On the Way of the Cross.

  29 For behold, the days are coming, in which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the breasts that never gave suck. [The proper blessedness of a matron is motherhood, but the horrors of the siege would reverse even so fixed a law as this.]

  30 Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us. [This language is refuge. But there is a touch of literalness in the fulfillment, for Josephus tells us that at the end of the siege those in Jerusalem hid themselves in the subterranean recesses of the city, and that no less than two thousand of them were buried alive under the ruins of these hiding-places--Wars vi. 9. 4.]

  31 For if they do these things in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry? [The language here is obscurely proverbial. Here, as elsewhere ( Luke 19:43 ; Matthew 24:15 ), Jesus refers to the sorrows which the Romans were to bring upon the Jews, and the meaning may be, If the fiery persecution of Rome is so consuming that my innocence, though again and again pronounced by the governor himself, is no protection against it, what will that fire do when it envelopes the dry, guilty, rebellious city of Jerusalem? Or we may make the present and the future grief of the women the point of comparison, and interpret thus: If they cause such sorrow to the women while the city is like a green tree, how much more when, like a dry, dead tree, it is about to fall.]

  32 And there were also two others, malefactors, led with him to be put to death.

  ^b 22 And they bring him unto the place ^d which is called in Hebrew, Golgotha: ^b which is, being interpreted, {^a that is to say,} The place of a skull

[Where this place was, or why it was so called, are matters of conjecture. All that we know certainly is that it was outside of, yet near, the city-- Hebrews 13:12 ; John 19:20 ],

  ^b 22 And they bring him unto the place ^d which is called in Hebrew, Golgotha: ^b which is, being interpreted, {^a that is to say,} The place of a skull

  ^c 33 And when they came unto the place which is called The skull,

  ^a 34 they gave {^b offered} him wine ^a to drink mingled with gall: {^b myrrh:} but {^a and} when he had tasted it, he would not drink. ^b he received it not.

[This mixture of sour wine mingled with gall and myrrh was intended to dull the sense of pain of those being crucified or otherwise severely punished. The custom is said to have originated with the Jews and not with the Romans. Jesus declined it because it was the Father's will that he should suffer. He would not go upon the cross in a drugged, semi-conscious condition.]

  ^a 34 they gave {^b offered} him wine ^a to drink mingled with gall: {^b myrrh:} but {^a and} when he had tasted it, he would not drink. ^b he received it not.