These remarks show how closely the Lord followed, in this first part of His charge to the disciples, [3055] Jewish forms of thinking and modes of expression. It is not otherwise in the second, [3056] although the difference is here very marked. We have no longer merely the original commission, as it is given in almost the same terms by St. Mark and St. Luke. But the horizon is now enlarged, and St. Matthew reports that which the other Evangelists record at a later stage of the Lord's Ministry. Whether or not when the Lord charged His disciples on their first mission, He was led gradually to enlarge the scope of His teaching so as to adapt it to all times, need not be discussed. For St. Matthew himself could not have intended to confine the words of Christ to this first journey of the Apostles, since they contain references to division in families, persecutions, and conflict with the civil power, [3057] such as belong to a much later period in the history of the Church; and, besides, contain also that prediction which could not have applied to this first Mission of the Apostles, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of Man be come.' [3058]
Without here anticipating the full inquiry into the promise of His immediate Coming, it is important to avoid, even at this stage, any possible misunderstanding on the point. The expectation of the Coming of the Son of Man' was grounded on a prophecy of Daniel, [3059] in which that Advent, or rather manifestation, was associated with judgment. The same is the case in this Charge of our Lord. The disciples in their work are described as sheep in the midst of wolves,' a phrase which the Midrash [3060] applies to the position of Israel amidst a hostile world, adding: How great is that Shepherd, Who delivers them, and vanquishes the wolves! Similarly, the admonition to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves' is reproduced in the Midrash, [3061] where Israel is described as harmless as the dove towards God, and wise as serpents towards the hostile Gentile nations. Such and even greater would be the enmity which the disciples, as the true Israel, would have to encounter from Israel after the flesh. They would be handed over to the various Sanhedrin, [3062] and visited with such punishments as these tribunals had power to inflict. [3063] More than this, they would be brought before governors and kings - primarily, the Roman governors and the Herodian princes. [3064] And so determined would be this persecution, as to break the ties of the closest kinship, and to bring on them the hatred of all men. [3065] The only, but the all-sufficient, support in those terrible circumstances was the assurance of such help from above, that, although unlearned and humble, they need have no care, nor make preparation in their defence, which would be given them from above. And with this they had the promise, that he who endured to the end would be saved, and the prudential direction, so far as possible, to avoid persecution by timely withdrawal, which could be the more readily achieved, since they would not have completed their circuit of the cities of Israel before the Son of Man be come.'
It is of the greatest importance to keep in view that, at whatever period of Christ's Ministry this prediction and promise were spoken, and whether only once or oftener, they refer exclusively to a Jewish state of things. The persecutions are exclusively Jewish. This appears from verse 18, where the answer of the disciples is promised to be for a testimony against them,' who had delivered them up, that is, here evidently the Jews, as also against the Gentiles.' And the Evangelistic circuit of the disciples in their preaching was to be primarily Jewish; and not only so, but in the time when there were still cities of Israel,' that is, previous to the final destruction of the Jewish commonwealth. The reference, then, is to that period of Jewish persecution and of Apostolic preaching in the cities of Israel, which is bounded by the destruction of Jerusalem. Accordingly, the coming of the Son of Man,' and the end' here spoken of, must also have the same application. It was, as we have seen, according to Dan. vii. 13, a coming in judgment. To the Jewish persecuting authorities, who had rejected the Christ, in order, as they imagined, to save their City and Temple from the Romans, [3066] and to whom Christ had testified that He would come again, this judgment on their city and state, this destruction of their polity, was the Coming of the Son of Man' in judgment, and the only coming which the Jews, as a state, could expect, the only one meet for them, even as, to them who look for Him, He will appear a second time, without sin unto salvation.