Mateo 27:32-56

TENTH SECTIONGOLGOTHA: THE CRUCIFIXION. (GOOD FRIDAY.)

Matthew 27:32-56

(Mark 15:21-41; Luke 23:26-56; John 19:17-30; Isaiah 53:0—Pericopes: Matthew 27:33-38; Matthew 27:39-44; Matthew 27:45-56)

32And as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name: him they compelled [impressed, ἠγγάρευσαν ]41 to bear his cross. 33And when they were come unto a place called Golgotha,42 that is to say, a [the] place of a skull,43 34They gave him vinegar [wine?]44 to drink mingled with gall: and when he had tasted thereof, he would not drink. 35And they crucified him, and parted [divided, διεμερίσαντο ] his garments, casting lots: [that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet (Psalms 22:15), They parted [divided] my garments among them, and upon my vesture did they cast 3637lots.]45 And sitting down they watched him there; And [they] set up over his head his accusation written, THIS IS JESUS THE KING OF THE JEWS.

38Then were there [are] two thieves [robbers, λῃσταί ] crucified with him; one on the right hand, and another on the left. 39And they that passed by reviled him, wagging 40[shaking]46 their heads, And saying, Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in 41three days, save thyself. If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross. Like wise also the chief priests mocking him, with the scribes and elders, said, 42He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be [he is] the King of Israel,47 let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him [we believe on him].48 43He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he said, I am the Son of God. 44The thieves [robbers] also, which [who] were crucified with him, cast the same in his teeth [reproached him in like manner, or with the same thing, τὸα ὐτὸ …ὠνείδιζον αὐτόν ].49

45Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour. 46And about the ninth hour Jesus cried [cried out, ἀνεβόησεν ] with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? (Psalms 22:1) that is to say, My God, my God, why hast 47thou forsaken me?50 Some of them that stood there, when they heard that [hearing it], said, This man calleth for Elias [Elijah]. 48And straightway one of them ran, and took a sponge, and filled it with vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave him to drink. [But] 49The rest said, Let be [Come, Wait, ἄφες ],51 let us see whether Elias [Elijah] will come to save him.52

50[And] Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost [his spirit].53 51And, behold, the vail of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake [quaked], and the rocks rent [were rent, ἐσχίσθησαν ]; 52And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which [who] slept arose. 53And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.

54Now when the centurion, and they that were with him, watching Jesus, saw the earthquake, and those things that were done, they feared greatly, saying, Truly this was the [a] Son of God [Θεοῦ υἱός ]. 55And many women were there beholding afar off, 56which [who] followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering unto him: Among which [whom] was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee’s children [the sons of Zebedee].

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

Survey.—The same brevity and sublimity with which Matthew described Christ’s sufferings during His trial, characterize his account of the crucifixion. Even Mark, in several parts, is more minute. Matthew, however, gives the fullest account of the blasphemy against Christ’s Messianic dignity; and he alone relates the effect produced upon the realm of the dead by the death of Jesus. The chief points are, Simon of Cyrene; Golgotha; the bitter wine; the parting of the garments; the watch (this last is recorded by our Evangelist alone); the two robbers crucified with Jesus; the blasphemies of the foes; the mocking by the robbers; the darkening of the sun; Jesus’ exclamation, My God, and the varying interpretations and the real meaning of the same; the giving up of His spirit; the rending of the temple-vail; the excitement in the world of the dead; the centurion’s testimony; the women beholding. The fulfilment of the Old Testament symbols of the Messiah’s sufferings is the point of view from which all is described.

Matthew 27:32. As they came out.—The executionstook place outside of the camp, and, accordingly, also outside of the holy city: Numbers 15:35; 1 Kings 21:13; Acts 7:56; see Lightfoot, p. 499. Instead of being led forth by lictors, the command of whom Pilate, as

sub-governor, did not enjoy, Jesus is conducted to the cross by the soldiery. A centurion on horseback, called by Tacitus exactor mortis, by Seneca, centurio supplicio prœpositus, headed the company. A herald, going in front of the condemned, proclaimed his sentence. Braune states: “There is a Jewish tradition to the effect that a herald went through the city, crying for forty days, Jesus was to be stoned: if any one could witness against Him, let him appear; but no one came forward.” We know from Matthew 28:11, that the Jews began very early to throw discredit upon the statements of the Evangelists. These falsifications were, at a later date, attempted especially in relation to the history of Jesus’ birth and death, and regarding the Messianic predictions of the Old Testament. The statement, moreover, of the Talmud, that there were two vails before the Most Holy, is evidently a concoction to remove the significance of the fact attested by the Evangelists.

They found a man of Cyrene.—Simon was from Cyrene, in African Libya, where many Jews were living. Ptoetmæus Lagi, when he obtained supreme power in Palestine, transported 100,000 Hebrews to Pentapolis, in that district. They had a synagogue of their own in Jerusalem. It is noteworthy, that we find in Acts 13:1, a Simon Niger associated with Lucius of Cyrene. Mark (Matthew 15:21) des gnates Simon “the father of Alexander and Rufus” two men who must have been well known to the Christian churches of that day, probably as brethren in the faith. Perhaps Simon was present as a pilgrim at the Passover (Acts 2:10); at all events, he was but lately come to Jerusalem, as his appellation, Κυρηναῖος , indicates. It is not likely that he was at that time more intimately related to Jesus. He had been out in the field, while Jesus was undergoing His tria’s before the various tribunals. Grotius and others, however, assume that he was a follower of Jesus. Rambach: “He manifested, it would appear, some sympathy with Jesus, and was therefore compelled to carry His cross.” Perhaps, during his bearing the cross, he became more intimately acquainted with Jesus; at all events, this fact has preserved his name in everlasting remembrance.54 Simon Peter was not now, as he had promised, in his place: another Simon from a distant land must serve in his place. The very circumstance of Simon’s arriving, a stranger and alone, at this time, drew the attention of the company; and they forced him, that is, they required of him, according to military custom, this service. For the verb ἀγγαρεύειν, see above, Matthew 5:41. Upon such requisitions, see Tholuck, Credibility of the Gospel History (German), p. 365. Simon may have been thus violently impressed by excited soldiers without being a Christian (Grotius), or a slave (Meyer’s supposition). Tradition reports that Christ had sunk to the ground beneath the load. It is possible that the captain of the band, who at a later period declared his conversion to the faith, was even now touched by a feeling of pity. The remainder of the way, it would appear, was short; and this is likely the reason why John omits the circumstance. According to custom, criminals were obliged to carry their own cross to the place of execution. [Comp. Plutarch, De sera numinis vindicta, c. Matthew 9:0 : ἕκαστος τῶν κακούργων ἐκφέρει τὴν αὐτοῦ σταυρόν . That our Saviour bore His own cross (probably the greater part of the way), is expressly stated by John 19:17.—P. S.]

Matthew 27:33. Golgotha.—Chald. גֻּלְגָּלְתָּא, Heb. גֻּלְגֹּלֵת that is, Skull. Hieronymus and others say this place of execution was so termed from the skulls of criminals.55 On the contrary, it is maintained by Cyril, Calovius, de Wette, and others, that the name arose from the conical shape of the hill.56 Certainly, for the second supposition, two reasons present themselves,—1. That Golgotha means skull, and that the place is not called κρανίων τόπος place of skulls, but κρανίου, skull,—Luke uses κρανίον; 2. that the skulls were not allowed to lie upon the place of execution unburied, but were covered up. The tradition of the Fathers, that Adam was buried there, gives us no assistance in explaining the name. Against the second supposition, the late origin of the name, which is not found in the Old Testament, comes in. If now we think of the Jewish mode of execution, stoning, in which the head was the first part injured, we gain something to support the first explanation.57 It would appear that Golgotha had not been selected as a place of execution till a late date; and that then the valley of Gehinnom ceased to be employed in that way. It is not unlikely that, up till this time, the place had been nameless, and now received this designation, and, it is possible, by way of reference to its shape.

The Christian tradition has made the position of Golgotha, which was certainly no hill, but merely an elevated place, to be that of “Mount” Calvary, the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This church lies within the walls of the present city, and in the north-western quarter. In opposition to this view, it is alleged that, without making any mention of the line of the city walls, which may belong to a later date, the city would have been in this part exceedingly small, if we suppose the present district of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to hare lain outside the walls. But, in reply, it is asserted, that a city may easily be small in some quarters, and extend in others. The fact is, Jerusalem then ran out more toward the south side. Against this identity the following have spoken decidedly:—Robinson (Biblical Researches, Bost. ed. 1856, vol. i. p. 407–418; vol. iii. 254–263; and Neue Untersuchungen, Halle, 1847); Titus Tobler: Golgotha, St Gallen, 1851, p. 224 ff.58 For the identity are—Karl von Raumer: Palästina, p. 355; Scholz: de Golgathœ situ, compare Friedlieb: l. c. p. 137; Schubert [Reise in das Morgenland, vol. ii. p. 503 ff.]; Schultz: Jerusalem, p. 96; Krafft: die Topographie Jerusalems, Bonn, 1846, p. 230.59 Wolff: Reise in das gelobte Land, Stuttgart, 1849, p. 83, pronounces in favor of the probability of the identity (more undecidedly in his work “Jerusalem,” Leipzig, 1857.) Berggren is decided for the identity, in the tract, Flavius Josephus, der Führer und Irrführer der Pilger im Alten und Neuen Jerusalem, Leipzig, Matt 1854:—“It may be quite indifferent to a Christian where the place of execution, Golgotha, and Christ’s grave, were, inasmuch as the truth of the Gospel history is not dependent upon the traditions regarding the external and local circumstances in the life and death of Jesus. But, overlooking the fact that tradition is often worthy of attention, there are all possible positive reasons to bring forward, why we should seek Golgotha at once, and only there, where the tradition represents. Neither the old world nor the new has any ground for doubting the common opinion regarding the Holy Sepulchre.”

The following remark appears important:—Jeremiah predicts (Jeremiah 31:38-40) that the city should it, future times extend beyond the north wall (the second wall), and enclose Gibeat Gareb, or the leper’s hill, and Gibeat Goath,60 or the hill of death (of roaring, groaning). The position of Gareb can correspond only with Under Bezetha, and the position of Goath only Upper Bezetha, where Golgotha rose. Both of these elevations were enclosed by Agrippa, as parts of the new city, and lay inside the third wall. From the context we learn that Gareb and Goath were unclean places, but, being measured in with the holy city, became sanctified. That the Goath-hill of Jeremiah is identical with the Golgotha of the Evangelists, is more than probable. The wall of Agrippa was built around Bezetha by Herod Agrippa, the grandson of Herod the Great.

In conducting this controversy, the following points should be kept in mind: 1. That those who oppose the identity have never pointed out any other site for Golgotha. 2. The history of the city of Jerusalem. It has been proved that the city, at a later period, extended considerably from south northward and north-westward, and that the third wall, or wall of Agrippa, enclosed on this side a piece of ground which had hitherto lain outside the city. 3. The history of the holy places themselves. It has never been disproved, that, according to the testimonies of Eusebius and Hieronymus, a marble statue of Venus desecrated Golgotha from the days of Hadrian to those of Constantine, to prevent Christians from resorting to the holy place; and that this and similar desecratory monuments form the connecting link between the apostolic tradition and the time of Constantine (Krafft, p. 172). 4. A distinction must be drawn between the statements of tradition regarding the holy places in general, and the description of special points; and it is an erroneous conclusion, when we entertain doubts regarding the former, because doubts attach themselves to the latter (Krafft, p. 234). Schultz represents Golgotha as a rocky height, which rose straight up over against the city, having a precipitous face toward north and east, and was in this way a kind of stage, exposed to the eyes of all the city’s inhabitants.As regards the Via dolorosa, or Via crucis, or the Lord’s road from the prætorium to Golgotha, mention was first made of it in the fourteenth century (Krafft, p. 168). The real way trod by our Lord must have lain somewhat more to the south.61 Braune’s statement, that the way was about an hour’s walking, is incorrect: it was very much shorter.

On the discovery of the holy cross by Saint Helena, the Basilika erected on Golgotha by her, and the present Church of the Holy Sepulchre, consult the Church Histories, and works of travel to the holy land. The central-point in the history of the Holy Sepulchre is the Crusades; but the fact, that the Mohammedans still possess the spot, is less saddening than that Christian sects contend and fight over the holy places, that this contention gave occasion lately to a bloody war, and that the superstitious deception of the holy Easter-fire forms the chief attraction of the feast of Golgotha!

