For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
40. Jonah is a sign (1) as affording a type of the Resurrection, (2) as a preacher of righteousness to a people who needed repentance as this generation needs it.
the whale’s belly ] The Greek word translated “whale” means “a sea monster.” The O. T. rendering is more accurate “the fish’s belly” (Jon 2:1), “a great fish” (Jon 1:17). It is scarcely needful to note that there are no whales in the Mediterranean.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Verse 40. Three days and three nights] Our Lord rose from the grave on the day but one after his crucifixion: so that, in the computation in this verse, the part of the day on which he was crucified, and the part of that on which he rose again, are severally estimated as an entire day; and this, no doubt, exactly corresponded to the time in which Jonah was in the belly of the fish. Our Lord says, As Jonah was, so shall the Son of man be, c. Evening and morning, or night and day, is the Hebrew phrase for a natural day, which the Greeks termed , nuchthemeron. The very same quantity of time which is here termed three days and three nights, and which, in reality, was only one whole day, a part of two others, and two whole nights, is termed three days and three nights, in the book of Esther: Go neither eat nor drink THREE DAYS, NIGHT or DAY, and so I will go in unto the king: Es 4:16. Afterwards it follows, Es 5:1. On the THIRD DAY, Esther stood in the inner court of the king’s house. Many examples might be produced, from both the sacred and profane writers, in vindication of the propriety of the expression in the text. For farther satisfaction, the reader, if he please, may consult Whitby and Wakefield, and take the following from Lightfoot.
“I. The Jewish writers extend that memorable station of the unmoving sun, at Joshua’s prayer, to six and thirty hours; for so Kimchi upon that place: ‘According to more exact interpretation, the sun and moon stood still for six and thirty hours: for when the fight was on the eve of the Sabbath, Joshua feared lest the Israelites might break the Sabbath; therefore he spread abroad his hands, that the sun might stand still on the sixth day, according to the measure of the day of the Sabbath, and the moon according to the measure of the night of the Sabbath, and of the going out of the Sabbath, which amounts to six and thirty hours.’
“II. If you number the hours that pass from our Saviour’s giving up the ghost upon the cross to his resurrection, you shall find almost the same number of hours; and yet that space is called by him three days and three nights, whereas two nights only came between, and one complete day. Nevertheless, while he speaks these words, he is not without the consent both of the Jewish schools and their computation. Weigh well that which is disputed in the tract Scabbath, concerning the separation of a woman for three days; where many things are discussed by the Gemarists, concerning the computation of this space of three days. Among other things these words occur: R. Ismael saith, Sometimes it contains four onoth, sometimes five, sometimes six. But how much is the space of an onah? R. Jochanan saith, Either a day or a night. And so also the Jerusalem Talmud: ‘R. Akiba fixed a DAY for an onah, and a NIGHT for an onah.’ But the tradition is, that R. Eliazar ben Azariah said, A day and a night make an onah: and a PART of an onah is as the WHOLE. And a little after, R. Ismael computed a part of the onah for the whole.” Thus, then, three days and three nights, according to this Jewish method of reckoning, included any part of the first day; the whole of the following night; the next day and its night; and any part of the succeeding or third day.
In the whale’s belly] That a fish of the shark kind, and not a whale, is here meant, Bochart has abundantly proved, vol. iii. col. 742, c., edit. Leyd. 1692. It is well known that the throat of a whale is capable of admitting little more than the arm of an ordinary man but many of the shark species can swallow a man whole, and men have been found whole in the stomachs of several. Every natural history abounds with facts of this kind. Besides, the shark is a native of the Mediterranean Sea, in which Jonah was sailing when swallowed by what the Hebrew terms dag gadol, a great fish; but every body knows that whales are no produce of the Mediterranean Sea, thought some have been by accident found there, as in most other parts of the maritime world: but, let them be found where they may, there is none of them capable of swallowing a man. Instead of either whale or shark, some have translated dag gadol, Jon 1:17, by a fishing cove, or something of this nature; but this is merely to get rid of the miracle: for, according to some, the whole of Divine revelation is a forgery – or it is a system of metaphor or allegory, that has no miraculous interferences in it. But, independently of all this, the criticism is contemptible. Others say, that the great fish means a vessel so called, into which Jonah went, and into the hold of which he was thrown, where he continued three days and three nights. In short, it must be any thing but a real miracle, the existence of which the wise men, so called, of the present day, cannot admit. Perhaps these very men are not aware that they have scarcely any belief even in the existence of God himself!
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
An evil and adulterous generation; either called adulterous for that specific sin, which reigned amongst them, and indeed their polygamy was hardly better; or else because of their degeneracy from Abraham, whom they so much gloried in as their father, Joh 8:39,44.
Seeketh after a sign; not satisfied with my miracles which I do on earth, they would have a sign from heaven. God was not difficult of confirming and encouraging peoples faith by signs; he gave Gideon a sign upon his asking, he gave Hezekiah and proffered Ahaz a sign without asking; but he had already given the Pharisees signs enough, and sufficient to convince them, but they would not believe, but out of curiosity would have a sign of another kind, a sign from heaven, as Mark expounds it, Mat 8:11, such a sign as the devil could not counterfeit.
There shall no sign be given to it; no sign of that nature, for we shall find that after this Christ wrought many miracles. But they shall have a sign when I shall be risen again from the dead, to their confusion and condemnation; when I shall answer the prophet Jonahs type of me. He was cast into the sea, and was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, in the heart of the sea, Jon 1:17, and then the whale vomited (him) out upon the dry land, Jon 2:10. So I shall be by them violently put to death and shall be in the grave part of three days and three nights, and then I shall rise again from the dead.
But here ariseth a difficulty. Christ indeed dying the day before the Jewish sabbath, and rising the morning after, might be said to be in the grave three days, because he was there part of three days; but how can he be said to have been there three nights? For he was only in the grave the night of the Jewish sabbath, (for their sabbath began at the evening before), and the night following, which were but two nights, either in whole or in part.
Answer: What we call day and night made up the Jewish . It appears by Gen 1:5, that the evening and the morning made up a day. Three days and three nights is with us but the same thing with three natural days, and so it must be understood here. Christ was in the grave three natural days, that is, part of three natural days; every one of which days contained a day and a night, viz. twenty-four hours.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
40. For as Jonas was“asign unto the Ninevites, so shall also the Son of man be to thisgeneration” (Lu 11:30).For as Jonas was
three days and three nightsin the whale’s belly (Jon1:17).
