goats on the left. 34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: 35 for I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: t ye V was 8 Rom. v, 17. xx7. Pet. i. 4, 9: iii. 9. Rev. t ch. xx. 23. James i. 27. 3 John 5. w James ii. 15, 16. x 2 Tim. i. 16. I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, "Ezek. xviii.7. and took me ye in: 36 w naked, and clothed me: I v Heb. xiii. 2. sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. 37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? 38 when saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? 39 or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? 40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, y Inasmuch h have done it unto y Prov. xiv. 31: as ye one of the least of these my brethren, ye h have done it. Heb. h render, did it. 34.] THE KING-here for the first and only time does the Lord give Himself this name: see Rev. xix. 16: Rom. xiv. 9. Come] Whatever of good these persons had done, was all from Him from whom cometh every good gift-and the fruit of his Spirit. And this Spirit is only purchased for man by the work of the Son, in whom the Father is well pleased and to whom all judgment is committed. And thus they are the blessed of the Father, and those for whom this kingdom is prepared. It is not to the purpose to say that those blessed of. The must be the elect of God in the stricter sense (the Father)--and that, because the Kingdom has been prepared for them from the foundation of the world. For evidently this would, in the divine omniscience, be true of every single man who shall come to salvation, whether belonging to those who shall be found worthy to share the first resurrection or not. Scripture assures us of two resurrections: the first, of the dead in Christ, to meet Him and reign with Him, and hold (1 Cor. vi. 2) judgment over the world: the second, of all the dead, to be judged according to their works. And to what purpose would be a judgment, if all were to be condemned? And if any escape condemna. tion, to them might the words of this verse be used: so that this objection to the interpretation does not apply. Election to life is the universal doctrine of Scripture; but not the reprobation of the wicked: see below, on ver. 41. On from the foundation of the world, see VOL. I. xix. 17. ch. John xvii. 24: 1 Pet. i. 20. N In this z Ps. vi. 8. 42. b 2 Pet. ii. 4. Jude 6. b a unto me. 41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into i everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: 42 for I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: 43 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. 44 Then shall they also answer [him], saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? 45 Then shall he answer Prov. xiv 31: them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. d Dan. xii. 2. 46 And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: Rom. ii. 7 ff. but the righteous into life eternal. xvii. 5. Zech. John v. 20. XXVI. 1 And it came to pass, when Jesus had finished i render, the eternal fire which hath been prepared. komit. ་ 1 render, eternal (the word is the same in both places). is fulfilled the covenant of God to Abraham, "in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth (so in LXX) be blessed." Gen. xxii. 18. 41-43.] It is very important to observe the distinction between the blessing, ver. 34, and the curse here. Blessed-of my Father-but not 'cursed of my Father.' because all man's salvation is of God-all his condemnation from himself. The Kingdom, prepared for you but the fire, which has been prepared for the devil and his angels' [greater definiteness could not be given than by the words in the original: that particular fire, that eternal fire, created for a special purpose]-not, for you: because there is election to life-but there is no reprobation to death: a book of Life -but no book of Death; no hell for man -because the blood of Jesus hath purchased life for all but they who will serve the devil, must share with him in the end. The repetition of all these particulars shews how exact even for every individual the judgment will be. Stier excellently remarks, that the curse shews the termination of the High Priesthood of Christ, in which office He only intercedes and blesses. Henceforth He is King and Lord his enemies being now for ever put under his feet. 44, 45.] See note on ver. 37. The sublimity of this description surpasses all imaginationChrist, as the Son of Man, the Shepherd, the King, the Judge-as the centre and end of all human love, bringing out and rewarding his latent grace in those who have lived in love-everlastingly punishing John v. 28, 29; and as taking up the pro- CHAP. XXVI. 1, 2.] FINAL ANNOUNCE MENT OF HIS SUFFERINGS, NOW CLOSE AT all these sayings, he said unto his disciples, 2 Ye know that m delivered n omit. с b John xi. 1, 2: c ch. xxi. 17. up: it is the same word as in ver. 15, 16, 21, &c. This gives no certainty as to the time when the words were said: we do not know whether the current day was included or otherwise. But thus much of importance we learn from them: that the delivery of our Lord to be crucified, and the taking place of the Passover, strictly coincided. The solemn mention of them in this connexion is equivalent to a declaration from Himself, if it were needed, of the identity, both of time and meaning, of the two sacrifices; and serves as the fixed point in the difficult chronological arrangement of the history of the Passion. The latter clause, and the Son of man depends on ye know ..... as well as the former. Our Lord had doubtless before joined these two events together in His announcements to his disciples. To separate this clause from the former, seems to me to do violence to the construction. It would require and then the Son.. 8-5.] CONSPIRACY OF THE Jewish AUTHORITIES. Mark xiv. 1. Luke xxii. 2. This assembling has no connexion with what has just been related, but follows rather on the end of ch. xxiii. who was called Caiaphas is in Josephus, "Joseph, who is also Caiaphas." Valerius Gratus, Procurator of Judæa, had appointed him instead of Simon ben Kamith. He continued through the procuratorship of Pontius Pilate, and was displaced by the proconsul Vitellius, A.D. 37. See note on Luke iii. 2, and chrono logical table in introduction to Acts. 6-13.] THE ANOINTING AT BETHANY. .... Simon the leper, 7 there came unto him a woman having an alabaster box of very precious ointment, and poured it on his head, as he sat at meat. 8 But when his disciples. saw it, they had indignation, saying, To what purpose is this waste? 