THE CERTITUDE OF CHRIST, AND THE INCERTITUDE OF HIS ENEMIES. THE DIVINE COUNSEL: AT THE FEAST OF THE PASSOVER
26:1–5
(Mar_14:1-2; Luk_22:1-2)
1And it came to pass, when Jesus had finished all these sayings, he said unto his disciples, 2Ye know that after two days is the feast of the passover [comes the passover,
ôÜðÜó÷á ãßíåôáé
], 3and the Son of man is betrayed [delivered up] to be crucified. Then assembled together the chief priests, and the scribes, and the elders of the people, unto 4the palace [in the court,
áὺëÞ
] of the high priest, who was called Caiaphas, And consulted [together,
óõ íåâïõëåýóáíôï
] that they might take Jesus by subtilty [craft,
äüëù
], and kill him [put him to death]. 5But they said, Not on the feast day [at the feast,
ἐí ôῇ ἑïñôῇ
], lest there be an uproar [tumult,
èüñõâïò
] among the people.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Mat_26:1. Had ended all these sayings.—With these savings [ch. 14 and 25] the Lord completed His historical prophetic office. He now foreannounces the fulfilment of His priestly office. He has marked out the figure of His future, the Son of Man in His majesty and glory. This assurance is the basis on which He stands at the commencement of His sufferings and deepest humiliation, and the basis on which He seeks to place His disciples.
Mat_26:2. After two days.—[Day after to-mor-row, on Thursday.] See the introductory remarks on the chronology of the history of the Passion.
The Passover.—
ôֶּñַç
, Aram.
ôַּñְçָà
; according to Exo_12:13, from
ôִּñַç
, to pass over, to spare, with allusion to the sparing of the first-born of Israel when the first-born of Egypt were slain by the destroying angel: thus, the passing over (of the destroying angel). This passing over has a threefold meaning: 1. The deliverance of the people out of Egypt through the judgment upon the Egyptians—the typical redemption; 2. the spiritual offering up of the Israelite first-born with the Egyptian, expressed by the blood of the lamb sprinkled on the doorposts—the typical death of Christ; 3. the actual sparing of the Israelite first-born in connection with that sacrifice—the raising up of the new life of Christ out of the sacrificial death. Accordingly, the Passover is a feast of thank-offering, a peace-offering, a sacrifice of salvation, which rests upon the basis of a sacrifice devoted to curse (the death of the Egyptian first-born), and of a propitiatory sacrifice (the sacrifice of the Israelite first-born in the blood of the lamb). The feast of deliverance is the seal and sacrament of salvation, the festival of new life and redemption, won out of the judgment of death. The type has thus its threefold relation to Christ. As Christ in His life was the true burnt-offering, so in His death He was: 1. The sacrifice of curse cherem (Gal_3:13), through the blindness of the world and the judgment of God, in order to the awakening and spiritual judgment of the world; 2. the sin-offering, chattah (2Co_5:21), for the reconciliation of the world; 3. the thank-offering in the new life, in the infinite fulness of life which He obtained in death. In all these senses He was the true and real Passover (1Co_5:7); and Easter, but especially the holy Supper, is the New Testament paschal foast, the feast of salvation, grounded upon propitiation through the condemnation of sin. And, inasmuch as with the deliverance from Egypt was connected separation from the leaven of Egyptian idolatry, and disciplinary wandering through the desert, the Passover is at the same time the feast of unleavened bread (
äַâ äִîִּöּãú
). This view of the feast has two main points: 1. Separation from the leaven, the spiritual fellowship of Egypt (Mat_16:6; 1Co_5:7); 2. wandering through all the tests and discipline of privation in the wilderness (Deu_16:3). With this twofold religious significance of the feast, there was, in process of time, connected the festival of spring-time and the beginning of harvest, or the first-fruits. (Some modern archæologists have without cause reversed the order, and made the natural feast the basis of the churchly or spiritual. Compare Winer, sub Pascha.) The Passover was the first of the three great feasts of Israel, and was celebrated in the first month of the year, Abib or Nisan, about the time of full moon—from the 14th to the 21st of Nisan—and in the central sanctuary. Concerning its rites, see below.
And the Son of Man is delivered up to be crucified.—The predictions of the crucifixion generally are here taken for granted: the prophecy here specifically lies in the definition of the date.
Mat_26:3. Then assembled together.—To the clear prospect and certitude of the Lord concerning the period of His death, is characteristically opposed the perfect uncertainty of the Sanhedrin concerning it, and the decree, which circumstances soon rendered vain, “not on the feast-day.”