so shall the Son of man bethree days and three nights in the heart of the earthThis wasthe second public announcement of His resurrection three days afterHis death. (For the first, see Joh2:19). Jonah’s case was analogous to this, as being a signaljudgment of God; reversed in three days; and followed by a gloriousmission to the Gentiles. The expression “in the heart of theearth,” suggested by the expression of Jonah with respect to thesea (2:3, in the Septuagint), means simply the grave,but this considered as the most emphatic expression of real and totalentombment. The period during which He was to lie in the grave ishere expressed in round numbers, according to the Jewish way ofspeaking, which was to regard any part of a day, however small,included within a period of days, as a full day. (See 1Sa 30:12;1Sa 30:13; Est 4:16;Est 5:1; Mat 27:63;Mat 27:64, &c.).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly,…. Or “in the belly of a great fish”, as is said, Jon 1:17 for that it was a whale, is not there said, nor is it certain it was; nor from the smallness of its swallow, is it thought probable it should; nor does the word here used, necessarily imply one, but some large fish; nor are there whales in the Phoenician Sea: it might be a kind of a sea dog, called Carcharias, and sometimes Lamia, or Lamina, from its vast swallow; in which whole men; even in coats of mail, have been found. However, be it what it will, Jonas was three days and three nights in the belly of it; which agrees with the account in the above mentioned place, and is the sign Christ speaks of in the foregoing verse; and a very great sign and miracle it was, that being swallowed down by such a fish, he should remain in the belly of it three days and three nights, as one dead; for, without a miracle, he could not have lived an hour; and on the third day, as one raised from the dead, be cast out of it upon the dry land; which was a very eminent type of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, as appears by what follows. The Jews reckon up several wonders or miracles in this case of Jonah’s; as that a fish was prepared to swallow him up, and he not drowned in the sea; and that this was prepared for him from the creation of the world; that he should be three days and three nights in the fish’s belly, and be alive; and that he should retain his senses and his understanding, so as to be able to pray: they represent him also as if he was in the state of the dead l, and that the fish itself was dead, and was quickened again. According to Josephus, after he had been carried 250 miles in the Hellespont of the Euxine Sea, he was cast ashore m.
So shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. That Christ means himself by the “son of man”, there is no reason to doubt; and his being laid in a tomb, dug out of a rock, is sufficient to answer this phrase, “the heart of the earth”, in distinction from the surface of it; but some difficulty arises about the time of his continuing there, and the prediction here made agreeable to the type: for it was on the sixth day of the week, we commonly call “Friday”, towards the close, on the day of the preparation for the sabbath, and when the sabbath drew on, that the body of Christ was laid in the sepulchre; where it lay all the next day, which was the sabbath of the Jews, and what we commonly call “Saturday”; and early on the first of the week, usually called “Sunday”, or the Lord’s day, he rose from the dead; so that he was but one whole day, and part of two, in the grave. To solve this difficulty, and set the matter in a clear light, let it be observed, that the three days and three nights, mean three natural days, consisting of day and night, or twenty four hours, and are what the Greeks call , “night days”; but the Jews have no other way of expressing them, but as here; and with them it is a well known rule, and used on all occasions, as in the computation of their feasts and times of mourning, in the observance of the passover, circumcision, and divers purifications, that , “a part of a day is as the whole” n: and so, whatever was done before sun setting, or after, if but an hour, or ever so small a time, before or after it, it was reckoned as the whole preceding, or following day; and whether this was in the night part, or day part of the night day, or natural day, it mattered not, it was accounted as the whole night day: by this rule, the case here is easily adjusted; Christ was laid in the grave towards the close of the sixth day, a little before sun setting, and this being a part of the night day preceding, is reckoned as the whole; he continued there the whole night day following, being the seventh day; and rose again early on the first day, which being after sun setting, though it might be even before sun rising, yet being a part of the night day following, is to be esteemed as the whole; and thus the son of man was to be, and was three days and three nights in the grave; and which was very easy to be understood by the Jews; and it is a question whether Jonas was longer in the belly of the fish.
l R. David Kimchi & Jarchi, in Jonah i. 17. & ii. 1. Zohar in Exod. fol. 20. 3. & 78. 3. m Antiq. 1. 9. c. 18. n T. Hieros. Pesach. fol. 31. 2. T. Bab. Moed. Katon, fol. 16. 2. 17. 2. 19. 2. & 20. 2. Bechorot, fol. 20. 2. & 21. 1, Nidda, fol. 33. 1. Maimon. Hilch. Ebel, c. 7. sect. 1, 2, 3. Aben Ezra in Lev. xii. 3.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
The whale ( ). Sea-monster, huge fish. In Jon 2:1 the LXX has . “Three days and three nights” may simply mean three days in popular speech. Jesus rose “on the third day” (Mt 16:21), not “on the fourth day.” It is just a fuller form for “after three days” (Mark 8:31; Mark 10:34).
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
The whale [ ] . A general term for a sea – monster.
Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament
1) “For as Jonas was three days and three nights,” (hosper gar hen lonas treis hemeras kai treis nuktas) “For just as Jonah was for three days and three nights,” as confirmed by the testimony of the prophet Jonah, and here certified by our Lord, Jon 1:17; Joh 2:18-22; Mat 17:23; Mat 20:19.
2) “In the whales belly;” (en te koilia tou ketous) “In the belly of the sea monster, (whale),” that was prepared of the Lord to swallow Jonah, Luk 11:30.
3) “So shall the Son of man be,” (houtos estia ho uios tou anthropou) “So also (in like manner) the Son of man will be (exist),” Mat 16:21; Mat 26:32; Mr 8:31; 10:34; Mat 26:61; Luk 18:31-33.
4) “Three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” (en te kardia tes ges treis hemeras kai treis nuktas) “For a period of three days and three nights in the heart of the earth,” Mat 27:63; Or sealed beneath the surface of the earth, referred to prophetically, by David as “not being left or abandoned) to hell,” or permitted: to see corruption, putrefication, or decomposition, Psa 16:10; Act 2:30-31; Eph 4:8-10. See also Luk 9:22; Luk 18:33; Luk 24:6-7.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
(40) As Jonas was three days and three nights.To understand the words rightly, we have to remember the prominence which our Lord gives to the history of Jonah, and to the repentance of the men of Nineveh, in this and in the parallel passage of Luk. 11:29, and in answer to another demand for a sign in Mat. 16:4. In the other passages the sign of the prophet Jonas appears with a vague mysteriousness, unexplained. Not a few critics have accordingly inferred from this difference that the explanation given by St. Matthew was an addition to the words actually spoken by our Lord, and that the sign of the prophet Jonas was sufficiently fulfilled by His preaching repentance to the wicked and adulterous generation as Jonah had done to the Ninevites. Against this view, however, it may be urged:(1) That Jonahs work as a preacher was not a sign in any sense, and that nothing in his history had this character, except the two narratives of the whale (Jon. 1:17) and the gourd (Jon. 4:6-10). Any reference to the latter is, of course, out of the question; and it remains therefore, in any case, that we must look to the former as that to which our Lord alluded. (2) That the very difficulty presented by the prediction of three days and three nights as compared with the six-and-thirty hours (two nights and one day) of the actual history of the Resurrection, is against the probability of the verse having been inserted as a prophecy after the event. (3) That if we believe that our Lord had a distinct prevision of His resurrection, and foretold it, sometimes plainly and sometimes in dark sayingsand of this the Gospels leave no room for doubt (Mat. 16:21; Mat. 26:32; Joh. 2:19)then the history of Jonah presented an analogy which it was natural that He should notice. It does not necessarily follow that this use of the history as a prophetic symbol of the Resurrection requires us to accept it in the very letter of its details. It was enough, for the purposes of the illustration, that it was familiar and generally accepted. The purely chronological difficulty is explained by the common mode of speech among the Jews, according to which, any part of a day, though it were but a single hour, was for legal purposes considered as a whole. An instance of this mode of speech is found in 1Sa. 30:12-13, and it is possible that in the history of Jonah itself the measurement of time is to be taken with the same laxity.
