20:1 Mt 21:23; Mr 11:27.

20:9 A long time - It was a long time from the entrance of the Israelites into Canaan to the birth of Christ. Mt 21:33; Mr 12:1.

20:16 He will destroy these husbandmen - Probably he pointed to the scribes, chief priests, and elders: who allowed, he will miserably destroy those wicked men, Mt 21:41; 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.

20:17 He looked on them - To sharpen their attention. Psa 118:22.

20:18 Mt 21:45.

20:20 Just men - Men of a tender conscience. To take hold of his discourse - If he answered as they hoped he would. Mt 22:16; Mr 12:12.

20:21 Thou speakest - In private, and teachest - In public.

20:24 Show me a penny - A Roman penny, which was the money that was usually paid on that occasion.

20:26 They could not take hold of his words before the people - As they did afterward before the sanhedrim, in the absence of the people, Lu 22:67, and c.

20:27 Mt 22:23; Mr 12:18.

20:28 Deut 25:5.

20:34 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.

20:35 But they who obtain that world - Which they enter into, before the resurrection of the dead.

20:36 They are the children of God - In a more eminent sense when they rise again.

20:37 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 3:6.

20:38 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.

20:40 They durst not ask him any question - The Sadducees durst not. One of the scribes did, presently after.

20:41 Mt 22:41; Mr 12:35.

20:42 Psa 110:1.

20:46 Mt 23:5.

20:47 Mt 23:14.