Mark 15:21-32

Mark 15:21 * The Crucifixion. Usually the criminal himself carried his cross (i.e. the cross-bar, probably not the upright). Jesus seems to have been exhausted by the scourging and by His own sorrow. Simon of Cyrene was forced into His service. The reference to Simon's children is pointless unless they were known to Mk.'s readers (HNT). Rufus is mentioned in Romans 16:13 and Alexander in Acts 19:33; 1 Timothy 1:20 (but they are not necessarily the same men as those to whom Mk. refers). The drugged wine used to be offered by Jewish ladies. They mixed frankincense (Jeremiah 6:20 *) with the wine, not myrrh, which was not soporific. Jesus meets death with senses undulled. The clothing of the crucified one was the perquisite of the soldiers. The casting of lots recalls Psalms 22:18. The affixing of a tablet to publish the ground of punishment was not unusual. The railings of the spectators reproduce the charges against Him, especially Mark 15:29; Mark 15:32. Unconsciously, they disclose His glory. He saved others. General Booth is reported to have said, They would have believed in Him, had He come down; we believe in Him because He stayed up.-'

Mark 15:25. the third hour: i.e. 9 A.M. John 19:14 * cannot easily be harmonised with this note of time. The reticence of this verse and indeed of the whole story is remarkable.

Mark 15:33. The Death of Jesus. At the sixth hour (12 noon) there was a preternatural gloom over Judæ a (reject RVm earth). This was not an eclipse, which could not occur at full moon. Either the sun was actually clouded at the time, or the incident is suggested by such a passage as Amos 8:9 or by the belief that nature mourns heroes (see Plutarch, Pelop. 295 a). When the darkness had lasted for three hours, Jesus uttered the one word from the Cross recorded in Mk. and Mt. If spoken in Aramaic Eloi, Eloi, the misunderstanding that follows is strange. The Heb. È li, Eli might be so misunderstood. We do not know the exact significance of this strange and seemingly desolate cry. The words come from Psalms 22:1. Strange to think that is the cry of the feeling of Jesus. One is almost tempted to say that there, as in a supreme instance, is measured the distance between feeling and fact. So He felt; and yet mankind has been of another mind, that there, more than in all else that He was or did, there was God (Glover). The offer of vinegar (cf. Ruth 2:14) may be an act of kindness. The waiting for Elijah is mockery, or curiosity. After six hours-' torture Jesus died, with one more inarticulate cry. The rent veil of the Temple symbolises the effect of His death (cf. Hebrews 10:19 f.). The manner of His death the strength of His cries and the suddenness of the end convinced the centurion that He was more than man. The captain stands at the end of the gospel as the type and forerunner of the countless bands of heathen who have been won over to the message of the crucified One (J. Weiss). The evangelist then mentions some of the women who watched afar off and to whom he may have owed some of his information. The loyalty of the women surpassed that of the disciples. Mary of Magdala (p. 29) must not be identified with the woman that was a sinner mentioned in Luke 7:37. Salome is described in Matthew 27:56 as mother of the sons of Zebedee.