While he was still speaking, behold, Judas, one of the twelve, came, and with him a great multitude with swords and clubs, from the chief priests and elders of the people. Now he who betrayed him gave them a sign, saying, “Whoever I kiss, he is the one. Seize him.” Immediately he came to Jesus, and said, “Hail, Rabbi!” and kissed him.
Jesus said to him, “Friend, why are you here?” Then they came and laid hands on Jesus, and took him. Behold, one of those who were with Jesus stretched out his hand, and drew his sword, and struck the servant of the high priest, and struck off his ear. Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place, for all those who take the sword will die by the sword. Or do you think that I couldn’t ask my Father, and he would even now send me more than twelve legions of angels? How then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that it must be so?”
In that hour Jesus said to the multitudes, “Have you come out as against a robber with swords and clubs to seize me? I sat daily in the temple teaching, and you didn’t arrest me. But all this has happened that the Scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled.” Then all the disciples left him and fled.
Those who had taken Jesus led him away to Caiaphas the high priest, where the scribes and the elders were gathered together. But Peter followed him from a distance, to the court of the high priest, and entered in and sat with the officers, to see the end.
Now the chief priests, the elders, and the whole council sought false testimony against Jesus, that they might put him to death; and they found none. Even though many false witnesses came forward, they found none. But at last two false witnesses came forward, and said, “This man said, ‘I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to build it in three days.’ ”
The high priest stood up, and said to him, “Have you no answer? What is this that these testify against you?” But Jesus held his peace. The high priest answered him, “I adjure you by the living God, that you tell us whether you are the Christ, the Son of God.”
Jesus said to him, “You have said it. Nevertheless, I tell you, after this you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming on the clouds of the sky.”
Then the high priest tore his clothing, saying, “He has spoken blasphemy! Why do we need any more witnesses? Behold, now you have heard his blasphemy. What do you think?” They answered, “He is worthy of death!”
Then they spat in his face and beat him with their fists, and some slapped him, saying, “Prophesy to us, you Christ! Who hit you?”
Now Peter was sitting outside in the court, and a maid came to him, saying, “You were also with Jesus, the Galilean!”
But he denied it before them all, saying, “I don’t know what you are talking about.”
When he had gone out onto the porch, someone else saw him, and said to those who were there, “This man also was with Jesus of Nazareth.”
Again he denied it with an oath, “I don’t know the man.”
After a little while those who stood by came and said to Peter, “Surely you are also one of them, for your speech makes you known.”
Then he began to curse and to swear, “I don’t know the man!” Immediately the rooster crowed.
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 bitterly.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv47, 50, 52, 53, 54, 57, 58, 62, 64, 65, 69, 74 Sent from the high Priests.
Sent from the high Priests.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv47–75 47 And while he yet spake, lo, Judas, one…
47 And while he yet spake, lo, Judas, one of the twelve, came, and with him a great multitude with swords and staves, from the chief priests and elders of the people.
Ver. 47. Lo, Judas, one of the twelve] Lo, for the reason next mentioned before. The truth hath no such pestilent persecutors as apostates. Corruptio optimi pessima, sweetest wine maketh sourest vinegar.
Read full note →
With swords and staves] What need all this ado? But that the hornet haunted them, an ill conscience abused them, Exo 23:28. When he put forth but one beam of his Deity, these armed men fell all to the ground: nor could they rise again till he had done indenting with them, Joh 18:6.
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 vv47, 48, 50, 51, 55, 57, 58, 59, 61, 62, 64, 65, 67, 70, 71, 73, 75 Mark saith the same, Mar 14:43, adding also the…
Mark saith the same, Mar 14:43, adding also the scribes. Luke saith there was a multitude, and Judas went before them, adding, that he drew near to Jesus to kiss him, Luk 22:47. If any ask how Judas knew where Jesus was at that time of the night, or rather so early in the morning, John satisfieth us, Joh 18:2, And Judas also, which betrayed him, knew the place: for Jesus oft times resorted thither with his disciples. And then goeth on, Joh 18:3, Judas then, having received a band of men and officers from the chief priests and Pharisees, cometh thither with lanterns and torches and weapons. Those skilled in the Jewish learning tell us, that the ordinary guard of the temple belonged to the priests, and such officers as they employed; but upon their great festivals, the Roman governor added a band of his soldiers, who yet were under the command of the priests. It is thought these officers, soldiers, and others came with a warrant to apprehend our Saviour from the Jewish sanhedrim, or highest court, which was made up of chief priests, scribes, and Pharisees, and the elders of the people: they had torches and lanterns, because it was yet dark, before the day was broke; swords and staves, to be ready against any opposition. Judas the traitor comes before as their leader.
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 vv51, 55, 57, 63, 69 The rude multitude laying hands upon Christ, the disciples,…
The rude multitude laying hands upon Christ, the disciples, who had remitted their watch, do resume their courage, and are willing to rescue their Master if they can; particularly Peter draws his sword, and cuts off the ear of Malchus, one of the forwardest to lay hold on Jesus.
Observe here St. Peter’s zeal and sincere love for his Lord and Master: it was in great sincerity spoken, Though I die with thee, yet will I not deny thee. But why did not Peter draw his sword upon Judas, rather than Malchus? Perhaps because though Judas was more faulty, yet Malchus was more forward to arrest and carry off our Saviour. How doth a pious breast swell with indignation at the sight of any open affront offered unto Christ!
Read full note →
Observe here, That though St. Peter’s heart was sincere, yet his hand was rash: good intentions are no warrant for irregular actions; and accordingly Christ, who accepted his affection, reproves him for the action: put up thy sword; for they that take the sword, shall perish by the sword.
Learn hence, That Christ will thank no man to fight for him wihtout a warrant and commission from him. To resist a lawful magistrate, even in Christ’s own defence, is rash zeal, and discountenanced by the gospel. To a lawful power lawfully executed, there must be yielded due obedience.
Observe lastly, Our Lord’s absolute refusal to be rescued out of his enemies’ hands, with the reason of it: "Did I incline to be rescued by force, (as if our Lord had said,) I could demand all the troops of angels in heaven to show themselves upon that occasion, but how can this stand with the decree of my Father, with the declaration of the scripture, with the demonstration of my mercy, and with the salvation of miserable mankind?"
Learn thence, That Christ was infinitely more concerned for the salvation of lost sinners, than for his own death and sufferings; more concerned for our eternal salvation, than for his own temporal preservation. Had he been rescued by the power of angels, we had fallen a prey into the paw of devils.
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 vv47–74 Now he that betrayed him gave them a sign,....…
Now he that betrayed him gave them a sign,.... By which it might be known who he was; for it being night, though they had lanterns and torches, as John says, Joh 18:3, yet Judas himself might not be able to discern, him, so as to point him out, until he came very near him: moreover, Christ and his apostles might be clothed alike, so that a mistake might be easily made, and one of them be took for him: and so the Jews say (l), that the two thousand men, they pretend were with him, were clothed with the same apparel; which story may take its rise from hence: add to this, that James, the son of Alphaeus, called the brother of our Lord, is reported to be very like unto him. Besides, it is very likely that the Roman soldiers, who were to be the principal persons in apprehending, binding, and carrying him away, might never have seen him, and so could not know him without some sign was given them; and which Judas gave them before he came out with them: and is as follows:
saying, whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is he, hold him fast. Judas might the rather pitch upon this to be the sign, partly because it might be what had been usual with the disciples, when they had been at any time absent from Christ, and which he admitted of; and partly because he might think this would best cover his treacherous designs, who, with all his wickedness, had not effrontery enough to come sword in hand and seize him in a violent manner, and besides, might not judge such a method advisable, had he impudence enough to prosecute it, lest this should put Jesus upon taking some measures to make his escape. The reason of his advice, "hold him fast", was, because he knew that once and again, when attempts were made to seize him, he easily disengaged himself, passed through the midst, and went his way; see Luk 4:30.
Read full note →
Joh 10:39; and therefore gave them this caution, and strict charge, lest, should he slip from them, he should lose his money he had agreed with the chief priests for; or to let them know, that when he was in their hands, he had made good his agreement, and should expect his money: and that it lay upon them then to take care of him, and bring him before the sanhedrim. The account the Jews themselves give of the directions of Judas, is not very much unlike this; who represent him advising in this manner, only as on the day before:
"gird yourselves ready about this time tomorrow, and the man whom shall worship and bow to, the same is he; behave yourselves like men of war, fight against his company, and lay hold on him (m).
(l) Toldos Jesu, p. 16. (m) Ib.
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 vv47, 50, 51, 52, 53, 55, 57, 58, 60, 64, 65, 67, 72, 73, 74 Mark xiv, 43; Luke xxii, 47; John xviii, 2.
Mark xiv, 43; Luke xxii, 47; John xviii, 2.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv47, 48, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75 Verse 47. Judas, one of the twelve] More deeply…
Verse 47. Judas, one of the twelve] More deeply to mark his base ingratitude and desperate wickedness - HE was ONE of the TWELVE-and he is a TRAITOR, and one of the vilest too that ever disgraced human nature.
A great multitude with swords and staves] They did not come as officers of justice, but as a desperate mob. Justice had nothing to do in this business. He who a little before had been one of the leaders of the flock of Christ is now become the leader of ruffians and murderers! What a terrible fall!
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 vv50, 55, 57, 59, 62, 65, 67, 69, 71, 73, 75 Mat 26:50-54. Jesus said, Friend Gr. εταιρε, companion; wherefore…
Mat 26:50-54. Jesus said, Friend Gr. εταιρε, companion; wherefore — Gr. εφ’ ω, For what, or against whom, art thou come? — Against me, thy Teacher, Saviour, and Lord? And to put me into the hands of murderers? Our Lord also added, (see Luk 22:48,) Betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss? — Art thou so vile a hypocrite as to betray thy Lord and Master by that which all men use as the symbol either of love or homage, making it the signal of thy treachery? The heroic behaviour of the blessed Jesus, in the whole period of his sufferings, will be observed by every attentive eye, and felt by every pious heart: although the sacred historians, according to their usual but wonderful simplicity, make no encomiums upon it. With what composure does he go forth to meet the traitor! With what calmness receive that malignant kiss! With what dignity does he deliver himself into the hands of his enemies! Yet plainly showing his superiority over them, and even then leading, as it were, captivity captive!
And one of them which were with Jesus — Namely, Peter; struck a servant of the high-priest — Probably the person that seized Jesus first, or was showing greater forwardness than the rest in this business. This servant’s name was Malchus, Joh 18:10. But why did not Peter draw his sword upon Judas, rather than Malchus? Doubtless because Judas had concealed his purpose so well from the disciples, that Peter did not suspect him, nor understand the treacherous design of his kiss. Though this might seem a courageous action of Peter, it was really very imprudent; and had not Christ, by some secret influence, overawed their spirits, it is very probable that not only Peter, but the rest of the apostles, might have been cut to pieces. Accordingly, Jesus ordered him to sheath his sword, telling him that his unseasonable and imprudent defence might prove the occasion of his destruction; or rather, as Grotius interprets it, that there was no need of fighting in his defence, because God would punish the Jews for putting him to death. See Rev 13:10; where this very expression, they that take the sword shall perish with the sword, is used in predicting the destruction of the persecutors of true Christians. Christ told him, likewise, that his rash conduct implied both a distrust of the divine providence, which can always employ a variety of means for the safety of his servants, and gross ignorance of the Scriptures. Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father — Who heareth me always; and he shall give me more than twelve legions of angels — “The legion was a Roman military term, and as the band which now surrounded them was a Roman cohort, our Lord might make use of this term by way of contrast, to show what an inconsiderable thing the cohort was, in comparison of the force he could summon to his assistance; — more than twelve legions, not of soldiers, but of angels — Instead of twelve deserting, timorous disciples! How dreadfully irresistible would such an army of angels have been, when one of these celestial spirits was able to destroy 185,000 Assyrians at one stroke!
Read full note →
2Ki 19:35.” Peter, it must be observed, had not only wounded the ear of the high-priest’s servant, but had actually cut it off. Jesus, however, repaired this injury; He touched his ear and healed him, Luk 22:51; either putting the ear on again, which was cut off, or creating a new one in the place of it: or if he performed the cure in any other way, he equally demonstrated both his goodness and power; and it is surprising that such a miracle, done in such circumstances, made no impression on those that came to apprehend him, especially as he put them in mind, at the same time, of his other miracles. For,
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 vv47, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 73, 74, 75 The account of Jesus’ being betrayed by Judas is…
The account of Jesus’ being betrayed by Judas is recorded by all the evangelists. See Mar 14:43-52; Luk 22:47-53; Joh 18:2-12.
Mat 26:47
Read full note →
Judas, one of the twelve, came - This was done while Jesus was addressing his disciples.
John informs us that Judas knew the place, because Jesus was in the habit of going there with his disciples. Judas had passed the time, after he left Jesus and the other disciples at the Passover, in arranging matters with the Jews, collecting the band, and preparing to go. Perhaps, also, on this occasion they gave him the money which they had promised.
A great multitude with swords and staves - John says that he had received a band of men and officers from the chief priests and Pharisees.” Josephus says (Antiq. b. 20 chapter iv.) that at the festival of the Passover, when a great multitude of people came to observe the feast, lest there should be any disorder, a band of men was commanded to keep watch at the porches of the temple, to repress a tumult if any should be excited. This band, or guard, was at the disposal of the chief priests, Mat 27:65. It was composed of Roman soldiers, and was stationed chiefly at the tower of Antonia, at the northwest side of the temple. In addition to this, they had constant guards stationed around the temple, composed of Levites. The Roman soldiers were armed with “swords.” The other persons that went out carried, probably, whatever was accessible as a weapon. These were the persons sent by the priests to apprehend Jesus. Perhaps other desperate men might have joined them.
Staves - In the original, “wood;” used here in the plural number. It means rather “clubs” or “sticks” than spears. It does not mean “staves.” Probably it means any weapon at hand, such as a mob could conveniently collect. John says that they had “lanterns and torches.” The Passover was celebrated at the “full moon;” but this night might have been cloudy. The place to which they were going was also shaded with trees, and lights, therefore, might be necessary.
Mat 26:48
Gave them a sign - That is, told them of a way by which they might know whom to apprehend - to wit, by his kissing him.
It was night. Jesus was, besides, probably personally unknown to the “Romans” - perhaps to the others also. Judas, therefore, being well acquainted with him, to prevent the possibility of mistake, agreed to designate him by one of the tokens of friendship.
John tells us that Jesus, knowing all things that should come upon him, when they approached him, asked them whom they sought, and that they replied, Jesus of Nazareth. He then informed them that he was the person they sought. They, when they heard it, overawed by his presence and smitten with the consciousness of guilt, went backward and fell to the ground. He again asked them whom they sought. They made the same declaration - Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus then, since they professed to seek only Him, claimed the right that his disciples should be suffered to escape, “that the saying might be fulfilled which he spake Joh 18:9; Of them which thou gavest me have I lost none.”
Mat 26:49
Hail, Master - The word translated “hail,” here, means to “rejoice,” to have joy, and also to have “cause” of joy.
It thus expresses the “joy” which one friend has when he meets another, especially after an absence. It was used by the Jews and Greeks as a mode of salutation among friends. It would here seem to express the “joy” of Judas at finding his Master and again being “with him.”
Master - In the original, “Rabbi.” See the notes at Mat 23:7.
Kissed him - Gave him the common salutation of friends when meeting after absence. This mode of salutation was more common among Eastern nations than with us.
Mat 26:50
And Jesus said unto him, Friend - It seems strange to us that Jesus should give the endeared name “friend” to a man that he knew was his enemy, and that was about to betray him.
It should be remarked, however, that this is the fault of our language, not of the original. In the Greek there are two words which our translators have rendered “friend” - one implying “affection and regard,” the other not. One is properly rendered “friend;” the other expresses more nearly what we mean by “companion.” It is this “latter” word which is given to the disaffected laborer in the vineyard: “‘Friend,’ I do thee no wrong” Mat 20:13; to the guest which had not on the wedding-garment, in the parable of the marriage feast Mat 22:12; and to “Judas” in this place.
Wherefore art thou come? - This was said, not because he was ignorant why he had come, but probably to fill the mind of Judas with the consciousness of his crime, and by a striking question to compel him to think of what he was doing.
Mat 26:51
One of them which were with Jesus - John informs us that this was Peter.
The other evangelists concealed the name, probably because they wrote while Peter was living, and it might have endangered Peter to have it known.
And drew his sword - The apostles were not commonly armed. On this occasion they had provided “two swords,” Luk 22:38. In seasons of danger, when traveling, they were under a necessity of providing means of defending themselves against the robbers that infested the country. This will account for their having any swords in their possession. See the notes at Luk 10:30. Josephus informs us that the people were accustomed to carry swords under their garments as they went up to Jerusalem.
A servant of the high-priest - His name, John informs us, was “Malchus.” Luke adds that Jesus touched the ear and healed it, thus showing his benevolence to his foes when they sought his life, and giving them proof that they were attacking him that was sent from heaven.
Mat 26:52
Thy sword into his place - Into the sheath.
For all they that take the sword ... - This passage is capable of different significations.
1. They who resist by the sword the civil magistrate shall be punished; and it is dangerous, therefore, to oppose those who come with the authority of the civil ruler.
2. These men, Jews and Romans, who have taken the sword against the innocent, shall perish by the sword. God will take vengeance on them.
3. However, the most satisfactory interpretation is that which regards it as a caution to Peter. Peter was rash. Alone he had attacked the whole band. Jesus told him that his unseasonable and imprudent defense might be the occasion of his own destruction. In doing it he would endanger his life, for they who took the sword perished by it. This was probably a proverb, denoting that they who engaged in wars commonly perished there.
Mat 26:53
Thinkest thou ... - Jesus says that not only would Peter endanger himself, but his resistance implied a distrust of the protection of God, and was an improper resistance of his will.
If it had been proper that they should be rescued, God could easily have furnished far more efficient aid than that of Peter - a mighty host of angels.
Twelve legions - A legion was a division of the Roman army amounting to more than 6,000 men. See the notes at Mat 8:29. The number “twelve” was mentioned, perhaps, in reference to the number of his apostles and himself. Judas being away, but eleven disciples remained. God could guard him, and each disciple, with a legion of angels: that is, God could easily protect him, if he should pray to him, and if it was his will.
Mat 26:54
But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled ... - That is, the Scriptures which foretold of his dying for the world.
In some way that must be accomplished, and the time had come when, having finished the work which the Father gave him to do, it was proper that he should submit to death. This was said, doubtless, to comfort his disciples; to show them that his death was not a matter of surprise or disappointment to him; and that they, therefore, should not be offended and forsake him.
Mat 26:55
Against a thief - Rather a “robber.” This was the manner in which they would have sought to take a highwayman of desperate character, and armed to defend his life.
It adds not a little to the depth of his humiliation that he consented to be “hunted down” thus by wicked people, and to be treated as if he had been the worst of mankind.
Daily with you teaching in the temple - For many days before the Passover, as recorded in the previous chapter.
Mat 26:56
Scriptures of the prophets - The “writings” of the prophets, for that is the meaning of the word “scriptures.” He alludes to those parts of the prophetic writings which foretold his sufferings and death.
Then all the disciples ... - Overcome with fear when they saw their Master actually taken; alarmed with the terrific appearance of armed men and torches in a dark night, and forgetting their promises not to forsake him, they all left their Saviour to go alone to trial and to death! Alas, how many, when attachment to Christ would lead them to danger, leave him and flee! Mark adds that after the disciples had fled, a young man, having a linen cloth cast about his naked body, attempted to follow him. It is not known who he was, but not improbably he may have been the owner of the garden and a friend of Jesus. Aroused by the noise from his repose, he came to defend, or at least to follow the Saviour. He cast, in his hurry, such a covering as was at hand around his body, and came to him. The young men among the Romans and Jews attempted to seize him also, and he only secured his safety by leaving in their hands the covering that he had hastily thrown around him. It is not known why this circumstance was recorded by Mark, but it would seem to be probable that it was to mention him with honor, as showing his interest in the Saviour, and his willingness to aid him. See the notes at Mar 14:50-51. This circumstance may have been recorded for the purpose of honoring him by placing his conduct in strong contrast with that of the apostles, who had all forsaken the Saviour and fled.
Mat 26:57
The trial of our Lord before the council, and the denial of Peter happening at the same time, might be related one before the other, according to the evangelists’ pleasure.
Accordingly, Matthew and Mark relate the “trial” first, and Peter’s denial afterward; Luke mentions the denial first, and John has probably observed the natural order. The parallel places are recorded in Mark 14:53-72; Luke 22:54-71; and Joh 18:13-27.
To Caiaphas - John says that they led him first to Annas, the father-in-law of Caiaphas. This was done, probably as a mark of respect, he having been high priest, and perhaps distinguished for prudence, and capable of “advising” his son-in-law in a difficult case. The Saviour was “detained” there. probably, until the chief priests and elders were assembled.
The high priest - Note, Mat 26:3. John says he was high priest for that year. Annas had been high priest some years before. In the time of our Saviour the office was frequently changed by the civil ruler. This Caiaphas had prophesied that it was expedient that one should die for the people. See the notes at Joh 11:49-50.
The scribes and elders - The men composing the great council of the nation, or Sanhedrin, Mat 5:22. It is not probable that they could be immediately assembled, and some part of the transaction respecting the denial of Peter probably took place while they were collecting.
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 vv48, 49, 51, 52, 53, 55, 56, 57, 58, 60, 61, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 69, 71, 73, 75 Judas wished to give them a sign, because Jesus…
Judas wished to give them a sign, because Jesus had before been apprehended, and had escaped from them on account of their ignorance of his person; which on this occasion he could also have done, if such had been his pleasure. (St. John Chrysostom)
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 vv47, 57, 69
FIFTH SECTION
JESUS ON THE NIGHT OF HIS BETRAYAL: JESUS AND THE TRAITOR; JESUS AND THE DEFENDER; JESUS AND THE MULTITUDE; JESUS AND HIS DISCIPLES GENERALLY; OR THE GLORY OF JESUS IN THE NIGHTLY ASSAULT AND THE CONFUSION OF THE IMPRISONMENT.73
Read full note →
26:47–56
(Mar_14:43-52; Luk_22:47-53; Joh_18:1-11)
47And while he yet spake [was yet speaking, ἔτι αὐτοῦ λαλοῦντος], lo, Judas, one of the twelve, came, and with him a great multitude with swords and staves [clubs, ξύλων],74 from the chief priests and elders of the people. 48Now he that betrayed him gave them a sign, saying, Whomsoever [Whom, ὅν] I shall kiss, that same is he; hold him fast. 49And forthwith he came to Jesus, and said, Hail [χᾶρε], Master [Rabbi];75 and kissed him. 50And Jesus said unto him, Friend, wherefore art thou come? [do that for which thou art here!]76 Then came they, and laid hands on Jesus, and took him [held him fast, as in Mat_26:48]. 51And, behold, one of them which [that] were with Jesus stretched out his hand, and drew his sword, and struck a [the] servant77 of the high-priest, and smote off his ear. 52Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all 53they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.78 [Or, ἤ] Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently79 give me [place beside me, παραστήσει μοι]80 more than twelve legions of angels? 54But how then [How then, πῶς οὖν]81 shall [can] the Scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be? [fulfilled? For thus it mustbe.] 55In that same hour [in that hour, ἐν ἐκείνῃ τῇ ὥρᾳ] said Jesus to the multitudes, Are ye come out as against a thief [robber, λῃστήν]82 with swords and staves [clubs] for83 to take me? I sat daily with you teaching in the temple, and ye laid no hold on me. 56But all this was done, that the Scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled. Then all the disciples [the disciples all]84 forsook him, and fled.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Mat_26:47. Then came Judas.—He knew the spot, as being the place where Jesus often met His disciples, Joh_18:2. During the completion of the meal, the final discourses of Jesus, and His agony in Gethsemane, Judas went out into the night, and consummated the work of his villany. His impetuosity induced the Sanhedrin to rescind their resolution of not taking Jesus at the feast. This it was first necessary that they should decide upon, and then summon the temple-guard; after which the permission of the Roman governor was to be obtained, and the requisite military protection. Judas had reckoned upon all this delay, and had calculated that time enough would be allowed for Jesus to hare reached Gethsemane. But that the preparation which the high-priests in league with Judas appointed, was exaggerated and excessive, all the Evangelists agree. According to John, Judas brought the Roman cohort (σπεῖρα). Even if we do not understand this literally—as the one Roman cohort which was stationed in the Castle Antonia consisted of 500 men—yet we may assume that the disposable portion of that force, representing the cohort, was there. To these must be added, according to Luke, the temple-watch. Such a watch belonged to the temple, and was commanded by a στρατηγός, Act_4:1. The plural στρατηγοί (Luk_22:52), refers to the presence of other and subordinate officers. The torches also betray the excess of the preparation; although even the paschal full moon would not render these needless, when searching among the shady caverns of the gloomy valley of the Kedron.
