him up for their king by main force; but he, knowing the mischief of such a design, From Matth. constrained his disciples (who were forward enough perhaps to join in the thing) im- xii. 1. Mark ii. mediately to take shipping, and to pass by Bethsaida || to Capernaum, whilst himself John v. 1. to dismissed the multitude; and (when he had so done) continued till after midnight in Matth. xvii. 14. meditation and prayer. 23. Luke vi. 1. Mark ix. 14. Luke ix. 37. In the mean time, the ship where the apostles were on board was tossed with a great John vii. 1. storm in the middle of the lake. The waves ran so high, and the wind was so contrary, that as soon as morning appeared, they had not got much above a league on their voyage, when our Saviour came walking † upon the surface of the sea, and drew near towards the ship. This strange appearance + (which they took for a spirit) increased their fear not a little. Our Lord indeed, to dispel it, told them who he was; but Peter, still doubtful, wanted a demonstration, which when he permitted him to try, and the apostle upon the experiment was ready to sink, he graciously reached out his hand, and with a gentle rebuke for the weakness of his faith, setting him again upon the top of the waves, walked along with him to the vessel; which they had no sooner entered, but the winds, knowing their duty to their Sovereign, ceased. This the rest of the disciples observing, came and adored Jesus, acknowledging his omnipotence, and admiring the Divinity of his power and person; and as it was not long before the ship gained the port, great numbers out of the country, as soon as they understood that he was arrived, brought their sick and diseased on beds, and laid them before him in the streets, beseeching him to permit them only to touch the border "of his garment; and as many as touched him were made whole. The multitudes whom our Lord had miraculously fed in the desert near Bethsaida, were in expectation of finding him the next morning on the mountain; for they had seen the disciples take shipping without their master, and no other vessel left for him: But perceiving that he was gone as well as his disciples, and having an opportunity of other vessels from Tiberias, they passed over with all expedition to Capernaum, where they found him teaching in the synagogues; and, being in no small surprise, desired to know of him how he got thither? But instead of gratifying their curiosity + with a direct answer, he, who knew their corrupt expectations, and that they came after him, not so much for his miraculous gifts as the gratification of their own appetites, took occasion from thence to discourse +4 to them of a certain food, different from what he had St Mark tells us, that our Saviour ordered his apostles to cross the sea, and wait for him "on the other side at Bethsaida," chap. vi. 45. St John writes, that accordingly they entered into the ship, but instead of going where they were directed, they steered their course towards Capernaum, chap. vi. 17.; and yet after all, if we will believe St Matthew, they landed at last, neither at Bethsaida nor Capernaum, but in the country of Gennesareth, chap. xiv. 34. Now, to reconcile this, we need only remember what all the evangelists tell us, viz. that while the apostles were on board, there arose a strong gale of wind, which, blowing from the north, proved, in a manner, quite contrary to them; so that, instead of making the port of Bethsaida, which is on the north coast of the sea of Galilee, the next morning they found themselves on the opposite side, not far from Tiberias, and to the south of Capernaum. Though therefore our Saviour ordered them to go to Bethsaida, yet they could not do it, because the wind was against them. Their next attempt therefore was to get to Capernaum; but even that they could not do; but being forced to yield to the storm, were carried a good way below to the south of it, from whence they just touched † Among several other instances of God's omni- + It was a common opinion among the Jews, that spirits did sometimes appear cloathed in an human form; but what put the apostles at this time in the greater fright, was their imagining, that those who appeared at night were usually evil spirits, and that this, which they now saw, might possibly be the demon who had raised the storm. Beausobre's Annotations. +3 We may observe from several parts of the Gospel, particularly from Luke xiii. 23, 24. John xii. 34, 35. that it was usual with our Blessed Saviour to answer nothing to such curious questions as had no tendency to edification, but to divert the people from them, by proposing some more profitable subject. Whitby's Annotations. + Our Blessed Saviour, through the greatest part of the sixth chapter of St John's Gospel, takes an occasion, from the multitude's coming after him out of Ann. Dom. A. M. 4035, given them in the desert of Bethsaida, infinitely more