SECTION VI

the end of the old testament theocracy. the withered fig-tree. the inquiry on the part of the Sanhedrim for Christ's authority. the separation between Christ and the Sanhedrim. the parable of the two sons, of the mutinous Vine-dressers, and of the wedding feast of the king’s son. the ironical temptations of Jesus as the theocratic king. the counter-question of Christ. the solemn denunciation by Jesus of the scribes and Pharisees. the lamentation over Jerusalem, and the departure from the temple. the look of approval on the widow’s mite

(Mat 21:10-24:2; Mar 11:20-13:2; Luk 19:47-21:6; Joh 8:1-11)

After the day of His kingly ministry in the temple, Jesus had again returned to Bethany, to pass the night in the dwelling of His friends. When on the following morning early He was returning to the city, and drew near to the fig-tree which, on the previous morning, He had cursed, Peter remembered the circumstance of yesterday, looked towards the tree, and observed with astonishment that it was withered from the root to the top.¹ In an excited manner, he called the attention of the Lord to the wonderful phenomenon, and the disciples also were amazed that the fig-tree was so soon withered. But Jesus said to them, ‘Have faith in God. For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.’

They were standing at this time opposite to the temple-mountain, perhaps even on its declivity. And this mountain, in its symbolic significance, as the representation of hierarchic Judaism, had now become a stumbling-block in His way. Thus He must now move this mountain out of the way by the word of His faith. The mountain must be cast into the sea; that is, the religious polity of Israel must be lost, by dispersion into the sea of Gentile life. And thus perhaps Jesus said the word not only by way of illustration, but as a symbolic expression of His work, of His endeavour, and of the expectation of His soul. The disciples, moreover, had to learn with Him to struggle in faith against the hindrances of the kingdom of God. So He went on: ‘Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.’ But one condition He must most earnestly impose upon them: only in the spirit of reconciliation with all men could they thus pray in blessing; thus their prayer must never be against any man—never to the detriment of any soul, of any life. ‘And when ye stand praying,’ He says, ‘forgive, if ye have ought against any; that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses. But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses.’²

And if this forgiveness be wanting, how could the heart unite with God, and work miracles by His power?

The phenomenon of the withered fig-tree may be considered, according to the relations in which this symbol stood to the Israelitish theocracy, as a mournful prognostic of what was to come to pass in Israel on that day. Hardly had the Lord, for instance, again entered the temple enclosure to teach the people, than there met Him a portion of the Sanhedrim, who may perhaps be considered as a representation of the entire Jewish authority, with a formal interrogatory, having for object to put an end to His ministry. He had not yet sat down, when this group of hierarchs, composed of chief priests, scribes, and elders, stood threateningly before Him. Their question was, ‘By what authority doest Thou these things? and who gave Thee this authority?’ The question is entirely a theocratic law-question, and is measured in every particular. They do not define more closely what He does, because they do not wish to acknowledge that He teaches, and does miracles. But they have in view His whole ministry and appearance, and refer to that. In the first question, they sought to ascertain by what power and authority in the abstract He stood there; in the second, who had invested Him with this authority in the way of the lawful ordination of theocratic tradition. Thus also, the first question is an appeal to His prophetic authority—to His inspiration: it has in view His name of Messiah. The second, on the other hand, would fain know His historic authority—His legitimation—would have His introduction among the people explained by some acknowledged power. And yet these hypocrites knew well that John the Baptist had pointed the people to Him—had introduced Him among the people. They thus were aware who had introduced Him according to the theocratic regulation, and in what character he had pointed Him out. Therefore it was entirely in the spirit of their own notions of legitimacy, when Jesus replied, ‘I will also ask of you one question, and answer Me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. The baptism of John, was it from heaven, or of men?’

Thus they must first of all declare whether they acknowledge the prophetic authority of John; whether they accepted him, with his baptism, as being the herald sent from God of the kingdom of heaven, and of the Messiah. His declaration depended on that. If, for instance, they acknowledged John, then they had still a legitimate theocratic jurisdiction, to which He was bound and willing to render an account in matters of the kingdom of God. But if they rejected the authority of John, He would, indeed, still acknowledge them as being the hierarchical authorities in the land; but as the authorized administrators of the Old Testament economy He could no longer acknowledge them, and therefore needed no longer to give account to them in a question of the kingdom.

At the counter-question of Jesus, the deputation fell into the extremest perplexity. They saw, indeed, that they could not answer it without considerable risk. If, for instance, they acknowledged the authority of John, Jesus might reproach them with having been disobedient to God’s message in him, which had directed them to Himself. But if they characterized the baptism of John as being from men; in other words, if they were to reject it as fanaticism, they must be careful of falling out with the whole people, yea, lest the people might stone them for such an act of unbelief, because all men honoured John as a prophet.

They resolved upon a desperate step, and declared, ‘We know not.’ This circumstance alone would have been sufficient to make these proud hierarchs deadly enemies of Jesus, even if they had not been so before—that He had extorted from them such a confession of ignorance, and, above all, of feigned ignorance, in the court of the temple, in the hearing of all the people. With this declaration, which they would make with the greatest windings of embarrassment, with mysterious phrases about the difficulty of the point, they were no longer looked upon by Jesus as a legitimate Sanhedrim; and He very decidedly declares, ‘Neither do I tell you by what authority I do these things.’

Thus the Lord, in His supremacy, had constrained the high college to exhibit themselves in the sheerest ignorance in the midst of the crowd of people. But He went still further, and compelled the hierarchs likewise to bear testimony themselves of their crime; while He proposed to them parables which had reference to them, and which He allowed themselves to complete in their judicial conclusion.

First of all, He passed before them the parable of the two doubly unlike sons of one father, whom he would send to work in his vineyard. Jesus describes to them the two sons: the first as saying No, to the command of the father, but nevertheless afterwards repenting and going; the other as saying hypocritically Yes, and nevertheless not going; and requires from them the decision which of the two did the will of the father. They could not help answering according to the prophetic and ethic judgment,³ the first. And He then plainly states to them, that, under the form of the first son, He had referred to the publicans and harlots; and under that of the second—themselves. John, says He, came to them in the way of righteousness: that is, not as a fanatic, but thoroughly authenticated according to the Old Testament law, and by his own righteous life. But in refusing their belief to him, they had been guilty of a threefold crime. They ought, first of all, to have set the example of faith on him to the people, and they did not. They ought, in this particular at least, to have kept on the level of the publicans and harlots, and they did not. Finally, they ought at least to have allowed themselves to be shamed by the faith which was manifested by these despised masses; but it was in vain.

Then, in the second parable, Jesus describes the rebellious Vine-dressers, who will not supply the lord of the vineyard with any fruit; who ill-treat the servants whom he despatches to them; nay, who even put to death his son and only heir, that they may seize upon the vineyard for themselves. Once more, He allows themselves to declare the sentence when He asks them what the lord of the vineyard would do to those servants; and they answered Him, that he would miserably destroy those wicked men, and would let out his vineyard to other husbandmen, who should render him the fruits in their seasons. Therein, once more, they were uttering their own condemnation. According to the Evangelists, it cannot be supposed that they did this without perceiving the meaning of the parable, especially after Christ had explained to them the first parable. Rather they sought to play the dispassionate hearers; and with a severe effort of the hypocritical spirit, they succeeded in throwing down the decision as though they did not observe anything (Mat 21:45).

Jesus quite understood that, with their hypocritical impartiality, they wished to display an affected contempt for Him, therefore He pressed more severely upon them, reminding them of a passage of the Psalms, wherein the prophetic spirit had even sketched the fact that they would treat Him with contempt. ‘Have ye then never read the passage,’ asked He, reprovingly: ‘The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes?’ (Psa 118:22-23.) They could not deny that this place refers to the Messiah, and that the Messiah is here designated as a stone which the builders on Zion would reject, as wholly unfit for the building of the temple, but which the Lord would make the corner-stone, in spite of their terrible unfaithfulness, and ignorance, and resistance. Such a text, He then remarks, fully entitled Him to apply the previously related parable to them, and to say to them, ‘The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.’ Here He had in view the New Testament congregation, as the real new people of God, contrasted with the old typical people. He then returns to the despised stone, portraying to them its reaction against its despisers, referring to other places, namely, to Isa 8:14-15, and Dan 2:45 : ‘And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall it will grind him to powder.’

In the first place, they shall themselves judge themselves, and perish by the fact that they sit in judgment upon the Son of God, and then their ruin will accomplish itself in the fact that the Son of God sits in judgment upon them. Or if we consider His reaction against His despisers by His sufferings inflicted by the world, He will first of all judge the world according to the representation of the marvellous stone in Isaiah; and then His glory over the world will come to the last judgment of the world, according to Daniel’s picture of the stone.