One of the twelve.—The significance of this expression here rests upon this, that Judas no longer comes in the train of the disciples as a follower of Jesus, but at the head of the hostile multitude.
With him a great multitude.—The swords85 indicate that the Roman cohort (Joh_18:3) was the centre of this multitude: while the clubs, and so forth, indicate that the Jewish temple-watch, and other miscellaneous fanatics, were there also. According to Luk_22:52, there were also fanatical priests and elders who mingled in the procession,—a circumstance which Meyer refers to a later and incorrect enlargement of the tradition. But Luke appears to regard representatives of the Sanhedrin as requisite for such a religious capture as this was (see Act_4:1); and Meyer under-estimates the fanatical impulses of Jewish fanaticism.
With swords and olubs, from the high-priests.—Here we see the mingled religious and political relations. The Sanhedrin had the decision in all matters of spiritual jurisdiction. Thus it was for them to settle the question whether any one was a false prophet, and therefore worthy of stoning,—the appointed punishment of that crime. That question they had already settled in the affirmative some time before, having determined to put Jesus to death (Joh_11:47); although they found themselves wanting in grounds of action, which therefore they endeavored by cunning to obtain from Himself, but failed. The right of putting offenders to death had been taken from them by the Roman government (Joh_18:31); hence the Roman crucifixion was afterward substituted for the Jewish stoning. Thus their undertaking was, on the whole, a daring experiment of wickedness. They were as yet without false witnesses and without grounds of accusation; they had not the thorough consent of Pilate; and they must silence and win over, by some sudden stimulant, the common people. On this account they aimed to give the capture, in which the Roman soldiers were at their disposal, a spurious character of importance; their excessive preparation would have the effect of creating the presumption that Jesus must be a very great criminal.
Mat_26:48. Gave them a sign.—Meyer: “The ἔδωκεν is commonly, but improperly, regarded as having a pluperfect sense. The Vulgate has it right, dedit. As he came he gave them a sign.” [So also Alford].—Whom I shall kiss.—The kiss was among the ancients a sign of affectionate and cordial intimacy, and particularly a token of fidelity, Gen_29:11. More commonly, the teachers kissed their pupils; but examples of the converse are not wanting. Lightfoot, Horœ, p. 484. It is doubtful whether the kiss of reverent submission (Psa_2:12) was impressed on the lips: probably on the hands or the feet.
Hold Him fast, seize Him.—We take the κρατήσατ εαὐ τόν as emphatic. Possibly there was a touch of irony in the language of the archtraitor, who expected that Jesus might in a magical manner elude them after all. For the darkened mind of Judas had now come to regard Him as a magician.
Mat_26:49. And forthwith he came.—Excited, but also dissembling. He pretended that he did not belong to the procession of enemies, that he would precede them, point out the danger, and separate from his Master with sorrow.—Kissed Him.—The κατεφίλησεν must be understood in all its emphasis, to kiss very tenderly, to caress. Comp. Xenoph Mem. 2:6, 33; Luk_7:38; Luk_7:45; Act_20:37. Meyer: “The sign was the simple kissing; but the performance was more emphatic, a caressing, corresponding with the purpose of Judas to make sure, and with the excitement of his feelings.” The kiss of Joab, 2Sa_20:9 (comp. 2Sa_3:27). “The early Christians, who kissed each other at the Lord’s Supper, did it as appropriate to the time when the sufferings of Christ were remembered; they did not thereby intend to express their abhorrence of Judas’ kiss.” Heubner.
Mat_26:50. Friend, ἑταῖρε.—Comp. Mat_20:13 [and Crit. Note No. 4, p. 352.]
[Why did the Lord call Judas friend—a term of civility, though not necessarily of friendship—and not a villain, or a traitor, and why did He not turn away, in holy indignation, from this Judas-kiss, the vilest, the most abominable piece of hypocrisy known in history, which the infernal inspirer of treason alone could invent? To give us an example of the utmost meekness and gentleness under the greatest provocation, surpassing even the standard which He holds up for His disciples, Mat_5:39. If the face of the Saviour was not disgraced by the traitor’s kiss, no amount of injury and insult heaped upon His followers by the enemies of religion can really dishonor the former, but falls back with double effect upon the latter. At the same time the words ἐφ ̓ ὄ πάρει, whether they be taken as a question, or as an exclamation, or as an elliptical assertion or command—together with the question recorded by Luke: “Betrayest thou the Son of Man with a kiss?” conveyed a most stinging rebuke to Judas, whose force was doubled by the use of the word friend, and the deep emotion and holy sadness with which they were uttered. The effect appears from the subsequent despair of Judas.—P. S.]
Do that for which thou art here!86 [Authorized Version: Wherefore art thou come?—Meyer: “Since the relative ὅς (ἐφ̓ ὅ πάρει) is never used in direct question, but only in indirect, the common acceptation of this as a question is not correct; and it is quite groundless (Winer, 192) to assume a corruption in the declining Greek in relation to ὅς. Fritzsche explains it as an appeal ad qualem rem perpetrandam ades! But the Greek would require this also to take the form of a question. The words are broken off with an aposiopesis: Friend, that for which thou art here come—do! Jesus thereby denounces the traitorous kiss.”—Ewald: “I need not thy kiss; I know that thou meanest it in hypocrisy; do rather that which is thy business.” Similarly Euthym. Zigab. This would certainly accord with the declining of the kiss in Luke: Betrayest thou the Son of Man with a kiss? But, in this case, it is better to assume that it is a concise form only: τοῦτο πρᾶττε, ἐφ̓ δ̀ πάρει. Or: παρέστω, ἐφ̓ ὅ πάρει. By the Lord’s going out to meet the watch, the hypocritical play of Judas was interrupted. John alone relates the falling to the ground on the part of the multitude. But Jesus hastened to meet the multitude, in order to protect, not only the three, but also the other disciples on the outside of the garden.
Mat_26:51. And, behold, one of them.—When the evangelical tradition first assumed shape and form, prudence required that the name of Peter should not be publicly mentioned. Hence the indefinite expression in the Synoptists. But this necessity did not exist when John wrote his Gospel: therefore he gives the name. The same remark applies to the omission of the raising of Lazarus in Bethany, which the Synoptists may have had good reasons for ignoring, but not John who wrote so much later.
Drew his sword.—When he saw that they laid sands on the Lord. According to Luke, the question was first asked from among the disciples, Lord, shall we smite with the sword? (On the two swords, compare Luke.) Immediately thereupon followed the blow of Peter’s sword; and it struck the servant of the high-priest, called Malchus, according to John. He had cut off his right ear: Matthew and Mark, τὸ ὠτίον; but Luke, τὸ οὖς, the ear itself, and not merely the lobe. It seemed that he would have split his head. The separation of the ear must have been not quite perfect; and Jesus healed the servant, according to the narrative of Luke the physician. Meyer, following Strauss, attributes this healing to a later tradition. The other Evangelists, however, appear to have regarded this healing as self-understood; as, otherwise, Peter would have remained a criminal, and the mutilation of Malchus would have furnished good ground of an accusation, which, however, was not preferred.
Mat_26:52. Put up again thy sword into its place.—The sheath, Joh_18:11. Peter, therefore, still stood there with his drawn and brandished sword in his hand.—For all they that take the sword.—This is a judicial sentence, but also a threatening warning. In the former light, it rests upon an absolutely universal principle. The sword is visited by the sword in war; the sword of retribution opposes the arbitrary sword of rebellious sedition; and the sword taken up unspiritually in a spiritual cause, is avenged by the certain, though perhaps long-delayed, sword of historical vengeance. Peter was, in all these three aspects, in a bad position, and the representative of wrong. The warrior exposed himself to the superior force of the legions of Rome, the rebel to the order of the magistrate, and the abuse of the sword in the service of religion provoked, and seemed to justify, the same abuse on the part of the world. Peter had really forfeited his life to the sword; but the Lord rectified his wounded position by the correcting word which He spoke, by the miraculous healing of the ear, and by the voluntary surrender of Himself to the authorities. But Peter had not only with wilful folly entered on the domain of this world, he had also brought his Master’s cause into suspicion. Indeed, he sought to bring his fellow-disciples, and his Lord Himself, into this wrong position, and to make his own Christ a Mohammed. Therefore the Lord so solemnly denounced his act, pronounced an ideal sentence of death upon his head, which, however, was graciously repealed. The Lord’s word from that hour became a maxim of Christianity (comp. Rev_13:10); and it was probably spoken to Peter with a typical significance. Even the Church of Rome says: ecclesia non sitit sanguinem, but only to have recourse to the stake and faggot, of which certainly the letter of this passage says nothing.
[Shall perish.—Alford: “ἐν μαχαίρῃ ἀπολῦται is a command; not merely a future, but an imperative future; a repetition by the Lord in this solemn moment of Gen_9:6. See the parallel in Rev_13:10 : δεῖ αὐτὸν ἐν μαχ. ἀποκτανθῆναι. This should be thought of by those well-meaning but shallow per sons, who seek to abolish the punishment of death in Christian states.” Comp. also Rom_13:4. Thus the passage justifies capital punishment as a measure of just retribution for murder in the hands of the civil magistrate, but condemns at the same time the resort to all carnal and violent measures on the part of the Church, which is a spiritual body, and should only use spiritual weapons. Comp. 2Co_10:3-4. Rome agrees in theory (Ecclesia non sitit sanguinem), but violates it in practice by handing the heretics, wherever she has the power, to the state for execution, and thus using the civil magistrate as an instrument. Quod quis per alium facit, id ipse fecisse dicitur.—P. S.]
Mat_26:53. Or thinkest thou?—If Christ had refused to take the way of the passion, He might have adopted quite another way than that of wilful and violent opposition to the world: the way, namely, of coming to judgment upon it. Thinkest thou not that, if I did not desire to be a long-suffering Redeemer, I might at once appear to the whole world as its supreme Judge, rather than enter upon thy hypocritical way of half-spirituality and half-worldliness, half-patience and half-violence, of civilization with a sword in its hand? For, the twelve legions of angels which He might have prayed for, doubtless signified that multitude of angels which will actually attend Him when He returns to judgment (Mat_25:31). If the Church of the Middle Ages had not the courage to achieve the evangelization of the world in the way of Christ’s passion, she should have had faith to supplicate for the last day to come; but she did wrong to make Christ another Mohammed, and to continue His work by a hypocritical mixture of religious preaching and carnal violence. Meyer: “The number twelve corresponds to the number of the Apostles, because it was one of those who had just endeavored to defend Him.” But it is also and always the number of the developed perfection of life. The legion is the symbol of a great fighting host. Schaaf, Alterthumskunde: “By legio (a legendo) was originally understood the aggregate of the Roman military collected for war. When that force increased, it became a great division of the host, which contained, at various times, from 2400 to beyond 6000 infantry, and from 300 to 400 horsemen. Since the time of Marius, the legion had reached more than 6000.”—It is well worthy of notice that Christ here numbers the angels by legions, as the counterpart of the Roman power, now leagued against Him with His enemies.
Mat_26:54. How then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled? for, etc.—Meyer: “We must not supply λέγουσαι before ὅτι (Beza, Maldonatus, and others); but there must be a question after γραφαί, and ὅτι is for. For thus (in no other way) must it (that which now befalls Me) be.” Thus there are two reasons: 1. The fulfilment of the Scripture concerning the suffering Messiah: Psalms 22; Isaiah 53; Dan_9:26 Zec_13:7. 2. The counsel of God Himself for the salvation of a sinful world, which is the foundation of all the prophetical Scriptures.
Mat_26:55. In that hour said Jesus to the multitudes.—According to Luke, especially to the rulers and the guard of the temple, which Meyer vainly seeks to set aside.—Starke: “Jesus did not say this before he had been seized and bound. He would give no indication that He was not willing to be taken; and therefore not till after they had done their will did He rebuke their injustice.”—In the temple;—that is, in the forecourt of the temple. In this space the Rabbins placed a synagogue (comp. Luk_2:46). Here also was to be sought Solomon’s porch (Joh_10:23; Act_3:11), with other halls—the region of teaching and preaching.—And ye laid no hold on Me.—Certainly, because they durst not; but that exhibits their surprise by night as the work of evil conscience and malignity.
Mat_26:56. But all this is done that the Scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled.—Luke: “But this is your hour, and the power of darkness.” The one supplements the other. Of this hour of darkness, and of the seeming triumph of evil, all the prophets prophesied: Isaiah 53; Dan_9:26, etc. The supposition of Erasmus, de Wette, and others, that this last word in Matthew was a remark of the Evangelist, takes off the point of our Lord’s address, as Meyer rightly observes. It was this last word which indicated His settled purpose to take the path of death. Hence it also gave occasion for the flight of the disciples. Their courage now failed them, and they fled. The flight, however, was not absolute, as appears from the narrative of the young man in Mar_14:51, and the conduct of Peter and John, according to Joh_18:15. They followed Him, but afar off. In reality, the scattering and flight was complete. [But while the eleven forsook the Lord, other disciples, as Nicodemus, and Joseph of Arimathea, took a more decided stand for Him. The Church can never fail; new Christians always take the place of the old ones. Comp. Lange’s notes on Mar_14:51-52.—P. S.]
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. The Kiss of Judas.—Its dark history in the world and the Church. This combination, the betrayal and the kiss of respect in one, could have been invented by no man, least of all by the soul of an Evangelist. He only who executed it could have devised it; or, rather, hell alone.
2. This wild combination of enemies—soldiers, temple-servants, and priests—for the accomplishment of an act of hypocritical violence against Christ, is also a typical world-historical scene.87 Not less so is the surprise and capture of the Holy One in His Holiest of All, under the pretext of serving the sanctuary.
3. Peter showed by his first stroke that he was no soldier; happily he had missed his blow. That it was the ear of Malchus which he struck, is very significant. It has always been the ear, the spiritual hearing, and willing susceptibility, which carnal defenders of Christ’s cause have taken away from their opponents, when they have had recourse to the sword of violence.
4. They who take the Sword shall perish by the Sword.—That this was said to Peter, had its typical historical meaning. “The early Christians, amidst all the slanders heaped upon them, were never charged with having risen in insurrection against their Gentile oppressors. Comp. Tertull. Apol. cap. 37. Luther (in the peasant insurrection) quoted this passage against the peasants. Duels also are by this sentence absolutely forbidden. The punishment of death for certain offences is clearly enjoined. See Rothe’s Ethik, iii. 877.” Heubner. How far a Christian state may be justified in giving this punishment another form, may be matter of reasonable question. In its essential significance the death penalty is an inalienable legal ordinance, but the form of social death and its execution has been in many ways subject to modification.
5. Thinkest thou that I cannot.—Christ rejects once for all that unholy and disturbing mixture of judgment and salvation into which carnal zeal is so much disposed to turn His cause. What He here says applies to every moment in the history of Christianity. If it were God’s will that at any time (before the end) the economy of grace, effectual through the sacred cross, should be suspended, at that moment the infinite preponderance of heavenly forces over the violence of the enemy of earth would at once be exhibited. But then the work of salvation would be broken off before its consummation. This no man should ever think of. Whenever men act on this principle, they tempt God, and summon such powers against the cause of evil as prove themselves to be, not angels of light, but disguised powers of darkness; and the enmity which these exhibit against the cause of evil is only apparent. Of such carnal violence against conscience we must distinguish educational legal discipline within the Church, as we must distinguish also between theocracy and hierarchy.
6. The assurance of Christ to those who came against Him with weapons in the night,—that He had been ready to give them an account in broad day,—has also a symbolical meaning for all ages. The persecutions of the faithful are always stamped with the mark of calumny.
7. The last word of Christ is the expression of His consummate preparation for His passion. Therefore it is the crisis when the disciples, not yet mature in faith, forsook Him. Old Testament martyrdom had in it some affinity with the self-sacrifice of a hero in battle: they hoped for the speedy triumph of the theocracy. The New Testament martyr must, in the patience of the saints (Rev_13:10; Rev_14:12), tarry for the manifestation of victory until the last day. For this the disciples were not ripe: they had not the joyful testimony of victory within their own spirits. This New Testament martyrdom could flourish only after the blood of Christ was shed.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
The betrayal.—The first betrayal as the germ of the second.—Jesus and His company in the hour of betrayal.—An old and always new event, and yet an event standing alone.—No place upon earth is a perfectly secure refuge for the Church: God alone is that. (Luther sung: “A tower of strength our God is still,” but many sing: “A tower of strength our Church is still.”)88—Gethsemane: 1. Consecrated by Christ’s prayer; 2. desecrated by the betrayal; 3. for ever consecrated by the voluntary resignation of Jesus.—The temple dishonored in the name of the temple.—Judas, having left the company of the Twelve, now at the head of Christ’s enemies: a fearful image of a deep apostasy.—The sign of treachery, the self-condemnation of the traitor: 1. As the hypocritical sign of his acquaintance, of his discipleship, of his apostolical vocation; 2. as the token of his apostasy, of his ingratitude, of his reprobation.—The kiss of Judas, the most cunning and the maddest imagination of hell.—The serpent’s bite in its historical consummation and spiritual meaning: 1. Consummated in the connection of hellish betrayal with the sign of heavenly honor (Psa_2:12); 2. the sign of all treason against all faith and fidelity, taken from the sign of love and confidence.—Supreme cunning, one with supreme infatuation (stupidity).—Friend, wherefore art thou here; or, the counter-greeting of Christ to the traitor: 1. Infinitely gentle (although “friend” in Greek was no more than “companion”):89 a mild allusion to his ingratitude. 2. Infinitely earnest and severe: Take the mask away! Stand forth as thou art! 3. Infinitely effectual: the subsequent despair of Judas.—How different, although related, the kiss of Judas and the sword-stroke of Peter!—The unholy use of the sword, and all the acts of spiritual violence do but dull the spiritual ear in their false zeal.—Christ between His friends and His enemies: oppressed by both, righteous to both.—The decree of the Lord, “All who take the sword,” etc.: 1. A decisive action (the perfect action of perfect suffering); 2. a sacred principle; 3. a prediction scarcely half-fulfilled.—The connection between Peter’s smiting with the sword and his denial: 1. Presumption, despondency; 2. wounded conscience, anxiety (Joh_18:26, Malchus’ relation); 3. his misinterpretation of the word: “He that taketh the sword shall perish by the sword;” as if it were to be at once literally fulfilled.—Christ enters upon the path of His passion in the full consciousness of His heavenly glory (Thinkest thou that I could not?)—Not weakness restrains the judgment upon the wicked, but only the divine compassion.—One of the deadliest evils to Christ’s cause is the intermixture of gospel and judgment in carnal zeal for the advantage of the Church: it makes both the gospel mercy and the judicial severity matter of contempt and scorn.—The protest of the Lord against the cunning violence of the assault, an eternal protest of the spirit of truth.—The cunning violence of the enemies of the truth condemns itself: 1. The violence and force condemns the cunning; 2. the cunning condemns the force.—Swords and staves mixed, and both lost: the honor of the sword, of the State; the dignity of the staff, of the Church.—The Scriptures of the prophets concerning Christ taken and bound.—Christ’s peace in the great word that the dark hour of uttermost darkness was perfectly in accordance with the word and will of God.—The flight of the disciples at the end of their human enthusiasm was their guilt, and yet mercifully they were delivered from its consequences by their Lord’s protection.—Christ the great Martyr, the Founder of New Testament martyrdom.
Starke:—Wickedness is often stupid and shameless. The wicked* are bold, Mat_7:22.—Zeisius: The Lord abhors the bloody and deceitful man, Psa_5:6.—Psa_2:12, the kiss of genuine homage and love.—Quesnel: The world is full of deceitful courtesies and flatteries.—Everywhere we should be able to answer the question: Wherefore art thou come?—Osiander: When Christians are bound and put in prison without any guilt of their own, they should reckon it no disgrace, but rather the highest honor.—Even among the saints is much lust of revenge, Rom_12:19.—Provocation to anger and vengeance the most deadly temptations of Satan in the time of external tribulation.—Young and rash preachers are too apt to brandish Peter’s sword, before they have learned to use the sword of the Spirit90.—But when our carnal zeal smites wrongly, the injury is done to the ear, which should hear the word of God.—Canstein: God rules the sins and infirmities of His people in such a way, that they cannot do more evil than He has decreed to permit, Rom_13:4.—Luther: They take the sword who use it without orderly authority. They have fallen under the judgment of the sword, although repentance may prevent the execution of the decree. Thus Christ approves a right use of the sword.—Rambach: Peter says (1 Eph_4:15): “Let no man suffer as a murderer or as an evildoer,” probably with allusion to this very event. If he had cut off the servant’s head, he would have fallen under the condemnation of the law as a murderer, and then could never have died as a martyr.—1Pe_2:13 : No man must oppose lawful authority.—Hedinger: Christ’s kingdom needs no sword; suffering and praying are the best weapons.—Cramer: The seditious go never unpunished, 2Ki_9:31; 2Sa_18:14.—The angels of Dan_7:10; Heb_1:14.—That all the angels of God serve the Saviour, a great consolation for God’s children.—Canstein: When God suffers His people to be overcome in external trouble, that is no sign of His weakness, but that these sufferings are decreed for His own glory and His people’s good.—Nova Bibl. Tub.: The weapons of the false Church are swords and staves, external violence.—True Christians never shun the light: their words and deeds are manifest.—The heart, Jer_17:9-10, with reference to Peter.
Braune:—Jesus’ suffering His greatest deed.—Gerlach: The sword out of its sheath is not in its place, except when it is subserving the wrath of God.
Lisco:—The sad fall of Judas should be a warning to every one not to indulge a vain reliance in the mere external fellowship of Christ.
Heubner:—The frightful transformation of Judas.—Judas at their head.—A studied dishonor to the Lord,—that they should come with so great a multitude.—Jesus, taken and suffering in the night, atones for the sins which are done in the night.—There is always a Judas-kiss among us (insincerity of profession, in office, in sacramental pledges, in the holy communion).—Jesus endures still the kiss of many false members of His Church.—Jesus, according to Luk_22:48, names his name: Judah! Thou art named confessor, and art become a traitor.—This Bound One is the Captain of God’s host, the Leader of all mankind.—Jesus is free even in His bonds.—Peter not yet free from revenge and ambition.—How often must the Lord repair what the rashness and folly of His disciples have done amiss!—He who has full faith in God, his Father, sees himself without amazement surrounded by enemies; invisible defenders are around him, and the Almighty is his help.—Look on all sufferings as the Lord’s good pleasure; so will all their bitterness be gone.—Wrong for ever shuns the light.—Goodness can always appeal to its open, frank, and known behavior before the world.—The forsaken Jesus is the atonement of our unfaith-fulness.—He knows what the forsaken feel.
