Luke 9:34-36

3 d. Luke 9:34-36. The Divine Voice.

Here we have the culminating point of this scene. As the last sigh of the dying Christian is received by the Lord, who comes for him (John 14:3; Acts 7:55-56), so the presence of God is manifested at the moment of the glorification of Jesus.

The cloud is no ordinary cloud; it is the veil in which God invests Himself when He appears here below. We meet with it in the desert and at the inauguration of the temple; we shall meet with it again at the ascension. Matthew calls it a bright cloud; nevertheless he says, with the two others, that it overshadowed this scene. His meaning is, that the brightness of the central light pierced through the cloudy covering which cast its mysterious shadow on the scene. If with the T. R. we read ἐκείνους, only Jesus, Moses, and Elijah were enveloped in the cloud, and the fear felt by the disciples proceeded from uneasiness at being separated from their Master. But if with the Alex. we read αὐτούς, all six were enveloped in an instant by the cloud, and the fear which seized the apostles was caused by their vivid sense of the divine nearness. The former meaning is more natural; for the voice coming forth out of the cloud could scarcely be addressed to any but persons who were themselves outside the cloud.

The form of the divine declaration is very nearly the same in the three accounts. The Alex. reading in Luke: this is my Elect, is preferable to the received reading: this is my beloved Son, which is taken either from the two other narratives, or from the divine salutation at the baptism. It is a question here of the elect in an absolute sense, in opposition to servants, like Moses and Elijah, chosen for a special work. Comp. Luke 23:35. The exhortation: Hear Him, is the repetition of that by which Moses, Deuteronomy 18:15, charged Israel to welcome at some future day the teaching of the Messiah. This last word indicates the design of the whole scene: “Hear Him, whatever He may say to you; follow in His path, wherever He may lead you.” We have only to call to mind the words of Peter: “ Be it far from Thee, Lord! this shall not be unto Thee,” in the preceding conversation, to feel the true bearing of this divine admonition.

We find here again the realization of a law which occurs throughout the life of Jesus; it is this, that every act of voluntary humiliation on the part of the Son is met by a corresponding act of glorification, of which He is the object, on the part of the Father. He goes down into the waters of the Jordan, devoting Himself to death; God addresses Him as His well-beloved Son. In John 12, in the midst of the trouble of His soul, He renews His vow to be faithful unto death; a voice from heaven answers Him with the most magnificent promise for His filial heart.

Matthew mentions here the feeling of fear which the other two mention earlier.

The word: Jesus only, Luke 9:36, is common to the three narratives. It is a forcible expression of the feeling of those who witnessed the scene after the disappearing of the celestial visitants; see on Luke 2:15. Does it contain any allusion to the idea which has been made the very soul of the narrative: The law and the prophets pass away; Jesus and His word alone remain? To me it appears doubtful.

The silence kept at first by the apostles is accounted for in Matthew and Mark by a positive command of Jesus. The Lord's intention, doubtless, was to prevent the carnal excitement which the account of such a scene might produce in the hearts of the other apostles and in the minds of the people. After the resurrection and the ascension, there would no longer be anything dangerous in the account of the transfiguration. The risen One could not be a king of this world. Luke does not mention Jesus' prohibition; he had no reason for omitting it, had he known of it. The omission of the following conversation respecting the coming of Elijah may be accounted for, on the other hand, as intentional. This idea being current only amongst the Jews, Luke might not think it necessary to record for Gentile readers the conversation to which it had given rise. Besides, Luke 1:17 already contained a summary of what there was to be said on this subject. This entire scene, then, in each of its phases, conduced to the object which Jesus had in view the strengthening of the faith of His own. In the first, the contemplation of His glory; in the second, the sanction of that way of sorrow into which He was to enter and take them with Him; in the third, the divine approval stamped on all His teaching: these were powerful supports for the faith of the three principal apostles, which, once confirmed, became, apart from words, the support of the faith of their weaker fellow-disciples.

