SECTION XII

the transfiguration of Jesus

(Mat 17:1-13. Mar 9:1-13. Luk 9:28-36)

The disciples of Jesus had now cheerfully taken His side in opposition to the powerful hostility which had developed itself against Him among their countrymen. They had been made acquainted with the first fore-feeling that a time of heavy trial lay before their Master and themselves. Yet they were not forsaking Him; their spirit was willing to follow Him, but their flesh was weak; and of this their present mood of feeling might be giving indications which were only too clear. The next days were probably days of seriousness and sadness. Who may tell all that in those days was stirring in the heart of the disciples? The first dawning sense of the blessedness of suffering might be visiting the heart of a John; while, perhaps, the first thoughts of treason might at first timidly, then more boldly, be straying through the breast of Judas. We have of these days no record.

‘After six days,’ that is, after about a week,¹ the Lord judged it the time to strengthen the hearts of His disciples by an especial manifestation of His glory. He again singled out from the rest the three most confided in,—Peter, the elder James, and his brother John,—and conducted them aloft (ἀναφέρει), up a high mountain, into the deep solitude of some mountain range. Tradition has marked out for this hill the high-towering Tabor in Galilee. Now, six days would, it is true, have given Jesus and His disciples time enough to leave the neighbourhood of Cesarea Philippi and get to Tabor. But of such forced journeys as must have been made in this interval we read nothing. On the contrary, Mark tells us distinctly, that not till after this time did they leave the district of Gaulonitis and come into Galilee (9:30). Also it is to be considered, that in Galilee now for the first time Jesus had found it advisable to withdraw from all large gatherings of the people, whilst in the dominions of Philip He still calmly resigns Himself to the crowd just when it is flocking to Him (Mat 17:14). People extol the beauty of the prospect from Mount Tabor.² At another time, perhaps, this might have been an inducement with the Lord, to choose the spot for celebrating with His disciples a joyous feast of the spirit; but now the matter in hand was something quite different from fine, wide-reaching views. The disciples required a twofold prospect into the other world-into the spirit realm of the heroes of the Old Covenant, as also into the future of the glorification of their Lord in the New. Moreover, as has been already observed (i. 252), the summit of Tabor was at this time inhabited. There are therefore distinct negative reasons against the tradition that the transfiguration took place on Tabor, while there are other positive ones in favour of the neighbourhood of Cesarea Philippi. Jesus therefore, no doubt, was still in the hill region at the foot of Anti-Libanus: it was there He led His disciples up a high hill; Luke says, ‘up the hill’ (εἰς τὸ ὅρος). The highest hill in this neighbourhood is Hermon. Some suppose that Hermon was the scene of the transfiguration, while others name the hill Paneas, near to Cesarea Philippi.³ In reference to this last conjecture, we are to consider that in the proximity of a very high hill, a small hill, or, in fact, the mere spur of a hill can hardly be designated as the hill or as a high hill. Since then we find ourselves in the neighbourhood of Cesarea Philippi, these expressions seem certainly to point to Hermon. On the other hand, in this mountain journey, our Lord’s object could not be to get to the region covered with snow, but only to the deepest solitude. The remarkably elevating and refreshing effect of the solitudes of the Alpine regions has been frequently celebrated. In the still seclusion of the high mountain Jesus sought to strengthen Himself and His disciples by prayer. They were praying (Luke ver. 28). The world vanished from their view.

At this solemn hour the disciples saw how the face and the whole appearance of Jesus was altered. He ‘appeared to them in a new form.’ ‘His face shone as the sun:’ even ‘His clothes gleamed’ in the bright light, ‘white as snow;’ ‘white’ (adds Mark) ‘as no fuller on earth can white them.’

We know how joy often brightens the countenance of a man, how love beautifies it, how by the happiness of a deathbed it is often strangely glorified.⁴ The revelations of the future world make holy prophets often pale as dead men (Dan. 10), often beaming for joy. The countenance of Moses shone when he came down from Mount Sinai, so that no man was able to endure to gaze upon it (Exo 34:29 seq.; cp. 2 Co 3:7 seq.) Here we have the highest that in this way could come to pass in human experience. The fulness of the Spirit which was in Christ cast its splendour over His whole being; yea, the heavenly luminosity of His inner man, which else was still bound by the obscurity of His earthly appearing, now broke forth, and poured even upon His apparel a white glistering of light, which was wholly new to the astonished disciples. This was a mightier reappearance of that phenomenon which the Baptist saw when the Spirit descended upon Him; a fore-shining of the perpetual glorification to be afterwards realized (see above, vol. i. p. 361). It was the first particular of that wondrous experience which the disciples were now destined to realize; a spirit-apparition in the midst of the present world. The heavenly being of Jesus broke forth out of His earthly: it was as if He stood already upon the heights of the other world, as if already He belonged to the realm of spirits.⁵

