Matthew Chapter 27 verse 50 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 50. - When he had cried again. He had cried aloud once before (ver. 46). But he does not repeat the former words; the horror of great darkness was past. Probably the cry here resolved itself into the words recorded by St. Luke, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." With a loud voice. This loud cry at the moment of death proved that he laid down his life voluntarily; no man could take it from him (John 10:17, 18); he himself willed to die; and this preternatural voice proceeded from one who died not altogether from physical exhaustion, but from determined purpose. Yielded up the ghost (a)fh = ke to\ pneu = ma); literally, dismissed his spirit; emisit spiritum). The phrase has been interpreted to signify that Christ exerted his power to anticipate the actual moment of dissolution; but there is no necessity of importing this idea into the expression. It is used ordinarily to denote the act of dying, as we say, "He expired." Perhaps the exertion of uttering this great cry ruptured some organ of the body. We know from the effect of the piercing of his side that his sacred heart was previously broken; and thus he verily and really died upon the cross. He, being in the form of God, and equal with God, became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, suffered death forevery man. It is to be noted that the death of Christ occurred at 3 p.m., the very time when the Paschal lambs began to be slain in the temple courts. Thus the long prepared type was at last fulfilled, when "Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us."

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(50) When he had cried again with a loud voice.--It is well that we should remember what the words were which immediately preceded the last death cry; the "It is finished" of John 19:30, the "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit" of Luke 23:46, expressing as they did, the fulness of peace and trust, the sense of a completed work.It was seldom that crucifixion, as a punishment, ended so rapidly as it did here, and those who have discussed, what is hardly perhaps a fit subject for discussion, the physical causes of our Lord's death, have ascribed it accordingly, especially in connection with the fact recorded in John 19:34, and with the "loud cry," indicating the pangs of an intolerable anguish, to a rupture of the vessels of the heart. Simple exhaustion as the consequence of the long vigil, the agony in the garden, the mocking and the scourging, would be, perhaps, almost as natural an explanation.Yielded up the ghost.--Better, yielded up His spirit. All four Evangelists agree in using this or some like expression, instead of the simpler form, "He died." It is as though they dwelt on the act as, in some sense, voluntary, and connected it with the words in which He had commended His spirit to the Father (Luke 23:46).