Matthew 27:49

49. Let be This was not spoken to the soldier who was relieving his thirst with the sponge. As appears by Mark, the soldier himself joined in the expression. It means, “Wait and let us see if Elias will come to his rescue.” These words plainly show that there was no jest. There was an actual suspense, awakened by the awful darkness, as to whether the divine interposition would not take place.

After this verse, I am inclined to place the prayer of the penitent malefactor, in Luke 23:42-43. Matthew (Matthew 27:44) clearly affirms that the thieves reviled him. Now it might be perfectly reasonable to say, as some do, that Matthew uses the plural for the singular, if the other thief silently assented, or did not dissent from the reproaches. But it is too much to concede that Matthew includes both in the plural as reviling, at the very moment when one never did revile, but reproved the reviler and prayed to Jesus. The only way of fair reconciliation is to hold Matthew and Luke as narrating different moments of the action of the malefactors. To suppose that one of them relented after the approach of supernatural darkness, brings the fact into correspondence with other proofs of a subsidence of hostile feeling at that point.