ration seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of [° the prophet] Jonas. And he left them, and departed. 5 And when his disciples were come to the other side, they P had forgotten to take bread. 6 Then Jesus said unto them, Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees. 7 And they reasoned among themselves, saying, It is because we have taken no bread. 8 Which when Jesus perceived, he said [ unto them], O ye of little faith, why reason ye among yourselves, because ye have brought no bread? 9b Do ye bch. xiv. 17. not yet understand, neither remember the five loaves of the five thousand, and how many baskets ye took up? с John vi. 9. 10 Neither the seven loaves of the four thousand, and how ech. xv. 31. many baskets ye took up? 11 How is it that ye do not understand that I spake it not to your concerning bread, that ye should beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees? 12 Then understood they how that he bade them not beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees. 13 When Jesus came into the coasts of Cæsarea Philippi, O omitted in the oldest MSS. q omit. P render, forgot. read, concerning bread? But beware 8 render, parts: see ch. xv. 21. Daniel were just at their end; yet they discerned none of these things. 4.] See note on ch. xii. 39. LEA 5-12. WARNING AGAINST THE VEN OF THE PHARISEES AND SADDUcees. Mark viii. 13-21. 5.] This crossing of the lake was not the voyage to Magadan mentioned in ch. xv. 39, for after the dialogue with the Pharisees, Mark adds (viii. 13), "entering into the ship again he departed to the other side." they forgot to take bread; viz. on their land journey further. This is also to be understood in Mark (viii. 14), who states their having only one loaf in the ship, not to shew that they had forgotten to take bread before starting, but as a reason why they should have provided some on landing. 6. the leaven] See beginning of note on ch. xiii. 33. It is from the penetrating and diffusive power of leaven that the comparison, whether for good or bad, is derived, In Luke xii. 1, where the warning is given on a wholly different occasion, the leaven is explained to mean, hypocrisy; which is of all evil things the most penetrating_and diffusive, and is the charge which our Lord most frequently brings against the Jewish They sects. In Mark we read, "and the leaven of Herod." The Herodians were more a political than a religious sect, the dependants and supporters of the dynasty of Herod, for the most part Sadducees in religious sentiment. These, though directly opposed to the Pharisees, were yet united with them in their persecution of our Lord, see ch. xxii. 16: Mark iii. 6. And their leaven was the same,-hypocrisy, however it might be disguised by external difference of sentiment. were all unbelievers at heart. 8-12.] Not only had they forgotten these miracles, but the weighty lesson given them in ch. xv. 16-20. The reproof is much fuller in Mark, where see On the two sorts of baskets (cophini on the former occasion, spyrides on the latter), see note, ch. xv. 36. This voyage brought them to Bethsaïda : i. e. Bethsaïda Julias, on the NorthEastern side of the lake, see Mark viii. 22, and the miracle there related. note. 13-20.] CONFESSION OF PETER. Mark viii. 27-30. Luke ix. 18-21. Here St. Luke rejoins the narrative common to the three Evangelists, having left it at ch. xiv. 22. We here begin the second d ch. xiv. 2. d he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am? 14 And they said, Some [t say that thou art] John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets. 15 He saith unto them, But John vi. 69: whom say ye that I am? 16 And Simon Peter answered 1.2,5. 1 John and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. e ch. xiv. 33. xi. 27. Heb. iv. 15: v. 5. e t not expressed in the original. great division of our Saviour's ministry on earth, introductory to His sufferings and death. Up to this time we have had no distinct intimation, like that in ver. 21, of these events. This intimation is brought in by the solemn question and confession now before us. And as the former period of His ministry was begun by a declaration from the Father of His Sonship, so this also, on the Mount of Transfiguration. 13. Cæsarea Philippi] A town in Gaulonitis at the foot of Mount Libanus, not far from the source of the Jordan, a day's journey from Sidon, once called Laish (Judg. xviii. 