The Evangelists observe in this place, that the chief priests and Pharisees had perceived the meaning of these parables, and in their exasperation would have liked to lay hold on Jesus; but they were restrained from so doing by their fear of the people, who honoured Jesus as a prophet.

In this state of mind, they must receive one more parable from the mouth of Jesus, in which, assuredly, all the fulness of His compassion for them was once more clearly expressed. It was the parable of the marriage of the king’s son, and of the invited guests, who, notwithstanding their acceptance of the invitation, declined the feast, to their ruin.

When in this parable, moreover, He depicted to them the judgment upon the man who had come to the feast without having on a wedding garment, He gave them to understand thereby, that the kingdom of righteousness, on which they professed to set so much value, would only continue to exist by means of the kingdom of His grace.

With the conflict between Jesus and the hierarchical power, on the subject of John’s authority, His separation from them, and at the same time from the temple, was already decided. But when, in addition, He had humiliated them in the very midst of the temple court, nay, had made their official dignity of no account, it seemed to them as if He would pursue His successful work in this place in spite of them. Although they did not venture forcibly to lay hands on Him here, yet they believed that they might craftily eject Him from His commanding position; and thus they ironically agreed to the assumption of the popular party actually predominant, that He was the theocratic Lord and Judge in the land, and sought, by mock demonstrations of respect, to ensnare Him in some wile.

Under this point of view, we have perhaps to conceive of the temptations with which they now assailed Him; among which, as was above intimated, we regard the bringing before Him of the woman taken in adultery.⁴

The first temptation proceeded from an association of the party of the Pharisees with the party of the Herodians. In political matters these parties could combine in their common aversion to the Roman supremacy in the country; thus making a theocratic patriotic interest, although in their more precise purpose they might be disagreed among themselves. Upon this theocratic patriotic interest they based their plan. They wished to compel the Lord to express Himself upon the sovereign rights of the Romans over Judæa. If He declared Himself absolutely in their favour, there was an end of His popularity among the people. But they rather hoped that He would declare Himself against them; for it surpassed all their conceptions, that one should claim to be the Messiah and yet acknowledge the supremacy of the Romans in the land, all the more that they themselves were conscious of another disposition towards the Romans. They thought also to beguile Him, in His presumed fanatical enthusiasm, to speak against the Romans, and they would then have delivered Him to the Roman governor as a seditious person (Luk 20:20). The question which they had chosen for that purpose seemed to be a certain snare; and the men who were to propose the inquiry were well selected, expert, plausible persons, who knew how to give to themselves the air of being careful for the theocratic privilege, and of coming to Jesus with a difficult scruple of conscience, with masterly hypocrisy (Luk 20:20). Thus they came before Him. First of all they seek Him, with a flatteringly designed acknowledgment of His high candour and independence, to ask, ‘Master, we know that Thou art true, and teachest the way of God in truth; neither carest Thou for any man, for Thou regardest not the person of men.’ How appropriately they thus in these words describe Him as one who is always true because He is free, and is always free because He is righteous! It is the deepest mystery of wickedness, that it can so imagine and feign to itself the acknowledgment of what is holy, without acknowledging it at all in truth; and that it can employ the highest appearance of truth in the deepest interests of falsehood. After such an introduction, which has already intimated that they wish to encourage Him in fanatical excitement to speak a noble, brave, but hazardous and ruinous word, they speak out their question: ‘Tell us therefore, What thinkest Thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Cæsar, or no?’

Jesus, however, penetrated them.⁵ ‘Why tempt ye Me, ye hypocrites?’ said He to them; and then said, as if determined on His reply, ‘Show Me the tribute-money.’ They brought Him a denarius. ‘Whose is this image,’ He asked them, ‘and superscription?’ They answered, ‘Cæsar’s.’ Thereon followed the decision: ‘Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s; and unto God the things which are God’s.’ They were dumb and amazed at the convincing answer, and slunk away; their purpose of entrapping Him before the people in His answer had miscarried.

This word of the Lord is one of the most wonderful flashes of great and instantaneous presence of mind which occur in His whole life. It comprehends in its brevity and simplicity an entire theory of political law, and of its relation to the rights of the theocracy.

The first fundamental thought is perhaps this: Money represents the carnal, earthly side of the political life; the stamp on the coin indicates the sovereign lord over this temporality of the State; the acknowledgment of the appointed coin of the realm with the stamp, indicates the actual acknowledgment of the supremacy which the stamp represents.

Those who have acknowledged the coin of a sovereign in their land as the coin of the realm, have done allegiance to him thereby.⁶ They in manifold ways receive the coin from the hand of the prince, in profit, in pay, in gifts. They enjoy all sovereign protection and blessing which is connected with life in this appointed political union. Therefore, if they were to reject his actual supremacy, they would be in an outrageous manner depriving him of what is his due, what God had given him, what they had acknowledged his, and wherewith he had in many ways united them, and engaged them to his service.

The second leading thought is this: The entire life of man does not belong to Cæsar, nor is it subject to worldly supremacy. Contrasted with the kingdom of Cæsar stands the kingdom of God, as the kingdom of the inner life. What is God’s, man must give to God. But the image of God is originally impressed upon the inner nature of man, therefore man is bound to surrender his inner life to God. God only must be Lord in this sphere of the inner life—of the conscience.⁷

Thence follows the third principal thought, that man should continually be regarded as rightly divided between these two regions. In the first place, man is not to conceive that the two must of necessity coincide, or be confounded together. In the second place, it is not to be imagined that the one kingdom may be taken as a pretext for sinning against the regulations of the other: for thus it might be possible to appeal to the supreme claims of God, for the withdrawal from Cæsar of the secular obedience due to him; or to the supremacy of Cæsar as a justification of sin against the rights of God. Thirdly, it should be known that both these kingdoms may subsist in regular interworking and union, and that this interworking is perfected in the measure in which their distinction is clearly made, and thence their union thoroughly completed. If the kingdom of Cæsar be pure from all encroachments on the kingdom of God, it will become a perfectly blessed government, even a representation of the kingdom of God in the visible world. And if the kingdom of God attains its full power over the spirits, it becomes the highest authority in all a country’s concerns.

The answer of Jesus was purposely framed to release the Jews from their fundamental errors. They were accustomed to those views of the theocracy which represented the kingdom of God and the power of the princes in an undistinguishable unity. This state of things they fancied must always continue. Thus they made no distinction between the two spheres of life, although they had actually acknowledged the power of Cæsar as the political rule. Sometimes they alleged their duty towards Jehovah their highest King for the purpose of an insurrection, sometimes they alleged the claims of Cæsar for the purpose of carrying out some hierarchical design. Jesus showed them that it was full time to effect the distinction between the State and the kingdom of God—or even the community of God’s Church—in their conscious claims, since such a distinction had long existed by the disposition of God and according to their own acknowledgment. They had become bound in allegiance to Cæsar, therefore they ought to discharge their duty to Cæsar. But they must not conceive that thereby their duty towards God was relaxed.

In effect, this was what they did appear to conceive, when they tempted the anointed of God. They did not give to God what was God’s, any the more that they hypocritically pretended, that for His sake they were anxious to refuse to Cæsar his claims. Nay, a short time subsequently, they went so far as to urge the representative of Cæsar, by the appeal to Cæsar, to crucify their Messiah. The most glorious thing that was God’s, which God had entrusted to them, that they might restore to Him, they withdrew from Him, and cast it in the most importunate manner to Cæsar.

Give to God what is God’s! Jesus would say this to them in a tone fraught with warning, and with the most painful feeling, that they were actually purposing to cast away to Cæsar their marvellous endowment, stamped with the radiant image of God; while they were pretending to make grave scruples whether they should pay to Cæsar the poor tributary penny stamped with Cæsar’s image.

