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The Transfiguration of Christ.
v. 1. And after six days, Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John, his brother, and bringeth them up into an high mountain apart,
v. 2. and was transfigured before them; and His face did shine as the sun, and His raiment was white as the light.
Memorable, important days were those which Matthew fixes so carefully in the order of events, six days after the first specific announcement of Christ's passion; a turning-point in the ministry of Jesus. That Luke mentions eight days, chapter 9:28, offers no difficulty. "That Luke says Jesus had taken those three apostles with Him after about eight days, but Matthew and Mark, that it happened after six days, that is not opposed to each other. For Matthew and Mark reckon the days that lie between, but Luke takes the last day as well, upon which Christ preached before these six days, as also the first day after the six days, on which the transfiguration took place, in addition. " For Matthew it was the exact recollection of a strictly historical incident. While all the disciples undoubtedly went with Christ to the foot of the mountain,—which various commentators have guessed to be either Mount Hermon, in the Anti-Lebanon range, just north of the boundary of Palestine, or Mount Panius, near Caesarea Philippi, or Mount Tabor, near Nazareth,—only the three men that were His favored disciples, Peter, James, and John, were taken along to the top of the mountain. They were probably those upon whose understanding and sympathy He could rely. They were to become the witnesses of His glory before the whole world, 2Pe_1:16-18.
A most peculiar, miraculous phenomenon: While Jesus was praying, He was transfigured, transformed, before them, His physical body being transfused and glorified with spirituality, a foretaste of His future glorification. Not only did His face shine like the sun itself, with a luster not of this earth, but His raiment became as white-glistening as snow, as the essence of light itself, beyond the power of any fuller on earth to give them such pure spotlessness. All this was visible to them as they gazed in stupefied wonder. His divine glory, which He always bore in Himself, but which was usually hidden or manifested only occasionally in word and miracle, here transfused and shone through His outward form and person: an unsurpassed revelation of His glory before their eyes. It was an incontestable proof of the fact that He was truly the Son of God; it was visible evidence of His entering through suffering and death into His glory. "Therefore this appearance of Christ intends to show in deed and truth what Peter above, chapter 16:16, has confessed: Jesus, the man born of the Virgin Mary, is Christ, the Son of the living God (Christ, however, signifies a king and priest, that is, a Lord over all things; and also a Mediator between God and men). Because He was destined to be preached through the whole world as such, for that reason He is shown to the three apostles as such, who should testify to what they had seen and heard."