Lange Commentary - Luke 24:1 - 24:12

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Lange Commentary - Luke 24:1 - 24:12


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SECOND SECTION

THE PERFECT TRIUMPH

Luk_24:1-48

A. Over the Might of Sin and Death. Luk_24:1-12

1Now [But] upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared [end verse with “prepared,”], and certain others with them. 2And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre. 3And they entered in, and [having entered in they] found not the bodyof the Lord Jesus. 4And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout,behold, two men stood by them in shining [glittering] garments: 5And as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye theliving among the dead? 6He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake untoyou when he was yet in Galilee, 7Saying, The Son of man must be delivered into thehands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again. 8And they remembered9[or, called to mind] his words, And returned from the sepulchre, and told [reported]10all these things unto the eleven, and to all the rest. It was Mary Magdalene, and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and other women that were with them,which told these things unto the apostles. 11And their words seemed to them as idletales, and they believed them not. 12Then arose Peter, and ran unto the sepulchre; and stooping down, he beheld the linen clothes laid by themselves, and departed, wondering in himself at that which was come to pass.

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

General Remarks.—In the history of the Resurrection and Ascension also, Luke preserves the same character which we have already more than once remarked in him. In that which he communicates in common with the two other Synoptics, he is less detailed and exact than they, so that he must rather be complemented from them, than they, on the contrary, from him. But, on the other hand, he furnishes us new contributions to the knowledge of the Risen and Glorified Lord, the contents and tendency of which are in the most beautiful agreement with the broad humanistic character of his gospel, as will appear from the expositions of the individual accounts. The appearance on the evening of the first resurrection day he relates, Luk_24:36 seq., much more at length than John, and that our historical faith in a visible Ascension rests almost exclusively on his testimony, as well at the end of the gospel as at the beginning of the Acts, scarcely needs mention. Respecting the history of the Resurrection and its Enantiophanies in general, comp. Lange on Matt., Luke 28. After that which is there so admirably remarked, we are at liberty to occupy ourselves exclusively with the account of Luke. “In resurrectione et vita, quam ostendit quadraginta diebus, reficimur el delectabilibus pascimur argumentis.” Bernard of Clairvaux.

Luk_24:1. Very early in the morning, ὅñèñïõ âáèÝïò , or, according to the reading of A., C., D., [Cod. Sin.] with an unusual ancient genitive âáèÝùò , see Tischendorf, ad loc. The account is immediately connected with Luk_23:56, and the women of whom Luke here makes mention can be no others than those of whom he has said, 24:55, that they had come with Jesus from Galilee. Altogether arbitrary, therefore, is Bengel’s remark: aliœ, quœ non venerante Galilœa. Since Luke, Luk_24:10, mentions three of these women by name, and then adds, áἱ ëïéðáὶ óὺí áὐôáῖò ,, the company, according to his account, consisted at least of five. Mary Magdalene all the Evangelists mention. Matthew and Mark speak of the other Mary, the mother of James. Mark mentions as third only the name of Salome, while Luke, in her stead, places Joanna as third. It may be that this difference may be explained from their having gone in two divisions to the grave (Lange); although it is, on the other hand, a question whether a going out in company at so early a morning hour is not psychologically more probable. It is difficult to establish anything certain here, but at all events, unreasonable, where the account of the one Evangelist complements very well that of the other, but does not exclude it, to consider difference and opposition, without further inquiry, as words of like signification.

Luk_24:2. The stone rolled away, ôὸí ëßè .—By whom it had been rolled away appears from Matthew; with what unnecessary propositions and anxieties the women on the way to the grave had occupied themselves is related to us by Mark. After Mary Magdalene had viewed the stone that was rolled away, she hurries back to the city to bring this intelligence to Peter and John (Joh_20:2 seq.); this Luke is silent about, but, on the other hand, he describes to us the terror and joy of the other women in a vivid manner.

