SECTION III

the walk to Emmaus

(Mar 16:12-13. Luk 24:13-35)

The history, preserved by Luke, of the two disciples who walked to Emmaus, proves to us, that the message which the women brought from the sepulchre was not sufficient to convince the disciples of Christ’s resurrection; that most of them sat still or wandered about discouraged and comfortless, and therefore scattered and isolated from each other, even although the hidden germs of hope were no doubt powerfully excited in their hearts; nay, it even proves that the wondrous tidings brought by the women had not only intensified hope, but had also increased dejection and doubt in the circle of the disciples.

These two men belonged to the wider circle of disciples; tradition says they were of the seventy. One of them was called Cleopas, Luk 24:18. It is rather striking that the name of the other is not given. Ancient commentators have, on this ground, held that it was Luke himself. We have given above (I. vii. 2) the grounds which favour this hypothesis.¹

The place to which they were going was not, as Eusebius and Jerome thought, the town of Emmaus which was situated in the plain of Judea, and was the chief town of a toparchy under the Roman dominion; for this town was much farther from Jerusalem than the place mentioned by Luke, which was only sixty stadia (about seven miles) from the capital. Even the village El Kubeibeh, which recent travellers have taken for Emmaus, and which lies north-west from Jerusalem, is too far from the capital, ‘since it is at least three hours, or more than seventy stadia, from it.’² Robinson asserts that every trustworthy tradition concerning the position of Emmaus was lost even before the time of Eusebius and Jerome. Yet Sepp reminds us that Josephus (de Bello Jud. vii. 6, 6) speaks of an Ammaus sixty stadia from Jerusalem,³ and that he relates that, after the Jewish war, the emperor settled 800 veterans on the territory of that village; and then he remarks, this place could hardly have received any other name than Colonia, after being occupied by a colony of veterans. ‘Now, further,’ he says, ‘there is hardly a pilgrim who does not pass Culonieh,⁴ the village two hours’ moderate walking west from Jerusalem, where there are still traces of the old walls with forty large square stones; and this is the former Emmaus.’ This is a very simple and happy combination, and nothing can be inferred against the probability of this view, from the circumstance that the hot spring has disappeared which formerly gave to the place the name of ‘warm baths.’⁵

The Sabbath regulation for walking or riding was applied only to the strict Sabbath-days. Yet in the case of these two disciples there might have been the additional element of Grecian freedom, which made them walk so far into the country on so solemn a day. If they were Greeks, and if Emmaus lay to the west, it looks as if they were drawn by a secret impulse of their soul towards the sea in the direction of their native land, because their hope seemed to remain unsatisfied at Jerusalem. At all events, it is significant that Jesus came to these men first, after having already, as we shall see hereafter, greeted Peter. He should Himself first to the great apostle of the Jews, and then to the Greeks. It is worthy of observation, that these men meditate on His sufferings with deep dejection, and cannot understand His death; and that He finds it necessary to enter into a lengthened explanation with them, to show from Scripture the necessity of the death of Christ, which the Grecian spirit found still more difficult to comprehend than the Jewish.⁶

