The Fallible Study Bible

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Matthew17:22–23

The Second Prediction of the Passion

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Matthew 17:22–23 — The Second Prediction of the Passion. Each verse below carries the full apparatus: the Berean Standard Bible, the vocalized original (tap any word), and a parsed breakdown of every term transcribed from the interlinear. Synthesized commentary, canonical threads, and the reading of Christ gather at the end, over the whole unit.

22

When they gathered together in Galilee, Jesus told them, “The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men.

Berean Standard Bible · CC0

Greek — tap a word ↓

de autōn Systrephomenōn en tē Galilaia ho Iēsous eipen autois ho Huios tou anthrōpou Mellei paradidosthai eis cheiras anthrōpōn

Word by word19 · parsed
δὲdeWhenG1161
√ δέ — but, and, etcConjunction
αὐτῶνautōntheyG846
√ αὐτός — the reflexive pronoun self, used (alone or in the comparative G1438 (ἑαυτοῦ)) of the third person , and (with the proper personal pronoun) of the other personsPersonal / Possessive PronounGenitive Masculine 3rd Person Plural
ΣυστρεφομένωνSystrephomenōngathered togetherG4962
√ συστρέφω — to twist together, iVerbPresent Participle Middle or PassiveGenitive Masculine Plural
συστρέφω: to twist together, gather into a bundle Present participle, middle or passive, in a genitive absolute. This is one of the rarest verbs in the New Testament: the Verifier finds it in only two verses, here and Acts 28:3, where Paul twists together a bundle of sticks and a viper fastens on his hand. The lexical picture is of strands drawn into one cord. Ellicott, reading with Mark 9:30 (“He would not that any man should know”), takes the whole journey as deliberately private, the Twelve gathered in close precisely because what comes next is not preaching but disclosure.
ἐνeninG1722
√ ἐν — "in," at, (up-)on, by, etcPreposition
τῇtēG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleDative Feminine Singular
ΓαλιλαίᾳGalilaiaGalileeG1056
√ Γαλιλαία — Galilæa (iNounDative Feminine Singular
Galilee, dative of place. The region of the public ministry is now the region of private instruction: JFB observes that this was “not a preaching, but a private, journey through Galilee,” and that His Galilean ministry was all but concluded.
ὁhoG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleNominative Masculine Singular
ἸησοῦςIēsousJesusG2424
√ Ἰησοῦς — Jesus (iNounNominative Masculine Singular
εἶπενeipentoldG2036
√ ἔπω — to speak or say (by word or writing)VerbAorist Indicative Active3rd Person Singular
Aorist indicative: one word spoken at a point, not a habit of telling. Ellicott notes that the substance was the same as the first announcement (Matthew 16:21) and that the repetition itself was the new force.
αὐτοῖςautoisthemG846
√ αὐτός — the reflexive pronoun self, used (alone or in the comparative G1438 (ἑαυτοῦ)) of the third person , and (with the proper personal pronoun) of the other personsPersonal / Possessive PronounDative Masculine 3rd Person Plural
ὁhoTheG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleNominative Masculine Singular
ΥἱὸςHuiosSonG5207
√ υἱός — a "son" (sometimes of animals), used very widely of immediate, remote or figuratively, kinshipNounNominative Masculine Singular