The reason has been already suggested above,⁸ for supposing that even the bringing of the adulteress to Jesus,—the narrative of which occurs in the beginning of the 8th chapter of John’s Gospel,—happened in connection with the rest of the temptations of this day. This proceeding has precisely the same ironical character as the others; but is distinguished from the previous one, that it appears as a temptation on the part of the Pharisees and scribes. The Pharisees had discovered that they were likely to accomplish nothing in union with the Herodians, in the field of theocratic-political questions. They seemed, therefore, now to wish to try their fortune in association with the scribes on the field of theocratic matrimonial law; for which purpose an entirely recent case might furnish the occasion. This circumstance seemed to come to the relief of their discomfiture. Jesus had plainly distinguished between the obligation to the Roman claims and the obligation to the theocratic claims, and had assumed that the one could be obeyed consistently with the other. But now they believed that they had discovered a case of collision, with which they could certainly embarrass or entrap Him. By their subordination under the Roman supremacy, for instance, they were precluded from putting any man to death; and yet it was commanded them, in the law of Moses, to slay the adulteress who had thus been taken in the very act.⁹ This collision, which they had indeed successfully set aside in other cases previously by passive obedience to the constituted authority, or even by voluntary forgiveness of the adulteress, they fancied that they should be able to turn into a stumbling-block in the way of the Lord; if perhaps He should venture to declare Himself otherwise than according to the effectual execution of the Mosaic law. It is thus evident how extremely appropriate is the history to this place. It was to prove that it was not altogether so easy a matter to distinguish between what was Cæsar’s and what was God’s!

The narrative, moreover, with its introductory words, transports us at once to the actual time: Jesus has arrived early at the city from the Mount of Olives, to whose declivity on the further side Bethany belonged; and is seated teaching in the temple, surrounded by the people. The scribes, in conjunction with the Pharisees, bring before Him there a guilty woman,—a woman who has been taken in the act of adultery. They tell Him the circumstance, then remind Him of the Mosaic law, according to which such a convicted adulteress was to be stoned;¹⁰ and call upon Him accordingly to declare His decision thereupon.

But Jesus stooped down, and wrote with His finger upon the earth. This is the only time that it is recorded of Him in the Evangelic history that He had written anything; and this one time He writes with His finger in the dust.

It is not known what He then wrote, and the most various conjectures have been hazarded thereupon.

They made Him a judge in an action wherein they stood before Him themselves as deeply deserving condemnation. If He had actually acquiesced in their expectations, and become a judge in Zion, He must have blasted them themselves with His word; but His whole nature was adverse to their expectations: therefore, ashamed for them, yes, embarrassed by their forward perversity, He shrank within Himself; and probably this it was first of all which His writing expressed.¹¹

They wished for a theocratic legal sentence from Him how the woman should be punished. This sentence (not the judgment on her inward guilt, but that upon her theocratic criminal culpability) He wrote in the dust.¹²

Whether He wrote words in the dust, we know not. If He wrote words, they were probably those which He immediately afterwards uttered, when He observed that they continued insolently standing, and consequently actually persevered in their question; whilst He, surprised, looked upon them again—the answer, ‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.’

This answer has been thought to confuse the religious point of view with the juridical; but it exactly shows that Jesus desires to rebuke such a confusion in the adversaries. The theocratic punishment of the adulteress could only be significant, so long as the religion and the criminal justice were entwined into one (what is God’s and what is Cæsar’s). So long as this condition subsisted, there were always found spirits which, in prophetic or zealous enthusiasm, could juridically perform the religious decrees of God; but this time was now gone by. The religious judgment on the crime of adultery was now actually separated from the juridical, not only in the consciousness of the time, but by the civic order. According to the existing Roman laws, the adulteress could not be punished with death.¹³ The enemies of Jesus, however, pretended in this case to appeal to the ancient unity of the two orders of things; but He assented to this assumption in order to abolish it; while He required of them that he who would begin the stoning must feel himself free from sin. Therein He in no wise annulled the civic criminal prosecution against the adulteress; but only the confusion of the religious and the juridical point of view, which the opponents wished in a hypocritical manner again to bring into play. Herein it is certainly not to be overlooked, that, according to the form of His sentence, He altogether assents to the assumption that the woman ought to be stoned. The infinite boldness of His word, in this respect, has perhaps not been sufficiently considered. ‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.’ How, if one of these self-righteous people had believed that he was conscious of no sin? The woman must, in any case, according to her darkened mind, have shrunk at the word of Jesus, and for a moment have expected the stoning: she must thus have experienced the doom of death in spirit—and Jesus appeared for a moment to take on Himself a great risk, by the decided form of His word, as opposed to the Roman law, which did not permit such an execution; but He well knew that the opponents could not fail to understand Him. They must have been conscious of their guilt at His word, and therefore their proceeding was exhausted.

After the expressed declaration, Jesus went on again writing on the ground. But the word of the Judge who would not condemn began to have effect. The accusers of the adulteress began to go out, convicted by their consciences. So reprovingly worked the Spirit, the word, and the silence of Christ, that by degrees the consciousness of guilt—perhaps even in respect of the law of marriage—drove them all out from His presence. And according to the order in which this consciousness of guilt was realized, they slunk out one by one. The departure began first in the ranks of the eldest, and continued till the whole company of accusers had dissolved itself. They had assumed to themselves the air of a holy company, as they stood there in theocratic jealousy; a company which was entitled to remove the sin of adultery in the old manner out of Israel, by the doom of jealousy. But how soon had Jesus brought them to the actual acknowledgment that it was otherwise now with them—otherwise with the people; and that therefore it must also be otherwise with the legal ordinances in the land!

At length the woman stood there still alone. It is a marvellous operation of His Spirit, not to be overlooked, that the woman still continues standing there, and remains standing, as if chained, after all the accusers are gone. She appears actually to perceive the majesty of the Judge in Him; therefore she neither can nor will escape. Jesus at length looks up, and sees her standing there alone, placed opposite to Him. ‘Woman, where are those thine accusers?’ He asked her. Probably no answer followed—a good sign that she was not ready to triumph over her accusers. Then He continues, ‘Hath no man condemned thee?’ She answered, ‘No man, Lord.’ Hereupon He dismisses her with the word, ‘Neither do I condemn thee: go and sin no more.’

The civil process which her husband might undertake against her was, of course, not set aside thereby. And whether, by the judgment of Christ’s Spirit, she was willing to lay hold of the forgiving grace of God in her heart, was to be manifested in her future conduct. But in respect of the Old Testament theocratic doom of capital punishment, she was released there from in Sion, by the decision of Christ, because no person free from sin had been found among her accusers, who with assurance could execute this capital punishment, and because Christ, who was really free from sin, would not execute the capital punishment at all. Moreover, He would not do so, firstly, because He had already executed this punishment on the woman spiritually, in His sentence; then because in the process there was a nullity, viz., the false purpose of the accusers; and finally, in the third place, because He had postponed His theocratic judicial ministry to the end of the world.

After this failure, the party of the Sadducees would attempt to overcome Him from their point of view. It corresponds entirely with the importance of this day, that all the spiritual powers of the time, as they are tending to darkness, make assault upon the Lord, who now allows the full glory of His light to break forth upon Zion. Already is observed the approach of the great hour of darkness, in the fact, that all parties which usually are struggling with one another to the death, now come into a demoniacal agreement, neglecting everything else but their fierce enmity against Christ.

The Sadducees arrange their question according to their standing-point. They proceed on the supposition that there is nothing in the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. Nay, they think that they may be able to make out from the law of Moses that that doctrine is in contradiction to that law. This contradiction they wish to bring before the Lord in an instance, and desire to compel Him, in His decision, either to approve of their denial of the resurrection, or to contradict the law of Moses, or, finally, helplessly to admit that He could not solve the problem. Thus, in any case, they thought to have discredited Him in the sight of the people.

They proceed upon a legal position of Moses, because it is their intention to force out a contradiction between the law of Moses, according to their apprehension, and the doctrine of resurrection. This is the prescription on the subject of the Levirate marriage (Deu 25:5). If a husband die without children, the brother was to marry the widow, and the first son that is born of this union was to be considered the son of the deceased, and was to continue the name. They proceed to show, by a grotesque and coarsely contrived illustration, to what this law might lead. Seven brothers have married the same widow, one after the other, because none of those that died bequeathed children. They think that the fulfilment of the law must be carried on, even to this result. But upon this result they think that the doctrine of the resurrection must be quite wrecked. But in order to make this out, they must construct just as rude a caricature out of the doctrine of the resurrection, in proportion as they have treated that law of Moses with rude casuistry, and made of it a scarecrow.

Thus they assume that it is part of the doctrine of the resurrection to conceive of the future life as a familiar continuation of the present; so that not only conjugal unions should be repeated in the future, but even that conjugal rights and duties should pass over from the present life with the deceased into the future life. According to this gross and stupid supposition, which they, in the true modern pettifogging spirit, could force upon the doctrine of the resurrection, they now propose the question, ‘When, therefore, these seven brethren meet with the woman in the resurrection-world, which of them ought then to have her to wife again?’

The answer of the Lord was entirely fitted for such a question: ‘Ye err; ye are trifling with a false notion,’ said He; ‘and for this simple reason, because ye know neither the Scriptures, nor the power of God.’

They would fain be the men of knowledge, the enlightened ones in Israel. But their knowledge was delusion; and, indeed, a delusion which depended upon a twofold ignorance.

