23. And thou, Capernaum--(See on [Mt 4:13]).
which art exalted unto heaven--Not even of Chorazin and Bethsaida is this said. For since at Capernaum Jesus had His stated abode during the whole period of His public life which He spent in Galilee, it was the most favored spot upon earth, the most exalted in privilege.
shall be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom--destroyed for its pollutions.
it would have remained until this day--having done no such violence to conscience, and so incurred unspeakably less guilt.
24. But I say unto you, That it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee--"It has been indeed," says Dr. Stanley, "more tolerable, in one sense, in the day of its earthly judgment, for the land of Sodom than for Capernaum; for the name, and perhaps even the remains of Sodom are still to be found on the shores of the Dead Sea; while that of Capernaum has, on the Lake of Gennesareth, been utterly lost." But the judgment of which our Lord here speaks is still future; a judgment not on material cities, but their responsible inhabitants--a judgment final and irretrievable.
25. At that time Jesus answered and said--We are not to understand by this, that the previous discourse had been concluded, and that this is a record only of something said about the same period. For the connection is most close, and the word "answered"--which, when there is no one to answer, refers to something just before said, or rising in the mind of the speaker in consequence of something said--confirms this. What Jesus here "answered" evidently was the melancholy results of His ministry, lamented over in the foregoing verses. It is as if He had said, "Yes; but there is a brighter side to the picture; even in those who have rejected the message of eternal life, it is the pride of their own hearts only which has blinded them, and the glory of the truth does but the more appear in their inability to receive it. Nor have all rejected it even here; souls thirsting for salvation have drawn water with joy from the wells of salvation; the weary have found rest; the hungry have been filled with good things, while the rich have been sent empty away."
I thank thee--rather, "I assent to thee." But this is not strong enough. The idea of "full" or "cordial" concurrence is conveyed by the preposition. The thing expressed is adoring acquiescence, holy satisfaction with that law of the divine procedure about to be mentioned. And as, when He afterwards uttered the same words, He "exulted in spirit" (see on [Lu 10:21]), probably He did the same now, though not recorded.
O Father, Lord of heaven and earth--He so styles His Father here, to signify that from Him of right emanates all such high arrangements.
because thou hast hid these things--the knowledge of these saving truths.
from the wise and prudent--The former of these terms points to the men who pride themselves upon their speculative or philosophical attainments; the latter to the men of worldly shrewdness--the clever, the sharp-witted, the men of affairs. The distinction is a natural one, and was well understood. (See [1Co 1:19], &c.). But why had the Father hid from such the things that belonged to their peace, and why did Jesus so emphatically set His seal to this arrangement? Because it is not for the offending and revolted to speak or to speculate, but to listen to Him from whom we have broken loose, that we may learn whether there be any recovery for us at all; and if there be, on what principles--of what nature--to what ends. To bring our own "wisdom and prudence" to such questions is impertinent and presumptuous; and if the truth regarding them, or the glory of it, be "hid" from us, it is but a fitting retribution, to which all the right-minded will set their seal along with Jesus.
hast revealed them unto babes--to babe-like men; men of unassuming docility, men who, conscious that they know nothing, and have no right to sit in judgment on the things that belong to their peace, determine simply to "hear what God the Lord will speak." Such are well called "babes." (See [He 5:13]; [1Co 13:11]; , &c.).
26. Even so, Father; for so it seemed good--the emphatic and chosen term for expressing any object of divine complacency; whether Christ Himself (see on [Mt 3:17]), or God's gracious eternal arrangements (see on [Php 2:13]).
in thy sight--This is just a sublime echo of the foregoing words; as if Jesus, when He uttered them, had paused to reflect on it, and as if the glory of it--not so much in the light of its own reasonableness as of God's absolute will that so it should be--had filled His soul.
27. All things are delivered unto me of my Father--He does not say, They are revealed--as to one who knew them not, and was an entire stranger to them save as they were discovered to Him--but, They are "delivered over," or "committed," to Me of My Father; meaning the whole administration of the kingdom of grace. So in [Joh 3:35], "The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into His hand" (see on [Joh 3:35]). But though the "all things" in both these passages refer properly to the kingdom of grace, they of course include all things necessary to the full execution of that trust--that is, unlimited power. (So [Mt 28:18]; [Joh 17:2]; [Ep 1:22]).