υἱός: son, in the widest range of kinship Nominative, articular, and therefore the subject: the title is doing the grammar's heaviest work. In Matthew the phrase is Jesus' own self-designation, and it is the title He chooses exactly where He speaks of being handed over and killed. Its canonical home is Daniel 7:13, where one like a son of man comes with the clouds and receives dominion. The paradox of this verse is that the figure given everlasting rule is the figure given into other men's grip.
τοῦtouG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleGenitive Masculine Singular
ἀνθρώπουanthrōpouof ManG444
√ ἄνθρωπος — from G3700 (ὀπτάνομαι))NounGenitive Masculine Singular
ἄνθρωπος: man, human being Genitive singular with the article, “of the Man.” Matthew will repeat the same lexeme in the plural at index 18, so that one word stands at both ends of the sentence: the Man, and men. Strong's derivation here is thin (traced to ὀπτάνομαι, to appear), and nothing in the theology should be built on that etymology; the weight is in the Danielic usage and in the repetition.
ΜέλλειMelleiis aboutG3195
√ μέλλω — to intend, iVerbPresent Indicative Active3rd Person Singular
μέλλω: to intend, to be about to Present indicative active with the infinitive following. It states imminence, and the lexicon's primary gloss adds intention. Pulpit therefore renders it “Is ordained, in the counsels of God, to be betrayed,” and the Vulgate's tradendus est carries the same note of necessity. The passion is not a danger He notices approaching; it is an appointment He names.
παραδίδοσθαιparadidosthaito be deliveredG3860
√ παραδίδωμι — to surrender, iVerbPresent Infinitive Middle or Passive
παραδίδωμι: to surrender, hand over Present infinitive, middle or passive. Four handings-over converge on this one form, and the commentators divide them: Barnes reads the treachery of Judas (Matthew 26:14-16, 26:47-50); Gill reads the Jewish leaders delivering Him to Gentiles, and cites their own canon that whoever betrays an Israelite into Gentile hands “has no part in the world to come”; Pulpit points to Acts 2, where Peter charges the men of Jerusalem with lawless hands; and the ordaining counsel of God stands behind all three. The middle reading, that He hands Himself over, is grammatically open and theologically at home in Matthew.
εἰςeisintoG1519
√ εἰς — to or into (indicating the point reached or entered), of place, time, or (figuratively) purpose (result, etcPreposition
χεῖραςcheiras[the] handsG5495
√ χείρ — the hand (literally or figuratively (power)NounAccusative Feminine Plural
χείρ: the hand, literally or figuratively power Accusative plural after εἰς, the point reached. Strong's records the figurative sense: to fall into hands is to pass into another's power. The Son of Man, who has just been the one laying hands on the sick and the dead, becomes the one upon whom hands are laid.
ἀνθρώπωνanthrōpōnof menG444
√ ἄνθρωπος — from G3700 (ὀπτάνομαι))NounGenitive Masculine Plural
ἄνθρωπος: man, human being Genitive plural, no article: hands of men, any men. JFB marks the antithesis as remarkable and notes it survives in all three synoptic accounts, which is a real indication that the wording is not Matthew's stylistic flourish but the remembered shape of the saying.
23

