The Harmony Chronicle and Order of the New Testament, Part 1 · Section 53 – Section 54
SECTION LIII.
| MATTH. Chap. XVII. from the beginning to Ver. 24. | MARK Chap. IX. from Ver. 2. to Ver. 33. | LUKE IX. from V. 28. to Ver. 46. |
CHRIST transfigured. A devil cast out of a childe.
MATTHEW and Mark link this story to the preceding with this link, After six daies, &c. which Luke hath uttered, About an eight daies after, which is but the same in sense: Six daies compleat came between the day that Christ had spoken the words before and the day of his Transfiguration: So that the day of his Transfiguration was the eight day from the day when Christ said, There are some standing here that shall not taste of death till they have seen the Kingdom of God come with power.
This story o… Christs Transfigu…acion relateth to that prediction concerning the great Prophet, Deut. 18.18. I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren like unto thee, &c. And it shall come to passe that whosoever will not hearken to my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him. A Prophet, that is, a succession of Prophets till the great Prophet should come who should seal Vision and Prophesie.
Christ had been sealed for the great Priest at his Baptisme, when entring into his Ministry at the same age that the Priests entered into their Office, he is attested from heaven, This is my wellbeloved Son in whom I am well pleased. He is sealed for the great Prophet here, by the like attestation from heaven, with the same words, This is my wellbeloved Son in whom I am well pleased, but withall it is added Hear him, answerable to those words, Whosoever will not hearken, &c. Deut. 18.19.
Moses the first Prophet had all his Oracles out of a Cloud: and the Cloud of Glory that lead Israel in the Wildernesse, departed at his death: think of that when you see a cloud here overshadowing and a Divine Oracle given out of it, at the sealing of the Prophet greater then he.
Moses was the first Prophet of the Jews, and Elias the first Prophet of the Gentiles, and they both now appear to attend their Master. Christ and the three Disciples were in this mount of his Transfiguration all night: for Luke saith, It came to passe the next day when they were come down, &c. ver. 37. Compare Christ transfigured and his face shining with the shining of Moses his face, and so compare that first Prophet and this great Prophet again together.
The Disciples that had authority and power given them over all devils, Luke 9.1. are not able here to cast one out: and their Master sheweth a double reason why, namely, because of their unbelief, and because that kinde went not out but by Fasting and Prayer: Now, that their unbelief should be any more then it had been before [for they had cast out devils before this, Matth. 6.13.] it might seem strange, but that here were some concurrents towards that, more then they had met with before now: and that we may observe especially in these two things: 1. There were divers diseases, which in their own nature, were but naturall diseases, which yet the Jews did commonly repute as seizure and possessing by the devil, especially those that distempered the minde, or did in more speciall manner convulse the body: and according to this common language and conception of the Nation, the language of the Gospel doth speak exceeding frequently: Examples of this kinde of Dialect among the Jews we might produce divers: as that in Maym. in Gerushin. per. 2. A man which is troubled with an evil spirit, and saith when the sicknesse [foreign] begins upon him, Write a bill of Divorcement to my wife, he saith as good as nothing, because he is not compos sui: And so likewise, a drunken man, when he comes neer the drunkennesse of Lot, &c. He calls this evil spirit [foreign or] a sicknesse, and by it he means Lunacy or Distractednesse that had its lucida intervalla.
So the Jews speak of a man foreign that is possessed by Cordicus: which they interpret to be a spirit that seizeth on him that drinketh too much wine out of the winepresse. Talm in Gittin. per. 7. Vid. R. Sol. and Nissim ibi. And to spare more, because the story in hand is of a child, take but this example of an evil spirit which they conceived did seize upon children: foreign Shibta, say they, is an evil spirit that seizeth upon children by the neck, even upon the sinews behinde the neck, and drieth them up from their use and strength till it kill him. And the time of it is from the childes being two moneths old, and the danger of it is till the childe be seven years old. Aruch. in foreign Which seemeth to mean nothing else but Convulsion fits or shrinking of sinews, or some such like thing, a naturall malady.
Now in this childe there were not only these fits of Convulsions or the Falling sickness and the like, but he was really possessed with the devil indeed. So that though the Disciples had healed severall persons of maladies, which the Jews in their language and conceptions called possessings with evil spirits, and the Evangelists speak their language, yet this is a subject to work upon of a further difficulty by far, the devil being bodily in this childe indeed. 2. Granting [for we dare not deny] that they had cast out devils indeed before, yet this case carried some extraordinary matter in it above other times. They were then preaching up and down, and their Commission gave them power to cast out devils to confirm their Doctrine, but now they were not in that imployment. They were also now set upon by the Scribes and Pharisees, with a possessed person of an extraordinary example, as being possessed from an Infant, purposely that they might puzzle them, and that in the fairer opportunity, when their Master and three of the chief of their company, Peter and Iames and Iohn were absent. Therefore if by all these concurrents of disadvantage, their faith were somewhat shaken, it is to be the lesse wondered at, by how much the more the case was more strange and unusuall to them, and they had not been put to such a triall before.
SECTION LIV. MATTH. Chap. XVII. Ver. 24, 25, 26, 27. CHRIST payeth money miraculously gotten.
MARKS words in the beginning of the next Section, laid to the first verse of this, will be evidence sufficient for the order of both.
Christ is demanded the half shekel that every Israelite was bound by the Law annually to pay for the redemption of his life, Exod. 30.13. The word foreign speaks that. Now the proper time of collecting that began a little before the Passeover, as we have observed before out of the Treatise Shekalim. And though it were now almost half a year past the Passeover, yet is this the first time that Iesus had been at his own house in Capernaum, since the time of gathering that money had come in. This hal… shekel that every Israelite paid yearly, went to the repair of the Temple, and to the buying of things needfull for the service there; Christ paies his Church Duties, therefore here, though, as his own words argue, he being the Son of the great King for whom that Tribute was demanded, might have pleaded immunity: for Kings take Tribute of strangers, not of their own children. His paying it by a miraculous compassing of it out of a fishes mouth, sheweth at once his Divine power that could make all things serve his ends, and his great care to discharge his due paiments and to avoid offence; and withall, his poverty, when he is put to a Miracle for such a little summe of money, for he would not work Miracles where there was not need. His paying for Peter with him, was because he was of the same Town, and so was under the same demand of payment, and he knew that he was in the same want of money. The other Disciples were to pay in the places of their severall houses. When Ierusalem was destroyed by the Romanes, foreign. The Iewes were commanded to pay this half shekell yearly to Jupiter Capitolinus, Xiphilin. apud Dion. lib. 66. Ioseph. de Bell. lib. 7. cap. 27.