Matthew 27:34. Gave Him to drink.—It became a custom in later times, among the Jews, to give to those who were led away to execution a stupefying draught (Synedr. 6; Wetstein on Mark 15:23; Friedlieb, 141). The Rabbins considered this a custom of pious charity, and would ground it upon Proverbs 31:6 [“Prodeunti ad supplicium capitis potum dederunt, granumque thuris in poculo vini, ut turbaretur intellectus ejus, sicut dicitur: date siceram, etc.”]. In the days of the Christian martyrs, it sometimes happened that similar drinks were administered to the condemned on their way to execution by friends and brethren in the faith who accompanied them (Neander, Leben Jesu, p. 757). It cannot be shown to have been a Roman custom. Nevertheless the Roman soldier carried with him a wine, which, though weak in itself, was strengthened by being mixed with various roots. This common wine was called vinegar-wine (Mark), also vinegar (Matthew). Mark says myrrh was mixed with the wine.62 The Jewish Sanhedrin appointed for this purpose a grain of incense to be mixed with a cup of wine. The physician Dioskorides says myrrh was also used; Matthew, however, adds, “mingled with gall.” By χφλή the LXX. translate לַעֲנָח, wormwood, quassia. The Evangelist may have chosen the expression with reference to Psalms 69:22; but he has not marked the fulfilment specially. There is no trace of a later mythical tradition. The most common drink was vinegar-wine; the strongest and most stupefactive mixture, wormwood. Jesus refused this intoxicating draught decidedly, and that, too, knowing its nature: “when He had tasted, He would not drink.” The Romans named such a drink, significantly, sopor. Jesus did not thus afterward refuse the unmixed vinegar-wine when He thirsted, and had finished His work.

Matthew 27:35. And having crucified Him, σταυρώσαντες δέ αὐτόν κ.τ.λ .

1. The Cross, σταυρός : primarily a pale or beam, crux, two beams fastened together in the shape of a T; of these, the longer, called staticulum, projected often upward the shorter, or cross-beam, called antenna.63 In the middle of the larger beam there was a peg or a piece of wood, on which the sufferer rested; and this formed one of the most excruciating agonies of the cross.64 The height of the cross was not great, and the feet of the criminal were not more than two feet from the ground.

2. The Crucifixion. The most extreme capital punishment among several ancient nations; it was practised even by the Persians, Ezra 6:11; Esther 7:9; still, the Persian instrument of execution was something between the Roman cross and the Germanic gallows. The cross of the Romans was the severest punishment for the worst criminals, and so disgraceful, that it dare not be inflicted on Roman citizens (crudelissimum teterrimumque supplicium, Cicero, Verr. 5, 64); only slaves, highway robbers, rebels, and outlawed prisoners of war, were made to suffer it (Joseph. Bell. 5 Judges 11:1, etc.).65 Those condemned to the cross must first be scourged; then bear their own cross, also a tablet upon the breast stating their crime, as far as the place of execution, which lay outside the city, upon a thronged highway, or upon some exposed spot, that the crucified criminals might be mocked and at the same time inspire terror. When they had reached this place of execution, they were stripped, and, after the stupefying draught was administered, they were raised up and nailed to the cross, which had been previously erected, and above which was placed an inscription. There was, no doubt, another mode, according to which the criminals were fastened to the cross while it yet lay on the ground. But it would appear that the former was the more usual method (Friedlieb, p. l. c. 142). The arms were first extended and fastened to the cross-beam. The body rested upon a peg in the centre in a riding manner, which prevented the hands from being torn through, and allowing the person to fall. The feet, too, were fastened. Then began the nailing. The old traditional view of the Church, that the feet of the Lord were nailed as well as His hands, was contradicted since 1792 by Dr. Paulus, who maintained that the feet of Jesus were only bound. But this assertion has been disproved by Hengstenberg, Hug, and Bähr (consult Tholuck, Die. Glaubwürdigkeit der evangelischen Gesehichte; Hug, (Gutachten, ii. 174; Friedlieb, l. c. p. 144). The first proof that feet and hands were both fastened by nails, is supplied by Luke 24:39, where Jesus, after His resurrection, shows the disciples His hands and feet (with the marks in them). Again, we have the testimonies of the oldest Church Fathers, who wrote at a time when this punishment was still practised, upon this subject, namely, Justin Martyr, Dial. c. Tryph. 97; Tertullian, Advers. Marc. 3:19. Further, heathen writers testify that the feet as well as the hands were nailed: Plautus, Mostellaria, Acts 2:0 Scene 1.66 There is no reference made here by the Evangelist to Psalms 22:16.[67] This is a matter not to be overlooked. Moreover, the explanation of the words כָּאֲרִי [which the English Version renders: they pierced] is acknowledged to be very difficult and doubtful (compare Hengstenberg, Ewald, Hitzig [also Hupfeld, Delitzsch, and J. A. Alexander] on the passage). The typical Messianic reference of Psalms 22:0 to the sufferings of Christ does not, however, depend on Matthew 27:16 th, although the similarity is very striking. See Meyer also on this passage. The spirit of torture of the old world must naturally manifest its inventive powers in the augmentation of the pains of this punishment. So arose the habit of crucifying with the head downward (Peter’s death), and such like (see Friedlieb, l. c. p. 146). Hence, too, arose the crux decussata, in an oblique form, in the shape of the letter X, upon which Andrew is said to have bled to death. The Roman punishment of crucifixion was introduced into Palestine after that country had become a province of the Roman empire. Meeting with a similar punishment, of a Jewish character, a modification ensued. Among the Jews, those who had been stoned to death were hanged upon a tree to excite terror, on the condition that the corpse was not to remain on the tree, but should be buried the same day; for one who is hanged is cursed of God (Galatians 3:13), and the land was not to be polluted by such an one (Deuteronomy 21:22-23). Hence the Jews employ, of crucifixion, the more usual תָּלָה, to hang, and Christ is designated in Jewish polemical works, the hanged. According to the Roman custom, the crucified were not taken down: they were allowed to die slowly; and in the case of young and strong men, this continued sometimes three days. Their flesh was given to the birds, or other wild animals. At times their sufferings were shortened, by kindling a fire beneath, or allowing lions and bears to tear them to pieces. But the Jewish custom did not permit that, partly from a sense of humanity, partly from regard to symbolic purity. The bodies must, according to the law just quoted, be taken down and buried. Hence arose the Roman Crucifragium, the breaking of the legs (otherwise a punishment in itself); and with this a “mercy-stroke” was at times associated, which ended the pain of the sufferer. Were they already dead, the Crucifragium was superfluous; but to make sure of death, the easier mercy-stroke was given, that is, the body was pierced by a lance. We see in the Jewish custom two things, which were combined into one in the Roman: 1. The torturing execution; 2. the public exposure to insult and mockery; 3. the kindling of a fire beneath is the third point, and indicates an annihilating burial. Nero, probably, in his persecutions of the Christians, carried the thing further; later it became common; and the Inquisition, in the Middle Ages, employed this legacy of the Romans, and cherished it lovingly.

3. The Agonies of the Cross. Crucifixion was the most extreme punishment, shame, and torture, which could be devised by the old world, as represented by the severe Roman court of criminal justice. Only the Inquisition, with its fiendish inventions, has been able to surpass this torturing death. There are two sides, agony and disgrace. Each side presents three acts. The agony includes scourging, bearing the cross, suffering on the cross. The torture of the cross begins with the pain of the unnatural method of sitting on a peg, the impossibility of holding up the weary head, the burning of the nail-pierced hands and feet. Besides this, there is the swelling of arms and legs, feverish thirst and anguish, the gradual extinction of life through gangrened wounds or exhaustion. The disgrace and mental suffering also presents a climax: The Scourged One appears as the detested; the expelled Cross-bearer, as the rejected of God and men; the Cross-suspended, as an object of horror, and of cursing (1 Corinthians 4:13; John 3:14).—The unique character of Christ’s sufferings lies, however, first, in the contrast between His heavenly healthiness and sensibility, and this hellish torture; secondly, in the contrast between His holiness, innocence, philanthropy, and divine dignity, and this experiencing of human contempt, rejection, and of apparent abandonment by God; above all, thirdly, in His sympathy with humanity, which changes this judgment, to which the world was surrendered, into His own, and so transforms it into a vicarious suffering. Upon the bodily sufferings of Christ, during the crucifixion, the physician Chr. Gottl. Richter has written four treatises (1775).68

They divided His garments.—“Perfectly naked did the cruciarii hang upon the cross (Artemid. 2, 58; Lips. De cruce 2, 7), and the executioners received their clothes (Wetstein upon this passage). There is no ancient testimony to show that there was a cloth even round the loins. See Thilo, Ad. Ev. Nicod. 10, p. 582.” Meyer. There is, however, also a “retrospective” prophetic view; and the Jewish custom is to be remembered, the sympathy of the heathen captain, Christ’s mother beneath the cross, etc. The garments became the property of the soldiers, after Roman usage. The outer garment was divided probably into four, by ripping up the seams. Four soldiers were counted off as a guard, by the Roman code. The under garment could not be divided, being woven; and this led the soldiers to the dice-throwing. Matthew presents the different points as a whole.

Casting lots.—For the more explicit account, see John 19:23.—That it might be fulfilled.—According to the textual criticism (see above), we are led to think these words introduced from John, “although it is worthy of attention, that ῥηθὲν . belongs only to Matthew.” De Wette. One is induced, certainly, to side with the minority of witnesses in this case. The addition is supported not merely by the mode of speech used by Matthew, but also especially by the fact, that he has put the crucifixion into the Aorist participle, as though he would emphasize particularly the fact brought forward by the finite verb. And this cannot be the division of the garments in itself, but its import. Accordingly the case stands thus: either the majority of the scribes have taken objection to the expression, ὑπὸ τοῦ προφήτου , or the others have expanded the words, “they divided His garments, casting lots,” according to Matthew’s meaning. The construction shows, however, that this explanation was intended. The prophecy in the psalm is of a typical nature. Upon the misconception of the passage, Psalms 22:19, which Strauss charges home upon the Evangelist, see the author’s Leben Jesu, ii. 3, p. 1602 (German edition).

Matthew 27:36. And sitting down, they watched Him there.—The watch was set to prevent those who had been crucified from being taken down. In this case, they had a peaceful bivouac which assumed a significant meaning.

Matthew 27:37.—And they set up over His head, etc.—The circumstance that the cruciarius, according to Dio Cass. 54, 8, was compelled to carry a “title” stating his guilt, suspended from his neck and resting upon his breast, while being led to the place of execution, justifies the conclusion that it was the custom to set up this title also above the criminal’s head, when fastened to the cross. We learn the same from the transactions regarding this title recorded by John, who lays peculiar stress upon the double meaning and significance of the superscription, Matthew 19:20. This title, according to Matthew, was attached after the division of the clothes. The very soldiers seem to feel that the statement of the crime was not in this case the chief matter. The small, white tablet, upon which the accusation or sentence of death stood inscribed, was called titulus, σανίς, or also λεύκωμ α, αἰτία.—This is Jesus, The King of the Jews.—No other crime but this. The Jews have crucified their Messiah. He has His title of honor; they have their shame.

Matthew 27:38. Then are two robbers crucified with Him, σταυροῦνται.—At this moment, and not till then, are (present). “By another band of soldiers;” for those who crucified the Lord have seated themselves beneath the cross. This arrangement was a combination devised by Pilate. First, the crucified Jesus is decked with the title, King of the Jews; then two robbers, as the symbol of His Jewish kingdom, are crucified. This was the governor’s revenge, that the Jews had overcome him, and humbled Him in his own estimation.—Two robbers, λῃσταί.—The usual punishment for such an offence was crucifixion. They were in all likelihood no common robbers, but fanatical insurrectionists, chiliastic enthusiasts, such as are frequently met with in later Jewish history. Comp. Mark 15:7.

Matthew 27:39. But they that passed by.—Not laborers going to their work (Fritzsche, de Wette), but the people who, on the afternoon of the feast-day, were walking about outside the gate, and going toward this populous quarter, where a new town was rising. As we previously remarked, Golgotha was a rocky height, turned toward the city, forming thus a natural stage for the public exposure of the crucified. And there the citizens of Jerusalem came forth this day purposely, to walk about with pleasure.—Shaking their heads.—“Not as a sign of disapprobation, but, as we may see from Psalms 22:8—as a gesture of passionate and malignant joy: compare Job 16:4; Psalms 109:25; Isaiah 37:22; Buxtorf, Lexic. Talm. p. 2039.” Meyer. Query, was not disapprobation hidden under this malignant joy?

Matthew 27:40. Thou that destroyest the temple. Following the participial form, more accurately, the destroyer of the temple (ὁ καταλύων τὸν ναόν). The popular accusation brought against Him by the citizens of Jerusalem, proud of their temple, though the false witnesses upon the trial had contradicted one another. Still, they understood that there lay in the rebuilding within three days an announcement of a delivering power, and also a claim laid to Messianic dignity: hence the summons, Save Thyself, and the parallel sentence, explanatory of the first: If Thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross.—The witty mockers do not dream that He will really within three days rebuild the temple which they had destroyed. The parallelism, putting the words into poetic form, makes of the utterances a song of derision, which they improvise in their Satanic enthusiasm, as is still often observed in the East upon similar occasions.