Luk_24:4. Two men.—“The angels are designated according to that form of manifestation which they had in the view of the women.” Meyer. As respects the well-known controversy as to the number of the angels, we are satisfied, instead of occupying ourselves with all the harmonistic schemes that have been in earlier or modern times thought out, to remind the reader rather of the well-known word of Lessing in his Duplik, where he, with a liberality strange to most of the modern critics, wrote: “Cold discrepancy-mousers, do ye not then see that the Evangelists do not count the angels? The whole grave, the whole region round about the grave, was invisibly swarming with angels. There were not only two angels, like a pair of grenadiers who are left behind in front of the quarters of the departed general; there were millions of them; they appeared not always one and the same, not always the same two; sometimes this one appeared, sometimes that; sometimes on this place, sometimes on that; sometimes alone, sometimes in company; sometimes they said this, sometimes they said that.”

Luk_24:5. Why seek ye.—In the redaction of the angels’ discourse in Luke, it is especially the groundlessness of the seeking of Him in the mansions of the dead who already is actually living, which especially comes into the foreground. The difference in the account of the angels’ address is an internal argument for its truth, since the women, in the agitation of the moment, could not possibly have stated correctly, and with diplomatic exactness, the intelligence heard, Enough that all the Evangelists concur in the main matter. “Thus is the fact of the first announcement of the resurrection of Christ represented to us, not in the form of its abstractly objective course, but taken together with its living working in the living image of the first Easter harmonies which it called forth. But these harmonies now do not present themselves in the measured mood of a unisonous choral, but in the form of a four-voiced very agitated fugue.” Lange.

Luk_24:6. When He was yet in Galilee.—The reminder of that which the Lord had uttered particularly in Galilee takes in Luke the place of the direction to go into Galilee, as the place where the Risen One should be seen again, as he, moreover, communicates afterwards no Galilean appearance whatever. The prophecies of the Passion, which the women had forgotten, were known to the angels. Why it is psychologically impossible that the women should now first remember again the predictions of our Lord’s resurrection if He had really so definitely uttered them (Meyer), we do not comprehend.

Luk_24:9. Told all these things.—Obediently to the express command of the angel, which Matthew and Mark state. The mood in which they return from the grave is also, in particular, not stated to us more particularly by Luke; on the other hand, we owe to him the account that they proclaimed the joyful message in a yet wider circle than merely to the Twelve, as we soon after shall learn, Luk_24:22-24, yet more particularly from the journeyers to Emmaus. Respecting the here-named women themselves, see on Luk_8:2-3.

Luk_24:11. As idle tales, ὡóåὶ ëῆñïò , nonsense and superstitious gossip, crazy talk. Dutch: ydel geklap. That they also brought the intelligence with the same result to the ἀäåëöïῖò of the Lord (Act_1:14) is undoubtedly possible (De Wette), but by no means proved. The individual experience of the Magdalene, who is connected in Luk_24:10 also with the other women, and, according to Joh_20:18, gives her individual account, is, for brevity’s sake, passed over by Luke. It appears, however, from his condensed account, that she too found no better reception than the other messengers of the Resurrection.

Luk_24:12. Then arose Peter.—Comp. Joh_20:2-10. John is here unmentioned, but from Luk_24:24 it appears, at all events, that several of the disciples on this morning had gone to the grave. Had Luke, as Baur supposes, wished to place in the background the appearance vouchsafed to Peter by the narrative of the appearance which the journeyers to Emmaus experienced, then he might just as well have left this whole narrative of the apostles’ visit to the grave entirely unmentioned. As to the rest, in view of the brevity of Luke’s account, it cannot be a matter of surprise that he speaks of ìüíá , but does not mention the óïõäÜñéïí (Joh_20:7).

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. See Lange on the parallels in Matthew and Mark.

2. “The re-awakening of the dead Christ has, humanly apprehended, something so sublimely touching and beautiful, that if it were a fable, as it is not, the truth of history would be wished for it.” Herder. To have comprehended the great miraculous fact on its purely human side especially, and to have described it, and thus to have brought it yet nearer to us on this side than was done by Matthew and Mark, this belongs to the incontrovertible merits of Luke.

3. The announcement of the Resurrection by angels, like that of the Nativity, was in the highest degree worthy of God, and the receptivity of the women for the objectively present angelophany was conditioned by their subjective frame of mind. No inventor would have contented himself with one or two heavenly messengers, when in the Christmas night a whole throng of the heavenly host had come down to earth. A Resurrection without such extraordinary circumstances would have been a spring without flowers, a sun without rays, a triumph without triumphal crown.

