40-32. The Healing of Malchus' Ear

32. The Healing of Malchus’ Ear Luk 22:49; Luk 22:51 The blow struck by a disciple, who would fain have fought for his Master, that He should not be delivered to the Jews, is recorded by all four Evangelists (Mat 26:51; Mark 14:47; Luk 22:50; John 18:10); but the miracle belongs only to St. Luke, for he only tells how the Lord made good the injury which his disciple had inflicted, touched and restored the ear which he had cut off. It is possible that a double interest may have specially moved this Evangelist to include in his narrative this work of grace and power. As a physician, this cure, the only one of its kind which we know of our Lord’s performing, the only miraculous healing of a wound inflicted by external violence, would attract his special attention. And then, further, nothing lay nearer to his heart, or cohered more intimately with the purpose of his Gospel, than the portraying of the Lord on the side of his gentleness, his mercy, his benignity; and of all these there was an eminent manifestation in this gracious work wrought on behalf of one who was in arms against his life. The sacred historian, no doubt, knew very well, though he did not think good to set it down in his narrative, whose hand it was that struck this blow;—whether that the deed might still have brought him into trouble, though this appears an exceedingly improbable explanation, or from some other cause. The earlier Evangelists preserve a like silence on this head, and are content with generally designating him,—St. Matthew as “one of them who were with Jesus,” St. Mark as “one of them which stood by.” And it is only from St. John that we learn, what perhaps otherwise we might have guessed, but could not certainly have known, that it was Peter who struck this only blow stricken in defence of the Lord. He also alone gives us the name of the High Priest’s servant who was wounded; “the servant’s name was Malchus.” It is in entire consistency with all else which we read, that this fact, though unknown to the other Evangelists, should have come within the circle of St. John’s knowledge, who had, in some way that is not explained to us, acquaintance with the High Priest (John 18:15), and so accurate a knowledge of the constitution of his household as that he was aware that one of those, who later in the night provoked Peter to his denial of Christ, was kinsman of him whose ear Peter had cut off (ver. 26). The whole incident is singularly characteristic; the word-bearer for the rest of the Apostles proves, when occasion requires, the sword-bearer also—not indeed in this altogether of a different temper from the others, but showing himself prompter and more daring in action than them all. While they are inquiring, “Lord, shall we smite with the sword?” perplexed between the natural instinct of defence and love to their perilled Lord, on the one side, and his precepts that they should not resist the evil, on the other,—he waits not for the answer; but impelled by the natural courage of his heart,^[1] and taking no heed of the odds against him, aims a blow at one, probably the foremost of the band, the first that was daring to lay profane hands on the sacred person of his Lord. This was “a servant of the High Priest” one therefore who, according to the proverb, “like master like man,” may very probably have been especially forward in this bad work,—himself a Caiaphas of a meaner stamp. Peter was not likely to strike with other than a right goodwill; and no doubt the blow was intended to cleave down the aggressor; though by God’s good providence the stroke was turned aside, and grazing the head at which it was aimed, but still coming down with sheer descent, cut off the ear,—the “right ear” as St. Luke and St. John tell us,—of the assailant, who thus hardly escaped with his life. The words with which our Lord rebuked the untimely zeal^[2] of his disciple are differently given by different Evangelists, or rather they have each given a different portion, each one enough to indicate the spirit in which all was spoken. St. Matthew records them most at length (xxvi. 52-54); while St. Luke passes them over altogether. That moment of uttermost confusion might seem unsuitable for so long a discourse, indeed hardly to have given room for it. We shall best suppose that while the healing of Malchus was proceeding, and all were watching and wondering, the Lord spoke these quieting words to his disciples. Possibly too his captors, who had feared resistance or attempts at rescue on the part of his followers, now that they found his words to be words prohibiting aught of the kind, may have been most willing to suffer Him to speak unhindered. To Peter, and in him to all the other disciples, He says: “Put up again thy sword into his place; for all they that take the sword shall perish by the sword.” Christ, joining together the taking of the sword and the perishing by the sword, refers, no doubt, to the primal law, “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed” (Gen 9:6; cf. Rev 13:10). The words have been sometimes wrongly understood, as though the Lord were pacifying Peter with considerations such as these, “There is no need for thee to assume the task of punishing these violent men: they have taken the sword, and by the just judgment of God they will perish by the sword.”^[3] But the warning against taking the sword connects itself so closely with the command, “Put up again thy sword into his place,” and the meaning of the verse following (Mat 26:53) is so plainly, “Thinkest thou that I need a feeble help like thine, when, instead of you, twelve weak trembling men, inexpert in war, I might even now at this latest moment pray to my Father, and He will presently give Me^[4] more than twelve legions^[5] of Angels to fight on my behalf?”^[6]—that all the ingenuity which Grotius and others use, and it is much, to recommend the other interpretation, cannot persuade to its acceptance. This mention of the “twelve legions of Angels,” whom it was free to Him to summon to his aid, brings the passage into striking relation with 2Ki 6:17. A greater than Elisha is here, and thus speaking would open the spiritual eye of his troubled disciple, and show him the mount of God, full of chariots and. horses of fire, armies of heaven which are camping round his Lord, and whom a beck from Him would bring forth, to the utter discomfiture of his enemies. “But how then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?” The temptation to claim the assistance, of that heavenly host,—supposing Him to have felt the temptation,—is quelled in an instant; for how then should that eternal purpose, that will of God, of which Scripture was the outward expression, “that thus it must be,” have then been fulfilled? (cf. Zec 13:7). In St. John the same entire subordination of his own will to his Father’s, which must hinder Him from claiming this unsesonable help, finds its utterance under another image; “The cup which my Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?” This language is frequent in Scripture, resting on the image of some potion which, however bitter, must yet be drained. Besides Mat 20:22-23; Mat 26:39, where the cup is one of holy suffering, there is often, especially in the O. T., mention of the cup of God’s anger (Isa 51:17; Isa 51:22; Psa 11:6; Psa 75:8; Jer 25:15; Jer 25:17; Jer 49:12; Lam 4:21; Rev 14:10; Rev 16:19); in every case the cup being one from which flesh and blood shrinks back, which a man would fain put away from his lips, though a moral necessity in the case of the godly, and a physical in that of the ungodly, will not suffer it to be thus put aside. The words that follow, “Suffer ye thus far,” are to be accepted as addressed still to the disciples: “Hold now;^[7] thus far ye have gone in resistance, but let it be no further; no more of this.” The other explanation, which makes them to have been spoken by the Lord to those into whose hands He had come, that they should bear with Him till He had accomplished the cure, has nothing to recommend it. Having thus checked the too forward zeal of his disciples, and now carrying out into act his own precept, “Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you,” He touched the ear of the wounded man, “and healed him.” Peter and the rest meanwhile, after this brief flash of a carnal courage, forsook their divine Master, and, leaving Him in the hands of his enemies, fled,—the wonder of the crowd at that gracious work of the Lord, or the tumult, with the darkness of the night, or these both together, favouring their escape;