Matthew 27:41-43. The chief priests…with the scribes.—The burghers blaspheme, for they were at first stung with feelings of disapprobation; the members of the Sanhedrin mock for they think they have achieved a perfect victory. But their mockery is no less blasphemy: and here, too, appears that poetic parallelism which makes a derisive song out of their mocking. But the mockery rises in this case to frenzy:—He saved others (forced recognition) Himself He cannot save (blasphemous conclusion). Then, He is King of Israel: ironical no doubt, and again a wicked conclusion. Finally, He trusted in God (with blasphemous reference to Psalms 22:9); and the godless conclusion, in which blasphemy against Christ passes unconsciously over into blasphemy against God, for whose honor they pretend to be zealous. Besides this, they unconsciously adopt the language of the enemies of God’s servant, Psalms 22:0. Thus are the statements, and even the prayers, of finished fanaticism usually filled with blasphemies. If He will have him, εἰθέλει αὐτόν:—if He has pleasure in him, after the Hebrew חָפֵּץ בּזֹ. It is worthy of note, that the mocking speech of the Sanhedrin consists of three members, while that of the other mockers presents but two.

Matthew 27:44. The robbers also, etc.—Apparent contradiction of Luke 23:39. Luke 23:1. Meyer and

others: It is an actual contradiction. 2. Ebrard and others: It is only a general expression, indefinitely put. 3. The older harmonists, Chrysostom, and others: At first, both mocked; afterward, only one. 4. At first, both mocked, ὠνείδιζον, in so far as they demanded that He as Messias should descend from the cross. But this the one did, as a nobler chiliast (millennarian), and with a heart filled by enthusiastic hopes; the other, in a despairing spirit. Afterward, the former resigned all earthly hopes, and in his death turned to the dying Christ; the other in his despair blasphemed the dying Lamb (ἐβλασφήμει, Luke). See the author’s Leben Jesu, ii. 3, p. 1565.

Matthew 27:45. Now, from the sixth hour there was a darkness, etc.—Since the third hour, or nine o’clock in the morning, Jesus had been hanging on the cross; from the sixth hour,—accordingly at midday, when the sun stood highest and the day was brightest, which also was the middle-point in His crucifixion-torments,—the darkness began. This statement regarding the time, appears to be opposed to that in John 19:14, where we read that it was the sixth hour (ὤρα ἦν ὡς ἕκτη), when Pilate pronounced sentence. If we adopt Tholuck’s view, that John follows the reckoning of time usual in the Roman forum, we obtain too early an hour. The periods of the day being reckoned especially according to the hours of prayer, 3, 6, 9, we may understand the passage thus: the third hour (nine o’clock in the morning) was already past, and it was going, was hastening on, to the sixth hour. The sixth hour was held peculiarly sacred by the Jews, especially upon the Sabbaths and the festivals. Mark’s statement is analogous, Matthew 15:25 : it was the third hour when they crucified Jesus. Mark, like Matthew, contemplates the scourging as a part of the crucifixion; and that occurred between the third and sixth hour. This cannot have been an ordinary eclipse of the sun, because the Passover was celebrated at the time of full moon. Moreover, Luke mentions the darkening of the sun after the darkening of the earth; and hence it is manifest, that he ascribes the darkness which spread over the earth to no mere eclipse; but he ascribes, on the contrary, the darkness of the sun to a mysterious thickening of the atmosphere. The Christian Fathers of the first century appeal to a statement which is found in the works of Phlegon, a chronicler under the Emperor Hadrian (Neander, p. 756). Eusebius quotes the very words, under the date of the 4th year of the 202d Olympiad: “There occurred the greatest darkening of the sun which had ever been known; it became night at mid-day, so that the stars shone in the heavens. A great earthquake in Bithynia, which destroyed a part of Nicæa.”69 Hug and Wieseler (Chronol. Synopse, p. 388) reject this reference, inasmuch as Phlegon speaks of an actual eclipse. But when we see that Phlegon unites that eclipse with an earthquake, we may reasonably conclude he refers to some extraordinary natural phenomenon. Still, as it is alleged that the reckonings do not agree accurately with the year of Christ’s death (either two or one year earlier, see Wieseler, p. 388; Brinkmeyer, Chronologie, p. 208), we let this reference rest upon its own merits. Paulus and others make the darkness to be such as precedes an ordinary earthquake. Meyer, on the contrary, asserts that it was an extraordinary, miraculous darkness. Without doubt, the phenomenon was associated with the death of Jesus in the most intimate and mysterious manner. But the life of the earth has something more than its mere ordinary round; it has a geological development which shall go on till the end of the world. This development is conditioned by the development of God’s kingdom, forms a parallel to the same, and agrees in all the principal points with the decisive epochs in the kingdom of God (see the author’s Leben Jesu, ii. 1, p. 312; and Positive Dogmatik, p. 1227). Accordingly, the death of Jesus is accompanied by an extraordinary occurrence in the physical world. But that these occurrences, as natural phenomena, were produced by natural causes, cannot be denied. For, improper as it is to represent the wonder in nature as a simple, accidental occurrence in nature, it is equally improper to set nature outside of nature herself, or to deny the natural side of the wonder in nature. This darkening of the sun is then to be connected with a miraculous earthquake, which again stood connected with the occurrence in the life of the divine Redeemer, which we are now considering. The moment when Christ, the creative Prince, the principle of life to humanity and the world, expires, convulses the whole physical world. In a similar moment of death, is nature to go to meet her glorification. When Christ was born, night became bright by the shining of the miraculous star, as though it would pass into a heavenly day; when He died, the day darkened at the hour when the sun shone in fullest glory, as though it would sink into the awful night of Sheol. Heubner, referring to the eclipse mentioned by Phlegon, says, Suidas relates that Dionysius the Areopagite (then a heathen), saw the eclipse in Egypt, and exclaimed: “Either God is suffering, and the world sympathizes with Him, or else the world is hurrying to destruction.” See also, p. 457, the well-known statement of Plutarch (De oraculorum defectu). Ships which were sailing toward Italy, passed by the island Paxe. The Egyptian helmsman, Thamus, heard a voice bidding him say to the paludes, when he arrived, that the great Pan was dead. The announcement of this death called forth many outcries and a sound of bitter lamentation. Many interpretations of this mysterious legend.

Over all the land.—Theophylact: κοσμικὸν δὲ ἦν τὸ σκότος, οὐ μερικόν. Meyer agrees with this interpretation and thinks that, in accordance with the miraculous character of the whole event, ἐπὶ πᾶσαν τὴν γῆν must mean here over the whole earth, and not over the whole land (as Erasmus, Maldonatus, Kuinöel, Olshausen, Ebrard, and others take it); yet he admits that the term must not be measured by the laws of physical geography, and expresses simply the faith of popular observation.70 But the legitimacy of “the popular hyperbole” lies in this, that the Israelites used the “whole land” for the whole earth. There is a reference certainly to the whole world, though the natural phenomena may have been fully seen only in the holy land, Syria, and Asia Minor.—To the ninth hour.—Highly significant continuance of the darkness. Mere shadows of this gloom were the darknesses which accompanied the decease of Romulus and that of Cæsar. Virg. Georg. i. 164.

Matthew 27:46. About the ninth hour Jesus cried out, etc.—This is the only one of the “seven words” which is reported by Matthew and Mark: it is given accordingly in a pointed manner, and presented in its striking signification. Most exactly given by Mark in the vernacular Syro-Chaldaic dialect, Eloi, Eloi, etc.71 With this single exception the above-named Evangelists mention merely the loud cry of the Saviour without giving its contents. He cried out, ἀνεβόησεν; or, He shrieked with a loud and strong voice. The exclamation itself is given in its original form, as the “Talitha Cumi” and the “Abba” in Mark (Matthew 5:41; Matthew 14:36). Σαβαχθανί, Chald. שְׁבַקְתָּנִי=Heb. עֲזַבְתָּנִי. “The citation of this exclamation in the original tongue is fully and naturally explained by the mockery of Matthew 27:47, which rests upon the similarity of sound. The Greek translator of Matthew’s Gospel was accordingly forced to retain the Hebrew words, though he adds the translation.” Meyer.—Explanation of this cry: 1. Vicarious experience of the divine wrath (Melanchthon and the older orthodox school). 2. Testimony that His political plans had failed (Wolfenbüttel Fragments). 3. Mythical, founded on Psalms 22:0, the programme of His sufferings (Strauss). 4. Lamentation, expressed in a scriptural statement, showing He had the whole psalm, with its sublime conclusion, before His mind (Paulus, Schleiermacher). 5. Objective or actual momentary abandonment by God (Olshausen). 6. Subjective momentary abandonment or feeling of being forsaken by God. De Wette, Meyer. The latter says that Christ was “for a moment overpowered (!) by the deepest pain;” that “the agony of soul arising from His rejection by men, united with the torture of the body, which now surpassed endurance;” that “His consciousness of union with God was for the moment overcome by the agony.” 7. Amid the faintness, or the confusion of mind at the presentiment of approaching death, He felt His abandonment by God; and yet His spirit rested firmly on, and His will was fully subject to, God, while He was thus tasting death for every man through God’s grace (Lange’s Leben Jesu, ii. 3, p. 1573). Or the voice of conflict with death, a voice at the same time of victory over this temporal death to which humanity is subject. [We have in this exclamation an intensified renewal of the agony of Gethsemane, the culmination of His vicarious sufferings where they turned into victory. It was a divine-human experience of sin and death in their inner connection and universal significance for the race by one who was perfectly pure and holy, a mysterious and indescribable anguish of the body and the soul in immediate prospect of, and in actual wrestling with, death as the wages of sin and the culmination of all misery of man, of which the Saviour was free, but which He voluntarily assumed from infinite love in behalf of the race. But His spirit serenely sailed above the clouds and still held fast to God as His God, and His will was as obedient to Him as in the garden when He said: Not My will but Thine be done. While God apparently forsook Him, the suffering Head of humanity, in tasting death as the appointed curse of sin and separation from His communion, Christ did not forsake God, and thus restored for man the bond of union with God which man had broken. The exclamation: My God, My God, etc., implies therefore a struggle with death which was at the same time a defeat of the king of terror, and transformed death into life by taking away its sting, and completing the atonement. Hence the triumphant conclusion of the agony in the words: “It is finished!” Comp. the Doctrinal Thoughts below. There is great consolation in this dying word. Even if God hides His face from us, we need not despair; the sun of grace is still behind the clouds of judgment, and will shine through the veil with double effect.—P. S.]

Matthew 27:47. This (man) calleth for Elijah.—Explanation: 1. Misunderstanding on the part, a. of the Roman soldiers (Euthym. Zigabenus), b. of the common Jews (Theophylact), c. of the Hellenists (Grotius). 2. Meyer, following de Wette: “A blasphemous Jewish joke, by an awkward and godless pun upon Eli.”72 If we conceive to ourselves the state of matters, we may easily assume that joking and mockery were now past (see Luke 23:48). It may be supposed that this loud cry, Eli, Eli, wakened up the consciences of the on-looking Jews, and filled them with the thought, Perhaps the turning point may now actually have come, and Elijah may appear to bring in the day of judgment and vengeance (Olshausen); and, occupied thus, they may not have heard the remaining words. It is by no means far-fetched to imagine that the Jewish superstition, after the long-continued darkness, took the form of an expectation of a Messianic appearance. At least, we may say that they sought to hide their terror under an ambiguous pun upon the words.

Matthew 27:48-49. One of them ran and took a sponge.—The word of Jesus: I thirst, had immediately preceded this act, as we learn from John; and, succeeding the cry: Eli, marks that Christ was now conscious of having triumphed. Under the impulse of sympathy, one ran and dipped a sponge in a vessel of wine which stood there (the ordinary military wine, posca); and then fastening the sponge upon a hyssop-reed, which when fully grown is firm as wood, gave it to the Lord to drink. (See Winer, art. Hyssop.) According to John, several were engaged in this act. According to Matthew, the rest cry out to the man who was offering the drink, Wait (come), let us see whether Elijah will come to save Him. According to Mark, the man himself cries, Wait, etc.—an accurate picture of the excitement caused by the loud cry of Jesus. The one party seem to see in this act a disturbance of the expectation; the others see in it the fulfilment of the request, and a refreshment to support life till the expectation should be fulfilled. De Wette thinks the offer was ironical; but he confounds the second with the first draught. His view, too, is opposed by Christ’s reception of the second drink. Christ drank this draught, 1. because the wine was unmixed; 2. because now the moment of rest had come.

Matthew 27:50. Jesus cried again, κράξας.—The last words,—not those recorded in John 19:30, but those in Luke 23:46 : “Father, into Thy hands,” etc. Meyer is disposed, without ground, however, to find in these words a later tradition, arising from Psa 31:5.73 Paulus’ assumption of a merely apparent death needs no refutation.

[As to the order of the seven words from the cross, the harmonists are not entirely agreed. The most probable order is that adopted by Stier, Greswell, Andrews, and others: Before the darkness: 1. The prayer of Christ for His enemies. 2. The promise to the penitent robber. 3. The charge to Mary and John. During the darkness: 4. The cry of distress to His God. After the darkness: 5. The exclamation: “I thirst.” 6. “It is finished.” 7. The final commendation of His spirit to God. Ebrard puts (3) before (2), Krafft (4) before (3).—P. S.]

