{"commentary":{"id":"jamieson-fausset-brown","name":"Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary","website":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamieson-Fausset-Brown_Bible_Commentary","licenseUrl":"https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/","licenseNotes":null,"licenseNotice":null,"englishName":"Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary","language":"eng","textDirection":"rtl","sha256":"db3d4c8b3c1f32ef9d1430a57392e02bda3a17aac1f9bbe398461de021a3cb13","availableFormats":["json"],"listOfBooksApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/books.json","listOfProfilesApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/profiles.json","numberOfBooks":66,"totalNumberOfChapters":1187,"totalNumberOfVerses":17056,"totalNumberOfProfiles":0,"languageName":"English","languageEnglishName":"English"},"book":{"id":"MAT","commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","name":"Matthew","commonName":"Matthew","introduction":"THE author of this Gospel was a publican or tax gatherer, residing at Capernaum, on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. As to his identity with the \"Levi\" of the second and third Gospels, and other particulars, see on Mat 9:9. Hardly anything is known of his apostolic labors. That, after preaching to his countrymen in Palestine, he went to the East, is the general testimony of antiquity; but the precise scene or scenes of his ministry cannot be determined. That he died a natural death may be concluded from the belief of the best-informed of the Fathers--that of the apostles only three, James the Greater, Peter, and Paul, suffered martyrdom. That the first Gospel was written by this apostle is the testimony of all antiquity.\n\nFor the date of this Gospel we have only internal evidence, and that far from decisive. Accordingly, opinion is much divided. That it was the first issued of all the Gospels was universally believed. Hence, although in the order of the Gospels, those by the two apostles were placed first in the oldest manuscripts of the Old Latin version, while in all the Greek manuscripts, with scarcely an exception, the order is the same as in our Bibles, the Gospel according to Matthew is \"in every case\" placed first. And as this Gospel is of all the four the one which bears the most evident marks of having been prepared and constructed with a special view to the Jews--who certainly first required a written Gospel, and would be the first to make use of it--there can be no doubt that it was issued before any of the others. That it was written before the destruction of Jerusalem is equally certain; for as HUG observes [Introduction to the New Testament, p. 316, FOSDICK'S translation], when he reports our Lord's prophecy of that awful event, on coming to the warning about \"the abomination of desolation\" which they should \"see standing in the holy place,\" he interposes (contrary to his invariable practice, which is to relate without remark) a call to his readers to read intelligently--\"Whoso readeth, let him understand\" (Mat 24:15) --a call to attend to the divine signal for flight which could be intended only for those who lived before the event. But how long before that event this Gospel was written is not so clear. Some internal evidences seem to imply a very early date. Since the Jewish Christians were, for five or six years, exposed to persecution from their own countrymen--until the Jews, being persecuted by the Romans, had to look to themselves--it is not likely (it is argued) that they should be left so long without some written Gospel to reassure and sustain them, and Matthew's Gospel was eminently fitted for that purpose. But the digests to which Luke refers in his Introduction (see on Luk 1:1) would be sufficient for a time, especially as the living voice of the \"eye-witnesses and ministers of the Word\" was yet sounding abroad. Other considerations in favor of a very early date--such as the tender way in which the author seems studiously to speak of Herod Antipas, as if still reigning, and his writing of Pilate apparently as if still in power--seem to have no foundation in fact, and cannot therefore be made the ground of reasoning as to the date of this Gospel. Its Hebraic structure and hue, though they prove, as we think, that this Gospel must have been published at a period considerably anterior to the destruction of Jerusalem, are no evidence in favor of so early a date as A.D. 37 or 38--according to some of the Fathers, and, of the moderns, TILLEMONT, TOWNSON, OWEN, BIRKS, TREGELLES. On the other hand, the date suggested by the statement of IRENÆUS [Against Heresies, 3.1], that Matthew put forth his Gospel while Peter and Paul were at Rome preaching and founding the Church--or after A.D. 60--though probably the majority of critics are in favor of it, would seem rather too late, especially as the second and third Gospels, which were doubtless published, as well as this one, before the destruction of Jerusalem, had still to be issued. Certainly, such statements as the following, \"Wherefore that field is called the field of blood unto this day\" (Mat 27:8); \"And this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day\" (Mat 28:15), bespeak a date considerably later than the events recorded. We incline, therefore, to a date intermediate between the earlier and the later dates assigned to this Gospel, without pretending to greater precision.