They made their boast of rightly understanding the holy Scriptures—in choosing to consider them, more especially the Mosaic Scriptures, only in their literal legalism, as the rule of doctrine—and in asserting that in them the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead is not contained. But Jesus at once informs them, ‘that they know not the Scriptures.’ Moreover, they also thought, perhaps, that they had been entrusted with the true and lively conception of the world-that they understood the living divine government, as contrasted with the dead representations of the kingdom of God in this world and the next, which they thought were found among the orthodox Jews. This imagination likewise Jesus cast down. They know not the power of God. They know not the living God, who has power over themselves, over the world, over the dust of death: they manifested this by their denial of the resurrection of the dead. The one ignorance, moreover, was both the cause and effect of the other. Because they had no profound understanding of the Scriptures, they had only a feeble and diluted impression of the divine nature: to them it was, according to the delusion of the heathen, a feeble impersonal nature; and because they had had no experience of the power of God in His awakening Spirit, the Scriptures were closed to them; and they gathered from them only contradictions and offences, instead of faith.

Hereupon Jesus at once proceeds to the proof of His charge. The Sadducees like best to argue from mere assertion, not from the Scriptures. Thus they assert here, for example, that if the doctrine of the resurrection must have a meaning, it must needs be this, that the dead carry with them over into the other world the legal circumstances of this world. To this impudent and false assertion the Lord opposes a holy and true one—such an one as may be considered as the true explanation of the doctrine of the resurrection.

‘They,’ says He, ‘which shall be accounted worthy to attain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage. For they cannot die any more, because they are equal to the angels in heaven, and are sons of God, being the sons of the resurrection.’

According to Luke, the Lord speaks plainly of an attaining to the resurrection, as proceeding from the pressing through to the kingdom of God, and as what may appear as the reward and as the confirmation of faithfulness. The future world of the unfaithful and the lost, as opposed to this new world of those who are approved, does not come here into consideration, for it is a world of sin and death. But those who are approved have now become children of the resurrection, in that they have pressed through to the resurrection. Moreover, they are thereby approved as God’s children; and they are lifted up into the sphere of the everlasting angels. They have not become angels, but angel-like natures; that is to say, they are transplanted into the region of an imperishable being, raised above mortality and death. They cannot die any more; but for that reason also the conjugal unions are discontinued, those which form the counterpoise of death in the earthly world. It is plain that the Lord here derives all special decisions as to the position of the blessed in the future life, from the fact that they are passed through death into life in the way of the Spirit.

Incidentally He shows to the Sadducees, who also impugned the doctrine of the angels,¹⁴ how little He feared and regarded their denials, in thus designedly citing the angels in heaven as personalities, whose existence must be presupposed with certainty.

But that those who are mortal can press through to immortality—this He attributes to the power of God. He proves to them that God has the power to call back the dead to life, and that by this power He actually does arouse the dead to life. And this He proves to them from the second book of Moses—precisely from those words of Scripture which introduce the giving of the law, which must thus have in their eyes, and from their point of view, the highest authority: ‘And as touching the dead, that they rise; have ye not read,’ He asks, ‘in the book of Moses, how in the bush God spake unto him, and said, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?’ And he adds, ‘But God is not the God of the dead, but of the living!’

There are some who fancy that the holy Teacher in scriptural interpretation has argued here after the manner of the Jewish Rabbis, and that His proof is rather an artifice of rabbinical casuistry, than a proof of the doctrine of the resurrection drawn generally from the substance of relevant passages, and from the spirit and life of the Old Testament. But such a notion incurs in an aggravated measure the reproach that Christ urged against the Sadducees, and which at the end of His discourse He once again repeats.¹⁵ That the doctrine of the resurrection cannot, indeed, be a dogma developed in the Old Testament, is evident from the nature of the case. We may not seek there, in general, for any doctrine unfolded in the Christian ecclesiastical form, and still less in the abstract form in which the rationalistic theology lays down its doctrines. But in the manner of a living germ, all Christian ecclesiastical doctrines are really contained in the Old Testament. They must needs be found in this form there, as certainly as the New Testament is the organic realization of the Old Testament. The Lord assumes this canon; and in pursuance of it He finds, with the perfect glance of a master, the living germ of the doctrine of the resurrection absolutely there, where usually an enlightened theologian, to say nothing of one of the modern pantheistic critics, would not have readily sought for it.

If we desire to have a proof of the resurrection of the dead, the very point on which it depends is this—that God makes Himself known as the personal God, who draws up His elect as personal natures to Himself, in that He makes with them an everlasting covenant—in that He is their God. Therein appears the power of God. He has power over His own nature in everlastingly perfected self-consciousness. He is thus a personal being. Therefore He has also the power to call personal beings into life, and to make with them an everlasting covenant, in whose power they are raised up above death. In this power He reveals Himself as the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. The fact that in His revelation He thus calls Himself, involves the proof to the intelligent mind of the resurrection of the dead. For how could the eternally living One name Himself after those that are dead, and unknown in the flood of universal existence? As God, He lives for them who live. He thus continues to live for Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and these continue to live for Him. Because He is their God, they also have in Him everlasting life, and in their individuality they are eternally one with Him. Yea, to Him live all the dead.

This argument produced so striking an effect on all the bystanders, that again a great astonishment stirred the masses of the people. Nay, the argument of Jesus produced so powerful an impression even on the scribes, who even to this day had for the most part a common interest with the Sadducees, that some were induced to cry to the Lord, ‘Master, Thou hast well said!’ After this answer, none of the Sadducees ventured to ask Him any further questions.

Even the Pharisees could not resist a glad excitement when they heard how He had checked the loquacity of the Sadducees.

This intelligence was an occasion for them to collect together with the impulse of the corporate spirit. Although they were sworn enemies of Jesus, and laboured for His downfall, yet there was one point in which they were in accord with Him against the Sadducees,—namely, their estimate of the system of faith developed in the Old Testament. But from this standing Christ had now beaten the Sadducees. Therefore they acquiesced in this victory with gladness, as a pretended victory of their system. And the mischievous pleasure at the humiliation of their rivals enhanced their glad tumult. This pleasure, indeed, could not reconcile them to Jesus. Rather they determined now once more to put Him to the proof. In the department of Scripture learning He had overcome the Sadducees; therefore they laid the plan of providing a defeat for Him in this department, in order thereby to win a double triumph, as well over Him as over the hateful alliance which He had defeated. They appear to have determined on this plan in consequence of their conjecture that Jesus had only to thank a lucky chance for His victory in scriptural interpretation. But if a question were proposed to Him which pertained to learned exposition, it would be easy to manifest His entire ignorance.

