Mark 2:20

But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

MacLaren's Expositions

Mark

THE PUBLICANS’ FRIEND

Mark 2:13 - Mark 2:22.

By calling a publican, Jesus shocked ‘public opinion and outraged propriety, as the Pharisees and scribes understood it. But He touched the hearts of the outcasts. A gush of sympathy melts souls frozen hard by icy winds of scorn. Levi {otherwise Matthew} had probably had wistful longings after Jesus which he had not dared to show, and therefore he eagerly and instantly responded to Christ’s call, leaving everything in his custom-house to look after itself. Mark emphasises the effect of this advance towards the disreputable classes by Jesus, in his repeated mention of the numbers of them who followed Him. The meal in Matthew’s house was probably not immediately after his call. The large gathering attracted the notice of Christ’s watchful opponents, who pounced upon His sitting at meat with such ‘shady’ people as betraying His low tastes and disregard of seemly conduct, and, with characteristic Eastern freedom, pushed in as uninvited spectators. They did not carry their objection to Himself, but covertly insinuated it into the disciples’ minds, perhaps in hope of sowing suspicions there. Their sarcasm evoked Christ’s own ‘programme’ of His mission, for which we have to thank them.

I. We have, first, Christ’s vindication of His consorting with the lowest.

He thinks of Himself as ‘a physician,’ just as He did in another connection in the synagogue of Nazareth. He is conscious of power to heal all soul-sickness, and therefore He goes where He is most needed. Where should a doctor be but where disease is rife? Is not his place in the hospital? Association with degraded and vicious characters is sin or duty, according to the purpose of it. To go down in the filth in order to wallow there is vile; to go down in order to lift others up is Christ’s mission and Christ-like.

But what does He mean by the distinction between sick and sound, righteous and sinners? Surely all need His healing, and there are not two classes of men. Have not all sinned? Yes, but Jesus speaks to the cavillers, for the moment, in their own dialect, saying, in effect, ‘I take you at your own valuation, and therein find My defence. You do not think that you need a physician, and you call yourselves ‘righteous and these outcasts ‘sinners.’ So you should not be surprised if I, being the healer, turn away to them, and prefer their company to yours.’ But there is more than taking them at their own estimate in the great words, for to conceit ourselves ‘whole’ bars us off from getting any good from Jesus. He cannot come to the self-righteous heart. We must feel our sickness before we can see Him in His true character, or be blessed by His presence with us. And the apparent distinction, which seems to limit His work, really vanishes in the fact that we all are sick and sinners, whatever we may think of ourselves, and that, therefore, the errand of the great Physician is to us all. The Pharisee who knows himself a sinner is as welcome as the outcast. The most outwardly respectable, clean-living, orthodoxly religious formalist needs Him as much, and may have Him as healingly, as the grossest criminal, foul with the stench of loathsome disease. That great saying has changed the attitude towards the degraded and unclean, and many a stream of pity and practical work for such has been drawn off from that Nile of yearning love, though all unconscious of its source.

II. We have Christ’s vindication of the disciples from ascetic critics.

The assailants in the second charge were reinforced by singular allies. Pharisees had nothing in common with John’s disciples, except some outward observances, but they could join forces against Jesus. Common hatred is a wonderful unifier. This time Jesus Himself is addressed, and it is the disciples with whom fault is found. To speak of His supposed faults to them, and of theirs to Him, was cunning and cowardly. His answer opens up many great truths, which we can barely mention.

First, note that He calls Himself the ‘bridegroom’-a designation which would surely touch some chords in John’s disciples, remembering how their Master had spoken of the ‘bridegroom’ and his ‘friend.’ The name tells us that Jesus claimed the psalms of the ‘bride-groom’ as prophecies of Himself, and claimed the Church that was to be as His bride. It speaks tenderly of His love and of our possible blessedness. Next, we note the sweet suggestion of the joyful life of the disciples in intercourse with Him. We perhaps do not sufficiently regard their experience in that light, but surely they were happy, being ever with Him, though they knew not yet all the wonder and blessedness which His presence involved and brought. They were a glad company, and Christians ought now to be joyous, because the bridegroom is still with them, and the more really so by reason of His ascending up where He was before. We have seen Him again, as He promised, and our hearts should rejoice with a joy which no man can take from us.

Next, we note Christ’s clear prevision of His death, the violence of which is hinted at in the words, ‘Shall be taken away from them.’ Further, we note the great principle that outward forms must follow inward realities, and are genuine only when they are the expression of states of mind and feeling. That is a far-reaching truth, ever being forgotten in the tyranny which the externals of religion exercise. Let the free spirit have its own way, and cut its own channels. Laughter may be as devout as fasting. Joy is to be expressed in religion as well as grief. No outward form is worth anything unless the inner man vitalises it, and such a mere form is not simply valueless, but may quickly become hypocrisy and conscious make-believe.

III. Jesus adds two similes, which are condensed parables, to deal with a wider question rising out of the preceding principles.