and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will--willeth
to reveal him--What a saying is this, that "the Father and the Son are mutually and exclusively known to each other!" A higher claim to equality with the Father cannot be conceived. Either, then, we have here one of the revolting assumptions ever uttered, or the proper divinity of Christ should to Christians be beyond dispute. "But, alas for me!" may some burdened soul, sighing for relief, here exclaim. If it be thus with us, what can any poor creature do but lie down in passive despair, unless he could dare to hope that he may be one of the favored class "to whom the Son is willing to reveal the Father." But nay. This testimony to the sovereignty of that gracious "will," on which alone men's salvation depends, is designed but to reveal the source and enhance the glory of it when once imparted--not to paralyze or shut the soul up in despair. Hear, accordingly, what follows:
28. Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest--Incomparable, ravishing sounds these--if ever such were heard in this weary, groaning world! What gentleness, what sweetness is there in the very style of the invitation--"Hither to Me"; and in the words, "All ye that toil and are burdened," the universal wretchedness of man is depicted, on both its sides--the active and the passive forms of it.
29. Take my yoke upon you--the yoke of subjection to Jesus.
and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls--As Christ's willingness to empty Himself to the uttermost of His Father's requirements was the spring of ineffable repose to His own Spirit, so in the same track does He invite all to follow Him, with the assurance of the same experience.
30. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light--Matchless paradox, even among the paradoxically couched maxims in which our Lord delights! That rest which the soul experiences when once safe under Christ's wing makes all yokes easy, all burdens light.
Chapter 12
Mt 12:1-8. Plucking Corn Ears on the Sabbath Day. ( = Mr 2:23-28; Lu 6:1-5)
The season of the year when this occurred is determined by the event itself. Ripe corn ears are found in the fields only just before harvest. The barley harvest seems clearly intended here, at the close of our March and beginning of our April. It coincided with the Passover season, as the wheat harvest with Pentecost. But in Luke ([Lu 6:1]) we have a still more definite note of time, if we could be certain of the meaning of the peculiar term which he employs to express it. "It came to pass (he says) on the sabbath, which was the first-second," for that is the proper rendering of the word, and not "the second sabbath after the first," as in our version. Of the various conjectures what this may mean, that of Scaliger is the most approved, and, as we think, the freest from difficulty, namely, the first sabbath after the second day of the Passover; that is, the first of the seven sabbaths which were to be reckoned from the second day of the Passover, which was itself a sabbath, until the next feast, the feast of Pentecost ([Le 23:15], ; [De 16:9], ) In this case, the day meant by the Evangelist is the first of those seven sabbaths intervening between Passover and Pentecost. And if we are right in regarding the "feast" mentioned in [Joh 5:1] as a Passover, and consequently the second during our Lord's public ministry (see on [Joh 5:1]), this plucking of the ears of corn must have occurred immediately after the scene and the discourse recorded in [Joh 5:19-47], which, doubtless, would induce our Lord to hasten His departure for the north, to avoid the wrath of the Pharisees, which He had kindled at Jerusalem. Here, accordingly, we find Him in the fields--on His way probably to Galilee.
1. At that time Jesus went on the sabbath day through the corn--"the cornfields" ([Mr 2:23]; [Lu 6:1]).
and his disciples were an hungered--not as one may be before his regular meals; but evidently from shortness of provisions: for Jesus defends their plucking the corn-ears and eating them on the plea of necessity.
and began to pluck the ears of corn, and to eat--"rubbing them in their hands" ([Lu 6:1]).
2. But when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto him, Behold, thy disciples do that which is not lawful to do upon the sabbath day--The act itself was expressly permitted ([De 23:25]). But as being "servile work," which was prohibited on the sabbath day, it was regarded as sinful.
3. But he said unto them, Have ye not read--or, as Mark ([Mr 2:25]) has it, "Have ye never read."
what David did when he was an hungered, and they that were with him--([1Sa 21:1-6])
4. How he entered into the house of God, and did eat the showbread, which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them which were with him, but only for the priests?--No example could be more apposite than this. The man after God's own heart, of whom the Jews ever boasted, when suffering in God's cause and straitened for provisions, asked and obtained from the high priest what, according to the law, it was illegal for anyone save the priests to touch. Mark ([Mr 2:26]) says this occurred "in the days of Abiathar the high priest." But this means not during his high priesthood--for it was under that of his father Ahimelech--but simply, in his time. Ahimelech was soon succeeded by Abiathar, whose connection with David, and prominence during his reign, may account for his name, rather than his father's, being here introduced. Yet there is not a little confusion in what is said of these priests in different parts of the Old Testament. Thus he is called both the son of the father of Ahimelech ([1Sa 22:20]; [2Sa 8:17]); and Ahimelech is called Ahiah ([1Sa 14:3]), and Abimelech ([1Ch 18:16]).
