his sense of justice, too much for his consistency and his former self. Alas! that new temptation has found a weak place in his moral nature; it has sprung a leak in him; and the disappointment is as keen to-day as the expectations of yesterday were unduly sanguine.
III. St. Peters over-confidence would seek to have been due in part to his natural temperament, and to his reliance on it. A sanguine impetuosity was the basis of his character. In this instance, there was probably a mixture of these dispositions-genuine love of our Lord, stirred to vehemence by the recent defection of Judas, combined with eagerness, the product of temperament. The exact proportions of the combinations we know not; but, at any rate, nature had more to do with his language than grace. And while grace is trustworthy in times of trial, nature may be expected to give way. An instance of this confusion between grace and nature is to be found in the enthusiasm which led to the Crusades. No well-informed and fair-minded man can question the genuine love of our Lord Jesus Christ, which filled such men as Peter the Hermit, and still more that great teacher and writer, St. Bernard. They exerted, these men, some seven centuries ago, an influence upon the populations of Central Europe, to which the modern world affords absolutely no sort of parallel, and at their voice thousands of men, in all ranks of life, left their homes to rescue, if it might be, the sacred soil on which the Redeemer had lived and died, from the hands of the infidel. Who can doubt that of these not a few were animated by a love which is always noble-that of giving the best they had to give from their lives to the God who had made and redeemed them. But alas! who can doubt that many, perhaps a larger multitude, were really impelled by very different considerations which gathered round this central idea, and seemed to receive from it some sort of consecration, and that a love of adventure, a love of reputation, a desire to escape from the troublous times at home, the ambitious hope of acquiring influence or power which might be of use elsewhere than in Palestine, which might found or consolidate a dynasty, also entered into the sum of moral forces, which precipitated the crusading hosts on the coasts of Syria? And how many a crusader could analyse, with any approach to accuracy, the motives which swayed him in an enterprise where there was, indeed, so much of the smoke and dust of earth to obscure the love and light of heaven?
IV. The lessons to be leant from this event.
1. Estimate enthusiasm at its proper value. It is the glow of the soul; the lever by which men are raised above their average level and enterprise, and become capable of a goodness and benevolence which would otherwise be beyond them.
2. Measure well our religious language, especially the language of fervour and devotion. When religious language outruns practice or conviction, the general character is weakened. If Peter had said less as they left the supper-room, he might have done better afterwards in the hall of the palace of the high priest. (Canon Liddon.)
Fickleness of the human heart
In a vessel filled with muddy water, the thickness visibly subsides to the bottom, and leaves the water purer and clearer, until at last it seems perfectly limpid. The slightest motion, however, brings the sediment again to the top, and makes the water thick and turbid as before. Here we have an emblem of the human heart. The heart is full of the mud of sinful lusts and carnal desires, and the consequence is, that no pure water-that is, good and holy thoughts-can flow from it. It is, in truth, a miry pit and slough of sin, in which all sorts of ugly reptiles are bred and crawl. Many a one, however, is deceived by it, and never imagines his heart half so wicked as it really is, because at times its lusts are at rest, and sink, as it were, to the bottom. On such occasions his thoughts appear to be holy and devout, his desires pure and temperate, his words charitable and edifying, and his works useful and Christian. But this lasts only so long as he is not moved; I mean, so long as he is without opportunity or incitement to sin. Let that occur, and worldly lusts rise so thick that his whole thoughts, words, and works show no trace of anything but slime and impurity. This man is meek as long as he is not thwarted; but cross him, and he is like powder, ignited by the smallest spark, and blazing up with a loud report and destructive force. Another is temperate so long as he has no social companions; a third chaste, while the eyes of men are upon him. (Scriver.)
