at Bethlehem, and only knew that His birth was to be a mys- terious thing. This is a possible view, if not a very probable one. — The argument of the speakers before us would then be as follows : — " When Messiah comes, He is to come suddenly, as Malachi foretold, saying, ' the Lord shall suddenly come to His temple,' (Mai. iii. 1,) unexpectedly, mysteriously, and taking people by surprise. This man therefore, who is sitting in the temple among us, cannot be the Messiah, because we know that He came from Nazareth in Galilee, and has been living there for more than thirty years." — The prophecy about Messiah being born at Bethlehem, they conveniently dropped out of sight, and in fact never dreamed that it was fulfilled by our Lord. The only prophecy they chose to look at was the one in Malachi, (Mai. iii. 1,) and as the Lord did not appear to fulfil that, they concluded that He could not be the Christ. In religious matters people are easily satisfied with very imperfect and superficial reasoning, when they want to be satisfied and to be spared further trouble. Men never want reasons to confirm their will. This seems to have been the case with the Jews.
Rupertus mentions a common tradition of the Jews, — that when Christ came, He would come at midnight, as the angel came at midnight, when the first-born were destroyed in Egypt, and he thinks it may have been in their minds here.
Hutcheson observes that " not comparing of Scripture with Scripture, but taking any single sentence that seems to plead for that we would be at, is a very great nursery and cause of error. Such is the Jews' reasoning here. They catch at one thing, speaking of Messiah's Divinity, and take no notice of other places."
Besser quotes a saying of Luther's: "The Jews are poor scholars. They have caught the sound of the prophet's clock, (Micah. v. 2,) but they have not noted the stroke aright. He who does not hear well, imagines well. They heard that Christ was so to come, that none should know whence He came. But they understood not right, that coming from God He was to be born of a virgin, and come secretly into the world."
28. — \_Tlien cried Jesus. ..temple. ..taught.] This is a remarkable expression. We find our Lord departing from His usual prac- tice, when we read that He " cried," or raised His voice to a high pitch. Generally speaking, the words in St. Matthew apply strictly, quoted fromlsa. xlvii. 1, — "He shall not strive nor cry. neither shall any man hear His voice in the street." (Matt. xii. 19.) Yet we see there were occasions when-He did see it right to cry aloud and lift up His voice, and this is one. The perverse ignorance of the Jews, their persistence in blind- ness to all evidence, and the great opportunity afforded by the crowds around Him in the temple courts, were probably rea- sons why He " cried."
Our Lord is only said to have " cried " or lifted up His voice