Luke 22:17

(17) Take this, and divide it among yourselves.—The cup was probably the first of the three cups of wine, or wine mingled with water, which Jewish custom had added to the ritual of the Passover. As being a distinct act from that of Luke 22:20, it is natural to infer that it had a distinct symbolic meaning. Looking to the fact that wine is partly the symbol, partly the antithesis, of spiritual energy in its highest form (comp. Zechariah 9:17; Acts 2:13; Ephesians 5:18), and to the re-appearance of the same somewhat exceptional word for “divide,” in the tongues “parted, or divided, or distributed” (“cloven” is a mistranslation), in Acts 2:3, we may see in this cup the symbol of the bestowal of the spiritual powers which each of the disciples was to receive, according to the gift of the self-same Spirit, who “divideth to every man severally as He will” (the Greek word in 1 Corinthians 12:11 is, however, different, though expressing the same thought), just as the second was the pledge of a yet closer fellowship with His own divine life.