Dangers of impulsiveness
I. Prone to over-estimate self, and underrate others-though all men-yet not I.
II. Natural instability-frequent reactions-can do, but not wait.
III. Violence and rapidity of its changes.
IV. Readiness with which it takes its character from immediately surrounding circumstances. Learn:
1. Let the cool and prudent be gentle in judging of the more fiery.
2. Let the impulsive take warning from this example.
3. Let the man who repents some sin of haste, take encouragement and hope. (Analyst.)
I. No strength of attachment to Jesus can justify such confident promises of fidelity, made without dependence upon Him.
II. That all promises to adhere to Him should be made relying on Him for aid.
III. That we little know how feeble we are till we are tried.
IV. That Christians may be left to great and disgraceful sins to show them their weakness. (A. Barnes, D. D.)
Peters self-confidence
It is a common remark that in the absence of danger all men are heroes. Self-distrust does not enter into our calculations. Presuming upon the strength and permanence of present emotion, we hurl defiance at danger, and challenge circumstances to shake our magnanimity. Peter was not alone in this boast, but his conduct was marked by a more signal exhibition, both of self-confidence and of frailty, than that of his fellow-disciples. Fully, however, to estimate his fall-
I. Look at some of the concomitant circumstances by which his offence was aggravated.
1. He was one of the three disciples whom Jesus honoured with a peculiar intimacy.
2. He appears to have had an earlier and a stronger conviction of our Saviours Messiahship than his brother disciples (Mat_16:13-17).
3. The particular crisis at which his offence was committed. Almost immediately after another of the twelve had betrayed Him, and when, humanly speaking, his Master stood most in need of his support.
II. These facts serve to illustrate the extent of his self-deception, and to impress more forcibly this most important lesson, that No reasonable dependence is to be placed on our mere untried feelings and resolutions; but that the only satisfactory evidence we can possess of the genuineness and stability of our religious principles, is that which our conduct affords. When Peter protested his fidelity, his constancy had not been put to the test. His character rendered him in an especial degree liable to this species of self-deception, still, his case may be selected as a striking illustration of the fallaciousness of mere untried feelings and resolutions, as a satisfactory evidence of religious character, and of the folly and danger of trusting to them as any security for future conduct. Few things are more common. Let us not mistake passion for principle (Joh_14:21; 1Jn_5:3). (J. H. Smith.)
Protesting too much
When the subtle and ambitious John, of Gischala, pursuing his own dark course, as it is traced in the History of the Jews, joined outwardly the party of Arianus, and was active beyond others in council and camp, he yet kept up a secret correspondence with the Zealots, to whom be betrayed all the movements of the assailants. To conceal this secret he redoubled his assiduities, and became so extravagant in his protestations of fidelity to Arianus and his party, that he completely overacted his part, and incurred suspicion. His intended dupes began gradually to look with a jealous eye on their too obsequious, most obedient, and most devoted servant. (F. Jacox.)
Hawthorne
remarks that Italian asseverations of any questionable fact, though uttered with rare earnestness of manner, never vouch for themselves as coming from any depth, like roots drawn out of the substance of the soul, with some of the soil clinging to them. Their energy expends itself in exclamation. The vaulting ambition of their hyperboles overleaps itself, and falls on the other side.
Truth not in need of an oath
Reality cares not to be tricked out with too taking an outside; and deceit, when she intends to cozen, studies disguise. Least of all should we be taken with swearing asseverations. Truth needs not the varnish of an oath to make her plainness credited. (Owen Feltharn.)
Lie following lie
Lie engenders lie. Once committed, the liar has to go on in his course of lying. It is the penalty of his transgression, or one of the penalties. To the habitual liar, bronzed and hardened in the custom, till custom becomes second nature, the penalty may seem no very terrible price to pay. To him, on the other hand, who, without deliberate intent, and against his innermost will, is overtaken with such a fault, the generative power of a first lie to beget others, the necessity of supporting the first by a second and a third, is a retribution keenly to be felt, while penitently owned to be most just. (F. Jacox.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv31–34 31. Shall be offended. Compare Mark 14:26–31; Luke 22:31–34;…
31. Shall be offended. Compare Mark 14:26–31; Luke 22:31–34; John 13:37, 38. It is written. Zech. 13:7. The Shepherd. Christ. The sheep. His disciples.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v31 Mat_26:32. I will go before you.—As a shepherd. A…
CRITICAL NOTES
Mat_26:32. I will go before you.—As a shepherd. A pastoral expression (Bengel). See preceding verse.
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Mat_26:34. Before the cook crow.—The crowing of cocks during the stillness of the night is quite a feature in Oriental life, and nowhere more so than in and around Jerusalem. The great time for cock-crowing was, and is, in the third watch of the night. See Mar_13:35 (Morison).
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Mat_26:31-35
Foresight and blindness.—When the disciples follow their Master from the Passover-chamber to the Mount of Olives (Mat_26:30), they share His company, but hardly His thoughts. Much is seen by Him which is hidden from them. This is brought out here in two principal ways: in connection, first, with the general warning which He addresses to them all; in connection, secondly, with the special warning which He addresses to St. Peter alone.
