Lange Commentary - Luke 23:26 - 23:31

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Lange Commentary - Luke 23:26 - 23:31


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

4. Calvary (Luk_23:26-43)

a. THE LEADING AWAY TO THE CROSS (Luk_23:26-31)

(Parallel with Mat_27:31-32; Mar_15:20-22; Joh_19:16-17.)

26And as they led him away, they laid hold upon one Simon, a Cyrenian, coming out of the country, and on him they laid the cross, that he might bear it after Jesus. 27And there followed him a great company of people, and of women, which also bewailed and lamented him. 28But Jesus turning unto them said, Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children. 29For, behold, the days are coming [there come days], in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps [breasts] which never gave suck [nourishment]. 30Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us. 31For if they do these things in a [on, or to, the] green tree [or, wood], what shall be done in [happen to] the dry?

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

Luk_23:26. And as they led Him away.—As respects the identity of the present via dolorosa (Haradell-Alahm) with the way of our Lord to the Cross, this is at least doubtful. It is about a league in length, starting from the prœtorium, inside the walls of the city, in a northwesterly direction as far as Mount Calvary, The actual way to the Cross was hardly so long, and appears also to have tended more southerly. The spuriousness at least of the so-called Stations, as, for instance, of the place from whence the train set out, where Simon of Cyrene met the Lord, where Mary sank down speechless, and heard a “Salve Mater” from His mouth, where Veronica handed Him the handkerchief, upon which immediately, in a miraculous way, the features of His countenance impressed themselves, &c., can hardly need any further mention, although, for instance, even Chateaubriand has defended their identity. Even Sepp, 3:536, no longer ventures to take these traditions under his protection, and Lamartine also allowed that he had found here stone-heaps of far later date. In reference to specialities of this sort, the admirable expression of Von Schubert holds good, Reise durch das Morgenland, ii. p. Luke 505: “Although it may be that here the childlike devotion of the natives, when it describes to us the individual features of the great picture, sometimes appears similar to a countryman whose cottage stands in the neighborhood of a battle-field, when he, not with the words of an experienced soldier, still less with the certainty of an eye-witness, relates to us what here and there took place upon the greatly-altered spots: still the relation will ever move us to deepest sympathy; for it is at all events an echo of that which his ancestors here really saw and experienced. There is now passing the sixteenth century since Constantine and Helena’s times, of those that have edified and spiritually refreshed themselves from the monuments of these mighty recollections.” Respecting, however, the identity of Calvary and the Holy Sepulchre, see Lange, Matthew, p. 520, and the there cited authors, with whose results we on the whole can agree.

They laid hold of.—A more exact expression, ἀããáñåýåéí , is found in Matthew and Mark, a word which, with the exception of Mat_5:41, is only found in this passage of the New Testament. That the idea of a military constraint is implied in it is certainly beyond question, wherein, it is true, in respect to the person of the one thus impressed, the form in which the impressment took place, and the occasion why precisely he was chosen in preference to all others, a wide field remains open to the fancy of exegetes for all manner of conjectures. The most important we find in Matthew, ad loc. Unless we assert that the notice of Mark, “father to Alexander and Rufus,” was written down without any purpose, then the conjecture is obvious that this meeting with our Lord became for Simon and his house an event of great importance, and the occasion of his afterwards bearing the Cross after Christ in a yet higher sense. In this case then, the King of the kingdom of God has, even on His way to the Cross, won a subject, and the well-known fiction of the Basilidians (of whom Epiphanius, Hœres. 24, 3, makes mention), that Simon died on the Cross instead of our Lord, acquires then a beautiful symbolical sense. Not in the place of our Lord, but in His fellowship, was, thus, not indeed his body, but his old sinful nature nailed with Jesus to the tree. Comp. Romans 6 and Mat_16:24.