They will kill Him, and on the third day He will be raised to life.” And the disciples were deeply grieved.

Berean Standard Bible · CC0

Greek — tap a word ↓

kai apoktenousin auton kai tē tritē hēmera egerthēsetai kai sphodra elypēthēsan

Word by word11 · parsed
καὶkaiG2532
√ καί — and, also, even, so then, too, etcConjunction
ἀποκτενοῦσινapoktenousinThey will killG615
√ ἀποκτείνω — to kill outrightVerbFuture Indicative Active3rd Person Plural
ἀποκτείνω: to kill outright Future indicative active, third plural, subject unexpressed. The only active verb in the prediction belongs to men; everything predicated of the Son of Man in these two verses is infinitive or passive. Barnes notes that the disciples could not fit this clause to their expectation of a prince who would “restore the kingdom to Israel” (Acts 1:6), and that they did not understand it fully until after the resurrection.
αὐτόνautonHimG846
√ αὐτός — the reflexive pronoun self, used (alone or in the comparative G1438 (ἑαυτοῦ)) of the third person , and (with the proper personal pronoun) of the other personsPersonal / Possessive PronounAccusative Masculine 3rd Person Singular
καὶkaiandG2532
√ καί — and, also, even, so then, too, etcConjunction
τῇtēon theG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleDative Feminine Singular
τρίτῃtritēthirdG5154
√ τρίτος — thirdAdjectiveDative Feminine Singular
τρίτος: third Adjective, dative feminine singular, agreeing with ἡμέρᾳ. Gill's observation is exact and worth keeping: when Christ speaks of rising He names the precise interval, the third day, and Gill grounds that precision in the types and prophecies of the Old Testament. Gill does not specify which, and neither should we without evidence; Matthew's own nearest specification is the sign of Jonah (Matthew 12:40), to which Barnes points here.
ἡμέρᾳhēmeradayG2250
√ ἡμέρα — day, iNounDative Feminine Singular
Dative of time: on the third day, not after three days. Matthew's wording is the precise one; Mark 9:31, as Poole quotes it, reads “after that he is killed, he shall rise the third day.”
ἐγερθήσεταιegerthēsetaiHe will be raised [to life]G1453
√ ἐγείρω — to waken (transitively or intransitively), iVerbFuture Indicative Passive3rd Person Singular
ἐγείρω: to waken, to rouse Future indicative passive. Two things sit in this one form. First, the lexical picture is sleep broken, which is why the Pulpit Commentary renders it “be wakened”; the same root serves Matthew for rousing from sleep and for raising from the dead, and the New Testament will keep calling death sleep because of it. Second, it is a passive with an unnamed agent, the construction the apostolic preaching fills in with God as the raiser. The grammar thus divides the sentence between what men do to Him and what is done for Him.
καὶkaiAndG2532
√ καί — and, also, even, so then, too, etcConjunction
σφόδραsphodravvvG4970
√ σφόδρα — of uncertain derivation) as adverbAdverb
σφόδρα: exceedingly An uncommon adverb (eleven verses by the Verifier's count), and Matthew's usual intensifier for reactions too large for the disciples to manage: the exceeding joy of the magi (Matthew 2:10), the exceeding fear on the mountain (Matthew 17:6), the exceeding astonishment at the camel and the needle (Matthew 19:25). Standing before its verb here, in the emphatic slot, it measures this grief against those.
ἐλυπήθησανelypēthēsan[the disciples] were deeply grievedG3076
√ λυπέω — to distressVerbAorist Indicative Passive3rd Person Plural
λυπέω: to distress, to grieve Aorist indicative passive, subject unexpressed. The passive matters: grief fell on them. JFB judges the sorrow greater than at the first announcement, since repetition drove the news deeper. Poole and Gill both face the honest difficulty that Mark and Luke say the disciples did not understand the saying, and both conclude the sorrow was partly grief at not understanding: Poole thinks they could not reconcile it with the Messiah they had been taught, and Gill notes they overlooked the resurrection clause entirely, the one clause that could have comforted them. Ellicott puts it most finely: their sorrow was vague, and they shrank from making it definite.

The verse-by-verse work is done. What follows gathers the whole unit. All three layers below are machine-generated (⚙). Weigh them; they have no authority.

⚙

Grand Commentary — the unit, read whole

synthesis · verify

AI synthesis — woven from the public-domain voices above and the original text; generated and fallible.

i. The circle drawn tight — 17:22a

The unit opens on a grammatical detail that is also a piece of geography. Συστρεφομένων is a genitive absolute from συστρέφω, a verb the Verifier finds in only two verses of the whole New Testament: to twist strands into one cord. Ellicott reads the clause against Mark 9:30 and concludes that the journey was not ministry at all but withdrawal, and he adds a motive: at that crisis the disciples' minds were in a state of feverish excitement that needed calming. JFB is blunter about the stage of the ministry, calling this not a preaching but a private journey through Galilee, with the public work there all but concluded. Pulpit locates them geographically, returned secretly from the far north and approaching Capernaum. ⚙ Three independent commentators, then, agree on the setting: the crowds are gone, the Twelve are bundled in close, and what follows is said to them alone. The one caution is textual. Ellicott and Pulpit are working from ἀναστρεφομένων, went to and fro, the reading behind “while they abode in Galilee,” where our interlinear has συστρέφω. Their observations about privacy rest on Mark, not on the participle, and survive the variant; our image of the tightened bundle rests on the participle and does not.

