XXIV. (1-8) NOW UPON THE FIRST DAY OF THE WEEK. — See Notes on Matthew 28:1; Mark 16:1. VERY EARLY IN THE MORNING. — The original has a more poetic form _“_in the deep dawn,” agreeing with “while it was yet dark.” The last clause, “certain others with them,” is not found in the best MSS., and may... [ Continue Reading ]
AND THEY FOUND THE STONE ROLLED AWAY. — The narrative is less vivid and detailed than St. Mark’s; possibly, we may believe, because St. Luke’s report may have come, not from one of the Maries, but from Joanna (named in Luke 24:10). or Susanna, who were less prominent, and might only have heard of wh... [ Continue Reading ]
TWO MEN STOOD BY THEM. — St. Mark and St. Matthew mention one only. Had St. Matthew given the two, it might have been urged by adverse critics that this duplication of phenomena, as in the case of the demoniacs (Matthew 8:28), and the blind men at Jericho (Matthew 20:30), was an idiosyncrasy of his.... [ Continue Reading ]
WHY SEEK YE THE LIVING AMONG THE DEAD? — Better, as in the margin, _Him that liveth._ The question was enough to change the whole current of their thoughts. The Lord whom they came to honour as dead was in very deed “living,” was emphatically “He that liveth,” alive for evermore (Revelation 1:18). T... [ Continue Reading ]
REMEMBER HOW HE SPAKE UNTO YOU.-THE direct appeal to the memory of the women is peculiar to St. Luke, and shows us what does not lie on the surface of the Gospel history, that they, too, were among those to whom were uttered the prophecies of the Passion and the Resurrection of which we read in Luke... [ Continue Reading ]
INTO THE HANDS OF SINFUL MEN. — The adjective does not appear in the earlier report. It is probably used here, more or less, in its popular Jewish meaning, as applied to “sinners of the Gentiles” (Galatians 2:15).... [ Continue Reading ]
AND THEY REMEMBERED HIS WORDS. — It would be better to end the previous verse with a fullstop, and begin the next sentence, _And they returned.... _... [ Continue Reading ]
(9-11) TO ALL THE REST. — So Matthew 28:8 as to “the disciples,” as a wider term than “Apostles.” We may naturally think of many at least of the Seventy as being among the “rest.”... [ Continue Reading ]
MARY MAGDALENE, AND JOANNA. — St. Luke alone names the latter in the Resurrection history, as he alone had named her before, as following our Lord in Galilee (Luke 7:2). It is not an unreasonable inference from this that she was probably his chief informant.... [ Continue Reading ]
IDLE TALES. — The one Greek word which is thus rendered occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. It is applied strictly to the trifling, half-idiotic babble of dotage.... [ Continue Reading ]
THEN AROSE PETER. — See Notes on John 20:3. The fact of Peter’s visit to the sepulchre is common to St. Luke and St. John, but the former does not mention the companionship of the beloved disciple. On the assumption of Joanna being St. Luke’s informant, we can understand that she told what she remem... [ Continue Reading ]
AND, BEHOLD, TWO OF THEM. — The long and singularly interesting narrative that follows is peculiar to St. Luke, and must be looked upon as among the “gleaning of the grapes,” which rewarded his researches even after the full vintage had apparently been gathered in by others. The Emmaus in Galilee, a... [ Continue Reading ]
WHILE THEY COMMUNED TOGETHER... — The verb is the same as that translated “talked” in the preceding verse. JESUS HIMSELF DREW NEAR, AND WENT WITH THEM. — Excluding, as we must do in such a case, the element of chance, we are left to conjecture the reasons for this special manifestation. Neither of t... [ Continue Reading ]
WHAT MANNER OF COMMUNICATIONS...? — Literally, _What are these words that ye bandy to and fro with one another?_ AND ARE SAD. — The adjective is the same as that used of the hypocrites in Matthew 6:16. The better MSS. make the question stop at “as ye walk,” and then add, “And they stood sad in coun... [ Continue Reading ]
ONE OF THEM, WHOSE NAME WAS CLEOPAS. — The name is to be distinguished from the Clopas of John 19:25, which was probably a Græcised form of the Aramaic name of a Galilean disciple. Here the name is a Greek contraction of Cleopatros (so Antipas, from Antipatros), and so far, as connected with Cleopat... [ Continue Reading ]
WHAT THINGS? — Literally, _What kind of things?_ CONCERNING JESUS OF NAZARETH, WHICH WAS A PROPHET. — The words indicate the precise stage of faith which the two disciples had reached. They believed in Jesus as a prophet; they hoped that He would redeem Israel. They had not risen to the belief that... [ Continue Reading ]