\n\nWe have adverted to the strikingly Jewish character and coloring of this Gospel. The facts which it selects, the points to which it gives prominence, the cast of thought and phraseology, all bespeak the Jewish point of view from which it was written and to which it was directed. This has been noticed from the beginning, and is universally acknowledged. It is of the greatest consequence to the right interpretation of it; but the tendency among some even of the best of the Germans to infer, from this special design of the first Gospel, a certain laxity on the part of the Evangelist in the treatment of his facts, must be guarded against.\n\nBut by far the most interesting and important point connected with this Gospel is the language in which it was written. It is believed by a formidable number of critics that this Gospel was originally written in what is loosely called Hebrew, but more correctly Aramaic, or Syro-Chaldaic, the native tongue of the country at the time of our Lord; and that the Greek Matthew which we now possess is a translation of that work, either by the Evangelist himself or some unknown hand. The evidence on which this opinion is grounded is wholly external, but it has been deemed conclusive by GROTIUS, MICHAELIS (and his translator), MARSH, TOWNSON, CAMPBELL, OLSHAUSEN, CRESWELL, MEYER, EBRARD, LANGE, DAVIDSON, CURETON, TREGELLES, WEBSTER and WILKINSON, &c. The evidence referred to cannot be given here, but will be found, with remarks on its unsatisfactory character, in the Introduction to the Gospels prefixed to our larger Commentary, pp. 28-31.\n\nBut how stand the facts as to our Greek Gospel? We have not a title of historical evidence that it is a translation, either by Matthew himself or anyone else. All antiquity refers to it as the work of Matthew the publican and apostle, just as the other Gospels are ascribed to their respective authors. This Greek Gospel was from the first received by the Church as an integral part of the one quadriform Gospel. And while the Fathers often advert to the two Gospels which we have from apostles, and the two which we have from men not apostles--in order to show that as that of Mark leans so entirely on Peter, and that of Luke on Paul, these are really no less apostolical than the other two--though we attach less weight to this circumstance than they did, we cannot but think it striking that, in thus speaking, they never drop a hint that the full apostolic authority of the Greek Matthew had ever been questioned on the ground of its not being the original. Further, not a trace can be discovered in this Gospel itself of its being a translation. MICHAELIS tried to detect, and fancied that he had succeeded in detecting, one or two such. Other Germans since, and DAVIDSON and CURETON among ourselves, have made the same attempt. But the entire failure of all such attempts is now generally admitted, and candid advocates of a Hebrew original are quite ready to own that none such are to be found, and that but for external testimony no one would have imagined that the Greek was not the original. This they regard as showing how perfectly the translation has been executed; but those who know best what translating from one language into another is will be the readiest to own that this is tantamount to giving up the question. This Gospel proclaims its own originality in a number of striking points; such as its manner of quoting from the Old Testament, and its phraseology in some peculiar cases. But the close verbal coincidences of our Greek Matthew with the next two Gospels must not be quite passed over. There are but two possible ways of explaining this. Either the translator, sacrificing verbal fidelity in his version, intentionally conformed certain parts of his author's work to the second and third Gospels--in which case it can hardly be called Matthew's Gospel at all--or our Greek Matthew is itself the original.\n\nMoved by these considerations, some advocates of a Hebrew original have adopted the theory of a double original; the external testimony, they think, requiring us to believe in a Hebrew original, while internal evidence is decisive in favor of the originality of the Greek. This theory is espoused by GUERICKS, OLSHAUSEN, THIERSCH, TOWNSON, TREGELLES, &c. But, besides that this looks too like an artificial theory, invented to solve a difficulty, it is utterly void of historical support. There is not a vestige of testimony to support it in Christian antiquity. This ought to be decisive against it.\n\nIt remains, then, that our Greek Matthew is the original of that Gospel, and that no other original ever existed. It is greatly to the credit of DEAN ALFORD, that after maintaining, in the first edition of his Greek Testament the theory of a Hebrew original, he thus expresses himself in the second and subsequent editions: \"On the whole, then, I find myself constrained to abandon the view maintained in my first edition, and to adopt that of a Greek original.