Kapff:—What we may learn from Jesus when taken captive: 1. Courage and strength; 2. humility and submission to the will of God; 3. meekness and love for our enemies.—Brandt: Because Adam would not be bound by God’s commandment and his own obedience, Christ must be bound by human bonds.—Grammlich: Christ’s fettered hands tear away the bonds of our death.
[Burkitt:—None sin with so much impudence and obstinacy, as apostates.—There is so much hypocrisy in many, and so much corruption in all, that we must not be too confident. Peter’s heart was sincere, but his head rash in drawing the sword.—God’s intentions are no warrant for irregular actions.—Christ will thank no man to fight for Him without a warrant and commission from Him.—Christ was more concerned for our salvation than for His own temporal preservation.—Had He been rescued by the power of angels, we would have fallen into the paw of devils. Matthew Henry:—Many betray Christ with a kiss, and Hail, Master, who, under pretence of doing Him honor, betray and undermine the interests of His kingdom.—Mel in ore, fel in corde—Honey in the mouth, gall in the heart.—Καταφιλεῖν οὐκ ἐστιφιλεῖν—To embrace is one thing, to love another.—Jacob’s kiss and Judas’s kiss were much alike.—Religio cogi non potest, et defendenda non occidendo, sed moriendo. [From Lactantius: Institutiones div. Similar remarks might be quoted from Tertullian’s Apologeticus, and other ante-Nicene writers, who opposed religious persecution and claimed toleration as an inalienable right of conscience.—P. S.] Men hasten and increase their own troubles by blustering, bloody methods of self-defence.—Persecutors are paid in their own coin, Rev_13:10.—God has no need of us, of our services, much less of our sins, to bring about His purposes; and it argues our distrust and disbelief of the power of Christ, when we go out of the way of our duty to serve His interests.—There is an innumerable company of angels, Heb_12:22. (Twelve legions=above seventy-two thousand, and yet a mere detachment which would not be missed in heaven.)—Let God’s word be fulfilled and His will be done, whatever may become of us.—The Scriptures are fulfilling every day.—What folly, to flee, for fear of death, from Him who is the fountain of life! Lord, what is man!—Christ, as the Saviour of souls, stood alone; as He needed not, so He had not the assistance of any other. He trod the wine-press alone, and when there was none to uphold, then His own arm wrought salvation, Isa_63:3; Isa_63:5.—P. S.]
Footnotes:
[73]All these significant headings are omitted in the Edinb. trsl.—P. S.]
[74]Mat_26:47.—[The Vulgate translates μετὰ μαχαιρῶν καὶ ξύλων: cum gladiis et fustibus; Lange: mit Schwertern und mit Keulen; other German Versions: Stangen, or Knitteln, or Prügeln; staves was introduced by Tyndale, and retained in the subsequent English Version, except that of Rheims, which renders ξύλα: clubs. Staff is the proper translation for ῥάβδους in Mat_10:10; Mar_6:8; but the Authorized Version renders ξύλα and ῥάβδους alike. Comp. Mat_26:55; Luk_22:52. John mentions also lantern and torches, to search perhaps in the secret parts of the garden and the dark caverns of the valley of the Kedron.—P. S.]
[75]Mat_26:49.—[The colder and more formal Rabbi ought be retained here and in Mat_26:25 in the translation, as Matthew retained it from the Hebrew for διδάσκαλε, and as the English Version itself did in Mat_23:7-8.—P. S.]
[76]Mat_26:50.—[The words: ἐφ̓ ὅ πάρει, are generally understood as a question and so punctuated in most editions; but Fritzsche takes them as an exclamation: For what (dreadful deed) art thou here! Meyer, Ewald, Lange, as an elliptical command, as to say: Away with your hypocritical kiss; do rather that for which thou art here! See the Exeg. Notes. But the ellipsis might also be supplied by an οἶδα: I know for what thou art here.—P. S.]
[77]Mat_26:51.—[Τὸν δοῦλον, the well known servant, viz., Malchus, Joh_18:10. Comp. Mar_14:47, where the English Version likewise substitute’s the indefinite article.—P. S.]
[78]Mat_26:52.—Some uncial Codd. read άποθανοῦνται [for ἀπολοῦνται].
[79]Mat_26:53.—[Presently should be omitted, as it arose from confounding two readings in the text, some authorities placing ἅρτι, now, after παραστήσει, others after δύναμαι, but none repeating it. Cranmer’s Bible first put now (over now) after both verbs, while Tyndale, the Genevan Bible, and the Bishops’ Bible have it only after cannot, and the Rheims N. T. (following the Vulgate) after give me. King James revisers substituted presently for the second now.— P. S.]
[80]Mat_26:53.—[Or: cause to stand by, as the Bishops’ Bible literally renders παραστήσει, and Scrivener commends Conant prefers “send” with Coverdale. Campbell: “send to my relief.”—P. S.]
[81]Mat_26:54.—[But is an insertion to make the connection plainer, or it was supposed to be implied in οῦ̓ν. But the meaning is: Considering then that God could place such a mighty force at My disposal, how is it possible, etc.—P. S.]
[82]Mat_26:55.—[Not: κλέπτης, which is expressly distinguished from λῃστής in Joh_10:1; Joh_10:8. Comp. Mat_21:13, and note. Scrivener; “All these precautions would be futile against a petty thief, though very proper against a bandit, such as Barnabas for example.”—P. S.]
[83]Mat_26:55.—[For before the infinitive is obsolete and should be omitted in a revised translation—P. S.]
[84]Mat_26:56.—[This is the emphatic form of the Greek: οἱ μαθηταὶ πάντες, and so rendered by Conant and others.— P. S.]
[85][Not: these words, as the Edinb. edition reads.—P. S.]
[86]So Lange: “Freund! (nur das) wozu du da bist! Similarly Ewald: “Freund, das wozu du da bist! But Luther, de Wette, and other German Versions, agree with the English in taking the phrase as a question.—P. S.]
[87][Not: symbolical, as the Edinb. trsl. reads. In German: ein tupisches weltnistorisches Bild, i.e., an event of typical significance which is frequently repeated and fulfill ed in history.—P. S.]
[88][Dr. Lange alludes, of course, to the famous hymn of Luther: Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott (based upon Psalms 46 and composed 1529), which may be called the spiritual [illegible]r-song of the Reformation, and which has been very often translated into English, by Thomas Carlyle, Mills, Cath. Winkworth. Bunting, and others. It is omitted in the Edinb. edition, together with a number of homiletical hints in this section.—P. S.]
[89][Comp. note 4 on p. 352.—P. S.]
[90][The Edinb. edition has godly,—no doubt typograpical error for godless.—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 vv47, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 73, 74, 75 § 132. — APPREHENSION OF JESUS, Mat_26:47-56.
§ 132. — APPREHENSION OF JESUS, Mat_26:47-56.
While the solemn scenes of the Last Supper and of Gethsemane are transpiring, a very different business is going on between Judas and the Jewish authorities. The armed band is furnished; he knows the customary place of Jesus and his twelve; and now, lo! he comes. To show that he truly lays down his life with full power to retain it, our Lord for a moment by divine power overwhelms his assailants. (See Joh_18:4-9.) He meets with cutting rebuke the treacherous kiss of the betrayer. He arrests the sword of Peter and heals the wound it inflicted. He reproves the shamefulness of their armed band, and declares that he submits only to the divine necessity of fulfilling the prophetic Scripture. His disciples flee; the evangelist Mark is all but apprehended. (Mar_14:51.) The Saviour then is in the hands and at the mercy of his enemies.
Read full note →
47. Lo, Judas — The deed by which his name is forever a term of abhorrence is now in course of completion. Staves — The plural of staff. They were nearer canes than clubs. Although it was full moon, they came, as John informs us, with torches and lanterns. Judas led the way, going before them. Luk_22:47.
With him a great multitude — By what authority was Jesus now arrested? and of whom or what did this multitude consist?
To the first question we may answer, that in Judea there was an inferior native or Jewish government, under the dominion of the Roman government. Of the Jewish government the chief magistrate was the high priest. The legislative authority resided in the Sanhedrim. It was by the Jewish authority, or at least at their prosecution, that our Lord is now arrested and taken before their high priest, to answer for offence against the Jewish law.
The multitude who apprehended Jesus were of the following four classes:
1. The band, (Joh_18:3,) being a detachment from the garrison of five hundred Roman soldiers, who, in the fortress of Antonia, overlooking the temple, kept the Jews in awe. A detachment was ever ready to be sent when the commander was informed that a disturber needed to be taken in custody. So that thus much Jesus was apprehended by the loan of a Roman body.
2. The captains of the temple, (Luk_22:52,) who came, doubtless, attended by their guard or police, men who kept order at the temple.
3. Several of the Jewish dignitaries attended to see the work carefully done; namely, (Mat_26:47,) chief priests, zealous Pharisees, and elders. 4. Servants of these dignitaries, (Joh_18:18,) both private and official, like Malchus. Our Lord was thus arrested by the Jewish authority, partly using Roman instrumentality.
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 vv47, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 61, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 73 47–56. The Arrest of Jesus
47–56. The Arrest of Jesus
St Mar_14:43-50; St Luk_22:47-53; St Joh_18:3-11
Read full note →
47. a great multitude with swords and staves] St John more definitely, “having received a (strictly, the) band (of men) and officers from the chief priests and Pharisees” (Mat_18:3). The band of men here = the company of Roman soldiers, placed at the service of the Sanhedrin by the Procurator. The same word is used Act_10:1; Act_21:32; Act_27:1. St Luke names the “captains of the temple” (Luk_22:52). Hence the body, guided by Judas, consisted of (1) a company (speira) of Roman soldiers; (2) a detachment of the Levitical temple-guard (Luke); (3) certain members of the Sanhedrin and Pharisees.
with swords and staves] St John has “with lanterns and torches and weapons.” Staves, rather, clubs; different from the travellers’ “staves” of ch. Mat_10:10, where another Greek word is used.
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 vv47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 72, 73, 74, 75 (47) A great multitude with swords and staves.—St. John’s…
(47) A great multitude with swords and staves.—St. John’s account (Joh_18:3) is fuller. The multitude included (1) the band (not “a band,” as in the Authorised version), i.e., the cohort (the same word as in Act_10:1) of Roman soldiers sent by Pilate to prevent a tumult. These probably were armed with swords; (2) the officers of the chief-priests, probably the Levites or Nethinim, who were the guards of the Temple, armed with “staves” or “clubs.” He adds, also, what lay in the nature of the case, that they were provided with “lanterns and torches” as well as weapons. It was now near the hour of dawn, but they must have left the city while there was at best only moonlight to guide them. They bent their steps to Gethsemane, as that was known to Judas as one at least of our Lord’s chosen resorts (Joh_18:2), in which, we may well believe, He had spent some hours of each of the four preceding nights.
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 vv47–75 Vers. 47-56. Betrayal and apprehension of Jesus. (Mar_14:43-52 Luk…
Vers. 47-56. Betrayal and apprehension of Jesus. (Mar_14:43-52 Luk 22:47-53Jo Luk_18:2-11)
Judas, one of the twelve. So called by all the synoptists, as if to enhance his guilt one of Christ"s own familiar friends, who had eaten bread with him. Came. St. Luke tells us that he led the way to Gethsemane. He well knew the place as a favourite resort of Christ; (Joh_18:2) he knew, too, that Jesus was alone there with his apostles, and he had gone with confidence to inform the authorities where they could find him, and to demand a force sufficient to make the arrest. A great multitude. Consisting of some of the Levitical guard, Roman soldiers, Sanhedrists, and elders. The soldiers carried swords, the fanatical herd bore staves, to overcome any opposition which, after the demonstration at the triumphal entry, might be naturally expected. St. John adds that they brought with them lanterns and torches in order to search the recesses of the grove, should Christ have hidden himself there.
Read full note →
Vers. 47-56. The apprehension of our Lord.
I THE BETRAYAL.
1. The approach of Judas. The three evangelists describe him as "one of the twelve." They add this description, not for the sake of accurate identification, for his treachery had been already mentioned, but to set forth the blackness of his guilt. Holy Scripture commonly uses a certain stern simplicity in speaking of great offences. There is a depth of meaning in those few simple words, "one of the twelve." He was the most conspicuous person among the advancing group; his sin was the deadliest. He knew the perfect holiness of the blessed Master; he had been admitted into his friendship; he had listened to his words of heavenly wisdom, and seen his works of almighty power and love; he had lived for two years and more in the immediate presence of that life of wondrous purity and beauty. And now be is to teach us the solemn lesson that the heart of man is indeed deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; that it can continue hard and selfish and impenitent in spite of the greatest possible religious privileges. He came, and with him a great multitude Roman soldiers, officers of the temple, servants of the chief priests. It may be they feared resistance from the Galilaeans or other adherents of the Lord; it may be they feared him. Many of them had heard of his miracles; Judas knew that he had stilled the tempest, that he had raised the dead. He trusted, it seems, to numbers, to earthly weapons. Strange folly, almost incredible in one who had known so much of Christ; but he was blinded by Satan, to whom he had sold himself.
2. The traitors kiss. He gave them a sign. The Roman soldiers, perhaps others also, did not know the Person of the Lord. The sign was to be a kiss. The traitor had known the Lord intimately; he had been, it seems, on the same footing of affectionate friendship with him as the rest of the twelve. He would kiss him now for the last time; but that last kiss would be, not the kiss of peace, but the deadly breath of hellish treachery, the cold, wicked kiss of hypocrisy the kiss of death. He came; he said, "Hail, Master!" and he dared to pollute the face of the Lord with his unholy kiss. He kissed him. The Greek word seems to imply that he did it with an affectation of earnestness, with much warmth of manner, perhaps out of excitement, perhaps in fear; perhaps he thought, in his madness and folly, that he might be able to conceal his sin. Christ and the apostles might think that he was coming simply to join them, and might not discover his connection with the band that followed. But the Lord went forth, "knowing all things that should come upon him." He knew the evil heart of Judas. "Companion," he said he could not call him "friend;" and the Greek word has something of sternness in it, as in Mat_20:13 and Mat_22:12 it this for which thou art come?" "Judas, betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss?" He showed his Divine knowledge; he showed his almighty power. At the words, "I am he," "they went backward, and fell to the ground." But then he meekly yielded himself to suffer and to die. One word of wrath would have swept his assailants into utter death. He would not speak it; for he came to lay down his life for his sheep. "Then came they, and laid hands on Jesus, and took him.
II THE SWORD OF PETER.
1. The blow. Two of the disciples were armed with swords. (Luk_22:38) They thought for a moment of resistance; "Lord," they said, "shall we smite with the sword?" Peter, always impetuous, did not wait for an answer, but at once struck a servant of the high priest"s, and smote off his ear.
2. The Lord"s reproof. Mark his majestic collectedness, his thoughtfulness for others; in the immediate presence of danger and death he cared for the wounded man, he cared for the erring apostle. "Put up thy sword into his place," he said, as Peter stood with his drawn weapon, ready to repeat the blow; "for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword." The kiss of Judas and the sword stroke of Peter stand in diametrical opposition; the one was the act of cold, selfish, hateful treachery; the other, of bold, ardent, self-forgetting zeal. Both were wrong, though in widely different degrees. The one was the act of a devil; (Joh_6:70) the other, the act of a saint, though not a saint-like act. Christians may not use the sword for the defence or for the propagation of the gospel. Sometimes mistaken zeal, sometimes more unholy motives, have led to persecutions and to so called religious wars. The Lord distinctly condemns the use of force; he himself refrained from the exercise of his power. He was King of kings and Lord of lords; he could have subjugated all the kingdoms of the world at once, by one act of omnipotence; he might have had around him now, not eleven disciples, but more than twelve legions of angels. But how then should the Scriptures be fulfilled? The salvation of man was to be brought about, not by force, not by a display of power, but by holy teaching, by holy example, by suffering, by self-sacrifice, by the cross. The forces to be employed were not physical, but moral and spiritual. Christ would not terrify men into obedience. What he seeks is not the forced service of slaves, but the willing obedience of love. And love cannot be forced; it can be gained only by love. It is the love of Christ manifested in his incarnation, in his holy life, in his precious death, which constrains his faithful followers to live no longer unto themselves, but unto him who died for them, and rose again. The Lord asked not for the twelve legions of angels; his followers must not use the sword to propagate the gospel.
III THE LORD"S ADDRESS TO THE MULTITUDE.
1. The needless display of force. There was much hesitation in the action of the soldiers. They had felt the Lord"s power; (Joh_18:6) evidently they regarded him with some awe, with some indefinite terror. Hence he had time to heal the wound of Malchus, to speak to Judas, to Peter, to the multitude. He asked them now why they had come out as against a robber? He had long sat quietly teaching in the temple; he had not sought to escape. But they did not seize him then; they did not interfere with his teaching. Why did. they now seem to regard him as a dangerous robber? Why these swords and staves? The good Lord felt the cruelty of their conduct, the indignity with which they were treating him.
2. The real cause of the Lords sufferings. The Lord knew, they did not know, the deep necessities which lay under all this show of human violence. The Scriptures of the prophets must be fulfilled. Those wicked men were ignorantly working out the eternal purpose of God. They were guilty, all of them, more or less; their will was free. But yet, in the mystery of the Divine foreknowledge and the overruling providence of God, which is so infinitely above our reach, they were bringing to pass the utterances of God through the prophets. The Scriptures must be fulfilled. St. Matthew dwells reverently upon that great truth. He recurs to it again and again. Let us remember it, and treasure it in our hearts for warning and for encouragement.
3. The flight of the disciples. They had looked, perhaps, for some exertion of power. But the Lord did not resist; he meekly yielded himself to die. And their heart sank within them. Fear became stronger than love. "They all forsook him, and fled." Even Peter, who had just drawn the sword in his defence; even John and James, the sons of thunder all fled. Alas! for human nature; how much weakness and cowardice and selfishness there is even in the best of us! Let us learn to distrust ourselves, to recognize our own weakness, to trust in him whose strength is made perfect in weakness.
LESSONS.
1. Many knew Christ after the flesh; and yet they were not saved. Let us pray to know him by faith through the presence of his Spirit.
2. The kiss of Judas could not hide his treason. Outward reverence will not conceal a selfish, wicked heart.
3. We must use gentle means to win hearts to God.
4. Apostles fled. Let us beware of self-confidence; let us watch and pray.
Vers. 47-56. The submission of Jesus.
After the third time praying in Gethsemane, Jesus came to his slumbering disciples, and said, "Sleep on now, and take your rest the opportunity for watching is past. Note: Opportunities pass, never to return; therefore we should never fail to improve them in their passing. "Behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners the hour of trial is come for which watchings should have prepared. "Arise, let us be going," not to run away from the crisis, but to meet it. (cf. Joh_18:4) "Behold, he is at hand. that betrayeth me. And while he yet spake, lo, Judas," etc. Note here, and admire
I THE SUBMISSION OF JESUS TO JUDAS.
1. He might have avoided him.
(1) He knew of his coming (see vers. 45, 46). Every particular of the tragedy was vividly presented to his prophetic spirit.
(2) The Miracle worker had not lost his resources. On a former occasion, when hurried by an infuriated rabble to the brow of the hill at Nazareth, that they might throw him headlong, he knew how to pass through the midst of them. (see Luk_4:30) How he did this we are not informed whether he shut their eyes or overawed them by the sense of his majesty. But Judas knew the fact, and was probably influenced by the recollection of it when he nervously said, "Hold him fast." Instead of avoiding the traitor:
2. He endured his kiss.
(1) A kiss is the token of allegiance and friendship. (see Psa_2:12)
(2) With Judas the token of friendship was made the sign of treachery. The kiss of Judas came to be an expression for the greatest of all hypocrisies the betrayal of innocence by simulated love. The "angel of light" seeks hellish ends in heavenly means.
(3) By enduring that infamous kiss Jesus permitted the traitor to show himself up. God"s permission is judicially given to the sinner to sin. "Do that for which thou art come." Sin is its own chastiser.
3. He called him friend," or companion.
(1) Thus he identified himself as the Ahithophel of prophecy. (cf. 2Sa_15:12 Psa_41:9 Psa_55:12-14)
(2) He was "one of the twelve." The vilest wretches lurk in the best company.
(3) Once, probably, Judas had been as sincere a friend to Jesus as Ahithophel had been to David. The Heart searcher would not have chosen him for a disciple and promoted him to the apostolate unless he had then been a true man.
(4) But how fearfully bad he fallen! A leader of the flock of Christ has become the leader of a mob of ruffians against his life. Apostates from religion become its bitterest foes. Julian and Judas are notable examples.
(5) There is truth in the irony of the term "friend." The working out of the redemption and salvation of men was the great purpose cherished in the heart of Christ. Judas, therefore, unwittingly befriended him in furthering his sufferings. Jesus called Peter "Satan" for hindering him. (see Mat_16:22, Mat_16:23) God brings good out of the evil working of the wicked.
II THE SUBMISSION OF JESUS TO THE RABBLE.
1. He might have resisted them.
(1) With what authority did he drive the throng of sacrilegious traders from the temple! (see Mat_21:12, Mat_21:13)
(2) He was the same Miracle-worker still. At the utterance of the words, "I am he," they were so overpowered that "they went backward, and fell to the ground". (see Joh_18:6) They never could have approached him without his consent. The power that restored the ear of Malchus could not have been controlled by that of Malchus and his company.
(3) He might have had "more than twelve legions of angels." Note:
(a) The "innumerable company of angels" are marshalled into ranks.
(b) The angels were to Elisha "chariots of fire and horses of fire," not only to secure him, but to consume his assailants. (cf. 2Ki_1:10-15 2Ki_2:11 2Ki_6:14-17 Psa_104:4)
(c) If a single angel could destroy a hundred and eighty-five thousand Assyrians at a stroke, (2Ki_19:35) what might not "twelve legions" do?
2. He forbade an appeal to the sword.
(1) Had he made such an appeal, there would have been a popular response. The people were disposed even forcibly to make Jesus their Warrior-King. (see Joh_6:15) They readily followed false Christs who relied upon the sword. Peter was in sympathy with his nation when he weilded the sword.
(2) But Jesus rebuked the impetuosity of Peter. He struck without asking, "Shall we smite with the sword? ". (see Luk_22:49) Peter did not intend evil, but intemperate zeal is often evil in its results.
(3) He reproved him for appealing to the sword.
(a) It was needless, for Christ could have received succour from his Father. God has no need of our sins to bring about his purposes.
(b) It was dangerous, viz. both to himself and his fellow disciples. For "he that; takes the sword shall perish by the sword.
(c) It evinced ignorance of the Scriptures. They teach that the way to glory is through suffering rather than through fighting. Peter would have the end without the means
(d) Peter"s unsanctified zeal was another step toward his fall, by increasing his subsequent fear of detection.
(4) To show that he did not wish to be defended by carnal weapons, the Lord healed the ear of Malchus. (see Luk_22:51) The soldiers of Christ do not war after the flesh. (see 2Co_10:3, 2Co_10:4)
3. Instead of resisting, he reasoned.
(1) "Are ye come out as against a robber, with swords and staves?" Judaea at this time was infested with thieves, and every one will lend a hand to stop a thief.
(2) The "swords" were those of the "cohort" of the chiliarch, or "chief captain probably Roman soldiers from the Tower of Antonia. (cf. ver. 45; Joh_18:12) The "slaves" were those of the creatures of the high priest. These classes were usually at variance; but, like Pilate and Herod, they find a point of agreement in hostility to Christ.
(3) Thus they treated as a robber him that came to "restore" that he "took not away". (see Psa_69:4) He became a prisoner that he might set us at liberty. "If therefore ye seek me, let these go their way". (see Joh_18:8, Joh_18:9)
(4) "I sat daily in the temple teaching, and ye took me not." How comes this change in your conduct? Is it not unreasonable and inconsistent? Why come clandestinely in the night? Who looks most like the criminal?
