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Mat_28:17 Ἰδόντες , κ . τ . λ .] According to the account now before us, evidently the first occasion of meeting again since the resurrection, and the first impression produced by it—corresponding to the ὄψεσθε of Mat_28:7; Mat_28:10. See, besides, on Mat_28:10.
οἱ δὲ ἐδίστασαν ] It was previously said in a general way that the eleven fell prostrate before Him, though all did not do so: some doubted whether He, whom they saw before them, could really be Jesus. This particular is added by means of οἱ δέ , which, however, is not preceded by a corresponding οἱ μέν before προσεκύνησαν , because this latter applied to the majority, whereas the doubters, who did not prostrate themselves, were only the exception. Had Matthew’s words been: οἱ μὲν προσεκύνησαν , οἱ δὲ ἐδίστασαν , he would thus have represented the eleven as divided into two co-ordinate parts, into as nearly as possible two halves, and so have stated something different from what was intended. This is a case precisely similar to that of the οἱ δὲ ἐῤῥάπισαν of Mat_26:67, where, in like manner, the preceding ἐκολάφισαν αὐτόν (without οἱ μέν ) represents what was done by the majority. “Quibus in locis primum universa res ponitur, deinde partitio nascitur, quae ostendit, priora quoque verba non de universa causa jam accipi posse,” Klotz, ad Devar. p. 358. Comp. Xen. Hell. i. 2. 14 : ᾤχοντο ἐς Δεκέλειαν , οἱ δʼ ἐς Μέγαρα ; Cyrop. iv. 5. 46: ὁρᾶτε ἵππους , ὅσοι ἡμῖν πάρεισιν , οἱ δὲ προσάγονται , and the passages in Pflugk, ad Eur. Hec. 1160; Kühner, II. 2, p. 808. According to Fritzsche, a preceding οἱ μὲν οὐκ ἐδίστασαν should be understood. This, however, is purely arbitrary, for the ἐδίστασαν has its appropriate correlative already in the preceding προσεκύνησαν . Again, as matter of course, we must not think of predicating the προσεκύνησαν of the doubters as well, which would be psychologically absurd (only after his doubts were overcome, did Thomas exclaim: ὁ κυριός μου κ . ὁ θεός μου !). Fritzsche (comp. Theophylact, Grotius, and Markland in Eur. Suppl. p. 326) attempts to obviate this objection by understanding ἐδίστασαν in a pluperfect sense (they had doubted before they saw Jesus); an expedient, however, of the same arbitrary nature as before (comp. on Joh_18:24), and such as no reader of our passage (with προσεκύνησαν before him) would have suspected to be at all necessary. Others, in spite of the plain and explicit statements of Matthew, and in order to free the eleven from the imputation of doubt, have here turned to account the five hundred brethren, 1Co_15:6 (Calovius, Michaelis, Ebrard, Lange), or the seventy disciples (Kuinoel), and attributed the ἐδίστασαν to certain of these! Others, again, have resorted to conjecture; Beza, for example, thinks that for οἱ δέ we might read οὐδέ ; Bornemann, in the Stud. u. Krit. 1843, p. 126 (comp. Schleusner), suggests: οἱ δὲ διέστασαν (some fell prostrate, the others started back from each other with astonishment). The doubting itself on the part of the disciples (comp. Luk_24:31; Luk_24:37; Luk_24:41; Joh_20:19; Joh_20:26) is not to be explained by the supposition of an already glorified state of the body (following the Fathers, Olshausen, Glöckler, Krabbe, Kühn, wie ging Chr. durch d. Grabes Thür? 1838; comp. Kinkel’s unscriptural idea of a repeated ascension to heaven, in the Stud. u. Krit. 1841, p. 597 ff.), for after His resurrection Christ still retained His material bodily organism, as the evangelists are at some pains to remind us (Luk_24:39-43; Joh_20:20; Joh_20:27; Joh_21:5; comp. also Act_1:21 f., Mat_10:41). At the same time, it is not enough to appeal to the fact that “nothing that was subject to death any longer adhered to the living One” (Hase), but, in accordance with the evangelic accounts of the appearing and sudden vanishing of the risen Lord, and of the whole relation in which He stood to His disciples and His disciples to Him, we must assume some change in the bodily organism and outward aspect of Jesus, a mysterious transformation of His whole person, an intermediate phase of existence between the bodily nature as formerly existing and the glorified state into which He passed at the moment of the ascension,—a phase of existence, however, of which it is impossible for us to form any distinct conception, for this is a case where analogy and experience alike fail us. His body did not retain, as did those of Jairus’ daughter, the young man of Nain, and Lazarus, exactly the same essential nature as belonged to it before death, but still it was not as yet the σῶμα τῆς δόξης αὐτοῦ (Php_3:21), though it was certainly immortal, a fact which of itself would necessarily involve the very essential change which came over it; comp. also Bleek.