warn them plainly and gently before leaving them for ever All this appears in our Lord's dealing with Judas in this chapter.
2. — [A?i.d supper being ended.'] These words would have been more literally rendered, " while supper was going on," or, " sup- per being in progress." That this is the true meaning seems clear from the twenty-sixth verse. If supper had really been ended, we should not have heard of a sop being given out of the dish, etc.
It is only fair to say that Scaliger and other learned men in- sist that the Jews had more than one supper at the passover, — • one a legal one, strictly according to ritual ; the other a social one. They think these two suppers are both in this chapter. Gerhard gives this opinion at length. Whitby seems to lean to this view, and maintains that our Lord twice pointed out Judas as the traitor, — once privately and once publicly.
Let it be noted that our Lord^s' ministry ended with a supper, — that the last ordinance He appointed was a supper, — that one promise He has left to a believer is, " I will come and sup with him " (Rev. iii. 20), — and that the first thing that will take place at His second advent will be the marriage supper of the Lamb. All point to the same great truth, — the close union, familiarity, and comfortable intimacy between Christ and His people. It is a thing far too little known.
What supper this was we are not told, and are left to conjec- ture. It is a point on which opinions widely differ.
Some, as Lightfoot, think that the supper was the same that took place at Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper, two days before the passover. Rollock also thinks it was not the pass- over.
Others think it was the ordinary passover supper, which our Lord was eating with His disciples the night before His cruci- fixion. This certainly, in my judgment, seems the more proba- ble view.
One thing at any rate is pretty clear. It was not the institu- tion of the Lord's Supper. It seems highly improbable that the washing of the disciples' feet would take place after the Lord's Supper. That blessed ordinance appears to come in after the twentieth verse. Brentius stands alone in maintaining that it was the Lord's Supper.
[The devil . . . put . . heart.'] This does not mean that Judas now for the first time left the faith, and became an apostate. Our Lord long before had spoken of him as one that " was a dcv- il." (John vi. 70.) But it means that now at length the devil suggested into the heart of this unhappy man the atrocious idea of betraying his Master. It was the last and final heading ud of his apostasy.