Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Matthew · About this commentary
One of You Will Betray Me
Matthew 26:17-25
17 Now on the first day of unleavened bread, the disciples came to Jesus, saying to him, “Where do you want us to prepare for you to eat the Passover?” · WEB
At the table he says one of them will hand him over, and eleven ask whether it is them.
"Where do you want us to prepare for you to eat the Passover?" Matthew 26:17.
The arrangements are already made — a room, a contact, a password of sorts Matthew 26:18. A man being hunted has secured a place to eat where nobody could follow him to it in advance.
The meal is the Passover, which is the frame for everything that happens in it. A lamb killed, a household eating in haste, blood on the doorposts so that death passes over Exodus 12:1–13 — the memorial of a deliverance, being kept on the night before the deliverance it was a memorial of.
As they were eating, he said, "Most certainly I tell you that one of you will betray me" Matthew 26:21. The exchange is in the earlier account Mark 14:1–21.
They were exceedingly sorrowful, and each began to ask him, "It isn't me, is it, Lord?" Matthew 26:22. The question is the most honest thing the twelve ever say. Not who is it — each of them asks about himself, and the form of the question in the Greek expects the answer no while still needing to hear it. Eleven men who would not betray him are unwilling to be certain of it.
"He who dipped his hand with me in the dish will betray me" Matthew 26:23. Everyone at the table had dipped in the dish. It identifies nobody and says something worse: the betrayer is a man sharing a meal, and Scripture had said that too Psalms 41:9.
"The Son of Man goes even as it is written of him, but woe to that man through whom the Son of Man is betrayed!" Matthew 26:24. Both halves are held. It was written, and the man who does it is not thereby excused — which is the standing shape of things in Scripture and is stated here more plainly than anywhere else.
Judas, who betrayed him, answered, "It isn't me, is it, Rabbi?" Matthew 26:25. He asks the same question the others asked, and with one difference. Every other man at the table says Lord. He says Rabbi — the title reserved for teachers, and the word he will use in the garden.
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