Coming out of the country.—“Belongs to the Synoptical traces of a working day.” Meyer. To this, however, the fact is opposed that we do not learn how distant this field [ ἀð ʼ ἀãñïῦ ] was from the city, and as little whether he had been working in the country, in which case it must not at the same time be left out of sight that a feast day with the Jews was by no means observed more strictly than the Sabbath; but, on the contrary, less strictly. Very justly, therefore, does Wieseler remark: “We Christians [He means, of course: “We Continental Christians.”—C. C. S.] easily mistake the true relation, by comparing the Jewish Sabbath with our Sunday, and then remembering that the feast days to us are holier, celebrated with more Sabbath rest than our common Sundays.” The name of the greatest Sabbath, Lev_16:31, [Shabbathon,] is among all the feast and memorial days only given to the great day of atonement; but on the remaining feasts this strict abstinence from all labor is not required as on every seventh day (comp. Lev_23:31 with Luk_23:7; Luk_23:21; Luk_23:25; Luk_23:35, where there is a careful distinction made between labor and servile labor). Even among the present Jews the greater holiness which the weekly Sabbath and the great day of atonement have above all other feasts is among other circumstances visible from this fact, that during the two first-named days, but not during the latter, mourning for the dead is suspended; that on the former they bury no corpses, but they do so on the latter, &c. We do not, accordingly, even hold it necessary for an explanation of the compulsory service imposed upon Simon of Cyrene to assume (Lange) that they were disposed therewith, regarding him as somewhat of a Sabbath breaker, to let him smart a little for it.

On him they laid the cross, ἐðÝèçêáí … öÝñåéí ὄðéóèåí ôïῦ ʼ Éçóïῦ .—The general expression of Matthew and Mark, ̔ ἵíá ἄñῃ ôὸí óôáõñüí must be explained according to this more precise one of Luke. It is no öÝñåéí ὑðÝñ ôïῦ ʼ Éçóïῦ , but ὄðéóèåí , so that our Lord obtains, it is true, some lightening, but not a freeing from bearing the cross. The cross was bound with cords upon the shoulders, and it is hardly probable that they would have lost much time in unbinding it from our Saviour and laying it in His stead upon the back of Simon; it is, therefore, not an entire transfer of the cross that is spoken of, but only a bearing of it with Him, and particularly the hinder part; and if one should even assert that our Lord found His burden hereby much rather aggravated than relieved, since then the fore-part must have pressed so much the more heavily upon Him, it would only follow from this, as often, that the tender mercies of the wicked were cruel. As to the rest, we do not read in any of the Evangelists that our Saviour was about to sink under the load if just at the right time Simon had not supported Him. Here also the Saviour bears the heaviest part of the burden, while the (comparatively) lightest part rests on the shoulders of him who follows after Jesus.

Luk_23:27. Women, which also bewailed.—A beautiful trait of genuine humanity, which in the third Gospel is exactly in its place. As customary at public executions, so here also, a great crowd have streamed together, among whom there are also women from Jerusalem. Luke, in whose Gospel the most of the women who stood in connection with Jesus are described, relates to us also how their compassion strewed yet one last flower for our Lord upon His path, of thorns. This phenomenon was the more remarkable because it, at least according to a later Jewish tradition, was considered as entirely unlawful to bestow on a malefactor who was led to the place of punishment any proof whatever of compassion. These women have, however, been placed too high when they have been put on a level with the Galilean friends of our Lord, and again too low when it is asserted that they only showed traces of an entirely superficial sympathy, such as is brought up so easily at the view of any pitiable object. In the last case our Lord would assuredly never have deemed these women worthy of a particular address, and what, moreover, could there be against supposing that at least some were found among them who personally knew Jesus, who had been affected by His preaching, or who, by report, or by their own experience of His benefits, had become engaged in His favor? We do not need, therefore (Sepp), to understand high-minded matrons who had come to a work of love, and bore in their hands a wine drugged with myrrh (which was to be a composing draught for the Saviour). They have no myrrh wine, but tear-water, wherewith they moisten the way to the Cross; but the sincerity of their sympathy becomes for our Lord upon this sorrowful course a refreshment, and He who before a frivolous Herod has kept silence, gives now these sorrowing women to hear His powerful admonitions. It is the last connected discourse of our Lord of any length that is uttered on this occasion; afterwards we shall hear only single interrupted words before His death. Perhaps He uses thereto the moment of delay which the impressment of Simon had occasioned; in this case the difficulty at once disappears, “that at this moment we are hardly to presume a witness as present who could have caught up and related any words uttered by Jesus.” (Weisse). What our Lord had uttered with composed dignity and intelligibly enough, may very well have been related by a sufficient number of witnesses, and particularly by the women themselves to His disciples.

