Luke 24:41-42 - Exposition

And while they yet believed not for joy. The awful joy of the disciples now was something too. deep for words, even for calm belief. St. John records it, too, with simple pathos. "Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord." This was the fulfilment of his promise to them, when, full of sadness, they were listening to him that last solemn Passover evening in the upper room. "Ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you" ( John 16:22 ). In after-days, as John preached and taught in his old age, how the remembrance of that hour must have stirred in his heart when he thus wrote of it! Have ye here any meat? And they gave him a piece of a broiled fish, and of an honeycomb . The Master would not permit this state of wondering ecstasy to continue; so he changes the current of their thoughts by thus descending into the region of everyday life, at the same time powerfully demonstrating by this further proof that, though changed, his resurrection, body was no mere Docetic semblance, no phantom, but that he could eat if he chose. The next sentence (verse 43) tells simply how he took the food, and ate before them. The fish and honeycomb which they gave him no doubt formed the staple of their evening meal. Fish was part of the common food of the disciples—we see this from the miracles of the five thousand and the four thousand, and also from the narrative of John 21:9 . Honey, we know, in Canaan, the laud flowing with milk and honey, was common enough to enter into the diet of the poor (compare, among many passages, Exodus 3:8 , Exodus 3:17 ; Deuteronomy 26:9 , Deuteronomy 26:15 ; Jeremiah 11:5 ; Isaiah 7:15 , Isaiah 7:22 ; Matthew 3:4 ).