DELIVERED HIM TO BE CONDEMNED TO DEATH. — Literally, _to a sentence of death._ The words are strictly accurate. The Sanhedrin had not, strictly speaking, passed a sentence of death, though they had voted for condemning our Lord on a capital charge. For that they had to deliver Him up to the secular... [ Continue Reading ]
BUT WE TRUSTED. — The pronoun is emphatic. “_We,_ the disciples, _were hoping_...,”whatever might be the judgment of others. WHICH SHOULD HAVE REDEEMED ISRAEL. — More exactly, _He that is about to redeem_... The two travellers belonged apparently to those who now, as at the time of the Nativity, we... [ Continue Reading ]
MADE US ASTONISHED. — The Greek verb is that from which we get our word “ecstasy,” taken transitively. Literally, _they startled us._ EARLY. — Strictly speaking, _at day-break,_ or _early dawn. _... [ Continue Reading ]
A VISION OF ANGELS. — The word for “vision” is used of what Zacharias saw in the Temple (Luke 1:22), of the “visions” of which St. Paul was tempted to boast (2 Corinthians 12:1). It does not occur elsewhere in the New Testament.... [ Continue Reading ]
AND CERTAIN OF THEM WHICH WERE WITH US. — The words have the interest of presenting an obviously undesigned coincidence with St. John’s report of the visit of Peter and John (John 20:3). The naturalness of the manner in which the two Apostles are mentioned, but not named, “certain of them which were... [ Continue Reading ]
O FOOLS, AND SLOW OF HEART TO BELIEVE. — The word for “fools” (more literally, _silly, senseless_) is not that which is used in Matthew 5:22; Matthew 23:17, but one belonging to a somewhat higher style of language. It is used by St. Paul of the “foolish Galatians” (Galatians 3:1), and elsewhere, and... [ Continue Reading ]
OUGHT NOT CHRIST TO HAVE SUFFERED? — Better, _the Christ._ The thought that the sufferings were a necessary condition of the glory that followed, became from this time forth almost as an axiom of Christian thought. So we read of _“_the sufferings of the Christ, and the glory that should follow” (1 P... [ Continue Reading ]
BEGINNING AT MOSES AND ALL THE PROPHETS. — Better, _from Moses._ Here, then, if not before, there was a full “opening of the Scriptures” on all that pertained to the work and office of the Christ, and it is, at least, a legitimate inference to believe that we find the echoes of the great lesson thus... [ Continue Reading ]
HE MADE AS THOUGH HE WOULD HAVE GONE FURTHER. — This was, it is obvious, the crucial test of the effect of the Lord’s previous teaching. Did they feel a new light flowing in upon their souls, bringing new meanings into what had before been obscure and hard sayings? Were they content to let the unkno... [ Continue Reading ]
ABIDE WITH US: FOR IT IS TOWARD EVENING. — As.part of the narrative, the words have the interest of bringing before us the eager desire of the disciples to know more of the wisdom which they had been drinking in from the lips of the unknown Teacher. They could not bring themselves to part with one w... [ Continue Reading ]
HE TOOK BREAD, AND BLESSED IT. — Had the two travellers been of the number of the Twelve, we might have thought of the words and acts as reminding them of their last Supper with their Lord. As it was, we must think of those words and acts as meant to teach them, and, through them, others, the same l... [ Continue Reading ]
AND HE VANISHED OUT OF THEIR SIGHT. — Literally, _He became invisible._ The adjective does not occur elsewhere in the New Testament. In the order of time this is the first example of the new conditions of our Lord’s risen life. It was not that He rose and left the room in which they sat. In a moment... [ Continue Reading ]
DID NOT OUR HEART BURN WITHIN US...? — More accurately, _Was not our heart burning..._? the tense both of this and of the other verbs implying a continuous and not a momentary state or act.... [ Continue Reading ]
THEY ROSE UP THE SAME HOUR. — As it was towards evening when they had arrived at Emmaus, and its distance from Jerusalem was about eight miles, they must have reached the chamber where the Eleven were assembled after nightfall. If we identify this gathering with that of John 20:19, there were but te... [ Continue Reading ]
THE LORD IS RISEN INDEED, AND HATH APPEARED TO SIMON. — Of the manifestation thus referred to, we have no other record in the Gospels. It occupies, however, a prominent place in those which St. Paul enumerates (1 Corinthians 15:5), and takes its place among the phenomena which indicates St. Paul’s a... [ Continue Reading ]