III THE SUBMISSION OF JESUS TO GOD.
1. For the vindication of his truth.
(1) "How then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?" Jesus carried the Law of God in his heart.
(2) They were "a great multitude" that came to arrest him, that the Scriptures might be fulfilled which saith, "Lord, how are they increased that trouble me!". (Psa_3:1)
(3) By being pursued as a thief, "he was numbered with the transgressors". (Isa_53:12) This Scripture met a further accomplishment when he was afterwards crucified between two malafactors. (see Mar_15:27, 28)
(4) He was shamefully deserted by his disciples. In their conduct they evinced
(a) unfaithfulness,
(b) unkindness,
(c) ingratitude,
(d) folly.
For why should they through fear of death forsake the Fountain of life? (see Joh_6:67, Joh_6:68) But this desertion was to be a part of Messiah"s suffering. (cf. Job_19:13 Psa_38:11 Isa_63:3-5)
(5) The Scripture must be fulfilled that Christ should be "led as a lamb to the slaughter". (Isa_53:7) Had he summoned the angels, he would not have been so led. Note: Nothing must be done against the fulfilment of the Scriptures.
2. For the vindication of his goodness.
(1) The sword of the Lord was drawn against Christ. (see Zec_13:7) The Great One had to be smitten that the "little ones" might go free.
(2) The Redeemer of mankind had afterwards to become the Intercessor for the salvation of believers.
(3) He had to become the Example of the triumph of patience, of the victories of suffering. He accordingly denounced the human doctrine of victory by the sword, by asserting the converse, viz. "All they that take the sword shall perish by the sword.
(4) History has given its verdict. The Jews who put our Lord to death by the sword of the Romans perished by the same Roman sword. The Romans who used the sword against Christ perished by the sword of the Goths. The doom of persecuting Churches and of persecutors also is pre-written here. (see Rev_13:10)
Reflect: Are there not still found among the disciples:
1. Those who betray Christ and his cause?
2. Who deny him and his people?
3. Who abandon him, his cause, his people, and his truth? 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.
John A. Broadus 1886 · Public Domain On vv57, 69 Mat 26:57-68.
Mat 26:57-68.
Jesus Sentenced By The Sanhedrin
Read full note →
This is found also in Mar 14:53-66 Luk 22:54, Luk 22:63-65 Joh 18:12-14, Joh 18:19-24.
The trial of our Lord may be divided into two main parts, the Jewish and the Roman trial. Each of these must be subdivided. (1) The Jewish trial comprises (a) The examination before Annas, Joh 18:12-14, Joh 18:19-23; (b) The sentence by an informal session of the Sanhedrin, Mat 26:57-68 Mar 14:53-65; (c) The formal trial before the Sanhedrin, which sends him to Pilate for sentence, Mat 27:1 f.; Luk 22:66-71. (2) The Roman trial includes (a) The first examination before Pilate, Mat 27:11-14 Joh 18:28-38; (b) The reference to Herod, Luk 23:6-12; (c) The, final appearance before Pilate, Mat 27:15-31 Joh 18:39 to Joh 19:16. It is noticeable that John gives a good deal as to the Roman trial that is not found in the other Gospels, particularly as to Pilate’s private inquiries. Mark continues to resemble Matt. Luke has some matter not found in the others.
Our present section contains the trial before an informal session of the Sanhedrim It may be divided into Mat 26:57 f., 59-63a; 63b-66; 67 f.
I. Mat 26:57 f. Jesus Is Brought Before Caiaphas And The Scribes And Elders. Peter Follows And Looks On
(Mar 14:53 f.; Luk 22:54 Joh 18:15, Joh 18:24)
They that had laid hold on Jesus, at Gethsemane. Led him away to Caiaphas, the high priest. The appended ’where’ implies that this means to the house of Caiaphas, and that is distinctly stated in Luke. Caiaphas was the son-in-law of Annas, Ananus, or Hanan, who had long before been high priest himself, and among the numerous changes of the time, was succeeded by five sons and this son-in-law (Josephus, "Ant.," 18, 2, l f.; 20, 9, 1.) The family were all Sadducees (Josephus, Talmud), and were specially odious to the Pharisees, the "house of Annas" becoming a by-word (Talmud). Joseph Caiaphas was deposed shortly after Pilate lost the procuratorship, A. D. 36 ("Ant.," 18, 4, 2 f.) The time when he was made high priest depends on an obscure statement of Josephus. ("Ant.," 18, 2, 2.) His expressions leave hardly more than four years between Annas and Caiaphas. Either Annas officiated about A. D. 7-21, and then Caiaphas A. D. 25-36, or Annas A. D. 7-14, and then Caiaphas A. D. 18-36. The son Eleazar came between Annas and Caiaphas; Jonathan and Theophilus (Keim) A. D. 36 f.; Matthias. A. D. 42 f.; Annas, junior ("Ant.," 20, 9, 1) A. D. 63. This makes the last a different person from the high priest Ananias of Act 23:2, Act 24:1, A. D. 58. The character of Caiaphas appears from Joh 11:49-52, and from the trial of Jesus, to have been shrewd, self-seeking, and unscrupulous. Where the scribes and the elders were assembled. Mark mentions also (Mar 14:53) ’all the chief priests,’ and these are expressly mentioned just after by Matthew, Mat 26:59. These were the three classes composing the Sanhedrin (see on "Mat 26:59".) Instead of ’were assembled’ (Com. Ver.), it is better to translate were gathered together, for the former would indicate a formal session of the Sanhedrin, while the Greek term is neutral on that point. Mark’s phrase is simply ’there come together with him,’ and the fact seems to be that this was an informal gathering before dawn, whereas, a formal session could not be held till ’morning was come.’ (Mat 27:1)
It was apparently while the dignitaries were gathering at that unseasonable hour, that Jesus was first questioned by Annas. (Joh 18:12-14) Annas and Caiaphas were both regarded as high priests, (Luk 3:2) the former still in popular estimation holding the office as long as he lived, while the latter only was recognized by the Romans. So in 1Ki 4:4, Zadok and Abiathar are mentioned as priests, it having been stated in 1Ki 2:35 that the king put Zadok in the room of Abiathar. An action would be valid in the eyes of both the people and the Romans if known to have the approval of both Caiaphas and Annas. This was easier from the fact that Caiaphas was son-in-law to Annas; and the supposition (Euthym. and various recent writers) that Annas at this time lived with Caiaphas in the high priest’s official residence, each having his own reception room, will account for all the statements in the several Gospels. It is also a plausible conjecture (Wieseler, Ewald), that Annas may have been at this period president (Nasi) of the Sanhedrim John distinctly states that they "led him to Annas first; for he was father-in-law to Caiaphas, who was high priest that year." (Rev. Ver.) Then after mentioning some things about Caiaphas and about Peter, John states that the "high priest" questioned Jesus "of his disciples, and of his teachings" (Rev. Ver.); but the Saviour declined a response, saying that he had taught publicly, and those who had heard him could be asked. Then John adds (correct text, Rev. Ver.), "Annas therefore sent him bound unto Caiaphas the high priest." This seems to leave no doubt that the high priest who first vainly interrogated Jesus was Annas. Many of the ablest recent writers have taken this view, while not a few still think otherwise.[1] Thus understood, this was not a trial, but a mere personal interrogation by an aged ex-high priest. John gives no account of the trial before Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin, that having been fully described by the earlier Gospels. Indeed, it may be (Weiss, "Life") that John mentions this preliminary examination only because of its connection with the first of Peter’s denials.
[1] Vedder ("Bibl. Sac.," Oct. 1882), calls it a "clumsy and improbable hypothesis," and says, "There is some thing ludicrous in the statement, ’Now Annas sent him away bound to Caiaphas,’ if the sending away consisted in a removal from one apartment to another in the same house." But he has laid an unwarranted stress upon the apo, failing to notice that stello is not used in New Testament (except twice in the middle voice), and apostello is frequently employed where there is no distinctive notion of sending away. Moreover, sending from one audience room to another, across a large court, was not a trifling removal.
But Peter followed him afar off, viz., followed him from Gethsemane (compare on Mat 26:56). Really attached to the Master, and still self-confident, he was yet alarmed by the probable consequences of his smiting the high priest’s servant, and so he took a middle course; John went along with the party who conducted Jesus; the other disciples fled; Peter followed at a distance. Alexander: "However unexpected the fact here recorded, there is probably no reader who, as soon as it is stated, does not feel it to be perfectly in keeping with what he knows already of the character of Peter, who would scarcely seem to be himself if he continued in concealment, and whose re-appearance on the scene, and subsequent performance there, exhibit just the strength and weakness which together constitute the native temper of this great apostle. "Unto the high priest’s palace, see on "Mat 26:3". The building was doubtless four-square, surrounding an open court. Upon this court opened the rooms, one of which formed the audience room of the high priest, and probably another that of Annas. John gives the further details that Peter reached the house only after the procession had all entered and the gate was closed; and that he (John), being "known unto the high priest,"... went out "and spake unto her that kept the door, and brought in Peter." And sat with the servants, or officers. Tyndale, etc., ’servants,’ Greek huperetes, see on "Mat 8:6". John adds (Joh 18:8) that "the servants (douloi) and the officers stood there, who had made a fire of coals; for it was cold." At the time of the passover it is quite hot in Jerusalem at mid-day, but frequently grows cold towards morning. As to the fact that Matt. says ’sat,’ and John ’standing,’ it is easy to meet so trifling a difficulty by remembering that they would be likely to change posture. To see the end, He was anxious as to the matter, and determined to see it through, but not humble, watchful, and prayerful, (Mat 26:40 f.) or he would not have become involved in such difficulty. The further account of Peter see below in Mat 26:69-75. Bengel: "Here mid-way between courage (Mat 26:51) and cowardice. (Mat 26:70.)"
II. Mat 26:59-63 a. Vain Attempts To Convict Jesus By False Witness
Mar 14:55-59.
Luke does not mention this informal gathering of the Sanhedrin, but only the formal session "as soon as it was day." (Luk 22:66; compare Mat 27:1) Many expositors identify the two meetings; but the supposition of a previous informal meeting is natural in itself, as many of the rulers would be anxiously awaiting the result of Judas’ expedition, and this supposition accounts for all the phenomena of the narrative; accordingly it is adopted by Wieseler, Alford, Godet, Keim, and various other recent writers. Edersh. insists that neither of these was a regular session of the Sanhedrin, and there was no formal condemnation of Jesus by that body; but his line of argument is far from convincing. Geikie adopts the same view from the Jewish writer Jost. Chief priests, and elders, and all the council or Sanhedrin. The phrase suggests that the chief priests formed a part of the Sanhedrin, and that this was a full meeting. While no exception is here mentioned, we know from Luke (Luk 23:50 f., R.V.) that Joseph of Arimathea "had not consented to their counsel and deed," and we infer the same as to Nicodemus from the accounts in John. It would not be an improbable supposition that the rulers had avoided informing Nicodemus of this meeting. (compare Joh 7:50-52) A quorum of the Sanhedrin was twenty three (Lf.), but this was "all the Sanhedrin," a very full meeting.
The Sanhedrin was in the time of our Lord the highest court of the Jews. Our knowledge of its constitution and functions is but fragmentary. It arose during the Greek or the Maceabaean period. The very name is a mere Hebrew spelling of the Greek sunedrion (’sitting together’), the h of hedra, lost in the Greek compound, being restored in the transliteration, as has frequently happened. The Mishna supposes that the Sanhedrin was a survival of the council of seventy formed by Moses, (Num 11:16) and infers that it also must have contained seventy members, or adding one for Moses, then seventy-one. It is probable that this was the number, but we cannot certainly determine. The constitution of the body is not described by the Talmud, but the New Testament shows (Mat 27:1 Mar 15:1 Luk 22:66) that it consisted of chief priests, elders, and scribes, though we know not in what proportions, nor what sort of elders were included. As to the chief priests and the scribes, see on "Mat 2:4". The chief priests are usually mentioned first, and would naturally be the ruling section of the body. They were for the most part Sadducees, while the scribes were probably all Pharisees. The presidency of the body seems to have been elective, but the high priest was commonly the person elected. The Sanhedrin tried (Schürer) all the more important secular and religious, civil and criminal causes, the less important being tried by inferior local tribunals. It seems highly probable, though not certain (see the difficulties well stated by Vedder, p. 666 ff.), that the Sanhedrin’s death-sentence could at this period be executed only by the procurator’s permission. In Joh 13:31, the Jews say to Pilate, "It is not lawful for us to put any man to death." Some argue that the Romans had taken away this power when Judea first became a province, as they are known to have done in some other provinces. The Jerus. Talmud says (Sanh. i, 1; vii, 2), "Forty years before the destruction of the temple, judgments upon life and death were taken away from Israel." This date is probably given (Schürer) in a round number, as was natural three hundred years later. The crucifixion was probably in the forty-first year before the destruction of the temple. The stoning of Stephen was a tumultuary proceeding, and probably occurred at a time when there was no procurator. The regular place of meeting of the Sanhedrin was at a hall either in or near the temple area (Josephus and the Mishna differ). It is stated in the Talmud that forty years before the destruction of the temple the Sanhedrin ceased to meet in its hall, and met in shops; these may have been in the outer court of the temple, which the Saviour more than once cleansed. At any rate, a special meeting at the high priest’s residence would not be surprising in such an emergency as the trial of Jesus, when in various ways they were departing from custom. Moreover, it may have been only the informal meeting that was held at the high priest’s house; the formal session of Mat 27:1, may have been at their hall—notice especially ’led him away’ in Luk 22:66 (Rev. Ver., correct text).
Sought false witness, imperfect tense, describing them as engaged in seeking. To, or, that they might, put him to death. They must have sufficient evidence for sentencing him to death, in order that they might gain the Roman governor’s authority to execute the sentence. Though many false witnesses came.[1] This was easy to bring about through the continued exertions of influential men, compare Act 6:11; in fact, they had no doubt been for some time hunting up witnesses. (Mat 26:4 f.) Anywhere in Asia, not to speak of other countries, there are hangers on about the courts ready to sell testimony. Mark explains (Mar 14:56) that ’their witness agreed not together.’ The Sanhedrin could not afford to disregard the ordinary forms of judicial procedure. Their proceedings could not be permanently kept secret. The law expressly forbade the death penalty upon the testimony of a single witness. (Num 35:30 Deu 17:6) Here there were many witnesses, each making a separate accusation, but not two to the same count. It is vain to conjecture what were the various and conflicting false testimonies. At the last (afterward) came two. The Com. text adds ’false witnesses,’ from the preceding verse. We might suppose that these two agreed in their testimony; but Mark (Mar 14:59, Rev. Ver.) says, "and not even so did their witness agree together," probably meaning that it did not so agree concerning the circumstances and terms of the alleged statement as to be credible. The Mishna, treatise ’Sanhedrin,’ gives detailed directions concerning witnesses, one of which is ("Sanh.," V., 1) that each witness must be asked seven questions as to the alleged offence, viz:, in what period of seven years (counting from the Sabbatical year) it occurred, in what year of the period, in what month, day of the month, day of the week, hour of the day, and at what place; and the limits are indicated within which two witnesses may differ upon one or another question, without invalidating their testimony. (Compare Wünsche, or "The Criminal Code of the Jews," London, 1880.) Observe that in Mark (Mar 14:58) the witnesses declare, "We heard him say," etc., with emphasis on "we"; and so they could be required to give time and place. We of course do not know how far these strict rules were actually observed two centuries before the Mishna was written down. But while the Sanhedrin was bent on conviction, it would for that reason be all the more careful to observe customary forms. Notice that there seems to have been no call for evidence in Jesus’ defence, though he had intimated to Annas (Joh 18:20 f.) that such evidence might he easily found. The medieval Jewish fables tried to remove this obvious injustice by declaring that heralds made proclamation for forty days, and no witness appeared in Jesus’ behalf. It is hardly necessary to say that Jewish writers do not now claim any respect for these fables, though some of them try to soften the guilt of the Sanhedrin. This fellow (rather, man) said. The Greek for ’this’ does not in itself carry such contempt as Tyndale, etc., expressed by ’fellow.’ I am able to destroy. Mark has ’I will destroy,’ substantially equivalent; and so as to the other slight differences between Matt. and Mark. ’Destroy’ is literally, ’pull down,’ same word as in Mat 5:17. The temple, is here naon, the central house, see on "Mat 4:5". In three days, or, more correctly, after three days, literally, ’with an interval of three days,’[2] as in Act 24:17 Gal 2:1. This alleged statement was evidently a perversion of what Jesus had said at the first passover of his ministry, (Joh 2:19) "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." He did not even suggest the idea of himself destroying the temple, which the Jews would naturally call impious; and we know, as the Sanhedrin might have learned from him if they had desired, that he meant the expression in a merely figurative sense. But we find the same conception still cherished among the Jews in Act 6:14. It might be (Edersheim) a good pretext to use with Pilate, that Jesus would encourage popular violence against public and sacred buildings. The Egyptian of Act 21:38 promised his followers that from the Mount of Olives they would see the walls of Jerusalem fall at his command, and could march in. But this could hardly be seriously treated as a ground for sentence of death; so the high priest eagerly urges Jesus to answer the accusation, hoping that thus he will somehow criminate himself. This eagerness is indicated by the fact that he arose, or stood up, Mark likewise, and also by the second question, what is it, etc., by which he seeks to arouse the accused into attention and response. It is much more natural to understand the Greek as two questions than as one. But Jesus held his peace, literally, was silent, compare Isa 53:7. He knew that no explanation or self-defence would be heeded, that his condemnation and sentence was a foregone conclusion; compare on Mat 27:14. He was fully prepared for the foreseen result, (Mat 26:42) and now awaited it in calm silence. Origen remarks that the utter failure, notwithstanding diligent effort, to find anything against Jesus, shows that his life was most pure and wholly irreprehensible.
[1] The common text here presents an interesting example of a "conflate reading." True text, ’and they found it not, though many false witnesses came.’ Rev. Ver., some documents, ’and though many false witnesses came they found it not.’ Conflate text,’ and they found it not, and though many false witnesses came they found it not.’ Any body can see that the last was formed by combining the other two; and there are many such readings in the Common Greek text (compare Westcott Hort, Int. sec. 132 ff.).
[2] Meyer and many are here misled by taking dia in the sense of ’through,’ and overlooking its primary sense of ’between,’ from which one derivative sense was that of interval. In Mat 27:40 and Joh 2:19 the phrase employed literally means ’In three days.’
III. Mat 26:63-66. Jesus Is Condemned Upon His Own Testimony
Mar 14:60-64. Luke, who gives no account of the informal meeting, presently introduces much the same matter into his account of the formal session held "as soon as it was day." (Luk 22:66-71) It is very improbable that this was all repeated in the formal session (Clark’s "Harmony"), and very easy to understand that Luke has thrown all the examination together, while some portions of it would very likely be repeated. The only matter of great practical importance was that Jesus was condemned by the Sanhedrin, and upon his own confession.—Finding that the false testimony does not suffice for a conviction, and that the accused will not discuss it, the high priest essays a bold stroke. He demands a categorical answer, upon oath, to the question whether Jesus is the Messiah. And the high priest answered and said unto him. The Com. text seems to be here right in its reading.[1] The ’answered’ means responded to the situation presented by the persistent silence of Jesus (compare on Mat 11:25). I adjure thee, means exactly ’I put thee on oath.’ See the same Greek term in Gen 24:3, ’I will make thee swear by the Lord,’ and compare Lev 5:1 (Rev. Ver.), where it is declared to he a sin if one who has witnessed a matter "heareth the voice of adjuration" and does not tell what he knows. Compare also 1Ki 22:16. The high priest used the most solemn form of oath, by the living God. If one answered after such an adjuration, he answered on oath; the mere ceremony of putting on oath is conventional, as in some parts of our country men take an oath by pointing to heaven, in other parts by kissing the Bible. So then Jesus spoke on oath before a court of justice, which shows conclusively that he did not mean to condemn all such oaths when he said, "Swear not at all" (see on "Mat 5:34"); that he spoke of oaths familiarly used in conversation. That thou tell us, The peculiar Greek construction is explained on Mat 5:29. Whether thou be the Christ, the Messiah, see on "Mat 2:4". Here (Mark and Luke also) K. James rightly inserted the article, though Tyn., Cram, Gem, had simply ’Christ,’ as K.J. has in many other places. Luke here gives only ’the Christ’; Mark adds ’the Son of the Blessed’; Matt., the Son of God. It is evident from Joh 19:7 that ’the Son of God’ was understood to mean the Messiah, and that claiming to be the Son of God was considered blasphemy. But it does not follow that the Jews used or understood the phrase as denoting divinity, since they spoke of blasphemy quite loosely (see on "Mat 26:65"), and there is no indication in the Jewish books that the Messiah was expected to be divine.—According to our ideas and legal usages, very different from those prevailing in many other countries, it is unjust to cap on an accused person to give testimony against himself; and so it is often said that the high priest dealt unjustly in calling on Jesus to testify. The law of Moses provided that in some cases of uncertainty the accused should take an oath upon the matter; see Exo 22:10 f.; Num 5:19 ff.; 1Ki 8:31 f. Thus the high priest’s course was not formally illegal, though in spirit and intent it was unjust. It is of late coming to be provided in our laws that an accused person may testify in his own behalf, but cannot be required to criminate himself.
[1] Answered’ is omitted by à B L, Memph., Origen, Cyril, and various documents, but it may well be an "Alexandrian" alteration due to the apparent incongruity of answering one who was silent.
64. Jesus knew that the question was designed to secure a ground of conviction. But he was no longer silent. Now that the crisis had arrived, that his ’hour’ was come, he would not decline to say distinctly, before the highest Jewish tribunal, that he was the Messiah. He had long urged the disciples to "tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ," or the Messiah (see on "Mat 16:20"), because the crisis must not be precipitated before his work of teaching and healing in every district of the Holy Land was completed. Only a few days before the end he had quietly avoided saying to the rulers that he was the Messiah, while allowing the people to think so (see on "Mat 21:15 f."). But he will not pass to his death as "despised and rejected" without having borne distinct public testimony that he is the Messiah. Thou hast said, viz., hast said what is true, a formula of affirmative answer found also in the Talmud (compare above on Mat 21:4 f.). In Mark it is directly ’I am.’ In Luke (Luk 22:67 f.) the answer is preceded by a censure of their unbelief and unfairness. Nevertheless, Although they now scorn his claim to be the Messiah, and reject all the evidence in his teachings and his works, yet they will henceforth see his Messiahship indubitably manifested. Hereafter, henceforth is the real meaning. So Luk 22:69, the Greek in both cases being literally ’from now.’ The word refers to something that would be true onward from the time of speaking. The Saviour’s death, resurrection, and ascension, the miracles wrought by his apostles and other gifts of the Spirit, the spread of the gospel and its beneficial effects, would go on manifesting him to be the Messiah, sitting on the right hand of power; and finally they would behold his second coming in, on, the clouds of heaven. For the phrase, ’the Son of man,’ see on "Mat 8:20". This expression would remind the rulers of Dan 7:13. By this title Jesus had long virtually claimed to be the Messiah, though not distinctly asserting it in public. ’Power’ (so Mark and Luke) is the abstract for the concrete (Meyer); Talmud and Midrash (Gill, Wün.) sometimes use the term ’power’ to denote God, as "The Ten Commandments came from the mouth of power." In Mat 22:42-45 Jesus had spoken of sitting on the right hand of God as a definitely Messianic phrase, and derived from Psalms 110. As to ’coming on the clouds of heaven,’ compare on Mat 24:30; that was said to the disciples in private; this to the Sanhedrin.