\"\n\nOne argument has been adduced on the other side, on which not a little reliance has been placed; but the determination of the main question does not, in our opinion, depend upon the point which it raises. It has been very confidently affirmed that the Greek language was not sufficiently understood by the Jews of Palestine when Matthew published his Gospel to make it at all probable that he would write a Gospel, for their benefit in the first instance, in that language. Now, as this merely alleges the improbability of a Greek original, it is enough to place against it the evidence already adduced, which is positive, in favor of the sole originality of our Greek Matthew. It is indeed a question how far the Greek language was understood in Palestine at the time referred to. But we advise the reader not to be drawn into that question as essential to the settlement of the other one. It is an element in it, no doubt, but not an essential element. There are extremes on both sides of it. The old idea, that our Lord hardly ever spoke anything but Syro-Chaldaic, is now pretty nearly exploded. Many, however, will not go the length, on the other side, of HUG (in his Introduction to the New Testament, pp. 326, &c.) and ROBERTS (\"Discussions of the Gospels,\" &c., pp. 25, &c.). For ourselves, though we believe that our Lord, in all the more public scenes of His ministry, spoke in Greek, all we think it necessary here to say is that there is no ground to believe that Greek was so little understood in Palestine as to make it improbable that Matthew would write his Gospel exclusively in that language--so improbable as to outweigh the evidence that he did so. And when we think of the number of digests or short narratives of the principal facts of our Lord's history which we know from Luke (Luk 1:1-4) were floating about for some time before he wrote his Gospel, of which he speaks by no means disrespectfully, and nearly all of which would be in the mother tongue, we can have no doubt that the Jewish Christians and the Jews of Palestine generally would have from the first reliable written matter sufficient to supply every necessary requirement until the publican-apostle should leisurely draw up the first of the four Gospels in a language to them not a strange tongue, while to the rest of the world it was the language in which the entire quadriform Gospel was to be for all time enshrined. The following among others hold to this view of the sole originality of the Greek Matthew: ERASMUS, CALVIN, BEZA, LIGHTFOOT, WETSTEIN, LARDNER, HUG, FRITZSCHE, CREDNER, DE WETTE, STUART, DA COSTA, FAIRBAIRN, ROBERTS.\n\nOn two other questions regarding this Gospel it would have been desirable to say something, had not our available space been already exhausted: The characteristics, both in language and matter, by which it is distinguished from the other three, and its relation to the second and third Gospels. On the latter of these topics--whether one or more of the Evangelists made use of the materials of the other Gospels, and, if so, which of the Evangelists drew from which--the opinions are just as numerous as the possibilities of the case, every conceivable way of it having one or more who plead for it. The most popular opinion until recently--and perhaps the most popular still--is that the second Evangelist availed himself more or less of the materials of the first Gospel, and the third of the materials of both the first and second Gospels. Here we can but state our own belief, that each of the first three Evangelists wrote independently of both the others; while the fourth, familiar with the first three, wrote to supplement them, and, even where he travels along the same line, wrote quite independently of them. This judgment we express, with all deference for those who think otherwise, as the result of a close study of each of the Gospels in immediate juxtaposition and comparison with the others. On the former of the two topics noticed, the linguistic peculiarities of each of the Gospels have been handled most closely and ably by CREDNER [Einleitung (Introduction to the New Testament)], of whose results a good summary will be found in DAVIDSON'S Introduction to the New Testament. The other peculiarities of the Gospels have been most felicitously and beautifully brought out by DA COSTA in his Four Witnesses, to which we must simply refer the reader, though it contains a few things in which we cannot concur. \n\n\n\nNext: Matthew Chapter 1\n\n","order":40,"numberOfChapters":28,"sha256":"85230502f7845520bbf6f2983f2d40076dbb901c7feac0d1cfa0d62c8b7d54f8","firstChapterNumber":1,"firstChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/MAT/1.json","firstChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"MAT","chapter":1},"lastChapterNumber":28,"lastChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/MAT/28.json","lastChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"MAT","chapter":28},"totalNumberOfVerses":525},"chapter":{"number":16,"content":[{"type":"verse","number":14,"content":["And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist--risen from the dead. So that Herod Antipas was not singular in his surmise (Mat 14:1-2). \n\nsome, Elias--(Compare Mar 6:15). \n\nand others, Jeremias--Was this theory suggested by a supposed resemblance between the \"Man of Sorrows\" and \"the weeping prophet?\" \n\nor one of the prophets--or, as Luke (Luk 9:8) expresses it, \"that one of the old prophets is risen again.