18:13-27 Simon Peter denied his Master. The particulars have been noticed in the remarks on the other Gospels. The beginning of sin is as the letting forth of water. The sin of lying is a fruitful sin; one lie needs another to support it, and that another. If a call to expose ourselves to danger be clear, we may hope God will enable us to honour him; if it be not, we may fear that God will leave us to shame ourselves. They said nothing concerning the miracles of Jesus, by which he had done so much good, and which proved his doctrine. Thus the enemies of Christ, whilst they quarrel with his truth, wilfully shut their eyes against it. He appeals to those who heard him. The doctrine of Christ may safely appeal to all that know it, and those who judge in truth bear witness to it. Our resentment of injuries must never be passionate. He reasoned with the man that did him the injury, and so may we.

Verses 26, 27. - Between the second and third denials some time elapsed. Thus according to Matthew and Mark "after a little while," according to Luke "about the space of one hour after," an effort was made to identify Peter by. some sign of his association with Jesus. All the synoptists re. present it as turning on his provincial, Galilaean, speech, but John gives a closer point of identification. There were thousands of Galilaeans in Jerusalem, and this was a feeble ground of proof, though it may have corroborated the suspicion of the maidens and others, that Peter was an accomplice of the hated Nazarene; but the charge came home in terrible earnest and verisimilitude as recorded by John. His account is far more lifelike, forcible, and circumstantial. The fourth evangelist says, One of the servants (doulw = n) of the high priest, being a kinsman of him whose ear Peter cut off, says, Did I not see thee in the garden with him? The historically attested fact gave the lie to Peter's previous assertions. Clearly he was seen and recognized and in imminent peril, and he is now more vehement than ever. Matthew and Mark tell, "tie began to curse and swear, saying, I do not know the Man." John, with less feeling of reproach, says, Peter therefore denied again. The intercessory prayer, the solemn warning, the agony in the garden, above all, the following of the sublime encouragements by this fearful failure, the ignominious binding and rude indignity offered to the Man who had claimed to be the Vicegerent and Image and Glory of the Father, combined to shatter Peter's courage, though it did not annihilate his faith (see Steinmeyer and Weiss). The Lord had prayed that his faith should not fail. He was sifted as wheat, but the apostle knew, even in the depths of his shame, that he was a poltroon and coward, and that the Lord was everything he said he was. But meanwhile he denied again, he kept up with his violence of language, his hypocritical denial of his own faith - and straightway the cock crew. Mark, who had made the prediction of our Lord cover a twofold cockcrowing, records the twofold fulfillment; John, who in John 13:38 had given the prediction "before the cock crow," here shows how Peter must have been reminded of his Lord's preternatural knowledge and forecast. So that, though John does not mention the repentance, he refers to the well-known occasion of it, and, moreover, shows more forcibly than either of the synoptists the extraordinary tenderness of the risen and reconciled Lord to his erring and cowardly disciple. Some extreme harmonists have spread out the fault of Peter into nine distinct acts of treachery; others have reduced them to seven or eight. M'Clellan, in a powerful note (p. 447), urges that there were "twice three," or six distinct denials. Matthew and Mark report three denials while the trial before Caiaphas was going on; these are, according to M'Clellan, entirely distinct from John's "first denial," which preceded even the lighting of the fire. Nor does he allow that Luke's first denial, "sitting at the fire," can coincide with John's "second denial," which must also have preceded that which Luke gives as the first, and that John's "third denial" is distinct again from Matthew's third, Mark's third, and Luke's third. Thus he makes John's account entirely supplementary to the synoptists. Peter may have used a variety of expressions on each occasion, and each challenge may have been accompanied by some features not especially noted as to posture or place, but the arrangement adopted in the text represents a threefold assault upon the apostle, which had three crises of intensity and terrible result. Taking Matthew and Mark as virtually identical, Luke's account as a separate tradition with reference to the second denial, and agreeing with Matthew and Mark in the third, and in his first with John's second, we have three denials once more following the prediction. John's account, whether distinct or not from the other two records, bears the same relation to our Lord's previous announcement that the synoptists' do to theirs, and shows that in no quarter was there a general belief in more than three virtual acts of apostasy. Mark alone mentions a twofold warning from the cock, one after the first denial, and on Peter's going out to the προαύλιον, or the enclosure, i.e. between the πυλών and the θύρα, and again after the third denial. M'Clellan and others find a threefold denial before each crowing of the cock. Certainly John has omitted the entire scene detailed by the synoptists in the hail of Caiaphas, viz. the calling of the witnesses; the lack of harmony in the false witnesses; the adjuration of Caiaphas; the wondrous confession of the persecuted and bound Sufferer; the verdict pronounced against him, on the part of all assembled, that he was guilty of death; the first cruel mockery; and the very early assembly of the entire Sanhedrin - all the chief priests (πάντες οἱ αρχιερείς) and. elders of the people (Matthew 27:1, 2; Mark 15:1, the chief priests, with the elders and scribes and all the Sanhedrin). The synoptists assure us that the object of this council - which was probably held in the celebrated chamber of the temple appropriated for the purpose - was to adopt the most suitable measures for immediately carrying their unanimous judgment into effect. As we shall see shortly, John is perfectly aware of such a measure having been taken (see not only Ver. 31, but John 11:47, etc.). Nevertheless, he passes on at once to the legal and civil trial before the Roman proprietor. This is not the place to discuss the twofold trial of Jesus before the Sanhedrin. Derembourg, Farrar, and Westcott suppose that the first demands of the high priest, as to whether he was the Christ, as given by Matthew and Mark, were different from the scene described by Luke, where he claimed ἀπὸ τοῦ νῦν to be seated on the right hand of the power of God, and suppose that this last was the occasion, when the verdict was given by the Sanhedrin in full session, not in the palace of the high priest, but in the "Gazith," or possibly in the "Booths of Hanan," on the Mount of Olives. Luke clearly discriminates between οϊκος τοῦ ἀρχιερέως (Luke 22:54), and the συνέδριον αὐτῶν of Ver. 66.

One of the servants of the high priest,.... Hearing him so stiffly deny that he was a disciple of Jesus, when he had great reason to believe he was:

being his kinsman, whose ear Peter cut off; a near relation of Malchus, to whom Peter had done this injury; and who was present at the same time, and no doubt took particular notice of him; and the more, because of what he had done to his kinsman:

saith unto him, did not I see thee in the garden with him? as if he should have said, I saw thee with my own eyes along with Jesus, this very night in the garden, beyond Kidron, where he was apprehended, how canst thou deny it? and wilt thou stand in it so confidently, that thou art not one of his disciples?

26. One of the servants of the high priest, being his kinsman, whose ear Peter cut off, saith, Did not I see thee in the garden with him—No doubt his relationship to Malchus drew attention to the man who smote him, and this enabled him to identify Peter. "Sad reprisals!" [Bengel]. The other Evangelists make his detection to turn upon his dialect. "After a while ['about the space of one hour after' (Lu 22:59)] came unto him they that stood by and said to Peter, Surely thou also art one of them, for thy speech betrayeth thee" (Mt 26:73). "Thou art a Galilean, and thy speech agreeth thereto" (Mr 14:70; and so Lu 22:59). The Galilean dialect had a more Syrian cast than that of Judea. If Peter had held his peace, this peculiarity had not been observed; but hoping, probably, to put them off the scent by joining in the fireside talk, he only thus revealed himself.

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