Matthew 17:1

§ 75. THE TRANSFIGURATION, Matthew 17:1-12 .

1. After six days Luke says “about eight days;” that is, after the conversation mentioned in the last chapter. Luke counts and Matthew omits the first and last days. Taketh… bringeth them. He selects and leads them. Peter, James, and John The rock and the two sons of thunder. They were the select three of several occasions. Their traits of character rendered them capable of special revelations and manifestations. (Mark 5:37; Matthew 26:27; Luke 8:51.) Into a high mountain It was formerly supposed to be Tabor, in Galilee; but as our Lord on coming down immediately joins the other disciples, and seems not to have left the region of Cesarea Philippi for Galilee until after the curing of the demoniac, (Mark 9:30,) so distant a mountain as Tabor can hardly have been the scene. Hermon, called Great Hermon, northeast of Gennesaret, is now considered by scholars as the more probable locality.

“It is impossible to look up from the plain to the towering peaks of Hermon, almost the only mountain which deserves the name in Palestine, and not be struck with its appropriateness to the scene. That magnificent height, mingling with all the views of Northern Palestine, from Shechem upwards, though often alluded to as the northern barrier of the Holy Land, is connected with no historical event in the Old or New Testament. Yet this fact of its rising high above all the other hills of Palestine, and of its setting the last limit to the wanderings of Him who was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, concurs with the supposition which the words of the Scripture narrative inevitably force upon us. High up on its southern slopes there must be many a point where the disciples could be taken ‘apart by themselves.’ Even the transient comparison of the celestial splendour with the snow, where alone it could be seen in Palestine, should not, perhaps, be wholly overlooked.” Stanley.