IV. (1) The narrative of the Temptation is confessedly one of the most mysterious in the Gospel records. In one respect it stands almost, if not altogether, alone. It could not have come, directly or indirectly, from an eye-witness. We are compelled to look on it either as a mythical after-growth; a... [ Continue Reading ]
Forty days and forty nights. — Here we have an obvious parallelism with the fasts of Moses (Exodus 34:28) and Elijah (1 Kings 19:8), and we may well think of it as deliberately planned. Prolonged fasts of nearly the same extent have been recorded in later times. The effect of such a fast on any huma... [ Continue Reading ]
WHEN THE TEMPTER CAME. — Nothing in the narrative suggests the idea of a bodily presence visible to the eye of sense, and all attempts so to realise it, whether as Milton has done in _Paradise Regained,_ or as by rationalistic commentators, who held that the Tempter was, or assumed the shape of, a s... [ Continue Reading ]
IT IS WRITTEN. — The words of all the three answers to the Tempter come from two Chapter s of Deuteronomy, one of which (Deuteronomy 6) supplied one of the passages (6:4-9) for the phylacteries or frontlets worn by devout Jews. The fact is every way suggestive. A prominence was thus given to that po... [ Continue Reading ]
The order of the last two temptations is different in St. Luke, and the variation is instructive. Either St. Luke’s informant was less accurate than St. Matthew’s, or the impressions left on the minds of those to whom the mystery had been communicated were slightly different. Especially was this lik... [ Continue Reading ]
IF THOU BE THE SON OF GOD. — In this case, as before, the temptation starts from the attestation of the character of Jesus as the Son of God. With this there is now joined an appeal to familiar and sacred words, and the subtlety of the Tempter lay in his perversion of their true meaning. Here, too,... [ Continue Reading ]
IT IS WRITTEN AGAIN. — The words are, as already stated, from the chapter that contains one of the passages written on the phylacteries, that were probably used by our Lord Himself. As the words stand in Deuteronomy 6:16, their general meaning is specialised by an historical reference, “Ye shall not... [ Continue Reading ]
AN EXCEEDING HIGH MOUNTAIN. — Here, if proof were wanted, we have evidence that all that passed in the Temptation was in the region of which the spirit, and not the senses, takes cognisance. No “specular mount” (I use Milton’s phrase) in the whole earth commands a survey of “all the kingdoms of the... [ Continue Reading ]
ALL THESE THINGS WILL I GIVE THEE. — St. Luke’s addition, “For that is (has been) delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will I give it,” is full of significance. The offer made by the Tempter rested on the apparent evidence of the world’s history. The rulers of the world, its Herods and its Cæsars,... [ Continue Reading ]
Get thee hence, Satan. — Once more the answer to the Tempter was found in the words of the _Tephillim_ and the lessons of childhood. No evidence of power could change the eternal laws of duty. There came to the Son of Man the old command, “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God,” as an oracle from heav... [ Continue Reading ]
ANGELS CAME AND MINISTERED UNTO HIM. — The tenses of the two verbs differ, the latter implying continued or repeated ministrations. Here also we are in the region of the spiritual life, and must be content to leave the nature of the ministration undefined, instead of sensualising it as poets and art... [ Continue Reading ]
Between the 11th and 12th verses there is a great break, and it is well to remember what passed in the interval: (1) the return to the Baptist, and the call of the six disciples (John 1:29); (2) the marriage at Cana, and the visit to Capernaum (John 2:1); (3) the cleansing of the Temple; the intervi... [ Continue Reading ]
LEAVING NAZARETH. — The form of the name in the older MSS. is Nazara. St. Matthew records the bare fact. St. Luke (Luke 4:16) connects it with His rejection by the men of this very place, where He had been brought up, and their attempt upon His life. St. John (John 2:12) states a fact which implies... [ Continue Reading ]
The light in which the fact of the migration presented itself to St. Matthew was, as with other facts, that it agreed with what had been spoken by a prophet. The abode of Nazareth had thus fulfilled one prediction, that at Capernaum fulfilled another.... [ Continue Reading ]
(15-16) The citation is remarkable as the only reference in the New Testament to what seems to us the most wonderful and majestic of all Messianic prophecies; and still more remarkable as dwelling, not on the words so familiar to us, “Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given...,” but on the m... [ Continue Reading ]
FROM THAT TIME JESUS BEGAN TO PREACH. — We have in these words St. Matthew’s record of the commencement of our Lord’s Galilean ministry. It is important to remember that it had been preceded by a ministry of some months in Judæa; that that ministry had been outwardly like that of the Baptist (John 4... [ Continue Reading ]
AND JESUS, WALKING BY THE SEA OF GALILEE. — In no part of the Gospel history is it more necessary to remember St. John’s record as we read that of the Three, than in this call of the disciples. Here, everything seems sudden and abrupt. There we learn that those who were now called had some months be... [ Continue Reading ]
FOLLOW ME. — The command came, as we have seen, to those who were not unprepared. Short as it was, it was in some sense the first parable in our Lord’s teaching, the germ of an actual parable (Matthew 13:47). It suggested a whole circle of thoughts. The sea is the troubled and evil world (Isaiah 57:... [ Continue Reading ]
MENDING THEIR NETS. — On the assumption that the facts in St. Luke preceded what we read here, the “mending” might seem the natural consequence of the “breaking” there described, and be noted as an undesigned coincidence. It must be remembered, however, (1) that the “mending” as well as “washing” fl... [ Continue Reading ]
LEFT THE SHIP AND THEIR FATHER. — St. Mark adds, with the hired servants,” a fact of interest as showing that the sons of Zebedee were probably, in some measure, of better means and higher social standing than those of Jona. The absence of the name of the latter suggests the inference that he was no... [ Continue Reading ]
PREACHING THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. — As far as regards St. Matthew this is the first occurrence of the phrase. It tells of a vast amount of unrecorded teaching, varying in form, yet essentially the same — a call to repentance — the good news of a kingdom of heaven not far off — the witness, by act... [ Continue Reading ]
THROUGHOUT ALL SYRIA. — The word is probably used popularly, rather than with the definite significance of the Roman province with which St. Luke uses it in Luke 2:2. Our Lord’s ministry, with the one exception of the journey to the coasts of Tyre and Sidon (Matthew 15:21), was confined to what is c... [ Continue Reading ]
DECAPOLIS. — The district so named was formed by the Romans on their first conquest of Syria, B.C. 65, and, speaking roughly, included a tract of country east and south-east of the Sea of Galilee. The ten cities from which the region took its name are given by Pliny (v. 18) — though with the reserva... [ Continue Reading ]