Matthew 27:51. And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain.—Full development of an earthquake, which was mysteriously related to the death of Jesus, and yet was quite natural in its progress. The rending asunder of the veil was a result of the convulsion, although the earthquake is mentioned afterward. Such is ever the case in an earthquake: its approach is marked by such fixed signs as the shaking of houses, etc. Meyer holds that neither the earthquake nor the darkness were natural. But nature and spirit do not in the Scriptures pursue different roads; here nature is conditioned by spirit. An Earthquake, which is not natural, is a contradiction. Moreover, the veil which was rent was that before the Holy of Holies (הַפָּרֹכֶת, Exodus 26:31 sq.; Leviticus 16:2; Leviticus 16:12), and not before the Holy Place. See Heubner, p. 459, for the refutation of this assumption of Michaelis.74 This rending was a result of the convulsion, and at the same time a sign of the removal of the typical atonement through the completion of the real atonement, which ensures us a free access to God, Hebrews 6:19; Hebrews 9:6; Hebrews 10:19. For the mythical embellishment of this fact, in the Evang. sec. Hebr., see Meyer. [It is simply the exaggerating statement quoted by St. Jerome in loc.: “In. Evangelio, cujus saepe facimus mentionem (he means the Gospel of the Hebrews), superliminare Templi infinitae magnitudinis fractum esse atque divisum legimus.” This exaggeration, which substitutes a thick beam of the temple for the veil, presupposes the simple truth as recorded by Matthew. Meyer fully admits this event as historical (against Schleiermacher, de Wette, and Strauss), and assigns to it the same symbolical significance as Lange and all the orthodox commentators. Comp. Hebrews 9:11-12; Hebrews 10:19-23. There is neither a prophecy of the Old Testament, nor a Jewish popular belief, which could explain a myth in this case. The objection of Schleiermacher, that the event could not be known except to hostile priests, has no force, since the rumor of such an event, especially as it occurred toward the time of the evening sacrifice, would irresistibly spread, and since “a great company of the priests” were converted afterward, Acts 6:7.—P. S.]

Matthew 27:51-52. And the rocks were rent.—Progress of the miraculous earthquake: the firm foundation of the holy city begins to split.

The graves were opened.—Awful, significant phenomenon, introducing the following ghostly phenomenon. The whole forms a type and symbol of the general resurrection and the world’s end, which is seen in its principle in Jesus’ death, and hence is manifested by natural signs. The opening of certain particular graves in the neighborhood of Jerusalem was a special representation of the coming resurrection, particularly of the faithful. But it was typical as well as symbolic, as is evident from the spiritual apparitions which succeeded. [Travellers still point us to extraordinary rents and fissures in the rocks near the supposed or real spot of the crucifixion, as the effects of this earthquake. The Jewish sepulchres, unlike our own, were natural or artificial excavations in rocks, the entrance being closed by a door or a large stone. Hence it may be supposed that, besides the rending of rocks, the stone doors of the graves were removed by the force of the earthquake.—P. S.]

Matthew 27:52. And many bodies of the saints who slept, arose.—There is no ground for the opinion held by Stroth (in Eichhorn’s Repert. Matthew 9:1, p. 123) and by the, elder Bauer (Bibl. Theol. des Neuen Test. i. 366), that both verses are interpolated. De Wette: “This surprising statement does not seem to belong to the common evangelical tradition. As even a legendary (mythical) representation, it does not harmonize well with the Messianic belief of that time (it may, to some degree, with the expectation of the first resurrection, Revelation 20:4); and again, we cannot satisfactorily deduce the thing from the fact that a few graves were opened. (See Hase, § 148.) The legend is more fully developed in Evang. Nicodemi, cap. 17, 18.” Meyer’s view is, that the symbolical fact of the graves having opened, was transformed into the traditional history that certain persons actually arose; and hence he holds the passage to be an “apocryphal and mythical supplement.” With the one fact, that the graves opened, agrees the other, that after Jesus’ resurrection many believers saw persons who had risen from the grave, who had been delivered from Hades. These two facts became one living unity in the Apostle’s belief regarding the efficacy of Christ’s resurrection. Our text is thus the first germ of the teaching of the Church upon the Descensus Christi ad inferos, the development of which we have even in 1Pe 3:19; 1 Peter 4:6. The appearance of the bodies may hence be regarded as symbolical; they were the representations of redeemed souls. The death of Christ is accordingly proved at once to be the life75 of the world; as an atoning death and a triumphant entrance into Hades, it acted upon the spirit-world, quickening especially Old Testament saints; and these quickened saints reacted by manifold annunciations upon the spiritual condition of living saints. Accordingly, it is not miracles of a final resurrection which are here spoken of; but, on the other hand, neither is it a miraculous raising from death, as was that of Lazarus, to live a second life in the present world. In this respect, the order laid down in 1 Corinthians 15:20 continues, according to which Christ is the ἀπαρχή. “According to Epiphanius, Ambrose, Calovius, etc., these dead arose with a glorified body, and ascended with Christ.76 In Actis Pilati (Thilo, p. 810) Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the twelve patriarchs, Noah, are especially named. A different account is found in Evang. Nic.” Meyer. A distinction is made in our text between the effect of the death of Jesus and His resurrection. By His death, the saints are freed from the bonds of Sheol (“their bodies arose”); by His resurrection, their action on this world is restored (“went into the holy city,” etc.).

[There are six resurrections mentioned in the Scriptures as preceding that of Christ, but all of them are only restorations to the present earthly life, viz.: (1) The son of the widow of Sarepta, 1 Kings 17:0 (2) The Shunamite’s son, 2 Kings 4:0 (3) The resurrection caused by the bones of Elisha, 2 Kings 13:0 (4) The daughter of Jairus, Matthew 9:0 (5) The son of the widow at Nain, Luke 7:0 (6) Lazarus, John 11:0. The translations of Enoch and Elijah from earth to heaven, not being preceded by death, do not belong here. The resurrection mentioned in our passage, if real, was a rehearsal, a sign and seal of the final resurrection to life everlasting, but did not take place till after the resurrection of Christ, μετὰ τὴν ἔγερσιν αὐτοῦ, which must be referred to the preceding ἠγέρθησαν as well as ἐξελθόντες. The rising was the result, not the immediate accompaniment of the opening of the graves, and is mentioned here by Matthew in anticipation, but with the qualifying insertion: after His resurrection, to preven misunderstanding. Christ’s death opened their tombs. His resurrection raised them to life again, that He might be the first-born from the dead (πρωτότοκος τῶν νεκρῶν, Colossians 1:18), and the first-fruits of them that slept (ἀπαρχὴ τῶν κεκοιμηένων, 1 Corinthians 15:20; 1 Corinthians 15:23). Augustine, Theophylact, and others, supposed that these saints died again, while Origen, Jerome, Alford, Owen, Nast, and others, assume that they ascended with Christ to glory. There is also a difference of opinion among commentators, as to the question whether they were patriarchs and other saints of the olden times to whom Jerusalem was indeed a holy city, or saints who lately died and were personally known to some of the living. Owen favors the latter opinion with a doubtful “doubtless,” and specifies Simeon, Hannah, and Zachariah. Dr. Nast adds John the Baptist and Joseph. But in the absence of all Scripture information, it is perfectly useless to speculate on the age and number of these mysterious visitors from the spirit world. So much only appears certain to us, that it was a supernatural and symbolic event which proclaimed the truth that the death and resurrection of Christ was a victory over death and Hades, and opened the door to everlasting life.—P. S.]

Matthew 27:54. Now when the centurion.—The centurion who had presided over the execution. See above.—And they that were with him.—The soldiers on guard, who at the beginning had been thoughtlessly gambling. Mark mentions, as the single witness of Christ’s majesty in dying, this captain, who, along with the captain in Capernaum (Matthew 8:0), and the captain Cornelius at Cæsarea (Acts 10:0), forms a triumvirate of believing Gentile soldiers, in the evangelic and apostolic histories. But Matthew associates with the centurion, his band; and Luke informs us, the consternation was general, Matthew 27:48. The special testimony belongs, nevertheless, to the centurion.—Saw the earthquake, and what was done.—Not only the destructive effects of the earthquake upon the rocky region of Golgotha, but also the way in which Christ gave up His spirit (Mark and Luke).—Truly this was God’s Son [Θεοδυἱός].—Luke says, a just man. The word of a heathen must not always be taken in a heathen meaning (so Meyer, Heros, demi-god); least of all, here. Heathen became Christians, and their conversion was announced by their Christian confession. Yea, the centurion may easily have been acquainted with Jewish opinions; and so the accusation, Jesus had made Himself Messiah and God’s Son, was understood by the captain rather in a Christian sense, of a divine-human holy being, than in a heathen sense of a demi-god. The heathen coloring is exceedingly natural; but the germ is evidently not a superstitious conceit, but a confession of faith. [Alford likewise maintains against Meyer that the centurion used the words in the Jewish sense, and with some idea of what they implied. But the absence of the article before υἱός and the parallel passage in Luke should not be overlooked.—P. S.]

Matthew 27:55-56. And many women were there.—Luke gives us an accurate account of these female disciples, ch Matthew 8:2. They followed the Lord upon His last departure from Galilee, served Him, and supported Him out of their property. Matthew names, 1. Mary Magdalene. She was, judging from her name, a native of Magdala, on the Sea of Gennesareth; and hence she is supposed to have been the sinner who turned unto the Lord in that district, and anointed His feet, Luke 7:37. Out of the Magdalene, according to Mark, seven devils had been driven by Jesus; that is, He had wrought a miraculous deliverance of an ethical, not of a physical character (see the author’s Leben Jesu, ii. 2, 730 ff.); and this exactly agrees with the pardon of the great sinner. She is of course to be clearly distinguished from Mary of Bethany (John 12:1). Meyer says: “מגדלינא is mentioned by the Rabbins (Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judenthum, i. p. 277); but this must not be confounded with מגדלא, a female hairdresser, with whom the Talmud identifies the mother of Jesus (Lightfoot, p. 498).” 2. Mary the mother of James and Joses, that is, the wife of Alpheus (John 19:25), sister-in-law of Joseph, and of the mother of Jesus. [?] 3. The mother of Zebedee’s children, i.e., Salome: see Matthew 20:20. She it is, undoubtedly, who is meant by the sister of Christ’s mother, John 19:25. The Evangelist chooses to name just these without excluding the mother of Jesus, and the other ministering women. “Hence we must reject the unnatural assumption of Chrysostom and Theophylact, which Fritzsche repeated, although Euthym. Zigabenus refuted it, that the mother of Jesus is the same with Mary the mother of James and Joses, Matthew 13:55.” Meyer.

[Matthew and Mark (Mark 15:40) omit Mary the mother of the Lord, while John (John 19:25) expressly mentions her first among the women who stood by the cross, but omits Salome, his own mother, unless we assume with Wieseler and Lange that she is intended by “His mother’s (Mary’s) sister,” so that John and James the Elder would be cousins of Jesus. Luke mentions no names, but speaks generally (Luke 23:49): “And all His acquaintance, and the women that followed Him from Galilee, stood afar off, beholding these things.” To account for the omission of Mary by Matthew and Mark, we must suppose either that she had at that time left the cross with John who took her to his home in obedience to the dying request of the Saviour (John 19:26), or that there were different groups, the one mentioned by Matthew and Mark consisting only of those who ministered to the wants of our Lord of their substance (διακονοῦσαι αὐτῷ,, Matthew 27:55). There must have been another group of disciples, including John and others, to whom He afterward showed the print of the nails as a proof of His identity. Comp. Luke’s all His acquaintance. The previous flight of the disciples, mentioned Matthew 26:56, does not exclude their return to witness the mighty scenes “afar off.” John certainly was there, according to his own statement. These pious women, who, with the courage of heroes, witnessed the dying moments of their Lord and Master, and sat over against the lonely sepulchre (Matthew 26:61), are the shining examples of female constancy and devotion to Christ which we now can witness every day in all the churches, and which will never cease. Woman’s love truly is faithful unto death. Women and children form the majority of the Church militant on earth, and, we may infer, also of the Church triumphant in heaven.—P. S.]

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. See the preceding remarks.

2. The prevailing point of view from which the Evangelist represents the crucifixion and its agonies, is the fulfilment of the Old Testament types. Hence it is that he twice makes the chief fact merely introductory, which is marked by the use of the participial form, and brings out into prominence some special circumstance as the chief thought by the use of the finite verb. 1. Καὶ ἐλθόντες εἰς τόπον Γολγ., ἔδωκαν αὐτῷ πιεῖν, κ.τ.λ., Matthew 27:33-34. Matthew 27:2. Σταυρώσαντες δὲ αὐτὸν, διεμερίσυντο, κ.τ.λ., Matthew 27:35.