I. The warning to all—His words in this way show, first, how much He knew of what was to happen that night. “All ye shall be offended in Me this night” (Mat_26:31). Nothing looked less like this than things did when He spoke. Had not these disciples followed Him long? Through many vicissitudes (Luk_22:28)? At very great cost (Mat_19:27)? Had they not also joined in, if not actually started, the acclamations which accompanied His entry into Jerusalem (Mat_21:6-9)? And been with Him in all His subsequent word-encounters and triumphs (Mat_22:15-46)? How strange, therefore, the announcement, that in a few hours, they would be acting inconsistently with all this! Ashamed to be seen in His company! Scandalised at the accusation (!) of belonging to Him at all! Still more strange, therefore, to hear it said that this had been predicted of old; and that the reason of it all was to be found in that which had also been predicted of Him. He was to be “smitten,” and they were to be “scattered” (Mat_26:31; Zec_13:7 : see also 1Ki_22:17). All this, though incredible to them, was foreseen by Him as quite close. Much the same was it, in the next place, with what was to follow that night. Most significant, most profound, are His words on this point. As to Himself, on the one hand: that He was to die, and yet live; to need “raising again”; to attain to it also; and to follow it up by departing for Galilee with a view to their good (Mat_26:32). As to them, on the other hand: that, though they were to be scattered, they were not to be so for ever; that, if presently “offended” with Him, they should confess Him afterwards, and follow Him as before. All this, again, though thus fore proclaimed by Him, was past believing to them. This is shown very plainly by the language of the most forward among them. To him there is no need whatever of the language they have heard; of the primary warning; of the subsequent re-assurance; least of all, of the first. Things in the future, in his judgment, will not be as they have heard them described. He, at any rate, whatever others do, is not going to do as is said (see Mat_26:33). He is as confident, in a word, in his ignorance as Christ is in His light.
II. The special warning to one.—See here, again, on the one side, how clear was the pre-vision of Christ! How definite, also, His words! He declares that this confident Peter himself shall be an example—a leading example—of what He has said. That he shall not only be “offended” with Him, but “offended” so much as to “deny” that he had ever known Him at all. That he shall do this three times in succession. That he shall do it also, before the departed sunlight shall shine again on the world. And this He declares, also—if such a thing can be—with even greater solemnity than before; almost implying, in fact, that He is never to be trusted again if not trusted in this (Mat_26:34). See, on the other hand, how this second warning was met. How it was met by St. Peter himself. With a stronger defiance than ever. Stronger in substance. Even if I have to stand alone, he had said before in effect, I will never deny Thee (Mat_26:33). What he says now is, that he will never do so, even if he has to die for it with Jesus (Mat_26:35). Not even, he says, if denial is death, will I stoop to such depth. Stronger, also, in form. Such a second defiance is, on that very account, a more significant thing in itself. Such a second defiance as this, also, being in reply to such a second and closer and more earnest remonstrance, is more significant still. The lips that do this will do anything in that unconvincable line. How it was met, also, by the other disciples! They, too, are as much proof as was Peter himself to this second warning of Christ. Instead of being moved by it to side with the Saviour against His disciple, they side with him against Christ; and proceed, as it were, in a kind of chorus, to add their “nays” unto his (end of Mat_26:35). “The Teacher is wrong,” they say, “and the disciple is right. None of us stand in need of the warning on which He has thus doubly insisted. None of us are really going to act in the manner described.” Was there ever such a close juxtaposition of darkness and light? Of light which exceeded all the light of mankind? Of darkness which thought itself light?
1. How affecting is this scene, on the one hand! The Saviour knows, the Saviour feels, all that is coming upon Him! He may be almost said, therefore, to be crucified in anticipation, as well as in fact! Yet He is so far, in all this, from having the sympathy of His own disciples, that He cannot even persuade them that there is any necessity for it. None needed it more, none was farther from it, than He was at this time.
2. How instructive is this story!—How great is the difference between true courage and the mere absence of fear! How difficult it is to teach those who think that they know (Pro_26:12)! And how ready such persons are to set about teaching those by whom they profess to be taught! Of all things to be distrusted, is trust in ourselves! Of all gifts to be coveted, that of a teachable heart!
HOMILIES ON THE VERSES
Mat_26:31. Christ deserted by His disciples.—
I. The great events of time developed according to Divine prediction.
II. The loneliness of Jesus Christ in the final scene, an incidental proof of His Divine mediation.
III. Christ’s Divine power of looking beyond the process to the great result.
IV. Though Jesus was deserted by His disciples, yet the disciples were not deserted by Him.—J. Parker, D.D.
Mat_26:34. Peter and Judas.—What is the difference between the sin of Peter and the sin of Judas?
