Bible Commentaries

XVII.

(1) After six days.—St. Luke’s “about eight days” (Luke 9:28) may be noted as an example of the mode of reckoning which spoke of the interval between our Lord’s death and resurrection, about six-and-thirty hours, as three days.

Peter, James, and John.—The three retain their position, as in the raising of Jairus’s daughter, as the elect among the elect. (Comp. also Matthew 26:37; Mark 13:3.) Looking to the grouping of the Apostles it might have seemed natural that Andrew also should have been there, but his character seems to have been always retiring, and, it may be, was wanting in the intensity of faith which belonged to his brother, the Rock-Apostle, and to the two Sons of Thunder.

Into an high mountain.—A tradition of uncertain date fixes on Tabor as the scene of the Transfiguration, but this was probably due to the conspicuous position of that mountain, as it rises abruptly from the plain of Esdraelon. The Gospel narratives leave the locality altogether uncertain, but as Cæsarea Philippi was the last place mentioned, and a journey through Galilee follows (Mark 9:30), it is more probable that the scene is to be found on one of the heights of Hermon. Tabor, it may be added, was crowned with a fortress, which at this time was likely to be occupied, and this is obviously inconsistent with the solitude which the narrative implies.

(2) And was transfigured before them.—Elsewhere in the New Testament (with the exception of the parallel, Mark 9:2) the word is used only in its spiritual sense, and is there rendered “transformed.” St. Luke does not use the word, but describes the change which it implies, “the fashion of His countenance became other than it had been” (Luke 9:29). He adds the profoundly significant fact that this was while He was in the act of prayer. It was in that act of communion with His Father that the divine glory flowed out into visible brightness. Transcendent as the manifestation was, it has its lower analogies in the radiance which made the face of Stephen “as the face of an angel” (Acts 6:15); yet more in the glory which shone on the face of Moses when he came down from the mount (Exodus 34:29); in some faint measure, in what may be called the metamorphic power of prayer which invests features that have no form or comeliness with the rapture of devout ecstacy. And it is no over-bold speculation to see in the fact thus noted that which gives its meaning to the Transfiguration as a stage in the training of the disciples. Prayers like those which were offered for Peter that his “faith might not fail” (Luke 22:31-32) at least suggest something as to the intercession of the Master for His disciples, and this, we must remember, was a crisis in their spiritual history. They had risen to the highest faith; they had been offended by the announcement of His rejection, His sufferings, His death. Something was needed which might sustain their faith, on which they might look back in after years as the earnest of a future glory. It was well for them that they should, at least once in His life of lowliness, gaze on the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father (John 1:14), and feel that they were not “following cunningly-devised fables,” but had been “eye-witnesses of His majesty” (2Peter 1:16). To those who believe that our Lord’s human nature was in very deed, sin only excepted, like unto ours, it will not seem over-bold to suggest that for Him too this might have been a time of conflict and of trial, a renewal of the Temptation in the wilderness (Matthew 16:23), an anticipation of that of the agony of Gethsemane, and that even for Him, in his humanity, there might be in the excellent glory and in the voice from heaven the help and comfort which strengthened Him for the cross and passion. Following the narrative in its details, we may trace its several stages in some such sequence as follows:—After six days, spent apparently with their Lord in the mountain district near Cæsarea Philippi, but not in the work of preaching or working miracles, the rest of the disciples are left at the foot of the mountain, and the three follow Him, as the evening closes, to its summit. There, as afterwards in Gethsemane, He withdraws from them “about a stone’s throw” (Luke 22:41), and they “watch with Him.” and gaze on Him, as He, standing or kneeling (the first was, we must remember, the more common attitude of prayer, Luke 18:11), intercedes for them and for Israel, and, we may add, for mankind. And then, as they gaze, form and features shine with a new glory, bright as the sun, as though the Shechinah cloud had wrapt Him round. Even His garments are “white as the light,” “white as snow” (the reading in St. Mark is doubtful, but if genuine the snows of Hermon may have suggested the comparison), as St. Mark adds with his usual descriptive vividness, “so as no fuller on earth can whiten them.” Nothing, however, it may be added, suggests the vision of three forms floating in the air with which Raffaelle’s glorious picture has made us familiar.