ii. The Man, and the hands of men — 17:22b

The saying is built on one repeated lexeme. ἀνθρώπου in the title, ἀνθρώπων at the end: the Man, handed into hands of men. JFB calls the antithesis remarkable and, importantly, notes that it stands in all three synoptic narratives, which is evidence that the wording is remembered rather than composed. Between the two words sits Μέλλει παραδίδοσθαι. Pulpit will not let μέλλω be a mere future and renders it “Is ordained, in the counsels of God, to be betrayed,” with the Vulgate's tradendus est behind him. The verb of handing over then draws the commentators into naming agents, and they name different ones: Barnes defines betrayal as making use of reposed confidence to deliver a man to his enemies, and points at Judas; Gill puts the Jewish leaders in the dock by their own law, quoting the canon that forbids betraying an Israelite into Gentile hands and adds that whoever does so has no part in the world to come, a rule they forgot when they delivered Christ to Pilate; Pulpit traces Matthew's own widening of the circle, from chief priests at Matthew 16:21 to Gentiles at Matthew 20:19, and then to Peter's charge in Acts 2 that lawless hands crucified Him. ⚙ Our reading takes the grammar's reticence as the point. The infinitive is middle or passive, the killers in v. 23 are an unnamed “they,” the hands are anarthrous. Matthew is not identifying a guilty party; he is describing a transfer of custody, and every party the commentators name turns out to be inside it. Henry's concise comment says the same thing from the other side: Christ knew perfectly everything that would befall Him, and undertook the work of our redemption anyway, which is where Henry locates the proof of His love.

iii. Killed, wakened, and a grief that understood nothing — 17:23

Three clauses, and the verbs do the theology. ἀποκτενοῦσιν is active, future, third plural, and it is the only active thing anyone does to Him here. ἐγερθήσεται is passive with no agent named, and its root means to waken, which is why Pulpit glosses it “be wakened.” ἐλυπήθησαν is passive too: grief fell on the Twelve. Gill notes that Christ, whenever He speaks of rising, names the exact interval, the third day, and grounds that precision in the types and prophecies of the Old Testament without naming them; Barnes, at this same clause, points to Matthew 12:40, Matthew's own sign of Jonah. Then all the commentators run into the difficulty the parallels create. Mark 9:32 and Luke 9:45 say the disciples did not understand the saying and were afraid to ask, yet Matthew says they were exceedingly sorry. Poole weighs it and suggests they were sorry that they could not understand it and reconcile it with the Messiah they had absorbed; Gill says they overlooked the resurrection clause altogether, the one clause that could have comforted them; Cambridge suggests they may have hoped the death and rising were parable; JFB thinks the second telling grieved them more than the first, not less, because it went deeper; Ellicott, most precisely, says their sorrow was vague and dim and they shrank from what would make it definite. ⚙ We take that last as the best reading of σφόδρα in front position: the adverb is Matthew's word for reactions too large to handle (Matthew 2:10, 17:6, 19:25), and here it measures a grief with no object it can name. They mourn a sentence they cannot construe. Note what this costs any theory that the passion predictions were written back into the tradition by the church: an invented prediction would not be paired with an audience that failed to hear it.

Read under Sola Scriptura — this tool’s own fallible reading (⚙)