4. A remarkable agreement exists between the awakening of the first and of the second life of our Lord upon earth. In both beginnings we see doubters and anxious ones quieted by a heavenly messenger. In both the attendant circumstances are related at length, but over the commencing point itself of the life and of the Resurrection of our Lord there remains a mysterious veil. He is awakened by the power of the Most High, as He by the same power had been conceived (Luk_1:35; Rom_6:4). By His Resurrection He becomes manifest as God’s Son (Rom_1:4), as He had been named even before His birth (Luk_1:32).

5. The Resurrection of our Lord is, first, the Restoration of the life which appeared to be quite ended, while the broken bond between soul and body is again knit together; secondly, a Continuance of the previous life, wherewith the consciousness of its identity again awakes (Luk_24:39), the memory returns, and the objective fact acquires also subjective truth for the Risen One Himself; finally, the Glorification of the former existence, whose burdens now all fall away, so that the Risen One shows Himself entirely different from before, without being on that account another.

6. The Scripture testifies that Christ rose with a truly human body, from an actual sleep of death, in the literal sense of the word, out of the grave. Condemned, therefore, is the Docetic representation, by which either the reality or the identity of His body is doubted, or the manner of His resurrection so represented that it becomes entirely impossible to conceive a true corporeality (see, for instance, the essay of F. Kuhn: Wie ging Jesus durch des Grabes Thür? Bonn, 1838). But not less is the coarser or more refined rationalistic interpretation, according to which the revivification of the Lord becomes only the awakening out of a seeming death, against the Scripture and the Christian consciousness. How would it be possible that the double expression of the self-consciousness of the Lord (Rev_1:18), “I was dead, and behold I am alive again,” should contain in its second part objective, in the first only subjective, truth? Finally, we reject the one-sided symbolical interpretation, according to which the Resurrection history is regarded only as an unessential involucrum of religious ideas, not as a fact in itself (Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Strauss).

7. The possibility of the Resurrection of the Lord from the dead is a priori controverted by those who, in Pantheistic or Rationalistic wise, ignore every essential distinction between spirit and matter. Over against this we have simply to bring to mind that the justice of the fundamental anthropological views of unbelief is yet in no wise proved. To explain the possibility of the Resurrection so perfectly that one clearly sees that it, according to natural laws, not only can take place, but also must take place, is a preposterous requirement, since the fact precisely by such an explanation would lose the character of a miracle, and sink out of the class of the Miracula down into that of the Mirabilia. Enough that the possibility is grounded in the personality of the Lord, for whom death, not less than sin, as we have already previously reminded the reader, may be called something entirely and utterly preternatural. It is a folly to dispute about this possibility with such as deny the miraculous deeds of the earlier period of His history. Only when these latter are proved or allowed can we go farther, and find it also assumable and rational that He, although bodily in the grave, could not see corruption. Whether we have to conceive His Resurrection as the fruit of a quiet but regularly proceeding development in the grave, very much as in the dead pupa the arising life of the butterfly is, as in a closed laboratory, developed, or whether we have rather to assume a magnificent transition, in consequence of which the hitherto entirely senseless corpse in an instant was, as it were, streamed through with Divine life—this is a question to the decisive answer of which all fixed historical data are wanting to us. Enough that we have to conceive of the Lord’s Resurrection as being both the proper work of the Son (Joh_10:18), and as also a miraculous act of the Father (Act_2:24). Whoever takes our Lord for that which He, according to His own word and according to that of His apostles, is, accounts the raising again of the God-man, wonderful as it is, as being in the highest sense of the word perfectly natural, since the presupposition becomes Christologically unreasonable that He should have remained in death. As to the conception of the miracle itself, there deserve here to be compared the weighty remarks of Schenkel, in Gezler’s Protestant. Monatsblatt, 1833, and by Rothe in his Abhandlung zur Dogmatik in the Theol. Stud. u.Krit., 1858, i.

