[3244] St. John vi. 48-58.
[3245] Rosh haSh 29 b.
[3246] Sot. vii. 1.
[3247] Jer. Sot. p. 21 b.
[3248] Ber. 44 a.
[3249] Not an Egyptian basket, as even Jost translates in his edition of the Mishnah. The word is derived from {hebrew} (Metser), wicker or willow.
[3250] Comp. Sotah. ii. 1.
[3251] See the meaning of that expression in the previous chapter. __________________________________________________________________
CHAPTER XXX. THE NIGHT OF MIRACLES ON THE LAKE OF GENNESARET
(St. Matt. xiv. 22-36; St. John 15-21.)
THE last question of the Baptist, spoken in public, had been: Art Thou the Coming One, or look we for another?' It had, in part, been answered, as the murmur had passed through the ranks: This One is truly the Prophet, the Coming One!' So, then, they had no longer to wait, nor to look for another! And this Prophet' was Israel's long expected Messiah. What this would imply to the people, in the intensity and longing of the great hope which, for centuries, nay, far beyond the time of Ezra, had swayed their hearts, it is impossible fully to conceive. Here, then, was the Great Reality at last before them. He, on Whose teaching they had hung entranced, was the Prophet,' nay, more, the Coming One:' He Who was coming all those many centuries, and yet had not come till now. Then, also, was He more than a Prophet - a King: Israel's King, the King of the world. An irresistible impulse seized the people. They would proclaim Him King, then and there; and as they knew, probably from previous utterances, perhaps when similar movements had to be checked, that He would resist, they would constrain Him to declare Himself, or at least to be proclaimed by them. Can we wonder at this; or that thoughts of a Messianic worldly kingdom should have filled, moved, and influenced to discipleship a Judas; or that, with such a representative of their own thoughts among the disciples, the rising waves of popular excitement should have swollen into the mighty billows?
Jesus therefore, perceiving that they were about to come, and to take Him by force, that they might make Him King, [3252] withdrew again into the mountain, Himself alone,' or, as it might be rendered, though not quite in the modern usage of the expression, became an anchorite again . . . Himself alone.' [3253] This is another of those sublime contrasts, which render it well-nigh inconceivable to regard this history otherwise than as true and Divine. Yet another is the manner in which He stilled the multitude, and the purpose for which He became the lonely Anchorite on the mountain-top. He withdrew to pray; and He stilled the people, and sent them, no doubt solemnised, to their homes, by telling them that He withdrew to pray. And He did pray till far on, when the (second) evening had come,' [3254] and the first stars shone out in the deep blue sky over the Lake of Galilee, with the far lights twinkling and trembling on the other side. And yet another sublime contrast - as He constrained the disciples to enter the ship, and that ship, which bore those who had been sharers in the miracle, could not make way against storm and waves, and was at last driven out of its course. And yet another contrast - as He walked on the storm-tossed waves and subdued them. And yet another, and another - for is not all this history one sublime contrast to the seen and the thought of by men, but withal most true and Divine in the sublimeness of these contrasts?
For whom and for what He prayed, alone on that mountain, we dare not, even in deepest reverence, inquire. Yet we think, in connection with it, of the Passover, the Manna, the Wilderness, the Lost Sheep, the Holy Supper, the Bread which is His Flesh, and the remnant in the Baskets to be carried to those afar off, and then also of the attempt to make Him a King, in all its spiritual unreality, ending in His View with the betrayal, the denial, and the cry: We have no King but Cæsar.' And as He prayed, the faithful stars in the heavens shone out. But there on the Lake, where the bark which bore His disciples made for the other shore, a great wind' contrary to them' was rising. And still He was alone on the land,' but looking out into the evening after them, as the ship was in the midst of the sea,' and they toiling and distressed in rowing.'