Mat 26:65 f. The high priest has accomplished his object and proceeds to make much of the confession. Rent his clothes, the usual expression of grief, horror, (Act 14:14) or other violent and uncontrollable emotion. The custom, which existed also among the early Greeks and Romans, doubtless originated (Bengel) in the fact that excited emotions often cause one’s garments to seem confining. ’Rent’ is a compound verb, thoroughly rent to pieces; compare 2Ki 18:37, 2Ki 19:1. Mark has the more specific term which denotes the under-garments, of which several were sometimes worn; see on "Mat 5:40". The Talmud directs (Lightfoot) that when the judges in a case of blasphemy rend their garments, they must not be sewed up again. Maimonides shows that at least in his time even this expression of uncontrollable emotion was formulated by custom; a man rent all garments except the innermost and outermost; and rent from the front of the neck downwards to the length of a hand. The high priest was forbidden in the law (Lev 10:16, Lev 21:10) to rend his clothes; bait this was in mourning for the dead, because such mourning unfitted him for the performance of official duties, and it was not understood as prohibiting the practice on other occasions; see examples in 1Ma 11:71; Josephus "War," 2, 15, 4. He hath spoken blasphemy. It is not entirely clear, but seems probable, that the high priest here understood the phrase ’the Son of God’ as claiming divinity; compare Luk 22:70. At any rate Jesus had distinctly claimed it in the added words about sitting at the right hand of power, etc. In Joh 5:18, R.V., he was accused of "making himself equal with God," because he "said God was his Father," and in Joh 10:30, for saying "I and my Father are one,"the Jews sought to stone him," because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God." It is very hard to determine how much the Jews really meant by these charges, as accusatory expressions are apt to be stronger than would be used in calm declaration. Nor is the question important to us, since the Saviour left no doubt as to the meaning of his answer, and the New Testament as a whole teaches that Jesus Christ is the Son of God in the highest and fullest sense. And certainly, if Jesus had only been a human teacher, he would surely now have explained himself to that effect. What think ye? This was the regular Greek phrase for putting any question to the vote. They answered and said. They took no. formal vote, but decided by acclamation. He is guilty of death, or liable to death (Rev. Ver. margin), as in Mat 5:21 f., ’in danger of.’ So Tyn., Cran., Gen, ’worthy to die’; K. James followed Wyc. and Rheims, ’guilty of death,’ compare Num 35:31. The same term is here used in Mark. Death was the legal punishment of blasphemy. (Lev 24:16) The Mishna requires ("Sanh." v, 5) that where Numbers vote would condemn to death, the matter must be postponed to the next day, when after the night’s reflection any of those who voted to condemn may change, but not contrariwise. If this rule existed in the traditional law at the time of our Lord, we can image the Sanhedrin evading it by construing that they had virtually voted to condemn Jesus some time before, (Joh 11:47-53) or that the meeting after dawn (Mat 27:1) was virtually another session, with a portion of night for reflection—which would have been a device quite after their fashion. It is, however, probable, as Edersheim and Schürer remark, that these were largely ideal regulations, expressing what the Rabbis thought ought to be done, and by no means strictly followed.
IV. Mat 26:67 f, Jesus Spit Upon, Buffeted, And Mocked
Mar 14:65 Luk 22:63-65. Observe that while Luke has transferred the examination and condemnation to the regular session after dawn, he puts this outrage and mocking first, in the same order as Matt. and Mark. Then did they spit in his face. This would most naturally mean the members of the Sanhedrin, mentioned in the preceding sentence, but might mean (compare Mat 27:2) the subordinate officials who had Jesus in custody, and so Luke has it, (Luk 22:63) "the men that held Jesus." Mark’s statement (Mar 14:65, Rev. Ver.) "some began to spit on him... the officers received him with blows of their hands," explains that some members of the Sanhedrin joined the subordinates in these outrages. (Compare Act 7:57, Act 23:2) They would be encouraged (Keim) by finding that they could with impunity smite him whose reported miracles had often made them tremble. Buffeted him, smote him with the fist. So Tyn., Cram, ’buffeted hym wyth fistes.’ Smote him with the palms of their hands, as in Mat 5:39, and so Latin Versions, Memph., and Gothic; or perhaps (Rev. Ver. margin),’ smote him with rods,’ as Geneva. The same two terms occur in Mar 14:65. Luke says (Luk 22:63 B. U. Ver.) they "mocked him, beating him." Prophesy, meaning, speak by divine inspiration, not necessarily, nor even most commonly in Scripture, involving a prediction. Here, with his face covered (Luke and Mark), he would need superhuman knowledge to tell who smote him, and such knowledge the Messiah might be expected to have. Matt. alone gives the taunting address, thou Christ, or simply ’Christ.’ Luke adds, Rev. Ver., "And many other things spake they against him, reviling him." Here the Jews mock Jesus as a pretended prophet; in Mat 27:27 if., the Romans will mock him as a pretended king. Amid all these insults of word and deed he was still silent. Compare 1Pe 2:23.
Homiletical And Practical
Mat 26:58. Jerome: "Following afar, on the road to denial." Bengel: "Sat with the officers, inopportune good-fellowship."—’to see the end.’ Henry: "It is more our concern to prepare for the end, whatever it may be, than curiously to enquire what the end will be. The event is God’s, but the duty is ours."
Mat 26:59. Jesus condemned, but righteous. After the failure of false witnesses, he could be condemned only through his confession of what should have been a reason for reverencing him. The traitor confessed him to be righteous. (Mat 27:4) Pilate found no fault in him. (Luk 23:14) The centurion at the cross declared him righteous. (Luk 23:47) The day is coming when every tongue will confess that he is Lord. (Php 2:11)
Mat 26:61. Bengel: "By no great change of words is often made a great calumny."
Mat 26:63. Origen: "We learn from this passage to despise the utterances of calumniating and false witnesses, not holding them worthy of reply or of resistance, when by their contradictions they resist each other. It is a greater thing to maintain a brave and self-respecting silence, than to defend oneself to no purpose."
Mat 26:64. Henry: "He thus confessed himself, for example and encouragement to his followers, when they are called to it, to confess him before men, whatever hazards they run by it."
Mat 26:66. Hall: "O Saviour, this is not the last time wherein thou hast received cruel dooms from them that profess learning and holiness. What wonder is it, if thy weak members suffer that which was endured by so perfect a head."
John A. Broadus, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (American Baptist Publication Society, 1886) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv47, 53, 56, 57, 63, 69 And Jesus said unto him, Friend, wherefore art thou…
Mat_26:47-52
And Jesus said unto him, Friend, wherefore art thou come?
Read full note →
The last pleading of love
I. The patience of Christs love. The betrayer in the very instant of his treason has that changeless tenderness lingering around him, and that merciful hand beckoning to him still. Sin is mighty, but it cannot make God cease to love us.
II. The pleading of Christs patient love. There is an appeal to the traitors heart, and an appeal to his conscience. Christ would have him think of the relations that have so long subsisted between them, and of the real nature of the deed he was doing. The sharp question is meant to wake up his conscience. All our evils are betrayals of Christ, and all our betrayals of Christ are sins against a perfect friendship and an unvaried goodness. We too have sat at His table, heard His wisdom, had a place in His heart. It is the constant effort of the love of Christ to get us to say to ourselves the real name of what we are about. Wherefore art thou come? Almost all actions have a better and a worse side, prudence is called selfishness; we are clever men of business, he a rogue. It is, therefore, the office of love to force us to look at the thing as it is. He must begin with rebukes that He may advance to blessing.
III. The possible rejection Of the pleading of Christs patient love. We can resist His pleadings. It is easily done. Judas merely held his peace-no more. Silence is sufficient. Non-submission is rebellion. The appeal of Christs love hardens where it does not soften. The sun either scatters the summer morning mists, or it rolls them into heavier folds, from whose livid depths the lightning is flashing by mid-day. That silence was probably the silence of a man whose conscience was convicted while his will was unchanged. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Gods love embraces the worst man
As the sunshine pours down as willingly and abundantly on filth and dunghills, as on gold that glitters in its beam, and jewels that flash back its lustre, so the light and warmth of that unsetting and unexhausted source of life pours down on the unthankful and on the good. The great ocean clasps some black and barren crag that frowns against it, as closely as with its waves it kisses some fair strand enamelled with flowers and fragrant with perfumes. So that sea of love in which we live, and move, and have our being, encircles the worst with abundant flow. He Himself sets us the pattern, which to imitate is to be the children of our Father which is in heaven, in that He loves His enemies, blessing them that curse, and doing good to them that hate. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Man may reject the Divine love
We cannot cease to be the objects of His love, but we can refuse to be the recipients of its most precious gifts. We can bar our hearts against it. Then, of what avail is it to us? To go back to an earlier illustration, the sunshine pours down and floods a world, what does that matter to us if we have fastened up shutters on all our windows, and barred every crevice through which the streaming gladness can find its way? We shall grope at noontide as in the dark, within our gloomy houses, while our neighbours have light in theirs. What matters it though we float in the great ocean of the Divine love, if with pitch and canvas we have carefully closed every aperture at which the flood can enter? A hermetically closed jar, plunged in the Atlantic, will be as dry inside as if it were lying on the sand of the desert. It is possible to perish of thirst within sight of the fountain. It is possible to separate ourselves from the love of God, not to separate the love of God from ourselves. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Judas, why made a disciple
But why did Christ choose Judas as a disciple, knowing him a wicked man?
1. To teach us that He will tolerate in the Church militant evil men, and no society among men so small, so holy, but some will creep in.
2. To show His humility and patience in admitting to His board and bread so vile a person, yea, to dip his hand in the same dish.
3. To accomplish the ancient prophecy, that his familiar friend, and he that eats bread with Him, that went up to the house of God with Him as a friend, he should lift up his hand against Him (Psa_55:13-14.) (Thomas Taylor.)
Perishing by the sword if we use the sword
Human vengeance will produce its own punishment. Resist, and you will be resisted. Treat men unkindly and they will treat you unkindly. But, on the other hand, be gentle and you will rule. Be willing to bear injuries and you will triumph. Believe in martyrdom. Let martyrdom be possible. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Christ is the great fulfilment of that beatitude; and His example is here before us, consistent to the end. (Dean Howson.)
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 vv47, 48, 50, 51, 52, 53, 55, 57, 58, 59, 62, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75 47. Judas, one of the twelve, came. Judas knew…
47. Judas, one of the twelve, came. Judas knew the place where the Lord would go to pass the night (John 18:2). Compare Mark 14:43–50; Luke 22:47–53; John 18:3–12. A great multitude. Roman soldiers (John 18:3, 12), the temple guard, “the captains of the temple,” and possibly some priests and scribes. With swords, in the hands of the soldiers. Staves. Clubs. The rabble with the soldiers carried these. From the chief priests and elders. The Sanhedrim.
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 vv47, 57, 69 Mat_26:47. A great multitude.—See Joh_18:3 (R.V.); Luk_22:52. The body,…
CRITICAL NOTES
Mat_26:47. A great multitude.—See Joh_18:3 (R.V.); Luk_22:52. The body, guided by Judas, consisted of
Read full note →
(1) a company of Roman soldiers;
(2) a detachment of the Levitical temple-guard;
(3) certain members of the Sanhedrin and Pharisees (ibid.). Staves.—I.e. clubs. Not the same word as in chapter Mat_10:10.
Mat_26:51. One of them.—See Joh_18:10. When the Evangelical tradition first assumed shape and form, prudence required that the name of Peter should not be publicly mentioned. Hence the indefinite expression in the Synoptists. But this necessity did not exist when John wrote his Gospel; therefore he gives the name (Lange).
Mat_26:53. Twelve legions.—In the Roman army a legion numbered about six thousand. Note the contrast to the “twelve weak men, one a traitor, and the others timorous “; also to the company with Judas.
Mat_26:56. But all this was done, etc.—A continuation of the address of Jesus. See R.V.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Mat_26:47-56
Forbearance.—What the Saviour had just spoken of (Mat_26:46), now comes to pass. “Lo, Judas,” and a “great multitude” “with him” (Mat_26:47). This is the beginning of this part of the story. The end corresponds. Jesus is seen as a captive—and by Himself—in the hands of His enemies (Mat_26:50; Mat_26:56). How has all this come to pass? Through His own action—His own inaction, rather—in very great part. What He has refrained from doing is the chief cause of these things being done. We may contemplate this forbearance of His, first, in His way of dealing with treachery; secondly, in His way of dealing with insult; thirdly, in His reasons for both.
I. His way of dealing with treachery.—This was remarkable, first, because of the nature of the treachery in question. It was something, even for treachery, exceedingly base. Base, as noted before (Mat_26:14), but noted again here (Mat_26:47), as though a feature which should never be forgotten in telling the story, because of the position of the traitor himself. What he was doing was to betray the Man whom he had professed to follow and love in a specially eminent way! Wronging his Master! Selling his Friend! Base still more because of the nature of the “sign” which he fixed upon with this view. Was there no other way of effecting betrayal than by a protestation of loyalty? “Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is He.” You may know whom I am injuring by my pretending to love Him. Baser yet because of the wholly unnecessary effusion with which this vile purpose was effected. “He said, Hail Rabbi, and kissed Him;” “kissed Him much” (so R.V.); did more than was needed for the evil object in view; over-acted his affectation of friendship; went out of his way, as it were, to indulge in falseness. Basest of all because of the character of the Master whom he was treating with this baseness—even the Truth itself—the Incarnation of Love—and the very last of men, therefore, to be treated thus, even if any man ought. Equally remarkable, therefore, in the next place, was the Saviour’s reply to this baseness. “Friend, wherefore art thou come?” This is all, according to one version, that He says in reply; as though He would thereby merely let the traitor know that His design was seen through. “Friend, do that for which thou hast come.” So we find given in another version of the Saviour’s reply, as though He would not only show to the traitor that He understood his design, but that He did not intend to resist or oppose it, even by so much as a word. In any case, there is not a trace of bitterness or sign of anger in any one of His words. Never, perhaps, was any man more cruelly wronged. Never, surely, did any wrong elicit less wrath in return.
II. His way of dealing with insult.—How much there was of this here, on the one side, is shown in two ways. Partly, by what we read of those who had now come with the traitor. They were carrying “swords” some of them (Mat_26:47; Mat_26:55), and appear, therefore, to have been Roman legionaries engaged for this work. Others had “staves” (see as before), so, probably, came from the priests. Either way they had all come against the Saviour as against one of the dregs of mankind—a double insult to One who had recently—and so openly—claimed to be a leader of men. (See especially Mat_21:1-12; Mat_21:23). Partly, by what we read here of the Saviour Himself, and by the express way in which He showed that He felt what their conduct involved (Mat_26:55). And partly, once more, by what is related here of the conduct of one of His disciples. To the Apostle Peter (Joh_18:10), the indignity offered appeared absolutely beyond endurance. Drawing his sword (Luk_22:38), he struck violently at one of those on the opposite side; not impossibly at one of the foremost of them, and one forward, therefore, both with staff and gesture, to threaten the person of Christ. At any rate, in Peter’s judgment the insult offered warranted even the shedding of blood in return. Hence, therefore, on the other side, the exceeding wonder of Christ’s view of the same. What the disciple could not endure for His sake, He submits to with patience. More than that, what the disciple had done, He undoes, as it were. So we are told, be it observed, by the physician St. Luke (Luk_22:51). He even goes so far as to lay down a law against the adoption, by those who are His, of any remedy of this kind, declaring it to be a remedy which could only in the end be productive of more harm (Mat_26:52). It is not for Me, He says—it is not for any of Mine—to have recourse to the “sword.” What a way of meeting all the violence with which He was threatened! Not even a breath of it in return!
III. The Saviour’s reasons for this twofold forbearance.—Not want of feeling, as we have seen (see again Mat_26:55; also compare the use of the word “friend” (= companion, or mate) in Mat_26:50 with Psa_41:9; Psa_55:12-13). Nor yet want of capacity to take vengeance, had He so willed. The Saviour shows here, on the contrary, that what He had to do now lay in the exactly opposite line. Not to exert power, but to restrain it; not to call for help, but to forbid it; not to summon “legions,” but to prevent them from coming; not, in a word, to speak the word which would have destroyed all His enemies at one stroke (cf. Joh_18:6)—was what lay now upon Him (Mat_26:53). Why, then, did He restrain Himself thus? Why restrain others—why such others—as well? His own answer is of the simplest and most definite kind. Because the Scriptures, if He had done otherwise, would have been set on one side. It is very observable that, even in this mere summary of the story, this is specified twice (see Mat_26:54; Mat_26:56). It is equally observable that no other reason is mentioned beside. All our attention is concentrated by the Saviour—and by the Evangelist also—on this one reason alone. Whatever other reasons there were in the background—and we can well believe there were not a few—they are all hidden here behind this. Christ meets these marvellous wrongs in this marvellous manner because it was prophesied that He should! That is what He Himself leaves last on our minds!
1. How full of awe, then, on the one hand, are the Scriptures of truth! By them even the King of kings holds Himself bound. Not even the Holy One of God will allow Himself to set them aside (cf. Psa_40:7)!
2. How full of grace, on the other hand, are the Scriptures of truth! For to what is it, when we come to inquire, that they thus bind the Messiah? Is it not to do that which had been predicted of Him of old? Even to “bring in everlasting righteousness,” and “make reconciliation for iniquity” and provide a ransom for all? The more binding, therefore, the more gracious, on this view of the case! The more stringent, the better! What can, indeed, be better for us than that such a Saviour should have thus bound Himself not to fail in His work?
HOMILIES ON THE VERSES
Mat_26:49. The traitor’s kiss.—
1. Holy things may be prostituted to basest uses.
2. Symbols of friendship may become signals of treason.
3. Deeds receive their moral worth from underlying motives.
4. Men betray Christ with a kiss, when they mask a hatred of His disciples beneath false shows of friendship.
5. When they mingle with His disciples, to make themselves familiar with, and then laugh over their defects.—J. C. Gray.
Mat_26:50. An important question.—St. Bernard used often to ask himself the question which our Lord put to Judas, “Friend, wherefore art thou Come? Why hast thou been created and placed in this world at all? Why hast thou been made a member of Christ in baptism? Why hast thou been led by Providence to this or that state of life? Art thou here to do thine own will? Or wouldst thou indeed serve God, and by labour and suffering such as He may appoint prepare for thine everlasting aim? Friend, wherefore art thou come?” If we would sincerely press that question home, how different would be the aim and the perfectness of our work through each day?—Canon Liddon.
Mat_26:52. Christ’s condemnation of war.—
I. The evils of war are the very evils Christ came to remove.—What are they?
1. Reign of brute force.
2. Carelessness about cruelty.
3. Neglect of the interest of individual souls.
4. Stubborn hindrance of progress and brotherhood.
5. Setting up wrong standards of character; such as Roman honour of Mars and Hercules, and Scandinavian honour of Thor, rather than Christian honour of the Christ. The beatitudes are reversed, and a glamour is thrown around soldiery.
II. The advantages of war are only apparent gains.—
1. War leads to war. The seeds of revenge are sown in the scars of the conquered.
2. There has to be recourse to arbitration at the end, as there might have been at the beginning.
3. If there is acquiescence in victory, it is a wicked confession that Providence is on the side of the strongest battalions.—U. R. Thomas, B.A.
Mat_26:53-54. Christ’s apprehension.—
I. How easily our Lord could have rescued Himself.—
1. God is pleased to work by the ministry of angels.
2. Our Lord might have had any number.
II. Why He forbore to rescue Himself.—That the Scriptures might be fulfilled.
III. Practical observations.—
1. Prayer will extricate us from trouble.
2. Be content to go to heaven in God’s way.
3. Christ’s solicitude for the fulfilment of the Scriptures was a pledge of His anxiety for their accomplishment in all that relates to our salvation.—C. Simeon, M.A.
Mat_26:56. The fickleness of friends.—“Then all the disciples forsook Him and fled.”
I. The cruelty of this it would be hard to exaggerate.—For three years and upwards their Divine Master had been building up their faith and binding them to Himself by a thousand heavenly acts.
II. A lesson of patience towards one another.—Be more patient, more long-suffering and less ready to take offence and rail against the world and its ways; remembering that thou hast bound no one on the earth’s surface to thee—nor canst bind—as Christ bound the eleven, who, when they beheld Him apprehended in the garden, at once forsook Him and fled.—J. W. Burgon, 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 vv47, 57, 59 Mat 26:47-56; Mar 14:43-52; Luk 22:47-53;Joh 18:2-12. “And Judas,…
THE ARREST
Mat 26:47-56; Mar 14:43-52; Luk 22:47-53;Joh 18:2-12. “And Judas, the one betraying Him, knew the place, because frequently, Jesus, with His disciples, had resorted thither. Then Judas, taking a band and officers from the chief priests and Pharisees, comes thither with lanterns, torches, and arms.” The lantern was a closed- up light of some kind, fortified against the wind, while the torches were large, blazing flambeaux. Though the moon was very bright, as she was nearly full, it was exceedingly important to have plenty of light as a fortification against the liability of mistaking the wrong person, as they surmised that an effort would be made on the part of the disciples to elude them in that way; their great confidence, however, being in Judas, who was so intimately acquainted with Him. Thus they had taken every precaution to make sure that they arrested the One whom they had been pursuing these three years, and who had baffled them so frequently by rendering Himself invisible, and in various ways eluding their grasp till His work was done.
Read full note →
Mar 14:43 : “And immediately, He speaking, Judas, being one of the twelve, comes, and a great multitude with him, with swords and clubs, from the chief priests, scribes, and elders.” A huge club, four or five feet long, is an exceedingly common weapon in that country now. I saw persons incessantly thus armed — quite a formidable weapon in the hands of a stalwart man.
Joh 18:4-9. “Then Jesus, knowing all things which are coming upon Him, having gone out, said to them, Whom do you seek? They responded to Him, Jesus the Nazarene. Jesus says to them, I am He?” Never did the world see another such a man as Jesus. When they came to crown Him King, He fled away; but when they came to kill Him, He went out to meet them. “Judas, the one betraying Him, also stood with them. Then, when He said to them, I am He, they went back, and fell upon the ground.” This is His last miracle, except healing the amputated ear, which speedily followed. Though He boldly comes out from the dense shade of those great olive-trees into the clear light of the moon, shining so brightly from that cloudless, Palestinian sky, and also into the strong light of a hundred flambeaux, so that it was as bright as day, and there was no trouble about recognition, yet, lo! an awful panic strikes them, so they retreat back and fall upon the ground like dead men. How easily He could have utterly baffled and defeated them, striking them all with the paralysis of incorrigible terror! But the time has come for Him to meet the bloody avalanche from the bottomless pit, and lay down His life for a lost world.
“Then again He asked them, Whom do you seek? And they said, Jesus the Nazarene. Jesus responded, I said to you that I am He. If then you seek Me, let these retire in order that the word which He spoke may be fulfilled, That I lost none of them whom Thou hast given Me.” They did not consider His disciples sufficiently important to deserve their attention at that time, as they were satisfied if they could only get the One who had given them so much trouble, and whose life they had so long been seeking in vain. Really, all their energies, aspirations, and wits were laid under contribution to secure the arrest and execution of Jesus.