8. For the Lord Himself the hour of the Resurrection was, without doubt, an hour of blessed joy and glorious triumph, and then also an hour of hopeful preparation for the different revelations which He on the very first day bestowed on different friends in different places. We stand here at the entrance of one of the most remarkable transition periods of His outer and inner life, of a character almost like the transitions in His twelfth or thirteenth year. From henceforth He enters into an entirely different relation to His foes and to His friends, to the world of spirits, to the kingdom of darkness, to death and the grave, yea, in a certain measure, even to the Father. Hitherto we have learned to know Him as the Son who must yet become perfect and learn obedience by that which He suffered (Heb_2:10; Heb_5:8); now we find Him entirely perfected and purified, as it were, at the foot of His throne. An hour like this He had on earth never yet seen, and not less than at the Baptism (Luk_3:21), may we suppose Him now also to have consecrated the new life in prayer to the Father. Nay, as His whole first life may be named a preparation for His suffering and death, so now did His second life become a preparation for the hour of ascension. Perverted as it is essentially to identify Resurrection and Ascension (Kinkel, Weisse), as little may we forget that the two are most intimately united. With every day which removed our Lord farther from the empty grave He drew nearer and nearer to His waiting crown, and the blessed celebration of His victory coalesced with the still preparation for His coronation in an admirable unity, so that He, even on the first day, might speak of an entry into His glory, Luk_24:26. Yet scarcely do we venture to enter more deeply into this sanctuary. If we cannot even express what a glory and blessing is reflected in the Lord’s Resurrection, what must then the experience have been? In the appearances of the Risen One has His glory become most clearly visible for the finite eye, and to them we have, therefore, above all things, to give heed if we will learn to know Christ and the power of His Resurrection, Php_3:10. The fulness of detail with which Luke communicates to us the fourth appearance compensates in rich measure his silence respecting the first and the second, while the third, Luk_24:34, is only intimated by him. Respecting the number and sequence of these appearances, see Lange, Matthew, p. 540 seq.

9. In view of the supreme moment of this miraculous fact, we cannot be at all surprised that it has been in manifold ways glorified by Christian art. Painting owes to it masterpieces of Raphael, Tintoretto, Paul Veronese, Caracci, Rubens, and others. In the most of these pictures Christ appears surrounded with heavenly glory, as He breaks the bands of death and swings the banner of victory, while the watchers of the grave are trembling and fleeing. Yet, in view of the difficulties of representing the moment of the Resurrection itself, perhaps the efforts to paint what immediately preceded or followed it deserve the higher esteem. The journey of the holy women to the grave, and the second appearance to Mary Magdalene, both by Ary Scheffer, belong to his most admirable masterpieces. Hymnology has been enriched by the Resurrection with the exquisite lays of a Gregory the Great, Ambrose, Gellert, Klopstock, Claudius, Manzoni, and others, [and our own Hastings, whose “How calm and beautiful the morn,” is scarcely equalled.—C. C. S.] The scene of the Easter bells in Faust has bestowed on Goethe a part of his own earthly immortality.