This served to introduce the second marvellous particular. The Gospel history announces it with astonishment (καὶ ἰδού). The disciples saw how two men appeared and talked with Jesus; and it became clear to them, through the greeting and further proceeding which took place between Jesus and these unearthly forms, that these men were Moses and Elias.⁶ At the same time they understood on what subject their discourse was, namely, the decease with which Jesus should fulfil his pilgrimage at Jerusalem. They were in a peculiar state of being; weighed down by sleep, and yet, in the very midst of this state of sleepiness, awake and all alive (διαγρηγορήσαντες) and gazing. The sleepiness, therefore, was no common sleepiness, but seemed brought upon them by the overwhelming influence of the spiritual powers which were playing upon them, as on that other occasion in Gethsemane, when Christ was struggling through His agony. And so also their seeing was not now common seeing, but a looking with the bodily eye and a gazing with the visionary perception of the inner man at one and the same time.⁷ They were really gazing into the spirit-world; they had before their eyes Moses and Elias. But that they should be able to catch sight of these heavenly forms, was no doubt brought about for them through the medium of Christ’s own mood of feeling in that hour, through His glance, and through His converse with those spirits.

It is of the highest significance that the disciples heard Moses and Elias speaking with Jesus of His decease at Jerusalem. Therewith there would dawn in their minds the knowledge of the fact, that Jesus would be abiding in connection with the Old Testament, even if at Jerusalem He should come to a mournful end; that therein He would be at one with the spirit of that lawgiver who condemned transgressors to death, of that zealous one who commanded fire to come down from heaven; but that, with all the closeness of this connection, He, by the very circumstance that He was to suffer death, went beyond them. So that in this vision there was displayed to them the oneness of the Old Covenant with the New, and the superiority of the New above the Old.⁸ The spirit of the Old Testament and the spirit of the New again greeted each other, as on that other occasion at Jordan when Jesus was baptized (see above, vol. i. p. 356).

But when Peter observed that the men of the spirit-world were about to depart (Luk 9:33), he sought to prevent this, speaking to Jesus the words: ‘Master, it is good for us to be here: and let us make three tabernacles; one for Thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias.’ It had, then, soon escaped from his view what Jesus had a short while before said to him of the end of His life, and that that moreover had been the subject of discourse even now. He would have been so glad to hold fast the glory of this hour, of this association. The world he would now gladly forsake, to the earth he would gladly be dead and utterly lost, for the recompense of being able externally to keep together this communion of spirits, and to tarry in its circle, lodging perhaps in the tabernacle of Jesus with the other disciples. He was beside himself when he made this proposal to the Lord. And yet his greeting of the occasion is characteristic. At any price he would have been glad to avoid the lot of crucifixion on behalf of his Lord. In the strictest sense, he wished here to build a cathedral church, or even to found a monastic order. He would establish a church-fellowship, in which Jesus should be the first person, the law-giver Moses the second, and the zealot Elias the third. Thereby he wished to draw down the spirit-world into this life, and with plastic determination to hold it fast in the world of sensuous perception. Thus he spoke as Simon, not as Peter; as a type of that church-communion which professes to rest on him.⁹ He ‘knew not what he said,’ the Evangelists observe in his excuse. ‘For they were beside themselves with fear,’ adds Mark. This is perhaps to be understood thus: through their awful sense of the spirit-world, they were carried aloft above the consciousness of ordinary life, felt (so to speak) spirit-like, and found nothing impossible in the thought of living with spirits.

