15:33-41 There was a thick darkness over the land, from noon until three in the afternoon. The Jews were doing their utmost to extinguish the Sun of Righteousness. The darkness signified the cloud which the human soul of Christ was under, when he was making it an offering for sin. He did not complain that his disciples forsook him, but that his Father forsook him. In this especially he was made sin for us. When Paul was to be offered as a sacrifice for the service saints, he could joy and rejoice, Php 2:17; but it is another thing to be offered as a sacrifice for the sin of sinners. At the same instant that Jesus died, the veil of the temple was rent from the top to the bottom. This spake terror to the unbelieving Jews, and was a sign of the destruction of their church and nation. It speaks comfort to all believing Christians, for it signified the laying open a new and living way into the holiest by the blood of Jesus. The confidence with which Christ had openly addressed God as his Father, and committed his soul into his hands, seems greatly to have affected the centurion. Right views of Christ crucified will reconcile the believer to the thought of death; he longs to behold, love, and praise, as he ought, that Saviour who was wounded and pierced to save him from the wrath to come.

Verse 36. - There is a slight difference here in the narratives. St. Matthew (Matthew 27:49) says, "And the rest said, Let be; let us see whether Elijah cometh to save him." Here in St. Mark the words are recorded as having been spoken by him alone who offered our Lord the vinegar. According to St. John (John 21:28), the offering of the vinegar followed immediately upon the words of our Lord, "I thirst." This drink was not the stupefying potion given to criminals before their crucifixion, to lull the sense of pain, but the sour wine, the ordinary drink of the soldiers, called posen. The reed was most probably the long stalk of the hyssop plant. Dr. J. Forbes Royle, in an elaborate article on the subject, quoted in Smith's 'Dictionary of the Bible' (vol. 1 p. 846), arrives at the conclusion that the hyssop is none other than the caper plant, the Arabic name of which, asuf, bears a strong resemblance to the Hebrew. The plant is the Capparis spinosa of Linnaeus. The apparent difference between the narratives of St. Matthew and St. Mark may be reconciled by weaving in the narrative of St. John with those of the synoptists - the "Let be" of the soldiers in the one case being intended to restrain the individual from offering the wine; and the "Let be" of the individual, corresponding to our "Wait a moment," while he answered our Savior's cry, "I thirst."

And one ran and filled a sponge full of vinegar,.... Christ at the same time saying, I thirst; see John 19:28;

and put it on a reed; an hyssop stalk, John 19:29;

and gave him to drink; and so fulfilled a prophecy in Psalm 69:21;

saying, or "they said", as the Syriac version reads it; not he that fetched the sponge, but the others that were with him, and which agrees with Matthew 27:27;

let alone; as forbidding him to go near him, and offer him any thing to drink:

let us see whether Elias will come and take him down; from the cross; See Gill on Matthew 27:49.

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