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

General Points of view:—The Resurrection of the Lord—I. In relation to the history of the world. The vanquishing of the might of sin and death, which had revealed itself in all manner of forms, as well among Israelites as among the heathen nations; the implanting of a new principle of life in man and in mankind. The empty grave the boundary between the old and the new economy, 2Co_5:17. The triumph of the might of light over the might of darkness in the course of the history of the world, typically expressed in the triumph of the second Adam over all the powers of darkness and death. II. In relation to Israel. The sublimest expectations of the Old Testament are fulfilled, Psa_16:9, et alibi, and what there was typified in Joseph, David, Israel, that, namely, the way of humiliation led to the highest glory, was realized in unexampled measure. The triumph of the King of Israel, the beginning of the temporary overthrow, rejection, hardening of Israel, and yet also the pledge of its final re-establishment. The empty grave the dumb and yet eloquent accuser of the Messiah’s murderers. III. In relation to the Apostles and first friends of our Lord. His Resurrection the foundation of their renewal to a life of faith, hope, and love, after that all with His death had appeared lost. The Easter morning the commencement of a new period for every one among them and for their whole body. The certainty that their Master lives, bestows on their spirit new life, on their heart new joy, on their feet new strength, on their future, new hope. Even unbelief has seen itself forced to the acknowledgment that a transformation such as becomes manifest in the circle of the disciples between Good Friday and Whitsunday, can only be explained by their having believed in the great fact which the Easter morning proclaims. But how this subjective certainty could have arisen, unless from the objectively present fact, no apostle of unbelief has been able to explain to us in a way which, psychologically, and, much less, historically, has even any degree of probability. IV. In relation to Jesus Himself. The Resurrection is: a. the satisfactory solution of the otherwise entirely inexplicable events of His life, whereby the otherwise disturbed harmony of His life is again restored; b. the crown of His miraculous deeds, especially of His raisings from the dead; c. the seal of His declarations in respect to His own person and to His condition after His death; d. the decisive step on the way to His glorification, after the status exinanitionis now lay forever behind Him. V. In relation to the foundation of the Kingdom of God in general, the Lord’s Resurrection is the indispensably necessary condition, without which the coming forward of the apostles, the conversion of thousands of Jews, and the union of many thousand heathen with them in one spiritual body, must have remained something entirely inexplicable. VI. Nay, for the whole Doctrine of Salvation, Jesus’ Resurrection is the conditio sine qua non of the personal redemption, renovation, and resurrection of all His people. The certainty of reconciliation is not perfectly assured so long as it has not become manifest that the sacrifice of the Son has been accepted by the Father; on this account, also, Paul lays yet more weight upon the Lord’s Resurrection than even upon His death (Rom_5:10; Rom_8:34). a. The type, b. the ground, c. the power, of our Lord, we find offered only in faith on the Christ who has personally arisen from the dead, and it is by this great fact of the Easter morning that, a. the possibility, b. the certainty, c. the glory of our own resurrection, so far as we believe on Him, is triumphantly confirmed. All this offers to the Christian homilete on the highest feast of the church a so infinite wealth of points of view and considerations, that we can scarcely conceive how any one who has experienced in himself, at least incipiently, the truth of the apostle’s word, Gal_2:20, could ever be able on this feast to complain that he had entirely preached himself out.

On the Section.—The first Easter morning; the realm of nature a symbol of the realm of grace, a. the gloomy night, b. the much-promising dawn, c. the breaking day.—The first pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre: a. how mournful they go thither, b. how joyful they return.—The experience of the first female friends of our Lord on the day of His Resurrection a proof of the truth of the declaration, Psa_30:5. Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.—The stone rolled away.—How on Easter morning it began to be bright: 1. In the garden; 2. in the human hearts; 3. over the cross; 4. for the world; 5. in the realm of the dead.—The first Easter gospel: 1. The hearers; 2. the preacher; 3. the message; 4. the fruit of the sermon.—How unbelief mourns precisely for that which was to give it the first ground of hope.—The empty grave viewed not joyfully, but doubtfully.—The Easter morn a festal day for the angels of heaven also.—The fruitless seeking of the living among the dead: 1. Of the living Christ in the grave; 2. of the living Christian in the dust of the earth.—“He is not here,” for the first and only time the absence of Christ a source of inexpressible joy.—The coincidence and the diversity between the first Christmas night announcement and the first Easter morning announcement.—Jesus’ Resurrection the confirmation of His earlier and the pledge for the fulfilment of His later words.—Of how many words of the Master does the Christian become mindful at the view of the empty grave!—No command was on the Resurrection morning so often given and carried out, as that to proclaim the joyful message to others also.—The distinction between the unbelief of the first apostles and friends of Jesus in His Resurrection, and that of modern criticism.—Only the Risen Saviour Himself was able to put an end to the doubt and sorrow of His first friends.—They doubted, that we might not need to doubt.—The empty grave viewed by a fallen apostle; he: 1. Longingly entered it; 2. carefully examined it: 3. found it empty; 4. left it thoughtful.—The lovely harmony of the Easter evening arising from the manifold sharp dissonances of the Easter morning.