Mat 26:48-50. “And the one having betrayed Him gave them a sign, saying, Whom I shall kiss is He; hold Him fast. And immediately coming to Jesus, he said, Hail, Master; and kissed Him copiously. Jesus said to him, Comrade, for what do you come? Then they, coming, laid hands on Jesus, and bound Him.” Joh 18:12. “Then the band, the chiliarch, and the officers of the Jews took Jesus and bound Him.” Such was their fear, solicitude, and anxiety for success that they all united in arresting and binding Him. Joh 18:10 : “Then Simon Peter having a sword drew it, and smote the servant of the high-priest, and cut off his right ear. And the name to that servant was Malchus.” Mat 26:52 :
“Then Jesus said to Peter, Put up thy sword into its place; for all taking the sword shall perish by the sword.” (Gen 9:6.) Of course, those who use the sword are all liable to perish in that way. Luk 22:51 : “Jesus said, Hold on a little, and touching his ear He healed it.” The moment Peter smote Malchus, Jesus ordered him to put up his sword, stepped instantly to the wounded soldier, touched his ear and healed it, thus in His last miracle manifesting His loving kindness even to His enemies, who had that moment arrested Him, and He knew they were going to take His life. You see in the assault Peter made on the enemies of Jesus a brilliant manifestation of his native heroism. He feared the face of no man, but was brave enough to fight that whole army. It is a great mistake to conclude that he was deficient in natural courage because in the subsequent events of that awful night he displayed so signal cowardice. All this was because Jesus would not let him fight, and consequently he felt he was at the mercy of His enemies, who knew no mercy.
Mat 26:53-56. “Do you not think that I am able now to call on My Father, and He will send Me more than twelve legions of angels? How then can the Scriptures be fulfilled, because it behooveth it thus to be?” Those angels were ready, hovering around, and eager for the opportunity to snatch Him away from the cruel manacles of the bloodthirsty rabble and bear Him on pinions of light to the home of the glorified. Right there at Jerusalem a solitary angel had slain a hundred and eighty-five thousand Assyrian soldiers in one night. Doubtless the same angels who ministered to Him when tempted in the wilderness were hovering round. “At that hour Jesus said to the multitudes, You have come out as against a thief with swords and clubs to take Me. I sat daily with you, teaching in the temple, and you laid not hands on Me. But all this has taken place that the Scriptures of the prophets may be fulfilled. Then all of His disciples, leaving Him, fled.” When the mob first came they surrounded them altogether. Now that they have secured the only One they wanted, they break ranks, leaving an opening for the others all to run away, as they did not want to be encumbered with them at that time. If Jesus had not risen from the dead, thus creating a great popular sensation and weakening the hands of His enemies, they would have arrested and executed every one of His apostles, except Judas, as accomplices in the criminality in which they had falsely implicated Jesus. Now the apostles see that He is arrested and bound, completely in the hands of His enemies; hence, yielding to desperation and affright, they flee away.
Luk 22:53. “But this is your hour, and the power of darkness.” His enemies had repeatedly tried to arrest Him, stone Him, and destroy Him in any way they could; but invariably suffered utter defeat till now, when He is turned over to the powers of earth and hell to execute their vilest venom against His innocent person, and He thus becomes the vicarious substitute for every guilty sinner.
Mar 14:51-52. “And one certain young man follows Him, clothed with a linen cloth on his naked body. The young men arrest him; but he, leaving the linen cloth fled from them in a state of nudity.” It is believed that this young man was none other than the Apostle John and it is said that he fled away to the house of Rabbi Amos in the city, and there procured the robe of a Jewish priest, invested in which he returned, and remained with the Savior in all of His troubles, walking by His side to the tribunal of Annas, thence to the judgment-hall; of Caiaphas, thence to Pilate’s bar and to Herod’s tribunal, then back to Pilate, and on His way to Calvary. Standing by His side when He hung bleeding on the cross all this time hoping that He would revive, exercise His wonderful power, and extricate Himself from the hands of His enemies, till the Roman soldier came along and plunged the spear into His side, thus tearing His heart to pieces. It is said that when this cruel deed was done, all hope of His reviving taking its flight, John, yielding to despair, fainted. Let this be as it may, we see here that John was with Him after the flight of the other ten.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
F. W. Grant 1903 · Public Domain On v57 Subdivision 2. (Mat 26:57-75; Mat 27:1-54.)
Subdivision 2. (Mat 26:57-75; Mat 27:1-54.)
The Cross.
Read full note →
The Lord of glory is now in the hands of men; and we are to see what is in their hearts to do with Him. The perfect and ordained trial of man it is, this opportunity of theirs, and in result the world is manifest in all its dreadful alienation from God. The Cross gives character to all that is before us now; men are acting, and God too is acting in view of it, although the special, anticipated cup is not taken till the Cross is actually reached, and even then is confined to the three hours of intensest suffering marked off by the preternatural darkness from all the rest. Those will lose much of what God would teach us as to the mystery of atoning suffering who do not see the distinct meaning here. All the ground is holy, all the suffering necessary; but the more on this account, not less, must be the meaning of such differences as we find here.
1. Christ is now before men’s judgment-seats, the ecclesiastical, as we call it, and the civil; before the high priest and the governor; the Jew and the Gentile. The charge before each is different: in the one case, blasphemy; in the other, rebellion. The last was to the Jew every way a false charge, made to serve a purpose, and by the Roman so fully seen through that it was but like mocking him to his face to prefer it. The whole land as soon to go up in flames in opposition to the hated tyranny of the Gentile; and Pilate had already tasted the temper of these men now so careful to maintain the authority of Caesar. Nay, they were using him in all this for their own purposes, as he well knew, and making him the instrument of their malice. For an upright man the escape for him was easy; but being the man he was, it was impossible.
The first charge was the real one, though here too they might seek false witness to establish it. But the essential provocation for them was in this, what He had already told them to their faces. They were saying, "This is the Heir: come, let us kill Him and seize on His inheritance." "They have seen," He declares, "and hated both Me and My Father."
Certainly, not even to themselves, would they have admitted this. Not only was there a multitude that blindly followed them, but the leaders too were in the deepest sense "blind" also, as again He had told them. There is, in the awful mystery of our fallen nature, a blindness which is all the more intense because intentional, - an ignorance which is the fruit of know ledge. And such was the misery of these unhappy men; with whom the very light in them was darkness, knowing not because they would not know, and condemned therefore even because they did not.
But this was the ground, then, of His accusation, as they declared themselves, "by our law He ought to die, because He made Himself the Son of God" (Joh 19:7). This was the issue, though they never faced it, "Was He the Son of God?" Confessedly even, that they never meant to lace. Scripture had silenced them. David in Spirit had certainly called his Son his Lord. Why this? They had no answer, and they would not seek one.
(1) He on His part stood by this issue - would not accept another - would not take the Kingdom upon any other ground. "Thou art the Son of God" must in the lips of a disciple be the basis of the other affirmation; "’Thou art the King of Israel." False witness, such as they sought, they did not need to condemn Him, nor would He plead one way or the other against it. Let them put the real question, He will answer under oath, and does. "Tell us if Thou be the Christ the Son of God." And He answers, "Thou hast said, Moreover I say unto thee that from henceforth ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven."
There is His counter-challenge. He, yet in their hands, patiently subject to all the indignities they can heap upon Him, - He is just at the end - at the end for ever, of all this humiliation. "From henceforth" all will be changed for Him and for them. And He summons forth Daniel again to link that manhood of His, which they deemed a sufficient disproof of His highest claim, with those prophetic scriptures to which, through all that was in contradiction to it, the heart of the nation clung. Let them give heed to the voices, then, which out of the past spoke with new energy in the living present. Affirmed as such, with all the glory of His words and works to give authority to His witness, Christ the Son of God was there.
But it avails only for His condemnation, and to set loose the fury of wild passion stirred by the breath of satanic enmity: for this was their hour and the power of darkness (Luk 22:53). Frenzied with the majesty of that calm Presence in which they stand, they break out in insult and defiance of all His claim. Rending his clothes as in horror, the high-priest declares the trial over; He has blasphemed, He has condemned Himself. To which they all agree, that He is worthy of death. Then the pitiful form of justice being ended, the spirit beneath is free to manifest itself; and all the depths of men’s hearts are poured out.
(2) The true witness of the Master is followed by the denial of the disciple, - the foremost of them all, and under his Master’s eye. Three times over and even with noisy profanity, he denies companionship with or knowledge of Him; until it would seem, this reckless overflow of a heart too like their own; assures them, more than his denial, that indeed he cannot be a follower of "Jesus the Nazarene." Only the Eye that Peter discerns presently upon him can find still under all this the partaker of the old intimacy, the man to whom the Eternal Father had revealed His Son. Alas for this other self we carry with us, and which would disown the Christ that we think we could die for! Matthew does not indeed record the look of Jesus upon His fallen disciple, but how, when immediately the cock crew, he remembered the words of prophetic warning that had been addressed to him, but which had been surely part of the provision made for him to sustain the faith which Christ had prayed in that critical moment might not fail, even though it might seem to have already failed. With an awful spasm of conviction, out he went into the night, a crushed and broken man.
Night! but already the darkness was not unrelieved. That which had brought it into his soul was that which heralded the coming day.
2. The charge made before the high-priest was, as already said, the real one, and was the truth. He did affirm Himself to be what they charged Him with affirming, and was condemned for His own true witness. The charge before the governor was on the contrary a fictitious charge, with just so much truth in it only as would make it serve their purpose. Pilate hears it, hears His own declaration that He is a King, nay, that He is King of the Jews, and having heard and examined, declares Him innocent, and does so to the end. The Kingdom that He claimed was not to be established by human power, nor might they draw sword on His behalf. He had exhorted them to give to Caesar what was Caesar’s, and declared that they that took the sword should perish by the sword. Caesar had nothing to fear, therefore, except it were possibly from a quarter where to resist would be hopeless.
But the Jews had not the power of inflicting a penalty of death, and had need, therefore, of the Roman governor for this purpose, and were, no doubt, full of grim satisfaction at the thought of having him in their hands, towards whom they had plenty of ground for ill-feeling, and little enough for good will. Crucifixion was not a Jewish penalty: they might hang the dead upon a tree, but not the living. The Lord, the Yielder up of His own life, had declared that He was to be delivered to the Gentiles to be crucified.
There was a spiritual reason governing all here. For the curse of the law was to be upon Him, and the public, open sign of the curse was hanging on a tree (Deu 21:23); but the infliction of this as a Jewish penalty would have carried this beyond death, and altered its significance. In the hands of the Gentiles alone would crucifixion answer to its end. But this we must look at further in a little while.
In connection with this charge before the governor it is that we see God bringing forward His witnesses to the spotlessness of His beloved Son. Matthew especially dwells upon this, because Matthew gives us all through the governmental side of things, and even the aspect of the Lord’s sacrificial work (the trespass-offering) is governmental.* The witness of Pilate is given more fully here than elsewhere; that of Judas, and that of the dream of Pilate’s wife, are only in this Gospel. Correspondingly we have the purchase of Aceldama with the money cast back to them by Judas, which is surely significant. The witness of the acceptance of His work we shall look at in its place. The four testimonies previously mentioned are all found in the present section. They are the evidence in rebuttal of the charge brought against Him.
{*See Introduction pp. 27, 28, and the notes on the offerings, vol. 1, pp. 296-300.}
(1) Israel deliver up their King, then; to the Gentiles. It is done formally, by the heads of the nation; whom we hear little later refusing positively any king but Caesar, as the result of counsel taken to put Jesus to death. The evangelist breaks off at once to follow the course of Judas to the end.
(2) A hope seems to have remained or freshly risen in the heart of Christ’s betrayer that, after all, He might not be condemned. Perhaps the words here do not convey as much as that, but rather the horror produced by the actual thing when now accomplished, never to be undone. What tales have we of deeds deliberately done, which when done have assumed at once a new shape of terror and dismay, as if never contemplated before. With what different eyes might the traitor have seen the actual condemnation of his Lord and Master from those with which he had looked on to it, however certain. Clearly it is the awful agony of remorse that awakes now in Judas, and not repentance. He cannot keep the money he has gained, to which even for the chief priests the blood-stain indelibly attaches. Nay, he shrieks out even in their ears the confession of his sin in having betrayed the innocent blood. But there it ends: "innocent blood;" not holy or righteous, still less "the Holy and the Righteous One": the glory of the Son of God has no part in it - neither heals nor even smites him. There is no turning to Him with whom he had companied so long, - no sense of any one to whom he can turn. There is, in short, no faith, and therefore no repentance. "He cast the silver pieces into the temple" - practically, the sanctuary, the part proper to the priests alone, - "and departed and went away and hanged himself." In this we see again the opposite of faith. How many times must he have seen the miraculous deeds which testified that "the Son of man had power on earth to forgive sins"! but he seems to remember nothing of all this, or else cannot believe in the divine mercy toward himself; and thus he plunges headlong into irrecoverable ruin.
(3) So the money is on the hands of those who scruple to defile the treasury with it, though as to their souls they have no such care. But the price of blood they cannot put into the "Corban," among the offerings to Jehovah, and so they take counsel, and buy with it the potter’s field - a special place known as that - "to bury strangers in." "The expression," says Lange, "does not refer to Jews from other countries (as Meyer supposes), who in a religious point of view were not strangers; nor to professing heathens, who were left to themselves; but to Gentile proselytes (of the gate), to whom a certain regard was due, while priestly exclusiveness would not allow them to rest in properly consecrated graves. Thus even in this act of cheap charity and pious provision on the part of a Sanhedrin which slew the Lord of glory, Phariseeism remained true to itself. The price of blood and the field of blood are declared quite suited for ’strangers.’"
But this is on man’s side only; on God’s there was surely a witness of what Israel had really acquired for themselves with this fatal blood-money. Had they not in fact purchased for themselves in every land into which they were to be cast "a burial-place for strangers"? Strangers they have indeed been ever since, and their graves how often in a "field of blood:" - a "potter’s field" too, as the quotation here declares; not simply that which lay on the slope of the valley of Hinnom, but the field of the Great Potter of Jer 18:1-23, in which "the word of Jehovah came to me," says the prophet, "saying, O house of Israel, cannot I do with you, as this potter? saith Jehovah. Behold, as the clay in the potter’s hand, so are ye in My hand, O house of Israel."
They had indeed cast this money to the potter, and they have been ever since as a vessel marred upon the wheel, and to be re-moulded. This is the meaning of their discipline in all the long years since.
(4) Jesus before the governor at once declares Himself the King of the Jews; but to all the accusations of the Jews replies nothing whatever; so that Pilate marvels.
But now the question of His acceptance or rejection is to be pressed on all the people; and again we see how the government of God has arranged every thing to this end. First, there has been established a custom of releasing a prisoner at the time of the paschal feast, and the people had the decision as to what prisoner it should be. Then they had at this time a prisoner of a notable kind, most suitable every way for comparison and by way of contrast with the spotless Victim now before them. This is at once suggested by his name, Barabbas, which is "son of the father." The Syriac and some other versions, with some cursive MSS., even read "Jesus Barabbas," an insertion very hard to explain if not genuine. All Christian feeling would naturally be against it, and certainly favor omission rather than insertion. Together, the names would be an awful diabolic assumption of titles most significant in the Lord.
Mark and Luke add that he had been cast into prison for sedition; thus had actually committed the crime with which they were falsely charging Jesus. Added to which, he was a robber and a murderer. Thus for the people to choose Barabbas would seem impossible, when now Pilate desired to know whether he should release this notorious criminal or "Jesus who is called Christ."
The mercy of God has given Pilate warning also from a wholly unexpected quarter. "As he was sitting on the judgment-seat, his wife sent unto him, saying, Have nothing to do with that just man, for I have suffered many things today in a dream because of him." It was the very thing most calculated, perhaps, to act upon the sceptical Roman; a voice out of that dark border-land which by its very darkness seems to attract the imaginative faculty, to fill it with possibilities the less challengeable the less they are defined. Outside of all priestly influence also, his wife is made the witness to his conscience, and against these priests whose measure he has long since taken and whose motives he penetrates. "He knew that for envy they had delivered Him."
In his uneasiness Pilate would fain put the responsibility which he cared not to face upon the people. Not the chief priests but the popular voice shall determine what is to be done, and the people also shall decide but one way, if he can accomplish it, - it shall be Barabbas or Jesus who is called Christ!
But the unhappy people are under the control of their leaders, and urgently insist upon their choice of Barabbas. It is the heart of man exposed to its depths, - the mind of the flesh, which is enmity against God; and when Pilate, still anxious to escape the fatal responsibility, puts it to them, (as he had no right to do,) what they would have done with Jesus then, immediately the awful cry breaks out from the crowd as with one voice, "Let Him be crucified!" Pilate asks in vain, "Why? what evil hath He done?" The only answer is the more vehement cry, "Let Him be crucified!"
It is the popular vote, after He has been among them three or more years, borne witness to by a constant display of power in grace that ministered to every need of man; by wondrous words that went even beyond this, and revealed, as light from heaven; the whole face of the world, while bringing in for it the glory of what is beyond and above it; Himself in Himself the incarnate glory of God, the seal and perfection of all that He uttered. The end is full, absolute rejection; hatred for His love, passionate hatred as if for some unspeakable wrong, that dooms Him to death, a death of shame, of unutterable anguish, the death of a criminal, a frightful and accursed death. They deliver up the Prince of life and desire a murderer to be granted to them. One cannot but realize in this Jesus Barabbas of Matthew the shadow of one to come, in whom man’s natural choice will find its final expression, and of whom the Lord said to the Jews, I am come in My Father’s name, and ye receive Me not: if another come in his own name, him ye will receive" (Joh 5:43). Another will come in his own name, God allowing all the thoughts of man’s heart to come out in full public expression, - another "saviour," the son of another father, true "child of the devil," in whom the unbelief as to Christ shall come to faith, and the crop of sin at last be harvested. "For the mystery of iniquity doth already work, only he who now letteth" (hindereth) will hinder until he be taken out of the way and then shall that wicked one be revealed, the son of perdition; whom the Lord shall consume with the breath of His mouth, and destroy with the manifestation of His presence: even him whose coming is after the working of Satan; with all. power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish, because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion that they should believe a lie; that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness" (2Th 2:7-11).
Awful are words like these, but they are words of truth, and to be fulfilled in days that are yet before us. The common application to Popery destroys for us in large measure its power for warning, and teaches us to look for its fulfilment in what has been manifested for centuries, and the day of Christ has not yet come. Not in the Christian Church, but in the Jewish temple of God
" will this defiance of God be uttered, and where Christ was rejected, there shall antichrist be installed. Israel have, alas! saved their Barabbas, to enthrone him in a day which every sign of the times assure us to be very near at hand. And as the Gentiles then joined hands with the Jews to put Jesus to death, so shall they join hands also to enthrone antichrist.
(5) The government of God in all this shows itself, and the power of the enemy itself works in compelled subjection to it. We find now Israel invoking it, and not in vain. Pilate, determined to escape the responsibility of that which under pressure he is about to do, adapts to his purpose part of the Jewish ritual in the case of an unknown murder, and washes his hands in the presence of the multitude, saying, "I am innocent of the blood of this just man: see ye to it." "And all the people answered and said, His blood be upon us and on our children." Thus, if they cannot lift the load from Pilate, they accept their own responsibility in the fullest way; and ever since, flee as they might into all the countries of the earth, the avenger of blood has been behind them. No effectual city of refuge has been found for them; nor will be until they look upon Him whom they have pierced, and in repentance and faith find it in Him the source of all their blessing.
Barabbas is released, and Pilate has the One whom he has owned to be righteous scourged, preparatory to crucifixion.
3. With one more step we come to the Cross itself, the lowest point of Christ’s humiliation, and the place of deepest suffering, but not only this: the Cross has a character peculiarly its own, and here alone do we reach what is in the proper sense, atonement. This is, however, contested by so many, and is of such importance in itself that we must look at it in this place sufficiently to understand the character of what is before us.
If sin-bearing be, as it plainly is, an absolute necessity for atonement, Scripture declares without any obscurity whatever, that it was on the Cross He bore sin, and only there. "Who His own self," says the apostle, "bare our sins in His own body on the tree" (1Pe 2:24). Scripture says this, and only this. It never speaks of our Lord as a sin-bearer in life, but in death; including, however, in death not simply the act of death, the expiring, but the suffering connected with it, "the death of the cross": suffering which gave its character to the death itself.
To distinguish it from mere dying, the circumstances are associated with it in a way that at first seems strange enough, to be put (as they are) as if essential to atonement itself. Thus it is said, "Jesus, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered without the gate" (Heb 13:12). Why without the gate? does not that seem a mere circumstance, quite separable from the suffering itself even; and certainly from the power of the precious blood of Christ to sanctify?
Yet, when we examine the connection with the preceding verse, we find that this suffering without the gate, or what is implied in it, is undoubtedly contemplated in the type to which the apostle is referring: "For the bodies of those beasts whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high-priest for sin; are burned without the camp." "Burned without the camp" certainly answers to "suffered without the gate." And here, notice that the distinction between those offerings whose blood went into the sanctuary and those that did not, was not in the burning, (for all were burnt, though indeed not all wholly burnt,) but in the place of burning: the emphasis is laid upon this very thing.
But what, then, is the meaning? the ordinary place of burning was upon the altar in the tabernacle-court, and there was the place of which it was said, in connection with the blood, "I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh atonement for the soul" (Lev 17:11).
Yet the blood of what was burnt upon the altar could not go in where the blood of that which was burnt on the ground outside the camp could and did go.
Notice again, that this is the sin-offering, called this distinctively as that in which the judgment of sin is what is prominent - is differential. The judgment of sin; then; is that which is expressed in the banishment of what is nevertheless the "most holy" sin-offering into the holy place outside not merely the courts of Jehovah’s house, but outside the camp also, the place of a people in relationship with God.
Banishment from God is what is marked by it: for God is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, and that cannot look at sin; while sin and sin-offering are the same word in Scripture, a man’s sin-offering being that in which his sin was put before God. Thus outside the gate, as outside the camp, expresses either the place of one himself a sinner, or the place of One "made sin" for sinners.
"The Tree" intensifies still more this thought; for "cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree;" and the cross is thus a death of curse. "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written; Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree" (Gal 3:13). Here again; what might seem merely circumstantial is made to express that which marks the death of Christ as truly propitiatory, the bearing of sin’s awful penalty. Here is the "cup" from which the Lord necessarily shrank, but which nevertheless He drank in obedience to the Father’s will, as requisite for our redemption. Death and judgment are man’s natural portion, because of sin; not death only and there an end, but "after death the judgment" (Heb 9:27). Thus death alone could not be what Christ had to bear, and death simply was but its least part. Death is provisional, temporal, a governmental infliction, not an absolute necessity. For judgment in its full character resurrection must come in: death yields up to judgment, and judgment is eternal.
We must not look at the "curse of the law," then, as if it were mere circumstance - the hanging on a tree. That was but the outer garb of a reality more fearful far. Man could give man the cross: atonement was not an effect of suffering at the hands of man, but of suffering Godward. And this is what the cry of abandonment on the cross expresses. It was not that He had been given up into the hands of men; and to make it that would be to make Him less than the many of His people who have suffered such physical agonies at the hands of others without any such thought of being forsaken of God as is heard in this desolate cry. Nay, the psalmist, in that prophetic psalm to which the very words of the cry refer us, has distinguished carefully between this and all that saints ever suffered: for "our fathers trusted in Thee," he says: "they trusted in Thee, and Thou didst deliver them; they cried unto Thee, and were not confounded; but I am a worm and no man . . . be not far from me" (Psa 22:4-6; Psa 22:11; and see the notes on the Psalm). The sorrow here is an unequalled sorrow, and wholly different from any other.
How different from anything that could be true of Him in that wondrous life He had lived, in which His testimony was, "And He that sent Me is with Me: the Father hath not left Me alone; for I do always the things that please Him" (Joh 8:29). How would such a cloud in any other place than this have marred the glory of that life of manifest communion with God, which in its unbroken perfection shone out in Him. Nay, how it would have shadowed the divine glory revealed in Him, that He, being what He was, should have been yet ever in the distance of the sinner’s place with God! Or do we think that what is involved in this is only the bearing some results of God’s government of a fallen world, - as one of an exiled family, though innocent, not being able to sleep at Jerusalem (!) and such things? If that were all, what need of the cross at all? Is it possible that any one can fail to see the difference - the total, absolute contrast, between the forsaking of God and His being ever with Him? between His life-work and His sacrificial death?