Peter had begun to speak at the moment when the scene appeared about to change, and the third stage of the transaction was on the point of commencing. He was yet speaking when a ‘bright cloud,’ ‘a cloud of light,’ showed itself, which began to envelop the men of the apparition which was before their eyes.¹⁰ They were surprised by a sudden access of terror when they saw this sign, and when they observed how those apparitions were vanishing in that cloud of light, whose brightness was overpowering their eyes. Also, Jesus was by it withdrawn from their eyes. It might possibly seem to them as if He were now being parted from them, as if, in the company of those unearthly men, He were being removed from the earth. In fact, this was the moment when they were completely to learn that He had power to keep His life; that it was free love, if He again stepped forth out of the fellowship of heavenly ones, and with them descended into the valley of death. In that cloud they saw the medium of transition between this world and the other. It was as if Jesus had already embarked in the ship that was destined to convey Him away into the region of glory, which, later, actually did convey Him thither. As in the light of His transfigured body was manifested the breaking out of the heavenly life in the earthly, so in the bright cloud was manifested that veil which the heavenly life, in the unfolding of its full glory, weaves for itself out of earthly powers because it needs such a veiling—the Shechinah.¹¹ So also the ordinary cloud is the means which allays and tempers for the earth the outward brightness of heaven, as the earth requires. In this stage of highest tension of feeling, the disciples heard the voice which once had been accorded to John the Baptist, ‘This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him.’ Upon this the disciples, from fear, fell on their faces. It was revealed to them now by the Father Himself that Jesus was the Son of God, that He was the chosen One above Moses and Elias, and that obedience to Him was the highest duty. It was the second time that this voice resounded: since then it has been heard once more with a similar turn of meaning (Joh 12:28).¹²

With this call to them from God, which re-echoed loud in the souls of the disciples, the whole mysterious procedure was closed. Jesus again stepped forth, ‘took hold of them, and said, Arise, be not afraid!’ They looked up, and, full of astonishment, glanced quickly around in every direction (περιβλεψάμενοι). All had disappeared. Only ‘Jesus alone’ stood before them.

We cannot know how far this transaction was intended for those in the other world themselves;¹³ although we certainly must suppose that it had an object also for them, since the objective reality of the fact is certain.¹⁴ But that Jesus had thereby gained deep refreshment, as if in heaven itself, for the path of suffering which now soon awaited Him, is evident from the very nature of the transaction. It is assumed, however, with reason, that it also served especially to strengthen the three disciples, and through them the whole band of disciples, for the great conflict which they were now on the way to meet. They behoved first (so to speak) to be fastened with the bands of this heavenly experience to heaven, before they could be led down into the abyss of temptation which lay for them in Jesus’ cross and passion. In kindly acquaintanceship with the eternal world of spirits must be laid the deep foundation for that Church of the Cross, which now, in spite of the world, death, and hell, was to be established out of the souls of poor, weak, sinful men.

‘As they were coming down from the mountain, Jesus charged them, saying, Tell the vision¹⁵ to no man until the Son of man be risen from the dead. They kept this command,’ and obeyed it; they maintained the most profound silence respecting the occurrence. Unquestionably the secret must have proved sufficiently oppressive to them, since they did not know how they were to understand the word respecting Jesus’ ‘resurrection from the dead’ (Mark, ver. 10). This word was to them, at present, in two respects a hard riddle: in the first place, in itself, for they knew not in what sense it was to be taken; and then again, because, not knowing its meaning, they knew not either the period when their tongues should be loosed respecting this great secret. If, for example, Jesus had spoken of the general resurrection of the dead at the last day (see Joh 11:24), He would then have imposed upon them in that command almost an everlasting silence on the great event which they had witnessed. They had eager discussion therefore with each other as to the meaning of that announcement.

The question has been raised, what object could Jesus have had in binding them to this secrecy? The answer (we may believe) is found in the consideration, that for the larger circle of disciples the transaction could only be made intelligible through the medium of Jesus’ resurrection. Yea, even these His most confidential disciples themselves could only then properly apprehend it, when they viewed it in connection with the expectation of their Lord being raised from the dead, since in its very nature it was a prophetic prelibation of His resurrection. If they had now at once made the circumstance known amongst a larger circle, it would have been subjected to profanation in two ways. With the superstitious friends of Jesus, all sorts of chiliastic illusions would have been again quickened; and they would have excited not only themselves, but also these disciples, with expectations which Jesus was just now making it His very endeavour to beat down. On the other hand, gainsayers, by a coarse, hostile criticism, would have found it very easy to throw an air of ridiculousness over an experience woven, as this was, out of the fine, delicate texture of heavenly apparitions and moods of exalted, spirit-like sensibility; and the result would have been, that they would themselves have been made sceptical of the fact which they had witnessed in the hours of their noblest consecration. For it is just as easy to explain away, to all appearance, for the common sense of men, and to resolve into nothing, just the most tender, most mysterious, and most elevated occurrences which betide in the border region between heaven and earth, as it is in the case of a man of a weaker sort to scare away, by any jest or buffoonery, the devotional mood, ‘the shy roes’ (as Lenan finely expresses himself) of thoughts of prayer; this is proved by sundry forms of antagonistic interpretation of the transfiguration, either bold and dashing, or recherché and refined, which we have seen in more recent days. As it was, we can easily conceive that the three disciples would be wrought upon by the occurrence which they had witnessed in the most powerful degree, just through their having for a while to keep the burdensome secret to themselves. But, it may be asked, should not the same strengthening have been imparted also to the other disciples? We answer, these were mediately strengthened in the manner which the Lord saw to be the most suitable. For, in the first place, they were again encouraged by the three returning into their circle in a wholly changed mode of feeling, and beaming with a lofty confidence. And next, through this changed state of mind in the three, the rest could not fail to get the impression, that they knew some great and cheering secret relative to the future of their Master and His cause; and this impression must serve to keep them in a strain of expectation likely to do them good.