I. Let us see what was the difference of their general lives.—We know that Peter loved our Lord sincerely, and that he followed Him with a real desire to do His will; whereas, what we know of Judas, even before his great sin, is unfavourable. It is of importance to observe this, because, in fact, our particular sins take their colour from the general character of our lives. What we call sin of infirmity, a sudden yielding to some very strong temptation, can hardly be said to exist in a man whose life is generally careless or sinful. He who takes no heed at any time to strengthen his nature has no right to plead its weakness; he who is the slave of all common temptations has no right to say that this one temptation overcame him because of its greatness.
II. Yet the acts of Peter and of Judas were in themselves different.—The act of Peter was done without premeditation. Assuredly had he felt himself in any danger of denying his Lord, he would have gone away to his own home rather than have sought admission to the palace of the high priest. But Judas sin was deliberate; it had been resolved upon, not some minutes only before it was committed, but some hours, and even some days.
III. And so, after the two sins were committed, what followed in either case?—One look at our Lord recalled Peter to himself, to that very self, that better and habitual self, which our Lord had pronounced to be clean. He went out and wept bitterly. But of all this in the case of Judas we hear nothing: with him there was remorse indeed, but not repentance—an unblessed sorrow, working an unblessed death.—T. Arnold, D.D.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain On v31 Mat 26:31-35; Mar 14:27-31; Luk 22:31-38;Joh 13:36-38. N.B. —…
JESUS PREDICTS THE FALL OF PETER AND THE DISPERSION OF THE APOSTLES
Mat 26:31-35; Mar 14:27-31; Luk 22:31-38;Joh 13:36-38. N.B. — They are all still at the supper-table except Judas, who, at nightfall, went away alone — and not alone, for Satan went with him. “Simon Peter says to Him, Lord, whither art Thou going? Jesus responded to him, Whither I go, thou art not able to follow Me now; but shall follow Me hereafter. Peter says to Him, Lord, wherefore am I not able to follow Thee now? I will lay down my life for Thee.” Peter absolutely and sincerely meant all he said, and yet in a few hours denied Him, illustrating the horrific instability of unsanctified humanity. After Peter received the fiery baptism, he was more than a match for earth and hell, living a hero and dying a martyr. What an admonition is Peter’s case to all to get sanctified!
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Mat 26:31. “Then Jesus says to them, All you will be offended in Me this night. For it has been written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered.” (Zec 13:7) The application of this is very plain and simple, as it was fulfilled in Gethsemane about three hours after this utterance. “And after I am risen, I will go before you into Galilee.” Jesus had repeatedly predicted to them that He would meet them in Galilee, His native land and that of most of His apostles, whither they all went soon after His resurrection, and He met them on the bank of the Galilean Sea, after a night of toil in dragging their nets through the waters; but then, to their unutterable surprise, pursuant to His mandate, casting the net on the right side of the ship, they caught one hundred and fifty-three large fish. He also met them on one of the mountains of Galilee, not named.
“Peter, responding, said to Him, If all shall be offended in Thee, I will never be offended.” Peter was no hypocrite. He meant all he said; yet before the crowing of the cock that very night, he denied that he knew Him.
Luk 22:31. “The Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan sought after you, to sift you like wheat.” Here the pronoun “you” is humas, the plural number, including not only Peter, but all of the apostles. All the depravity in human nature belongs to Satan, because he put it there in the fall. All sin is the crop of Satan’s own sowing. So long as there is anything in you which Satan can sift out, you are not ready for heaven. Satan could not sift Jesus, because when he came to Him, he found nothing in Him belonging to him. After the apostles were all sanctified at Pentecost, Satan’s sifting was fruitless toil, as the celestial flame had consumed all the chaff, straw, cheat, cockle, and trash, leaving nothing but the pure wheat, ready for the Lord’s mill. “But I prayed for you, that your faith may not fail.” “You” is in the singular number, meaning Peter alone, as the especial subject of the Savior’s prayer in this case, lest he might be gobbled up by Satan. Jesus here tells them, “You will all be offended in Me this night.” This word is from scandalon, “a stumbling-block,” showing that they all ran over a great stumbling-block, which jostled them exceedingly, and Peter, the most sanguine of all, became more seriously upset than any of his comrades. This word, however, does not convey the idea of a total apostasy, but a stumbling and temporary backsliding, the prayer of Jesus prevailing, so that the faith, though terribly tried, did not utterly let go. “And you, having turned, then strengthen your brethren.” “When thou art converted,” E. V., is too strong a rendering of epistrepsas, which simply means “having turned,” being in the active voice; i. e., “Having turned from your backsliding, strengthen your brethren.” Peter was the senior apostle, his house in Capernaum being headquarters of Jesus during the two and a half years of His ministry in Galilee. Therefore he wielded a very potent influence over his brethren, who, of course, being jostled by his backsliding, would need confirmation by his confession and testimony. “And he said to Him, Lord, I am ready to go with Thee to prison, and to death.” Mar 14:30 : “And Jesus says to him, Truly I say unto thee, that this night, before the cock crows twice, thou shall deny Me thrice. And he continued to say the more positively, If it may be necessary for me to die along with Thee, I will not deny Thee. And all the others said likewise.” You see how sanguine Peter was, feeling perfectly sure; and yet when the emergency came he failed. A significant illustration of the bold utterances of unsanctified Christians, believing indubitably that they will do just what they say; but signally failing, because they have an indwelling enemy stronger than they.