In the court [in der Halle],—Not the palace of the high-priest itself, but the atrium, or court enclosed by its buildings. The common place of meeting for the Sanhedrin was called Gazith, and joined, according to the Talmud, the south side of the temple. Lightfoot, p. 459.
Who was called Caiaphas.—“Probably equivalent to
áַּéְôָּà
, depressio.” This was a standing surname, which passed into a proper name. He was originally called Joseph (Joseph. Antiq. xviii:2, 2). [Some ancient fathers confounded him with Josephus the Jewish historian, and supposed that he was secretly converted to Christianity.—P. S.] Caiaphas was one of those high-priests who marked the desecration of the institution by party spirit and the influence of foreign power. The Procurator Valerius Gratus bad given him the office, and he lost its dignity through Vitellius (Joseph. Antiq. xviii. 2, 2; 4, 3). He was the son-in-law of Annas. The evangelical history paints his character in his deeds.
Mat_26:4. By craft,
äüëù
.—The impression which the spiritual victories gained over them in the temple by Jesus had made upon the people, and also upon themselves, is here very plainly marked.
Not at the feast.—The people were, in their congregation at the feast (often to the amount of two millions), generally inclined to insurrection (Joseph. Antiq. xvii. 9, 3; 20:5, 3); and a tumult on behalf of Jesus was all the more to be provided against, because He had so many dependents among the people, especially among the bold and quarrelsome mountaineers from Galilee. The decree was presently invalidated—not through the first offer of Judas (Meyer), which had already been made, and had led them to settle the form of betrayal and His sudden surprise—but through the later appearance of the traitor, when he came from the supper in the night, and announced to them the favorable opportunity of seizing Christ in the garden. Bengel: Sic consilium divinum successit. Their counsel was fulfilled only so far as the taking the Lord by craft. It was a vain imagination that such a person as Jesus was, could be surreptitiously and without noise removed out of the way.
[Comp. Wordsworth: “Observe Christ’s power over His enemies in His death. Oftentimes when they endeavored to take Him, He escaped from them (Joh_10:39). But at the time when they had desired not to take Him, viz., at the Passover (comp. Luk_22:6), then He willed to be taken, and they, though unwilling, took Him; and so they fulfilled the prophecies in killing Him who is the true Passover, and in proving Him to be the Christ. (Comp. Leo, Serm. 58; Theophylact in Marc. 14:2.)” Dr. Lange, Meyer, Wordsworth, and others, assume that the priests intended to crucify the Lord after the feast of the Passover, when the crowds of strangers, sometimes amounting to two millions, should have left, but were frustrated in their design by the favorable opportunity soon offered. Ewald, on the contrary (Geschichte Christus’, p. 410), supposes that they intended to crucify Him before the feast, and actually did so, viz., on the 14th of Nisan. There is no doubt that the words
ìὴἐíôῇἑïñôῇ
, not at the feast! admit of both views. But in the latter case we would involve the Synoptists in self-contradiction; and then the time was already so far advanced, that the people, whose tumult they feared, must have already been at Jerusalem when the Sanhedrin resolved to crucify Christ. In any case their words in Mat_26:5 imply that they had no religious scruples against a public execution on the feast, but were restrained only by motives of policy and expediency. Probably such executions did take place sometimes on high festivals—as religious acts, and as a warning to the people. The law nowhere expressly prohibits them. Hegesippus relates in Euseb. Hist. Ecc_2:23, that James the Just, the brother of the Lord, was stoned and killed on the day of the Passover. See above, p. 456. Consequently this verse cannot be pressed as an argument against the view that Christ died on the 15th of Nisan, as is done by Bleek and others who advocate the 14th as the day of the crucifixion.—P. S.]
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. Jesus in divine assurance ready for death, familiar with the time of His death; while His murderers themselves know not whither they are proceeding.
2. Jesus the real Passover, or Paschal Lamb. See above.
3. The Sanhedrin, in its decree: “Not on the feast” is the type of the policy of a sinful world, which is violently moved by the powers of hell, and urged whither they will more impetuously than itself desires.
