Luke 9:37-40

The Request.

The sleep with which the disciples were overcome, as well as Peter's offer to Jesus, Luke 9:33, appear to us to prove that the transfiguration had taken place either in the evening or during the night. Jesus and His three companions came down from the mountain the next morning. A great multitude awaited them. Nevertheless, according to Mark, the arrival of Jesus excited a feeling of surprise. This impression might be attributed to a lingering reflection of glory, which still illumined His person. But a more natural explanation of it is the violent scene which had just taken place before all this crowd, which gave a peculiar opportuneness to the arrival of the Master. Matthew omits all these details, and goes straight to the fact.

The symptoms of the malady, rigidity, foaming, and cries, show to what kind of physical disorder it belonged; it was a species of epilepsy. But the 42d verse and the conversation following, in Matthew and Mark, prove that in the belief of Jesus the disorder of the nervous system was either the cause or the effect of a mental condition, of the same kind as those of which we have already had several examples (Luke 4:33 et seq., Luke 8:26 et seq.). According to Matthew, the attacks were of a periodical character, and were connected with the phases of the moon (σεληνιάζεται). Mark adds three items to the description of the malady: dumbness (in the expression dumb demon there is a confusion of the cause with the effect; comp. Luke 8:12-14; Luke 8:23, for examples of similar confusion), grinding of the teeth, and wasting away. These are common symptoms in epilepsy.

The disciples had found themselves powerless to deal with a malady so deep-seated (it dated from the young man's childhood, Mark 9:21); and the presence of certain scribes (see Mark), who no doubt had not spared their sarcasm either against them or their Master, had both humiliated and exasperated them. The expectation of the people was therefore highly excited.

What a contrast for Jesus between the hours of divine peace which He had just spent in communion with heaven, and the spectacle of the distress of this father, and of the various passions which were raging around him!