[5015] i. 14-27.
[5016] iv. 31-41.
10. Significance of Capernaum.
Matthew for his part adds, [5017] that when the Lord had entered into Capernaum the centurion came to him, saying, "My boy is lying in my house sick of the palsy, grievously tormented," and after telling the Lord some more about him, received the reply, "Go, and as thou hast believed, so be it unto thee." And Matthew then gives us the story of Peter's mother-in-law, in close agreement with the other two. I conceive it to be a creditable piece of work and becoming to one who is anxious to hear about Christ, to collect from the four Gospels all that is related about Capernaum, and the discourses spoken, and the works done there, and how many visits the Lord paid to the place, and how, at one time, He is said to have gone down to it, and at another to have entered into it, and where He came from when He did so. If we compare all these points together, we shall not go astray in the meaning we ascribe to Capernaum. On the one hand, the sick are healed, and other works of power are done there, and on the other, the preaching, Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand, begins there, and this appears to be a sign, as we showed when entering on this subject, of some more needy place of consolation, made so perhaps by Jesus, who comforted men by what He taught and by what He did there, in that place of consolation. For we know that the names of places agree in their meaning with the things connected with Jesus; as Gergesa, where the citizens of these parts besought Him to depart out of their coasts, means, "The dwelling of the casters-out." And this, also, we have noticed about Capernaum, that not only did the preaching, "Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand," begin there, but that according to the three Evangelists Jesus performed there His first miracles. None of the three, however, added to the first wonders which he records as done in Capernaum, that note attached by John the disciple to the first work of Jesus, "This beginning of His signs did Jesus in Cana of Galilee." For that which was done in Capernaum was not the beginning of the signs, since the leading sign of the Son of God was good cheer, and in the light of human experience it is also the most representative of Him. For the Word of God does not show forth His own beauty so much in healing the sick, as in His tendering the temperate draught to make glad those who are in good health and are able to join in the banquet.
[5017] viii. 5 sqq.
11. Why the Passover is Said to Be that of the "Jews." Its Institution: and the Distinction Between "Feasts of the Lord" And Feasts Not So Spoken of.
"And the passover of the Jews was at hand." [5018] Inquiring into the accuracy of the most wise John (on this passage), I put myself the question, What is indicated by the addition "of the Jews"? Of what other nation was the passover a festival? Would it not have been enough to say, "And the passover was at hand"? It may, however, be the case that the human passover is one thing when kept by men not as Scripture intended, and that the divine passover is another thing, the true passover, observed in spirit and truth by those who worship God in spirit and in truth; and then the distinction indicated in the text may be that between the divine passover and that said to be of the Jews. We should attend to the passover law and observe what the Lord says of it when it is first mentioned in Scripture. [5019] "And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, This month is to you the beginning of months, it is the first for you among the months of the year. Speak thou to all the congregation of the children of Israel, saying, On the tenth of this month shall every man take a sheep, according to the houses of your families;" then after some directions in which the word passover does not occur again, he adds, [5020] "Thus shall ye eat it, your loins girt and your shoes on your feet, and your staves in your hands, and ye shall eat it with haste. It is the passover of the Lord." He does not say, "It is your passover." And a little further on He names the festival again in the same way, [5021] "And it shall come to pass, when your sons say to you, What is this service? And ye shall say to them, It is the sacrifice, the passover of the Lord, how He guarded the houses of the children of Israel." And again, a little further on, [5022] "And the Lord spake to Moses and Aaron, saying, This is the law of the passover. No alien shall eat of it." And again in a little, [5023] "But if a proselyte come to you, and keep the passover of the Lord, every male of him shall be circumcised." Observe that in the law we never find it said, "Your passover;" but in all the passages quoted the phrase occurs once without any adjunct, while we have three times "The passover of the Lord." To make sure that there is such a distinction between the passover of the Lord and the passover of the Jews, we may consider the way in which Isaiah speaks of the matter: [5024] "Your new moons and your Sabbaths and your great day I cannot bear; your fast and your holiday and your new moons and your feasts my soul hateth." The Lord does not call them His own, these observances of sinners (they are hated of His soul, if such there be); neither the new moons, nor the Sabbaths, nor the great