⚙ Read only with the Greek and the rest of the canon in hand, these two verses are a study in voice: who acts, and who is acted upon. Men are the subject of exactly one verb, ἀποκτενοῦσιν, they will kill. Everything else said of the Son of Man is infinitive or passive: to be handed over, to be wakened. On the surface that reads as helplessness, and the disciples heard it that way, which is why they grieved. But Μέλλει stands in front of the infinitive, and the lexicon's first sense of μέλλω is intention, not mere imminence. The one who is handed over is the one who announces the handing over, twice, on a private road, to a circle He has drawn in close for the purpose. A passive verb governed by a declared intention is not a victim's grammar. Our fallible reading, therefore: the prediction is not a warning about what will be done to Him but the terms on which He will do it, and the two passives are the load-bearing ones. He does not seize back His life; He is wakened, by the Father, on a day He names in advance. What the Twelve could not hold was not the cross alone but the shape of a kingship that arrives through custody. We would rather under-claim than over-read here: Matthew does not name the agent of either passive, and every identification of the handers-over, Judas, the Sanhedrin, the Gentiles, the counsel of God, comes from elsewhere in the canon and from the commentators, not from this sentence. The one line below is our own interpretive summary, offered to be tested. It is synthesis, not Scripture, and no verse says it.

The hands He is given into are hands He made, and the only verb they own is the one He has already dated.

⚙

Canonical Threads — out to the whole of Scripture

cross-refs · verify

AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.

The bundle and the viper: the rarest verb in the sentence verbal / quotation: confirmed

⚙ Συστρεφομένων (συστρέφω, G4962) is the rarest lexeme in this unit by a wide margin. The Verifier finds the verb in only two verses of the New Testament: here, and Acts 28:3, where Paul twists together a bundle of sticks on Malta and a viper fastens on his hand. The same passage shares χείρ with Matthew 17:22, though that word is common (168 verses) and carries no weight on its own. We claim a real lexical link and nothing more: Luke is not quoting Matthew, and the two scenes have no shared subject matter. What the pairing does give is the root's picture, strands gathered into one, which is a better guide to the participle than the smooth English “when they gathered together.” Ellicott's and Pulpit's reading of the clause depends on the variant ἀναστρεφομένων and so does not rest on this link.

Acts 28:3

basis: Verifier: shared Greek lexeme G4962 συστρέφω, in only 2 verses of the New Testament, which is rare enough to confirm a genuine verbal link; both refs are Greek New Testament, and no quotation or literary dependence is claimed

Exceedingly grieved: Matthew's collocation, and where it lands next structural / thematic: confirmed

The Verifier pairs Matthew 17:23 with Matthew 18:31 and Matthew 26:22 on the same two lexemes together, λυπέω (G3076, 21 verses) and σφόδρα (G4970, 11 verses). ⚙ Matthew uses the collocation for the grief of servants who watch a fellow servant seized in the next chapter, and then for the Twelve at the table when Jesus says one of them will hand Him over. That third occurrence is the one that matters here: the same words describe the disciples' grief at the prediction of the handing over and their grief at the naming of the betrayer. We tier this structurally and not verbally. Neither lexeme is rare enough on its own to confirm a verbal link, and no citation is involved; what is confirmed is a repeated authorial collocation within one Gospel. JFB's observation that the second telling grieved them more deeply than the first belongs to the same motif, though he does not appeal to the vocabulary.

Matthew 18:31 · Matthew 26:22

basis: Verifier: shared Greek lexemes G3076 λυπέω (in 21 vv) and G4970 σφόδρα (in 11 vv) in the same collocation; both moderately common, so the link is authorial repetition within Matthew, not quotation, and the tier is deliberately downgraded from verbal

The synoptic parallel: the same prediction in Luke's words structural / thematic: confirmed

The Verifier pairs this unit with Luke 9:22 on υἱός (G5207), ἀποκτείνω (G615) and ἡμέρα (G2250). The commentators here are working constantly with the parallels: Poole prints Mark 9:30-32 and Luke 9:44-45 in full; JFB quotes Mark's “He would not that any man should know it” and Luke's “Let these sayings sink down into your ears”; Barnes, Ellicott, Cambridge and Pulpit all note that Mark and Luke add what Matthew omits, that the disciples did not understand and were afraid to ask. ⚙ The differences are worth keeping, not harmonizing away: Matthew's dative τῇ τρίτῃ ἡμέρᾳ says on the third day, while Mark, in Poole's citation, has after that he is killed, he shall rise the third day. Structural and not verbal: the lexemes shared with Luke 9:22 are common ones, and parallel synoptic accounts of one saying are not a case of one text quoting another.