(3) Moses and Elias.—The identification of the forms which the disciples saw was, we may well believe, intuitive. If we accept the narrative as a whole, it is legitimate to assume that, in the state of consciousness to which they had been raised, they were capable of a spiritual illumination which would reveal to them who they were who were thus recognising their Master’s work and doing homage to His majesty. There was, it is obvious, a singular fitness in each case. One was the great representative of the Law, which was a “school master” or “servant-tutor” (see Note on Galatians 3:24) leading men to Christ, the other of the whole goodly fellowship of the prophets. Of one it had been said that a “Prophet like unto him” should come in the latter days (Deuteronomy 18:18), to whom men should hearken; of the other, that he should come again to “turn the hearts of the fathers to the children” (Malachi 4:5). The close of the ministry of each was not after the “common death of all men.” No man knew of the sepulchre of Moses (Deuteronomy 34:6), and Elijah had passed away in the chariots and horses of fire (2Kings 2:11). Both were associated in men’s minds with the glory of the kingdom of the Christ. The Jerusalem Targum on Exodus 12 connects the coming of Moses with that of the Messiah. Another Jewish tradition predicts his appearance with that of Elijah. Their presence now was an attestation that their work was over, and that the Christ had come.

Talking with him.—St. Luke (Luke 9:31) adds the subject of their communing: “They spake of His decease which He should accomplish at Jerusalem.” So far as the disciples then entered into the meaning of what they heard, or afterwards recalled it, it was a witness that the spirits of the lawgiver and the prophet accepted the sufferings and the death which had shaken the faith of the disciples as the necessary conditions of the Messianic kingdom. It is significant that the word for “decease” (exodos) reappears in this sense once only in the New Testament, and then in close connection with a reference to the Transfiguration (2Peter 1:15).

(4) Lord, it is good for us to be here.—For “Lord” St. Luke has “Master;” St. Mark (giving. probably, as elsewhere, the very word uttered) “Rabbi.” It is not easy to trace the thoughts that passed rapidly through the soul of the disciple in that moment of amazement. Afterwards—if we may judge from St. Mark’s account (Mark 9:6), “he knew not what to answer, for they were sore afraid,” or St. Luke’s (Luke 9:33) “not knowing what he said”—he could hardly explain them himself. We may venture to see in the very naïveté of the words a touch of originality and unexpectedness which, as far as it goes, attests the truthfulness of the narrative. What the words seem to imply is:—(1) An abounding joy at being thus brought into a glory which fulfilled the Apostle’s brightest hopes. It was, indeed, good to be thus carried, as it were, into Paradise, or the third heaven, and to hear there words which human lips might not reproduce. (2) His thoughts travelled back to the records of the Exodus, when the Lord talked with Moses in the tabernacle (Exodus 33:7-10). What if like tabernacles could now be made for those three glorious forms, that all Israel might come and gaze, and hear and worship? Would not this be a better consummation than the shame and death at Jerusalem? Would it not meet the belief of the scribes and of the people that “Elias must first come”?

(5) A bright cloud overshadowed them—i.e., our Lord, Moses, and Elias. To the disciples this would, we cannot doubt, recall the “cloudy pillar” which had descended on the first tabernacle (Exodus 33:9), the “cloud that filled the house of the Lord on the dedication of the Temple” (1Kings 8:10). It was, in later Jewish language, the Shechinah, or abiding presence of Jehovah—the very form of the word connects it with both the Hebrew (mishkan) and the Greek (skené) words for tabernacle—which was the symbol that He was with His people. The Targums, or Paraphrases, of the Law and Prophets which were then current, had used the word as a synonym for the divine name. Where the Hebrew text had had “I will dwell in thee,” the Targum of Jonathan had “I will make my Shechinah to dwell” (Zechariah 2:10; Zechariah 8:3). Its appearance at this moment, followed by the voice out or the cloud, was a witness that no tabernacle made with hands was now needed, that the humanity of Christ was the true tabernacle of God (comp. Note on John 1:14), and that it was in this sense true that “the tabernacle of God was with men” (Revelation 21:3), and that He would dwell with them.

