Chú giải Kinh Thánh

Matthew 26:42 ff. Πάλιν ἐκ δευτέρου] a well-known pleonasm. John 21:15; Acts 10:15. Comp. δεύτερον πάλιν, Plat. Polit. p. 260 D, αὖθις πάλιν (p. 282 C), and such like. We sometimes find even a threefold form: αὖθις αὖ πάλιν, Soph. Phil. 940, O. C. 1421.

εἰ] not quandoquidem (Grotius), but: if. The actual feelings of Jesus are expressed in all their reality in the form of acquiescence in that condition of impossibility (οὐ δύναται) as regards the divine purpose which prevents the thing from being otherwise.

τοῦτο] without τὸ ποτήριον (see the critical remarks): this, which I am called upon to drink.

ἐὰν μὴ αὐτὸ πίω] without my having drunk it; if it cannot pass from me unless it is drunk.

γενηθήτω τὸ θέλημά σου] this is the ὑπακοὴ μεχρὶ θανάτου σταυροῦ, Php 2:8; Romans 5:19. Observe in this second prayer the climax of resignation and submission; His own will, as mentioned in Matthew 26:39, is completely silenced. Mark’s account is here less precise.

Matthew 26:43. ἦσαν γὰρ, κ.τ.λ.] for their eyes (see on Matthew 8:3) were heavy (weighed down with drowsiness). Comp. Eur. Alc. 385.

Matthew 26:44. ἐκ τρίτου] belongs to προσηύξ. Comp. 2 Corinthians 12:8.

τ. αὐτ. λόγ.] as is given at Matthew 26:42.

Matthew 26:45. The annoyance at finding the disciples asleep (Matthew 26:40 : οὕτως οὐκ ἰσχύσατε, κ.τ.λ.) now deepens into an intensely painful irony: “sleep on now, and have out your rest” (the emphasis is not on τὸ λοιπόν, but on καθεύδετε κ. ἀναπ.)! He had previously addressed them with a γρηγορεῖτε, but to how little purpose! and, accordingly, He now turns to them with the sadly ironical abandonment of one who has no further hope, and tells them to do quite the reverse sleep on, etc. Comp. Euthymius Zigabenus, Beza, Münster, Erasmus, Calvin, Er. Schmid, Maldonatus, Bengel, Jansen, Michaelis, Fritzsche, Keim, Ewald. On λοιπόν and τὸ λοιπόν, for the rest of the time, in the sense of jam (Vulgate), henceforward (Plat. Prot. p. 321 C), see Schaefer, ad Long. p. 400; Jacobs, ad Philostr. p. 663. Comp. on Acts 27:20. To object, as is frequently done, that the ironical view does not accord with the frame of mind in which Jesus must have been, is to fail to appreciate aright the nature of the situation. Irony is not inconsistent even with the deepest anguish of soul, especially in cases where such anguish is also accompanied with such clearness of judgment as we find in the present instance; and consider what it was for Jesus to see such an overpowering tendency to sleep on the part of His disciples, and to find everything so different from what He needed, and might reasonably have expected! Winer, p. 292 [E. T. 391], following Chrysostom, Theophylact (who, however, admits the plausibility of the ironical view), and Grotius, excludes the idea of irony, and interprets thus: “sleep on, then, as you are doing, and take your rest,” which words are supposed to be spoken permissively in accordance with the calm, mild, resigned spirit produced by the prayers in which He had just been engaged. This is also substantially the view of Kuinoel, de Wette, Morison, Weiss on Mark; and see even Augustine, who says: “verba indulgentis eis jam somnum.” But the idea that any such indulgence was seriously intended, would be incompatible with the danger referred to at Matthew 26:41, and which He knew was threatening even the disciples themselves. There are others, again, who are disposed to take the words interrogatively, thus: are ye still asleep? Such is the view of Henry Stephens, Heumann, Kypke, Krebs, in spite of the ordinary usage with regard to τὸ λοιπόν, to understand which in the sense of “henceforth” (Bleek, Volkmar) would be entirely out of keeping with the use of the present here. If, however, the mark of interrogation be inserted after καθεύδετε, and τὸ λοιπὸν καὶ ἀναπαύεσθε be then taken imperatively (Klostermann), in that case καί would have the intensive force of even; but its logical position would have to be before τὸ λοιπόν, not before ἀναπαύεσθε, where it could be rendered admissible at all only by an artificial twisting of the sense (“now you may henceforth rest on, even as long as you choose”).