Upon this trial the evangelical narratives are quite distinct from that occurrence when Jesus discoursed with a scribe in Galilee, upon the question which was the weightiest commandment in the law.¹⁶ In that place the scribe recites the first and great commandment; here it is Jesus. In that place the declaration is drawn forth in connection with the question, What must I do that I may inherit eternal life? here in connection with the question, Which is the principal of all the commandments? the chief command which embraces all the others? But even this occurrence itself is not related in an exactly similar manner by the Evangelists Matthew and Mark. According to Matthew, the man learned in the law, who represents the question of the Pharisees to the Lord, adduces the question to tempt him; but, according to Mark, he asks Him, prompted by the gratification that he had received from the excellent answer given by the Lord to the Sadducees, and, in the main, he occupies a friendly attitude towards Him. Now there is really no opposition here, but a diversity of apprehension which is intended to render the circumstance clear to us. The Pharisees select from their midst one learned in the law, whom they had sent for especially to oppose to the Lord in Scripture learning; and they gave him the charge to propose a question to Him. It is this which Matthew has in view, and under this aspect he relates the whole fact; he sees in it, according to his systematic mode of regarding, a new and probably the last onslaught of the Pharisees for the purpose of entrapping Jesus. Mark, on the other hand, has in view the individual. He, for instance, certainly belonged to the better disposed of his position; that is evidenced by the whole way in which he discharged himself of his commission. Probably he placed the difficulty of his question specially in its form, whilst he either asked with mysterious expression after the great commandment in the law, or playfully asked after the first of the commandments; but in each case he meant the command that comprehends all commands. But the question was exceedingly opportune for the Lord, as He extricated its meaning forthwith out of the scholastically difficult form, and as there might perhaps have arisen even then a conventional opinion in the rabbinical theology on the great fundamental law; such as at least may be inferred from the agreement of this place with the earlier interview of Jesus upon the weightiest matter in the law with the scribe.¹⁷ Nay, Jesus only needed in this case to repeat that answer which He formerly had received from the scribe. The Evangelist Mark communicates to us His answer in the completest manner: Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord. So runs the commencement,—the true covenant. God must not only be the only God for the hearts, but also the only ruler in the hearts of His people. Thence follows that fundamentally there is only one commandment, and that the first in the developed definition. Thou must love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. Thus proceeds the love of God from the very centre of our being: energizing from within outwards, it penetrates every region of our life, until it has pervaded all our powers, and drawn them into its service. First of all, the man who has God’s law written by love in his heart, loves God with his whole heart, in the germ of his nature, however the dispositions of his soul may still be darkened. But then the moods of his soul are elevated into this love, as well the dull tones of his sorrow as the bright vibrations of his joy. Hereupon he begins likewise to love God with his whole mind; in the earnest faith of his soul he seeks God with all his individual thoughts and self-determination; in his intercourse with the outer world he seeks and finds Him in all the experiences of his life, in all the forms of divine providence. And thus at length all his powers are drawn up into the great attraction of his soul; all are governed by love to God, and are glorified in this love. When the Lord had indicated to the scribe this commandment as the first and highest, He found it necessary to add to it, moreover: The other is of like importance with this. Thou must love thy neighbour as thyself. There is no commandment greater than these two. Thus Christ links together indissolubly into one, the true love of God, the true love of one’s neighbour, and the true love of one’s self. The true love of one’s self, or the nobility in which man observes the divine in his life, must always verify itself in the true love of one’s neighbour, which seeks and acknowledges the divine in one’s neighbour; the latter must always be maintained by the former. But both must proceed in their unity, as the true divine love of man, from the true love of God: with this they must be animated, and represent it in the life. This answer of Jesus appears not only to surprise the scribe by its justice, but also to affect him strongly by the spirit in which He spoke; his reply appears to indicate this: ‘Well, Master, Thou hast said the truth, that there is one God, and there is none other but He. And to love Him with the whole heart,’ adds the scribe, in his own free judgment, ‘and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbour as himself, is more than all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices.’ From the last observation the inference may be drawn; that many of the Pharisees might be awaiting an answer which should exalt sacrifice higher than the duty of love, or should elevate the ceremonial law over the fundamental law of the ten commandments. But the scribe was not in the least disposed to acquiesce in such presumption; rather, in his inclination to Jesus, the spirit of contradiction appeared to bestir itself against the spirit of the corporation which had given him so equivocal a commission. Jesus, however, rejoiced at his answer, since it testified of lively consideration, and said to him, ‘Thou art not far from the kingdom of God.’ Not far! This expression was so significant, that it might become in the soul of such a scribe perchance an incentive to seek with full purpose of heart for an entrance into the kingdom of God.

After this victory of Jesus over the Pharisees, in which He not only had subdued the questioner, but had almost drawn him to His side, no one ventured any more to come to Him with such a trial-question. But now He reversed the order, and for once proposed a question to His adversaries, as they were collected in a group around Him.

He asks them whose son Christ is; and they answer Him, The Son of David. Hereupon He puts before them the problem which they are to solve for Him. ‘David,’ says He, ‘in the book of Psalms (Ps. 110¹⁸), says of the Messiah, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit Thou on My right hand, until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool. David therefore calleth Him Lord: how is He then his son?’

The question of Jesus attains its whole importance, if we reflect that He was now ruling in the temple as Messiah, not only according to His own consciousness, but by the acknowledgment also of the people; nay, that His adversaries themselves had apparently acquiesced in the recognition of Him as Messiah. They were all of one mind with Him in the assurance, that in the psalm to which He had referred it was the Messiah that was spoken of. But how marvellous appears to us the tranquillity of mind of Jesus, if we reflect on His being able thus to discuss with them the dignity of the Messiah! And those words which He, as it were, only passingly quoted, according to which it was promised Him to be throned at the right hand of the Father in heaven, until all His enemies should be cast down before His feet as at a footstool—those words must now in His mouth be of power as against those enemies who wished to make Him a footstool for the heathen. But even the question suggested to the adversaries that the dignity of the Messiah must overtop the dignity of David; that thus also His authority could not be dependent upon the authority of the Old Testament, still less on their authority who administered the Old Testament as judges and interpreters of the law. Yes, this question led them on to the track, that the Messiah must be not only the Son of David, but also the Son of God.

His opponents gave Him no answer to this question. It was characteristic of their gross blindness, that they were incapable of any recognition of the higher dignity and nature of the Messiah. They could not conceive of any Messiah who should take precedence over them; for that reason also, of none who could supersede the Old Testament or David. Thus the word of David that had been quoted was to them a sealed mystery; and with this word, moreover, every other which in a similar way glorified the Messiah; nay, the entire Old Testament, so far as it was to find its key and its explanation in the glory of the Messiah. Thus, therefore, in one great example Christ showed to the Pharisees and the scribes that the Old Testament, and with it also the mystery of the Messiah, is sealed to them by their own fault. With this evidence He broke off the conference with them. According to the Evangelist Mark, a considerable crowd of people rejoiced at these words of the Lord. But the greater part perhaps had no foreboding that Jesus had denounced a judgment of blindness as impending over the greatest part of the nation.¹⁹

Thus, as Jesus once took His departure from the Galilean Pharisees and scribes, announcing to them the judgments of God which must come on them on account of their obduracy,²⁰ so now He separated from the Jewish Pharisees and scribes with a terrible denunciation also. We cannot wonder, as has been already hinted, if in this discourse some features recur which are found in that earlier one. Indeed, this Jewish company of scribes and Pharisees were not contrasted with that Galilean one as a totally different company; for about the feast-time there were many of those very Galileans in Jerusalem. Nevertheless, in most of its elements it was a new and a different company from the former; therefore we cannot wonder if that denunciatory address of Jesus recurs in substance. But as this company presents a determined obstinacy more ripened, more general, more past remedy on the part of the Pharisees and scribes than at their earlier appearance in Galilee, the rebuking word of Jesus is developed into a sevenfold woe upon His adversaries.

Doubtless the words which Mark (12:38-40) and Luke (20:45-47) record contain the most accurate characters of the Lord’s discourse; nevertheless, the extended form of the discourse in Matthew must perhaps be considered as authentic. For this discourse is like the sermon on the mount, thoroughly original, lively, and historical; it is appropriate to the moment, just as that is. No Evangelist could construct from himself so great a discourse, or venture formally to arrange such an address out of the expressions of Christ.²¹

The Lord’s address to the people and to His disciples preceded His denunciation of woe upon the adversaries; and herein He openly declares Himself with respect to them. The scribes and Pharisees, said He, are established in Moses’ seat. It is the fact that those people had become lawgivers and judges in the community of Israel. And in that capacity the people ought therefore to acknowledge them. ‘All therefore,’ says Christ, ‘whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do.’ So far goes the positive injunction. It is plain, on the face of it, that here obedience to the scribes and Pharisees can only be spoken of so far as it does not militate against obedience to the eternal commands of God. All that they deliver to you, that keep: thus the holy and eternal word of God before all things. The holy Scripture is the tradition of all traditions; therefore the system of tradition must also in its result come back to the point of conforming all other institutions to the holy Scripture. According to this canon Christ stood in relation to the hierarchy.

And thence, therefore, follows at once the negative injunction of the Lord, ‘But do not ye after their works: for they say (everything), and do not.’ This accusation, that their doings contradict their sayings, the Lord prosecutes with many reproaches. The first goes on: ‘They bind heavy burdens, and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.’ This reproach might give offence: it might be asked, whether it was not actually zeal for the blessedness of the work for which these men are distinguished. The Lord answers, No! For He sees through them. He knows that they are a long way from thinking of the spiritual performance of those requirements which they impose upon others: that thus, for instance, they are widely removed from changing the Sabbath into a purely contemplative celebration of the presence of God; or from trembling or shuddering, according to the meaning of their washings for every defilement, even the smallest of daily life. He knows them well, and speaks with confidence. The burdens which they bind on other men, they do not move with a finger, although they would pretend that they do everything. This is precisely the second ground of rebuke. All these works they do to be seen of men. The Lord points out how this love of display strikes the eye. The religious Israelite, by way of literal application of the text, Deu 6:8, wears slips of parchment, containing verses of the law, in a sheath on his arm and forehead: these people, however, make their parchments or phylacteries excessively broad. According to the text, Num 15:38, the religious Israelite wears on his garment fringes to remind him of his Israelitish calling.²² These memorials they allow to hang down in heavy tufts. It was intended that all should see how carefully they remember the command of the Lord, how faithfully they are mindful of their Israelitish calling. But their struggles prove that this love of display is animated with a burning ambition; this is described by the Lord also. They wish to usurp all the honours, however various, of every position and every condition, it might almost be said of every faculty; they wish to take possession for themselves of the first place of honour at the banquets, the first master’s chair in the synagogues, and the first respect at the market; they demand for themselves all courtesies and all greetings; they wish to be hailed by men as Rabbi! Rabbi!