The further these initiated ones came down the hill, the more they felt that a blessed hour for them was passed by. The threatening world in the low grounds down under, again came forward into the sphere of their spiritual sight. And now it was natural that the thought should occur to them, Why have not those men of God whom we have seen come down with us, that, with the authority which they clearly have in Israel, they might prepare the way for their Master? At least, why not Elias? He is surely to come to usher in the Messias; and now, when he has barely shown himself, he vanishes again! Through such thoughts the question might very well be called forth, ‘How say then our scribes that Elias must first come?’ The form of their question of itself shows, that they ask it with reference to something just before witnessed, which had begot all kinds of thoughts in their minds. They seem to mean, Why has not at least Elias accompanied us? We are not, surely, to regard that fleeting apparition of him as the fulfilment of this great expectation cherished by all Israel, and which rests upon a clear word of a prophet (Mal 4:5)? But Jesus explains to them, in order to calm their minds, that that announcement of Elias was not at all to be referred to this apparition of him, but received its accomplishment in a wholly different fact.

He read in their soul, and understood well, what it was which they especially wished to say in this reference of theirs to the coming of Elias. In all probability, the thought was present in their soul, If Elias is to come and restore all things for the Messias, how then can so great suffering still lie before Him? This thought, then, He draws forth into view by saying explicitly, ‘Elias truly shall come first and restore all things.’ But then He gives His disciples to understand, that it does not therefore follow that the path of suffering was to be spared to Himself. They should rather understand the word which stands written of Elias, so as that it shall tally with that which stands written of the Messias Himself. This problem He gives them to solve, in answering the question in their mind, which yet they had not expressed in words. They wished to ask Him, How then can this course of suffering be required with the Messias? He addresses to them the counter-question, ‘Why then is it written of the Son of man, that He shall suffer many things, and be set at nought?’¹⁶ Such prophecies of the Messias Jesus found with certainty in the Old Testament; in particular, we may feel sure, at any rate there, where the Christian Church in all ages has found them; e. g., in the 53rd chapter of Isaiah.

‘Yea, I say unto you’ (He added), ‘Elias is already come, and with him also they have done as they listed.’ That surely means, So little have they allowed themselves to be hindered by Elias from killing the Messias, that they have rather, with the most outrageous self-will, treated and set aside even that mighty zealot himself. ‘As is written of him,’ added the Lord; an enigmatical word for the disciples then, as for many theologians still at the present day. In the history of suffering told of the historical Elias itself, lay the type of every figurative Elias in the theocracy. The historical Elias was devoted to death by the resolute, wicked Jezebel, the wife of the weak Ahab; and this had at least for its result, that for a long time he had to flee the country, and that later he would not have had much longer continuance upon earth, even if God had not delivered him by taking him up to heaven. There may be read a prophetic sketch of the fortunes, which as a rule lie before every one who in the theocracy prepares the way of the Lord. And so, in particular, for John was found a Jezebel, Herodias, who made him to be persecuted by the hand of a weak king Ahab, Herod, until she had prepared for him death. But also in the word of the prophet Malachi (3:1) might have been found an obscure prediction of the path of suffering which the Elias-John was to tread. For if it was certain that the Messias was to enter into His glory through the suffering of death, and that the prophet announced that His messenger would come, and go before Him and prepare His way in all, then there lay therein an indirect intimation that He was to go before Him also in the death of martyrdom.