It must have been late in the afternoon when the two men set out from Jerusalem, for it was about sunset when they arrived at Emmaus. It was the crucifixion of Christ, and the message of the angels that He was alive, which occupied their thoughts and sent them out in that direction. As they walked, they talked with one another of all these things, forming conjectures regarding their meaning. A traveller going the same way overtook them; they knew not the Risen One in Him. This circumstance places the objectivity of Christ’s resurrection before us in the strongest light. They walked with a man in whom they did not recognize the Lord, whose appearance, therefore, could not have been a figment of their longing for Christ’s appearance. Their eyes were holden, that they should not know Him, says Luke. He appeared to them in another form, is the account Mark gives. This implies that Christ’s form had altered since His death. The lustre of a new life surrounded Him; the curse and the woe of the world, and the anticipation of the death of the cross, no longer weighed upon His soul, but the joyous serenity of eternal victory beamed from His countenance. Yet they would have recognized Him in consequence of the continued identity of His being and spirit with His former mode of being, had not their eyes been holden by the turn which their minds had taken, by a state of mind in which they saw only darkness, death, and the cross, and Jesus only as extended on it.⁷ So there was a correspondency between the two causes of their not knowing Him.⁸ Jesus asked, with compassion, what manner of communication they had with one another, and gently censured them for being so sad, and for only deepening their sadness by their conversation. They, on the other hand, expressed their astonishment that He seemed to know nothing of this great matter; His extraordinary serenity even appeared offensive to them. ‘Art thou,’ said Cleopas, ‘the only stranger in Jerusalem who has not known the things which are come to pass there in these days?’ And on His asking them, What things? they continued (both, it would seem, pouring out their heart, interrupting or supplementing each other), ‘Concerning Jesus of Nazareth.’ And after they had told what manner of man He was, a Prophet mighty in deed and word, both in His inward relation to God and His open works among the people (equally great in secret contemplative and in public active life), they named the things which they meant, and with which their minds were occupied, namely, how the chief priests and their rulers⁹ had condemned Him to death, and crucified Him. They then expressed their sorrow of heart at this event. ‘But we trusted that it had been He who should have redeemed Israel; and beside all this, to-day is the third day since these things were done. Yea, and certain women also of our company made us astonished, who were early at the sepulchre; and when they found not His body, they came, saying, that they had also seen a vision of angels, who said that He was alive. And certain of them who were with us went to the sepulchre, and found it even so, as the women had said; but Him they saw not.’ This was the utterance of their complaint, forming a confused and faint echo of the first account of the Easter message; like Easter news in the tones of Ash-Wednesday, or an Easter sun amid the mists of dejection and doubt, casting only straggling rays through the gloomy clouds by which it is surrounded. Christ found that they could not yet share in the solemn joy of His resurrection, because they had not yet understood the counsel of God in His death. They must be baptized more deeply in heart into His death before they were able to recognize Him as the Risen One. Therefore He reproached them, saying, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory? They had received the prophets; they had received and acknowledged one side of the prophetic revelations, namely, all that had been said of the glory of the coming Messiah, the glory of His redemption-work and kingdom; but the whole side of the prophetic word which spoke of His sufferings, which set forth His great course of suffering as the previous condition of His entering into glory, had continued entirely concealed from them, and concealed because they were void of presentiment (could not apprehend with their reason), and slow of heart (with all their walking and asking after the truth, still wanting in the freshness and joyousness of inward devotedness to God) for the testimonies of God’s word concerning the sacredness and necessity of the theocratic sufferings of Christ (and of His people).

And now He took them to school. Beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scripture the things concerning Himself, especially what had been foretold of His sufferings. He gave them a comprehensive view of all the prophecies which related to His passing through death to glory. Thus they walked listening to His instruction, peripatetics in a higher sense than the philosophizing Greeks before their time had been. How short in such company the road must have seemed, and how quickly their journey ended! When they arrived at the village where they intended to lodge, He made as though He would have gone farther. Westward from this time forth, the Spirit of Christ bent its course, as it afterwards did in the history of Paul (see Act 16:1-40) His making as if He would have gone farther was a trying of them. If, after being thus instructed regarding the necessity of the cross of Christ, they had let Him depart without fully confiding in Him, He really would have gone farther. But His Spirit had subdued them; they stood the test: they constrained Him, saying, Abide with us; for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. Thus they painted the appearance of nature, but also described unconsciously their own spiritual condition. The sun of their old world was just about to set, the sacred night of the cross was sending a solemn shudder of awe through their souls, like western breezes announcing with a still lingering shiver of death, yet full of joy, the morning of the resurrection to newness of life in the Spirit. Greeks imbued with the spirit of their nation needed specially to be brought to this standpoint, if ever they were to rejoice in Christ’s salvation.¹⁰ He complied with their request, and went in with them. When they sat down to supper, they felt that the position of head of the house, or Rabbi, was due to the mysterious stranger; they left it to Him to break the bread, to pronounce the usual blessing over it, and then to distribute it.¹¹ But just as He began—when He was handing to them the bread over which He had pronounced the blessing—their eyes were opened, and they knew Him.¹² It was the same Man they had before heard praying as if entering into or coming out of heaven, and who had perhaps, besides, broken the bread with the words, the divine and living tones of which they could not forget.¹³ A moment stood He before them in the full clearness of His being, Christ the Risen One, and then vanished out of their sight. But they were certain that it was He, and said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while He talked with us by the way, and while He opened to us the Scriptures? Thus they had both at the same time felt that burning of heart which only the word of Christ from the cross can produce—even that sacred glow which penetrates, consumes, and transforms the heart as an offering to God. With these words they rose up, and returned the same hour to Jerusalem. They had become evangelists of the resurrection, who could not rest until they had told the tidings to their mourning companions. It was a peculiar dispensation of providence which made them thus hasten by night as the first messengers of Christ from the heathen of the west to Jerusalem, to announce there the tidings of Christ’s resurrection. How light their step going down the valley and up the other side, and then across the stony plain, till they reached the city, where they sought for the apostles, and found the eleven assembled, and other disciples with them! For the spirit of joy, faith, and hope was already beginning to display its power in assembling and uniting the disciples, whom the spirit of disconsolation and dejection had scattered. And now ensued one of the most glorious events in the Easter history; a high and real antiphony which God made. They were just about to tell the assembly that they had seen the Lord, when the assembled disciples met them, saying, ‘The Lord hath risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon!’ They answered this joyous salutation by telling that Jesus had walked with them, and that He was known of them in breaking of bread.