While Jesus is in the act of uttering His καθεύδετε, κ.τ.λ., He observes the hostile band approaching; the painful irony changes to a painful earnestness, and He continues in abrupt and disjointed words: ἰδοὺ, ἤγγικεν, κ.τ.λ. The ἡ ὥρα should be taken absolutely: hora fatalis, John 17:1. The next clause describes in detail the character of that hour.

εἰς χεῖρας ἁμαρτ.] into sinners’ hands. He refers to the members of the Sanhedrim, at whose disposal He would be placed by means of His apprehension, and not to the Romans (Maldonatus, Grotius, Hilgenfeld), nor to both of these together (Lange). The παραδιδούς is not God, but Judas, acting, however, in pursuance of the divine purpose, Acts 2:23.

Matthew 26:46. Observe the air of quick despatch about the words ἐγείρεσθε, ἄγωμεν, ἰδού.

ἄγωμεν] is not a summons to take to flight, in consequence perhaps of a momentary return of the former shrinking from suffering (which would be inconsistent with the fact of the victory that had been achieved, and with the clear consciousness which He had that ὁ υἱὸς τ. ἀ. παραδίδοται, κ.τ.λ. Matthew 26:45), but: to go to meet the betrayer, with a view to the fulfilling of the παραδίδοται of which He had just been speaking. Κἀντεῦθεν ἔδειξεν, ὅτι ἑκὼν ἀποθανεῖται, Euthymius Zigabenus.

REMARK.