Another thing that results from all this, and the want of perception of which has clouded for many the full intelligence of the atoning work, is the need of realizing that the penalty upon sin that had to be lifted from us could not be satisfied or modified, by the infinite glory of the blessed Sufferer. Such thoughts appeal to us very strongly and from two different directions. We think of the Father’s Son; of the Word made flesh, and shrink confounded from the thought of what seems to be suggested by it, as if a schism (though but for a moment) in the divine nature, or between the divine and human in the Lord. Or, again, contrasting the eternity of the penalty upon man with the actual brief endurance of the Lord’s suffering, we incline at once to say, here certainly there was modification of the penalty, and a very great one.
Now in the first case, we are simply baffled by the inscrutability of that which the Lord assures us is inscrutable, the mystery of His divine-human Person, which for those who have not been content to accept the necessary limitations of creature-understanding, darkened now by sin; have constantly ended in the acceptance of some impairment either of humanity or divinity in Him. But neither in this way have they escaped from perplexity, nor, had they done so, could they have found the inscrutable Christ of Scripture. We can but accept Scripture, in its declarations and its silences; and in doing so, we shall find a Christ never impaired in His humanity by His divinity, capable as Man of being understood by men; One capable of all that is proper to man; capable of faith, nay, the supreme example of it; capable of a will which, though holy, He gave up to the Father; capable of being tempted in all things like as we are, sin apart" (Heb 4:15). Can we reconcile it all with that higher glory of deity in Him, which gives new glory to His humanity itself? We should gain nothing by the attempt, but lose wholly. We need a Christ whom we can know, but yet not wholly know; with whom there are inner recesses of light which no man may explore; and that is what we find in Him.
As to the second case, the eternity of the penalty is no necessary element in it, except where the sins or the sinful condition eternally abide: and that is the case wherever the atonement provided has no effect. It is a common mistake to argue against the eternity of the penalty from the time during which the Lord endured it, or upon the same ground for a modification of the penalty as He endured it. Indeed, some will have no penalty at all in His case, but a substitute for it; while others say an equivalent or one modified in some way. The Scriptures cannot be made to agree with any of these thoughts. Christ honored the God of judgment by taking the very judgment lying upon man: He was made a curse for us; He was made sin for us who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. But let us go now with the solemn history before us.
(1) And here the indications of the divine meaning in the Cross are found in that which is nevertheless but the awful display of diabolic cruelty at the hands of man. A new class of men are the soldiers to whom Pilate has given Him up, and in them man comes to a new trial. They have heard the justification by the judge of the One whom he sends as innocent to an agonizing death. They are not Jews, these soldiers, care nothing about the Sanhedrin, are not pressed to what they do by the chief priests or the outcries of a people whom they despise as senseless and bigoted fanatics. There was not only in general no love between them and the Jews, but the fiercest scorn and enmity. Nor are they forced by their office as executioners to that for which now as their own special mocking and insult, not to be lost willingly by any of. them, they gather the whole band.
How the various classes of men are made to bear witness against themselves through all this scene: most freely acting out the very depths of their hearts, while overruled by the divine purpose to show out the glory of the Man so seemingly helpless in their hands. These are the men of blood and iron, the men with whom might is right, the men who delight to pull down others from their excellency; men with no wrongs even imagined to repay, but simply at their business, which they enter into with the zest of the amphitheatre, the cruel Roman frenzy, which possessed all sections of the people. Now they have a king in their hands - a King! - and with an inscrutable dignity about Him which nothing that man has done can touch. Now it is their turn: what can they do that has not yet been done, and which shall accomplish what all else has failed in?
Herod had mocked Him with a royal robe; it should be theirs to crown Him; but with what? with bay, laurel, myrtle? He takes satire easily, as it were, unconsciously: can they not make Him feel it, this impenetrable Man? You see the brutal jest of the soldier: crown Him? yes, crown Him! make the satire pungent: crown Him with thorns.
So they stripped Him, and put on Him a scarlet cloak, and having plaited a crown of thorns, put it upon His head, and a reed in His right hand. And they mocked Him, saying, "Hail, king of the Jews!"
But they could not know how, ever after, we should be gazing with eager adoration at this wondrous Figure just as with their cruel hands they had arrayed it and how the centuries should see in all they had done, no more their malignant mockery, but indeed the divinely significant emblems of God’s glorious King.
The scarlet cloak or pallium was such as was worn by kings and emperors, but its color was produced from the coccus; it was a death-stain.
Thorns are the sign of the curse which He was now taking to remove it from us.
And the reed, the type of weakness, becomes the symbol of His power, - or at least of the way through which He has taken it: "He was crucified through weakness." Yet the cross is that which has annulled every foe that was against us, while it has made Him the Sovereign of an Empire soon to be universal: "I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me."
How plain that every detail here is under the government of divine wisdom, and proclaiming in fact His glory. They have failed, and cast aside their mockery, to turn it into mere brutality as useless. They have failed; every foe must fail. The King goes on to His throne.
(2) Of the Cross we have first the human side, - a cross which man may be permitted to carry after Him: and so Simon; the "hearkener," the "obedient," is seen at the outset, here. For by dull hearing we may escape the world’s impressment after this fashion; though as Simons we shall find it companionship with the Lord. Still we must remember that there was another Simon who had professed readiness to take this place and more, and did not though he afterwards did. We have to learn the secret of power, even though we have the will; and that the strength we need is made perfect in weakness.
So the place of a skull is reached, the objective point which had been before the Lord all through. A scene of death was the attraction for the Lord of life; for none other could it have had any. But He comes into it, therefore, not to be merely a visitor, but to "taste death" in its reality. He refuses therefore the stupefying draught* offered to those led to execution, and gives Himself up to the full endurance of all that is before Him. Then they crucify Him and divide His garments among them, casting lots; all the while the light of prophecy steadily shining upon all this, as the great Eye of God, though unheeded, heeding silently, until the time comes for interference. And meanwhile still for faith there runs through all the deeper meaning which, if we could not read it, we should be satisfied must be there. But is He not in fact providing at His own cost the clothing which is to cover men’s nakedness, and that by divine appointment also, (of which the lot in Israel spoke,) even for His enemies? Certainly thus alone it is that any one of us can say, "He has covered me with the robe of righteousness" (Isa 61:10).
{*The "gall" mingled with the wine was probably "wormwood," a strongly stupefying ingredient, though the Septuagint use it for various bitter substances. The "vinegar," an alternative reading here, and with evident reference to Psa 69:21, was no doubt simply the sour wine in common use.}
Nay, was it not we, the sinners enriched by Him, who guarded Him there, keeping Him upon that cross of shame which He could not leave, because of our necessities? This was indeed more than all the legions of the Roman army, that which made rescue for Him impossible, and kept all the hosts of heaven from breaking through for His relief.
His title is His accusation: He is Jesus, the King of the Jews; and for that they class Him with robbers, who is presently to sit down upon the Father’s throne; and the passers-by revile Him, wagging their heads as they see Him there who according to their false accusation was to destroy the temple and in three days was to build it up again. In fact it was they who were now destroying it, and in a little while they will begin to realize the true application; "In three days I will rise again."
But against all His claims, the cross is in their minds a conclusive argument. The Son of God upon a cross! He must, if He is to be believed at all, come down from the cross. And the priests follow, mocking Him with the same arguments: "He is the King of Israel? well, let him come down from the cross, and we will believe." And then they use, all unconsciously, almost the words of the mockers of the twenty-second psalm: "He trusted in God: let Him deliver Him, if He will have Him." Nay, even "the robbers who were crucified with Him, reproached Him" with His powerlessness and lack of help. He is the King with the reed-sceptre and the crown of thorns!
(3a) Deeper the chasm under Him yawns. A preternatural darkness settles down upon the whole land for three hours together, from the sixth to the ninth hour. When it disappears the crisis is over, He Himself declares that "It is finished" (Joh 19:30), and then; in the language here, dismisses His spirit and departs. His work is accomplished: the rent veil and the graves broken through remain as the tokens of what is accomplished.
It is surely a superficial thought that the sympathy of nature with her suffering Lord is what the darkness falling over all expresses. The Lord, as it passes away, Himself interprets it in a different manner. If God be Light, darkness is the natural sign of His turning away. The three days’ darkness in Egypt we have seen to have such a meaning. The final "outer darkness" of the lost is the most distinct and awful expression of it - darkness outside, -away from the presence and glory of God. It is the rejection by God of those who have rejected Him. It is the necessity of a holy nature which cannot have fellowship with evil. And Christ in the darkness is the sign of His being the Sin-bearer of His people, - the sign of that which was to Him was the deepest agony that He could suffer, the forsaking of God.
We have already in some measure considered the meaning of this. It is not here that we shall find the doctrine of atonement, but the fact, the making it, with presently the consequences Godward and manward, which show how perfectly it has been made. Christ in the sinner’s place, the reality of substitution, God’s judgment upon sin owned and borne by Him who knew no sin, -that is what is before us here. These three hours are apart from all other in human history; in which have been manifested, as nowhere else, both man and God; evil and good have come together; the good, not by power interposing for it, but by its own intrinsic blessedness, o’er-mastering the evil; God glorified, so as to bring Him in in answer to it, in righteousness the justifier of every one that believeth in Jesus.
To those standing by the cross the Lord’s words are a call for Elias; a misinterpretation, probably, of the soldiery, rather than the Jews, but who had caught up some of the common Jewish beliefs which they would have heard expressed around them. Would Elias come and take Him down? Conscience getting roused, they still it with faint mockery addressed to the man who ministers the vinegar to the agonizing thirst of crucifixion; "Let be: let us see whether Elias will come to save Him."
(b) But the end now is reached. Still, master of Himself, not conquered of death but yielding Himself to it, He cries with the loud voice of unexhausted strength, and dismisses His spirit. The expression is peculiar to Matthew, the royal Gospel, and very unhappily obscured in the common translation.* It is the explicit assertion, as to the moment of death, of what He had Himself before declared: "No man taketh My life from Me, but I lay it down of Myself; I have authority to lay it down, and authority to take it again" (Joh 10:18). Notice that here it is the simple expression of authority and thus absolutely in place in the Gospel of Matthew, one of those more hidden harmonies of inspiration, which we are apt to let through mere inadvertency escape us. But what a testimony to Him whose royal title was proclaimed upon a cross, whose sceptre was a reed, whose crown was of thorns, and lately in the deepest agony of One suffering for sin! But such are the mysteries of our salvation, now made so fully intelligible to us, yet still the mysteries of a "love that passeth knowledge."
{*"Yielded up the ghost," (R.V.) "yielded up His spirit."}
(c) The peculiar agony passed of the forsaking of God, there remains but death to complete atonement. All that lay upon man is then taken; God’s righteousness approved and manifested, sin in its reality as before Him exposed. The result begins at once to be apparent in a double way. The veil of the temple is rent in the midst; and on the other hand the quaking earth opens the graves, "and many bodies of the saints that slept arose, and came out of the graves after His resurrection, and went into the holy city and appeared unto many."
This latter sign is, again; a thing peculiar to Matthew. As the effect of the Lord’s work, it would naturally have reference to that special aspect of the work which is presented here; and this we have seen already to be in Matthew the trespass- (which is the governmental) offering.
This is easily understood, if we consider the difference between that which is the necessary part of the penalty upon sin, as resulting from the very nature of God, and therefore unchangeable as that nature, and that which it may please Him to affix to it as the special brand of His displeasure.
As has often been said, while "God is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, and cannot look at sin," and therefore His separation from it is an unchangeable necessity, - death (I am speaking of what we ordinarily call that) is, in man’s case, such a governmental brand, and can be removed from him without change on his part, or atonement for him. This is important to realize as bearing upon the resurrection of the wicked. It has been often argued and with apparent justification from a certain statement in Scripture, that the resurrection even of the wicked is due only to Christ’s atoning work, and so in their case also has a redemptive character. Here is not the place to discuss the fundamental passage; but the Lord’s own words assure us that as, on the one hand, there is a "resurrection of life," so, on the other, there is a "resurrection of judgment" (Joh 5:29, R.V.). As, on the one hand, life claims even the bodies of the heirs of life, so on the other, does judgment claim the bodies of the unsaved. And thus it is said, "after death the judgment" (Heb 9:27), which takes place, as we see in the book of Revelation, only when "death and hades" have given up the dead.
Thus death has place in God’s dealings with man this side of eternity only; and indeed, though it be the brand upon sin; yet still as part of a discipline of mercy. As the removal of man from the place for which he was originally created, and the sundering of all sweet, familiar ties, sending him out alone, naked as he came into the world, but with neither the ignorance nor innocence with which he came into it, to meet he knows not perhaps what, yet fears with a true instinct, if he knows not, - death is the constant appeal to him as to the ruin in which he is, - the "Adam, where art thou?" of God who seeks him. Whatever, then; the final issue, death has no part in it. For even the second death is no repetition of the first, but that in which it is swallowed up and lost; while the saint inherits life eternal.
Notice, now, the peculiar way in which the resurrection of the saints of which Matthew speaks here is connected with the work of atonement. They do not come out of their graves till "after His resurrection." They do not actually rise till then. Plainly, because Christ is the "first-fruits" of them that sleep, the "First-born from the dead;" and none, therefore, could precede Him.* On the other hand, it is when the Lord dies that the graves open: it is this that opens them; we are intended to find connection between this death and the apparition of living men brought up out of death. No phantom merely, we are assured; "bodies of the saints that slept" arising; not to take again their place among men; but as those that belong to another sphere, glowing with the light of it.
{*For this is not a restoration to mortal life once more, as in the case of Lazarus, of the daughter of Jairus, and the son of the widow of Nain; or it would not exemplify, as is plainly intended here, the power of atonement.}
The rending of the veil of the sanctuary precedes in the account here, as it preceded in order of occurrence, the resurrection of the saints. It is plainly connected with the three hours of darkness, in the same way in which the latter is connected with the Lord’s death. The veil was the sign of that "thick darkness" in which under the law God dwelt. "The way into the holiest was not made manifest." None could see God and live. If Moses himself is permitted to see His glory, it is after He is gone by: thus with His face turned away.
Here, then; is the darkness of the Cross, the darkness in which man abides, spite of all that he can do in his own behalf. He sits in darkness and the shadow of death. Pass the veil he cannot. His Deliverer must come out after him, even to where he is; but having come there in the perfection of that marvelous obedience, cannot abide there. The veil is rent in the divine way, from top to bottom. The light of the glory of God streams forth, God fully manifested in righteousness and in love, and by that way, the way of the Cross which has revealed Him, men be they what they may can draw near, if they will, to Him, - nay, find in His presence thus their one possible sanctuary of refuge.
The resurrection of the saints that follows here is but that which completely fits them for that place, and puts them fully into it. Restitution Godward, with its overplus of glory being fully made, man too can receive his overplus of compensating blessing. If the first paradise be not restored, he shall enter in Christ the paradise of God. Thus the trespass-offering view of the Cross is here complete.
(d) The fruit of it is seen also in another way. The Gentile centurion and those that are with him, convinced by all that they have seen and heard, confess Him to be, not the King of the Jews merely, but the Son of God. Thus the Roman soldier takes his place with Peter the apostle in proclaiming that which Israel has denied. The dispensational intimation here, according to the character of Matthew’s Gospel, seems to be shown in this, that what in Mark and Luke is given as the individual faith of the centurion is here testified as shared by "those that were with him." It is the general faith of a Gentile company.
F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On vv50, 57, 65, 66
Matthew
THE LAST PLEADING OF LOVE
Read full note →
Mat 26:50.
We are accustomed to think of the betrayer of our Lord as a kind of monster, whose crime is so mysterious in its atrocity as to put him beyond the pale of human sympathy. The awful picture which the great Italian poet draws of him as alone in hell, shunned even there, as guilty beyond all others, expresses the general feeling about him. And even the attempts which have been made to diminish the greatness of his guilt, by supposing that his motive was only to precipitate Christ’s assumption of His conquering Messianic power, are prompted by the same thought that such treason as his is all but inconceivable. I cannot but think that these attempts fail, and that the narratives of the Gospels oblige us to think of his crime as deliberate treachery. But even when so regarded, other emotions than wondering loathing should be excited by the awful story.
There had been nothing in his previous history to suggest such sin, as is proved by the disciples’ question, when our Lord announced that one of them should betray Him. No suspicion lighted on him-no finger pointed to where he sat. But self-distrust asked, ‘Lord, is it I?’ and only love, pillowed on the Master’s breast, and strong in the happy sense of His love, was sufficiently assured of its own constancy, to change the question into ‘Lord! who is it?’ The process of corruption was unseen by all eyes but Christ’s. He came to his terrible pre-eminence in crime by slow degrees, and by paths which we may all tread. As for his guilt, that is in other hands than ours. As for his fate, let us copy the solemn and pitying reticence of Peter, and say, ‘that he might go to his own place’-the place that belongs to him, and that he is fit for, wherever that may be. As for the growth and development of his sin, let us remember that ‘we have all of us one human heart,’ and that the possibilities of crime as dark are in us all. And instead of shuddering abhorrence at a sin that can scarcely be understood, and can never be repeated, let us be sure that whatever man has done, man may do, and ask with humble consciousness of our own deceitful hearts, ‘Lord, is it I?’ These remarkable and solemn words of Christ, with which He meets the treacherous kiss, appear to be a last appeal to Judas. They may possibly not be a question, as in our version-but an incomplete sentence, ‘What thou hast come to do’-leaving the implied command, ‘That do,’ unexpressed. They would then be very like other words which the betrayer had heard but an hour or two before, ‘That thou doest, do quickly.’ But such a rendering does not seem so appropriate to the circumstances as that which makes them a question, smiting on his heart and conscience, and seeking to tear away the veil of sophistications with which he had draped from his own eyes the hideous shape of his crime. And, if so, what a wonderful instance we have here of that long-suffering love. They are the last effort of the divine patience to win back even the traitor. They show us the wrestle between infinite mercy and a treacherous, sinful heart, and they bring into awful prominence the power which that heart has of rejecting the counsel of God against itself. I venture to use them now as suggesting these three things: the patience of Christ’s love; the pleading of Christ’s love; and the refusal of Christ’s love.
I. The patience of Christ’s love.
If we take no higher view of this most pathetic incident than that the words come from a man’s lips, even then all its beauty will not be lost. There are some sins against friendship in which the manner is harder to bear than the substance of the evil. It must have been a strangely mean and dastardly nature, as well as a coarse and cold one, that could think of fixing on the kiss of affection as the concerted sign to point out their victim to the legionaries. Many a man who could have planned and executed the treason would have shrunk from that. And many a man who could have borne to be betrayed by his own familiar friend would have found that heartless insult worse to endure than the treason itself. But what a picture of perfect patience and unruffled calm we have here, in that the answer to the poisonous, hypocritical embrace was these moving words! The touch of the traitor’s lips has barely left His cheek, but not one faint passing flush of anger tinges it. He is perfectly self-oblivious-absorbed in other thoughts, and among them in pity for the guilty wretch before Him. His words have no agitation in them, no instinctive recoil from the pollution of such a salutation. They have grave rebuke, but it is rebuke which derives its very force from the appeal to former companionship. Christ still recognises the ancient bond, and is true to it. He will still plead with this man who has been beside Him long; and though His heart be wounded yet He is not wroth, and He will not cast him off. If this were nothing more than a picture of human friendship it would stand alone, above all other records that the world cherishes in its inmost heart, of the love that never fails, and is not soon angry.
But we, I hope, dear brethren, think more loftily and more truly of our dear Lord than as simply a perfect manhood, the exemplar of all goodness. How He comes to be that, if He be not more than that, I do not understand, and I, for one, feel that my confidence in the flawless completeness of His human character lives or dies with my belief that He is the Eternal Word, God manifest in the flesh. Certainly we shall never truly grasp the blessed meaning of His life on earth until we look upon it all as the revelation of God. The tears of Christ are the pity of God. The gentleness of Jesus is the long-suffering of God. The tenderness of Jesus is the love of God. ‘He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father’; and all that life so beautiful but so anomalous as to be all but incredible, when we think of it as only the life of a man, glows with a yet fairer beauty, and corresponds with the nature which it expresses, when we think of it as being the declaration to us by the divine Son of the divine Father-our loftiest, clearest, and authentic revelation of God.
How that thought lifts these words before us into a still higher region! We are now in the presence of the solemn greatness of a divine love. If the meaning of this saying is what we have suggested, it is pathetic even in the lower aspect, but how infinitely that pathos is deepened when we view it in the higher!
Surely if ever there was a man who might have been supposed to be excluded from the love of God, it was Judas. Surely if ever there was a moment in a human life, when one might have supposed that even Christ’s ever open heart would shut itself together against any one, it was this moment. But no, the betrayer in the very instant of his treason has that changeless tenderness lingering around him, and that merciful hand beckoning to him still.
And have we not a right to generalise this wonderful fact, and to declare its teaching to be-that the love of God is extended to us all, and cannot be made to turn away from us by any sins of ours? Sin is mighty; it can work endless evils on us; it can disturb and embitter all our relations with God; it can, as we shall presently have to point out, make it necessary for the tenderest ‘grace of God to come disciplining’-to ‘come with a rod,’ just because it comes in ‘the spirit of meekness.’ But one thing it cannot do, and that is-make God cease to love us. I suppose all human affection can be worn out by constant failure to evoke a response from cold hearts. I suppose that it can be so nipped by frosts, so constantly checked in blossoming, that it shrivels and dies. I suppose that constant ingratitude, constant indifference can turn the warmest springs of our love to a river of ice. ‘Can a mother forget her child?-Yea, she may forget.’ But we have to do with a God, whose love is His very being; who loves us not for reasons in us but in Himself; whose love is eternal and boundless as all His nature; whose love, therefore, cannot be turned away by our sin-but abides with us for ever, and is granted to every soul of man. Dear brethren, we cannot believe too firmly, we cannot trust too absolutely, we cannot proclaim too broadly that blessed thought, without which we have no hope to feed on for ourselves, or to share with our fellows-the universal love of God in Christ.
Is there a worst man on earth at this moment? If there be, he, too, has a share in that love. Harlots and thieves, publicans and sinners, leprous outcasts, and souls tormented by unclean spirits, the wrecks of humanity whom decent society and respectable Christianity passes by with averted head and uplifted hands, criminals on the gibbet with the rope round their necks-and those who are as hopeless as any of these, self-complacent formalists and ‘Gospel-hardened professors’-all have a place in that heart. And that, not as undistinguished members of a class, but as separate souls, singly the objects of God’s knowledge and love. He loves all, because He loves each. We are not massed together in His view, nor in His regard. He does not lose the details in the whole; as we, looking on some great crowd of upturned faces, are conscious of all but recognise no single one. He does not love a class-a world-but He loves the single souls that make it up-you and me, and every one of the millions that we throw together in the vague phrase, ‘the race.’ Let us individualise that love in our thoughts as it individualises us in its outflow-and make our own the ‘exceeding broad’ promises, which include us, too. ‘God loves me; Christ gave Himself for me. I have a place in that royal, tender heart.’