The objections to the reality of the transfiguration are: 1. Its magical character and uselessness: Why, asks Keim, should there be a sign from heaven on this grand scale, when Jesus always refused to grant any such prodigy!

But nowhere, perhaps, does the sound reasonableness of the gospel come out more clearly than in this narrative; glorification is as much the normal termination of a holy life, as death is of corrupt life. The design with which this manifestation, which might have been concealed from the disciples, was displayed to them, appears from its connection with the previous conversation respecting the sufferings of the Messiah. 2. The impossibility of the reappearing of beings who have long been dead (see on Luke 9:30). 3. A real appearing of Elijah would be an actual contradiction to the following conversation (in Matthew and Mark), in which Jesus denies the return of this prophet in person, as expected by the rabbis and the people. These are the arguments of Bleek and Keim.

But what Jesus denies in the following conversation is not a temporary appearance, like that of the transfiguration, but Elijah's return to life on earth in order to fulfil a new ministry. This is what John the Baptist had accomplished (Luke 1:17). 4. The silence of John, who must have conceived of the glory of Jesus in a more spiritual manner.

Is it to be believed that this objection can be raised by the same critic who blames John for the magical character of the miracles which he relates, and denies their reality for this reason? The transfiguration, along with many other incidents (the choice of the Twelve, the institution of baptism and the Lord's Supper, etc.), is omitted by John for the simple reason that they were sufficiently known through the Syn., and did not necessarily enter into the plan of his book. 5. “The artificial character of the narrative appears from its resemblance to certain narratives of the O. T.” (Keim). And yet this very Keim disputes the reality of the appearing of Moses and Elijah, on the ground that apparitions of the dead are not warranted by the O. T.! But how is the existence of our three narratives to be explained? Paulus reduces the whole to a natural incident. He supposes an interview of Jesus with two unknown friends with whom He had made an appointment on the mountain. The reflection of the rising or setting sun on the snows of Hermon, followed by a sudden clap of thunder, occasioned all the rest. But who were those secret friends more closely connected with Jesus than His most intimate apostles? This explanation only results in making this scene a got-up affair, and Jesus a charlatan. It is abandoned at the present day. Weisse, Strauss, and Keim regard the transfiguration as nothing but an invention of mythical origin, designed to represent the moral glory of Jesus under images derived from the history of Moses and Elijah. But they can never explain how the Church created a picture so complete as this out of fragments of O. T. narrative. And how could a mythical narrative occur in the midst of such precise historical notes of time as those in which it is contained in the three narrations (six or eight days after the conversation at Caesarea, on the one hand; the eve of the cure of the lunatic child, on the other)? And Jesus' strict injunction forbidding His apostles to publish an event which never took place! We must pass here, as everywhere else, from the mythical theory to the supposition of imposture. And Peter's absurd speech would the Church have been likely to make its founder speak after this fashion? Lastly, others have regarded the transfiguration simply as a dream of Peter's. But did the two other apostles have the same dream at the same time? And would Jesus have attached such importance to a disciple's dream as to have strictly prohibited him from relating it until after His resurrection from the dead? All these fruitless attempts prove that the denial of the fact has also its difficulties.

From innocence to holiness, and from holiness to glory; here we have the normal development of human existence, its royal path. The transfiguration, at the culminating point of the life of Jesus, shows that once at least this ideal has been realized in the history of humanity.

This narrative is one of those in which we can most clearly establish the originality and superior character of Luke's sources of information. Certainly, he has neither derived his matter from the two other evangelists, nor from a document common to all three. This is evident from these two expressions: eight days after, and the elect of God (Luke 9:28 and Luke 9:35). The details by which Luke determines for us the precise object of this scene, and the subject of Jesus' conversation with Moses and Elijah, as well as the picture he gives of the state of the disciples, are such inimitable touches, and are so suggestive for purposes of interpretation, that criticism must renounce its mission as a search after historic truth, or else decide to accord to Luke the possession of independent sources of information closely connected with the fact.

The transfiguration is the end and seal of the Galilean ministry, and at the same time the opening of the history of the passion in our three Gospels.