34. Before the cock crow. A little more graphic if the article is omitted, as in the Greek. Before a single cock shall
140 WORD STUDIES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. [Cu. XXVI.
be heard, early in the night, thou shalt deny me. Dr. Thom- son (“Land and Book”) says that the barn-door fowls “swarm round every door, share in the food of their possessors, are at home among the children in every room, roost overhead at night, and with their ceaseless crowing are the town-clock and the morning-bell to call up sleepers at early dawn.”
35. Though I should die («dv Séy pe droSaveiy). The A. Y. misses the force of dé): “Though i should be necessary for me to die.” Wyc., “Jf it shall behove me to die.” Rev., ex- cellently, “ Even if I must die.”
36. Gethsemane. Meaning o7l-press. Beyond the brook Ke- dron, and distant about three-quarters of a mile from the walls of Jerusalem. Dean Stanley says of the olive-trees there: “In spite of all the doubts that can be raised against their antiquity, the eight aged olive-trees, if only by their manifest difference from all others on the mountain, have always struck the most indifferent observers. They will remain, so long as their already protracted life is spared, the most venerable of their race on the surface of the earth. Their gnarled trunks and scanty foliage will always be regarded as the most affecting of the sacred memorials in or about Jerusalem; the most nearly approach- ing to the everlasting hills themselves in the force with which they carry us back to the events of the gospel history ” (“Sinai and Palestine”).
40. What! It is hardly possible to convey the exact force of the Greek obrws, thus or so. The idea is, “are ye thus unable, or so utterly unable to watch ?”
45. The hour is at hand. He probably heard the tramp and saw the lanterns of Judas and his band.
47. One of the twelve. Repeated in all three evangelists, in the narratives both of the betrayal and of the arrest. By the time Matthew’s Gospel was written, the phrase had become a stereotyped designation of the traitor, like he that betrayed him.
Ca. XXVI.J . MATTHEW. 141
A great multitude. The Sanhedrin had neither soldiery nor a regularly-armed band at command. In John xviii. a Judas receives a cohort of soldiers and officers from the chief priests and Pharisees. Part of the band would consist of this regularly-armed cohort, and the rest of a crowd armed with cudgels, and embracing some of the servants of conspicuous men in the Sanhedrin.
49, Kissed him (xcatedéAncev). The compound verb has the force of an emphatic, ostentatious salute. Meyer says embraced ‘and kissed. The same word is used of the tender caressing of the Lord’s feet by the woman in the Pharisee’s house (Luke vii. 38), of the father’s embrace of the returned prodigal (Luke xv. 20), and of the farewell of the Ephesian elders to Paul (Acts ax ot):
50. Wherefore art thou come ? (颒 6 mdpet). The inter- rogation of the A. V. is wrong. The expression is elliptical and condensed. Literally it is, that for which thou art here ; and the mind is to supply do or be about. The Lord spurns the traitor’s embrace, and says, in effect, “ Enough of this hyp- ocritical fawning. Do what you are here to do.” So Rev., Do that for which thou art come.
1. The servant (rév S00d0v). The article marks the spe: cial servant ; the body-servant.
Ear (@riov). A diminutive in form but not in sense ; accord- ing to a Greek popular usage which expressed parts of the body by diminutives; as pia, the nostrils ; oppdrvov, the eye ; capktov, the body. Peter aimed his blow at the servant’s head, but missed.
52. Put up again. Peter was still brandishing his sword.
58. Twelve legions of angels. Compare the story of Elisha at Dothan (2 Kings vi. 17).