Matthew 9:15

15. Children of the bride-chamber These were the attendant young comrades of the bridegroom, who assisted in the festivities of the wedding. Bridegroom When the bridegroom should come to the house of the bride’s father the wedding would proceed, and the hilarity would begin.

See notes on Matthew 25:1-13. Christ is the glorious bridegroom who has come. He who was just now the physician for the sick, and so the source of health, is now the bridegroom for the anxious waiters, and so the source of joy. His disciples are the bridegroom’s friends. Theirs is not the part of the Old Testament tarriers for his coming; they belong to a gladder dispensation; they proclaim a Saviour come. Bridegroom shall be taken The Saviour shall disappear. Then shall they fast Sorrow then shall be for his absence and for our distance from him, which shall sober the joy even of this dispensation; but never a stern sadness which forgets that the Saviour has come, and that in spirit he is here evermore. The sentiment, then, stripped of its symbols, is this: My disciples refuse to fast, in order to show that they belong to the new and joyous dispensation; yet after my departure Christians shall ever feel the sorrow of a distance from me temper the joy of my having come.

Mr. Roberts remarks, in his illustrations, that when a man is gloomy and stern in the midst of surrounding joy, or upon some occasion demanding hilarity, his neighbour in the East would be apt to say: “What, do people weep in the house of marriage? Is it a funeral or a marriage you are going to celebrate?” Does a person go to cheer his friend, he says, on entering the house, “I am come this day to the house of marriage.”