Matthew 26:75

Matthew 26:75 . And Peter — Immediately upon hearing the cock crow, remembered the words of Jesus — The crowing of the cock reminding him of them. Thus, at the same time that Jesus predicted his fall, by mentioning that it would happen before the cock crew, he provided the means of his recovery, and by this little circumstance the fallen apostle is awakened and brought to repentance. Such weak and contemptible means does God sometimes use to open the eyes of sinners, and bring them to a sense of their danger and their duty! This, however, was not the only means of Peter’s restoration. Luke informs us, that immediately upon Peter’s denying Christ the third time, and the crowing of the cock, the Lord turned and looked upon Peter, and that, upon his so doing, Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said unto him, Before the cock crow thou shalt deny me thrice. “The members of the council,” it appears, “who examined Jesus, sat at the upper end of the hall; in the other, were the servants with Peter at the fire. Wherefore, if Christ was placed on some footstool or bench, that his judges, who were many in number, might hear and see him, he could easily look over the heads of those who stood around him, and observe what was doing at the fire; particularly he could see Peter, who was then denying him with imprecations, and in the vehemency of his passion was speaking loud enough to be heard at the upper end of the room.

But he had no sooner denied his Master the third time, than the cock crew, and awakened in him the first conviction of his sin; or at least made him look to his Master, in order, perhaps, to see if he were taking notice of what had happened. But at the same instant Jesus, turning about, fixed his eyes on his cowardly disciple. The look pierced him, and with the crowing of the cock, brought his Master’s prediction afresh into his mind. He was stung with deep remorse, and being unable to contain himself, he covered his face with his garment (see note on Mark 14:72 ) to conceal the confusion he was in, and going out he wept most bitterly;” experiencing that godly sorrow which worketh repentance unto salvation not to be repented of. Before we dismiss this melancholy subject of Peter’s fall, it may not be unprofitable to notice, as a warning to ourselves, two particulars therein: First, the gradual progress of sin in him, and the various gradations by which it advanced to this depth of wickedness.

Matthew 26:75 . καὶ ἐμνήσθη : The cock crowing caused a sudden revulsion of feeling, and flashed in on Peter’s mind the light of a vivid recollection: the word his Master had spoken.— πρὶν , etc., repeated as in Matthew 26:34 .— ἐξελθὼν , going out, neither in fear of apprehension (Chrys., Euthy.) nor from shame (Orig., Jer.), but that he might give free rein to penitent feeling.— ἔκλαυσεν , wept loudly, as distinct from δακρύειν ( John 11:35 ), to shed tears.

(75) Peter remembered the word of Jesus. —St. Luke records ( Luke 22:61 ) that it was at this moment, probably as He was passing from the council chamber, mocked and buffeted by the officers, that “the Lord turned and looked upon Peter.” That glance, full, we must believe, of tenderest pity and deepest sadness, as of one who was moved not by anger but by sorrow, recalled him to his better self, and the flood-gates of penitence were opened. From that hour we lose sight of him till the morning of the Resurrection. We may infer from his then appearing in company with John ( John 20:3 ), that he turned in his contrition to the friend and companion of his early years, who had probably witnessed his denials, and was not repulsed. The fact that the record of his fall appears in every Gospel, may be noted as indicating that, in after years, he did not shrink from letting men know of his guilt, but sought rather that men might find in him (as St. Paul afterwards in his experience, 1Timothy 1:12-16 ) a proof of the mercy and tender pity of his Lord.

Matthew 26:75 . Καὶ , and) then at last. Unbelief, fear, sorrow, bind even the natural faculties, which the joy of faith revives. See Luke 24:7-8 .[1168]— εἰρηκότος , which said ) A participle of mighty force.— πικρῶς , bitterly ) Tears are bitter or sweet, according to the emotion from which they spring. Even if Peter’s weeping was not of long duration, his grief was so undoubtedly: see Mark 16:7 . [ All his former presumption ceased then and for ever .—B. G. V.] The tears of the godly, even of men , who do not easily weep from any other cause, furnish a great proof of the power, and consequently the truth, of Christianity. [1168] ἐμνησθη , remembered ) Forgetfulness is not unattended with loss and injury. But, nevertheless, if Peter had not ceased to remember the words of Jesus in the very act of his denying Him, his sin would have been even still more heinous.—V. g.

Matthew 26:75 . Ἐξελθ . ἕξω ] namely, from the porch ( Matthew 26:71 ) in which the second and third denial had taken place. Finding he could no longer repress the feeling of sorrowful penitence that filled his heart, the apostle must go outside to be all alone with his remorse and shame. The fear of being detected (Chrysostom) had by this time undoubtedly become to him a very secondary consideration; he was now himself again. εἰρηκότος αὐτῷ ] who had said to him ( Matthew 26:34 ), in itself a superfluous expression, and yet “grande participium,” Bengel. πικρῶς ] he wept bitterly . Comp. Isaiah 22:4 , and the passages in Wetstein. How totally different was it with Judas ! “Lacrymarum physica amaritudo (comp. Hom. Od. iv. 153) aut dulcedo (comp. γλυκύδακρυς , Meleag. 45), congruit cum affectu animi,” Bengel. REMARK. Seeing that the whole four evangelists concur in representing Peter as having denied Jesus three times , we are bound to regard the threefold repetition of the denial as one of the essential features of the incident (in opposition to Paulus, who, in the discrepancies that occur in the various accounts, finds traces of no less than eight different denials). The information regarding this circumstance can only have been derived from Peter himself; comp. also John 21:1 ff.

As for the rest, however, it must be acknowledged—(1) that John (and Luke too, see on Luke 22:54 ff.) represents the three denials as having taken place in a different locality altogether, namely, in the court of the house in which Annas lived, and not in that of Caiaphas ; while to try to account for this by supposing that those two persons occupied one and the same dwelling (Euthymius Zigabenus, Ebrard, Lange, Lichtenstein, Riggenbach, Pressensé, Steinmeyer, Keim), is a harmonistic expedient that is far from according with the clear view of the matter presented in the fourth Gospel; see on John 18:16 ; John 18:25 . (2) That the Synoptists agree neither with John nor with one another as to certain points of detail connected with the three different scenes in question, and more particularly with reference to the localities in which they are alleged to have taken place, and the persons by whom the apostle was interrogated as to his connection with Jesus; while to say, in attempting to dispose of this, that “Abnegatio ad plures plurium interrogationes facta uno paroxysmo , pro una numeratur” (Bengel), is to make a mere assertion, against which all the accounts of this incident without exception enter, so to speak, an emphatic protest. (3) It is better, on the whole, to allow the discrepancies to remain just as they stand, and to look upon them as sufficiently accounted for by the diverse forms which the primitive tradition assumed in regard to details.