Christ’s appearance to Peter must have taken place before He showed Himself on the way to Emmaus. For the disciples in Jerusalem would have met, as their custom was, about the same hour in the evening as the two disciples arrived at Emmaus. But when Peter joined his friends about that time, he could tell them that Jesus had appeared to him. Thus the disciple most in need of comfort was the first to receive it. The appearing of Christ to him of itself implied his pardon. Our Lord’s dealing with him must have been very intimate and mysterious, for nothing further is anywhere told of it; yet the fact is reckoned by Paul, 1Co 15:1-58, among the chief revelations of the risen Saviour.¹⁴

At the same time we here learn, that after his fall Peter named himself, and was named in the Church, Simon, not Peter. He was like a priest who has laid aside his priestly robes because he has defiled them, or an officer who has given up his sword because he failed to maintain the dignity of a soldier. Jesus alone could restore his name of honour, Peter. He was now, by having seen the Lord, again received among the disciples, but not reinstated into his forfeited apostleship. But in his present disposition it was the main matter with him, and sufficient grace, that Christ had brought to him the salutation of peace.

───♦───

Notes

The conjecture of Paulus, that Jesus was on the point of returning to Galilee when He joined the disciples going to Emmaus, but was induced to return to Jerusalem because He had learned from them the continued dejection of the disciples, has influenced even Röhr (Palästina, 174) in determining the position of Emmaus. We have here a very spiritual geography as product of a very corporeal (material) apprehension of the Easter history.

1) The name Cleopas, too, favours the opinion that we have to seek Hellenists or Greeks in the two disciples. Cleopas does not mean the same as Clopas (which we
forgot to mention above), but is a Greek name contracted from Cleopatros (see Sepp, 651). Thus Cleopas was probably of Greek descent. For similar contractions, see Sepp, a.a.O.—The expression of Cleopas, 'Art thou only,' &c., tends in the same direction. [Wieseler, who identifies Cleopas with Alpheus, conjectures that the unnamed disciple was his son, the Apostle James.—ED.]

2) See Robinson, ii. 255.

3) Josephus (iv. 1, 3) speaks of another Ammaus in the neighbourhood of Tiberias, the name of which he translates 'warm baths,' חַם מַים

4) On the position and name of the village, see Robinson. 'The name appears to be derived from the Latin colonia, but I know of no historical fact for this etymology.'

5) That, according to Robinson, Culonieh is only an hour and a half from Jerusalem, makes some difficulty. Yet this may be explained thus : the colony of veterans was settled in the territory of Ammaus, but not limited to the small spot around the village. Thus the colony might be situated eastwards from the village of Emmaus. [Robinson (iii. 146-150) discusses the claim of Amwâs, the ancient Nicopolis, and concludes, 'After long and repeated consideration, I am disposed to acquiesce in the judgment of Eusebius and Jerome, i.e., that the Emmaus of the narrative and Am was are identical. Amwâs, indeed, is 160 stadia from Jerusalem, but some MSS. of Luke read 160: and if this be thought too great a distance for the disciples to re turn that night, Robinson, thinks the circumstances warranted such an amount of travel.—ED.]

6) Hence also Luke s account of the resurrection is impenetrated with the idea, Christ ought to suffer according to the Scriptures.

7) We see here that there may be a one-sided view of Christ crucified, which renders the knowledge of Christ exalted difficult.

8)  See Ebrard.

9)  Καὶ οἱ ἄρχοντες ἡμῶν. This may be referred to their political rulers, as it is separated by the article from the ἁρχῖερεῖς.

10) See above, Book II. vi. 5.

11) See Sepp, C54.

12) [It is an old supposition, and not so shallow as it may at first sight seem, that the pierced hands, shown as He brake the bread, identified the crucified and risen Redeemer.—ED.]

13) According to Sepp (a. a. 0.), Christ Himself here first dispensed the Lord s Supper under one form. But he has not reflected that Jesus disciples let the bread be broken by a man of whose descent and dignity they knew nothing, and who consequently had not for them even the form of a legitimate priest. Besides, this spiritual meal, which was certainly a Lord s Supper in the higher sense, forms the greatest contrast to the mass, the supper under one form.

14) It forms an antithesis, that among all who were called to the office of apostle, Christ appeared first to Peter and last to Paul; in the middle there was a special appearance to James.