This is my beloved Son.—The words were in substance the same as those heard at the baptism of our Lord (see Note on Matthew 3:17), but the difference in their form is suggestive. Then they were addressed to the human consciousness of the Son of Man, as declaring to Him the greatness of His being. Now they come addressed as to the disciples, and in close connection with the “decease” which was to be accomplished at Jerusalem. It was, if we may so speak, because the Son of Man became obedient unto death that He was showing Himself worthy of the Father’s love. In the hour of darkness and seeming failure, and agony and death, He was “satisfying” His Father’s “good pleasure,” and accepted by Him as the one perfect sacrifice. And so the command, “Hear ye Him,” gained a new significance. Not the traditions of the elders, or the doctrines of the scribes and Pharisees, not even the teaching of Moses and Elias, of the Law and of the Prophets, but the words of the Son of Man, were henceforth to command their allegiance, and to be the guide of their faith and of their lives, for of them only it was true that the Father was revealed fully in them (Hebrews 1:1-2), and that they should never pass away (Matthew 24:35).

(6) When the disciples heard it.—At this point St. Matthew’s narrative is the fullest. The three disciples shrink in fear, like that of the Israelites at the brightness of Moses’ face (Exodus 34:30), like that of the priests in the Temple who could not stand to minister because of the cloud (1Kings 8:11), and lie prostrate on the ground in speechless terror. They have seen the glory of the Lord: can they hear His voice and live?

(7) Jesus came and touched them.—Act and words were both expressive of an almost brotherly tenderness. The touch of the hand they had so often grasped—as, e.g., in Matthew 14:31—the familiar words that had brought courage to their fainting hearts in. the hour of danger (Matthew 14:27), these recall them again to the realities of life. They need not fear the glory of the divine Presence, for He is with them still as its most perfect manifestation.

(8) They saw no man, save Jesus only.—The words, following as they do upon the “Be not afraid,” imply a marked contrast to Peter’s rash utterance. It was not “good” for frail men such as they were to tarry long in the immediate glory of the Presence. It was a relief to see “Jesus only” with them, as they had been wont to see Him. So in our own lives, moments of spiritual ecstasy are few and far between, and it is good for us that it should be so, and that we should be left to carry the fragrance and power of their memory into the work of our common life, and the light of our common day.

It may not be amiss to say a few words as to the credibility of a narrative which is in itself so wonderful, and has been exposed so often to the attacks of a hostile criticism. And (1) it is obvious that what is commonly known as the rationalistic method of interpretation is altogether inapplicable here. The narrative of the Evangelists cannot by any artifice be reduced to a highly-coloured version of some natural phenomenon falling under known laws. If accepted at all, it must be accepted as belonging to the region of the super natural. (2) The so-called mythical theory, which sees in such narratives the purely legendary after-growth of the dreaming fancies of a later age, is of course possible here, as it is possible wherever the arbitrary criticism which postulates the incredibility of the supernatural chooses to apply it; but it may, at least, be urged against its application in this instance that there was nothing in the Jewish expectations of the Messiah likely to suggest such a legend, and that the circumstances connected with it are such (e.g., its association with our Lord’s sufferings, and the strange, abrupt utterance of Peter) as were hardly likely to suggest themselves either to the popular imagination or to that of an individual mind. (3) The position which it occupies both in our Lord’s ministry and the spiritual training of the disciples, while, on the one hand, it raises the Transfiguration above the region of a mere marvel, is, it may be urged again, such as was not likely to occur to a simple lover of the marvellous. (4) Lastly, the language of John 1:14 and (though with less certainty, owing to the doubt which hangs over the genuineness of that Epistle) of 2Peter 1:16, may surely be allowed some evidential weight, as being of the nature of allusive reference to a fact which the writers take for granted as generally known. Over and above St. Peter’s direct reference, we note the recurrence of the words “decease,” “tabernacle,” as suggested by it (2Peter 1:13; 2Peter 1:15).