HE WAS KNOWN OF THEM IN BREAKING OF BREAD. — The use by St. Luke of a term which, when he wrote, had already acquired a definite secondary meaning, as applied to “breaking bread “in the Supper of the Lord (Acts 2:42; Acts 2:46; 1 Corinthians 10:16), is every way significant. He meant men to connect... [ Continue Reading ]
JESUS HIMSELF STOOD IN THE MIDST OF THEM. — The account agrees with that in John 20:19, who adds the fact that the doors of the room had been closed for fear of the Jews. The mode of appearance in both Gospels suggests the idea, as in Luke 24:31, of new conditions of existence, exempted from the phy... [ Continue Reading ]
SUPPOSED THAT THEY HAD SEEN A SPIRIT. — More accurately, _supposed that they were looking on_... For the use of the word “spirit “in this sense, see Acts 23:8; Hebrews 12:23.... [ Continue Reading ]
WHY ARE YE TROUBLED? — The question has a singular interest as witnessing to the identity of character, if one may so speak, of the risen Lord with all that had belonged to His humanity in the days of His ministry. He, too, had known what it was to be “troubled in spirit” (John 11:33; John 12:27; Jo... [ Continue Reading ]
BEHOLD MY HANDS AND MY FEET. — The test thus offered to the disciples, like that afterwards given to Thomas, was to be to them a proof that they were not looking on a spectre from the shadow-world of the dead. The Resurrection was a reality, not an appearance. In St. John’s words, “which our hands h... [ Continue Reading ]
WHILE THEY YET BELIEVED NOT FOR JOY. — We again note St. Luke’s characteristic tendency to psychological analysis. As men sleep for sorrow (Luke 22:45), so they disbelieve for very joy. What is brought before their eyes is too good to be true. HAVE YE HERE ANY MEAT? — Literally, _anything to eat, an... [ Continue Reading ]
A PIECE OF A BROILED FISH, AND OF AN HONEYCOMB. — The fact is interesting as pointing to the common food of the disciples. Fish — as in the miracles of the Five Thousand and the Four, and, we may add, in the narrative of John 21:9 — seems to have been the staple article of diet. Honey — as in the pr... [ Continue Reading ]
THESE ARE THE WORDS WHICH I SPAKE UNTO YOU. — As with the travellers to Emmaus, so now with the Ten who were present, our Lord leads His disciples to the true method of interpreting the prophecies which foretold the Christ. And that method was not an afterthought. It had been given in hints and outl... [ Continue Reading ]
THEN OPENED HE THEIR UNDERSTANDING. — Assuming, as we must assume, that this was the same meeting of the Lord with His disciples as that reported in John 20:22, we have here that which corresponds with the gift of the Holy Spirit He then imparted to them. They were conscious of a new spiritual power... [ Continue Reading ]
THUS IT BEHOVED CHRIST TO SUFFER. — Better, as elsewhere, _that the Christ should suffer. _... [ Continue Reading ]
AND THAT REPENTANCE AND REMISSION OF SINS... — Here also we have a point of contact with St. John’s narrative. Though St. Luke did not know the special form in which the commission had been given, he had, at least, learnt that forgiveness of sins had occupied a prominent place in what had been said... [ Continue Reading ]
YE ARE WITNESSES OF THESE THINGS. — Here again we have a link connecting the Gospel with the Acts, the key-note of which, especially in the earlier Chapter s, is that the disciples are to be “witnesses” of their Lord’s work and teaching, and above all of His resurrection (Acts 1:8; Acts 1:22; Acts 2... [ Continue Reading ]
AND HE LED THEM OUT AS FAR AS TO BETHANY. — It must be admitted that this narrative, taken by itself, would leave the impression that the Ascension followed with not more than a day’s interval on the Resurrection. We must remember, however, that even the coincidences between the close of St. Luke’s... [ Continue Reading ]
The words “and was carried up into heaven” are wanting in some of the best MSS., and are omitted accordingly by some recent editors.... [ Continue Reading ]
THEY WORSHIPPED HIM. — These words also are absent from most of the best MSS. If they stand as part of the text, we must remember that they describe the attitude of prostrate adoration. WITH GREAT JOY. — Now, at last, the disciples found the fulfilment of their Lord’s promise that “their sorrow sho... [ Continue Reading ]
AND WERE CONTINUALLY IN THE TEMPLE. — The statement is obviously not inconsistent with that in the Acts (Acts 1:13), that they were abiding in an upper-chamber in Jerusalem. What it indicates is, that their days were spent, not in the routine of common life, but in the prayer of fervent expectation;... [ Continue Reading ]