natural feelings by His Divine nature, or restrained His trouble, and in so doing was greatly disturbed.
(d) Some, as Gomarus and Lampe, consider that our Lord was moved to holy sorrow and indignation at the sight of the unbelief even of Martha and Mary, (expressed by their immod- erate grief, as if the case of Lazarus was hopeless,) as well as at the sight of the unbelief of the Jews.
(e) Some, as Bullinger, Gualter, Diodati, Grotius, Maldona- tus, Jansenius, Bollock, and Hutcheson, consider that the phrase simply expresses the highest and deepest kind of inward agitation of mind, an agitation in which grief, compassion, and holy detestation of sin's work in the world were all mingled and combined. This agitation, however, was entirely inward at present : it was not bodily, but spiritual ; not in the flesh, but in the spirit. As Burgon says, the " spirit " here means Christ's inward soul. I prefer this opinion to the former one, though I fully admit it has difficulties. But it is allowed by Schleusner and Parkhurst, and seems the view of Tyndall, Cranmer, and .lie Geneva version, as well as of our own.
[ And icas troubled.] This expression is to my mind even more difficult than the one which immediately precedes it. It would be literally translated, as our marginal reading has it, " He troubled himself." In fact, Wycliffe translates it so. Now what can this mean ?
Some maintain that in our Lord's mysterious Person the human nature was so entirely subordinated to the Divine, that the human passions and affections never moved unless influenced and actuated by the Divine nature, and that here, to show His sympathy, He "troubled Himself." Thus Rupertus remarks that " if He had not troubled Himself, no one else could have troubled Him." I confess that I regard this view with a little suspicion. It seems to me to imply that our Lord's human nature was not like ours, and that His humanity was like an instrument played upon by His divinity, but in itself dead and passive until its music was called out. To my mind there is something dangerous in this.
I prefer to think that our Lord as man had all the feelings, passions, and affections of a man, but all under such perfect con- trol that they never exceeded as ours do, and were never even very demonstrative, excepting on great occasions. As Beza says, there was no "disorder" in His emotions. Here I think He saw an occasion for exhibiting a very deep degree of sorrow and sympathy, partly from the sorrowful sight He beheld, and partly from His love to Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. Therefore He greatly disturbed and "troubled Himself."
It still admits of a question whether the phrase may not be simply a Hebraism for " He was troubled." (Compare 1 Sam. xxx. 6, and 2 Sam. xii. 18.) Hammond says it is a Hebrew idiom.