Starke:—Quesnel:—What one will do for love to Christ he must accomplish very soon and carefully.—Nova Bibl. Tub.:—No stone is so great but the mighty Providence of God can lift it.—Believers often find Jesus not as they seek Him.—Canstein:—The angels have ten times served the Son of God from His manifestation in the flesh to His Ascension.—God has many means and ways to comfort the terrified; if He does it not through the holy angels, yet it comes to pass through the angels of the church.—Bibl. Wirt.:—With God there is no respect of persons; to Him a woman is as good as a man, &c., Gal_3:28.—The holy angels abide by the word of Christ.—Canstein:—To forget Christ’s word brings trouble.—Sometimes weak women must be evangelists to men, that ought to be so strong.—Nova Bibl. Tub.:—The secret of the Resurrection passes all men’s reason and thoughts.—Jesus, the Supreme Good, is worthy that we leave not off till we find Him.—Osiander:—Faith and unbelief wrestle sometimes in a man.

Arndt:—The first rays of the glory of Christ in the dawn of the Easter morning: 1. The stone rolled away; 2. the glittering angels; 3. the hastening women.—Krummacher:—In the miracle of the Resurrection we behold: a. the glory of the Father, b. the glory of the Son, c. the glory of the elect.—Nitzsch:—The happiness of the disciples of Jesus to be revivified by the resurrection of their Head.—Flatt:—The morning of the Resurrection of Jesus: 1. How it diffuses the brightest morning twilight over the earth, and in its light the morning of eternity beams kindly upon us.—W. Hofacker:—The open grave of the Risen One: 1. An arch of His triumph; 2. a bow of peace denoting heavenly favor and grace; 3. a door of life for the resurrection of our spirit and our body.—Rieger:—How God wills not that we should seek and anoint a dead Jesus in the grave.—Ahlfeld:—The celebration of the first Easter.—Souchon:—The Easter preaching of the angel.—Stier:—The Resurrection of Christ the true comfort of all believers: 1. In tribulation; 2. in sin; 3. in death.—Rautenberg:—Easter among the graves: 1. The stone of the curse is rolled away therefrom; 2. there dwell angels therein; 3. the dead are gone out therefrom.—The great Easter consolation: 1. For sorrowing love; 2. for the troubled conscience.—Schmid:—Easter the most glorious feast: 1. Of the most glorious joy; 2. of the most glorious victory; 3. of the most glorious faith; 4. of the most glorious hope.—Jaspis:—How we may celebrate Easter in the right spirit.

Footnotes:

Luk_24:1.—The clause which follows in the Recepta, êáὶ ôéíåò óὺí áὐôáῖò , is probably, as Kuinoel already conjectured, an interpolation from Luk_24:10. The words are wanting in B., C., [Cod. Sin.,] L., 33, Vulgate, Itala, and others, and are rejected by Lachmann, Tisohendorf, [Meyer, Tregelles, Alford.]

Luk_24:3.—The words of the Recepta, ôïῦ êõñßïõ ̓ Éçóïῦ , are omitted in D. but appear in all the other uncials, and though rejected by Tisohendorf and marked as doubtful by Van Oosterzee, are retained by Lachmann, Meyer, Alford. Tregelles omits ôïῦ êõñßïõ , following one Cursive, and some Versions. The great weight of authority, therefore, is for the words in question. A concordance of the Acts will show that “The Lord Jesus” is a favorite appellation with Lake, as Alford remarks. But the concurrence of both appellations would, as he also remarks, be quite sure to provoke the erasure sometimes of one and sometimes of the other, thus leading to a doubt of the genuineness and the consequent omission of both.—C. C. S.

Luk_24:9.—Revised Version of the American Bible Union.—C. C. S.

Luk_24:12.—Although Luk_24:12 is wanting in Cod. D. and moreover in the Syriac, Itala, Jerome, &c., yet it appears to be original and genuine, and only to have been omitted, because it appeared to conflict with Luk_24:24. An interpolator would, in the interest of harmony with Joh_20:1-10, not have neglected to mention also the Ü ́ ëëïò ìáèçôÞò . The very incompleteness and fragmentariness of the report is an argument for its genuineness.

[The author, of course, by the word “purified” has anything in mind but a purification of the Sinless One from sin. But He is now purified even from the sinless infirmities which appertain to humanity as yet unglorified.—C. C. S.]