Footnotes [1] Josephus characterizes the Galilaeans as μαχίμους.

[2] Modern expositors are sometimes much too hard upon this deed of Peter’s; Calvin, for instance: Stulto suo zelo Petrus gravem infamiam magistro suo ejusque doctrinae inusserat, —with much more in this tone. The wisest word upon the matter (and on its O. T. parallel, Exo 2:1-2) is to be found in Augustine, Con. Faust, xxii. 70. He keeps as far from this unmeasured rebuke as from the extravagance of Romish expositors, who exalt and magnify this act as one of a holy and righteous indignation; liken it to the act of Phinehas (Num 25:7) by which he won the high priesthood for his family for ever. Leo the Great (Serm. l. 4) had here already led the way: Nam et beatus Petrus, qui animosiore constantiâ Domino cohaerebat, et contra violentorum impetus fervore sanctae caritatis exarserat, in servum principis sacerdotum usus est gladio, et aurem viri ferocius instantis abscidit. Another finds in the words of the Lord, “Put up thy sword into his place,” a sanction for the wielding of the civil sword by the Church; for, as he bids us note, Christ does not say, “Put away thy sword;” but “Put up thy sword into his place,”—that is, “Keep it in readiness to draw forth again, when the right occasion shall arrive.” Tertullian, in an opposite extreme, concludes from these words that the military service is always unlawful for the Christian (Be Idolol. 19); Omnem militem Dominus in Petro exarmando discinxit.

[3] Thus Grotius: Noli, Petre, considerations ejus quæ mihi infertur injuriæ concitatior, Deo præripere ultionem. Levia enim sunt vulnera quæ a te pati possunt. Stat enim rata sententia, crudeles istos et sanguinarios, etiam te quiescente, gravissimas Deo daturas pœnas suo sanguine. This interpretation is a good deal older than Grotius. It is, I think, Chrysostom’s; and Euthymius sees, in these words a προϕητεία τῆς διαϕθορᾶς τῶν ἐπελθόντων αὐτῷ Ἰουδαίων.

[4] Καὶ παραστήσει μοι = et servitio meo sistet (Rom 6:19; Rom 12:1).

[5] The phrase is remarkable, when connected with the expression πλῆθος στρατιᾶς οὐρανίου (Luk 2:13), and some other similar language. Without falling in with the dreams of the Areopagite, we may see here intimations of a hierarchy in heaven. Bengel: Angeli in suos numeros et ordines divisi sunt.

[6] Jerome: Non indigeo duodecim Apostolorum auxilio, qui possum habere duodecim legiones angelici exercitûs. Maldonatus: Mihi quidem verosimile videtur Christum angelos non militibus, sed discipulis opponere, qui duodecim erant, ac propterea duodecim non plures nec pauciores legiones nominâsse, ut indicaret posse se pro duodecim hominibus duodecim legiones habere. The fact that the number of Apostles who were even tempted to draw sword in Christ’s behalf was, by the apostasy of Judas, reduced now to eleven, need not remove us from this interpretation. The Lord contemplates them in their ideal completeness; for it was no accident, but rested on a deep fitness, that they were twelve, and neither fewer nor more. He does the same, saying in another place, "Ye shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel" Mat 19:28; cf. Luk 22:30)—when, in like manner, it was not Judas, but his. successor, that should occupy a throne [7] A comma should find place after ἐᾶτε.