3. The four chief points in the history of the passion, before us, are: (1) Jesus in the power of the Gentiles: (a) they press a Jew into the service of the cross; (b) they offer their stupefying drink to the Lord while dying; (c) they divide among themselves, and gamble for, His clothes, and guard His corpse; (d) they make the King of the Jews a robber-chief. (2) Jesus in the power of the Jews: (a) the derisive song of the people; (b) Christ blasphemed by the chief of the Jews and the teachers; (c) insulted even by their own dying criminals—He can give us no help. (3) Jesus sinks into apparent hopelessness, and with Him the Jewish and Gentile world, though then it is that He is really victorious: (a) the funeral pall of the world, or the darkening of the noon-day sun; (b) Jesus’ exclamation, or the judgment of death; (c) the last disappointed chiliastic expectation of help from Elijah here; (d) the last cry of Jesus, or the dark mystery of redemption. (4) The destruction of the world’s old form, and the signs of redemption and of the new world: (a) the temple service, or the slavery of conscience in this world, removed,—the access to the throne of grace in the Holy of Holies free; (b) the prison of Sheol, or the slavery of the spirits in the other world, removed,—the way of resurrection open; (c) the power of the Gentile tyrannical rule removed,—the Gentile centurion compelled, in his terror of soul, to make a confession of faith; (d) the slavery of women (and of the oppressed classes) removed,—the believing women, in their heroic spirit of faith, free.

4. Simon of Cyrene, an illustration of the fate which befel the Jews after Christ’s crucifixion under Gentile masters. An omen of the maltreatment and shame which were awaiting the Jews at the hands of the Gentile world, but likewise of their end; the Jews are to be excited and compelled by the Gentile world to take up the cross of Christ (Romans 11:0). Remarkable issue! Even up to that moment, the Jews still were imagining that they had subjected the Gentiles to themselves in the crucifixion of Christ, while the subjection of the Jew to the Gentile was now really becoming visible.

5. Golgotha, the old world’s accursed place of execution, transformed by Christ into the place of pilgrimage for the new world, and into the new city of Jerusalem.

6. The intoxicating drink, the old world’s remedy in suffering, anguish, and torture, proved by Christ, and rejected by Him with full and clear consciousness. The sympathy of the world with the suffering Christ, the complaint of Christ regarding the world’s consolations; and He, conscious of a truer comfort, does away with all these unavailing consolations of the old world.7. The gamblers beneath Christ’s cross changed into confessors of His glory. The heirs of His coal are at the end witnesses of His spirit. The military guard changed beneath His cross into a camp of peace.8. Christ, the King of the Jews, between the thieves, distinguished as a robber chief, become the royal Saviour and Judge of the world. The same title which honored the Lord, was the shame of the Jews.9. The feast celebration of the unbelievers: (1) The people walk up and down before the cross, and blaspheme; (2) the hierarchical powers mock; (3) the transgressors and despairing are angry, and revile. God, however, condemns: (1) The first in their ignorance, speaking as they do merely from lying hearsay; (2) the second in their raving wit, in that they condemned themselves by openly blaspheming against God, while they imagine that they mock Christ (the bulls of the Romish Church, consigning Christians to perdition); (3) the third in their thoughtlessness, who dream not that redemption is so near; (4) generally, the millennarian expectations, according to which the old world is to be glorified, destitute of salvation though it be. But God, condemning this old world, founds a new world of redemption and salvation.

10. The darkness over the earth.—The indication of that development which this terrestrial cosmos is to pass through, according to the teaching of Scripture. The sign that the earth, and not the sinner only, suffers from the curse (Genesis 3:0; Deuteronomy 28:0); that the earth sympathizes with Christ (Zechariah 11:0); the presage of the earth’s final (eschatological) death and victory (Matthew 24:0).

11. Eli, Eli.—The darkness which spread over the heavens was a visible representation of the state of Christ’s soul during this period of silent suffering upon the cross. The bodily effects of the crucifixion began at this time to cease. The inflammation arising from the wounds in His hands and feet, the lacerated brow and back stretched on the cross, and the inner fire of the fever, consumed His strength. The great interruption in the flow of blood, which formerly circulated so peacefully, weighed down His head, oppressed His heart, and took from Him the joyous feeling of life; and, suffering these agonies, the Lord hung during the long weary hours beneath the heaven’s mourning blackness. At last the dizziness experienced before fainting must begin to make itself felt,—that condition in which consciousness commences to dream, to reel, to be lost, and then returning, to behold the awful apparitions presented by the imagination. This is a state in which we see how near death is related to madness. Jesus was experiencing the approach of death. He was “tasting” death,—tasting death as only that holy and pure Life could taste death. But in this His death, He felt the death of mankind; and in this death of mankind, their condemnation to death. This experience He adopted as His own, receiving it into His own consciousness, and then sanctified it by His loud cry to God: “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” In that cry, His deep, full feeling of that great, full death, was changed into a prayer to God; and so His contest with and victory over death, became the glorification of death by the destruction of its sting: the completion of the atonement. His experience of being forsaken by God is expressed in the words: forsaken Me; His soul’s firm hold on God, in the words: My God, My God! The question: Why, is not the murmuring objection of one in despair, but the question of God’s child and servant; and almost immediately afterward, in the hour that He became conscious of victory, and cried aloud: It is finished, He received the answer through the eternal Spirit. From the beginning of His life He knew this, but in this moment it became a fact of experience, that He gave His life for the life of the world; and this enabled Him to declare soon afterward that all was now completed. We should not, accordingly, look upon this exclamation of Jesus as an exceptional singularity in Christ’s sufferings, but as the real climax, with which judgment changed into, victory, and death, the result of the curse, becomes the glorious redemption. This cry of Jesus, which is in one sense the darkest enigma of His life, becomes, when thus considered, the most distinct and most transparent declaration of the atonement. The doctrine of the personal union of the divine and human natures is as little disturbed by this passage as by the soul-sufferings of Jesus in Gethsemane; for the Evangelist refers to no unholy fear and trembling of His human nature, but to a holy one. But if divinity was really and fully united in Him with humanity, then His divine nature, even in the deepest depths of His human suffering, must be united with His human. And this was manifested here. No alteration was produced in God, however; but the deepest human pain, in other cases called despair, the full feeling of death becomes glorified as the fullest atoning submission.

12 Thessalonians 2:02 Thessalonians 2:02 Thessalonians 2:02d Psalm.—The numerous points of agreement between this psalm and the history of Christ’s passion, led Tertullian to say that the psalm contained totam Christi passionem. We may regard all the psalms as Messianic in the widest sense, and arrange them into: (1) Such as contain isolated Messianic references; (2) such as are typical of the life, sufferings, and victory of Christ; (3) such as are acknowledged prophecies of the ideal Messiah, and of the Messiah’s kingdom. The 22d psalm belongs to the second class. For manifestly in it a servant of God under the old economy describes his own unbounded theocratic Messianic sufferings. The representation becomes, without the writer’s knowledge, but truly with the Spirit’s knowledge, typical of the bitter agonies of Christ (comp. the author’s Positive Dogmatik, p. 673).

13. The curtain in the temple, before the Holy of Holies (see the descriptions of the temple in Winer, etc.).—This curtain was not merely torn in one spot: it was rent into two pieces, from top to bottom. This circumstance signifies that the real atonement was perfected; accordingly, that typical offerings and priestly mediation were done away; that the access to the throne for every believing soul, in the name of the Father, and of the Spirit of Christ, is now quite free. This view we might support from many a Scripture passage (Romans 3:25; Romans 5:2; the entire Epistle to the Hebrews). And hence, the excitement which takes place in the realm of death, which hitherto was under bondage, is the result, not of Jesus’ mere entrance into the realm of death, but of His entrance into the same in the might of His atoning death. Thus, too, is the idea of spiritual apparitions here realized; but these apparitions are to be entirely distinguished from the appearance of ghosts. See the article Gespenst (Spectre or Ghost) in Herzog’s Real-Encyklopädie.

14. The effects of the atoning death of Jesus: (1) Upon the realm of the dead (beginning of the resurrection); (2) upon the Gentile world (beginning of Confessions); (3) upon the world of the oppressed classes, namely, of women: free communion with Christ, in spirit, suffering, and victory.

15. At the siege of Jerusalem by Titus, the Jews sallied forth from the city in bands to free themselves, and were nailed by the Romans by hundreds to the cross. The cross of redemption cast upon the Jews numberless shadows of itself, as crosses of condemnation.16. The cross, which to the old world was the symbol of deepest abhorrence, shame, infamy, and perdition, has now become for the new world the symbol of honor, blessing, and redemption. Even the superstition and vanity of the world have adopted this sign. It has risen to be the object of veneration. It is the original form of most of our orders of honor. But the glorification of the cross is the symbol and type of the transformation of death from a curse into salvation.

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

On the Whole Section.—See the preceding christological reflections.—Christ treated as the slave of mankind: 1. By the Jews, estimated at a slave’s price; 2. by the Gentiles, executed like a slave.—A contemplation of Christ’s-cross: 1. The sufferings of the cross,—(a) on the side of the Gentiles, Matthew 27:32-38; (b) on the side of the Jews, Matthew 27:39-44. Matthew 27:2. The contest on the cross, Matthew 27:45-50 : (a) its reflection in the natural contest between light and darkness; (b) its culmination,—the contest between life and death in the heart of Christ (Eli!); (c) the false explanation (Elijah): (d) the decision (the drink of refreshment, the cry of triumph77). 3. The fruits of the cross, Matthew 27:51-56 : (a) symbol of the atonement; (b) of the resurrection; (c) of the conversion of the Gentiles; (d) of the companionship with Christ in suffering and victory.—The cross as the truest exemplification of, and testimony to: 1. Christ’s patience; 2. man’s guilt: 3. God’s grace.78—Christ on Golgotha.—The Lord’s silence and utterances in His death-hour: 1. His unbroken silence as regards the impotent hostility of the world. 2. His holy utterances: (a) His cry of suffering and of victory addressed to God; (b) His cry of awakening and of victory, addressed to men.—The mysteriousness of the atonement: 1. The deep darkness in which its central point is hidden: (a) the conceit of the Gentiles, who imagined that they crucified a transgressor; (b) the mockery and blasphemies of the Jews; (c) the darkening of the sun; (d) the silence of God; (e) the mysterious utterance of Christ Himself; (f) the misinterpretation of His words on the part of men, and the disappointed expectation. 2. The clear light: (a) the clear and kingly consciousness, which I would not submit to be stupefied, and which would suffer sensibly, free from opiates; (b) the distinct testimony to truth, which shines forth in spite of all the perversions of enemies (the King of the Jews, God’s Son, who saved others, who trusted in God, from whom the dying, no more than the living, can free themselves); (c) the instinct of nature, which testifies by its mourning to Jesus’ glory; (d) the freedom and obedience with which Jesus adopts death as His own, and thus conquers; (c) the glorious results of the death of Jesus.—The Lord’s death: 1. The result of the world’s most deadly hate; an unparalleled murder and death. 2. The result of Christ’s unconquerable love; the all-comprehensive death, in that all died in the One. 3. The result of God’s grace; it was the world’s redemption (its atonement, deliverance, illumination, sanctification).—The sublimity of the atoning death of Jesus, as it appears: 1. Towering above the most fearful and terrific guilt (blasphemy); 2. overcoming the most terrible temptation (the struggle against abandonment by God); 3. bursting through the most formidable barriers (the feeling of death); 4. displaying boundless and eternal efficacy (extending as far as the highest height of heaven, the depths of Sheol, the depths of the Gentile world, the depths of the human heart).

The Particular Portions.—Christ led to the cross: 1. The way to the cross, the falling cross-bearer; the greatest burden and oppression. 2. The place of the cross, or Golgotha, the place of a skull, the heaviest ban and curse. 3. The endurance of the cross the severest agony and shame. 4. Christ’s companions in crucifixion, the bitterest mockery and derision.—Simon of Cyrene; or, the man, coming from the country, who unconsciously became involved in the history of the cross.—Let us go forth with Him without the camp, bearing His reproach, Hebrews 13:13.—Golgotha, the place of blackest curse, changed into the place of greatest blessing.—Golgotha and its counterparts: 1. The counterparts of its curse: (a) the wilderness; (b) the grave; (c) the battle-field; (d) Sheol; (e) Gehenna. 2. The counterparts of its blessing: (a) Paradise and Golgotha—Paradise lost and regained, Golgotha present and disappeared; (b) Sinai and Golgotha—the law and the gospel; (c) Moriah79 and Golgotha—the shadow and the substance; (d) Gethsemane and Golgotha—the sufferings of the soul, and the sufferings of the cross; (e) Olivet and Golgotha—triumph, and suffering changed into the most glorious triumph.—The honors which the blinded people of Israel prepared for their King: 1. The procession of honor (beneath the weight of the cross); 2. the wine of honor (vinegar mingled with gall); 3. the guard of honor (gambling over the booty, His clothes); 4. the seat of honor (the cross); 5. the title of honor (King of robbers).—The intoxicating bowl and its false salvation rejected for the true salvation, which Christ with full consciousness has obtained for us.—The despairing world, and its means of strength.—Christ assures Himself of the clearness of His consciousness, and so of victory.—Soberness the necessary condition of all deliverance, 2 Timothy 2:26.—Moral and physical intoxication, the beginning of destruction; moral (spiritual) and physical soberness the beginning of salvation.—Christ must taste our death, Hebrews 2:9; He preserved a pure taste for that duty.—The visible inheritance left by Jesus, and the inheritance left to His spiritual heirs; 1. The visible inheritance: a booty of Gentile soldiers, an inheritance for which they gamble, cast lots, and squander their time. 2. The spiritual inheritance: His righteousness, His peace, His word and sacrament.—And sitting down, they watched Him. See how the duty of the military guard changes beneath the cross into a camp of rest, through the spirit of peace, which proceeds from Christ,—The fulfilment of the Old Testament in Christ’s sufferings; or, Christ presented with gall to drink, robbed, the King of the Jews.—Christ between the robbers; or, the beginning of His kingdom: 1. In His power to save; 2. in His power to condemn. —The blasphemy against, and the mockery of, the Crucified One; or, the sins of unbelief and obduracy.—Even the mocking and blaspheming foes of Christ must, against their will, praise Him.—The enthusiasm of derision and its result, the song of scorn: the most matured fruit of death.—The reviling robbers; or, dissatisfaction of the crucified transgressors with the crucified Saviour may issue in two different results: 1. It may lead to an unconditional surrender; 2. or to despair.