deserving of their inquisition, &c. or 5440. and whereof the manna in the wilderness was no more than a figure or a type. What 31, &c. this food was he signified to them, viz. The merits of his future death and passion, Vulg. Er. 29. which alone could be available for the obtaining of eternal life to such as believed in his Divine mission, and descent from heaven. But these sublime truths, which for the present he thought proper to couch in terms obscure and figurative enough, so gravelled the intellects of his auditory, that even his disciples began to murmur, and many of his followers, mistaking the words in a literal, which he intended in a spiritual, sense, and thence inferring that he was not such a Messiah as they imagined, wholly deserted him; insomuch, that he began to suspect the fidelity of his very apostles, until Peter (in behalf of all the rest) declared their fixed purpose of adhering to him, upon full conviction that he was the Messiah, the Son of the living God. But notwithstanding this liberal and frank confession, our Lord gave them to understand, that they were not equally sound, for among the twelve whom he had selected, one of them was to prove a traitor, meaning this of Judas Iscariot, who justly deserved that name, because he afterwards betrayed him. Whether our Blessed Saviour was at Jerusalem on the third passover after his bap tism, the evangelists have not informed us; but it is very probable, that he who came to fulfil all righteousness, would not neglect so great an ordinance. Upon this presumption, it is most generally believed that he was there, though very likely he might not stay long, but as soon as the festival was over return into Galilee, (a) because the rulers at Jerusalem lay in wait for an opportunity to put him to death. Upon his return into Galilee, a certain number of scribes and Pharisees † were sent from Jerusalem to be spies upon his actions, and to criticise upon his doctrine. These men observing, that when he and his disciples were to eat, they frequently sat down without washing their hands, contrary to the common custom of the Jews, which (as they pretended) was founded upon a tradition*, expostulated with him the reason for so a greedy desire to be fed, to discourse to them of the supreme court in all religious affairs, sent messengers to John the Baptist, when he began his preaching, enquiring who he was, and by what autho rity he baptized, John i. 19. and as the Pharisees had charged our Saviour's disciples with a violation of the Sabbath, in plucking and rubbing the ears of the corn, and himself with the same crime in curing the sick on the Sabbath-day, it is not improbable that these accusations had reached Jerusalem, and that the scribes and Pharisees here mentioned were emissaries sent from the sanhedrim to watch and observe our Saviour. And this seems the rather to be so, because they were so very ready (when they could find him guilty of no violation of the laws of God) to pick a quarrel with him about some rites and ceremonies of the church, which he and his disciples thought not so very necessary to be observed. Pool's Annotations. The traditions in the Jewish church came to gain credit upon this presumption, that Moses, when he received the law from God on Mount Sinai, which he recorded in his five books, was instructed, at the same time, in several things which God enjoined him not to commit to writing, for fear that the heathens should transcribe them: That, in these things, Moses instructed his successor Joshua, and from Joshua they were transmitted, through the elders of the people, by oral conveyance only, until Ezra, after the return The sanhedrim, which sat at Jerusalem, and was from the Babylonish captivity, collected them all to (a) John vii. 1. 23. Luke vi. 1. Mark ix. 14. doing but (instead of answering them directly) he put another question to them, by From Matth. way of recrimination, viz. Why they, by their pretended traditions †, vacated the laws xii. 1. Mark ii. of God, particularly that so solemn one of honouring their parents, and relieving them John v. 1. to in their wants? And, thereupon, looking upon them as so many hypocrites +2, with Matth. xvii. 14. whom he disdained to hold any farther converse, he turned to the multitude, and in- Luke ix. 37. formed them," that true piety did not consist in outward ceremonies, but in a sincere John vii. 1. observance of the laws of God; that no pollution could be in what entered into a man's mouth, but only in what proceeded from it; for (as he afterwards explains the thing to his disciples) whatever we eat does not affect the mind, the only seat of defilements, for it passes into the stomach, and is soon thrown out of the body, so that, be it never so gross or unclean, it cannot pollute the eater; but all pollution is from within, from the corruption of the heart, such as impure thoughts, unchaste desires, unholy purposes, immodest and