After this explanation, the disciples ‘understood that Jesus was speaking of John the Baptist.’ He therefore, even more distinctly than before (Mat 11:14), referred that prophetic expectation of the Elias preparing the way for the Messias to John the Baptist. Many suppose that Jesus saw only a qualified fulfilment of Malachi’s announcement in the appearance of the Baptist, and that His expression, ‘Elias cometh and restoreth all things,’ points to the fact, that hereafter His second coming will still be preceded by a particular appearing of Elias.¹⁷ But even if in this declaration of His we find an announcement which goes beyond John the Baptist, yet it is not therewith determined, that hereafter the historical Elias himself is to come again. Rather, the application which Jesus Himself makes of that passage in Malachi to John, leads us to the inference, that also in the second case the object spoken of is an Elias in a symbolical sense—one who prepares the way for Christ by appearing in the character of a reformer. And so far the word of Jesus would then be the declaration of a rule, in some such shape as this: Certainly, this is a fixed principle, Elias cometh, and will prepare beforehand all things. But this proposition would then have the general signification: at every great coming of the Messias an Elias goes before Him preparing the way. The truth of this proposition is beyond doubt. Yet surely we must hold fast to this, that Jesus saw the proper fulfilment of that ancient prediction in the ministry of John the Baptist; on which account also the disciples now do not go beyond that thought.

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Notes

1. The different ways of taking the narrative of the transfiguration are to be found in Strauss, ii. p. 239 [or in Kuinoel’s Commentarii, Matt. 17.—Tr.] Concerning the mythical exposition of Strauss, compare, in addition to the discursive observations made above, the illustrations given by W. Hoffmann (p. 375), Hug (p. 85), Ebrard (p. 341). Hoffmann shows in how forced, poverty-stricken, and merely external a method the ‘critic’ has gleaned and put together particular elements from the Old Testament, in order to exhibit the material out of which (he supposes) Christian legends have fashioned the story. Ebrard has with reason noticed it as particularly striking, that the ‘critic’ has started the question, What was the object, then, of the bright light (in the narrative before us)? Yet we should not exactly choose to call this question sly, as Ebrard does; it deserves another description. Let us bethink ourselves, that a Spinozist, a Hegelian, who knows how to teach us that all that appears (alles Erscheinende) is its own object, can in his critical eagerness so far contradict himself, as even to ask after the object of the bright light of a blissful face! The words of the ‘critic’ run thus: ‘But granting that this bright light were even possible, still the question remains, what end it is to be thought to have served.’ As to what concerns its interpretation upon natural principles, this in its different shapes has been very well commented upon by Strauss. Recently, Von Ammon has again enriched this chapter of exposition (ii. 302 seq.) To wit; ‘Jesus had placed Himself somewhat higher than those that accompanied Him, who were lying near, so that the light, striking upon the mountain, touched Him earlier than it did them, and gave Him seemingly an ethereal illumination.’ And yet the occurrence took place about the time of evening (p. 305). Von Ammon’s natural explanation would be made more presentable if it were transferred to the hour of morning. Oddly enough Von Ammon combines with the exposition of this natural illumination the following remark: ‘So God appears to Moses, &c.: Moses came back from Sinai with the reflection of this light.’ Surely (we imagine) not with a reflection of that natural evening-sunshine, amid which, he tells us, Jesus was standing! From the natural explanation of the fact by means of objective phenomena, we must distinguish that which explains it by means of subjective states, i.e., dreams of the disciples, according to which it must be supposed that they all dreamed the same thing; while it even then still remains unexplained, how Jesus at the end can, as being awake, have made Himself participant in the mistaking of their dream for an objective occurrence. As ingenious as it is untenable, is the allegorical explanation of the story propounded by Weisse (i. 538); cf. Strauss (ii. 260). According to this view, that high mountain was the elevation of knowledge which the disciples were now reaching,—the knowledge, to wit, in which the idea of the personal Messias was undergoing an intellectual transfiguration in their view. But how could we manage to make the disciples there, in Gaulonitis, suddenly disappear in the land of poesy? The hills of Anti-Libanus are real limestone mountain-ranges; and one needs not to go out of the land of knowledge just because one has a mind to continue in the region of reality and history. That in the hearts of the three disciples there was now dawning a higher knowledge concerning the relation of the Messias to the Old Testament, and to Jewish expectations; this is, upon just grounds, made prominent in Weisse’s view of the transaction, but surely it is too strongly emphasized. When we at last come back to the conception of the transfiguration as a miraculous external event, we must, however, observe that the true estimate of this, as of other similar transactions, could not but be difficult, so long as we held the views of a supernaturalism made purely external, and insisted upon the false dilemma, that such an event must be regarded either as one exclusively external, or as one exclusively inward. We have already shown before, how it was necessary that, in conjunction with the objective experience of a heavenly apparition, the visionary faculty in those chosen to receive the revelation should develop into the visionary posture of mind, and how this principle was in especial to be applied also to the case of perceiving heavenly utterances (see above, i. p. 364).