The darkening of the earth and the sun, the heavens’ testimony to the dying Jesus. A testimony: 1. That creation is dependent upon Christ’s consciousness; 2. that nature is entirely dependent upon spirit; 3. that the fate of the earth is entirely dependent upon the fate of the kingdom of God.—The last hiding of the holy God from the Crucified One, becomes, through the enduring trust of Christ, a presage of His full revelation.—Eli, Eli; or, the last struggle, and victory in one battle-cry.—Christ’s suspense upon Golgotha, the return and the culmination of His suspense in Gethsemane; 1. The full realization of abandonment; 2. the perfect harmony between His will and that of God.—Christ has altered condemnation to mean deliverance, and has thus given it its true meaning: 1. He changed the death, which sprang from the curse, into salvation; 2. He changed the mourning, which nature in her anger assumed because of Him, into compassion.—The crucified Jesus our trust and peace in the severest trial.—“He calls for Elias;” or, Christ crucified even in His utterances.—The last destruction of worldly expectations of deliverance, the beginning of the true deliverance.—Christ’s thirst slaked by His foes: a sign of His repose after the fight. 1. In the wilderness, He hungered after He had fought and fully vanquished, and angels ministered unto Him; 2. here he thirsted after the victorious struggle, and His enemies are compelled to minister unto Him.—Jesus receives His last refreshing draught out of the hands of His enemies in token of peace,—in token that His love has vanquished the world’s hate.—Christ’s last cry, though wordless, was doubtless a cry of triumph.—Death was overcome in Christ’s death, and the sun returned.—And lo, the veil rent.—The glorious and saving efficacies of the death of Jesus: 1. Atonement; 2. the dead redeemed, and the right of resurrection given to them; 3. the world’s conversion; 4. the perfection of the heart.—The new order of things instituted by the death of Jesus: 1. Believing suppliants have become priests (the rent veil); 2. the dead arise; 3. Gentile soldiers fear God and confess Christ; 4. women stand beneath the cross, and beside the grave, God’s heroines.—The spiritual apparitions at Jerusalem, a spring flower of the resurrection.—The earthquake at Christ’s death a sign of the world’s fate under the working of Christ; a sign: 1. Of the end of the old world: 2. of the beginning of the new, Haggai 2:6.

Selections from Other Homiletical Commentators

Starke:—Simon of Cyrene, the picture of all believers; for they must bear the cross after Christ, 1 Peter 4:13; Luke 9:23; Galatians 5:24.—If we lovingly help others to bear their cross, we do a good work.—Luther’s margin: Golgotha, the gallows, and the block.—He would not receive the draught, because He would suffer with full understanding, and had still various utteranance to pronounce.—Nova Bibl. Tub.: See how the Life-fountain pants with thirst, to atone for golden wine-goblets, excess, and drunkenness.—We should carefully guard our senses and our reason.—Luther’s margin: The garments of righteousness do not require to be divided, every one employs them whole and altogether.—Hedinger: Christ’s poverty our wealth, His nakedness our covering.—Christ in the midst of the thieves: this figure gives us to see Jesus surrounded by the two bands of soldiers.—He was reckoned with the transgressors.—Suffering is with some a suffering of martyrdom; with others, penance; with others, a self-inflicted punishment, 1 Peter 4:15-16.—Zeisius: Christ’s cruel mocking, the best remedy against the world’s envenomed mocking and derision.—Thou who destroyest the temple! The world has learned in a masterly way to pervert the words of the pious.—What worldlings do not understand of the mysteries of Christ, is to them only matter of contempt, scorn, and ridicule.—The darkness signifies: 1. The power of darkness, of sin, and of death over Him, who is the Sun of Righteousness; 2. the horror of this murder, from which the sun immediately hid his face; 3. that the Sun of Righteousness was darkened to the Jews, and the light of grace withdrawn, John 12:46.—Quesnel: Whosoever will not follow Christ, the light of the world, shall remain in darkness, and shall end by being precipitated into eternal darkness.—That Christ does not here say: My Father, but My God, must have its special reason.—All is dark before His eyes; he cannot know when the end and deliverance should come(?).—We had forsaken God; hence must Christ, again, be forsaken for our sake.—Learn from this example, that both may be true,—united with God, forsaken of God,—when the heart has had no experience of the power of the Spirit, of the divine life, of the sweetness of God’s love, of the hope of eternal glory.—The last cry: He roars when He snatches, as the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the prey from hell.—Luther’s margin: The veil rends: here is the crisis, and an entirely new existence begins, as when the prophet says: “His rest shall be glory,” Isaiah 11:10.—Such a rent reveals: 1. That every shadow would be now, through Christ, distinctly illuminated; 2. that He, by His, Spirit, would remove every covering and darkness, from the law; 3. that the atonement was complete, so that it was not annually to be repeated; 4. that all had now a ready access to the Father; 5. that all ceremonies had ceased.—Bibl. Wurt.: Heaven, which had been closed, is now once more opened, Hebrews 9:11-12.—The most firm and hard bodies in nature spring asunder; how is it then that man’s heart is so hard?—Christ has deprived death of his power, 2 Timothy 1:10.—The centurion: those who acknowledge God’s mighty works, and fear in consequence, are near conversion.—The women: the grateful forsake not their benefactors in time of need.—Friends and relations should remain united even in suffering.

Gerlach:—In their blindness, the members of the Sanhedrin mocked Him, employing, without willing it, the words of the enemies of the Messiah, from Psalms 22:9, which passed dimly before their mind; and in this manner, the prophecies of this Psalm receive a literal fulfilment. A circumstance which has been often repeated. When Farel stood before the ecclesiastical court in Geneva, and denounced the mass, the president asked the bench: “He has blasphemed God, what further need have we of witness? What think ye?” They all replied: “He is guilty of death.”—Jesus upon the cross lived the 22d Psalm through, in His body and in His soul. His word: It is finished! points to its conclusion, Matthew 27:24.—The veil, the type of earthly, sinful, mortal human nature, rent,—earth, the theatre of sin, was shattered,—the heathen soldiers (chiefly of the German race, for the Romans had at that time a German legion in Palestine), were deeply impressed by the majesty of Jesus.

Lisco:—Every man mocks in his own way, and hi the terms that come most readily; and so here the scribes revile in the language of Scripture.

Heubner:—He was obedient to the death of the cross.—If Jesus had not trod this path, we had been led to the execution-place of hell.—He was cast out of the city of God, that we might obtain an entrance into the heavenly Jerusalem.—He had carried His cross from youth onwards upon His heart, now He beareth on His shoulders the tree of shame.—If we would have consolation from the cross of Christ, we must determine to enter into the companionship of the cross, by crucifying lusts within, and bearing the cross of shame cast upon us from without.—The highest honor is to bear Christ’s cross.—Golgotha: here the Prince of Life overcame death upon his own territory.—This place was part of the Moriah chain, upon which Isaac was to have been offered up.—The drink: the Christian never betakes himself, when suffering and oppressed with care, to worldly pleasures, sensual enjoyments, intoxication, 1 Timothy 5:23 (the Stoics intoxicated themselves, to deaden their pains).—The world always gives gall to God’s children; Christ has tasted all this bitterness for us.—Why was this mode of death chosen by Christ? 1. It was the most painful and shameful death; (a) the most painful: the body was stretched out, Psalms 22:18, gaping wounds, thirst, exposure to the wind and changing weather; (b) the most shameful: quite naked, the Roman mode of punishing slaves, accursed of the Jews, Deuteronomy 21:23. Deuteronomy 21:2. The most appropriate for revealing Christ’s glory to contemporaries and to posterity, a lingering and visible dying. 3. He hangs, lifted up on the cross. He draws to Himself the looks of all the world. 4. He hangs there as the atoning Mediator, typified by the paschal lamb and the brazen serpent: (a) upon a tree. The serpent was to be overcome upon a tree, having overcome the first man upon a tree. (b) Suspended between heaven and earth as Mediator, (c) Set in the pillory in the place of men. He took all up with Himself.—Lavater: Jesus Christ upon the cross, Satan’s greatest triumph, Satan’s greatest defeat: 1. The cross, expressive symbol of self-denial, of self-sacrificing love; 2. the greatest of God’s wonders, the mystery of all mysteries, the holy symbol (the cross in the heavens of the Southern Hemisphere).—Naked and poor did Jesus hang upon the cross, indicating that He renounced all possessions of earth, all honor, all rule, stripped Himself entirely, and hung there an offering consecrated to God, which had all its value in itself alone.—The superscription of the cross is: 1. In the meaning of Pilate, an apparent justification of the Jews; 2. according to God’s intention, a punishment of their vain and selfish Messianic expectations; 3. to all time, a declaration of the true, heavenly, kingly dignity of Jesus.—The blasphemy: a High Priest who wishes to destroy God’s temple, a Saviour who does not save Himself, a Son of God who appeared to be forsaken by God on the cross, seems to us self-contradictory; but a High-Priest who removes the shadow to bring in the religion of the Spirit, a Saviour who offers Himself up, a Son of God who is obedient to His Father even unto death, is to the spiritual eye an object worthy of adoration.—They did not know what to reproach Him with, except His piety, His benevolence, His trust in God.—The one incomparable death. His death-hour was the world’s most sacred hour.—The Roman guard: at last the hour of redemption strikes for many a hardened heart, when it acknowledges the Crucified One.—The soldier, despite his rough exterior, has an open, blunt manner, which keeps him, when moved, from concealing the truth or hardening his heart.

Braune:—The darkness ceased not till Jesus died.—Jesus, the light of the world, which shined in darkness, came to keep souls from darkness: He has finished His work; and the token of this completion we have in the expressive sign of the departing darkness, just as the bow of peace stretched a sign of peace over the falling waters of the deluge.—The dead and crucified Redeemer makes light.—We must renounce with Him the darkness of sin and error.—The following is found in Angelus Silesius: Though Christ were born a thousand times in Bethlehem, and not in thee, thou remainest, nevertheless, eternally lost.—If the cross of Golgotha is not erected in thy heart, it cannot deliver thee from the Evil One.—Mark, that it is to thee of no avail that Christ has risen, if thou continuest lying in sin and the bonds of death.

Good Friday.—See Fr. Strauss: Das ev. Kirchenjahr, p. 211; Bobertag: Das ev. Kirchenjahr, p. 150; Brandt: Homilet, Hülfsbuch, 3 Bd., 298; Archœological. The Quadragesima, or the forty days of the passion-week, and of Lent, concludes with the Great Week, ἑβδομὰς μεγάλη, hebdomas magna, Septimana major. During this season, there was divine worship daily, morning and evening, much secret meditation, a strict fast was observed, and acts of beneficence performed. It began upon Palm Sunday (κυριακή s. ἡμέρατῶν βα ῒων), dominica palmarum. Among the holy days of this week, the fifth was specially celebrated, ἡ μεγάλη πέμπτη, feria quinta paschœ, as the commemoration of the last Passover, and the institution of the Lord’s Supper (dies cœnœ Domini). All took part in the holy communion, which in some places was held at night, though this was an unusual time. And then, too, occurred the rite of Washing the Feet, introduced by the lesson from John 13:1-15. The origin of the later designation of Green Thursday [Maundy Thursday], dies viridium, is very obscure. Some deduce it from the custom of eating on that day fresh spring vegetables (probably with reference to the bitter herbs of the Israelitish Passover); others from the passage, Psalms 23:2, the green pasture,80 probably a symbol of the Holy Supper. The sixth day succeeded, παρασκευ ή, ἡ μέρα τοῦ σταυποῦ, dies dominicœ passionis, as a day of humiliation and fasting. The meaning of the German names, Charwoche, Charfreitag (Good Week, Good Friday), is also uncertain; from carus, or χάρις, or the old German form of küren, to choose, or karo, garo, to prepare, to equip; hence=preparation-week, παρασκευή. “The Constit. Apostolicœ; v. 188, forbid any festivals οὐχ ἑορτῆς, ἀλλὰ πένθους, and enjoin the strictest fast, because this was the day of the Lord’s suffering and death.” The texts were in the rule taken from the last section of the Passion-lesson (from the four Gospels), often from John 18:19; sometimes Isaiah 52:13-15. Many preachers had no particular text.