indecent speeches, &c. These are the things that leave a lasting stain gether, and made the Cabbala, in seventy-two books, which was kept by Gamaliel, and others that succeeded as heads of the Sanhedrim, until the destruction of Jerusalem: That about an hundred and twenty years after this, R. Judas, the son of Simon, composed a book of them, called the Mishna, i. e. the second law, which is indeed the most ancient collection of traditions that the Jews have: That three hundred years after this, R. Jonathan, meeting with more, compiled them into a larger volume; and an hundred years after this, another Rabbi made a collection of such as were found among the Jews who remained in Babylon: That these two (which are a kind of supplement and explication of the Mishna) are called, the one the Talmud of Jerusalem, and the other of Babylon; and that by these the Jews, at this day, are governed in matters ecclesiastical, all the world over. In relation to the particular custom of washing before meat, their canon is, that "Whosoever despiseth the washing of hands, is worthy to be excommunicated; he comes to poverty, and will be extirpated out of the world:" for (according to the sense of one of their doctors, viz. R. Aquiba)" he that takes meat with unwashed hands is worthy of death," and therefore, when the same doctor was in prison, and had not water enough, both to drink and wash his hands, he chose to do the latter; because "it is better," says he," to die with thirst, than to transgress the tradition of the elders." It is no wonder then, that persons, inured to those notions, should so readily take exception at our Saviour's omitting what were indeed (though they thought not so) matters of an indifferent nature. Pool's, Whitby's, Hammond's, and Beausobre's Annotations, and Lightfoot on Mat. xv. 2. + The way whereby the Jews made the law of ho nouring and subsisting their father and mother of no effect, was, by pretending, that whatever their parents requested of them was a corban, i. e. that they had devoted it as a gift or offering to God, or to his temple; and, whatever was thus devoted, was not to be touched, be the necessity never so urgent: for their canon about vows was,-That "they reach even to things commanded, and take place as well in things required by the law as things indifferent; that a man may be so bound by them, that he cannot, without VOL. III. S great sin, do what God had commanded to be done; and that, in this case, if he makes a vow which cannot be performed without breaking a commandment, his vow must be ratified, and the commandment violated." This was a superstition which the Pharisees and other doctors of the law, who had a property in the gifts and oblations that were made to the temple, thought themselves concerned to indulge; and therefore, when any pretended that their parents stood in need of their help, they told them, that if they did but acquaint them that it was a gift, or that they had vowed such a portion of their estate to sacred uses, that would, before God, excuse them from relieving them: Nay, they affirmed farther, that if a man did but in a passion say, that the thing which another asked of him was a corban, though it were not actually consecrated to religious uses, this was vow enough to prevent his relieving that other person, even putting the case that it were his own father; unless they should absolve him from it, which they would undertake to do for so many shekels of silver, Levit. xxvii. Such abundant reason had our Blessed Saviour to charge the Jewish doctors with making one of the greatest commands in the second table of the law void by their tradition concerning vows. Pool's and Whitby's Annotations, and Pocock's Miscel. p 415. + In several places of the Gospel, our Lord calls the Pharisees hypocrites, not only because they placed the worship of God, and a great deal of sanctity and religion, in ceremonies of human institution, and, though they pretended to extraordinary purity, did all their good works to be seen of men, Matth. xxiii, 5.; but more especially in this place, because, being superstitiously careful to avoid the outward pollution of the body, by abstaining from the touch of any thing which they reputed unclean, and washing their hands whenever they thought they had done so; they left that which was within, viz. their hearts and affec tions, full of iniquity, uncleanness, extortion, and excess, Matth. xxiii. 