[5856] Sanh. 41.
[5857] St. John xviii. 31; St. John xix. 7.
[5858] Jos. War iv. 4. 6.
[5859] Jos. War v. 5, 8.
[5860] The number varied. See Marquardt, Röm. Alterthumsk. vol. v. 2, pp. 359, 386, 441. Canon Westcott suggests that it might have been, not a cohort, but a manipulus' (of about 200 men); but, as himself points out, the expression as used in the N.T. seems always to indicate a cohort.
[5861] Jos. Ant. xxv. 5. 3.
[5862] St. John xviii. 12.
[5863] Jos. War ii. 9. 4.
[5864] St. John xviii. 3.
[5865] St. Luke.
[5866] St. Matt xxvi. 49; comp. St. Mark xiv. 45.
[5867] We cannot, as many interpreters, take the words in an interrogative sense. I presume that Christ spoke both what St. Matthew and what St. Luke record. Both bear internal marks of genuineness.
[5868] St. Luke xxii. 48.
[5869] St. John xviii. 5.
[5870] xviii. 4-9.
[5871] St. John xvii. 12.
[5872] St. Matt. xxvi. 50 b.
[5873] St. Mark xiv. 46.
[5874] St. John xviii. 11, 26.
[5875] The name Malchus, which occurs also in Josephus (Ant. i. 15. 1.; xiv. 5.2; 11. 4; War i. 8. 3), must not be derived, as is generally done, from {hebrew} a king. Its Hebrew equivalent, apparently, is Malluch, Counsellor,' a name which occurs both in the Old Testament and in the LXX. (1 Chron. vi. 44; Neh. x. 4, &c.), and as a later Jewish name in the Talmud. But both Frankel (Einl. in d. Jer. Talm. p. 114) and Freudenthal (Hell. Stud. p. 131) maintain that it was not a Jewish name, while it was common among Syrians, Phoenicians, Arabians, and Samaritans. The suggestion therefore lies near, that Malchus was either a Syrian or a Phoenician by birth.
[5876] The definite article here marks that he was, in a special sense, the servant of the High-Priest - his body-servant.
[5877] St. Matthew.
[5878] A legion had ten cohorts.
[5879] St. John.
[5880] This reference to the cup which the Father had given Him to drink' by St. John, implies the whole history of the Agony in Gethsemane, which is not recorded in the Fourth Gospel. And this is, on many grounds, very instructive.
[5881] St. Luke.
[5882] St. John.
[5883] sindn. This, no doubt, corresponds to the Sadin or Sedina which, in Rabbinic writings, means a linen cloth, or a loose linen wrapper, though, possibly, it may also mean a night-dress (see Levy, ad voc.).
[5884] The designation young men' (St. Mark xiv. 51) is spurious. __________________________________________________________________
CHAPTER XIII. THURSDAY NIGHT - BEFORE ANNAS AND CAIAPHAS - PETER AND JESUS.
(St. John xviii. 12-14; St. Matt. xxvi. 57, 58; St. Mark xiv. 53, 54; St. Luke xxii. 54, 55; St. John xviii. 24, 15-18; St. John xviii. 19-23; St. Matt. xxvi. 69, 70; St. Mark xiv. 66-68; St. Luke xxii. 56, 57; St. John xviii. 17, 18; St. Matt. xxvi. 71, 72; St. Mark xiv. 69, 70; St. Luke xxii. 58; St. John xviii. 25; St. Matt. xxvi. 59-68; St. Mark xiv. 55-65; St. Luke xxii. 67-71, 63-65; St. Matt. xxvi. 73-75; St. Mark xiv. 70-72; St. Luke xxii. 59-62; St. John xviii. 26, 27.)
IT was not a long way that they led the bound Christ. Probably through the same gate by which He had gone forth with His disciples after the Paschal Supper, up to where, on the slope between the Upper City and the Tyropoeon, stood the well-known Palace of Annas. There were no idle saunterers in the streets of Jerusalem at that late hour, and the tramp of the Roman guard must have been too often heard to startle sleepers, or to lead to the inquiry why that glare of lamps and torches, and Who was the Prisoner, guarded on that holy night by both Roman soldiers and servants of the High-Priest.
If every incident in that night were not of such supreme interest, we might dismiss the question as almost idle, why they brought Jesus to the house of Annas, since he was not at that time the actual High-Priest. That office now devolved on Caiaphas, his son-in-law, who, as the Evangelist significantly reminds us, [5885] had been the first to enunciate in plain words what seemed to him the political necessity for the judicial murder of Christ. [5886] There had been no pretence on his part of religious motives or zeal for God; he had cynically put it in a way to override the scruples of those old Sanhedrists by raising their fears. What was the use of discussing about forms of Law or about that Man? it must in any case be done; even the friends of Jesus in the Council, as well as the punctilious observers of Law, must regard His Death as the less of two evils. He spoke as the bold, unscrupulous, determined man that he was; Sadducee in heart rather than by conviction; a worthy son-in-law of Annas.