Some incidental facts are worth noticing: (1) that the word translated whale may stand vaguely for any kind of sea-monster; (2) that the heart of the earth, standing parallel as it does to the heart of the seas, the belly of helli.e., Sheol and Hadesin Jon. 2:2-3, means more than the rock-hewn sepulchre, and implies the descent into Hades, the world of the dead, which was popularly believed to be far below the surface of the earth; (3) that the parable has left its mark on Christian art, partly in the constant use of Jonah as a type of our Lords resurrection, and partly in that of the jaws of a great whale-like monster as the symbol of Hades; (4) that the special character of the psalm in Jonah 2, corresponding as it does so closely (Jon. 2:6) with Psa. 16:10-11, may well be thought to have prompted our Lords reference to it.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
40. Three days His resurrection, connected with the diurnal revolution, would be an astronomical sign.
Our Saviour was not in the tomb three days and three entire nights, according to our modes of calculation. He expired on Friday afternoon and rose on Sunday morning. He was therefore entombed but the nights of Friday and Saturday. But the Jews reckoned the entire twenty-four hours in an unbroken piece, as a night-and-day. They counted the odd fragment of a day, in computation, as an entire night-and-day. Our Lord therefore was dead during three night-and-days.
The sign of the prophet Jonah was full of warning to the Jews. Jerusalem was the modern Nineveh; a living parallel to Jonah, greater than Jonah himself, was predicting its destruction; and the three night-and-days suggested that without repentance Jerusalem might meet the destruction that Nineveh, by repentance, escaped. Jonah prophesied a destruction in forty days; Jerusalem was destroyed after forty years. Whale Rather, sea monster. But Dr. Thomson has the following remarks on this subject:
“The Bible says that the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up the prophet; but in Matthew it is called a whale by our Saviour. Now, if I am correctly informed, there are no whales in the Mediterranean. How do you explain this?
“Simply by the fact that the multiplication of ships in this sea, after the time of Jonah, frightened them out of it, as other causes have driven all lions out of Palestine, where they were once numerous. It is well known that some of the best fishing stations, even in the great oceans, have been abandoned by the whales because of the multitude of whalers that visited them. This sea would of course be forsaken. If you could stock it thoroughly with these monsters to-day, there would be none left a year hence. But up to the time of Jonah navigation was in its infancy, ships were few and small, and they kept mostly along the shores, leaving the interior undisturbed. Whales may therefore have been common in the Mediterranean.
And there are instances on record of the appearance of huge marine creatures in this sea in ancient days. Some of these may have been whales. The Hebrew word dg, it is true, means simply any great fish; but nothing is gained by resorting to such a solution of the difficulty. Our Lord calls it a whale, and I am contented with his translation; and whale it was, not a shark or lamia, as some critics maintain. In a word, the whole affair was miraculous, and as such, is taken out of the category of difficulties.”
Heart of the earth As our Lord was not buried in the ground, but enclosed in a tomb of rock, some have understood by the phrase, heart of the earth, the place of departed spirits, to which our Lord at his death descended. But surely the rock is a part of the earth, as truly as the soil. The bosom of a rock is very expressively styled the heart of the earth.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
“For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the large fish, so will the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”
His first sign is typical of Scripture, it is something that will happen in the future (compare Exo 3:12; Isa 7:14). The future will prove the present (Deu 18:21-22). It does, however, require faith. In it He describes two things that were incongruous. The first was that Jonah spent three days and three nights in the insides of a large fish (citing Jon 1:17 to Jon 2:1), figuratively in the very depths of the grave (Jon 2:2; Jon 2:6). Here was a sign indeed, a sign of what happened to the disobedient. But it was also a sign of how God could deliver, even from the grave, and it cannot be doubted that this sign as recounted to the Ninevites played a great part in their response, along possibly with the unearthly pallor that had resulted from his sojourn in the fish and contact with its juices. Jonah had been to them a very sign from God. The second incongruous thing was that ‘the Son of Man’ would similarly spend three days and three nights in the body of the earth, prior to His coming to the throne of God. He too would be in the very depths of the grave. And when He arose He too would be altered (compare Mat 17:2; Act 7:55-56). So Jonah was a sign to his own generation and a foreshadowing of the greater Who was coming. But the second was incongruous because in Dan 7:13-14, instead of going into the grave, the Son of Man was to come in the clouds of Heaven from earth to the throne of God. The Son of Man was not supposed to be buried. He was supposed to ascend in triumph. And therein lay the sign. What was deemed impossible would happen, and when it did happen let them take note. The One Who was to take the throne of Heaven would first of all be locked in the body of the earth for three days and three nights, before, like Jonah had, He came forth in triumph. The presumption behind this was that after three days and three nights He would somehow rise again, as Jonah had. Thus Jesus death, burial and resurrection would be the promised sign. And it would convince many. It even convinced Paul. See 1Co 15:3-8.
‘Three days and three nights.’ To the Jews part of a day could be described as ‘a day and a night’ equally to a full day because they did not reckon scientifically. They saw the part as encapsulated within the whole. For example, in c 100 AD a well known Rabbi stated, “a day and a night make an ‘onah (twenty four hour day), and the portion of an ‘onah is reckoned as an ‘onah”. Thus in Jewish terminology Friday to Sunday would be ‘three days and three nights’. Some, however, do consider that Jesus died on a Wednesday, seeing it as being on the day of preparation of the Passover sabbath rather than that of preparation of the weekly sabbath. This, however, would not tie in with the women seeking to anoint Jesus’ body on the first day of the week, for had Jesus been crucified on the Wednesday they would have sought to anoint him when the festal Sabbath was over on the Friday. They would not have waited another two days until the body had putrefied.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Mat 12:40. For as Jonas was three days and three nights See the note on Jon 1:17. Instead of the whale’s, we should read the fish’s belly. It is no where in the Old Testament said that it was a whale, and signifies any large fish in general. See Mintert on the word. The heart of the earth is a Hebraism for the earth. See what Ezekiel says of the city of Tyre, which was situated on the seashore, ch. Mat 27:4 Mat 28:2. Our Saviour, in the expression here used, alludes to Jon 2:2. The miraculous preservation of Jonah for three days in the belly of a fish, was to the Ninevites a certain proof of his mission from God, being credibly attested to them, either by the mariners, who threw him overboard at a great distance from land; or by some other persons, who happening to see the fish vomit him alive upon the shore might inquire his history of him; and who, in the course of their business, met him afterwards at Nineveh, where they confirmed his preaching by relating what they had seen. In like manner Christ’s resurrection from the dead, after having been three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, being credibly attested to the Jews, should clearly demonstrate that he came from God.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Mat 12:40 . ] the monster of the deep , Hom. Il. v. 148; Od. iv. 446; Buttmann, Lexil. II. p. 95. The allusion is to the well-known story in Jon 2:1 .