25. and Luke xi. 39.; but from Christ's example in this particular, we must not be forward to pronounce men hypocrites, because we have neither that authority nor that knowledge of their hearts which he had. Whitby's Annotations. A. M. 4035, upon the soul, which a thing so merely external as omitting to wash before meat cannot do." &c. or 5440. Ann. Dom. 31, &c. Vulg. Er. 29. This was a doctrine not well pleasing to the Pharisees, as his disciples told him ; but they were a set of people whose censure he justly despised, "blind leaders of the blind," as he properly enough calls them, whose vain traditions, as having nothing of Divine institution in them, his purpose was to abolish. And from thence, in departing to the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, he entered into an house, with a design to conceal himself; but a certain Syrophoenician woman, having got intelligence where he was, came, and earnestly requested of him to cure her daughter, who was sadly tormented with a devil. Our Lord, for the trial of her faith, seemed at first to take no notice of her, until his disciples, to get rid of her importunity, desired him to grant her request, and dismiss her. His ministry, he told them, was confined to Judea, nor was he properly sent to any but "the lost sheep of the house of Israel." All this the poor woman heard; but so far was she from being discouraged by such coldness, that, advancing nearer, she threw herself prostrate at his feet, imploring his help for her child; and when (in an harsh metaphor) he told her, that "it was not proper to work those miracles for an heathen, which were originally designed for God's people, the Jews," the afflicted mother owned indeed the truth of what he had alleged, but then (continuing the same figure) she humbly hoped, "that a poor distressed heathen might, in some small measure, partake of the mercies which were more peculiarly promised to the Jews." Which answer was so highly expressive of the woman's humility, faith, and reliance, that he granted her petition; so that, when she returned home, she found her daughter laid upon the bed, and perfectly well. From the coasts of Sidon our Lord passed eastward to Decapolis, †2 and from thence towards the Sea of Galilee, where in his way he cured a deaf and dumb man, by putting his fingers †3 in his ears, and some of his spittle upon his tongue; and thence repairing Both the ancient and present condition of Tyre, we had occasion to take notice of before, vol. ii. p. 579, 580, in the notes; and now to do the like to Sidon. It is generally supposed to have took its name from Sidon, a son of Canaan, Gen. x. 15. and upon that account to be one of the most ancient cities in the universe. It was formerly very strong both by art and nature, having on the north side a fort, or citadel, built on an inaccessible rock, and environed on all sides by the sea. The commodiousness of its situation made it a great place of trade, which brought in vast riches, and made the inhabitants not a little Juxurious, insomuch, that to live "after the manner of the Sidonians" is the Scripture phrase, Judges xviii. 7. for to live voluptuously. At present it is strangely altered from what it was; for though it is well enough stocked with inhabitants, yet it is very much shrunk from its ancient extent, and much more from its splendour, as appears from the great many beautiful pillars which lie scattered up and down in the gardens without the present walls. Tyre and Sidon were seated both on the Mediterranean Sea, about twenty miles distant from each other, and the country adjoining to them, which lay to the west and north of Galilee, was called the coasts or territories of Tyre and Sidon. The old inhabitants of this tract were descendants of Canaan (for Sidon was his eldest son), and continued in possession of it much longer than they did of any other part of the country. The Greeks call it Phoenicia; and when, by right of conquest, it became a province of Syria, it took the name of Syrophoenicia; and from hence the woman, whom St Matthew calls a Canaanite, is by St Mark styled a Syrophoenician, as being, both by religion and language, a Greek. Wells's Geography of the New Testament, c. 7. and Maundrell's Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem. + It is a country in Palestine, which was so called because it contained ten cities, some situated on the east, and others on the west side of the river Jordan; the 1st and principal city is Scythopolis, and the rest, according to Pliny, are, 2d, Philadelphia; 3d, Raphane; 4th, Gadara; 5th, Hippos; 6th, Dion; 7th, Pella; 8th, Gerasa; 9th, Canatha; and, 10th, Damascus; though others reckon them after another manner, as Pliny himself observes, lib. v. c. 18. Cal met's Dictionary under the word. +3 Christ often made use of visible signs to represent that divine invisible virtue which was inherent in him, and which, upon that occasion, he intended to exert: And therefore, because deaf persons seem to have their ears closed, he put his fingers into the man's ears, to intimate, that by his power he would open them; and because the tongue of the dumb seems to be tied, or to cleave to the palate, therefore he moistened it with spittle, to signify that he would loose and give free motion to it. These, it is true, were not capable to effect the cure, but they had this use in them, that they excited the observation and attention of the people before whom these cures were wrought, Whitby's and Beausobre's Annotations. 