The answer of Christ left the special person undetermined, while it again repeated the awful prediction - shall we not add, the most solemn warning - that it was one of those who took part in the Supper. It is at this point that St. John resumes the thread of the narrative. [5694] As he describes it, the disciples were looking one on another, doubting of whom He spake. In this agonising suspense Peter beckoned from across the table to John, whose head, instead of leaning on his hand, rested, in the absolute surrender of love and intimacy born of sorrow, on the bosom of the Master. [5695] Peter would have John ask of whom Jesus spake. [5696] And to the whispered question of John, leaning back as he was on Jesus' breast,' the Lord gave the sign, that it was he to whom He would give the sop' when He had dipped it. Even this perhaps was not clear to John, since each one in turn received the sop.'
At present, the Supper itself begins by eating, first, a piece of the unleavened cake, then of the bitter herbs dipped in Charoseth, and lastly two small pieces of the unleavened cake, between which a piece of bitter radish has been placed. But we have direct testimony, that, about the time of Christ, [5697] the sop' [5698] which was handed round consisted of these things wrapped together: flesh of the Paschal Lamb, a piece of unleavened bread, and bitter herbs. [5699] This, we believe, was the sop,' which Jesus, having dipped it for him in the dish, handed first to Judas, as occupying the first and chief place at Table. But before He did so, probably while He dipped it in the dish, Judas, who could not but fear that his purpose might be known, reclining at Christ's left hand, whispered into the Master's ear, Is it I, Rabbi?' It must have been whispered, for no one at the Table could have heard either the question of Judas or the affirmative answer of Christ. [5700] It was the last outgoing of the pitying love of Christ after the traitor. Coming after the terrible warning and woe on the Betrayer, [5701] it must be regarded as the final warning and also the final attempt at rescue on the part of the Saviour. It was with full knowledge of all, even of this that his treachery was known, though he may have attributed the information not to Divine insight but to some secret human communication, that Judas went on his way to destruction. We are too apt to attribute crimes to madness; but surely there is normal, as well as mental mania; and it must have been in a paroxysm of that, when all feeling was turned to stone, and mental self-delusion was combined with moral perversion, that Judas took' [5702] from the Hand of Jesus the sop.' It was to descend alive into the grave - and with a heavy sound the gravestone fell and closed over the mouth of the pit. That moment Satan entered again into his heart. But the deed was virtually done; and Jesus, longing for the quiet fellowship of His own with all that was to follow, bade him do quickly that he did.
But even so there are questions connected with the human motives that actuated Judas, to which, however, we can only give the answer of some suggestions. Did Judas regard Christ's denunciation of woe' on the Betrayer not as a prediction, but as intended to be deterrent - perhaps in language Orientally exaggerated - or if he regarded it as a prediction, did he not believe in it? Again, when after the plain intimation of Christ and His Words to do quickly what he was about to do, Judas still went to the betrayal, could he have had an idea - rather, sought to deceive himself, that Jesus felt that He could not escape His enemies, and that He rather wished it to be all over? Or had all his former feelings towards Jesus turned, although temporarily, into actual hatred which every Word and Warning of Christ only intensified? But above all and in all we have, first and foremost, to think of the peculiarly Judaic character of his first adherence to Christ; of the gradual and at last final and fatal disenchantment of his hopes; of his utter moral, consequent upon his spiritual, failure; of the change of all that had in it the possibility of good into the actuality of evil; and, on the other hand, of the direct agency of Satan in the heart of Judas, which his moral and spiritual ship-wreck rendered possible.