On the agony in the garden (see, in general, Ullmann, Sündlos., ed. 7, p. 127 ff.; Dettinger in the Tüb. Zeitschr. 1837, 4, 1838, 1; Hofmann, Schriftbew. II. 1, p. 306 ff.; Keim, III. p. 306 ff.), the following points may be noted: (1) As to the nature of it, we must not regard it simply as bodily suffering (Thiess, Paulus), nor as consisting in sorrow on account of the disciples and the Jews (Jerome), nor as pain caused by seeing His hopes disappointed (Wolfenbüttel Fragments), nor as grief at the thought of parting from His friends (Schuster in Eichhorn’s Bibl. IX. p. 1012 ff.); but, as the prayer Matthew 26:39; Matthew 26:42 proves, as consisting in fear and dread of the cruel suffering and death that were so near at hand, the prospect of which affected Christ—whose sensibilities were purely human, and not of the nature of a philosophical abstraction, like the imperturbability of Socrates or the apathy of the Stoic (Celsus, in Origen, ii. 24, charges Him with cowardice)—all the more powerfully in proportion to the greater purity, and depth, and genuineness of His feelings, and the increasing distinctness with which He foresaw the approach of the painful and, according to the counsel of the Father, inevitable issue. For having been victorious hitherto over every hostile power, because His hour had not yet come (John 7:30; John 8:20), He realized, now that it was come (Matthew 26:45), the whole intensity of horror implied in being thus inevitably abandoned, in pursuance of God’s redemptive purpose, to the disposal of such powers, with the immediate prospect before Him of a most dreadful death, a death in which He was expected, and in which He Himself desired, to manifest His perfect obedience to the Father’s will. The momentary disturbing of the complete harmony of His will with that of God, which took place in Gethsemane, is to be ascribed to the human ἀσθένεια incidental to His state of humiliation (comp. 2 Corinthians 13:4; Hebrews 5:7), and should be regarded simply as a natural shrinking from suffering and death, a shrinking entirely free from sin (comp. Dorner, Jesu sündlose Vollkommenh. p. 6 f.). Neither was it in any way due to the conviction, unwarrantably ascribed to Him by Schenkel, that His death was not absolutely necessary for the redemption of the world. That touch of human weakness should not even be described as sin in embryo, sin not yet developed (Keim), because the absolute resignation to the Father’s will which immediately manifests itself anew precludes the idea of any taint of sin whatever. To suppose, however, that this agony must be regarded (Olshausen, Gess) as an actual abandonment by God. i.e. as a withdrawing of the presence of the higher powers from Jesus, is to contradict the testimony of Hebrews 5:7, and to suppose what is inconsistent with the very idea of the Son of God (Strauss, II. p. 441); and to explain it on the ground of the vicarious character of the suffering (Olshausen, Ebrard, Steinmeyer, following Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, Beza, and the dogmatic writers of the orthodox school), as though it were to be regarded as “a concrete bearing of the whole concentrated force of a world’s sin” (Ebrard), and of the wrath of God in all its fulness (comp. Thomasius, III. 1, p. 69 f.; Weber, v. Zorne Gottes, p. 266 ff.), is erroneously to take a materialistic and quantitative view of the ἱλαστήριον of Jesus; whereas Scripture estimates His atoning death according to its qualitative value,—that is to say, it regards the painful death to which the sinless Son of God subjected Himself in obedience to the Father’s will as constituting the efficient cause of the atonement, and that not because He required to undergo such an amount of suffering as might be equivalent in quantity and intensity to the whole sum of the punishment due to mankind, but because the vicarious λύτρον on behalf of humanity consisted in the voluntary surrender of His own life. Comp. Matthew 26:27 f., Matthew 20:8; John 1:29; 1 John 2:2; 1 John 3:5; 1 Timothy 2:6; 2 Corinthians 5:21; Galatians 3:13. But it would be unwarrantable, on the other hand, to ascribe the dread which Jesus felt merely to the thought of death as a divine judgment, and the agonies of which He was supposed to be already enduring by anticipation (Köstlin in the Jahrb. f. D. Theol. III. p. 125). Those who adopt this view lay great stress upon the sinlessness of our Lord as tending to intensify this painful anticipation of death (Dettinger, comp. Ullmann, Neander). (2) John, notwithstanding the fact that he was both an eye and ear witness of the agony in Gethsemane, makes no mention of it whatever, although he records something analogous to it as having taken place somewhat earlier, Matthew 12:27. With the view of accounting for this silence, it is not enough to suppose that John had omitted this incident because it had been sufficiently recorded by the other evangelists, for a mere external reason such as this would accord neither with the spirit of his Gospel nor with the principle of selection according to which it was composed (in opposition to Lücke, Tholuck, Olshausen, Ebrard). We should rather seek the explanation of the matter in the greater freedom which characterizes the composition of this Gospel, and therefore in the peculiarities of style and form which are due to this work of John being an independent reproduction of our Lord’s life. After the prayer of Jesus, which he records in ch. 17, John felt that the agony could not well find a place in his Gospel, and that, after Matthew 12:23 ff., there was no reason why it should be inserted any more than the cry of anguish on the cross. Comp. Ewald, Gesch. Chr. p. 557 f. In John, too, ch. 18, the transition from acting to suffering is somewhat abrupt (in opposition to Hofmann); but after the high-priestly prayer, the suffering appears as one series of victories culminating in the triumphant issue of John 18:30; in fact, when Jesus offered up that prayer, He did so as though He were already victorious (John 16:33). It is quite unfair to make use of John’s silence either for the purpose of throwing discredit upon the synoptic narrative (Goldhorn in Tzschirner’s Magaz. f. chr. Pred. 1, 2, p. 1 ff.; Schleiermacher, L. J. p. 422 f.), or as telling against John (Bretschneider, Probab. p. 33 ff.; Weisse, II. p. 268; Baur, Keim; likewise Theile in Winer’s Journ. II. p. 353 ff., comp. however, his Biogr. Jesu, p. 62), or with a view to impugn the historical character of both narratives (Strauss, Bruno Bauer). The accounts of the two earliest evangelists bear the impress of living reality to such an extent that their character is the very reverse of that which one expects to find in a legend (in opposition to Gfrörer, Heil. Sage, p. 337; Usteri in the Stud. u. Krit. 1829, p. 465); nor is there any reason why, even after the high-priestly prayer, such an agony as that in question should not find a place in the Gospel narrative; for who shall presume to say what changes of feeling, what elevation and depression of spirit, may not have taken place on the eve of such a catastrophe in a heart so noble, so susceptible, and so full of the healthiest sensibilities, and that not in consequence of any moral weakness, but owing to the struggle that had to be waged with the natural human will (comp. Gess, p. 175; Weizsäcker, p. 563)? Comp. John, remark after ch. 17. (3) The report of Jesus’ prayer should not be (unpsychologically) supposed to have been communicated by the Lord Himself to His disciples, but ought rather to be regarded as derived from the testimony of those who, before sleep had overpowered them, were still in a position to hear at least the first words of it.

Matthew 26:47. Εἷς τῶν δώδεκα] precisely as in Matthew 26:14, and repeated on both occasions in all three evangelists. In the oral and written tradition this tragic designation (κατηγορία, Euthymius Zigabenus) had come to be so stereotyped that if would be unconsciously inserted without there being any further occasion for doing so. The same holds true with regard to ὁ παραδιδοὺς αὐτόν, Matthew 26:48; Matthew 27:3.