Luk_23:28. Daughters of Jerusalem.—Our Lord undoubtedly does not overlook the fact that the compassion of these women had not the three condemned in equal measure, but Himself personally as its object. Therefore, also, He does not say: “Weep not for us,”—the terrible equalizing of Him with two murderers is only to be made some minutes later by the hands of His executioners,—but “Weep not for Me,” and He directs their look from Himself to their own future by the touching words: “Weep for yourselves and your children.” The latter certainly not without direct allusion to the imprecation of the Jews, Mat_27:25, whose fulfilment should come upon the children of these women also. Not to elicit new fruitless emotion, He now adds, not a Woe upon those with child, but a somewhat softer “Blessed” upon the unfruitful, not without a still retrospect, perhaps, to the “Blessed” which once a Galilean woman had uttered upon His mother, Luk_11:27; yet this prophecy of evil is not, therefore, the less terrible. He foretells days in which the highest blessing of marriage should be regarded as a curse, and on the other hand a sudden, even though a terrible death, as a benefit. Comp. Hos_9:14; Hos_10:8; Rev_6:16. The moment of the outbreak of this desperate condition of things ( ἄñîïíôáé ), which is here drawn entirely after life, can be no other than the point of time at the destruction of Jerusalem, when all hope of deliverance is cut off. It is worthy of note that our Lord now, after His condemnation, no longer warns against this catastrophe, but foretells it as unavoidably impending, without adding even the faintest intimation of any way whatever in which it could be escaped. The day of visitation for Jerusalem is now already passed; nor will our Lord, so near His end, at all assume the guise of being any longer concerned to deliver Himself or the people so as in any way in this moment to excite them even yet to believe on Him as the promised Messiah. The preaching of repentance becomes by this very fact so much the more tremendous.

Luk_23:31. For if they do these things to the green wood.—So long as the enemy at his incursion into a land spares the green wood, he will, perhaps, even refrain from destroying the dry; but if he does not even spare the fruitful, how should he not deny compassion to the unfruitful? The image, sufficiently intelligible of itself, is probably taken from Eze_20:47, and places the fate of the innocent Saviour as a prophecy of evil over against that of the guilty Israel. We have here not the contrast between young and old (Bengel), and as little the continuation of the exclamation of the despairing women themselves, Luk_23:30 (Baumgarten-Crusius), who, he supposes, from the fate which comes upon themselves as guiltless, now make inference as to the lot of the guilty; but, on the other hand, a pathetic allusion of our Lord Himself to that which even now is coming upon Him, in which this is given to the women as the standard according to which they were to measure the fate impending over themselves. Comp. Jer_49:12; Pro_11:31; 1Pe_4:17-18. Åἰ ôáῦôá ðïéïῦóéí , He does not even say what, in order not to agitate the souls of the women yet more deeply; they were themselves to see it in the moments next succeeding; ðïéïῦóéí , Impersonally; it designates neither the Jews nor the Romans alone, but is an indefinite expression of what is here to be accomplished by human hands.

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. The meeting of Simon the Cyrenian with the suffering Saviour is again one of the most striking proofs of a providentia specialissima, in which the history of His life and suffering is so incomparably rich. It was not merely for Simon himself, but also for our Lord of importance, since it prepares for Him a relief, even though a brief one, on the way to the cross. Simon Peter is not at hand, although he had promised to follow his Master even to death. But from the distant Cyrene must there another Simon appear to lighten the burdened course of the Lamb of God, on the way to the slaughter. The willingness with which Simon takes the burden forced upon him, renders for his character, perhaps for his awakening courage of faith, a favorable testimony. In the women also there is manifested a feeling for our Lord, which we, after all that hitherto had come to pass, should expect least of all in this hour. “Now already the first breezes of another temper begin to breathe; the harbingers of the courage of the cross are coming into view.” Lange.

2. The address of our Lord to the weeping women causes the light of His heavenly greatness to beam afar through the mists of the way to the cross in surprising wise. In an hour in which all presses in upon Him, and He might have had all occasion to think only of His own suffering, He wholly forgets this in order to occupy Himself only with the salvation of persons who yet really only exhibited for Him an inconsiderable sympathy. While the present with its whole weight rests upon Him, the future stands bright and clear before His unclouded spirit, and His eye already beholds the day that shall extort quite other tears. The feeling of His own innocence and dignity leaves Him not a moment. He knows and designates Himself as the green wood, in the same hour which He is about to end, nailed on the dry wood of shame. No word of bitterness against His murderers is mingled with the tones of love and compassion; even the fate of the children goes to His heart, upon whom their parents have recklessly called down the curse, and as if His own conflict were already endured, He will only have tears shed for Jerusalem’s fate. Thus does His prophetic character reveal itself in the same hour in which He goes to perform His High-priestly work, and He yet, as the Good Shepherd, seeks that which is lost, while He is already on the way to give His life for the sheep.

3. The difference between this leading away of our Lord and the entry which had only taken place five days before. The place which Calvary occupies as a link in the chain of those mountain-tops which are remarkable in the life of our Lord. An admirable representation of the Cross-bearing Christ, by Ary Scheffer. Another, the Moment Before the Crucifixion, by Steuber.