5. Or have ye not read in the law, how that on the sabbath days the priests in the temple profane the sabbath--by doing "servile work."
and are blameless?--The double offerings required on the sabbath day ([Nu 28:9]) could not be presented, and the new-baked showbread ([Le 24:5]; [1Ch 9:32]) could not be prepared and presented every sabbath morning, without a good deal of servile work on the part of the priests; not to speak of circumcision, which, when the child's eighth day happened to fall on a sabbath, had to be performed by the priests on that day. (See on [Joh 7:22], ).
6. But I say unto you, That in this place is one greater than the temple--or rather, according to the reading which is best supported, "something greater." The argument stands thus: "The ordinary rules for the observance of the sabbath give way before the requirements of the temple; but there are rights here before which the temple itself must give way." Thus indirectly, but not the less decidedly, does our Lord put in His own claims to consideration in this question--claims to be presently put in even more nakedly.
7. But if ye had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice--([Ho 6:6]; [Mi 6:6-8], &c.). See on [Mt 9:13].
ye would not have condemned the guiltless--that is, Had ye understood the great principle of all religion, which the Scripture everywhere recognizes--that ceremonial observances must give way before moral duties, and particularly the necessities of nature--ye would have refrained from these captious complaints against men who in this matter are blameless. But our Lord added a specific application of this great principle to the law of the sabbath, preserved only in Mark: "And he said unto them, the sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath" ([Mr 2:27]). A glorious and far-reaching maxim, alike for the permanent establishment of the sabbath and the true freedom of its observance.
8. For the Son of man is Lord even of the sabbath day--In what sense now is the Son of man Lord of the sabbath day? Not surely to abolish it--that surely were a strange lordship, especially just after saying that it was made or instituted for MAN--but to own it, to interpret it, to preside over it, and to ennoble it, by merging it in the "Lord's Day" ([Re 1:10]), breathing into it an air of liberty and love necessarily unknown before, and thus making it the nearest resemblance to the eternal sabbatism.
Mt 12:9-21. The Healing of a Withered Hand on the Sabbath Day and Retirement of Jesus to Avoid Danger. ( = Mr 3:1-12; Lu 6:6-11)
Healing of a Withered Hand ([Mt 12:9-14]).
9. And when he was departed thence--but "on another sabbath" ([Lu 6:6]).
he went into their synagogue--"and taught." He had now, no doubt, arrived in Galilee; but this, it would appear, did not occur at Capernaum, for after it was over, He "withdrew Himelf," it is said "to the sea" ([Mr 3:7]), whereas Capernaum was at the sea.
And, behold, there was a man which had his hand withered--disabled by paralysis (as in [1Ki 13:4]). It was his right hand, as Luke ([Lu 6:6]) graphically notes.
And they asked him, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath days? that they might accuse him--Mark and Luke ([Mr 3:2]; [Lu 6:7]) say they "watched Him whether He would heal on the sabbath day." They were now come to the length of dogging His steps, to collect materials for a charge of impiety against Him. It is probable that it was to their thoughts rather than their words that Jesus addressed Himself in what follows.
11. And he said unto them, What man shall there be among you that shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out?
12. How much then is a man better than a sheep?--Resistless appeal! "A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast" ([Pr 12:10]), and would instinctively rescue it from death or suffering on the sabbath day; how much more his nobler fellow man! But the reasoning, as given in the other two Gospels, is singularly striking: "But He knew their thoughts, and said to the man which had the withered hand, Rise up, and stand forth in the midst. And he arose and stood forth. Then said Jesus unto them, I will ask you one thing: Is it lawful on the sabbath days to do good, or to do evil? to save life or to destroy it?" ([Lu 6:8], ), or as in Mark ([Mr 3:4]), "to kill?" He thus shuts them up to this startling alternative: "Not to do good, when it is in the power of our hand to do it, is to do evil; not to save life, when we can, is to kill"--and must the letter of the sabbath rest be kept at this expense? This unexpected thrust shut their mouths. By this great ethical principle our Lord, we see, held Himself bound, as man. But here we must turn to Mark, whose graphic details make the second Gospel so exceedingly precious. "When He had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts, He saith unto the man" ([Mr 3:5]). This is one of the very few passages in the Gospel history which reveal our Lord's feelings. How holy this anger was appears from the "grief" which mingled with it at "the hardness of their hearts."
13. Then saith he to the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it forth--the power to obey going forth with the word of command.