2. Respecting the expectation of the Jewish doctors of the law, that the prophet Elias was to go before the Messias, see Hug, as above, ii. 86. One rabbinical sentence relating to this runs as follows: ‘He will gather you together through the hands of the great prophet Elias, and present you through the hands of the King Messias.’

1) So that Luke can say indefinitely, following Hellenistical usage: ʻabout an eight days after.ʼ

2) Sepp, ii. p. 407.

3) Hase, p. 189.

4) Cp. O. Krabbe, Vorlesungen übcr das Lcbcn Jcsu. p. 400.

5) An actual luminosity appearing upon the human body has been repeatedly remarked by physicians as a strange phenomenon attendant upon sickness. This is of itself sufficient to prove the physical possibility of such an eradiation as we are now considering, although the phenomenon does not fall into the circle of ordinary experience as a sign of the highest manifestation of life. But that symptoms can appear in the highest condition of life, having resemblance to symptoms of life in a lower condition, is shown, e.g., by the twofold way in which a man may turn pale: this may occur at one time in bodily fainting, at another in the condition of highest inspiration, when a beam of the majesty of God is touching his soul.

6) [It has often been noticed how this reappearance of the lawgiver and the prophet seems to have been prepared for by the manner of their departure from earth ; neither of them suffering that dissolution of the body which is the common lot of man. The reality of their appearance in glorified bodies thus becomes easier to our apprehension.—ED.]

7) See above, Book II. ii. 2. Here again we must remind the reader that the dilemma often proposed, that such a gazing must either be merely external (objective) or merely inward (subjective), is entirely false.

8) [The essential import, indeed, of this incident seems to be, that it was the formal resignation of those who had hitherto been mediators (typical) between God and man in favour of the ʻOne Mediator,ʼ whom God now also definitely proclaimed as such by His own voice. Moses and Elias, law and prophets, found their fulfillment and were merged in Jesus and mainly in His death of which they spoke.—ED.]

9) Sepp, ii. 408, makes the observation: ‘The three tabernacles symbolize the threefold service in the Church—that service of the sacramental sacrifice, of believing prayer, and of good works, which is continually being presented to the divine Almightiness, Holiness, and Love.’ More palpably evident is it, that they symbolize a church in which, along with the tabernacle of Christ, there are still standing the tabernacles of Moses and Elias.

10) Cf. Olshausen, ii, 215. ‘The strongest light is = σκότος. Therefore it is said in Scripture with the like meaning, God dwells in a φῶς ἀπρόσιτον, and in thick darkness, 1 Tim, vi. 16; Exod. xx. 21.ʼ

11) The Shechinah is therefore (we may believe) not merely the symbol of the presence of God, but at the same time a real phenomenon of concealment, which shows itself on the occasion of such heavenly manifestations as represent the manifestation of Jehovah in the lower world, It constitutes the correlative opposite to the transfiguration-brightness.

12) It is altogether without foundation that V. Ammon (ii, 209) tries to confound this occurrence with the later one of John xii. 27.

13) [The author might have more fully noticed the strengthening influence of this transaction on our Lord Himself. It was as one of the angels sent to minister to Him. Here He saw in the persons of Moses and Elias the whole Old Testament Church represented to Him, and represented as altogether dependent on Him alone, on His death, for the salvation they had hoped in. His face is now steadfastly set towards Jerusalem, the city of sacrifice—ED.]

14) Ebrard states the following object in reference to these (p. 340):—‘In His transfiguration Jesus had announced to the fathers of the Old Covenant the blissful tidings of His willingness to redeem them by His death.’

15) See Stier, ii. 342.

16) [The author, in his Bibelwerk on Mark (2d edition), gives a somewhat different punctuation and translation: And how is it written of the Son of man ? That He must suffer many things, and be set at nought; and in his note on this passage understands this to mean, what holds of Him, viz., that He must Buffer many things, holds also of His forerunner. TR.]

17) Stier, ii. 344.