4. “God’s wrath is harder to bear than Christ’s Cross.” Rieger.

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

Compare here and in the following divisions the Homiletical Hints on the parallels in Matthew and Mark.

The leading away to Calvary: 1. The Victim of wickedness led by the hands of men; 2. the atoning sacrifice of the world led by the hand of the Father to the slaughter.—The Via Dolorosa: 1. How far the Saviour alone treads it; 2. how far His disciples must continually tread the same in the following of Him.—The way of the cross: 1. Strown with the thorns of malice; 2. moistened with the tears of compassion; 3. illuminated by the light of the greatness of Jesus; 4. ended by the hill of death.—The Christian’s cross-bearing in following Jesus, like that of Simon, a work which is performed: 1. Seldom voluntarily; 2. best with resignation; 3. never without reward.—How our Lord now, with His cross-bearing disciples, has taken upon Himself the work of Simon the Cyrenian.—Not a single woman in the whole Evangelical history is hostilely disposed towards our Lord.—The great contrast between superficial feeling for, and living faith in, the Saviour.—“Weep not for Me.”—How much value is to be laid upon emotions such as are not seldom awakened in the hearers by a sermon on the Passion.—The view of the cross-bearing Christ calls us to weep for ourselves: 1. Such a suffering have human hands prepared for the most innocent and the holiest One; 2. such a sacrifice was requisite for the atonement of our sins also; 3. such a grace is even yet vainly proclaimed to many—and should we not weep over all this?—The fearful punishment of the rejection of Christ: 1. Foreseen with infallible certainty; 2. fulfilled with terrible severity; 3. held up for an example for all Christian nations who do not honor God’s Anointed.—Faith or despair; no other choice.—How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation! Heb. 2:23.

Starke:—God knows the cross-bearers most perfectly.—The greatest and most splendid cities have often the fewest to bear the Lord Jesus’ cross after Him; small places are before them in it.—Canstein:—It is to be reckoned among the hidden benefits when God, through others, against our own will causes the cross to be imposed on us which we do not like to bear, and which, yet, is so good for us.—Rather help thy neighbor to bear his burden than make it heavier, Gal_6:2.—All true Christians are cross-bearers.—At the Passion of Jesus the disciples, though men, become women, and the women become men.—Cramer:—The right way to consider Christ’s Passion begins thus: that we, with our children, bewail ourselves and our sins.—Nova Bibl. Tub.:—We commonly lament most what we should lament least, and least what we should lament most, Joe_2:12; Psa_119:36.—To have no children is in many circumstances happier than to have children.—The wrath of God, when it breaks out, is unendurable, Heb_10:31.—The righteousness of God must be satisfied; if He did not spare His own innocent Son, how much less will He spare an impenitent sinner.—Heubner:—Such lamentation, Luk_23:27, is itself a fulfilment of the prophecy, Zec_12:10-14.—Christ restraining the weeping ones proved His own high dignity.—The Passion of Christ is the most solemn warning for the impenitent.—Paternal and maternal love—the thought of the future fate of their children should move parents to repentance.—For every blinded sinner there will come a day when he shall curse his life.—Luk_23:31 by no means in conflict with the Evangelical doctrine of Atonement.—Arndt:—Jesus’ death-journey to Calvary.—F. W. Krummacher:—Simon the Cyrenian: 1. The Lord Jesus with the cross of the sinner; 2. the sinner with the cross of the Lord Jesus.—The daughters of Jerusalem.—Besser:—And He bore His cross. The two thieves also bore their crosses, for such was the manner; but He has borne a heavier one than they, outwardly and inwardly.—W. Hofacker:—The solemn death-journey of Christ to Calvary: 1. As a mirror of wholesome doctrines; 2. as a mine of peaceful consolation; 3. as a ground of obligation to willing following; 4. as a warning picture against guilt and its account.—Hagenbach:—What temper of mind the celebration of the death of Jesus should awaken in us.

Luk_23:29.—Rec.: ἐèÞëáóáí . apparently an interpretamentum of the original ἔèñåøáí , which Lachmann and Tischendorf, [Meyer, Tregelles, Alford] read, on the ground of B., [Cod. Sin.,] C.1 and 2, D., L., [C.2, D. having ἐîÝèñ .] 4 Cursives, [Versions. It is almost needless to say that ἐèÞë . might very easily be substituted for ἔèñåø ., but ἔèñåø . we may be sure was never substituted for ἐèÞëáóáí .—C. C. S.]