Verse 1. Matt. xxi, 23; Mark xi, 27.

9. A long time - It was a long time from the entrance of the Israelites into Canaan to the birth of Christ. Matt. xxi, 33; Mark xii, 1.

Verse 16. He will destroy these husbandmen - Probably he pointed to the scribes, chief priests, and elders: who allowed, he will miserably destroy those wicked men, Matt. xxi, 41; but could not bear that this should be applied to themselves. They might also mean, God forbid that we should be guilty of such a crime as your parable seems to charge us with, namely, rejecting and killing the heir. Our saviour answers, But yet will ye do it, as is prophesied of you.

Verse 17. He looked on them - To sharpen their attention. Psalm cxviii, 22.

Verse 18. Matt. xxi, 45.

20. Just men - Men of a tender conscience. To take hold of his discourse - If he answered as they hoped he would. Matt. xxii, 16; Mark xii, 12.

Verse 21. Thou speakest - In private, and teachest - In public.

Verse 24. Show me a penny - A Roman penny, which was the money that was usually paid on that occasion.

Verse 26. They could not take hold of his words before the people - As they did afterward before the sanhedrim, in the absence of the people, chap. xxii, 67.

Verse 27. Matt. xxii, 23; Mark xii, 18.

28. Deut. xxv, 5.

34. The children of this world - The inhabitants of earth, marry and are given in marriage - As being all subject to the law of mortality; so that the species is in need of being continually repaired.

Verse 35. But they who obtain that world - Which they enter into, before the resurrection of the dead.

Verse 36. They are the children of God - In a more eminent sense when they rise again.

Verse 37. That the dead are raised, even Moses, as well as the other prophets showed, when he calleth - That is, when he recites the words which God spoke of himself, I am the God of Abraham, &c. It cannot properly be said, that God is the God of any who are totally perished. Exod. iii, 6.

Verse 38. He is not a God of the dead, or, there is no God of the dead - That is, tho term God implies such a relation, as cannot possibly subsist between him and the dead; who in the Sadducees' sense are extinguished spirits; who could neither worship him, nor receive good from him. So that all live to him - All who have him for their God, live to and enjoy him. This sentence is not an argument for what went before; but the proposition which was to be proved. And the consequence is apparently just. For as all the faithful are the children of Abraham, and the Divine promise of being a God to him and his seed is entailed upon them, it implies their continued existence and happiness in a future state as much as Abraham's. And as the body is an essential part of man, it implies both his resurrection and theirs; and so overthrows the entire scheme of the Sadducean doctrine.

Verse 40. They durst not ask him any question - The Sadducees durst not. One of the scribes did, presently after.

Verse 41. Matt. xxii, 41; Mark xii, 35.

42. Psalm cx, 1.

46. Matt. xxiii, 5.