Ver. 31.—The chief priests and the scribes are more bitter than the people. In fact, they had all along endeavoured to rouse the bad passions of the people against our Lord. And now they take advantage of this his present degraded condition to renew the old charge that his miracles of healing had been wrought by Beelzebub, because, if they had been wrought by God, God would have interposed in this his sore extremity and have set him free. He saved others. They cannot deny thie fact. But they now try to turn this fact against him, by alleging that he who pretended to work miracles upon others, wrought them, not by the finger of God, but by Beelzebub, secing that, if they had been wrought by a Divine power, the game power would now be exercised for his deliverance. They desired to take advantage of this public opportunity of exposing him @s an impostor, and so they hoped to get rid of him, and at the same time to blot the very name of Christianity from out of the earth.
Ver. 32.—Christ might have come down from the cross; but he would not, because it was his Father’s will that he should die upon the cross to redeem us from death. So he despised the taunts of the wicked, that he might teach us by his example to do the same. If he had chosen to descend from the cross, he would not have ascended. He knew that the death upon the cross was necessary for the salvation of men; and therefore he would go through the whole. He withheld the exercise of his power. His omnipotence restrained the natural longings of his suffering humanity to escape from these unutterable torments. So he would not come down from the cross, although within three days he would rise from the grave. And yet there was no word of indig- nation against his tormentors. On the con- trary, he proclaimed mercy; for as he hung on his cross he said, “ Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”
Ver, 33.—And when the sixth hour was eome. This would be midday, twelve e’clock; and the darkness continued until the ninth hour, that is, three o’clock. This supernatural darkness came when the day fs wont to be at its brightest. The moon was now at the full, so that it could not have
been caused by what we call an eclipse, for when it is full moon the moon cannot in- tervene between the earth and the sun. This darkness was doubtless produced by the immediate interference of God. An account of it is given by Phlegon of Tralles, a freedman of the Emperor Adrian. Euse- bius, in his records of the year a.D. 33, quotes at length from Phlegon, who says that, in the fourth year of the 202nd Olym- piad, there was a great and remarkable eclipse of the sun, above any that had happened before. At the sixth hour the day was turned into the darkness of night, so that stars were seen in the heaven; and there was a great earthquake in Bithynia, which overthrew many houses in the city of Nicwa. Phiegon attributes the darkness which he describes to an eclipse, which was natural enough for him to do. The know- ledge of astronomy was then very imperfect. Phiegon also mentions an earthquake. This brings his account into very close corre- spondence with the sacred narrative. There was darkness over the whole land (éq’ danv Thy ynv). “Land” is a better rendering than “earth.” We are not informed pre- cisely how far the darkness extended. Dionysius says that he saw this phenome- non at Heliopolis, in Egypt, and he is reported to have exolaimed, “Hither the God of nature, the Creator, is suffering, or the universe is dissolving.” St. Cyprian says, “The sun was constrained to withdraw his rays, and close his eyes, that he might not be compelled to look upon this crime of the Jews.” To the same purpose St. Chrysostom, “The creature could not bear the wrong done to its Creator. Therefore the sun withdrew his rays, that he might not behold the deeds of the wicked.”
Ver. 34.—Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani? St. Mark here uses the Aramaic form Edot. St. Matthew refers to the original Hebrew. St. Mark in all probability took his form from St. Peter. It seems from hence that our Lord was in the habit of using the vernacular speech. Why hast thou forsaken me? (eis rf Be eykaréArmes 3). This might be rendered, Why didst thou forsake me? It is generally supposed that our blessed Lord, continually praying upon his cross, and offering himself a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, re- cited the whole of the psalm (xxii.) of which these are the first words, that he might show himself to be the very Being to whom the words refer; so that the Jewish scribes and people might examine and see the zause why he would not descend from the cross; namely, because this very psalm showed that it was appointed tliat he should suffer these things.
Ver. 35.— Notwithstanding the super- natural darkness, there were those who
ou, Xv. 1—47.] THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MARK.
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lingered about the cross. Indeed, the dark- ness would add greatly to the awfulness of the place. It was out of that darkness that
the voice of Jesus was heard; and inasmuch |
as Elias, or Elijah, was believed to hold some relation to the Messiah, it was natural for some of those who stood by to under- stand the words to mean that our Lord was actually calling for Hlias. “
Ver. 36.—There is a slight difference here in the narratives. St. Matthew (xxvii. 49) says, And the rest said, Let be; let us see whether Elijah cometh to save him.” Here in St. Mark the words are recorded as having been spoken by him alone who offered our Lord the vinezar. According to St. John (xix. 28), the offering of the vinegar followed immediately upon the words of our Lord, “T thirst.” This drink was not the stupe- fying potion given to criminals before their crucifixion, to luli the sense of pain, but the sour wine, the ordinary drink of the soldiers, called posea. The reed was most probably the long stalk of the hyssop plant. Dr. J. Forbes Royle, in an elaborate article on the subject, quoted in Smith’s ‘ Dictionary of the Bible’ (vol. i. p. 846), arrives at the conclu- sion that the hyssop is none other than the caper plant, the Arabic name of which, asuf, bears a strong resemblance to the Hebrew. The plant is the Capparis spinosa of Linnseus. The apparent difference between the nar- ratives of St. Matthew and St. Mark may be reconciled by weaving in the narrative of St. John with those of the synoptists—the “Let be” of the soldiers in the one case being intended to restrain the individual from offering the wine; and the “ Let be” of the individual, corresponding to our “ Wait a moment,” while he answered our Saviour’s ery, “I thirst.”
Ver. 37.And Jesus uttered a loud voice, |