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Mat_9:15. Οἱ υἱοὶ (Mat_8:12) τοῦ νυμφῶνος ] (of the bride chamber, Joe_2:16; Tob_6:16; Heliod. vii. 8) are the παρανύμφιοι , the friends of the bridegroom, who amid singing and playing of instruments conducted the bride, accompanied by her companions, to the house of her parents-in-law and to the bride-chamber, and remained to take part in the wedding feast, which usually lasted seven days. Pollux, Onom. Mat_3:3; Hirt, de paranymph. ap. Hebr. 1748; on the Greek παρανυμφίοι , consult Hermann, Privatalterth. § 31, 18. Meaning of the figure: So long as my disciples have me with them, they are incapable of mourning (fasting being the expression of mourning): when once I am taken from them—and that time will inevitably come—then they will fast to express their sorrow. Christ, the bridegroom of His people until His coming, and then the marriage; see on Joh_3:29. It is to be observed that this is the first occasion in Matthew on which Jesus alludes to His death, which from the very first He knew to be the divinely-appointed and prophetically-announced climax of His work on earth (Joh_1:29; Joh_2:19; Joh_3:14), and did not come to know it only by degrees, through the opposition which he experienced; while Hase, Wittichen, Weizsäcker, Keim, postpone the certainty of His having to suffer death—the latter, till that day at Caesarea (chap. 16); Holsten even puts it off till immediately before the passion; see, on the other hand, Gess, op. cit., p. 253 ff.
The τότε , which has the tragic emphasis of a sorrowful future (Bremi, ad Lys. p. 248, Goth.), expresses only the particular time specified, and not all time following as well, and while probably not condemning fasting in the church, yet indicating it to be a matter in which one is to be regulated, not by legal prescriptions (Mat_9:16 f.), but by personal inclination and the spontaneous impulses of the mind. Comp. Mat_6:16 ff.