9 For this [Pointment] might have been sold for much, and given to the poor. 10 When Jesus understood it, he said unto them, Why trouble ye the woman? d Deut. xv. 11. for she hath wrought a good work upon me. 11 d For ye 20: xxviii. 20. John 19: xvi. 5, 28: xvii. 11. e see ch. xviii. have the poor always with you; but e me ye have not xiv. always. 12 For in that she hath poured this ointment on my body, she did it for my burial. 13 Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, there shall also this, that this woman hath done, be told for a memorial of her. Pomit. if the narrative were continued; and at the end, instead of our then.. Judas went.... has "and Judas ... went" as if there were no connexion between the two. It certainly cannot be said of St. Matthew, that he relates the anointing as taking place two days before the Passover: of St. Mark it might be said. It may be observed that St. Luke relates nothing of our Lord's visits to Bethany. 6. Simon the leper] Not at this time a leper, or he could not be at his house receiving guests. It is at least possible, that he may have been healed by our Lord. Who he was, is wholly uncertain. From Martha serving (John xii. 2), it would appear as if she were at home in the house (Luke x. 38 sqq.); and that Lazarus was one of them that sat at meat need not necessarily imply that he was a guest properly so called. He had been probably (see John xii. 9) absent with Jesus at Ephraim, and on this account, and naturally for other reasons, would be an object of interest, and one of the sitters at table. 7. an as John xiii. 23,-may not have observed it. f ch. xxvii. 3. 14 Then one of the twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went unto the chief priests, 15 and said unto them, What will Zech. xi. 2. ye give me, and I will deliver him unto you? And they covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver. from that time he sought opportunity to betray him. been preached in the whole world,—and specifying the fact that this deed should be recorded wherever it is preached. We may notice (1) that this announcement is a distinct prophetic recognition by our Lord of the existence of written records, in which the deed should be related; for in no other conceivable way could the universality of mention be brought about: (2) that we have here (if indeed we needed it) a convincing argument against that view of our three first Gospels which supposes them to have been compiled from an original document; for if there had been such a document, it must have contained this narrative, and no one using such a Gospel could have failed to insert this narrative, accompanied by such a promise, in his own work,-which St. Luke has not done: (3) that the same consideration is equally decisive against St. Luke having used, or even seen, our present Gospels of Matthew and Mark. (4) As regards the practical use of the announcement, we see that though the honourable mention of a noble deed is thereby recognized by our Lord as a legitimate source of joy to us, yet by the very nature of the case all regard to such mention as a motive is excluded. The motive was love alone. 14-16.] COMPACT OF JUDAS WITH THE CHIEF PRIESTS TO BETRAY HIM. Mark xiv. 10, 11. Luke xxii. 3-6. (See also John xiii. 2.) When this took place, does not appear. In all probability, immediately after the conclusion of our Lord's discourses, and therefore coincidently with the meeting of the Sanhedrim in ver. 3. As these verses bring before us the first overt act of Judas's treachery, I will give here what appears to me the true estimate of his character and motives. In the main, my view agrees with that given by Neander. I believe that Judas at first became attached to our Lord with much the same view as the other Apostles. He appears to have been a man with a practical talent for this world's business, which gave occasion to his being appointed the Treasurer, or Bursar, of the company (John xii. 6; xiii. 29). But the self-seeking, sensuous element, which his character had in common with that of the other Apostles, was deeper rooted in him; and the spirit and love of Christ gained no such influence over him 16 And as over the others, who were more disposed to the reception of divine things. In proportion as he found our Lord's progress disappoint his greedy anticipations, did his attachment to Him give place to coldness and aversion. The exhibition of miracles alone could not keep him faithful, when once the deeper appreciation of the Lord's divine Person failed. We find by implication a remarkable example of this in John vi. 60-66, 70, 71, where the denunciation of the one unfaithful among the Twelve seems to point to the (then) state of his mind, as already beginning to be scandalized at Christ. Add to this, that latterly the increasing clearness of the Lord's announcements of His approaching passion and death, while they gradually opened the eyes of the other Apostles to some terrible event to come, without shaking their attachment to Him, was calculated to involve in more bitter disappointment and disgust one so disposed to Him as Judas was. The actually exciting causes of the deed of treachery at this particular time may have been many. The reproof administered at Bethany (on the Saturday evening probably),-disappointment at seeing the triumphal entry followed, not by the adhesion, but by the more bitter enmity of the Jewish authorities,-the denunciations of our Lord in ch. xxii. xxiii. rendering the breach irreparable,-and perhaps His last announcement in ver. 2, making it certain that his death would soon take place, and sharpening the eagerness of the traitor to profit by it :-all these may have influenced him to apply to the chief priests as he did. With regard to his motive in general, I cannot think that he had any design but that of sordid gain, to be achieved by the darkest treachery. See further on this the note on ch. xxvii. 3. 15.] The verb rendered covenanted ...for, may mean either weighed out, or appointed. That the money was paid to Judas (ch. xxvii. 3) is no decisive argument for the former meaning; for it may have been paid on the delivery of Jesus to the Sanhedrim. The "covenanted" of St. Luke and "promised" of St. Mark would lead us to prefer the other. thirty pieces of silver] Thirty shekels, the price of the life of a servant, Exod. xxi. 32. Between three and four pounds of our money. St. Matthew |