Jesus was dead only a day and two nights. But, in accordance with the popular method of computation (1Sa 30:12 f.; Mat 27:63 ), the parts of the first and third day are counted as whole days, as would be further suggested by the parallel that is drawn between the fate of the antitype and that of Jonah. [446]
The sign of Jonah has nothing to do with the withered rod that budded, Num 17 (in answer to Delitzsch); Jonah is the type.
[446] But the question as to what Jesus meant by , whether His lying in the grave (so the greater number of expositors), or His abode in Hades (Tertullian, Irenaeus, Theophylact, Bellarmin, Maldonatus, Olshausen, Knig, Lehre von Christi Hllenfahrt , Frankf. 1842, p. 54; Kahnis, Dogmat . I. p. 508), is determined by , to which expression the resting in the grave does not sufficiently correspond; for the heart of the earth can only indicate its lowest depths , just as means the depths of the sea in Jon 2:4 , from which the biblical expression in our present passage seems to have been derived. Again, the parallel in the is, in any case, better suited to the idea of Hades than it is to that of a grave cut out of the rock on the surface of the earth. If, on the other hand, Jesus Himself has very distinctly intimated that His dying was to be regarded as a descending into Hades (Luk 23:43 ), then . . . must be referred to His sojourn there. There is nothing to warrant Gder ( Erschein. Chr. unter d. Todten , p. 18) in disputing this reference by pointing to such passages as Exo 15:8 ; 2Sa 18:14 . We should mistake the plastic nature of the style in such passages as those, if we did not take as referring to the inmost depth.
REMARK.
Luke (Mat 11:30 ) gives no explanation of the sign of Jonah (Mat 5:40 ), as is also the case with regard to Mat 16:4 (where, indeed, according to Holtzmann, we have only a duplicate of the present narrative). Modern critics (Paulus, Eckermann, Schleiermacher, Dav. Schulz, Strauss, Neander, Krabbe, de Wette, Baumgarten-Crusius, Ammon, Bleek, Weizscker, Schenkel) have maintained that what Jesus meant by the sign of Jonah was not His resurrection at all, but His preaching and His whole manifestation , so that Mat 12:40 is supposed to be an “ awkward interpolation ,” belonging to a later period (Keim), an interpolation in which it is alleged that an erroneous interpretation is put into Jesus’ mouth. But (1) if in Mat 12:41 it is only the preaching of Jonah that is mentioned, it is worthy of notice that what is said regarding the sign is entirely brought to a close in Mat 12:40 , whereupon, by way of threatening the hearers and putting them to shame, Mat 12:41 proceeds to state, not what the Ninevites did in consequence of the sign , but what they did in consequence of the preaching of Jonah; and therefore (2) it is by no means presupposed in Mat 12:41 that the Ninevites had been made aware of the prophet’s fate. (3) Of course, according to the historical sense of the narrative, this fate consisted in the prophet’s being punished, and then pardoned again; but according to its typical reference, it at the same time constituted a , deriving its significance for after times from its antitype as realized in Christ’s resurrection ; that it had been a sign for the Ninevites, is nowhere said. (4) If Jesus is ranked above Jonah in respect of His person or preaching, not in respect of the sign, this, according to what has been said under observation 1, in no way affects the interpretation of the sign . (5) The resurrection of Jesus was a sign not merely for believers, but also for unbelievers, who either accepted Him as the Risen One, or became only the more confirmed in their hostility toward him. (6) Mat 12:40 savours entirely of the mode and manner in which Jesus elsewhere alludes to His resurrection. Of course, in any case, he is found to predict it only in an obscure sort of way (see on Mat 14:21 ), not plainly and in so many words; and accordingly we do not find it more directly intimated in Mat 12:40 , which certainly it would have been if it had been an interpretation of the sign put into the Lord’s mouth ex eventu . The expression is a remarkable parallel to Joh 2:21 , where John’s explanation of it as referring to the resurrection has been erroneously rejected. It follows from all this that, so far as the subject-matter is concerned, the version of Luk 11:30 is not to be regarded as differing from that of Matthew, but only as less complete, though evidently proceeding on the understanding that the interpretation of the Jonah-sign is to be taken for granted (Mat 16:4 ).
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
40 For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
Ver. 40. For as Jonas was three days, &c. ] In the history of Jonah, Christ found the mystery of his death, burial, and resurrection; teaching us thereby to search the Scriptures-to search them to the bottom; as those that dig for gold content not themselves with the first or second ore that offers itself, but search on till they have all. This we should the rather do, because we need neither climb up to heaven with these Pharisees nor descend into the deep with Jonah, since “the word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thine heart,” &c.,Rom 10:7-8Rom 10:7-8 .
So shall the Son of man be three days, &c. ] Taking a part for the whole. So Esther lasted three days and three nights, Ezr 4:16 , and yet on the third day she went to the king,Ezr 5:1Ezr 5:1 . So, then, the fast lasted not three whole days and nights, but two nights, one full day, and two pieces of days.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
40. ] If it be necessary to make good the three days and nights during which our Lord was in the heart of the earth, it must be done by having recourse to the Jewish method of computing time. In the Jerusalem Talmud (cited by Lightfoot) it is said “that a day and night together make up a (a ), and that any part of such a period is counted as the whole.” See Gen 40:13 ; Gen 40:20 ; 1Sa 30:12-13 ; 2Ch 10:5 ; 2Ch 10:12 ; Hos 6:2 .
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
Mat 12:40 gives an entirely different turn to the reference. he verse cannot be challenged on critical grounds. If it is an interpolation, it must have become an accepted part of the text before the date of our earliest copies. If it be genuine, then Jesus points to His resurrection as the appropriate sign for an unbelieving generation, saying in effect: you will continue to disbelieve in spite of all I can say or do, and at last you will put me to death. But I will rise again, a sign for your confusion if not for your conversion. For opposite views on this interpretation of the sign of Jonah, vide Meyer ad loc. and Holtzmann in H.C.
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
as = just as. The Lord was dead, therefore Jonah must have been. Nothing is said about his being “preserved alive”. That “sign” would have had no relation to what is here signified. See notes on Jonah.
three nights. Apart from these words, “three days” might mean any portion of a day. But “three nights” forbids this interpretation. See App-144and App-156. Quoted from Jon 1:17.
the whale’s. Greek. ketos. Occ only here. There is nothing about “a whale” either in the Hebrew of Jonah (Mat 1:17) or in the Greek here. The “great fish” was specially “prepared” by its Creator. See Jon 1:17.
the heart of the earth = in the earth: i.e. the sepulchre, or tomb, Mat 27:60. Mar 15:46. Luk 23:53. Joh 19:40. Act 13:29. It is the Figure of speech Pleonasm (a Hebraism), App-6, = the midst, or “in”. See Exo 15:8. Psa 46:2. 2Sa 18:14. Deu 4:11. In any case it is not “the centre”, any more than the heart is in the centre of the body, instead of near the top. We are to conclude that the Lord establishes “the literal validity of the history of Jonah”, inasmuch as He spoke “not His own words but only words of the Father” (see Joh 7:16; Joh 8:28, Joh 8:46, Joh 8:47; Joh 12:49; Joh 14:10, Joh 14:24; Joh 17:8); so that the assertions of modern critics are perilously near blasphemy against God Himself
earth. Greek. ge. App-129.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
40.] If it be necessary to make good the three days and nights during which our Lord was in the heart of the earth, it must be done by having recourse to the Jewish method of computing time. In the Jerusalem Talmud (cited by Lightfoot) it is said that a day and night together make up a (a ), and that any part of such a period is counted as the whole. See Gen 40:13; Gen 40:20; 1Sa 30:12-13; 2Ch 10:5; 2Ch 10:12; Hos 6:2.