4. In the way of obedience, Jesus came to the feast of the Passover. He was separated from the temple, but not from His people and His religious obligations and customs. As an Israelite, He must keep the feast in Jerusalem; although this feast should result in His own death. And this very fact makes it an untenable notion, that Jesus kept the Passover a day earlier than was the custom. He would then have arbitrarily altered and belied at the end the legal propriety of His whole life. His submission to the law brought Him to His death. Concerning the high-priestly office of Christ, compare dogmatical treatises.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
Christ, in the full anticipation of His judicial glory, is prepared for His death: 1. He is notwithstanding ready for death; 2. He is on that account ready for death.—The divine assurance of the Lord, in contrast with the perfect and helpless uncertainty of His enemies: 1. The fact itself: (a) He as the sacrifice knows the day of His death, which the murderers themselves do not yet know; (b) He marks out a definite day, which they by their decree in council reject. 2. The explanation of the fact: (a) Christ is perfectly familiar with the spirit of Scripture (the meaning of the ancient Passover)—with the government of His Father (He knows the machinations of the powers of evil to which His enemies are given over); (b) His enemies suppose in their despotic counsels that they are above events, while they have become the helpless instruments of hell, (c) hell itself knows not all things, and knows wrongly all that it knows; it is decreed by God that it shall be now condemned.—What is it that the Lord lays most stress upon when He announces His passion? 1. Not that He should be nailed to the cross; but, 2. that He should be betrayed.—Perfect faithfulness mourning over consummate treachery in the deepest grief.—The sufferings of Christ the consummation of all Joseph’s sufferings: to be betrayed and sold by His brethren.—The uncounselled confusion of the High Council—The mixing up of politics with the Church must ruin both.—The last sittings of the Jewish ruling Council in the Church, according to Matthew 1. A council without counsel devoted to subtilty (Mat_26:5); 2. a shameless council, devoted to lying and calumniation (Mat_27:1); 3. a profligate council, devoted to hypocrisy (Mat_26:7); 4. a blind council, devoted to bribery (Mat_28:12).—The greatest of all insurrections (against the Lord’s Anointed) must always be in dread of the phantom of insurrection: 1. They lift themselves up against the Lord; and, 2. brand the possible uprising for His defence as rebellion.—The shallow farce of hierarchical pride condemned: 1. They think they can triumphantly trifle,—(a) with circumstances; (b) with men; (c) with sin. 2. They become a spectacle of judgment,—(a) through unforeseen accident; (b) through the spirits of hell (working in the soul of Judas); (c) through the sacred supervision of God.—The counsel of the wicked set at nought: 1. It half succeeds (they take the Lord with subtilty); 2. it seemed to have succeeded beyond expectation (the people made an insurrection in their favor at the feast); 3. but it was absolutely put to shame (the crucifixion of Christ at this feast was the end of all their feasts).—The warning thought, that the obduracy of the Jews reached its climax precisely at the feasts, when Jesus came to them—The question, whether Christ should die at the feast? The enemies say: “Not at the feast;” the Lord says: “On the feast-day, and no other.” The corruption of the Jewish feasts, out of which the great Christian feasts have sprung: Good Friday, Easter, Ascension Day, and Whitsuntide.—The counsel of God, that Christ should die at the feast of the PassoMatthew 26:1. The appointment: (a) in the holiest place of the earth; (b) at the highest feast; (c) in the midst of an assembly which represented the whole of mankind; (d) thus with perfect publicity. 2. The reason: (a) for the realization of all the symbols, especially the Passover; (b) to establish that the feast of the typical deliverance was changed into the feast of the real redemption; (c) for a manifestation of the judgment of the world, and of the reconciliation of the world, in the greatest assembly of Jews and Gentiles.—God can make sacrifices of His own, but He does not give them up to secret murder.—They might crucify Him openly before all the world; but secretly do away with Him they could not.—The blood of the saints does not sink silently into the ground; it publicly flows, and preaches aloud.
Starke:—Christ’s words inseparable from His sufferings.—Happy he who, when his death comes, can speak and hear about it with satisfaction.—Christ would suffer and die at the Passover: 1. Because the paschal lamb was a type of Himself, 1Co_5:1; 1 Corinthians 2. that His sufferings and death might the sooner be everywhere known.—Zeisius:—In the first Passover, the Israelites were brought out of the literal slavery of Egypt; in the last Passover, Christ has delivered us by His death from spiritual slavery. Tit_2:14-15.—Christ delighted to speak of His sufferings; let us delight in hearing of them, especially during Lent.—The great mass of the High Council are spoken of (Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea, and some others, were excepted): happy those who do not make themselves partakers of the sins committed in the fraternity of their colleagues.—Bibl. Würt.:—The worst wickedness is practised at the most holy times: men never play and debauch themselves, and rage more in iniquity, than on the feast-days; but what on other days is simple sin, on such days is ten fold.—Canstein:—The visible Church of Christ may reach such a point, that its most eminent and greatest members may not only not tolerate Christ and His truth, but even seek to destroy them.—Quesnel:—The human schemes, Gen_50:20.—Canstein:—The ancient hypocritical serpent-subtilty (Mat_26:4, by subtilty), Gen_3:16.—Zeisius:—The world can bear with Jews, Gentiles, Turks, Epicureans, but not with the honest witnesses of truth.—The Messiah was to suffer and die in the midst of a great multitude of people.—Cramer:—The counsel of the ungodly passes away, but the decree of God shall stand.—Unpriestly priests, who, instead of attending to devotion, are dealing in political and ofttimes diabolical schemes.
