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Mat_27:45 Ἀπὸ δὲ ἕκτης ὥρας ] counting from the third (nine o’clock in the morning), the hour at which He had been nailed to the cross, Mar_15:25. Respecting the difficulty of reconciling the statements of Matthew and Mark as to the hour in question with what is mentioned by John at Mat_19:14, and the preference that must necessarily be given to the latter, see on John, Joh_19:14.
σκότος ] An ordinary eclipse of the sun was not possible during full moon (Origen); for which reason the eclipse of the 202d Olympiad, recorded by Phlegon in Syncellus, Chronogr. I. p. 614, ed. Bonn, and already referred to by Eusebius, is equally out of the question (Wieseler, chronol. Synops. p. 387 f.). But as little must we suppose that the reference is to that darkness in the air which precedes an ordinary earthquake (Paulus, Kuinoel, de Wette, Schleiermacher, L. J. p. 448, Weisse), for it is not an earthquake in the ordinary sense that is described in Mat_27:51 ff.; in fact, Mark and Luke, though recording the darkness and the rending of the veil, say nothing about the earthquake. The darkness upon this occasion was of an unusual, a supernatural character, being as it were the voice of God making itself heard through nature, the gloom over which made it appear as though the whole earth were bewailing the ignominious death which the Son of God was dying. The prodigies, to all appearance similar, that are alleged to have accompanied the death of certain heroes of antiquity (see Wetstein), and those solar obscurations alluded to in Rabbinical literature, were different in kind from that now before us (ordinary eclipses of the sun, such as that which took place after the death of Caesar, Serv. ad. Virg. G. I. 466), and, even apart from this, would not justify us in relegating what is matter of history, John’s omission of it notwithstanding, to the region of myth (in opposition to Strauss, Keim, Scholten), especially when we consider that the death in this instance was not that of a mere human hero, that there were those still living who could corroborate the evangelic narrative, and that the darkness here in question was associated with the extremely peculiar σημεῖον of the rending of the veil of the temple.
ἐπὶ πᾶσαν τὴν γῆν ] Keeping in view the supernatural character of the event as well as the usage elsewhere with regard to the somewhat indefinite phraseology πᾶσα or ὅλη ἡ γῆ (Luk_21:35; Luk_23:44; Rom_4:17; Rom_10:18; Rev_13:3), it is clear that the only rendering in keeping with the tone of the narrative is: over the whole earth ( κοσμικὸν δὲ ἦν τὸ σκότος , οὐ μερικόν , Theophylact, comp. Chrysostom, Euthymius Zigabenus), not merely: over the whole land (Origen, Erasmus, Luther, Maldonatus, Kuinoel, Paulus, Olshausen, Ebrard, Lange, Steinmeyer) though at the same time we are not called upon to construe the words in accordance with the laws of physical geography; they are simply to be regarded as expressing the popular idea of the matter.