7, 29) and afterwards Dan (ibid.), but in later times Paneas, or Panias, from the mountain Panium, under which it lay. The tetrarch Philip enlarged it and gave it the name of Cæsarea. In after times King Agrippa further enlarged it and called it Neronias in honour of the Emperor Nero. This must not be confounded with the Cæsarea of the Acts, which was Cæsarea Stratonis, on the Mediterranean. See Acts x. 1, and note. The following enquiry took place by the way, Mark viii. 27. St. Luke gives it without note of place, but states it to have been asked on the disciples joining our Lord, who was praying alone, Luke ix. 18. The reading of the last words of the verse is somewhat uncertain. Some of the oldest authorities have, Who do men say that the Son of Man is? Some would render as if our Lord had said, 'Who say men that I am? the Son of Man?' i. e. the Messiah? but this is inadmissible, for the answer would not then have been expressed as it is, but affirmatively or negatively. Equally inadmissible is Olshausen's rendering, Me, who am, as ye are aware, the Son of Man?' an expression, Olshausen says, by which the disciples would be led to the idea of the Son of God. then this would destroy the simplicity of the following question, But who say ye that I am because it would put into their mouths the answer intended to be given. The A. V. has beyond doubt the right rendering of this reading: and the Son of Man is a pregnant expression, which we now know to imply the Messiah But ship in the root of our human nature, and which even then was taken by the Jews as the Son of God, (see Luke xxii. 69, 70,) which would serve as a test of the faith of the disciples, according to their understanding of it. 14.] It is no one of contradiction to this verdict that some called him the Son of David (ch. ix. 27; xii. 23; xv. 22); for either these were or were about to become His disciples, or are quoted as examples of rare faith, or as in ch. xii. 23, it was the passing doubt on the minds of the multitude, not their settled opinion. The same may be said of John vii. 26, 31; iv. 42. On our Lord's being taken for John the Baptist, see ch. xiv. 2, from which this would appear to be the opinion of the Herodians. the prophets] "that one of the old prophets is risen again," Luke ix. 19. It was not a metempsychosis, but a bodily resurrection which was believed. On Elias, see note at ch. xi. 14. Jeremiah is mentioned first as being accounted by the Jews first in the prophetic canon. The confession is not made in the terms of the other answer: it is not 'we say' or 'I say,' but Thou art. It is the expression of an inward conviction wrought by God's Spirit. The excellence of this confession is, that it brings out both the human and the divine nature of the Lord: the Christ is the Messiah, the Son of David, the anointed King: the Son of the living God is the Eternal Son, begotten of the Eternal Father, not 'Son of God' in any inferior figurative sense, not one of the sons of God, of angelic nature, but THE SON OF THE LIVING GOD, having in Him the Sonship and the divine nature in a sense in which they could be in none else. This was a view of the Person of Christ quite distinct from the Jewish Messianic idea, which appears to have been that he should be a man born from men, but selected by God for the office on account of his eminent virtues. This distinction accounts for the solemn blessing pronounced in the next verse. 16.] The word living must not for a moment be taken here as it sometimes is used, (e. g. Acts xiv. 15,) as merely distinguishing the true God from dead 17 And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. 18 And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of idols it is here emphatic, and imparts force and precision to Son. That Peter when he uttered the words, understood by them in detail all that we now understand, is not of course asserted: but that they were his testimony to the true Humanity and true Divinity of the Lord, in that sense of deep truth and reliance, out of which springs the Christian life of the Church. 17.] Blessed art thou, as in ch. v. 4, &c., is a solemn expression of blessing, an inclusion of him to whom it is addressed in the kingdom of heaven, not a mere word of praise. And the reason of it is, the fact that the Father had revealed the Son to him (see ch. xi. 25-27); cf. Gal. i. 15, 16, in which passage the occurrence of the word "reveal" seems to indicate a reference to this very saying of the Lord. The whole declaration of St. Paul in that chapter forms a remarkable parallel to the character and promise given to St. Peter in our text, -as establishing Paul's claim to be another such rock or pillar as Peter and the other great Apostles, because the Son had been revealed in him not of man nor by men, but by God Himself. The name Simon Bar-jona is doubtless used as indicating his fleshly state and extraction, and forming the greater contrast to his spiritual state, name, and blessing, which follow. The same Simon son of Jonas' is uttered when he is reminded, by the thrice repeated enquiry, Lovest thou me?' of his