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Mat_26:18. Εἰς τὴν πόλιν ] to Jerusalem. According to Mat_26:6 ff., they were still at Bethany.
πρὸς τὸν δεῖνα ] as we say when we either cannot or will not mention the name of the person intended: to so and so. See Wetstein and Hermann, ad Vig. p. 704. But it was not Jesus Himself who omitted to mention the name (“ut discipulus ex diuturna consuetudine notissimum,” Fritzsche), for, after the question of the disciples, Mat_26:17, He could not assume that it was quite well understood who it was that He referred to; but it has been omitted by the evangelist in his narrative (comp. even Augustine, de cons, ev. ii. 80), either because it had not been preserved as part of the tradition, or for some other reason, to us unknown.
ὁ διδάσκ .] the Teacher κατʼ ἐξοχήν . Doubtless the unknown person here referred to was also a believer. Comp. Mat_21:3.
ὁ καιρός μου ] i.e. the time of my death (Joh_13:1), not: for my observing the Passover (Kuinoel), which would render the words singularly meaningless; for this time was, in fact, the same for all There is nothing whatever to justify the very old hypothesis, invented with a view to reconcile the synoptic writers with John, that Jesus partook of His last Passover meal a day earlier than that on which it was wont to be eaten by the Jews. See on Joh_18:28. Further, this preliminary preparation implies a pious regard for Jesus on the part of the δεῖνα , who was thus singled out; this Passover observance, for which preparations are being made, was destined, in fact, to be a farewell feast! According to Ewald, ὁ καιρός μου denotes the time when the Messianic phenomena would appear in the heavens (comp. Mat_24:34), which, however, is at variance with the text, where the death of Jesus is the all-pervading thought (see Mat_26:2; Mat_26:4; Mat_26:11 f., 21). Comp. ἐλήλυθεν ἡ ὥρα , Joh_17:1.
ποιῶ ] is not the Attic future (Fritzsche, Bleek), but the present, representing what is future as now going on, and suited to the idea of a distinct friendly arrangement beforehand: at thy house I observe the Passover. Comp. Exo_12:48; Jos_5:10; Deu_15:1; Deuteronomy 3 Esdr. Mat_1:6. Similarly classical writers frequently use ποιεῖν in the sense of to observe a feast.
Matthew’s account presupposes nothing miraculous here, as Theophylact and Calvin would have us believe, but simply an arrangement, of which nothing further is known, which Jesus had come to with the person in question, and in consequence of which this latter not only understood what was meant by the ὁ καιρός μου , but was also keeping a room in reserve for Jesus in which to celebrate the Passover. It is probable that Jesus, during His stay in Jerusalem after the triumphal entry, had come to some understanding or other with him, so that all that now required to be done was to complete the preparations. It was reserved for the later tradition, embodied in Mark and Luke, to ascribe a miraculous character to these preparations, in which respect they seem to have shared the fate of the incident mentioned at Mat_21:2 f. This being the case, the claim of originality must be decided in favour of what is still the very simple narrative of Matthew (Strauss, Bleek, Keim), in preference to that of Mark and Luke (Schulz, Schleiermacher, Weisse, Ewald, Weiss). As represented, therefore, by Matthew (who, according to Ebrard and Holtzmann, seems to have regarded the circumstance about the man bearing a pitcher of water as only “an unnecessary detail,” and whose narrative here is, according to Ewald, “somewhat winnowed”), this incident is a natural one, though the same cannot be said of the account given by Mark and Luke (in opposition to Olshausen and Neander).
Who that unknown person above referred to might be, is a point which cannot be determined.