He shall gird himself. — The words give a new significance to the act of our Lord in John 13:4. Their real fulfilment is to be found, it need hardly be said, in the far-off completion of the Kingdom, or in the ever-recurring experiences which are the foretastes of that Kingdom; but the office which He then assumed must have reminded the disciples of the words which are recorded here, and may well have been intended to be at once a symbol and an earnest of what should be hereafter. In the promise of Revelation 3:20 (“I will sup with him and he with Me”) we have a recurrence to the same imagery. The passage should be borne in mind as balancing the seeming harshness of the Master in Luke 17:8.
To sit down. — Literally, to lie down, or recline.
Will come forth... — Better, and as He passes on will minister unto them. The Greek verb expresses, not the “coming out” as from another chamber, but the passing from one to another, as when He washed the disciples’ feet, in John 13:5.