frailty, in his previous denial of his Lord. 18.] The name Peter (not now first given, but prophetically bestowed by our Lord on His first interview with Simon, John i. 43) or Cephas, signifying a rock, the termination being only altered from Petra to Petros to suit the masculine appellation, denotes the personal position of this Apostle in the building of the Church of Christ. He was the first of those foundation-stones (Rev. xxi. 14) on which the living temple of God was built: this building itself beginning on the day of Pentecost by the laying of three thousand living stones on this very foundation. That this is the simple and only interpretation of the words of our Lord, the whole usage of the New Testament shews: in which not doctrines nor confessions, but men, are uniformly the pillars and stones of the spiritual building. h See 1 Pet. ii. 4-6: 1 Tim. iii. 15 (where the pillar is not Timotheus, but the congregation of the faithful) and note: Gal. ii. 9: Eph. ii. 20: Rev. iii. 12. And it is on Peter, as by divine revelation making this confession, as thus under the influence of the Holy Ghost, as standing out before the Apostles in the strength of this faith, as himself founded on the one foundation, Jesus Christ, 1 Cor. iii. 11-that the Jewish portion of the Church was built, Acts ii.-v., and the Gentile, Acts x., xi. After this last event, we hear little of him; but during this, the first building time, he is never lost sight of: see especially Acts i. 15; ii. 14, 37; iii. 12; iv. 8; v. 15, 29; ix. 34, 40; x. 25, 26. We may certainly exclaim with Bengel, "All this may be said with safety; for what has this to do with Rome?" Nothing can be further from any legitimate interpretation of this promise, than the idea of a perpetual primacy in the successors of Peter; the very notion of succession is precluded by the form of the comparison, which concerns the person, and him only, so far as it involves a direct promise. In its other and general sense, as applying to all those living stones (Peter's own expression for members of Christ's Church) of whom the Church should be built, it implies, as Origen excellently comments on it, saying, that all this must be understood as said not only to Peter, as in the letter of the Gospel, but to every one who is such as Peter here shewed himself, as the spirit of the Gospel teaches us. The application of the promise to St. Peter has been elaborately impugned by Dr. Wordsworth. His zeal to appropriate the rock to Christ has somewhat overshot itself. In arguing that the term can apply to none but God, he will find it difficult surely to deny all reference to a rock in the name Peter. To me, it is equally difficult, nay impossible, to deny all reference, in " upon this rock," to the preceding word Peter. Let us keep to the plain straightforward sense of Scripture, however that sense may have been misused by Rome. church] This word occurs but in one place besides in the Gospels, ch. xviii. 17, and there in the same sense as here, viz. the congregation of the faithful: only there it is one portion of that congrega John xx. 23. k ch. xvii. 9. 1 ch xx. 17. ich, xvill. 18. hell shall not prevail against it. 19 [ui And] I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. 20k Then charged he his disciples that they should tell no man that he was [ Jesus] the Christ. 21 From that time forth began Jesus to 'shew unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be a omitted by our oldest MSS. tion, here the whole. The gates of hell (Hades), by a well-known Oriental form of speech, is equivalent to the power of the kingdom of death. The form is still preserved when the Turkish empire is known as the Ottoman Porte.' This promise received a remarkable literal fulfilment in the person of Peter in Acts xii. 6-18, see especially ver. 10. The meaning of the promise is, that over the Church so built upon him who was by the strength of that confession the Rock, no adverse power should ever prevail to extinguish it. 19.] Another personal promise to Peter, remarkably fulfilled in his being the first to admit both Jews and Gentiles into the Church; thus using the power of the keys to open the door of salvation. As an instance of his shutting it also, witness his speech to Simon Magus, Acts viii. 21. whatsoever thou shalt bind, &c.] This same promise is repeated in ch. xviii. 