Luke 9:22 · Mark 9:31 · Luke 9:44

basis: Verifier: shared Greek lexemes G5207 υἱός (in 344 vv), G615 ἀποκτείνω (in 70 vv), G2250 ἡμέρα (in 368 vv) with Luke 9:22; all common, so the confirmed basis is a synoptic parallel of the same saying, not a verbal citation. Mark 9:31 and Luke 9:44 are added on the commentators' own citation (Poole, JFB, Pulpit), not on lexeme overlap

Handed over: the Servant, the son of man, and the struck shepherd structural / thematic: confirmed

⚙ Three Old Testament passages stand behind “the Son of Man is about to be handed over into hands of men,” and none of them is quoted here. Isaiah 53:6 and 53:12 describe the Servant given up for the iniquity of others, which supplies the unnamed agent our passive leaves open. Daniel 7:13 supplies the title itself, one like a son of man who comes and receives dominion, and so supplies the paradox: the figure given everlasting rule is the figure given into other men's grip. Zechariah 13:7 supplies the sequel Matthew will make explicit at 26:31, the shepherd struck and the sheep scattered, which is what the disciples' vague grief here is already anticipating. These are Hebrew texts and this is a Greek one, so no shared Strong's number is possible and no verbal tier is available; our brief supplies no Septuagint evidence either, so we do not claim a Greek lexical bridge even where one may exist. Pulpit's tracing of Matthew's widening agents (chief priests at 16:21, Gentiles at 20:19, lawless hands in Acts 2) is the sourced part; the Old Testament identifications are our proposal.

Isaiah 53:6 · Isaiah 53:12 · Daniel 7:13 · Zechariah 13:7

basis: Cross-Testament: Greek to Hebrew, so shared Strong's numbers are impossible by definition and a verbal tier is excluded. The confirmed basis is the shared pattern of a righteous figure handed over (Isaiah 53:6, 53:12), the Danielic son of man title (Daniel 7:13) and the struck shepherd (Zechariah 13:7). No formula quotation appears in the BSB text of this unit, and the brief supplies no Septuagint wording, so no lexical bridge is asserted

On the third day: Jonah's three days and the flesh that saw no decay typological

Gill notes that Christ always names the exact interval and grounds it in the types and prophecies of the Old Testament, without saying which. ⚙ Barnes, at this very clause, points to Matthew 12:40, and that is the safest route: Matthew's own Gospel has already made Jonah's three days and nights in the fish the sign of the Son of Man's time in the heart of the earth, so the figural reading of Jonah 1:17 is Matthew's, not ours. Psalm 16:10, that God will not let His Holy One see decay, supplies the reason the interval is short rather than the number itself; the apostolic preaching applies that psalm to the resurrection, so this reading is ancient. We tier both typologically: a figure is being read as a foreshadowing, which is a mode of reading rather than a lexical fact, and no shared Strong's number is possible between a Greek and a Hebrew text in any case.

Jonah 1:17 · Psalm 16:10 · Matthew 12:40

basis: Figural reading, widely held and in the case of Jonah made by Matthew himself at 12:40, to which Barnes points at this clause. Cross-Testament for Jonah 1:17 and Psalm 16:10 (Hebrew to Greek), so no shared Strong's basis exists and no verbal tier is available

Hosea 6:2 and the third day: a link often asserted, rarely demonstrated flagged: verify source

⚙ Hosea 6:2, “on the third day He will raise us up,” is regularly named as the scriptural warrant for “on the third day” in the passion predictions and in Paul's formula at 1 Corinthians 15:4. We flag it rather than confirm it. No New Testament text cites Hosea 6:2 for the resurrection, the Hosea line is spoken of the people's restoration and not of an individual, and Gill, who appeals to Old Testament types here, does not name it. The Verifier can only tell us that Matthew 17:23 shares τρίτος, ἐγείρω and ἡμέρα with 1 Corinthians 15:4 (a real Greek to Greek overlap of common lexemes, which we report as structural), and it can say nothing about the Hebrew of Hosea. Anyone building on this link should verify it in the sources rather than inherit it.

