Matthew 16:21 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

From that time forth began Jesus. — The prominence given to the prediction shows that it came upon the minds of the disciples as something altogether new. They had failed to understand the mysterious hints of the future which we find in, “Destroy this temple” (John 2:19), in the Son of Man being “lifted up” (John 3:14), in the sign of the prophet “Jonas” (Matthew 12:39; Matthew 16:4). Now the veil is uplifted, and the order of events is plainly foretold — the entry into Jerusalem, the rejection, the condemnation, the death, the resurrection. It is obvious that if we accept the record as true the prediction is one which implies a foreknowledge that is at least supernatural, and is so far evidence of a divine mission, if not also of a divine nature in the speaker. And it may well be urged that in this case the incidents which surround the prediction — as, e.g., Peter’s protest, and the rebuke addressed to him in such striking contrast with the previous promise — have a character of originality and unexpectedness which negatives the hypothesis of its being a prophecy after the event. On the other hand, the fact that the disciples did not take in the meaning of the prediction as to His rising from the dead may, in its turn, be pleaded in bar of the assumption that the prophecy lingered in men’s minds, and suggested the belief in a mythical, in the absence of a real, fulfilment.