Luke 22:17

Take this, and divide it among yourselves. — The cup was probably the first of the three cups of wine, or wine mingled with water, which Jewish custom had added to the ritual of the Passover. As being a distinct act from that of Luke 22:20, it is natural to infer that it had a distinct symbolic meaning. Looking to the fact that wine is partly the symbol, partly the antithesis, of spiritual energy in its highest form (comp. Zechariah 9:17; Acts 2:13; Ephesians 5:18), and to the re-appearance of the same somewhat exceptional word for “divide,” in the tongues “parted, or divided, or distributed” (“cloven” is a mistranslation), in Acts 2:3, we may see in this cup the symbol of the bestowal of the spiritual powers which each of the disciples was to receive, according to the gift of the self-same Spirit, who “divideth to every man severally as He will” (the Greek word in 1 Corinthians 12:11 is, however, different, though expressing the same thought), just as the second was the pledge of a yet closer fellowship with His own divine life.