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Mat_26:29. The certainty and nearness of His death, which had just been expressed in the symbolism of the wine, impel Jesus to add a sorrowful but yet comforting assurance (introducing it with the continuative autem).
ὅτι οὐ μὴ πίω ] that I will certainly not drink. According to the synoptic conception of the meal as being the one in connection with the Passover, this presupposes that the cup mentioned at Mat_26:27 f. was the last one of the meal (the fourth), and not the one before the last. For it may be held as certain that, at this feast above all, and considering His present frame of mind, He would take care not to give offence by omitting the fourth Passover-cup; and what reason, it may be asked, would He have had for doing so? The cup in question was the concluding one, during the drinking of which the second portion of the Hallel was sung (Mat_26:30).
ἀπάρτι ] from this present occasion, on which I have just drunk of it. To suppose that Jesus Himself did not also partake of the cup (Olshausen, de Wette, Rückert, Weiss) is a gratuitous assumption, incompatible with the ordinary Passover usage. We are to understand the drinking on the part of Jesus as having taken place after the εὐχαριστήσας , Mat_26:27, before He handed the cup to the disciples, and announced to them the symbolical significance that was to be attached to it. Comp. Chrysostom. Matthew does not mention this circumstance, because he did not regard it as forming part of the symbolism here in view. Euthymius Zigabenus correctly observes: εἰ δὲ τοῦ ποτηρίου μετέσχε , μετέλαβεν ἄρα καὶ τοῦ ἄρτου . Comp. on Mat_26:26.
ἐκ τούτου τοῦ γεννήμ . τ . ἀμπ .] τούτου is emphatic, and points to the Passover-wine. Mark and Luke are less precise, not having τούτου . From this it must not be assumed that Jesus never drank any wine after His resurrection. Act_10:41; Ignat. Smyrn. 3. For γέννημα as used by later Greek writers (likewise the LXX.) in the sense of καρπός , see Lobeck, ad Phryn. p. 286. For the reasons for rejecting the reading γενήματος (Lachmann, Tischendorf), notwithstanding the far greater number of testimonies in its favour, see Fritzsche on Mark, p. 619 f. The use of this term instead of οἶνος has something solemn about it, containing, as it does, an allusion to the form of thanksgiving for the Passover wine: “benedictus sit, qui creavit fructum vitis.” Comp. Lightfoot on Mat_26:27.
καινόν ] novum, different in respect of quality; “novitatem dicit plane singularem,” Bengel; not recens, νέον . This conception of the new Passover wine, which is to be the product of the coming aeon and of the glorified κτίσις , is connected with the idea of the renewal of the world in view of the Messianic kingdom. Luk_22:16, comp. Mat_26:30. To understand the new celebration of the Passover in the perfected kingdom only in a figurative sense, corresponding somewhat to the feasts of the patriarchs, alluded to at Mat_8:11 (“vos aliquando mecum in coelo summa laetitia et felicitate perfruemini,” Kuinoel, Neander), would, in presence of such a characteristic allusion to the Passover, be as arbitrary on the one hand as the referring of the expression (Chrysostom, Euthymius Zigabenus, Münster, Clarius) to the period subsequent to the resurrection of Jesus (Act_10:41) would be erroneous on the other, and that on account of the τούτου and the words ἐν τῇ βασιλ . τ . π . μ ., which can only be intended to designate the kingdom of Messiah. It is wrong to take καινόν , as Kuinoel and Fritzsche have done, in the sense of iterum, for it is a characteristic predicate of the wine that it is here in question; besides, had it been otherwise, we should have had anew: ἐκ καινῆς , Thuc. iii. 92. 5, or the ordinary πάλιν of the New Testament.