When the Lord has depicted this hypocritical ambition, He makes an application of it for the benefit of His disciples.

As members of His community, on the pure New Testament ground of the kingdom of God, where the training of the child ceases, they were not to be called Rabbi, but to establish it firmly that only One is their Master, and they are all brethren one with another. They were therefore also to call none among them their father²³ (in a similar sense in the arrangement of the church life), since they have only one Father in a spiritual sense-the Father in heaven. Moreover, they were not, thirdly, in any way, either by lowering or altering their pretensions, to wish to be called leaders of the congregation (heads of a creed or of a sect); for One is the leader of the people, even Christ. Hereupon follow the earnest admonitions which we have already considered above. He that is greatest among you shall be your servant (Mat 20:26-27). Whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted (Luk 14:11). This word is here to be considered as the special motto of the denunciation against the scribes and Pharisees, which the Lord now, in a sevenfold woe, which is concentrated in the eighth, directs immediately upon them, always again and again accosting them as hypocrites.

The first woe He proclaims over them, because, by their exclusiveness in the nature of their institutions, they shut up from the people the kingdom of heaven, as the kingdom of the essential, the real, and free, and blessed life of the Spirit.²⁴ They themselves do not go out of the fore-court of types into the true spiritual temple of the kingdom of God; and they do not suffer it, if others should wish to enter. In this dead formality, they throw away the key of living knowledge; and stamp him as a criminal who again seeks and keeps it, in the true desire for inner spiritual life.

The second woe He denounces upon their sanctimonious covetousness-that they, with their heartless formality, extort from pious but credulous natures immense donations to the temple-chest. They devour widows’ houses. Moreover, long prayers are their pretence, with which they appear to bless everything, to be willing to rescue everything from the fire of judgment. Therefore, says the Lord, on that very account, ye shall receive the greater damnation.

The third woe comes upon them because of their mischievous proselytizing. They encompass, as if in a hunter’s circle, the sea and the land, in order to make one proselyte; and when he is made, they make him a child of hell, who in his blind fanaticism goes even far beyond themselves, and becomes twofold worthy of condemnation.

The fourth woe comes on them because of their mean casuistry, because of the ruinous distinctions in their spoiled religious doctrine and morality, by which they are characterised as blind guides of souls. This judgment is confirmed by an example. They teach that whosoever should swear by the temple, he is not bound thereby; but that he is, if he should swear by the gold in the temple. In the same way, they explain an oath by the altar as unimportant; but the oath by the gift on the altar, as creating an obligation. Indignantly the Lord inveighs against them as fools and blind, on account of their wretched distinctions. He shows to them that it is strictly the temple which sanctifies the gold in the temple; the altar which gives to the offering upon it its sacredness. They have thus made diametrically wrong definitions. Then the Lord proves to them that these distinctions are altogether futile, and leading to error, by the observation that he who swears by the altar swears at the same time by all which is thereon; and that he who swears by the temple swears also by Him who dwelleth in the temple; and that he who swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God, and by Him who sitteth on that throne. Thus He shows that even those oaths in which we are more or less prone to treat the law of truthfulness slightingly, are yet, if we attend to their peculiar significance, manifested at last as oaths by God: thus one with another as closely binding, strictly responsible oaths. And thus therefore all duties are in harmony with the one highest duty, although the casuists with their distinctions enfeeble many duties, and so lay the foundation of a real withering away of the sense of duty in the minds of their pupils.

The fifth woe is denounced upon the hypocritical petty legalism with which they conceal from themselves and others their wanton disregard of the everlasting commandments of God. They discharge very punctually the tenth for the temple,—of mint, and of anise, and of cummin; but they let slip the weightier and more difficult demands of the law—judgment (true living righteousness especially, as applied to self-judgment in repentance), and mercy, and faith. But these things, thus teaches the Lord, ought to stand in the foreground: these things ought to be done; and therewith also those things, those punctiliousnesses of legalism, ought not to be neglected. On account of this perversity, He casts upon them the reproach that they are like to such men as strain through their drink, in order that they may swallow with it no gnat, but in spite of their carefulness negligently swallow down a camel.

The sixth woe falls on them because of their sinful luxury, which they seek to disguise by the hypocritical appearance of great sanctity in their enjoyments. They keep the outside of their cups and platters—that is, the outside of their life of sense—clean and pure, according to an exaggeration of the ordinances of Levitical purity; but the inside of their table vessels is full of robbery and gluttony; their acquisitions, as their enjoyments, are sinful, wild, and ruinous. To this is added the warning, ‘Cleanse first the inside of the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also. Sanctify your gains and your enjoyments, in order to consecrate your life of sense, and to set it forth in its due honour.’

The seventh woe represents every curse already named in its root and in its fruit; in its external sanctimoniousness, appearances of life, glitter of life; in its internal ruin, death, and decay of corruption. ‘Ye are like,’ says Christ, ‘unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but are within full of dead men’s bones and of all uncleanness. Even so,’ He adds, ‘ye also appear outwardly righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.’

Hereupon the Lord, in an eighth woe, declares the historical and polemical side of their undoing—their hatred against the true spiritual life, which is manifested in the persecution of the prophets. In this woe there appears again, therefore, the historic effect and form of all their earlier perversities. It is a sevenfold woe in one—the curse of their imperishable hatred against the prophets: they build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, and say, ‘If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. ‘Wherefore,’ says He, ‘ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets (to wit, thoroughly blinded self-righteous men as they were); and ye shall fill up therefore the measure of your fathers.’ The concluding word goes on-‘Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?’ ‘Upon that very account,’ says He now, in the everlasting consciousness of His divine nature, before which time and space disappear, ‘behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes; and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city: that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.’ We have above considered the peculiar difficulty of this passage.²⁵ Its meaning is this: The judgment of the obduracy of Pharisees and scribes in Israel advanced further and further from generation to generation, and from guilt to guilt,²⁶ and could cease no more until it was fulfilled in the most fearful judgment upon the most enormous guilt. The Lord shows to His opponents that this doom is impending over them.

He thus appears to hint at the ninth and last woe. But this He does not express. Perhaps He does not express it because in His death, in which the guilt of the Pharisees and scribes was fulfilled, the atonement surpasses the judgment. And thus in this terrible denunciation of the Lord we number one woe less than we number of beatitudes in His sermon on the mount. But it is none the less plain that this announcement of judgment stands in internal connection with that announcement of the Gospel.²⁷ He had already contrasted the righteousness of His people whom He blessed in His beatitudes, with the righteousness of the Pharisees and scribes; and as He represents the ascent of the truly pious towards the blessed state, so He represents the descent of the seemingly pious to destruction. This destruction He has here described in its development. Thus it is obvious to look for a parallel between the sermon on the mount and this denunciation.

It is the beginning of the parallelism, that the blessedness of true poverty of spirit, to which the kingdom of heaven is appropriated, is contrasted with the unblessedness of an external legal service, whose representatives shut up the kingdom of heaven, of the true spiritual life, from themselves and from others also.

The second beatitude blesses those that mourn, who painfully long for the true life, for the entry into the kingdom of heaven, which they have lost. The second woe, on the other hand, represents those heartless hypocrites whose longing is no holy mournfulness, but an unholy covetousness, in which they devour widows’ houses, blinding and enchaining these true mourners with their long prayers, instead of truly comforting them.

The third beatitude blesses the meek, and assures to them the possession of the earth. The third denunciation of woe, on the other hand, falls upon the fanatical proselytizers who rush through land and sea to win proselytes, although they do not thereby extend the glory of the kingdom of God on the earth, or win the true inheritance of the earth, but rather destroy themselves and others.

The fourth beatitude blesses those who hunger and thirst after true righteousness, and gives them the promise that they shall be filled. How awfully sharp is the contrast between this blessing and the fourth woe, which proceeds from the dead-born false show of righteousness, expressing itself in the assertion of a casuistic morality, by which it is continually reproduced!

The fifth beatitude is addressed to the merciful; they shall obtain mercy. But it is altogether the contrary with those who incur the fifth woe by despising that which is important in the law—judgment, and mercy, and faith, while in a paltry manner they seek for life in petty punctilios of tithe-due.