Hosea 6:2 · 1 Corinthians 15:4

basis: Contested provenance: the identification of Hosea 6:2 as the scriptural basis of the third-day formula is widely repeated but not made by any New Testament citation, and none of this unit's commentators names it. The measurable part is Greek to Greek: Verifier pair on Matthew 17:23 and 1 Corinthians 15:4 returns shared lexemes G5154 τρίτος (in 47 vv), G1453 ἐγείρω (in 138 vv), G2250 ἡμέρα (in 368 vv), all common, hence structural at best. Cross-Testament to Hosea, no verbal tier possible

⚙Christ in the Unittypology · verify

AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.

The title He uses when He speaks of custody ancient/widely-held

Jesus does not say “I will be handed over.” He says the Son of Man will be, and then repeats the same lexeme for His captors: hands of men. JFB calls the antithesis remarkable and notes it stands in all three synoptic accounts. ⚙ The redemptive-historical weight of that is hard to overstate. The title comes from Daniel 7:13, where one like a son of man receives dominion that shall not pass away; Matthew's Jesus chooses precisely that title for the announcement that He is about to pass into other men's power. The two are not in tension in Matthew's telling but in sequence, and the disciples' inability to hold them together is exactly what Cambridge and Barnes describe: they could not abandon the earthly kingdom, and they expected the kingdom restored to Israel, so a handed-over Son of Man read to them as the collapse of the very thing the title promised. Pulpit shows Matthew widening the circle of agents through the Gospel, from the chief priests at 16:21 to the Gentiles at 20:19, and then quotes Peter in Acts 2 charging that lawless hands crucified Him, which is the apostolic verdict that the hands were everyone's. Gill adds the bitter irony from the rabbinic side: the leaders' own canon forbade delivering an Israelite into Gentile hands on pain of forfeiting the world to come, and they forgot it at Pilate's judgment seat. The reading that the suffering Servant and the reigning son of man are one figure is the ancient apostolic one, recorded here by Barnes, JFB, Gill, Cambridge and Pulpit alike.

Daniel 7:13 · Isaiah 53:6 · Matthew 16:21 · Matthew 20:19 · Acts 2:23

Wakened, not rising: the Father's verdict in a passive verb ancient/widely-held

ἐγερθήσεται is a future passive of ἐγείρω, and the Pulpit Commentary's gloss is the literal one: be wakened. ⚙ Two things follow for the doctrine of Christ. First, the agent is unnamed, and the apostolic preaching supplies the Father: the raising is not presented here as something Christ does for Himself but as something done for Him, so that the resurrection functions as a verdict rendered on the one men condemned. Paul's summary at Romans 4:25 pairs the very two verbs of this unit, handed over and raised, and makes the pairing the structure of justification itself; the Verifier confirms that Matthew 17:22 and Romans 4:25 share G3860 παραδίδωμι (a common lexeme, 117 verses, so this is a structural observation and not a quotation). Second, the lexical sense of waking keeps death from being final in the grammar before it is answered in the narrative. Gill observes that this clause was said for the disciples' comfort, and that they overlooked it entirely; Ellicott says their sorrow was vague and they shrank from making it definite. ⚙ That is the pastoral point of the passive: the one clause they could not hear was the clause that did not depend on them, or on Him, but on the Father who wakens Him on a day He had already named.