The difference between His disciples’ religious demeanour and that of their critics is not merely that the former are not now in a mood for fasting, but that a new spirit is beginning to work in them, and therefore it will go hard with a good many old forms besides fasting.

The essential point in both the similes of the raw cloth stitched on to the old, and of the new wine poured into stiff old skins, is the necessary incongruity between old forms and new tendencies. Undressed cloth is sure to shrink when wetted, and, being stronger than the old, to draw its frayed edges away. So, if new truth, or new conceptions of old truth, or new enthusiasms, are patched on to old modes, they will look out of place, and will sooner or later rend the old cloth. But the second simile advances on the first, in that it points not only to harm done to the old by the unnatural marriage, but also to mischief to the new. Put fermenting wine into a hard, unyielding, old wine-skin, and there can be but one result,-the strong effervescence will burst the skin, which may not matter much, and the precious wine will run out and be lost, sucked up by the thirsty soil, which matters more. The attempt to confine the new within the limits of the old, or to express it by the old forms, destroys them and wastes it. The attempt was made to keep Christianity within the limits of Judaism; it failed, but not before much harm had been done to Christianity. Over and over again the effort has been made in the Church, and it has always ended disastrously,-and it always will. It will be a happy day for both the old and the new when we all learn to put new wine into new skins, and remember that ‘God giveth it a body as it hath pleased Him, and to every seed his own body.’

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

2:18-22 Strict professors are apt to blame all that do not fully come up to their own views. Christ did not escape slanders; we should be willing to bear them, as well as careful not to deserve them; but should attend to every part of our duty in its proper order and season.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

See the notes at Matthew 9:15-17.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

Mr 2:18-22. Discourse on Fasting. ( = Mt 9:14-17; Lu 5:33-39).

See on [1409]Lu 5:33-39.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

See Poole on "Mark 2:18"

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

But the days will come,.... As they were in some sense now come to the disciples of John, their master being taken up by Herod, and confined in prison, and so it was a mourning time with them:

when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days: referring to the time of the sufferings and death of Christ, which would be, and was a sorrowful season to his disciples.

Geneva Study Bible

But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Expositor's Greek Testament

Mark 2:20. Here also the style becomes burdened by the sense of the solemn character of the fact stated: there will come days when the Bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall they fast—in that day! This final expression, ἐν ἐκείνῃ ἡμέρᾳ, singular, for plural in first clause, is very impressive, although Fritzsche calls it prorsus intolerabile. There is no ground for the suggestion that the phrase is due to the evangelist, and refers to the Friday of the Passion Week (Holtz., H. C.). It might quite well have been used by Jesus.

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

20. the days will come] The thought of death accompanies our Lord even to the social meal, and in the now undisguised hatred of His opponents He sees a token of what must hereafter come to pass. A dim hint of the same kind He had already given in His saying to the Jewish rulers, “Destroy this Temple and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19), and in His conversation with Nicodemus (John 3:14).

taken away] The same word is used by each of the Synoptists, and implies a violent termination of His life. The words occur nowhere else in the New Testament. This is the first open allusion recorded by St Mark, though probably little understood at the time, to the death, which was so soon to separate Him from His disciples.

Bengel's Gnomen

Mark 2:20.[20] Ἐλεύσονται, shall come) This is the first intimation of His Passion.—ἐν ἐκείνῃ τῇ ἡμέρᾳ) So also the Gothic version reads. Moreover, the plural, which is substituted by some, comes evidently from Luke.[21] There is but one day of the Bridegroom being taken away; many days, of His continuing absent after having been so taken away. But the days will come, when the Bridegroom shall be taken away; and then shall they fast in that day (In some one of those days, to wit, especially on the first of them). So in Luke 17:22 the plural number is used, the days shall come; and in Luke 2:31, on that day, in the singular number, with a force having relation to that plural.

[20] Mark 2:19. Τοῦ νομφῶνος, the Bridegroom) This means Jesus, in whose absence, they, to whom he is known, cannot feel the day joyful, and in whose presence they cannot feel the day sad.—V. g.

[21] Through Harmonists.—ED. The Gnomon and margin of Ed. 2 and Vers. Germ. prefer the Sing. The Ed. Maj. has at it the mark δ.—E. B. ABCD and Amiat. Vulg. support the Sing.: abc later Vulg. and Rec. Text, the Plural.—ED.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 20. - This is the first occasion on which our Lord alludes to his removal from them. The bridegroom shall be taken away from them. The Greek word (ἀπαρθῇ) conveys the idea of a painful severance. And then will they fast in that day (ἐν ἐκείνῇ τῇ ἡμέρα). This is the true reading. After our Lord's death, his disciples frequently fasted as of necessity, and went through much privation and trial. And so it must be for the most part with all who will live godly in Christ Jesus, until he returns to take to himself his kingdom, when there will be a glad and everlasting festival. Mark 2:20

Vincent's Word Studies

Then - in those days

The proper reading is ἐν ἐκείνῃ τῇ ἡμέρᾳ, in that day. So Rev. Another of Mark's double expressions: then - in that day.