Selections from Sermons

Proclus:—As the whole state mourns when the king dies, so to-day the whole creation puts aside its joyous brightness.—O mystery! Christ to the Jews a stumbling-block, to the Greeks folly, but to us the power of God, etc.—Schweizer:—Simon of Cyrene: Am I still a servant through custom, and through compulsion, or am I filled with the freedom and joy of God’s children?—Ahlfeld:—Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews: 1. A king upon the cross; 2. upon the cross a king.—Schultz:—The redemption which Jesus by His death hath purchased for us.—Gentzken:—What is the cross? 1. A mirror: there thou beholdest thy guilt. 2. A seal of God’s grace and mercy. 3. A temple of virtue.—Theremin:—It is finished: 1. God’s counsel; 2. the work of Jesus’ love; 3. the good works of His people, finished in Him.—Hossbach:—With what consciousness the dying Saviour looked back upon His finished life.—Mazeroll:—Christ’s death, the completion of His work.—Schuderoff:—Jesus’ exaltation in His deepest humiliation.—Hagenbach:—How Jesus manifested Himself even in His sufferings as the Son of God.—The same:—To this very hour does the quiet congregation of the Lord gather together around His cross, amid all the tumult and bustle of this world (the same feelings, duties, consolation).—Harms:—The death of Christ, the chief lesson of faith, and the chief command to duty.—Nitzsch:—Christ’s crucifixion viewed in connection with other acts of the world, and of worldly wisdom.—Palmer:—Jesus in the midst of robbers: in this we have shown: 1. The Lord’s gentleness and love; 2. the Lord’s glory and judicial authority.—Nitzsch:—The contemplation of the dying Lord makes us of a different mind. It changes: 1. Our secure self-righteousness into repentance; 2. our wicked and despairing thoughts into confidence; 3. our repining into a willing endurance of trial, rich in hope.—Dräseke:—Christ’s struggles, and our struggles.—Bobe:—Behold the Lamb of God!—Florey:—Christ upon the cross: 1. His shame is thy honor; 2. His weakness thy strength; 3. His lamentations thy peace; 4. His death thy life, 1 John 1:6; 1 John 1:9; 1 Corinthians 1:30; 2 Timothy 2:11.—A Knapp:—The great sermon for the world which has gone forth from the cross of Christ: 1. What God preached; 2. what the heavens; 3. the earth; 4. the pious; 5. sinners; 6. the dying Jesus.—Hofacker:—The world-atoning death of Christ in its power and effects.—Gaupp:—What testimony the cross gives unto Jesus.—Kapff:—Consider how our atonement is completed through the death of Jesus.

The Seven Last Words.—The consideration of these words comes in more appropriately in the commentary on Luke and John. See Rambach: Betrachtungen über die sieben letzen Worte Jesu, 1726; Arndt: Die sieben Worte Christi am Kreuz, 1840; Braune: Das Evangelium von Jesus Christus, p. 425; Brandt: Homilet. Hülfsbuch, vol. 3 p. 326; Fr. Krummacher: The Suffering Saviour, 1857; Lange: Auswahl von Gast und Gelegenheitspredigten, 2 Ausg. Die sieben letzen Worte, p. 208 sqq.

[This section is so rich and exhaustive that it would be mere repetition to add the practical reflections of the Fathers and the English commentators, whom we are in the habit of consulting and making contributors to the American edition of this work.—P. S.]

Footnotes:

Matthew 27:33; Matthew 27:33.—Γολγοθά. is the prevailing reading. [Other readings are γολλγοθά, γολγοθθά, γολγαθῦν In Luke 23:33 the English Version, following the Vulgate, translated the Greek κρανίον cranium, a hare skull, ints the Latin calvary (calvaria). The popular expression “Mount Calvary” is not warranted by any statement of the Evangelises concerning the place of crucifixion, which was probably a small round and barren elevation of the shape of a skul;—P. S.]

Matthew 27:33; Matthew 27:33.—Lachmann: ὅ ἐστιν κρανίου τό πος λεγό μενος. The reading ὅ is better supported than ὅς and few MSS. omit λεγόμενος Great variety in the readings [In English κρανίου τόπος should be renderer either with the definite article: the place of a skull, as the Authorized Version does in the parallel passages, Mark 15:21 and John 19:17, or without any article: Place of a skull.—P. S.]

Matthew 27:34; Matthew 27:34.—Lachmann reads οῖ̓νον following B., D., K., L., etc.: this is opposed by A. and others, reading ὄξος. Meyer holds the first reading to have been introduced from Mark 15:28. [Cod. Sinait. reads likewise οῖ̓νον, wine, as in Mark 15:23. But the five uncial (Sinait., B., D., K., L.) and the ten cursive MSS., which support this reading, are nearly all Alexandrine. On their side are the Egyptian and the old Latin Versions (the Vulgate: vinum, and hence the Roman Catholic Versions: wine). It is possible that οῖ̓νον was a wilful alteration to harmonize Matthew with Mark. Tischendorf and Alford adhere to the received reading: ὄξος, vinegar. The difference, of course, is only apparent. It was probably sour wine with myrrh, given to criminals to stupefy them.—P. S.]

Matthew 27:35; Matthew 27:35.—All the uncial Codd. [including Cod. Sinait.] omit the reading of the Recepta, from “that it might” to the end of the verse, Δ alone excepted. It is supposed to have been interpolated from John 19:20. [Mill and Wetstein, and all the modern critical editors omit the words in question from ἵνα to κλῆρον Dr. Lange puts them in brackets. Comp. his Exeg. Notes.—P. S.]

Matthew 27:39; Matthew 27:39.—[So Cheke, Campbell, and Scrivener render κινοῦντες. Lange: schüttelten. Norton: nodding, Conant, however, defends wagging as better expressing the contemptuous, scornful motion intended by the Evangelist.— P. S.]

Matthew 27:42; Matthew 27:42.—Βασιλεὺς Ἰσραήλ ἐστιν. Fritzsche and Tischendorf adopt this reading, omitting the preceding εἰ, according to B, D., L., etc. The irony is thus stronger. Εἰ is probably an exegetical addition from Matthew 27:40.

Matthew 27:42; Matthew 27:42.—The reading: πιστεύομεν αὐτῷ, according to Lachmann and his authorities, is stronger [than the text. rec.: πιστεύσομεν αὐτῷ]. The reading: ἐπ̓ αὐτῷ also, is well supported and significant. [Cod. Sinait. reads: ἐπ̓α ὐτ όν—P. S.]

Matthew 27:44; Matthew 27:44.—[Or: upbraided or were upbraiding, Wiclif, Cheke, Doddridge, Campbell, Scrivener; or reproached, Rhemish Version, Conant, and N. T. of the Am. B. U.; or reviled him, Norton. The rendering: cast in his teeth, dates from Tyndale, and was retained in the following revisions, but would hardly be defended now.—P. S.]

Matthew 27:46; Matthew 27:46.—The difference in the mode of writing the Hebrew words is unimportant. See Lachmann and Tischendorf. [The best authorities are in favor of lema instead of lama.—P. S.]

Matthew 27:49; Matthew 27:49.—[This is, in modern English, the corresponding word for σ̓́φες, which must be connected with the following ἴδωμεν without comma. It is the hortatory come or wait now, and not, as is usually supposed, a rebuke: let him alone, as if they intended to stop the man who offered the vinegar. Comp. Mark 15:36, where that person himself utters the words ἄφες ἴδωμεν, in common with the rest. Lange: Lass nur, wir wollen sehen; Luther: Halt, lass sehen; van Ess: Wart! lass sehen; Ewald omits it altogether and translates simply: lass uns sehen. Conant and the Revised N. T. of the Am. Bible Union: Let alone, which invites the same popular misunderstanding as if it meant: Let him alone.—P. S.]

Matthew 27:49; Matthew 27:49.—The addition: ἄλλος δέ λαβών λόγχην, κ.τ.λ., though supported by B., C, L., is here quite out of place, and is an interpolation from John 19:34. [The same addition, from ἄλλος to αῖ̔μα is found in Cod. Sinait., which usually agrees with the Vatican MS.—P. S.]

Matthew 27:50; Matthew 27:50.—[So Middleton, Campbell, Scrivener, Crosby, Conant. Better than expired, as Norton translates. The article in τό πνεῦμα is employed as a possessive pronoun. To give up the ghost, is now used in a low sense.—P. S.]

[54][Meyer: “That Simon became a Christian in consequence of his carrying the cross and his presence at the crucifixion, may be inferred from Mark 15:21.” So also Alford and others.—P. S.]

[55][Hieron. in Matthew 27:33 : “Golgotha, quod est calvariÆ locus. Audivi quemdam exposuisse Calvariœ locum in quo sepultus est Adam, et ideo sic appellatum esse, quia ibi antiqui hominis sit conditum caput....Favorabilis interpretatio et mulcens aurem populi, nec tamen vera. Extra urbem enim et foras portam loca sunt in quibus truncantur capita damnatorum, et Calvariœ, i.e., decollatorum sumsere nomen.”—The ancient Jewish-Christian tradition that Adam was buried where the second Adam died and rose again, is also mentioned by Origen, Tertullian, Athanasius, and Augustine, and turned to practical account. Augustine: “Quia ibi erectus sit medicus, ubi jacebat ægrotus.” Dr. Wordsworth allegorizes on Golgotha (from גָּלַל volvit hence a rolling, and a skull from its roundness), and brings it in connection with the hill Gilgal. Joshua 5:9, where Joshua had his camp and rolled away (גַּלּוֹהִי) the reproach of Egypt. So by our Jesus at Golgotha the shame and guilt of sin was rolled away from the Israel of God; and there was His camp, for He conquered by the cross. Rather far fetched.—P. S.]

[56][So also Reland, Palest, p. 860, Bengel, Winer, Ewald, Meyer, A. Alexander. The objection of Alford and Wordsworth, that no such bill or rock is known to have existed (comp. Stanley, Palestine, p. 454), is hardly valid in view of the hilly and rocky character of Jerusalem and its vicinity. Ewald identifies it with “the hill Gareb,” Jeremiah 31:39; Krafft and Lange with Goath, which was without the city. Williams (Holy City, 2:240) supposes that the rock of Calvary was part of a little swell of the ground forming a somewhat abrupt brow on the west and south sides, which would afford a convenient spot for public execution, as it was sufficiently elevated to raise the sufferers above the gazing crowd —P. S.]

[57][This is hardly of sufficient account. The explanation of Jerome appears to me very doubtful for three reasons: 1. The name would then be not the place of a skull (τόπος κρανίου), still less a skull simply, as in the Hebrew and in the Greek of St. Luke (κρανίον), but the place of skulls (τόπος κρανίων); 2. there is no record that the Jews had a special place for public execution; 3. it is extremely unlikely that a rich man, like Joseph of Arimathea, should have kept a garden in such a place (for the sepulchre of Christ was near the place of crucifixion, John 19:41).—P. S.]

[58][Also John Wilson, Barclay, Bonar, Stewart, Arnold, Meyer, Ewald, Sam. J. Andrews: The Life of our Lord upon the Earth., New York, 1863, p. 560 sqq.. and Arnold, art. in Herzog’s Encyklopädie, vol. 5:307 ff., where the reader will find a summary of the principal arguments on both sides of the question with special reference to Robin son and Williams, as the chief champions of the opposite views. Korte, a German bookseller, who visited Jerusalem, A. D. 1788, at the same time with the learned Pococke, was the first who took a stand against the supposed identity of the spot of the Holy Sepulchre with the place of the crucifixion and sepulchre of our Lord. The late Dr. Robinson, of Union Theol. Seminary, New York, strongly opposes the old tradition, and lays down the general principle “that all ecclesiastical tradition respecting the ancient places in and around Jerusalem and throughout Palestine is of no value; except as far as it is supported by circumstances known from the Scriptures or from other cotemporary testimony” (Bibl. Researches in Palestine, etc., vol. 1 p. 258 and 3 p. 263 of the last Boston edition. Comp. also James Ferguson, art. Jerusalem, in W. Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible, vol. 1 p. 1028 sqq Ritter, Winer, Bartlett, Stanley, and Ellicott, leave the matter doubtful.—P. S.]

