Matthew 10:23

23. Persecute you in this city Our Lord now momentarily reverts to the present trial and specimen mission upon which they are just proceeding. It is to towns and cities, rather than to rural districts, that they are going. Nay, they are commencing, as it were, the entire circuit (which they will never complete) of the cities of Palestine. They have no time to delay and fight the battle in cities that reject them. Driven from one city, let them hasten to another. They will not have visited even then all the cities of Israel before their special mission to Israel will be closed. Jesus will come at his resurrection, and give them a new commission for all the nations of the earth.

The command to flee was little accordant with a false human courage. But a heroism such as the world admires is not what Christ required. Christians who acted from the spirit of opposition, or the love of glory, were very apt to apostatize in the time of danger. The true martyr never sought death; never made a display of heroism; and never failed when, reposing faith in Christ, he meekly suffered for his name.

The Son of man We have before remarked that this epithet was usually applied to our Lord by himself alone. See note on Matthew 8:20. Its first application to the Messiah is in Daniel 7:13: “I saw in the night visions, and behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom,” etc.

Upon this passage we may remark:

1 . The Jews of all ages applied this pictorial description to their future Messiah. Our Saviour, therefore, in claiming this title, and habitually applying it to himself, claimed the title of Messiah.

2 . This picture and title intimate that the Messiah would possess a human nature, and spring from a human origin, and therefore refer primarily to the humility of the Messiah. With a pure humility, therefore, does our Lord make it his own habitual epithet for himself.

3 . Yet the title includes also his exaltation and glorification. He is seen “in the clouds of heaven.” He is led as a Son into the presence and before the throne of his Father Almighty. There is he invested with a divine royalty. Beneath him is placed a kingdom universal and eternal. This is the kingdom of heaven, yet it rules over the earth, comprehending authority over all nations.

4 . This scenic picture has a complete fulfilment in the resurrection and ascension of Christ; when coming in body from the tomb, and in soul from Hades, he announced that all power was given to him, and ascended to the presence in glorified state of the Father Almighty. There was he invested with a universal kingdom, and took his seat on the right hand of the majesty of God. There shall he reign until he has subdued all enemies under his feet. Compare note on Matthew 16:28, and Matthew 28:18.

Till the Son of man be come The apostles will not have gone over the cities of Israel till that coming, foreseen by Daniel, shall have withdrawn them from their special mission to Israel, and given them a mission to the world.

Of this expression, till the Son of man be come, very different interpretations have been given by commentators.

It has been referred to the judgment day, or second advent of Christ to judge the world. But this event did not take place in a shorter period than was requisite for the apostles to have gone over all the cities of Israel.

It is referred, however, by the great body of commentators, to the destruction of Jerusalem. Thus Stier gives a very plausible exposition, importing that the apostles will not be able to complete the circuit of Israel before that Christ, by his providence, will have overthrown the Jewish state, and have abolished the externalities of the Jewish dispensation. Nevertheless I am unable to adopt this view, as I shall show more fully in my notes on Matthew 24:25. I will here remark, that the destruction of Jerusalem is, I think, nowhere called the coming of Christ. There is nothing in that event to render it a terminus of the past, or a commencement of the future. Judaism ended at the crucifixion. At that moment her ritual, her sacrifices, her temple, her priesthood, her whole status, were null, and nothing in the world. The resurrection and ascension were the inauguration of the new dispensation. And what explains this clause specially is, that then the cities of Israel were no longer the circumscribed field of the apostolic mission, but a universal commission was given. Hence it is that our Lord charges his apostles that, with the speediest circuit, they would not have gone over the cities of Israel till the Son of man be come. Compare note on Matthew 16:28, and Matthew 28:18.