Fuente: The Greek Testament
Mat 12:40. , Jonas) Jonas did not then die, but yet it was as much believed that he would not return from the fish, as it was that Jesus would not return from the heart of the earth; yet both of them did return.- , in the belly of the whale) We ought not to doubt that Jonah was in the belly of the whale, on account of the narrow throat of some animals of that kind. For there are various sorts of whales, and in these days, the bodies of men are found in their stomachs; and even if such were not the case, we must suppose that fish especially made for the occasion; see Jon 2:1.-, shall be) A sign for the future, as in Joh 2:19; Joh 6:62; Joh 6:39.-, of the earth) From thence shall they have a sign, and not one from heaven before that, although they sought it thence; cf. Luk 11:16. No signs, except such as were exhibited from the earth, and performed for the good of men, were suitable to the Messiahs state of humiliation. They did not know that the sign of that time was suitable to that time; see ch. Mat 16:3. Afterwards signs were shown, and shall be shown from heaven: see Act 2:19; Mat 24:30.- , three days and three nights) No one doubts that Jesus was in the heart of the earth three days.-He remained there however only two nights, as far as night signifies the darkness interposed between day and day (cf. Mar 14:30); and yet the calculation of three days, and the same number of nights, holds good if you do not interpret it with astronomical exactness, but resolve it by synecdoche. For three days and three nights are the periphrasis of a single idea, and have the force of a single word and term, if such existed, by which the remaining of Jesus in the sepulchre is expressed, as if you should say a-space-of-three-days-and-nights (triduinoctium), or three-nights-and-days (tria noctidua). Three days might have been simply expressed, but this is the idiom of the sacred style, that in indicating continuous time the intervening nights are added; see ch. Mat 4:2; Gen 7:4; 1Sa 30:12-13; Job 2:13. And then it sounds better to say[581] three days and three nights, than three days and two nights, although the Lord was buried on the actual day of the preparation, not on the night preceding and joined to it, and the space of twenty-four hours is regarded simply as a natural day without the change of darkness and light; and in fact the first night-and-day, used synecdochically,[582] was from about the tenth hour of the Friday up to the night exclusively;[583] the second and fullest, from the beginning of that night up to the end of the Sabbath and beginning of the following night; the third, strictly speaking, from the beginning of the following night up to the resurrection of the Lord, and the rising of the sun on Sunday morning. Two nights, therefore, were certainly joined with two days; nor does one night taken from one day, i.e. the first, affect the truth of the language, which denominates the thing in question from its superior part (locutionis a potiori[584] rem denominantis). In fine, there were not two nights and days, nor four; therefore there were three. The Hebrew mode of expression is agreeable to this; concerning which, see Lightfoot and Wolfe on this passage, and Michaelis on Jos 2:16. Although what I have here said may satisfy a reader who is not unreasonable, I would also further observe, that the synecdoche does not belong so much to the three-days-and-three-nights as to the actual remaining in the heart of the earth. Scripture indeed frequently defines a certain time, and expresses not the whole matter which commensurately and exactly occupied that time, but a part of the matter longer in duration than the other parts; as, for example, the four hundred and thirty years of the sojourning in Egypt, Exo 12:40; and thus passim the whole book of Judges. In this passage, therefore, the remaining in the heart of the earth, i.e. in the sepulchre, is expressed, but at the same time the whole period of the Passion is implied, certainly from the agony in Gethsemane, when Jesus fell on the earth which He was the next day to enter, and from the capture by which the Jews commenced their undertaking to destroy that Temple (as Erasmus thinks, Annot. F. 134). Nay, the glorious beginning of the three days on Thursday is clearly intimated, in Joh 13:31 [comp. Harmon. Evang. p. 310, 366], as dating from the time when the Jews bargained for the Saviour, who was to be committed to the earth. The remaining in the earth, taken in a wider signification, includes all these things; see Psa 71:20. For the Son of Man was a sign to that generation, not only in His sepulchre, but most especially in His passion; see Joh 8:28. In this manner, the three days and three nights are exactly completed from the dawn of Thursday to the dawn of Sunday. The time of the death of the two witnesses is exactly defined, Revelation 11, to be three and a half days; therefore we ought to consider that the three days and three nights of our Lords remaining in the middle of the earth have been also exactly defined. The middle, or heart, of the earth should not be precisely sought for; but these phrases are opposed to the earth itself, on the surface of which Christ dwelt for more than thirty years.
[581] In the original, concinnius dicitur, i.e. it sounds more systematic, it sounds more uniform, to say.-(I. B.)
[582] See Appendix on the figure Synecdoche.-(I. B.)
[583] The night not being included.-ED.
[584] A potiori implies that the whole twenty-four-hour-day (the first of the three in question) is denominated, not only from a part, but also from the superior part, viz. the part which had the daylight, and which is regarded as superior to the part during which darkness prevailed, viz. the night preceding Friday, and attached to it, according to the Jewish mode of counting.-ED.
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
as: Jon 1:17
so: Mat 16:21, Mat 17:23, Mat 27:40, Mat 27:63, Mat 27:64, Joh 2:19
in the heart: Psa 63:9, Jon 2:2-6
Reciprocal: Gen 1:21 – great 1Sa 2:6 – he bringeth 2Sa 1:2 – the third 2Sa 18:14 – midst 1Ki 22:2 – in the third 2Ki 14:25 – Jonah Est 4:16 – eat nor drink Psa 69:15 – waterflood Mat 15:32 – three Mat 16:4 – wicked Mat 16:13 – I the Mat 20:19 – the third Mat 28:6 – as Mar 8:12 – There Mar 8:31 – and after Mar 9:9 – till Mar 10:34 – and the Mar 16:6 – he is risen Luk 2:46 – after Luk 11:30 – General Luk 24:6 – remember Joh 4:30 – General Joh 6:66 – of his Joh 19:42 – laid 1Co 15:4 – according Eph 4:9 – the lower Phi 2:10 – under
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
2:40
Just as certainly as Jonas spent three days and three nights within the whale, so the Son of man will spend that much time in the heart or inner part of the earth. The subject has two significant parts as it pertains to the test that Jesus proposed. If he spends a stipulated time only in the earth, then he must come forth unharmed as Jonas did from the whale, which would prove him to be a man under the care of God. Likewise, if and when that occurs it will prove Jesus to have been a true prophet at the time he spoke this to the Jews.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
[The Son of man shall be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.] I. The Jewish writers extend that memorable station of the unmoving sun at Joshua’s prayer to six-and-thirty hours; for so Kimchi upon that place: “According to more exact interpretation, the sun and moon stood still for six-and-thirty hours: for when the fight was on the eve of the sabbath, Joshua feared lest the Israelites might break the sabbath: therefore he spread abroad his hands, that the sun might stand still on the sixth day, according to the measure of the day of the sabbath, and the moon, according to the measure of the night of the sabbath, and of the going-out of the sabbath; which amounts to six-and-thirty hours.”
