Luke 22:47-53

1. The Arrest of Jesus: Luke 22:47-53.

Three things are included in this piece: 1 st. The kiss of Judas (Luke 22:47-48); 2 d. The disciples' attempt at defence (Luke 22:49-51); 3 d. The rebuke which Jesus administers to those who come to take Him (Luke 22:52-53).

Vers. 47 and 48. The sign which Judas had arranged with the band had for its object to prevent Jesus from escaping should one of His disciples be seized in His stead. In the choice of the sign in itself, as Langen remarks, there was no refinement of hypocrisy. The kiss was the usual form of salutation, especially between disciples and their master. The object of this salutation is not mentioned by Luke; it was understood. We see from John that the fearless attitude of Jesus, who advanced spontaneously in front of the band, rendered this signal superfluous and almost ridiculous.

The saying of Jesus to Judas, Luke 22:48, is somewhat differently reproduced in Matthew; it is omitted in Mark. In memory of this kiss, the primitive Church suppressed the ceremony of the brotherly kiss on Good Friday. The sole object of the scene which follows in John (the I am He of Jesus, with its consequences) was to prevent a disciple from being arrested at the same time.

Vers. 49-51. The Syn. name neither the disciple who strikes, nor the servant struck. John gives the names of both. So long as the Sanhedrim yet enjoyed its authority, prudence forbade the giving of Peter's name here in the oral narrative. But after his death and the destruction of Jerusalem, John was no longer restrained by the same fears. As to the name of Malchus, it was only preserved in the memory of that disciple who, well known in the house of the high priest, knew the man personally. What are we to think of the author of the fourth Gospel, if these proper names were mere fictions?

According to Luke 22:49, the disciple who struck acted in the name of all (ἰδόντες... εἶπον, shall we smite?). This particular, peculiar to Luke, extenuates Peter's guilt.

John says, with Luke: “the right ear.” This minute coincidence shows that the details peculiar to Luke are neither legendary nor the inventions of his own imagination.

The words ἐᾶτε ἕως τούτου supply in Luke the place of a long and important answer of Jesus in Matthew. Should this command be applied to the officers: “Let me go to this man ” (Paulus); or “to the spot where this man is”? But this would have required ἐᾶτε με, “let me go.” Or should we understand it, with De Wette, Riggenbach: “ Leave me yet for a moment ”? The ἕως, till, does not lead very naturally to this sense. Besides, the ἀποκριθείς, answering, shows that the words of Jesus are connected with the act of the disciple rather than with the arrival of the officers. It is not till Luke 22:52 that Jesus turns to those who have arrived (πρὸς τοὺς παραγενομένους). Here He is addressing the apostles. The meaning is therefore either, “Let these men (the officers) go thus far (the length of seizing me),” or (which is more natural), “ Stop there; strike no such second below; this one is quite enough.” This act of violence, indeed, not only compromised the safety of Peter, but even the Lord's cause. Jesus was all but hindered thereby from addressing Pilate in the words so important for His defence against the crime with which the Jews charged Him (John 18:36): “ My kingdom is not of this world; if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews. ” Nothing less was needed than the immediate cure of Malchus to restore the moral situation which had been injured by this trespass, and to enable Jesus to express Himself without the risk of being confounded by facts.

This cure is related only by Luke; Meyer therefore relegates it to the domain of myth. But if it had not taken place, it would be impossible to understand how Peter and Jesus Himself had escaped from this complaint.

Luke 22:52-53. Among those who came out, Luke numbers some of the chief priests. Whatever Meyer and Bleek may say, such men may surely, out of hatred or curiosity, have accompanied the band charged with the arrest. Besides, is not the rebuke which follows addressed rather to rulers than to subordinates? As to the captains of the temple, see Luke 22:4. As to the officers, comp. John 7:45; Acts 5:22-26. John speaks, besides, of the cohort, Luke 18:3; Luke 18:12; this word, especially when accompanied by the term χιλίαρχος, tribune (Luke 22:12), and with the antithesis τῶν ᾿Ιουδαίων, can only, in spite of all Bäumlein's objections, designate a detachment of the Roman cohort; it was, as Langen remarks, an article of provincial legislation, that no arrest should take place without the intervention of the Romans.

The meaning of the rebuke of Jesus is this: “It was from cowardice that you did not arrest me in the full light of day.” The other two Syn. carry forward their narrative, like Luke, with a but; only this but is with them the necessity for the fulfilment of the prophecies, while with Luke it is the harmony between the character of the deed and that of the nocturnal hour. Darkness is favourable to crime; for man needs to be concealed not only from others, but from himself, in order to sin. For this reason, night is the time when Satan puts forth all his power over humanity; it is his hour. And hence, adds Jesus, it is also yours, for you are his instruments in the work which you are doing; comp. John 8:44; John 14:30.

Luke omits the fact of the apostles' flight which is related here by Matthew and Mark. Where is the malevolence which is ascribed to him against the Twelve?

Mark also relates, with great circumstantiality, the case of the young man who fled stripped of the linen cloth in which he was wrapped. As, according to Acts 12, the mother of Mark possessed a house in Jerusalem, as this house was the place where the Church gathered in times of persecution, and as it was therefore probably situated in a by-place, it is not impossible that it stood in the vale of Gethsemane, and that this young man was (as has long been supposed) Mark himself, drawn by the noise of the band, and who has thus put his signature as modestly as possible in the corner of the evangelical narrative which he composed.