The blessed of the sixth beatitude are those who are of a pure heart. Their promise is—they shall see God. With them the denunciation of Jesus contrasts those seemingly pure ones who draw upon themselves the sixth woe, because they make clean the outside of their cups and platters, while their inner life is defiled by wicked gain and sensual conduct.

The seventh beatitude represents the children of God in the loftier choir; those heroes of love and of the Spirit who attain the title of God’s children because they manifest themselves on earth as the peacemakers—because they diffuse upon earth, with the peace of God, light, life, and joy. The gloomy contrast to them is formed by the whited sepulchres in their woe. They glisten like abodes of peace; but they are filled with the decay of death, and could not enliven, but only diffuse the odour of death.

Thus to the sevenfold beatitude there is a sevenfold woe as counterpart. But now we have seen above, in the consideration of the sermon on the mount, that in the eighth and ninth beatitudes the seven blessings are once more represented again in their historical form, according to the relation of the faithful to the world and to the Lord. And thus it is here also with the woe that surpasses the seventh.

The pious are blessed if they are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. The seemingly pious are unblessed, because they know no other way of reverencing righteousness than by adorning the graves of the righteous slaughtered in former times; while they themselves are manifested as blinded, self-righteous persecutors of the righteous.

In the ninth and last beatitude, the Lord blesses His people, because for His sake they are reviled and persecuted; and cries to them, Rejoice, and be exceeding glad; for great is your reward in heaven.

He has contrasted this beatitude with no woe. For all the blood of slain martyrs, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zacharias, has cried more or less for vengeance to heaven, and the great doom is thereby brought near; that the enemies put Him to death. But the blood of Christ speaketh better things than the blood of Abel. Therefore He does not express the ninth woe. Rather, instead of it, He breaks forth in the words: ‘O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!’

The guilt of the scribes and Pharisees appears now to the Lord as a guilt of Jerusalem; and thus therefore, moreover, as a national crime. For Jerusalem is the supporter of the pharisaic tendency, and the representative of the spirit of the people. It is the living centre, the earthly hearth of the theocratic people. But if the prevailing spirit of the people is represented to Him now in the form of Jerusalem, it results that there is awakened in His mind now sympathy for His people in its full strength.

Jerusalem represents the life and the honour, the ancestry and the pride, the youth and the hope of the nation. Jerusalem represents the children of the people, as they had often been threatened with terrible storms, and now are threatened by the most dreadful world-storm. Therefore He laments and mourns over His Jerusalem. All God’s messages which have come to Jerusalem, and which He has before designated as messages of righteousness, by which the judgment of Israel must be accomplished, appear to Him now more than ever as God’s endeavours to deliver Jerusalem. In all the efforts of the messengers, the life-impulse of His Spirit, of His saving mercy, was already at work. But especially it was engaged in all His own special labours. Yea, in all His historical pilgrimage and ministry, there was a sorrow, an anguish for Jerusalem, such as a hen feels for her chickens when threatened by an enemy.²⁸

The hen sees the bird of prey in the air, and seeks with anxiety to gather her brood together. Even thus Jesus saw the Roman eagle hover for judgment over the children of Jerusalem, and sought to deliver them with the most earnest allurements of His love. In vain! They treated the voice of maternal love as if they had been dead children. And thus they behaved, even now, at the last appeal of pity.

That is the wretchedness of Jerusalem, as the Lord, the real true King of the city, feels it in His faithful heart, and expresses it in the most earnest lamentation. But the wretchedness of Jerusalem is, moreover, the guilt of Jerusalem. And this guilt is especially a crime of those who resisted Jesus in the character of His deadly enemies,—a crime which He must now again consider, which He must express in words—Ye would not!

‘Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.’ That is the judgment upon the temple.²⁹ He departs now from the temple, in heart, in spirit, and in purpose, and then the temple incurred its doom—the glory of the Lord dwells no longer therein. Henceforth it is a profaned house, yea, a fallen city, a ruin!

But still Jesus could not, even now, announce to His people a hopeless sorrow. Once more the voice of pity is lifted up to hail a bright morning glow behind the long stormy night: ‘I say unto you, Ye shall not see Me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord.’³⁰

The Jews, as Jews, were no more to behold in their temple and ceremonial any trace of the true historical Messiah, until at a future time they turned to Him—until the jubilee of the repentant people cries to Him welcome, and acknowledges that He comes to them in the name, in the word, in the power, in the commission, and in the Spirit of their ancient covenant God, Jehovah!³¹

The Lord had thus taken His departure from the temple-with no pathetic excitement, however, but with the deepest tranquillity of spirit, although with the most sorrowful feeling. He no more hurried away from the temple now, than He subsequently hurried away from the grave when He awakened to new life. There He first placed the grave-clothes in order, and laid them on one side quietly; and here He sat down for a little time in the fore-court of the women, opposite to the boxes for offerings which belonged to the temple treasury;³² and considered the people as they flowed by and cast their alms into the treasury of God. He beheld how many rich people flocked near, and cast in large gifts. Then He beheld also a poor widow come, who cast in two mites, which made together a quadrant, or penny.³³ This circumstance, apparently so trifling, induced Him to call His disciples together. ‘Verily I say unto you,’ said He, ‘That this poor widow hath cast more in than all they which have cast into the treasury. For all they did cast in of their abundance: but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living.’

It has been observed, with reason, that this history is directly intended to confirm the rebuke of Jesus against the scribes and Pharisees, that they devoured the widows’ houses. It was seen, in an example, how grievously the spirits of the pious in the land were goaded and pressed by the fathers of the people to offer to the treasury everything which they thought they could in any way dispense with; while the rich, and among them also the Pharisees and scribes, made themselves very comfortable with their offerings.

‎This trait, however, shows us at once the profoundly calm, tran‎quil state of mind—the heavenly transparency of feeling—with‏ ‎which Christ took His departure from the temple. As a holy‏ ‎stranger, as a considerate traveller from a higher world, He might‏ ‎sit down opposite the alms-chest, and consider that kind of offering‏ ‎in which the superstition of His people was at that time concern‎trated. He looks on the alms of the people with penetrating eye ;‏ ‎that is the testimony of His heavenly candour. The two mites of‏ ‎the widow do not escape Him ; that is the master-glance of love.‏ ‎He acknowledges in her unmeasured, almost foolish effort to support‏ ‎the treasury of God with her last very small means, the pious intention, the pure purpose, the offering of the heart which is given‏ ‎to God. This is the glance of heavenly truth. He estimates the‏ ‎gift of this woman, in respect of the showy gifts of money which‏ ‎so many rich people brought, and decides that the woman has given‏ ‎most of all, because she hag brought, not of her superfluity, but of‏ ‎her want, what she offered. That is the voice of equity. More‎over, therein is expressed the eternal freshness, vivacity, and power‏ ‎of that perfect faithfulness to His vocation, which is identical with‏ ‎the pulse of the pure heart—that He is now disposed, in this frame‏ ‎of mind, and in this aspect of affairs, to discourse once more to His‏ ‎disciples upon this text, ‘The poor widow’s two mites,—a discourse,‏ ‎indeed, which has wrought blessing in His Church a thousandfold,‏ and will work blessing even to the end of the world. But that with this inoffensive and affectionate discourse He should take leave of their temple concerns, from which He beholds Himself thrust by obdurate spirits—in this is revealed the Reconciler of the world, as also the sin of the world in their religious condition. Had the Reformers been able, in such an exalted disposition towards their times, to separate from the typical temple concerns of that day, the Reformation would have been completed in richer measure.

The look of the Lord, which recognized the pure flame of piety in that widow, in the midst of the smoke of her own superstition, and in the fume and vapour of hypocrisy that was around her, assures us that the Lord sees all the greater and lesser lights of sacrificing love which faithful and pious hearts kindle to their God in every pl ace. Therefore such offerings, in the proportion of their inner value, are not lost, even although the external alms which fall into the treasury of a form of worship alienated from the spirit, go with that form of worship to ruin. The foolish confidence of the poor widow in the nature of the temple, upon which her piety reposed, is penetrated by the higher confidence with which she surrenders her last means of widowhood to the God of her life.

But it is perhaps a leading feature in this beautiful representation of character, that Christ separates from the temple with one warm glance of ble sing upon true piety in the old temple service.