II. If you number the hours that passed from our Saviour’s giving up the ghost upon the cross to his resurrection, you shall find almost the same number of hours; and yet that space is called by him “three days and three nights,” when as two nights only came between, and only one complete day. Nevertheless, while he speaks these words, he is not without the consent both of the Jewish schools, and their computation. Weigh well that which is disputed in the tract Schabbath; concerning the uncleanness of a woman for three days; where many things are discussed by the Gemarists concerning the computation of this space of three days. Among other things these words occur; “R. Ismael saith, Sometimes it contains four Onoth sometimes five, sometimes six. But how much is the space of an Onah? R. Jochanan saith either a day or a night.” And so also the Jerusalem Talmud; “R. Akiba fixed a day for an Onah; and a night for an Onah; but the tradition is, that R. Eliezar Ben Azariah said, A day and a night make an Onah, and a part of an Onah is as the whole.” And a little after, R. Ismael computeth a part of the Onah for the whole.
It is not easy to translate the word Onah into good Latin: for to some it is the same with the half of a natural day; to some it is all one with a whole natural day. According to the first sense we may observe, from the words of R. Ismael, that sometimes four Onoth; or halves of a natural day, may be accounted for three days: and that they also are so numbered that one part or the other of those halves may be accounted for a whole. Compare the latter sense with the words of our Saviour, which are now before us: “A day and a night (saith the tradition) make an Onah; and a part of an Onah is as the whole.” Therefore Christ may truly be said to have been in his grave three Onoth; or three natural days (when yet the greatest part of the first day was wanting, and the night altogether, and the greatest part by far of the third day also), the consent of the schools and dialect of the nation agreeing thereunto. For, “the least part of the Onah concluded the whole.” So that according to this idiom, that diminutive part of the third day upon which Christ arose may be computed for the whole day, and the night following it.
Fuente: Lightfoot Commentary Gospels
Mat 12:40. In the belly of the whale, or great fish. (Comp. Jon 1:17, chap. 2) Probably a white shark, which reaches an immense size in the Mediterranean. Our Lord vouches for the main fact.
So shall the Son of man be three days and three nights. In round numbers according to the Jewish mode of reckoning time.
In the heart of the earth. Either in hades or in the grave. The first sense accords better with the case of Jonah, although nothing can be inferred from this respecting the locality of the place of departed spirits. Christs sepulchre was not strictly in the heart of the earth. The sign of Jonah may be traced at some length; the following words of our Lord suggest, that as Jonah emerged to preach repentance to the Gentiles, so He rose to send the gospel to all nations.
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
For as Jonah was, &c., in the heart, i.e., in the lowest part of the earth, within the earth, as the heart is within the human body. When Christ died upon the cross, as His body was placed in the tomb, so did His soul descend into the Limbus Patrum, which is near the centre of the earth.
You will ask, how Christ was three days and nights in the sepulchre and Limbus: for He was there only on Friday and Saturday nights, and rose at day-break on Sunday? 1. Alcuin (L. de. Divinis 0ff. sec. de. Cna. Dom.) gathers from this place that Christ lay in the tomb three whole days and nights, or 72 hours, and consequently rose again at the end of Easter Monday. But this is certainly a mistake. The constant tradition of the church is that Christ rose on the Lord’s day.
2. Greg. Nyssen (Orat. 1 &. 2 de Resurrec.) computes these three days to begin on Thursday. He is of opinion, that when on the evening of that day Christ instituted the Eucharist, He offered Himself to God under the species of bread and wine by means of the unbloody sacrifice. The soul of Christ was separated from the body, but that this was done in a secret and invisible manner, and that then the soul of Christ went down to Hades, and that thus He pre-accomplished His death, which the Jews were visibly to bring about on the following day upon the cross. But this, too, is an error. For there is really in the Eucharist the soul of the Living Christ, that is to say, in His body and blood contained under the species of bread and wine. It is there, I say, not indeed by virtue of the words of consecration, but by natural concomitance. For in the Eucharist there is Living Christ, with His Soul, even as He is outside the Eucharist. Thus the Council of Trent defines (Sess. 13, sec. 2). It would have been otherwise if any of the Apostles had consecrated the Eucharist during the triduum of the Passion. For then the Body and Blood of Christ would have been in it separated from His Soul, for in this manner they were in Christ Himself now buried. For Christ was then dead, not alive.
I say then, that the expression three days and three nights is here only a periphrasis and description of a natural day. The two integral parts of such a day are day and night, or light and darkness. Christ makes use of this periphrasis because Jonah, His antetype, did the same. (Jon 1:17.) We must not understand that these days are three artificial days as opposed to nights, as if during three days, in which the sun is above the horizon, Christ lay in the tomb; for this was not the case. You must consider these three natural days to be not whole days but parts of days, namely, the latter part of Friday; when Christ being taken down from the Cross, was laid in the sepulchre, the whole of Saturday, and part of the Lord’s day. For although the Hebrews reckoned their civil days from one sun-rise to another, like the Chaldeans and the Persians (Beda de ration. temp.), yet they computed their sacred days, such as the Passover, from evening to evening. Thus S. Jerome, Theophyl., Euthym., and S. Aug. and commentators, passim, explain the meaning of these three days. Hence Christ is constantly spoken of as rising on the third day, or after three days, without any mention of nights.
But in this place, according to this computation, there were but two nights in which Christ lay in the tomb, viz. Friday and Saturday nights, and yet three nights are expressly mentioned. Others therefore answer more fully and plainly; that these three days and nights are reckoned according to the Roman computation. For the Romans were at that time, masters of Judea, and had introduced their own methods of computing time in civil affairs. The Romans reckoned from midnight to midnight, as Christians do in their fasts and festivals. (See Macrob. L. 1. Saturni c. Gell. L. 3. c. 2. Pliny. L. 2. c. 77. and others). According to this reckoning it is clear Christ remained in the tomb during a part of three days and three nights. He was buried on Friday before sunset; and was in the tomb until the midnight of that day. After that He was in the tomb during the entire day and night of the Sabbath; and from the midnight of Sunday for about six hours until that dawning of the Lord’s Day on which He arose. For the Passover was at that time about the equinox, when the days and nights are equal, each being about twelve hours long. But the Soul of Christ, immediately when He expired upon the Cross at the ninth hour, i.e., at three o’clock in the afternoon, descended into Limbus, and there remained with the Fathers until the dawn of Easter Day. Now that the Jews made use of the Roman method of computing time may be learnt as well from other things, as because they borrowed the four watches of the night from the practice in use among the Roman armies. (See Mat 15:25 and elsewhere.) Different nations had different methods of reckoning the beginning of the day. The Persians and Babylonians reckoned from sunrise to sunrise. The Athenians and Italians, from sunset to sunset. Astronomers from midday to midday. But the Egyptians and Roman priests reckoned from midnight to midnight: and this method has continued in the Roman Church. The Hebrews then in the time of Christ followed the method of the Romans, to whom they were subject. Franc. Lucas teaches that the Jews did not compute their Festivals from midnight as Christians do. The explanation given above is that of S. Anselm, in Loco. Isidore of Pelusium (L. 1. Epist 114 and 212), D. Thom., (3. p. q. 46. art. 9), Suarez (3. p. q. 53. disp. 46. sect. 3. in fine.), and Baronius. (A. C. 34.).