18, to all the disciples generally, and to any two or three gathered together in Christ's name. It was first however verified, and in a remarkable and prominent way, to Peter. Of the binding, the case of Ananias and Sapphira may serve as an eminent example: of the loosing, the "Such as I have, give I thee," to the lame man at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple. But strictly considered, the binding and loosing belong to the power of legislation in the Church committed to the Apostles, in accordance with the Jewish way of using the words bind and loose for prohibit and allow. They cannot relate to the remission and retention of sins, for though to loose sins certainly appears to mean to forgive sins, to bind sins for retaining them would be altogether without example, and, I may add, would bear no meaning in the interpretation: it is not the sin, but the sinner, that is bound, "liable to eternal sin " (so in text) (Mark iii. 29). Nor can the ancient custom of fastening doors by means of cord be alluded to; for the expressions clearly indicate ▾ omit. something bound and something loosed, 21-28.] OUR LORD ANNOUNCES HIS APPROACHING DEATH AND RESURRECTION. REBUKE OF PETER. Mark viii. 31-ix. 1. Luke ix. 22-27. See note on ver. 13. Obscure intimations had before been given of our Lord's future sufferings, see ch. x. 38: John iii. 14, and of His resurrection, John ii. 19 (x. 17, 18?), but never yet plainly, as now. With St. Mark's usual precise note of circumstances, he adds, "He spake that saying openly.” 21.] On must, which is common to the three Evangelists, see Luke xxiv. 26: John iii. 14, and ch. xxv. 54. suffer many things] "be rejected" in X raised again the third day. 22 Then Peter took him, and w began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee. 23 But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: mthou art an m Rom. viii. 7. offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men. 24 n Then said Jesus n ch. x. 38. unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. 25 For Acts xiv. 22. 1 Thess. 3. 2 Tim. iii. 12. John xii. 25. ° whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever o Luke xvii. 33. will lose his life for my sake shall find it. 26 For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for the oldest MS. reads, saith to him, rebuking him. I render, God be gracious to thee. I some of the best MSS. read, shall a man be profited. how many of the Lord's sayings must have been completely veiled from their eyes, owing to their non-apprehension of His sufferings and triumph as a whole. He Himself reproaches them with this very slowness of belief after His resurrection. It is in the highest degree improbable that the precision should have been given to this prophecy after the event, as Meyer supposes: both from the character of the Gospel History in general (see Prolegomena), and because of the carefulness and precision in the words added by St. Mark; see above. 22.] The same Peter, who but just now had made so noble and spiritual a confession, and received so high a blessing, now shews the weak and carnal side of his character, becomes a stumblingblock in the way of his Lord, and earns the very rebuff with which the Tempter before him had been dismissed. Nor is there any thing improbable in this; the expression of spiritual faith may, and frequently does, precede the betraying of carnal weakness; and never is this more probable than when the mind has just been uplifted, as Peter's was, by commendation and lofty promise. took (hold of) him] by the dress or hand, or rebukes. z render, life. thou 23.] As it was Peter's spiritual discernment, given from above, which made him a foundation-stone of the Church, so is it his carnality, proceeding from want of unity with the divine will, which makes him an adversary now. Compare ch. iv. 10, also Eph. vi. 12. art an offence unto me] literally, Thou art my stumbling-block (not merely a stumbling-block to me), "rock (petra) of offence," in Peter's own remarkable words, 1 Pet. ii. 7, 8,-joined too with the very expression, which the builders disallowed (rejected), which, as above noticed, occurs in this passage in Mark and Luke. Before this rebuke St. Mark inserts "when he had turned about and looked on his disciples," that the reproof might be before them all. 24.] When he had called the people unto him with his disciples also, Mark viii. 34; he said to them all, Luke ix. 23. This discourse is a solemn sequel to our Lord's announcement respecting Himself and the rebuke of Peter: teaching that not only He, but also His followers, must suffer and selfdeny; that they all have a life to save, more precious than all else to them; and that the great day of account of that life's welfare should be ever before them. On this and the following verse, see ch. x. 38, 39. After his cross Luke inserts "daily." 26.] There is apparently a reference to Psalm xlix. in this verse. Compare especially the latter part with ver. 7, 8, of that Psalm. lose his own life = 66 lose himself," Luke. Compare also 1 Pet. i. 18. what shall a man give in exchange for his life?] We must not here render soul, but life, understand " |