\" In another report of the popular opinions which Mark (Mar 6:15) gives us, it is thus expressed, \"That it is a prophet [or], as one of the prophets\": in other words, That He was a prophetical person, resembling those of old.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":15,"content":["He saith unto them, But whom--rather, \"who.\" \n\nsay ye that I am?--He had never put this question before, but the crisis He was reaching made it fitting that He should now have it from them. We may suppose this to be one of those moments of which the prophet says, in His name, \"Then I said, I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for naught, and in vain\" (Isa 49:4): Lo, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree; and what is it? As the result of all, I am taken for John the Baptist, for Elias, for Jeremias, for one of the prophets. Yet some there are that have beheld My glory, the glory as of the Only-begotten of the Father, and I shall hear their voice, for it is sweet.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":16,"content":["And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God--He does not say, \"Scribes and Pharisees, rulers and people, are all perplexed; and shall we, unlettered fishermen, presume to decide?\" But feeling the light of his Master's glory shining in his soul, he breaks forth--not in a tame, prosaic acknowledgment, \"I believe that Thou art,\" &c.--but in the language of adoration--such as one uses in worship, \"THOU ART THE CHRIST, THE SON OF THE LIVING GOD!\" He first owns Him the promised Messiah (see on Mat 1:16); then he rises higher, echoing the voice from heaven--\"This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased\"; and in the important addition--\"Son of the LIVING GOD\"--he recognizes the essential and eternal life of God as in this His Son--though doubtless without that distinct perception afterwards vouchsafed.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":17,"content":["And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou--Though it is not to be doubted that Peter, in this noble testimony to Christ, only expressed the conviction of all the Twelve, yet since he alone seems to have had clear enough apprehensions to put that conviction in proper and suitable words, and courage enough to speak them out, and readiness enough to do this at the right time--so he only, of all the Twelve, seems to have met the present want, and communicated to the saddened soul of the Redeemer at the critical moment that balm which was needed to cheer and refresh it. Nor is Jesus above giving indication of the deep satisfaction which this speech yielded Him, and hastening to respond to it by a signal acknowledgment of Peter in return. \n\nSimon-Barjona--or, \"son of Jona\" (Joh 1:42), or \"Jonas\" (Joh 21:15). This name, denoting his humble fleshly extraction, seems to have been purposely here mentioned, to contrast the more vividly with the spiritual elevation to which divine illumination had raised him. \n\nfor flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee--\"This is not the fruit of human teaching.\" \n\nbut my Father which is in heaven--In speaking of God, Jesus, it is to be observed, never calls Him, \"our Father\" (see on Joh 20:17), but either \"your Father\"--when He would encourage His timid believing ones with the assurance that He was theirs, and teach themselves to call Him so--or, as here, \"My Father,\" to signify some peculiar action or aspect of Him as \"the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.\"\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":18,"content":["And I say also unto thee--that is, \"As thou hast borne such testimony to Me, even so in return do I to thee.\" \n\nThat thou art Peter--At his first calling, this new name was announced to him as an honor afterwards to be conferred on him (Joh 1:43). Now he gets it, with an explanation of what it was meant to convey. \n\nand upon this rock--As \"Peter\" and \"Rock\" are one word in the dialect familiarly spoken by our Lord--the Aramaic or Syro-Chaldaic, which was the mother tongue of the country--this exalted play upon the word can be fully seen only in languages which have one word for both. Even in the Greek it is imperfectly represented. In French, as WEBSTER and WILKINSON remark, it is perfect, Pierre--pierre. \n\nI will build my Church--not on the man Simon-Barjona; but on him as the heavenly-taught confessor of a faith. \"My Church,\" says our Lord, calling the Church His OWN; a magnificent expression regarding Himself, remarks BENGEL--nowhere else occurring in the Gospel. \n\nand the gates of hell--\"of Hades,\" or, the unseen world; meaning, the gates of Death: in other words, \"It shall never perish.\" Some explain it of \"the assaults of the powers of darkness\"; but though that expresses a glorious truth, probably the former is the sense here.