Luk 22:35-38. “And He said to them, When I sent you out without purse, valise, and sandals, did you lack anything? And they said, Nothing. Then He said to them, But now, let the one having purse take it, likewise also valise; and let every one not having a sword, sell his cloak and purchase one. For I say unto you, that it behooveth that which has been written yet to be fulfilled in Me, And He was numbered with the transgressors [Isa 53:12]; and those things concerning Me have an end. And they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And He said to them, It is sufficient.” While our Savior was with them on the earth, He miraculously fed, clothed, and protected them when it was necessary. Consequently they could go without these provisions, incident to human life, indiscriminately. But now that He is going away to leave them, they must take heed and give the necessary attention to the temporalities essential to their physical support and protection. The Orientals wear two garments — the cheiton, interior, and the himation, exterior. The outer garment they frequently carried while traveling and laid aside when at labor, keeping it for night and storms. Jesus here tells them, if necessary, to sell the himation and buy a sword. I never could understand why He told them to take a sword till I traveled in that country and saw the necessity of carrying weapons. I did not carry any, as I did not know how to use them; but a sanctified preacher in our company carried a revolver, our dragman also being armed with a revolver and a dagger. In some places we were compelled to hire an armed escort to keep the robbers off. “Why were you compelled to do it?” Our guide refused to go without the armed escort. Going round in Jerusalem, men, as a rule, had no visible weapons; but traveling through the country, all we met were armed with guns, swords, or huge clubs, almost as large as an American rifle, and convenient to kill a man with a single stroke. The guide-books advise all travelers to go armed, but not to use their weapons, their utility being that of intimidation, as robbers abound everywhere, who do not content themselves by simply taking your money, but take everything you possess, leaving you utterly destitute of clothing, baggage, etc. In that day there were no firearms, the sword being the most common weapon of defense; also regarded as a badge of itinerancy. You see, when they pointed out these two swords, He said they were sufficient. The presumption is that the sword was a prudential, peace, and safety provision, for the intimidation of robbers and for personal security in case of emergency, as persons openly avowing the absence of all protecting weapons in their peregrinations would soon fall a prey to the robbers. Along the road from Jerusalem down to Jericho, where the traveler (Luke 10) was attacked by the robbers, the Roman Government had a garrison of armed men to protect the travelers, as the robbers were so troublesome.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On v33 fall away
fall away
See how you translated this in Matthew 26:31.
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Truly I say to you
"I tell you the truth." This adds emphasis to what Jesus says next.
before the rooster crows
Roosters often crow about the time the sun comes up, so the hearers might have understood these words as a metonym for the sun coming up. However, the actual crowing of a rooster is an important part of the story later on, so keep the word "rooster" in the translation. (See: Metonymy)
rooster
a male chicken, a bird that calls out loudly around the time the sun comes up
crows
This is the common English word for what a rooster does to make his loud call.
you will deny me three times
"you will say three times that you are not my follower"
translationWords
Peter
amen
disciple
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv31, 32, 35 26:31 God will strike: In Zech 13:7-9, the Shepherd,…
26:31 God will strike: In Zech 13:7-9, the Shepherd, God’s partner, is struck down (understood by Jesus as a prediction of his own death), and out of the scattered sheep emerge a purged, purified remnant of faithful ones (Zech 13:8-9). In the short term, the disciples would soon be scattered and deny association with Jesus (Matt 26:34, 56, 69-75).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.