Moses and Elias. — The identification of the forms which the disciples saw was, we may well believe, intuitive. If we accept the narrative as a whole, it is legitimate to assume that, in the state of consciousness to which they had been raised, they were capable of a spiritual illumination which would reveal to them who they were who were thus recognising their Master’s work and doing homage to His majesty. There was, it is obvious, a singular fitness in each case. One was the great representative of the Law, which was a “school master” or “servant-tutor” (see Note on Galatians 3:24) leading men to Christ, the other of the whole goodly fellowship of the prophets. Of one it had been said that a “Prophet like unto him” should come in the latter days (Deuteronomy 18:18), to whom men should hearken; of the other, that he should come again to “turn the hearts of the fathers to the children” (Malachi 4:5). The close of the ministry of each was not after the “common death of all men.” No man knew of the sepulchre of Moses (Deuteronomy 34:6), and Elijah had passed away in the chariots and horses of fire (2 Kings 2:11). Both were associated in men’s minds with the glory of the kingdom of the Christ. The Jerusalem Targum on Exodus 12 connects the coming of Moses with that of the Messiah. Another Jewish tradition predicts his appearance with that of Elijah. Their presence now was an attestation that their work was over, and that the Christ had come.
Talking with him. — St. Luke (Luke 9:31) adds the subject of their communing: “They spake of His decease which He should accomplish at Jerusalem.” So far as the disciples then entered into the meaning of what they heard, or afterwards recalled it, it was a witness that the spirits of the lawgiver and the prophet accepted the sufferings and the death which had shaken the faith of the disciples as the necessary conditions of the Messianic kingdom. It is significant that the word for “decease” (exodos) reappears in this sense once only in the New Testament, and then in close connection with a reference to the Transfiguration (2 Peter 1:15).