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":19,"content":["And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven--the kingdom of God about to be set up on earth \n\nand whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven--Whatever this mean, it was soon expressly extended to all the apostles (Mat 18:18); so that the claim of supreme authority in the Church, made for Peter by the Church of Rome, and then arrogated to themselves by the popes as the legitimate successors of St. Peter, is baseless and impudent. As first in confessing Christ, Peter got this commission before the rest; and with these \"keys,\" on the day of Pentecost, he first \"opened the door of faith\" to the Jews, and then, in the person of Cornelius, he was honored to do the same to the Gentiles. Hence, in the lists of the apostles, Peter is always first named. See on Mat 18:18. One thing is clear, that not in all the New Testament is there the vestige of any authority either claimed or exercised by Peter, or conceded to him, above the rest of the apostles--a thing conclusive against the Romish claims in behalf of that apostle.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":20,"content":["Then charged he his disciples that they should tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ--Now that He had been so explicit, they might naturally think the time come for giving it out openly; but here they are told it had not.\n\nAnnouncement of His Approaching Death and Rebuke of Peter (Mat 16:21-28).\n\nThe occasion here is evidently the same.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":21,"content":["From that time forth began Jesus to show unto his disciples--that is, with an explicitness and frequency He had never observed before. \n\nhow that he must go unto Jerusalem and suffer many things--\"and be rejected,\" (Mar 8:31; Luk 9:22). \n\nof the elders and chief priests and scribes--not as before, merely by not receiving Him, but by formal deeds. \n\nand be killed, and be raised again the third day--Mark (Mar 8:32) adds, that \"He spake that saying openly\"--\"explicitly,\" or \"without disguise.\"\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":22,"content":["Then Peter took him--aside, apart from the rest; presuming on the distinction just conferred on him; showing how unexpected and distasteful to them all was the announcement. \n\nand began to rebuke him--affectionately, yet with a certain generous indignation, to chide Him. \n\nsaying, Be it far from thee: this shall not be unto thee--that is, \"If I can help it\": the same spirit that prompted him in the garden to draw the sword in His behalf (Joh 18:10).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":23,"content":["But he turned, and said--in the hearing of the rest; for Mark (Mar 8:33) expressly says, \"When He had turned about and looked on His disciples, He rebuked Peter\"; perceiving that he had but boldly uttered what others felt, and that the check was needed by them also. \n\nGet thee behind me, Satan--the same words as He had addressed to the Tempter (Luk 4:8); for He felt in it a satanic lure, a whisper from hell, to move Him from His purpose to suffer. So He shook off the Serpent, then coiling around Him, and \"felt no harm\" (Act 28:5). How quickly has the \"rock\" turned to a devil! The fruit of divine teaching the Lord delighted to honor in Peter; but the mouthpiece of hell, which he had in a moment of forgetfulness become, the Lord shook off with horror. \n\nthou art an offence--a stumbling-block. \n\nunto me--\"Thou playest the Tempter, casting a stumbling-block in My way to the Cross. Could it succeed, where wert thou? and how should the Serpent's head be bruised?\" \n\nfor thou savourest not--thou thinkest not. \n\nthe things that be of God, but those that be of men--\"Thou art carried away by human views of the way of setting up Messiah's kingdom, quite contrary to those of God.\" This was kindly said, not to take off the sharp edge of the rebuke, but to explain and justify it, as it was evident Peter knew not what was in the bosom of his rash speech.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":24,"content":["Then said Jesus unto his disciples--Mark (Mar 8:34) says, \"When He had called the people unto Him, with His disciples also, He said unto them\"--turning the rebuke of one into a warning to all. \n\nIf any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":25,"content":["For whosoever will save--is minded to save, or bent on saving. \n\nhis life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it--(See on Mat 10:38-39). \"A suffering and dying Messiah liketh you ill; but what if His servants shall meet the same fate? They may not; but who follows Me must be prepared for the worst.\"\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":26,"content":["For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul--or forfeit his own soul? \n\nor what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?--Instead of these weighty words, which we find in Mar 8:36 also, it is thus expressed in Luk 9:25 : \"If he gain the whole world, and lose himself, or be cast away,\" or better, \"If he gain the whole world, and destroy or forfeit himself.\" How awful is the stake as here set forth! If a man makes the present world--in its various forms of riches, honors, pleasures, and such like--the object of supreme pursuit, be it that he gains the world; yet along with it he forfeits his own soul. Not that any ever did, or ever will gain the whole world--a very small portion of it, indeed, falls to the lot of the most successful of the world's votaries--but to make the extravagant concession, that by giving himself entirely up to it, a man gains the whole world; yet, setting over against this gain the forfeiture of his soul--necessarily following the surrender of his whole heart to the world--what is he profited? But, if not the whole world, yet possibly something else may be conceived as an equivalent for the soul. Well, what is it?