Nor should any sin make us doubt this. He loved us with exceeding love, even when we were ‘dead in trespasses.’ He did not begin to love because of anything in us; He will not cease because of anything in us. We change; ‘He abideth faithful, He cannot deny Himself.’ As the sunshine pours down as willingly and abundantly on filth and dunghills, as on gold that glitters in its beam, and jewels that flash back its lustre, so the light and warmth of that unsetting and unexhausted source of life pours down ‘on the unthankful and on the good.’ The great ocean clasps some black and barren crag that frowns against it, as closely as with its waves it kisses some fair strand enamelled with flowers and fragrant with perfumes. So that sea of love in which we ‘live, and move, and have our being,’ encircles the worst with abundant flow. He Himself sets us the pattern, which to imitate is to be the children of ‘our Father which is in heaven,’ in that He loves His enemies, blessing them that curse, and doing good to them that hate. He Himself is what He has enjoined us to be, in that He feeds His enemies when they hunger, and when they thirst gives them drink, heaping coals of fire on their heads, and seeking to kindle in them thereby the glow of answering love, not being overcome of their evil, so that He repays hate with hate and scorn with scorn, but in patient continuance of loving kindness seeking to overcome evil with good. He is Himself that ‘charity’ which ‘is not easily provoked, is not soon angry, beareth all things, hopeth all things, and never faileth.’ His love is mightier than all our sins, and waits not on our merits, nor is turned away by our iniquities. ‘God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’
II. Then, secondly, we have here-the pleading of Christ’s patient love.
I have been trying to say as broadly and strongly as I can, that our sins do not turn away the love of God in Christ from us. The more earnestly we believe and proclaim that, the more needful is it to set forth distinctly-and that not as limiting, but as explaining the truth-the other thought, that the sin which does not avert, does modify the expression of, the love of God. Man’s sin compels Him to do what the prophet calls his ‘strange work’-the work which is not dear to His heart, nor natural, if one may so say, to His hands-His work of judgment.
The love of Christ has to come to sinful men with patient pleading and remonstrance, that it may enter their hearts and give its blessings. We are familiar with a modern work of art in which that long-suffering appeal is wonderfully portrayed. He who is the Light of the world stands, girded with the royal mantle clasped with the priestly breastplate, bearing in His hand the lamp of truth, and there, amidst the dew of night and the rank hemlock, He pleads for entrance at the closed door which has no handle on its outer side, and is hinged to open only from within. ‘I stand at the door and knock. If any man open the door, I will come in.’
And in this incident before us, we see represented not only the endless patience of God’s pitying love, but the method which it needs to take in order to reach the heart.
There is an appeal to the traitor’s heart, and an appeal to his conscience. Christ would have him think of the relations that have so long subsisted between them; and He would have him think, too, of the real nature of the deed he is doing, or, perhaps, of the motives that impel him. The grave, sad word, by which He addresses him, is meant to smite upon his heart. The sharp question which He puts to him is meant to wake up his conscience; and both taken together represent the two chief classes of remonstrance which He brings to bear upon us all-the two great batteries from which He assails the fortress of our sins.
There is first, then-Christ’s appeal to the heart. He tries to make Judas feel the considerations that should restrain him. The appellation by which our Lord addresses him does not in the original convey quite so strongly the idea of amity, as our word ‘Friend’ does. It is not the same as that which He had used a few hours before in the upper chamber, when He said, ‘Henceforth I call you not servants, but I have called you friends.-Ye are My friends if ye do whatsoever I command you.’ It is the same as is put into the lips of the Lord of the vineyard, remonstrating with his jealous labourer, ‘Friend, I do thee no wrong.’ There is a tone, then, of less intimate association and graver rebuke in it than in that name with which He honours those who make His will theirs, and His word the law of their lives. It does not speak of close confidence, but it does suggest companionship and kindness on the part of the speaker. There is rebuke in it, but it is rebuke which derives its whole force from the remembrance of ancient concord and connection. Our Lord would recall to the memory of the betrayer the days in which they had taken sweet counsel together. It is as if He had said-’Hast thou forgotten all our former intercourse? Thou hast eaten My bread, thou hast been Mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted-canst thou lift up thy heel against Me?’ What happy hours of quiet fellowship on many a journey, of rest together after many a day of toil, what forgotten thoughts of the loving devotion and the glow of glad consecration that he had once felt, what a long series of proofs of Christ’s gentle goodness and meek wisdom should have sprung again to remembrance at such an appeal! And how black and dastardly would his guilt have seemed if once he had ventured to remember what unexampled friendship he was sinning against!
Is it not so with us all, dear brethren? All our evils are betrayals of Christ, and all our betrayals of Christ are sins against a perfect friendship and an unvaried goodness. We, too, have sat at His table, heard His wisdom, seen His miracles, listened to His pleadings, have had a place in His heart; and if we turn away from Him to do our own pleasure, and sell His love for a handful of silver, we need not cherish shuddering abhorrence against that poor wretch who gave Him up to the cross. Oh! if we could see aright, we should see our Saviour’s meek, sad face standing between us and each of our sins, with warning in the pitying eyes, and His pleading voice would sound in our ears, appealing to us by loving remembrances of His ancient friendship, to turn from the evil which is treason against Him, and wounds His heart as much as it harms ours. Take heed lest in condemning the traitor we doom ourselves. If we flush into anger at the meanness of his crime, and declare, ‘He shall surely die,’ do we not hear a prophet’s voice saying to each, ‘Thou art the man’?
The loving hand laid on the heart-strings is followed by a strong stroke on conscience. The heart vibrates most readily in answer to gentle touches: the conscience, in answer to heavier, as the breath that wakes the chords of an Aeolian harp would pass silent through the brass of a trumpet. ‘Wherefore art thou come?’-if to be taken as a question at all, which, as I have said, seems most natural, is either, ‘What hast thou come to do?’-or, ‘Why hast thou come to do it?’ Perhaps it maybe fairly taken as including both. But, at all events, it is clearly an appeal to Judas to make him see what his conduct really is in itself, and possibly in its motive too. And this is the constant effort of the love of Christ-to get us to say to ourselves the real name of what we are about.
We cloak our sins from ourselves with many wrappings, as they swathe a mummy in voluminous folds. And of these veils, one of the thickest is woven by our misuse of words to describe the very same thing by different names, according as we do it, or another man does it. Almost all moral actions-the thing to which we can apply the words right or wrong-have two or more names, of which the one suggests the better and the other the worse side of the action. For instance what in ourselves we call prudent regard for our own interest, we call, in our neighbour, narrow selfishness; what in ourselves is laudable economy, in him is miserable avarice. We are impetuous, he is passionate; we generous, he lavish; we are clever men of business, he is a rogue; we sow our wild oats and are gay, he is dissipated. So we cheat ourselves by more than half-transparent veils of our own manufacture, which we fling round the ugly features and misshapen limbs of these sins of ours, and we are made more than ever their bond-slaves thereby.
Therefore, it is the office of the truest love to force us to look at the thing as it is. It would go some way to keep a man from some of his sins if he would give the thing its real name. A distinct conscious statement to oneself, ‘Now I am going to tell a lie’-’This that I am doing is fraud’-’This emotion that I feel creeping with devilish warmth about the roots of my heart is revenge’-and so on, would surely startle us sometimes, and make us fling the gliding poison from our breast, as a man would a snake that he found just lifting its head from the bosom of his robe. Suppose Judas had answered the question, and, gathering himself up, had looked his Master in the face, and said-’What have I come for?’ ‘I have come to betray Thee for thirty pieces of silver!’ Do you not think that putting his guilt into words might have moved even him to more salutary feelings than the remorse which afterwards accompanied his tardy discernment of what he had done? So the patient love of Christ comes rebuking, and smiting hard on conscience. ‘The grace of God that bringeth salvation to all men hath appeared disciplining’-and His hand is never more gentle than when it plucks away the films with which we hide our sins from ourselves, and shows us the ‘rottenness and dead men’s bones’ beneath the whited walls of the sepulchres and the velvet of the coffins.
He must begin with rebukes that He may advance to blessing. He must teach us what is separating us from Him that, learning it, we may flee to His grace to help us. There is no entrance for the truest gifts of His patient love into any heart that has not yielded to His pleading remonstrance, and in lowly penitence has answered His question as He would have us answer it, ‘Friend and Lover of my soul, I have sinned against Thy tender heart, against the unexampled patience of Thy love. I have departed from Thee and betrayed Thee. Blessed be Thy merciful voice which hath taught me what I have done! Blessed be Thine unwearied goodness which still bends over me! Raise me fallen! forgive me treacherous! Keep me safe and happy, ever true and near to Thee!’
III. Notice the possible rejection of the pleading of Christ’s patient love.
Even that appeal was vain. Here we are confronted with a plain instance of man’s mysterious and awful power of ‘frustrating the counsel of God’-of which one knows not whether is greater, the difficulty of understanding how a finite will can rear itself against the Infinite Will, or the mournful mystery that a creature should desire to set itself against its loving Maker and Benefactor. But strange as it is, yet so it is; and we can turn round upon Sovereign Fatherhood bidding us to its service, and say, ‘I will not.’ He pleads with us, and we can resist His pleadings. He holds out the mercies of His hands and the gifts of His grace, and we can reject them. We cannot cease to be the objects of His love, but we can refuse to be the recipients of its most precious gifts. We can bar our hearts against it. Then, of what avail is it to us? To go back to an earlier illustration, the sunshine pours down and floods a world, what does that matter to us if we have fastened up shutters on all our windows, and barred every crevice through which the streaming gladness can find its way? We shall grope at noontide as in the dark within our gloomy house, while our neighbours have light in theirs. What matters it though we float in the great ocean of the divine love, if with pitch and canvas we have carefully closed every aperture at which the flood can enter? A hermetically closed jar, plunged in the Atlantic, will be as dry inside as if it were lying on the sand of the desert. It is possible to perish of thirst within sight of the fountain. It is possible to separate ourselves from the love of God, not to separate the love of God from ourselves.
The incident before us carries another solemn lesson-how simple and easy a thing it is to repel that pleading love. What did Judas do? Nothing; it was enough. He merely held his peace-no more. There was no need for him to break out with oaths and curses, to reject his Lord with wild words. Silence was sufficient. And for us-no more is required. We have but to be passive; we have but to stand still. Not to accept is to refuse; non-submission is rebellion. We do not need to emphasise our refusal by any action-no need to lift our clenched hands in defiance. We have simply to put them behind our backs or to keep them folded. The closed hand must remain an empty hand. ‘He that believeth not is condemned.’ My friend, remember that, when Christ pleads and draws, to do nothing is to oppose, and to delay is to refuse. It is a very easy matter to ruin your soul. You have simply to keep still when He says ‘Come unto Me’-to keep your eyes fixed where they were, when He says, ‘Look unto Me, and be ye saved,’ and all the rest will follow of itself.
Notice, too, how the appeal of Christ’s love hardens where it does not soften. That gentle voice drove the traitor nearer the verge over which he fell into a gulf of despair. It should have drawn him closer to the Lord, but he recoiled from it, and was thereby brought nearer destruction. Every pleading of Christ’s grace, whether by providences, or by books, or by His own word, does something with us. It is never vain. Either it melts or it hardens. The sun either scatters the summer morning mists, or it rolls them into heavier folds, from whose livid depths the lightning will be flashing by mid-day. You cannot come near the most inadequate exhibition of the pardoning love of Christ without being either drawn closer to Him or driven further from Him. Each act of rejection prepares the way for another, which will be easier, and adds another film to the darkness which covers your eyes, another layer to the hardness which incrusts your hearts.
Again, that silence, so eloquent and potent in its influence, was probably the silence of a man whose conscience was convicted while his will was unchanged. Such a condition is possible. It points to solemn thoughts, and to deep mysteries in man’s awful nature. He knew that he was wrong, he had no excuse, his deed was before him in some measure in its true character, and yet he would not give it up. Such a state, if constant and complete, presents the most frightful picture we can frame of a soul. That a man shall not be able to say, ‘I did it ignorantly’; that Christ shall not be able to ground His intercession on, ‘They know not what they do’; that with full knowledge of the true nature of the deed, there shall be no wavering of the determination to do it-we may well turn with terror from such an awful abyss. But let us remember that, whether such a condition in its completeness is conceivable or not, at all events we may approach it indefinitely; and we do approach it by every sin, and by every refusal to yield to the love that would touch our consciences and fill our hearts.
Have you ever noticed what a remarkable verbal correspondence there is between these words of our text, and some other very solemn ones of Christ’s? The question that He puts into the lips of the king who came in to see his guests is, ‘Friend, how camest thou in hither, not having on a wedding garment?’ The question asked on earth shall be repeated again at last. The silence which once indicated a convinced conscience and an unchanged will may at that day indicate both of these and hopelessness beside. The clear vision of the divine love, if it do not flood the heart with joy and evoke the bliss of answering love, may fill it with bitterness. It is possible that the same revelation of the same grace may be the heaven of heaven to those who welcome it, and the pain of hell to those who turn from it. It is possible that love believed and received may be life, and love recognised and rejected may be death. It is possible that the vision of the same face may make some break forth with the rapturous hymn, ‘Lo, this is our God, we have waited for Him!’ and make others call on the hills to fall on them and cover them from its brightness.
But let us not end with such words. Rather, dear brethren, let us yield to His patient beseechings; let Him teach us our evil and our sin. Listen to His great love who invites us to plead, and promises to pardon-’Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. W. McGarvey 1914 · Public Domain On vv47, 57, 58 J. W. McGarvey's The Fourfold Gospel [CXXIV. Jesus Betrayed].
J. W. McGarvey's The Fourfold Gospel [CXXIV. Jesus Betrayed].
CCXXIV. JESUS BETRAYED, ARRESTED, AND FORSAKEN. (Gethsemane. Friday, several hours before dawn.) aMATT. XXVI. 47-56; bMARK XIV. 43-52; cLUKE XXII. 47-53; dJOHN XVIII. 2-11.
Read full note →
d2 Now Judas also, who betrayed him, knew the place: for Jesus ofttimes resorted thither with his disciples. [See 2Ki_6:8-12). Jesus asked, "Whom seek ye?" (1) To openly and manfully declare his identity; (2) to make the Jewish rulers fully conscious that they were arresting him, an innocent man; (3) to confine the arrest to himself and thus deliver his disciples. The older commentators regard the falling to the ground as a miracle, but modern scholars look upon it as a result of sudden fear. Jesus merely manifested his dignity and majesty, and the prostration followed as a natural result.] a48 Now he that betrayed him gave bhad given them a token, aa sign, saying, Whomsoever I shall kiss, that is he: take him. band lead him away safely. cand he drew near unto Jesus to kiss him. 48 But Jesus said unto him, Judas, betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss? b45 And when he was come, astraightway he came to Jesus, and said bsaith, aHail, Rabbi; and kissed him. 50 And Jesus said unto him, Friend, do that for which thou art come. [Some place this event before the preceding paragraph. It comports better with the fitness of things to place it here. Jesus made Judas feel his utter nothingness, and his worthlessness even as a betrayer. Before Judas can in any way identify Jesus, the Lord had twice declared himself to be the party whom they sought. When he approaches to carry out his contract, the Lord's question exposes him before all as a betrayer, and not a disciple as he wished to appear to be (for kissing was the common mode of salutation between men, especially between teacher and pupils), and when Judas brazenly persists in completing the sign, Jesus bids him do it, not as a friend, but as a traitor. Little did the betrayer think that the kiss of Judas would become a proverb in every nation.] Then they came [690] and laid hands on Jesus, and took him. [The sight of Judas touching him no doubt reassured them, and they laid hands on Jesus.] c49 And when they that were about him saw what would follow, they said, Lord, shall we smite with the sword? b47 But a51 And behold, d10 Simon Peter ba certain one of them that stood by athat were with Jesus dtherefore having a sword astretched out his hand, and drew his sword, and smote dstruck athe servant of the high priest, and struck dcut off his right ear. [We have seen that the apostles were but scantily armed, there being only two swords in their possession. See Joh_18:16). He knew Malchus by name, and he also knew his kindred-- Joh_18:26.] c51 But Jesus answered and said, Suffer ye them thus far. And he touched his ear, and healed him. [Some think that Jesus spoke these words, "Suffer ye thus far," to those who held him, asking them to loose him sufficiently to enable him to touch the ear of Malchus. But the revision committee by inserting "them" make Jesus address his disciples, commanding them not to interfere with those who were arresting him, making it a general statement of the idea which the Lord addressed specifically to Peter in the next sentence.] a52 Then d11 Jesus therefore said asaith dunto Peter, aPut up again thy dthe sword into the sheath: aits place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. dthe cup which the Father hath given me, shall I not drink it? [By the healing of Malchus' ear and the words spoken to Peter, Jesus shows that the sword is not to be used either to defend the truth or to advance his kingdom. Had he not thus spoken and acted, Pilate might have doubted his words when he [691] testified that his kingdom was not of this world ( Joh_18:36). While we know better than to rely upon the aid of the sword for the advance of truth, we are often tempted to put undue trust in other "carnal weapons" which are equally futile. Wealth and eloquence and elaborate church buildings have but little saving grace in them. It is the truth which wins. By using the word "cup" John gives us an echo of the agony in Gethsemane, which suggests that he expects his readers to be conversant with the other Gospels. The other Evangelists, having shown that Jesus was fully resolved to drink the cup, do not regard it as necessary to repeat these words.] a53 Or thinkest thou that I cannot beseech my Father, and he shall even now send me more than twelve legions of angels? 54 How then should the scriptures be fulfilled that thus it must be? [Jesus still addresses Peter. Had it accorded with the divine purpose that Jesus should resist this arrest, angels and not men would have been his proper and infinitely more effective rescuers. But, on the contrary, it was God's purpose that he should be arrested, as the Scripture had foretold.] 55 In that hour bJesus answered and said unto them athe multitudes, cthe chief priests, and captains of the temple, and elders, that were come against him, Are ye come out, as against a robber, with swords and staves? ato seize me? c53 When aI sat bwas daily with you in the temple teaching, cye stretched not forth your hands against me: band ye took me not: cbut this is your hour, and the power of darkness. a56 But all this is come to pass, that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled. [The party which came to arrest Jesus was large. The word "band" used by John to describe part of it is speira, which is the Greek name for the cohort, a division of the Roman army which in the time of Augustus contained 555 men. Ten cohorts, or a legion, were usually quartered in the castle Antonia, at the northwest corner of the temple enclosure. That the whole cohort was present is not likely ( Mat_27:27), but there was a large enough body to represent it. The [692] Evangelists therefore properly style it a great multitude. Moreover, it was a motley crowd. Its strength and diversity suggest the fear that Jesus might miraculously defend himself. Each part of the crowd found courage in the strength possessed by the other part, the priests relying upon the solidity of the soldiers, the soldiers superstitiously trusting to some spiritual power residing in the priests, etc. Now, because of these fears, the preparation was as great as if some band of robbers was to be taken. The questions of Jesus, therefore, show two facts: 1. By their extensive preparation the rulers bore an unintentional testimony to his divine power. 2. By their failure to arrest him openly in the temple, they bore witness to his innocence. With his divinity and his innocence, therefore, Jesus challenges them, referring to their own conduct for testimony thereto. In conclusion, he cites them to the Scriptures which they were fulfilling. Our Lord's dual reference to the Old Testament at this sacred time should cause us to handle them with awe and reverence.] b50 And aThen all of the disciples left him, and fled. b51 And a certain young man followed with him, having a linen cloth cast about him, over his naked body: and they lay hold on him; 52 but he left the linen cloth, and fled naked. [All the predictions of Jesus had failed to prepare the apostles for the terrors of his arrest. Despite all his warnings, each apostle sought his own safety. The young man who fled naked is usually presumed to be Mark himself, and it is thought that he thus speaks impersonally after the manner of Matthew and John. The manner of his description shows that he was not an apostle. As Mark's mother resided in Jerusalem ( Act_12:12, Act_12:25), Canon Cook advances the theory that the Lord's Supper was eaten in the upper room of her house, and that when the disciples retired with Jesus from thence to Gethsemane, Mark slipped from his bed, threw his sindon about him, and followed after them. The sindon, or linen vestment, was very costly, not being worn even by the middle classes: no apostle would be thus attired.] [693]
[FFG 689-692]
J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv50, 53, 57, 71 Gr. "Hetaire," "comrade." Perhaps the most touching thing in…
Friend
Gr. "Hetaire," "comrade." Perhaps the most touching thing in the Bible. The Lord does not disown Judas.
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv47, 51, 55, 57, 59, 65, 69 The Betrayal and Arrest.
The Betrayal and Arrest.
The coming of the traitor:
Read full note →
v. 47. And while He yet spake, lo, Judas, one of the Twelve, came, and with him a great multitude with swords and staves, from the chief priests and elders of the people.
v. 48. Now he that betrayed Him gave them a sign, saying, Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is He; hold Him fast.
v. 49. And forthwith he came to Jesus and said, Hail, Master; and kissed Him.
v. 50. And Jesus said unto him, Friend, wherefore art thou come? Then came they, and laid hands on Jesus, and took Him.
While Jesus was still urging His disciples to shake off the drowsiness to which they had given way, Judas came. One of the Twelve he is called, to heighten the effect of the contrast: A chosen apostle of the Lord, and yet His traitor. With him came a big crowd, as many as could be assembled late in the evening, rabble, for the most part, with a nucleus of Temple police, who were at the command of the Sanhedrin, servants of the chief priests and the leaders of the Jews. In the motley crowd some of the elders themselves may have appeared, though they kept in the background. They even bore arms of a kind, swords and staves, to quell any disturbance of Christ’s followers at the start. The traitor may have been considering the best way of approaching the Lord. It was, after all, not an easy matter, hardened though he was, to deliver his old Master to this composite crowd. Finally he hit upon the plan of making a kiss, the token of affection and fidelity, the sign by which they should recognize the Lord, and so informed his band. Upon Him whom he would kiss they should lay restraining hands, to hold Him with main strength, if need be. With a respectful salute: Rabbi, Judas stepped up to Jesus, and kissed Him most tenderly. And the Lord, kind, tactful, searching ever, addresses him with the salutation of disciple or companion, instead of spurning his traitorous kisses, the very essence of hypocrisy. At the same time Christ shows that He knows the purpose of his coming. For the last time He warns him: Remember what this treason means. "From this horrible case we should learn to fear God. For Judas was not a lowly man, but an apostle, and without doubt had many fine, excellent gifts; just as he, above other disciples, had a special office, and the Lord had ordained him to be steward, or treasurer. But since this man, who is an apostle, who in the name of Jesus preaches repentance and forgiveness of sins, baptizes, casts out devils, and performs other miracles, falls so grievously, becomes an enemy of Christ, sells Him for a little bit of money, betrays Him, and sacrifices Him as a lamb brought to the slaughter; since, I say, such a terrible mishap comes upon such a great man; we surely have reason not to be secure, but to fear God, guard against sins, and pray diligently that God would not lead us into temptation; but if we do fall into temptation, that He would graciously lead us out that we may not remain therein. For it happens very easily that one gets into trouble and commits sins, when one does not watch carefully and diligently make use of the protection of prayer."
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv47, 49, 51, 55, 57, 59, 62, 65, 67, 69, 71, 73 Connecting Statement:
Connecting Statement:
This begins the account of when Judas betrayed Jesus and the religious leaders arrested him.
Read full note →
While he was still speaking
"While Jesus was still speaking"
clubs
large pieces of hard wood for hitting people
Now ... Seize him
Here "Now" is used to mark a break in the main story line. Here Matthew tells background information about Judas and the signal he planned to use to betray Jesus. (See: Background Information)
saying, "Whomever I kiss, he is the one. Seize him."
This direct quotation can be stated as an indirect quotation. AT: "saying that whomever he kissed was the one they should seize." (See: Direct and Indirect Quotations)
Whomever I kiss
"The one I kiss" or "The man whom I kiss"
kiss
This was a respectful way to greet one's teacher.
translationWords
Judas Iscariot
the twelve
chief priests
elder
sword
betray
kiss
seize
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 vv49, 51, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 63, 64, 65, 67, 69, 73, 75 26:49 Judas . . . gave him the kiss:…
26:49 Judas . . . gave him the kiss: Judas’s use of a sign of affection to betray Jesus amplifies the heinousness of his betrayal.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.