Luke 23:44

Luke 23:44-45 . About the sixth hour — Answering to twelve o’clock with us; there was darkness, &c. — See on Matthew 27:45 . The noon-tide darkness, covering the sun, obscured all the upper hemisphere. And the lower was equally darkened, the moon being in opposition to the sun, and so receiving no light from it. Until the ninth hour — Or three o’clock in the afternoon. And the veil of the temple was rent, &c. — See on Matthew 27:51 .

Luke 23:44-46 . See on Matthew 27:45 ; Matthew 27:50 f.; Mark 15:33 ; Mark 15:37 f. According to Luke, the connection of events was as follows: It was already about the sixth hour, when there is darkness over the whole earth till the ninth hour (yet the sun is still visible),—then the sun also vanishes in darkness—the veil is rent Jesus utters His last cry, and dies. καί ] as Luke 19:43 ; Mark 15:25 . τὸ πνεῦμά μου ] my spirit , comprehending the whole spiritual nature, contrasted with the dying body; Acts 7:59 . Comp. in general, Hahn, Theol. d. N. T. I. p. 410. Luke 23:46 . εἰς χεῖράς σου κ . τ . λ .] from Psalm 31:6 , which words Jesus makes His own, committing His spirit wholly to the disposal of God; and this perfect surrender to God, whose control extends even to Hades ( Luke 16:22 ; Wis 3:1 ; Acts 2:27 ), is not out of keeping with Luke 23:43 . This prayer is to be placed after the τετέλεσται of John 19:30 , and corresponds to the παρέδωκεν τὸ πνεῦμα of John. Probably, however, the idea παρέδωκεν τὸ πνεῦμα was only by the more accurately explaining tradition moulded into the definite words , as Luke has them.

(44-46) And it was about the sixth hour. —See Notes on Matthew 27:45-50 ; Mark 15:33-37 . We can only conjecturally account for the omission of the “ELI, ELI, LAMA SABACHTHANI,” so prominent in the other two reports; but it is at least conceivable, assuming the same sources of information as before, that the women who stood by the cross may have shrunk from repeating words so terrible, and have loved to dwell rather on those which seemed to them to speak, not of abandonment, but of an absolute and unshaken trust. It is remarkable that this, like the cry of apparent despair, is a quotation from the Psalms ( Psalm 31:6 ).

Verse 44. - The time of the Crucifixion. And it was about the sixth hour . We have before given (see note on Luke 22:47) the approximate hours of the several acts of the last night and day. This verse gives us the time of the duration of the "darkness" - from the sixth to the ninth hour; that is in our reckoning, from 12 noon to 3 p.m. With this date the other two synoptists agree (comp. Matthew 27:45 ; Mark 15:33 ). Our Lord had then been on the cross three hours (see Mark 15:25 , where it is stated that he was crucified in the third hour, i.e. 9 a.m.). But while the three synoptists are in perfect harmony, we are met with a grave difficulty in St. John's account, for in John 19:14 : of his Gospel we read how the final condemnation of our Lord by Pilate took place about the sixth hour. At first sight, to attempt here to harmonize St. John with the three synoptists would seem a hopeless task, as St. John apparently gives the hour of the final condemnation by Pilate, which the three give as the hour when the darkness began, i.e. when the Sufferer had already hung on the cross for three hours. Various explanations have been suggested; among these the most satisfying and probable is the supposition that, while the three synop-tists followed the usual Jewish mode of reckoning time, St.

John, writing some half a century later in quite another country, possibly twenty years after Jerusalem and the temple had been destroyed, and the Jewish polity had disappeared , adopted another mode of reckoning the hours, thus following, probably, a practice of the province in which he was living, and for which he was especially writing. Dr. Westcott, in an additional note on John 19:14, examines the four occasions on which St. John mentions a definite hour of the day; and comes to the conclusion that the fourth evangelist generally reckoned his hours from midnight. The Romans reckoned their civil days from midnight, and there are also traces of reckoning the hours kern midnight in Asia Minor. "About the sixth hour" would then be about six a.m. Before touching upon the strange darkness which at the sixth hour seems to have hung over the land like a black pall, we note that somewhere in the first three hours, possibly after the words spoken to the dying penitent, must be placed the incident of the entrusting the virgin-mother to St. John ( John 19:25 , etc.). There is no doubt that on the surface of this, his third word from the cross, lay a loving desire to spare his mother the sight of his last awful suffering. Hence his command to John to watch over from henceforth the mother of his Lord. We may assume, then, that, in obedience to his Master's word, John led Mary away before the sixth hour.

44-49. Darkness. The Veil of the Temple rent. The End. Remorse of the Spectators. 44. it was about the sixth hour ] i.e. mid-day. This seems at first sight to contradict John 19:14 , but there is fair ground to conjecture that ‘sixth’ was an early misreading for ‘third’ (written Γ ). For other proposed solutions of the discrepancy see Life of Christ , ii. 385. The solution which asserts that St John used a different way of reckoning time is very precarious. St Luke omits the presence of the Virgin and the two other Marys and Salome at the Cross, and the words “Woman, behold thy son,” “Behold thy mother.” During the three hours’ darkness no incident is recorded, but we trace a deepening sense of remorse and horror in the crowd. The fact that the sun was thus “turned into darkness” was, at last, that ‘sign from heaven’ for which the Pharisees had mockingly asked. over all the earth ] Rather, over all the land. There is no reason to believe that the darkness was over all the world. The Fathers (Origen, 100: Cels. ii. 33, 59, and Jerome, Chron.) indeed appeal to two heathen historians—Phlegon and Thallus—for a confirmation of it, but the testimony is too vague to be relied on, either as to time or circumstance. They both speak of an eclipse.