Matthew Chapter 26 verse 56 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 56. - All this was done (hath come to pass), etc. This is most probably part of Christ's speech, not a remark of the evangelist. He repeats to the multitude what he had said to Peter (ver. 54, where see note), and what he had already intimated at the last Supper (vers. 24, 31). To quote the words of Stier, "Again and again he de. clares that one thing which, nevertheless, Christian theology perpetually refuses to learn from the supreme Teacher and Doctor. He holds firmly to the Scripture, whether speaking to the exasperated Jews or the docile disciples; he puts those to shame in their folly by proofs from Scripture, and strengthens these in their despondency by its consolatory promises. He appeals to Scripture in his vehement disputation with men, as he does in his solemn way of suffering to die for them; he confronts Satan with 'It is written,' and prays to the Father - that the Scripture may be fulfilled." If Christ had been taken prematurely in the temple, and put to death by a tumultuary stoning, prophecy would not have been fulfilled, and his death would not have been the appointed sacrifice of the Lamb of God. Forsook him, and fled. As he had foretold (ver. 31). They saw their Master bound and helpless; they recognized that he would not deliver himself by heavenly aid, and, fearing to share his fate, they looked to their own safety and basely abandoned him in his hour of danger. Now occurred the incident mentioned only by St. Mark (Mark 14:51), which is explained rightly by Edersheim (2:485, 544). Only Peter and John followed the officers to the high priest's palace.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(56) But all this was done.--Better, but all this has come to pass. The words, though they agree in form with those of Mark 1:22, are, as we see from Mark 14:49, not a comment of the Evangelist's, but our Lord's own witness to the disciples and the multitude, that the treachery and violence of which He was the victim were all working out a divine purpose, and (as in Matthew 26:54) fulfilling the Scriptures in which that purpose had been shadowed forth.Then all the disciples forsook him, and fled.--We read with a sorrowful surprise of this cowardly abandonment. Better things, we think, might have been expected of those who had professed their readiness to go with Him to prison and to death. Yet we may remember (1) the weariness and exhaustion which had overcome them, making the resolve and courage, to say the least, more difficult; and (2) that they had been told not to resist, and that flight might seem to them the only alternative to resistance. We have to fill up St. Matthew's record with the strange episode of the "young man with a linen cloth cast about his naked body" of Mark 14:51, where see Note.