Heubner:—All these sayings (Mat_26:1). He had told His people and His disciples all that was needful for salvation, and had confirmed all by works and miracles: nothing now was left but to die.—He spoke of His sufferings, that His disciples might see how little chance had to do with them, but that all was after the will of His heavenly Father.—A pattern to us, that we should accustom ourselves to think and speak without fear of our final sufferings.—They thought not that He well knew all that was passing in their council.—The higher a man rises in influence and authority, the greater is his temptation to ambition, pride, love of power, and envy.—Those who are mighty in this world, its great men and rulers, are mostly indisposed to any new and better ordinance.—Fear of the people: vigor and openness are peculiar to the righteous cause.—“Not at the feast:” the feast was the wrong time, not because of any fear of God, but because of their fear of man. The decree must have cost them after all some pangs of conscience.
Footnotes:
Mat_26:2.—[So Lange renders
ðáñáäßäïôáé
here. Comp. Mat_5:25; Mat_15:5; Mat_18:34; Mat_27:18; Mat_27:26; Mar_15:1Luk_20:20; Rom_8:32 But
ðáñáäéäüíáé
is used sometimes, like
ðñïäéäüíáé
and the Lat. prodere, with the collat eral notion of treachery, as in Mat_10:4.—P. S.]
Mat_26:3.—
Êáὶ ïé ãñáììáôåῖò
(and the scribes) must be omitted according to Codd. A., B., D., L., etc. Probably inserted from Mar_14:1; Luk_22:2. [The words are also wanting in Cod. Sinait. and in the critical editions.)
Mat_26:3.—[Dr. Lange: Halle.
ÁὐëÞ
means usually, and so here, not the palace, but the atrium, the inner court or enclosed square around which the house was built, and which was used also for business. This is evident from Mat_26:69
ÐÝôñïò ἐêÜèçôù ἔîù Ýí ôῇ áὐëῃ
, sat without in the court (not: without in the palace, which involves a contradiction in terms), and from Luk_22:55, where it is said that they kindled a fire
ἐí ìÝóῳ ôῆò áõëῆò
, in midst of the court. Comp. Meyer and Conant in loc., and Lange’s Exeg. Notes.—P. S.]
Mat_26:5.—[The word feast here means the whole period of seven days during which the passover lasted. Meyer: Sie meinen die gunze siebentägige Festzeit.—P. S.]
[The word
ðÜó÷á
(originally transitus,
ὑðÝñâáóéò
,
ôֶּñç
) is used in a threefold sense in the N. T. (1) Agnus paschalis, the paschal lamb; hence the phrase to kill the passover,Mar_14:12; Luk_22:7. (2) The sacrificial lamb and the supper, Mat_26:17; Mar_14:14; Luk_22:11. (3) The whole feast of unleavened bread,
ἡ ἑïñôὴ ôῶí ἀæüìùí
or
ôὰ ἄæõáó
, which lasted seven days. Mat_26:2; Luk_22:1, and so generally in Joh_2:13; Joh_6:4; Joh_11:15; Joh_12:1; Joh_13:1, etc. Some of the Greek and Latin fathers connected the passover with the Greek verb
ðÜó÷á
, to suffer, and with the death of Christ which was typified by the sacrifice of the paschal lamb Dr. Wordsworth finds a deep mystic meaning in his.—a mistake, which evidently arose from the ignorance of Hebrew, a language known to very few of the fathers and schoolmen down to the period of the Reformation. He also sees a providential paronomasia in Luk_22:15 between
ôïõôï ôὸ ðá
ʼ
ó÷á öáãåῖí
and
ðñὸ ôïῦ ìå ðáèåéí
.—P. S.]
[This theme, of course, implies the chronological view held by Lange, Tholuck, Wieseler, and Hengstenberg, who fix upon the 15th Nisan as the day of crucifixion: but it is of no avail if Christ died on the 14th Nisan or before the regular Jewish Passover, according to Seyffarth, Ebrard, Bleek, and others.—P. S.]
[This comes nearer the original: Geistlose Geistlche, than the Edinb. trsl.: Unspiritual clerics.—P. S.]