The men of Nineveh shall rise up, &c. That is to say the Ninevites, who, with their king Sardanapalus, had thrown themselves into wickedness, and given themselves up entirely to the lusts of the flesh, when they heard Jonah thundering against them, and threatening them with destruction, believed him, and did penance. They therefore, in the day of judgment, shall accuse and condemn the Scribes and the Jews who would not believe Christ, their God and Lord, working so many miracles. They shall condemn them, I say, not so much in word as by their deeds, namely, by the example of their faith and repentance. It does not follow from hence that the Ninevites were saved; for shortly afterwards they returned to their sins like a dog to his vomit. (See what I have said in the Prefaces to Jonah and Nahum.)
And behold a greater than Jonah is here. For Jonah was a prophet and a servant: Christ is Messiah and the Lord. Jonah, remaining alive in the fish, alive came forth: Christ rose again from death and the grave, and restored to life, came forth. Jonah preached unwillingly. Christ of His own accord. Jonah was a foreigner among the Ninevites: Christ was of the same race as the Jews. Jonah threatened the destruction of Nineveh. Christ promised the kingdom of Heaven. Jonah did no miracle: Christ did very many. All the prophets prophesied of Christ: none of Jonah. Jonah cried aloud, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” Christ cried by His Apostles, “Yet forty years and Jerusalem shall be destroyed by Titus.” Euseb. of Emissa (Hom. 2. de Pasch.), and S. Aug. (Epist. 49. 6), have collected further analogies between Jonah and Christ.
The Queen of the South shall rise, &c. Aegypt. The Southern Queen. Persian, Queen of Thema (Theman with the Hebrews and Orientals signifies the south). Ethiopic, Queen Aseb. The naine, therefore, of this queen appears to have been Aseb, and to have been taken from the name of her kingdom, Saba, Saba. This is the opinion of some. But I maintain that Aseb is Ethiopic for the south, as Ethiopians at Rome have assured me. This is the Queen of Sheba, which is south of Judea (1Ki 10:1-13). Sheba, or Saba, is a country, and has two meanings. One Sheba was in the neighbouring Arabia; the other in remote Ethiopia, the capital of which was afterwards called by Cambyses Mero, after the name of his sister. This queen is thought by many to have come from the Ethiopian, rather than the Arabian Sheba: because the Ethiopian Sheba was furthest off, and because Josephus calls her Queen of Ethiopia and Egypt. Wherefore afterwards the knowledge of scripture, and of the true God of the Hebrews, remained among the Ethiopians. From among them there came to Jerusalem, to worship God, a eunuch of Candace, Queen of the Ethiopians. (Acts viii.) Pliny (Lib. 6, c. 29) says, that queens reigned over the Ethiopians, and bore the general name of Candace. Indeed, the Emperor of the Ethiopians, or Abyssinians calls himself the Son of Solomon. For the Ethiopian tradition is that their queen was married to Solomon, by whom she had a son, from whom the Abyssinian kings, who are now called Prete-Tannes, are descended. Pineda, however, refutes this tradition. The Abyssinians add that this queen Aseb reigned in Tigris, which is the largest province of Abyssinia, and that her son was called Menile, or like, because he was very like his father Solomon. Thus Euthymius, Jansen, Maldonatus, Toletus, Barrad, and others, think this queen came from Ethiopia; but others, with more probability think she came from Saba, which is in Arabia Felix, where are the Homerit, in whose country spices and gold as well as camels are abundant. Again, she is said to have come from the uttermost parts of the earth; for Arabia Sabaea is distant from Jerusalem 606 leagues. It is, moreover, the furthest land in the direction of the Mare Indicum, or Arabian Gulf, for there the land ends, and the sea begins. Hence it is often called in scripture, a land very far off, as Jer. vi. Isaiah xliii. and elsewhere. Whence Nicephorus (l. 8, c. 35) says, Arabia Felix is Sabaea, and its boundaries extend to the ocean. Thus SS. Jerome, Cyril, Theodorus, Salmeron and others, whom Pineda quotes and follows.
To hear the wisdom of Solomon; and behold a greater than Solomon is here. Christ speaks of Himself in the third person out of modesty. This comparison between the Jews and the Queen of Sheba has much emphasis, which is well brought out by Franc. Lucas. “The woman,” he says, “was a Gentile, not brought up in God’s discipline, but immersed in the business of a great empire; yet she was attracted by the fame of Solomon’s wisdom, and undertook a most difficult journey from the remotest parts of the earth to Jerusalem, that she might make trial of his wisdom. This wisdom she wondered at above measure, and received Solomon’s counsel, although he only discoursed concerning earthly things. But the Jews, the scholars of the Divine Law, would not receive Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, the only teacher of the mysteries of eternal salvation, which had been hid from ages and generations, when He offered Himself to them, and asked and invited them to come to Him. Yea, they altogether rejected Him, although He gave them the most wonderful sign of the Resurrection. How much, therefore, did the Queen of Sheba excel the Jews! and with what justice and with what power, will she, in the Day of Judgment, rebuke them to their face for their obstinate ingratitude, unbelief, and disobedience to Christ!” The same reasoning will apply to the Ninevites. Therefore let priests, religious and others, who are abundantly supplied with God’s grace, take heed that they use it rightly and diligently; for otherwise, the more they have received, the more severely will they be punished. Yea, in the Day of Judgment, laymen will triumph over them, even as Heathens and Turks will upbraid bad Christians, because if they had had their graces, they would have lived far more holily and religiously.
When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, &c. Observe, Christ still continues to treat of the subject of demoniacal possession: for the possessed, whom He healed, were corporeally possessed by a demon, but the Scribes and the Jews, who reviled Christ’s miracles, were spiritually possessed. Christ here speaks parabolically, after the manner of the Syrians. The meaning is: As a man who is an exile wanders through arid and desert places, so the devil when driven by the law of God from man, that is to say, from you, 0 ye Jews, who were the people of God, amongst whom God dwelt, and manifested Himself by prophecies and miracles, wanders through desert places, and seeks rest. But when he cannot find it save in man, and when he sees that ye despise God’s grace, which I offer you, then he eagerly returns to you as to a house that is empty and swept, as to a place prepared and adorned for him. Then he takes seven, i.e., many other companions, more wicked than himself, and they joyfully inhabit that house, i.e., your souls; and that they may not be again expelled, and that they may make you more wicked, with that object in view they cause you to blaspheme Me, My doctrine, and My miracles, and to say that I cast out devils by Beelzebub, and that ye may at length crucify Me, which is of all wickedness the chief and the greatest. Wherefore God will punish you with utter destruction by Titus, and will cause you to be without God, without Messiah, without law, or temple, or sacrifice, and without faith-yea, that ye shall think your own perfidy and blindness to be the true faith and the true light.