Romans 4:25 · Acts 2:24 · 1 Corinthians 15:4

The cross announced twice, to a circle drawn in close novel

⚙ A smaller and more novel reading, offered as such. The sourced facts are these: the journey was private (Ellicott and JFB, both from Mark 9:30), the announcement was a repetition whose new force lay precisely in being repeated (Ellicott), and its hearers did not understand it and were afraid to ask (Mark and Luke, quoted by Poole, Barnes, Ellicott, Cambridge and Pulpit). ⚙ Put together, this is Christ catechizing His church in the one doctrine it will need and cannot yet receive, and doing it before He needs it understood. Geneva draws the application for the reader: our minds must be prepared more and more for the offence of the cross. Henry's concise note draws the christological one, that He knew everything that would befall Him and undertook our redemption anyway, which is where Henry finds the proof of His love. We mark this as novel only in its framing; every element of it is old, and nothing in it is required by the Greek of these two verses alone.

Mark 9:30 · Matthew 16:21 · Luke 9:44

Apparatus & Provenance

The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain (CC0). Hebrew/Greek text, transliteration, morphology and Strong’s are transcribed from the Berean interlinear (CC0) + Strong’s lexicons (PD); the literal renderings, divergence notes, word notes and all synthesis are this tool’s own work (⚙) — fallible; verify them.

Named voices, quoted verbatim from public-domain works:

  • Albert Barnes, Notes on the Bible (1834)
  • Charles Ellicott, Commentary for English Readers (1878)
  • Geneva Study Bible, Marginal Notes (1599)
  • Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory (1871)
  • John Gill, Exposition of the Entire Bible (1746–63)
  • Matthew Henry, Concise Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706)
  • Matthew Poole, Annotations upon the Holy Bible (1685)
  • The Pulpit Commentary, Spence & Exell, eds. (1880s)

Text and sources for this unit, with what is uncertain named plainly. (1) There is a live textual variant in v. 22. Our interlinear reads Συστρεφομένων (συστρέφω, G4962), while Ellicott and the Pulpit Commentary are working from ἀναστρεφομένων (went to and fro, conversantibus in the Vulgate), the reading behind the older English “while they abode in Galilee.” Their comments on the privacy of the journey rest on Mark 9:30 and survive either reading; our note on the rare verb and its one parallel at Acts 28:3 rests on the reading in front of us and falls with it. Readers should know that difference exists. (2) Two verbs in this unit are morphologically ambiguous or agentless and we have declined to resolve them: παραδίδοσθαι is middle or passive by form, and ἐγερθήσεται is passive with no agent expressed. Where the commentators name agents (Judas in Barnes, the Sanhedrin and the Gentiles in Gill, lawless hands in Pulpit's citation of Acts 2), that is their supplement from elsewhere in the canon, not this sentence's grammar. (3) BSB supplies three bracketed helps our literal rendering does not: “[the] hands,” “[to life],” and “[the disciples]”; each marks a real gap in the Greek. (4) Matthew records only the disciples' grief; Mark 9:32 and Luke 9:45 add that they did not understand and were afraid to ask. Poole, Gill, Barnes, Ellicott and Cambridge all attempt to reconcile grief with incomprehension, and they reach different answers; we have reported the disagreement rather than choosing for the reader. (5) Strong's derivation entries in this brief are truncated (G444 is given only as “from G3700”), and several are unhelpful or speculative as etymology; we have built no argument on any derivation, only on attested usage. (6) No formula quotation of the Old Testament appears in the BSB text of these two verses. Every Old Testament contact we thread (Isaiah 53, Daniel 7, Zechariah 13, Jonah 1, Psalm 16, Hosea 6) is therefore tiered structural or typological, and the Hosea 6:2 link is flagged for verification because it is widely repeated and nowhere demonstrated in the New Testament or in this unit's commentators. (7) The Verifier cannot compute cross-Testament lexeme overlap, since Strong's numbering is separate for Hebrew and Greek; no cross-Testament thread here carries a computed basis, and we say so in each badge.

✦ = human, public-domain source, quoted and named. ⚙ = machine synthesis, to be verified. Flagged cross-references are left visible on purpose — the verifier working in the open. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)