--\"Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?\" Thus, in language the weightiest, because the simplest, does our Lord shut up His hearers, and all who shall read these words to the end of the world, to the priceless value to every man of his own soul. In Mark and Luke (Mar 8:38; Luk 9:26) the following words are added: \"Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of Me and of My words [shall be ashamed of belonging to Me, and ashamed of My Gospel] in this adulterous and sinful generation\" (see on Mat 12:39), \"of him shall the Son of man be ashamed when He cometh in the glory of His Father, with the holy angels.\" He will render back to that man his own treatment, disowning him before the most august of all assemblies, and putting him to \"shame and everlasting contempt\" (Dan 12:2). \"O shame,\" exclaims BENGEL, \"to be put to shame before God, Christ, and angels!\" The sense of shame is founded on our love of reputation, which causes instinctive aversion to what is fitted to lower it, and was given us as a preservative from all that is properly shameful. To be lost to shame is to be nearly past hope. (Zep 3:5; Jer 6:15; Jer 3:3). But when Christ and \"His words\" are unpopular, the same instinctive desire to stand well with others begets that temptation to be ashamed of Him which only the expulsive power of a higher affection can effectually counteract.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":27,"content":["For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels--in the splendor of His Father's authority and with all His angelic ministers, ready to execute His pleasure. \n\nand then he shall reward, &c.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":28,"content":["Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here--\"some of those standing here.\" \n\nwhich shall not taste of death, fill they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom--or, as in Mark (Mar 9:1), \"till they see the kingdom of God come with power\"; or, as in Luke (Luk 9:27), more simply still, \"till they see the kingdom of God.\" The reference, beyond doubt, is to the firm establishment and victorious progress, in the lifetime of some then present, of that new kingdom of Christ, which was destined to work the greatest of all changes on this earth, and be the grand pledge of His final coming in glory.\n\n\n\n\nNext: Matthew Chapter 17\n\n"]}],"introduction":"PETER'S NOBLE CONFESSION OF CHRIST AND THE BENEDICTION PRONOUNCED UPON HIM--CHRIST'S FIRST EXPLICIT ANNOUNCEMENT OF HIS APPROACHING SUFFERINGS, DEATH, AND RESURRECTION--HIS REBUKE OF PETER AND WARNING TO ALL THE TWELVE. ( = Mar 8:27; Mar 9:1; Luk 9:18-27). (Mat. 16:13-28)\n\nWhen Jesus came into the coasts--\"the parts,\" that is, the territory or region. In Mark (Mar 8:27) it is \"the towns\" or \"villages.\" \n\nof CÃ&brvbrsarea Philippi--It lay at the foot of Mount Lebanon, near the sources of the Jordan, in the territory of Dan, and at the northeast extremity of Palestine. It was originally called Panium (from a cavern in its neighborhood dedicated to the god Pan) and Paneas. Philip, the tetrarch, the only good son of Herod the Great, in whose dominions Paneas lay, having beautified and enlarged it, changed its name to CÃ&brvbrsarea, in honor of the Roman emperor, and added Philippi after his own name, to distinguish it from the other CÃ&brvbrsarea (Act 10:1) on the northeast coast of the Mediterranean Sea. [JOSEPHUS, Antiquities, 15.10,3; 18.2,1]. This quiet and distant retreat Jesus appears to have sought with the view of talking over with the Twelve the fruit of His past labors, and breaking to them for the first time the sad intelligence of His approaching death. \n\nhe asked his disciples--\"by the way,\" says Mark (Mar 8:27), and \"as He was alone praying,\" says Luke (Luk 9:18). \n\nsaying, Whom--or more grammatically, \"Who\" \n\ndo men say that I the Son of man am?--(or, \"that the Son of man is\"--the recent editors omitting here the me of Mark and Luke [Mar 8:27; Luk 9:18]; though the evidence seems pretty nearly balanced)--that is, \"What are the views generally entertained of Me, the Son of man, after going up and down among them so long?\" He had now closed the first great stage of His ministry, and was just entering on the last dark one. His spirit, burdened, sought relief in retirement, not only from the multitude, but even for a season from the Twelve. He retreated into \"the secret place of the Most High,\" pouring out His soul \"in supplications and prayers, with strong crying and tears\" (Heb 5:7). On rejoining His disciples, and as they were pursuing their quiet journey, He asked them this question.\n\n"},"thisChapterLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/MAT/16.json","thisChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"MAT","chapter":16},"nextChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/MAT/17.json","nextChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"MAT","chapter":17},"previousChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/MAT/15.json","previousChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"MAT","chapter":15},"numberOfVerses":15}