Moreover, the house, that is the soul, is empty, because it is without God, and devoid of His grace. It is swept with besoms (Vulg.) because all virtue, piety and goodness have been driven out of it, and the poison of impurity has been scattered in it, and the tapestry of pride hung about it. For such adornment as this is the adornment of uncleanness, and is pleasing to the devil who delights in nothing but what is impure and filthy.
Again, the devils are driven by God and His Saints into desert places, that they may not injure men. Thus Raphael bound Asmodeus in the deserts of Upper Egypt. (Tobit 8.) So also Isaiah says, (Isaiah xiii. and xxxiv.) that Babylon should be wasted and rendered a desert; and that hairy creatures, Satyrs and Onocentauri, i.e. demons in the shape of goats and monsters should dwell there. But the devil does not find rest in such places, for, as Abul. says, “The devil cannot rest, because he shall be tormented eternally, but he seeks the rest of his own evil will: for he is envious, and loves to injure men: and when he is able to injure them he rests after a fashion.” He acts thus, partly from envy, because he grudges man the happiness of heaven, from which he himself has fallen; partly from hatred of God: and because he cannot injure God himself, he would injure man who is God’s creature and image, that he may thus, as far as he can, do an injury to God.
Mystically, dry places are the souls of the Gentiles, in which, by the grace of Christ, the moisture of concupiscence is dried up. Hear S. Jerome, “The unclean spirit went forth from the Jews, when they received the law, and being driven from them, walked in the wilderness of the Gentiles. But when the Gentiles had believed in the Lord-finding no place among them, the devil said, I will go back to the Jews.”
And the last state of that man, &c. This is the end and scope of the parable. Christ shows that relapsing into sin is worse than falling into it at first; even as a relapse into a disease of the body is worse than the original disease. S. Augustine says (Epist. 137), “I confess unfeignedly, before the Lord our God, who is the witness of my soul, from the time when I began to serve God, that I have not found any who have made greater progress in religion than those in monasteries. So too, in like manner, I have never found worse men than those who have fallen, being monks. And this is why I believe it has been written in the Apocalypse (ch. xxii.) ‘He that is just, let him become more just; and he that is filthy, let him become more filthy. ‘” Thus Lucifer, who was the most fair of all the angels, became the worst of the devils. So too Judas, from an Apostle, became an Apostate, and the betrayer of Christ. So also Nestorius, Eutyches, Pelagius, Arius, and in our time Luther, Calvin, and the rest, their companions, from monks and priests, became apostates and heresiarchs. As it is commonly said, “the best wine makes the sourest vinegar.”
While He was yet speaking to the multitude, behold His mother, &c. You will ask, who were those who, in the Gospels, are called the brethren of Christ? The impure heresiarch, Helvidius, answered that they were children of the blessed Virgin who were born after Christ. For he denied Her perpetual virginity. But S. Jerome sharply and learnedly refutes him, in the work which he wrote against him.
2. The Greeks generally, with Euseb. (H.E. ii. 1), and of the Latins, SS. Hilary and Ambrose, think that they were children of Joseph, by a former marriage. But Joseph never had any other wife except the Blessed Virgin Mary. Peter Damian (Epist. 11, c. iv. ad Nicol. Rom. Pont.) says that this is the faith of the Church.
3. Hugh of S. Victor thinks they were descendants of S. Ann, the mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and that S. Ann, besides Joakim the father of the Virgin, had two other husbands, of whom, those who are called the Lord’s brethren, were begotten. But S. Hippolytus (Ap. Niceph. 2, 3) teaches that S. Annn had only one husband, Joakim. I say, therefore, that these persons were not properly the brethren of Christ, nor the offspring of the Blessed Virgin Mary, nor Joseph, nor S. Ann, but are called brethren, i.e., cousins or relations of Christ, by a mode of expression common in Hebrew. In sooth, they were cousins, or really brothers of S. Joakim, or S. Ann, or rather brother’s children, or sistes’s children of SS. Joakim and Ann, probably children of Cleophas, who was a brother of Joseph, the husband of the blessed Virgin Mary, according to the testimony of Hegesippus (Eus. H.E. iii. 11). For Joseph and Cleophas were sons of Jacob, the brother of S. Ann. Hear S. Jerome on the passage, “We, as it is in the book which we have written against Helvidius, say, that the Lord’s brethren were not children of Joseph, but cousins of the Saviour, and children of Mary, the maternal aunt of the Lord, who is called the mother of James and Joseph and Jude.”
Stood without. They sent a messenger into the house, to Christ, to call Him out.
Seeking to speak with Him. Not out of ambition and pride, that they might appear to be relations of so great a Teacher and Prophet, as S. Chrysostom and Theophylact think; but that they might take Him with them, and bring Him to Nazareth. For they said that He was beside Himself (Mark 3:21). “For neither did His brethren believe in Him” (John 7:5). Whether they said this because they really thought He was mad; or feignedly, in order that they might deliver Him out of the hands of the Pharisees. That for some such cause the Blessed Virgin called Christ forth, no pious person would doubt. But if they wished to take Him as a madman, they must have concealed their opinion from the Blessed Virgin Mary, and taken her with them that they might the more easily draw Christ away. For it is certain she knew perfectly that Christ was of sound mind. Wherefore she accompanied these brethren or relations of Christ from the desire of beholding Him.
But one said to Him, Behold Thy mother, &c. This person was the messenger whom the brethren of Christ sent to call Him out.
But he said: Who is My mother, &c. Observe, Christ speaks thus, not as denying that He really had a mother, as if Christ were not a true man, but a phantasm born of a phantasm, as Marcion and the Manichees taught; nor yet as though He were ashamed of His mother and poor brethren, but either because this messenger was interrupting Him with too great boldness and importunity, by calling Him away from the preaching which He had begun; or rather, as S. Ambrose says, that He might show that He must be more intent upon the ministry given Him by His Father, than upon His affection for His mother; and that He must prefer spiritual to carnal relationships, where there is neither sex nor rank, but all are most nearly related to Christ, and by every tie, as though they were father, sister, and brother. For this is what Matthew adds concerning Christ, And stretching forth His hand, &c. The Arab. trans., He pointed with His hand towards His disciples.
For whosoever shall do, &c. Spiritually, as I have already said, not carnally. He speaks of brother and sister, because of either sex. The faithful soul is also the mother of Christ, because by teaching, exhorting, and counselling, she brings forth Christ in herself and others. Hear S. Gregory (Hom. 8 in Evang.), “We must know that he who is the brother and sister of Christ through believing, is made his mother by preaching. For he, as it were, brings forth the Lord, whom he infuses into the heart of his hearer.” He subjoins the example of S. Felicitas, who by the spirit bore to God the seven sons, to whom she had given birth in the flesh, because she strengthened them in persecution, and animated them for martyrdom. These words of Christ were also exemplified in S. Victoria, a virgin martyr under Diocietian. She said to the pro-consol, who asked her, “Wilt thou go with Fortunatianus, thy brother?” who was a heathen; “No, for I am a Christian; and those are my brethren, who keep the commandments of God.” Wherefore she was shut up in prison, and perishing by hunger, obtained the martyr’s crown.
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