[59][Comp. also on the same side Chateaubriand, who led the way in this century in a plausible defence of the old tradition, reasoning mainly a priori that the Christians must have known from the beginning and could never forget the places of Christ’s death and burial (Itinéraire de Paris à Jerusalem, Paris, 1811); Tischendorf (Reise in den Orient, Leipzig, 1846, vol. ii. 17 ff.); Geo. Finley (On the Site of the Holy Sepulchre, London, 1847); Olin; Prime; Lewin (Jerusalem, London, 1861); G. Williams (The Holy City, London, 1845; 2d ed. 1849, 2 vols.). Dr. Alford on Matthew 27:33 does not enter into the merits of the question, but gives it as his opinion that Williams “has made a very strong case for the commonly received site of Calvary and the Sepulchre.” The question is of little practical importance. The main argument in favor of the identity is derived from the unbroken Christian tradition. But while we are reluctant to break with a tradition of such extent, it is repugnant to sound Christian feeling to believe that a spot so often profaned and disgraced by the most unworthy superstitions, impostures, and quarrels of Christian sects, should be actually the sacred spot where the Saviour died for the sins of the race. At all events the testimony of tradition in such a case is not so important as maintained by Williams when he affirms that “the credit of the whole Church for fifteen hundred years is in some measure Involved In its veracity.” The Christian Church never claimed geographical and topographical infallibility, and leaves the question of the holy places open to fair criticism. The Apostles and Evangelists barely allude to the places of Christ’s birth, death, and resurrection. They fixed their eyes upon the great facts themselves, and wershipped the exalted Saviour in heaven, where He lives for ever. It was only since the age of Constantine, in the fourth century, that those localities were abused in the service of an almost idolatrous superstition, yet not without continued protest from many of the wisest and best men of the Church. From the Gospels so much only appears with certainty as to the place of the crucifixion, that it was out of the city, Matthew 28:11; John 19:17; comp. Hebrews 13:12; yet near the city, John 19:20; apparently near a thoroughfare, as may be inferred from Mark 15:29; and that the sepulchre was near the place of the crucifixion, John 19:41, in a garden and hewn in a rock, Matthew 27:60 and the parallel passages.—P. S.]

[60][Or accurately Goah, גֹּעה, the th being added to connect the Hebrew particle of motion,—Goathah. Gesenius derives it from גָּעָה, to low, or moo, as a cow. Hence also the translation of the Targum the heifer’s pool. The Syriac, on the other hand, has leromto, to the eminence, perhaps reading גֹּאָה.—P. S.]

[61][“If the trial of the Lord was at the palace of Herod on Mount Sion, He could not have passed along the Via dolorosa.” Andrews, 1. c p. 534.—P. S.]

[62][There is do necessary contradiction, as asserted by Meyer and Alford, between the “vinegar mingled with gall” of Matthew and the “wine mingled with myrrh” of Mark, since the common wine of the soldiers was little better than vinegar, and since χολή, gall, is used the Septuagint for various kinds of bitter substances. See Winer, sub Essig, vol. 1 p. 349 f.—P. S.]

[63][There were three forms of the cross: 1. Crux immissa or capitata, a transverse beam crossing a perpendicular one at some distance from the top,=+. According to tradition this was the form of the Saviour’s cross, which is thus commonly represented on ancient coins and in modern pictures of the crucifixion. There is no proof of this, but it appears probable from the fact that the “title” was placed over the head. The so-called Greek cross is a form of the crux immissa, where the two beams cross each other in the middle, and the four arms are of equal length. 2. Crux commissa, a transverse beam placed on the top of a perpendicular one, resembling the letter T. 3. Crux decussata, or St. Andrew’s cross, like the letter X. The cross which appeared to Constantine, was of this form, with the Greek letter R in it, so as to represent the first two letters of the word Christos= See pictures of coins of Constantine in Baronius’ Annales ad ann. p. 312; in Münter’s Sinnbilder der alten Christen, p. 86 sqq., and the second volume of my Church History, p. 27 sq.—P. S.]

[64][This needs explanation. The projection on the middle of the larger beam, on which the sufferer sat, a wooden pin called sedile (ἐφ̓ ῷ̔ ἐποχοῦνται οἱ οταυρούμενοι, Justin Mart Dial. c. Tryph. p. 818), was rather a relief, and prevented the weight of the whole body from falling upon the arms, which otherwise would soon have been torn from the nails. But in protracting the sufferings, it may be said to have been a chief source of pain.—P. S.]

[65][Crucifixion was abolished as a punishment by Constantine, the first Christian emperor, no doubt under the influence of the humane spirit of Christianity, which in this and many other features improved the Roman legislation, first indirectly and then directly, from the time of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius (although these emperors were heathen and persecutors) to Justinian. Comp. the writer’s Church History, vol. ii. (now in course of publication) § 18, p. 107 ff.—P. S.]

[66][The passage of Plautus alluded to above, reads thus: “Ego dabo ei talentum, primus qui in crucem excucurrerit, sed ea lege, ut offigantur bis pedes, bis brachia.” Here the only thing extraordinary is the repetition (bis), while the nailing of the feet itself is supposed to be the usual method. Each foot was probably nailed to the cross separately, and not both by one nail. In earlier pictures of the crucifixion, Christ was attached to the cross by three or four nails indifferently. Early tradition speaks of four nails. After the thirteenth century the practice prevailed of representing the feet as lying one over the other and both penetrated by only one nail. It is possible that the crown of thorns remained upon His head as represented by painters, since Matthew and Mark mention the removal of the purple robe by the soldiers, but not of the crown. See Friedlieb, Archæol. p. 145, and Andrews, Life of Christ, p. 538—P. S.]

[67][Not: Matthew 27:17, as in the Edinb. edition, which follows the German quotations of Psalms here and elsewhere, not knowing that the German, like the Hebrew Bible, treats the inscriptions of the Psalms as part of the text and numbers them as Matthew 27:1, while the Authorized English Version separates them from the text in smaller type. Hence all the German references to Psalms, which have an inscription, must be changed to suit the English Bible. The important words referred to above are: they pierced my hands and my feet.—P. S.]

[68][Dr. Christian Friedrich G. Richter. born 1676, died 1711, was a pious physician of the Orphan House in Halle, and the author of thirty-three excellent German hymns full of unction, several of which have passed into common use in public worship (e. g., Freuse such, erlöste Brüder; O Lisbe, die den Himmel hat serrissen; Es kostet viel, ein Christ nu sein; Es ist nicht schwer ein Christ su sein; Mein Salomo, dein freundliches Regieren; Es glünset der Christen inwendiges Leben; 0 wie selig sind die Seelen, He thus describes the physical sufferings of the crucifixion: 1. On account of the unnatural and immovable position of the body and the violent extens on of the arms, the least motion produced the most painful sensation all over the body, but especially on the lacerated back and the pierced members. 2. The nails caused constantly increasing pain on the most sensitive parts of the hands and feet. 3. Inflammation set in at the pierced members and wherever the circulation of the blood was obstructed by the violent tension of the body, and increased the agony and an intolerable thirst. 4. The blood rushed to the head and produced the most violent headache. 5. The blood in the lungs accumulated, pressing the heart, swelling all the veins, and caused nameless anguish. Loss of blood through the open wounds would have shortened the pain, but the blood clotted and ceased flowing. Death generally set in slowly, the muscles, veins, and nerves gradually growing stiff, and the vital powers sinking from exhaustion.—But all the ordinary sufferings of crucifixion give us but a faint idea of the sufferings of the sinless Godman and Redeemer of the world, which stand out solitary and alone,—the unexhausted and inexhaustible theme for meditation, gratitude, and worship to all ages and generations of the redeemed. See the excellent remarks of Dr. Lange in the text. Even the infidel Rousseau exclaimed: If Socrates lived and died like a sage, Jesus of Nazareth lived and died like a God.—P. S.]

[69][I add the original of the remarkable passage of Phlegon, who was a freedman of the heathen emperor Hadrian, and wrote a Sylloge Olympionicarum et Chronicorum: Τῷ Δ ἔτει τῆς ΣΒ ὀλυμπιάδος ἐγένετο ἔκλειψις π̔λίου μεγίστη τῶν ἐγνωσμένων πρότερον, καὶ νύξ ὥρα ἕκτῃ τῆς ἡμέρας ἐγένετο, ὥστε καὶ . Σεισμός τε μέγας κατὰ Βιθυνίαν γενόμενος τὰ πολλὰ Νικαίας κατεστρέψατο. The same passage is quoted by Julius Africanus, a. d. 222, In Syncellus’ Chron. 257, Ven. 322, Par.: φλέγων ἱστορεῖ ἐπὶ Τιβερίου Καίσαρας ἐν πανσελήνῳ (in the middle of the month) ἔκλειψιν ἡλίου γεγονέναι τελείαν . Another heathen historian, Thallus, as quoted by Julius Africanus, mentions the same eclipse of the sun: τοῦτο τὸ σκότος ἔκλειψιν τοῦ ἡλίου Θάλλος ὰποκαλεῖ ἐν τρίτῃ τῶν ἱστορίων. Eusebius mentions a third authority without naming it. To these testimonies must be added those of Tertullian, Origen, Rufinus, who boldly appeal to the Roman archives for the proof of the eclipse of the sun at the time of the Saviour’s death. See on this whole subject the learned astronomical investigation of Dr. Seyffarth, Chronologia Sacra, Leipzig, 1846, p. 130 ff. and p. 281 ff. Seyffarth, who defends the æra Dionysiaca as correct, both as to the year and day of Christ’s birth, puts this eclipse on the 19th of March, a. d. 33, and regards it both as a natural and as a supernatural phenomenon. He infers this even from Phlegon’s testimony, who says that this eclipse surpassed all others ever seen (μεγίστη τῶν ἐγνωσμένων πρότερον), and yet there can be no greater natural eclipse of the sun than a total eclipse, such as is not unfrequently witnessed in every generation. But the majority of orthodox commentators regard it as a purely supernatural event on account of the time of the passover in the full moon, when the sun cannot be obscured by the moon. So also Meyer, Stier, Alford, Wordsworth, who calls it a σκότυς θεοποίητον, Andrews, and Nast. At all events, the unanimous testimony of all the synoptical Gospels must silence all question as to the universal belief of this darkness as a fact. The omission of it in John’s Gospel is of no more weight than the numerous other instances of such omission. The darkness was designed to exhibit the amazement of nature and of the God of nature at the wickedness of the crucifixion of Him who is the light of the world and the sun of righteousness.—P. S.]

[70][This passage is entirely mistranslated in the Edinb. edition, so as to give the very opposite sense. I compared Meyer’s fourth edition, and gave his view more fully than Dr. Lange who quotes from the third edition. Alford confines the expression to that part of the globe over which it was day, but sees no strong objection to any limitation, provided the fact itself, as happening at Jerusalem, is distinctly recognized.—P. S.]

[71][Wordsworth infers from this an argument for the use of vernacular Scriptures.—P. S.]

[72][So Alford: “intended mockery, as οῦ̔τος clearly indicates.” Also Alexander, Ellicott, Andrews, Owen, Crosby, Stier, Nast, etc.—P. S.]

[73][Not: Matthew 27:6, as the Edinb. edition has it, slavishly following the German here and in similar quotations, without referring to the passage, and ignorant of the difference of the German and English Bibles in numbering the verses of Psalms, which arises from a different view of the inscription in its relation to the Psalm. The passage here meant is: “Into thy hand I commit my spirit: thou hast redeemed, me, O Lord God of truth.” These were the dying words of Luther and of other great men. The τετέλεσται of John was said before the words recorded by Luke: Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit, and the latter are implied in the παρέδωκεν τὸ πνεῦμα with which John relates the death of the Saviour immediately after the exclamation: It is finished! The connection must be plain to every one, and there is no excuse for Meyer’s arbitrary assumption of the unhistorical character of the dying exclamation in Luke.—P. S.]

[74][Origen likewise referred it to the outer veil, and thought that the inner veil would not be taken away till that which is perfect is come, 1 Corinthians 13:10.—P. S.]

[75][The Edinb. edition has just the reverse: “the death of the world.”—P. S.]

[76][The fathers, however, correctly assumed that the dead did not actually arise till after the resurrection of Christ. Jerome in loc.: “Non antea resurrexerunt, guam Dominus resurgeret, ut esset primogenitus resurrectionis ex mortuis.”—P. S.]

[77][The Edinb. translation substitutes for culmination, the doubtful issue, for decision (Entscheidung), dissolution, and for cry of triumph (der Siegesschrei, viz.: It is finished!), the death-cry!—P. S.]

[78][In German an untranslatable rhyme: Christi Geduld, der Menschen Schuld, Gottes Huld.—P. S.]

[79][The Edinb. edition has here: Mary, mistaking the German Moria for Maria, and this in spite of the connection, which makes it sufficiently plain that Mount Moriah is intended, as the seat of the temple, which represents the types and shadows of the Jewish worship.—P. S.]

[80][The Edinb. edition has instead: the green ear! How the German: grüne Aue, could be thus mistaken, especially in connection with the quotation of Psalms 23:2, I am unable to explain. Is it possible that the translator mistook Aue for Aehre!—P. S.]