day, nor the fast, nor the festivals. And in the legislation about the Sabbath in Exodus, we read, [5025] "And Moses said unto them, This is the word which the Lord spake, The Sabbath is a holy rest unto the Lord." And a little further on, "And Moses said, Eat ye; for to-day is a Sabbath unto the Lord." And in Numbers, [5026] before the sacrifices which are offered at each festival, as if all the festivals came under the law of the continuous and daily sacrifice, we find it written, "And the Lord spake unto Moses, Announce to the children of Israel, and thus shalt thou say unto them, My gifts, My offerings, My fruits for a smell of sweet savour, ye shall observe to offer unto Me at My festivals. And thou shalt say unto them, These are the offerings which ye shall offer unto the Lord." The festival set forth in Scripture He calls His own, not those of the people receiving the law, He speaks of His gifts, His offerings. A similar way of speaking is that in Exodus with regard to the people; it is said by God to be His own people, when it does not sin; but in the section about the calf He abjures it and calls it the people of Moses. [5027] On the one hand, "Thou shalt say to Pharaoh, Thus saith the Lord, Let My people go, that they may serve Me in the wilderness. But if thou wilt not let My people go, behold, I will send against thee and against thy servants, and against thy people and against thy houses, the dog-fly; and the houses of the Egyptians shall be full of the dog-fly, and on the land on which they are, against it will I send them. And I will glorify on that day the land of Gesem, on which My people are; on it there shall be no dog-fly, that thou mayest know that I am the Lord, the Lord of all the earth. And I will make a distinction between My people and thy people." To Moses, on the other hand, He says, [5028] "Go, descend quickly, for thy people hath transgressed, which thou leddest out of the land of Egypt." As, then, the people when it does not sin is the people of God, but when it sins is no longer spoken of as His, thus, also, the feasts when they are hated by the Lord's soul are said to be feasts of sinners, but when the law is given regarding them, they are called feasts of the Lord. Now of these feasts passover is one, which in the passage before us is said to be that not of the Lord, but of the Jews. In another passage, too, [5029] we find it said, "These are the feasts of the Lord, which ye shall call chosen, holy." From the mouth of the Lord Himself, then, we see that there is no gainsaying our statement on this point. Some one, no doubt, will ask about the words of the Apostle, where he writes to the Corinthians: [5030] "For our Passover also was sacrificed for us, namely, Christ;" he does not say, "The Passover of the Lord was sacrificed, even Christ." To this we must say, either that the Apostle simply calls the passover our passover because it was sacrificed for us, or that every sacrifice which is really the Lord's, and the passover is one of these, awaits its consummation not in this age nor upon earth, but in the coming age and in heaven when the kingdom of heaven appears. As for those feasts, one of the twelve prophets says, [5031] "What will ye do in the days of assembly, and in the days of the feast of the Lord?" But Paul says in the Epistle to the Hebrews: [5032] "But ye are come unto Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to ten thousands of angels, the assembly and church of the firstborn, who are written in heaven." And in the Epistle to the Colossians: [5033] "Let no one judge you in meat and in drink, or in respect of a feast-day or a new moon, or a sabbath-day; which are a shadow of the things to come."
[5018] John ii. 13.
[5019] Exod. xii. 1-3.
[5020] Ver. 11.
[5021] Ver. 26.
[5022] Ver. 43-48.
[5023] Ver. 48.
[5024] Isa. i. 13.
[5025] xvi. 23.
[5026] xxviii. 1.
[5027] Exod. viii. 21-23.
[5028] Exod. xxxii. 7.
[5029] Levit. xxiii. 2.
[5030] 1 Cor. v. 7.
[5031] Hosea ix. 5.
[5032] xii. 22, 23.
[5033] ii. 16.
12. Of the Heavenly Festivals, of Which Those on Earth are Typical.
Now in what manner, in those heavenly things of which the shadow was present to the Jews on earth, those will celebrate festivals who have first been trained by tutors and governors under the true law, until the fulness of the time should come, namely, above, when we shall be able to receive into ourselves the perfect measure of the Son of God, this it is the work of that wisdom to make plain which has been hidden in a mystery; and it also may show to our thought how the laws about meats are symbols of those things which will there nourish and strengthen our soul. But it is vain to think that one desiring to work out in his fancy the great sea of such ideas, even if he wished to show how local worship is still a pattern and shadow of heavenly things, and that the sacrifices and the sheep are full of meaning, that he should advance further than the Apostle, who seeks indeed to lift our minds above earthly views of the law, but who does not show us to any extent how these things are to be. Even if we look at the festivals, of which passover is one, from the point of view of the age to come, we have still to ask how it is that our passover is now sacrificed, namely, Christ, and not only so, but is to be sacrificed hereafter.
13. Spiritual Meaning of the Passover.