Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - Matthew 27:34 - 27:34
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Mat_27:34 The Jews were in the habit of giving the criminal a stupefying drink before nailing him to the cross. Sanhedr. vi. See Wetstein, ad Marc. xv. 23; Doughtaeus, Anal. II. p. 42. This drink consisted of wine (see the critical remarks) mixed with gall, according to Matthew; with myrrh, according to Mark. χολή admits of no other meaning than that of gall, and on no account must it be made to bear the sense of myrrh or wormwood[36] (Beza, Grotius, Paulus, Langen, Steinmeyer, Keim). The tradition about the gall, which unquestionably belongs to a later period, originated in the LXX. rendering of Psa_68:23; people wished to make out that there was maltreatment in the very drink that was offered.
ΓΕΥΣΆΜΕΝΟς ] According to Matthew, then, Jesus rejected the potion because the taste of gall made it undrinkable. A later view than that embodied in Mar_15:23, from which passage it would appear that Jesus does not even taste the drink, but declines it altogether, because He has no desire to be stupefied before death.
[36] No doubt the LXX. translate ìÇòÂðÈä , wormwood, by χολή (Pro_5:4; Lam_3:15); but in those passages they took it as meaning literal “gall,” just as in the case of Psa_69:22, which regulates the sense of our present passage, they also understood gall to be meant, although the word in the original is øÉàùÑ (poison). Comp. Jer_8:14; Deu_29:17. A usage so entirely foreign to the Greek tongue certainly cannot be justified on the ground of one or two passages, like these from the Septuagint. Had “bitter spiced wine” (Steinmeyer) been what Matthew intended, he would have had no more difficulty in expressing this than Mark himself. But the idea he wished to convey was that of wine along with gall, in fact mixed with it, and this idea he expresses as plain as words can speak it. Comp. Barnab. 7 : σταυρωθεὶς ἐποτίζετο ὂξει καὶ χκολῇ .