23. Luke vi. 1. to a mountain, he not only cured every person that was brought unto him, whatever his From Matth. malady or distemper was, but, in the conclusion, fed all the multitude, which amounted xii. 1. Mark i to four thousand men, besides women and children (and who, for three days successive-John v. 1. to ly, had been attending him), with "seven loaves and a few small fishes.” Matth. xvii. 14. Having thus dismissed the company, he embarked with his disciples for the coast of Luke ix. 37. Dalmanutha †; but no sooner was he arrived there, than the Pharisees, joining with John vii. 1. their enemies the Sadducees, came and demanded of him a sign from heaven, in order to convince them that he was the true Messiah: But having first upbraided them with their acuteness in discerning the face of the sky, and from thence the prognostics of fair or foul weather, and their blindness in not perceiving the manifest signs of the Messiah's coming, he remitted them (as he had done before) to the miracle of his own resurrection, and so sailed back with his disciples. His disciples, in the hurry of their departure, had forgot to take bread with them; and therefore when our Saviour, in their passage, gave them caution to take care of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees, and they were ignorant enough to take his words in a literal sense, he first gently reproved the blindness of their understandings, and the shortness of their memories, who had so soon forgotten his miraculous multiplication of the loaves and fishes at two different times, and then gave them to understand, that his words did not concern the leaven of bread, but the corrupt doctrines of the Pharisees and Sadducees. With this discourse they landed at Bethsaida, which (though the birth-place of several of his apostles) had by the perverseness and infidelity of its inhabitants so offended him, that, when a blind man was presented to him for cure, he would not do it in the city in the sight of the inhabitants; but taking him out of the gate, he anointed his eyes with his spittle, and laid his hands on them. The man at first saw objects indistinctly, men like trees walking, but when our Lord had laid his hands upon him the second time, he restored him to his perfect sight; and so sent him home, with a charge †2 not to return into the city, nor to discover the thing to any person belonging to that place. From that place he departed into the coasts of Cæsarea Philippi †3, where, being minded to make some trial of his apostles faith and proficiency, he demanded of them what opinion mankind had of him, and whom they took him to be? Some (say they) + What St Matthew calls Magdala, St Mark names Dalmanutha; and the reason hereof is, because these two places lay very near together, and Dalmanutha very probably within the precincts of Magdala. Wells's Geography of the New Testament, and Beausobre's Annotations. The leaven of the Pharisees was their hypocrisy, and too scrupulous observance of the traditions of their elders; and that of the Sadducees was their denial of the existence of angels and devils, the resurrection of the body, and the immortality of the soul; so that the meaning of our Saviour's caution to his apostles is,-To avoid the principles of those who place the sum of their religion in outward perform ances, which avail nothing to the sanctification of the soul; and to reject all such doctrines as tended to subvert religion, by cutting off all hopes of happiness in a future state. Calmet's Commentary and Whitby's Annotations. + The reason of our Saviour's giving the man this charge, is founded upon the infidelity of the people of Bethsaida, wherewith he upbraids them, Matth. xi. 21. +3 This city is situated near the head of the Jordan, and was by the Canaanites called Laish or Lechem, Judg. xviii. 7. but being taken by some of the Danites, it was by them called Dan, and is generally reputed the utmost border northward of the land of Israel. It was usually called by heathen writers Paneas, from the adjoining spring Paneum or Panion, which is commonly taken for the fountain-head of Jordan. Augustus Cæsar gave it, and all the territories belonging to it, to Herod the Great. He having rebuilt the place, gave it and the tetrarchy of Ituræa and Trachonitis, to which it adjoined, to his youngest son Philip, who, when he had enlarged and beautified it, so as to make it the capital of his dominions, and chief place of his residence, gave it the name of Cæsarea Philippi, partly to compliment Tiberius Cæsar, who was then emperor, partly to preserve the memory of his own name, and partly to distinguish it from another Cæsarea mentioned in Acts x. 1. situate on the Mediterranean, and built by his father, in honour of his great benefactor Augustus Cæsar. Wells's Geography of the New Testament. |