ὄχλος πολύς] Matthew makes no reference to the Roman cohort, John 18:3; his account, however, does not, at the same time, exclude it, as it is simply less precise. Luke 22:52 likewise represents the high priests and elders as appearing at this early stage among the throng; but this is an unwarrantable amplification of the tradition; see on Luke.

ξύλων] cudgels, fustibus (Vulgate). Herod. ii. 63, iv. 180; Polyb. vi. 36. 3. Wetstein on the passage.

ἀπὸ τῶν, κ.τ.λ.] belongs to ἦλθε; see on Galatians 2:12.

Matthew 26:48. It is usual, though unwarrantable (see on John 18:24), to take ἔδωκεν in the sense of the pluperfect (comp. Mark 14:44), in which case it is necessary, with Ewald, to make Matthew 26:48 a parenthesis. The Vulgate correctly renders by: dedit. He communicated the signal to them while they were on the way.

ὃν ἂν φιλήσω, κ.τ.λ.] Fritzsche inserts a colon after φιλήσω, and supposes the following words to be understood: Esther vobis comprehendendus. It may be given more simply thus: Whomsoever I shall have kissed, He it is (just He, no other is the one in question)! This αὐτός serves to single out the person intended, from those about Him. Hermann, ad Viger. p. 733.

Matthew 26:49. Εὐθέως] is not to be taken with εἶπε (Fritzsche), but with προσελθών: immediately, as soon as he had given them this signal, he stepped up, etc. No sooner said than done.

κατεφίλησεν] embraced and kissed Him, kissed Him most endearingly. Xen. Mem. ii. 6. 33: ὡς τοὺς μὲν καλοὺς φιλήσαντός μου, τοὺς δʼ ἀγαθοὺς καταφιλήσαντος; Tob 7:6; Sir 29:5; 3Ma 5:49; Test. XII. patr. p. 730. It is not the case, as de Wette imagines (see Luke 7:38; Luke 7:45; Acts 20:37), that in the New Testament (and the LXX.) the compound has lost the force here ascribed to it; but it is to be insisted on in our present passage as much as in classical Greek. The signal, as arranged, was to be simply a kiss; the signal actually given was kissing accompanied with embraces, which was entirely in keeping with the excitement of Judas, and the desire he felt that there should be no mistake as to the person intended.

Matthew 26:50. Ἑταῖρε] as in Matthew 20:13.

ἐφʼ ὃ πάρει] As the relative ὁς is never used in a direct (see Lobeck, ad Phryn. p. 57), but only in an indirect question (Kühner, II. 2, p. 942; Ellendt, Lex. Soph. II. p. 372), it follows that the ordinary interrogative interpretation must be wrong; and that to suppose (Winer, p. 157 [E. T. 207 f.]) that we have here one of those corrupt usages peculiar to the Greek of a less classical age, is, so far as ὅς is concerned, without any foundation whatever. Fritzsche, followed by Buttmann, Neut. Gr. p. 217 [E. T. 253], understands the expression as an exclamation: “ad qualem rem perpetrandam ades!” But even then, Greek usage would have required that it should have been put in an interrogative form and expressed by τί, or failing this we might have had the words ἐφʼ οἷον instead (Ellendt, as above, p. 300 f.). The language, as might be expected from the urgent nature of the situation, is somewhat abrupt in its character: Friend, mind what you are here for! attend to that. With these words He spurns the kisses with which the traitor was overwhelming Him. This suits the connection better than the supplying of εἰπέ (Morison). Instead of this hypocritical kissing, Jesus would prefer that Judas should at once proceed with the dark deed he had in view, and deliver Him to the catchpolls.

John 18:3 ff., it is true, makes no mention whatever of the kissing; but this is not to be taken as indicating the legendary character of the incident, especially as there is nothing to prevent us from supposing that it may have taken place just before the question τίνα ζητεῖτε, John 18:4; see on this latter passage.

Matthew 26:51. It is strange that the Synoptists have not mentioned the name of Peter here (John 18:10, where the name of the high priest’s servant is also given). It may be that, with a view to prevent the apostle from getting into trouble with the authorities, his name was suppressed from the very first, and that, accordingly, the incident came to be incorporated in the primitive gospel traditions without any names being mentioned, it having been reserved for John ultimately to supply this omission.

αὐτοῦ τὸ ὠτίον] his ear (see on Matthew 8:3). On ὠτίον, see Lobeck, ad Phryn. p. 211. He missed the head at which the stroke was aimed.