The disciples, on the going forth from the temple, appeared to appreciate the gravity of the moment deeply. When they came to the point of leaving the temple, they seemed to be unable to separate themselves from it. It looked like a mournful intercession, that they were so urgent now in calling the Lord’s attention to the glory of the temple. Possibly, also, this state of mind is penetrated by the doubt, whither it is possible that the Lord, with His interests, will separate Himself from this mighty edifice, and from the religious commonwealth supported by it, and will be able to establish a victorious Church of God outside of this house, and separate from it. The thought would fall on them very painfully, that they were not to discover in this temple the visible eternal centre of the kingdom of heaven that had been announced to them. One among them gave expression to this feeling. According to Mark, he called attention especially to the immense masses of stone, to the imposing character of the building—how it appeared to be founded for eternity. Luke relates, that others pointed to the adorning of the temple, how it was erected of beautiful stones—how its white blocks of marble glistened—and how, over and above, the gorgeous gifts³⁴ with which it was endowed " glorified it. Others, according to Matthew, might especially point out to Him the buildings, so far as the temple was still in process of building, and not yet altogether completed.³⁵ They seem to wish to say to Him in every way, that the temple appeared still to have an important future; that a house of God, so strongly founded, still scarcely completed, glittering afar through the land, from its temple mountain, like a white mountain of snow, yea, a house of God, which, for aught that appeared, even many eminent heathens had designated with their gifts, as the peculiar temple around which the Gentiles would assemble.

Thus the Lord beheld Himself surrounded by a band of enthusiastic temple-worshippers, in His disciples, who seemed to Him to extol the fabric as an imperishable house of God, or to speak in favour of its destiny. But these lively expressions of this company could not mislead Him. He answered them with a wondrously earnest and strong word: ‘See ye not (see ye not indeed³⁶) all these things?’ It seems as if all would, before His prophetic look, at once crumble together, fall and disappear, like a vision of the ancient glory of Zion! Do ye indeed see all this still? O Spirit-glance, which beholds deserts where the common eye of sense still sees the proudest structures of pomp, but which can also perceive a paradise where others can still only vouch for a desert, or the place of skulls! Then He adds, ‘Verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, which shall not be thrown down.’

Notes

1. Even although it cannot be authenticated that the Sadducees rejected the later writings of the Old Testament,—to wit, the prophetic books,—yet the inference may be gathered, not only from the place of Josephus (Ant. xiii. 10, 6), but especially also from the foregoing interview itself, from the form and manner in which the Pharisees argue against Jesus, and He argues against them, from the books of Moses—the inference that they must have attached a higher value to the Thora than to the later Old Testament writings.

2. The explanation of De Wette (Matth. 188) and of Weisse (i. 168), according to which Jesus might have wished here to set aside the notion that the Messiah is the son of David, as an erroneous one, needs here only to be mentioned.

1) 'Dried up from the roots,' is the expression of Mark; and this is more significant than if it were 'to the roots.'

2) There is nothing surprising about the repetition of such an expression as this.

3) Ezek. xviii. 20; comp, xxxiii. 12.

4) John viii. 2-11.

5) Matthew says He knew their wickedness, Mark that He perceived their hypocrisy, and Luke that He perceived their craftiness. Each in his individual and characteristic view

6) The Rabbis taught that if the inhabitants of a country had acknowledged the coin of a prince as the coin of their land, they had thereby acknowledged the prince himself. Comp. Sepp, iii. 257. [The words of Maimonides are, 'Ubicunque numisma regis alicujus obtinet, illic incolae regem istum pro domino agnoscunt.'—ED.]

7) [Ellicott (p. 305, note), after Meyer (in loc.), objects to this interpretation as too narrow and partial, and as restricting what was intended to be inclusive of all, whether material or spiritual, that is due to God.—ED.]

8) Book II. v. 17.

9) Lev. xx. 10. Comp. Hitzig, Uebcr. Joli. Markus, 209.

10) Lev. xx. 20. On the kind of punishment, compare Hitzig, as above, 209. [Meyer quotes from the Talmud, 'Filia Israelite, si adultera, cum nupta, strangulanda, cum desponsata, lapidanda.'—ED.]

11) [On this writing, Euthymius says: ὅπερ εἰώθασι πολλάκις ποιεῖν οἱ μὴ θέλοντες ἀποκρίνεσθαι πρὸς τοὺς ἐρωτῶντας ἅκαιρα καὶ ἀνάξια; that is, it was an action customarily resorted to by those who were unwilling to answer unseasonable and unseemly questions. The remarks of Tholuck on the passage are to the same effect. And for the strange opinions of those who have conjectured what was written, see Lampe, ii. 374.—ED.]

12) Jer. xvii. 13. Hitzig, 215.

13) Hitzig, 211.

14) Acts xxiii. 8.

15) Strauss, Leben Jesu, i. 647; compare, on the other hand, Ebrard, 383.

16) On this distinction, see Strauss, i. 650. When the author afterwards seeks to obliterate this distinction, in order to reduce that account of Luke, with the narratives of the two first Evangelists, of the present temptation of Jesus, to a free play of early Christian tradition, such an operation lies at the root of the often-noticed deficiency in perception of the various spiritual phenomena of various situations.

17) Luke x. 25; compare above, II. v. 32.

18) Upon the Messianic character of the Psalms compare Ebrard, 384. The Psalms are in their nature everywhere Messianic. A distinction must, nevertheless, be made between the unconscious prophecies of the sacred singer (which form the highest kind of types, the soul-types), and the conscious prophecies of prophets in the narrower sense. In this psalm, however, the royal singer is actually celebrating the essential, the sinless King, as a personality, who has everlasting reality, and stands as high as heaven above himself ; and this is a prophetic impulse in the limited sense, such as there are many in the Psalms.

19) 2 Cor. iii. 14. Strauss (i. 648) asserts with reason, against Paulus, that Jesus assumes the 110th Psalm as Messianic, and thinks, moreover, 'that the result, and perhaps also the intention of Jesus, as against the Pharisees, was only to show them that He also could do what they had previously tried to do to Him,—viz., drive them into a corner with captious questions,—and indeed with better result than they.'

20) II. v. 7.

21) Olshausen supposes the latter. Comment, on Matthew, iii. 203.

22) The fringes which they were to fasten to the wings of their garments were to be fastened with blue cord. Thus perhaps the varied play of their affections and thoughts was to be restrained by the blue cord of the divine revelation and of the faithfulness of Israel.

23) The change of expression is here very significant, and can perhaps only be explained on the supposition that not many would lay claim to the name of father in a spiritual sense, but that many might wish mistakenly to apply it to a person.

24) In many codices, and by critical authorities, the transposition of the usual order of vers. 13 and 14 is recommended ; but the received order is supported not only by other reasons, but especially also by the course of thought. It is the beginning of the pharisaic ruin, that its representatives close the actual kingdom of heaven to themselves and others, in order to continue in the typical vision.

25) II. v. 7, note 2.

26) Stier, iii. 233.

27) Olshausen, iii. 204. In both of these great discourses is represented an act of Christ's judicial work: in the sermon on the mount, its manifestation of blessing; in the anti-pharisaic discourse, of judgment. [So also Riggenbach (Vorlesungen, p. 598): 'There, with blessing on blessing, He allures to Himself all who were anxious to enter the kingdom of heaven through a better righteousness than that of the Pharisees. Here He heaps woe on woe upon the hypocritically righteous, who them selves remained outside, and would not that others should enter.'—ED.]

28) Stier, iii. 247, observes ingeniously how Jehovah, in His dealing with His people, represents Himself at first as an eagle (Deut. xxxii. 11) fluttering over her young and bearing them on her wings, and then as a hen which spreads abroad her wings over the chickens. This is the contrast between the governing, educating love, and the enduring, delivering love.

29) Comp. Hess, iii. 109. He observes, on this exclamation of Jesus, 'Words to which even that fruitless attempt of the Cæsar Julian to rebuild the temple, and all its subsequent destiny, have set the seal.' Compare also Kauschenbusch, das Lcben Jesu, 327.

30) Sepp makes the judicious remark: 'The chief priests, scribes, and elders of the people were bound to return the greeting to Him at the call of the children, Hosanna to the son of David, on the day of the palm-entry into the temple, and are still bound to it until this hour: therefore their house is left desolate, and the countenance of the Highest has not again turned towards His people even to this hour.' (iii. 314).

31) Stier, iii. 243.

32) On the γαζοφυλάκιον, see Ebrard, 385. Probably not only the porch, where the special treasury of the temple was, but, in a wider sense, the porch also in which the boxes for offerings was placed, was indicated by the name in question.

33) 'She had put in two lepta, or one quadrant. One lepton, perhaps, was given to a beggar, but less than two could not be cast into the alms-box: it was the smallest offering.'—Sepp, iii. 311. See also, upon the Jewish coins, the same author.

34) On these votive gifts, see Sepp, iii. 314,

35) Winer, Art. Temple.

36) The οὐ in Matthew, from internal evidence, must probably be the right reading. It brings out the word of the Lord just in its entire significance.