The Pulpit Commentary — Mark — Volume 1 — Section 114

moral lazars the great Physician found the widest field of operation. We may not forgot, however, that it is with much caution and certain restrictions that any mere man can eo have intercourse with the degraded of his species; but Jesus, the God-man, ran no risk -0f moral taint, or of compromising character by associating freely and fully with such. IL FASTING. 1. Fasting. In the former case just considered, the objectors shrank f1•1m directly assailing our Lord; they only took the disciples to task. Now, however, they have waxed bolder, and they attack the Master himself. The disciples of John imbibed the ascetic spirit of their master, who came neither eating nor drinkino-; the Pharisees, in addition to the one great annual fast appointed to be held on the Day ot Atonement, and the four annual fasts observed after the Exile and enumerated by Zech. viii. 18 as "the fast of the fourth month, and the fast of the fifth, and the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the tenth., (held in the same month, and probably the same as that on the Day of Atonement), observed also the two weekly fasts which superstition or will-worship had superadded, namely, Thursday, the day on which, as was alleged, Moses reascended the mount, and Monday, on which he returned. Holding a common principle, the disciples of John and the Pharisees make common cause, and question our Lord about the laxity of his disciples in this regard-not fastina-, while they themselves were so strict in such observances. 2. The true nature of fasting. This is made manifest by our Lord's reply. Nor do we find any new doctrine here; it is the restatement of an old truth or rather principle. AB rending the garments was a token of grief, so fasting was at once an effect and evidence of grief. But if the reality were absent, the former was meaningless and the latter hypocritical; hence the prophet warned his countrymen to rend their hearts and not their garments, and turn truly unto the Lord. So here the disciples of Jesus had not as yet any cause of grief. Why, then, indulge in empty pretence, employing the sign when the thing signified was absent, and when, in fact, no occasion existed for either, and when from the time and the circumstances both were uncalled for? 3. .Allusion to an ancient custom. John the Baptist had spoken (John ii. 29) of Jesus as the Church's Bridegroom; our Lord accepts the name John thus gave him, and adopts the figure, identifying himself with the bridegroom. In " the children of the bridechamber " we have an expression of Hebraistic impress, and equivalent to the more classical ,rapmµ,po, or vvµq,a:yaryol, who were the friends of the bridegroom-the groomsmen--a.nd who sat or went beside him to fetch the bride, and conduct her from her home, with merry music, gay procession, bright torches, and festive joy, to the house of her husband. Thua we read, in Jndg. xiv. 10, 11, "So his father went down unto the woman: and Samson made there a feast; for so used the young men to do. And it came to pass, when they saw him, that they brought thirty companions to be with him." The allusion makes the meaning manifest. "Can," asks onr Lord by a particle (µ~) which usually implies a negative answer, "the children of the bridechamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them?" The auswer was obvious. The presence of the bridegroom made it a time of feasting instead of fasting--of joy and not of grief ; and so he returns answer to himself, "As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast." Here the ancient Syriac Version omits this clause altogether, and substitutes for it the bare negative "no," as our Lord's reply to his own question. 4. Our Lord's first intima- tion of his suffering~. Yet he points to a time suited to fasting, and we can well imagine how a cloud shaded his benignant brow as he pronounced the darkly ominous words : "But," he says, "days shall come, yea, days when" (such is the import of the ml s.,...,, of St. Luke)" the bridegroom shall be taken away from them; then will they fast in those days.n The Revised Version renders perhaps more simply, though somewhat less significantly, we think, as follows:-" But the days will come; an<J when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, then will they fast in those days." This is the first public intimation which our Lord gives of his future sufferings and death. He had indeed enigmatically hinted it to the Jewish rulers in the words, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up" (John ii. 19); and he had dimly alluded to it in his private conversation with Nicodemus in the words, "Even so must the Son of man be lifted up" (John iii. 14). When that gloomy prospect should be realized, then it would be a time of real grief and consequently a. suitable season for fasting. 5. Marr,im teaching the avoidance of things incongruous. Our Lord takes occasion, from th@ notion of per:;ons indulging sorrow when the oc~ion 4111, If. 1-28.] THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MAH.K. 111