Matthew 20:19 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

And the third day he shall rise again. — This, as before, came as a sequel of the prediction that seemed so terrible. The Master looked beyond the suffering to the victory over death, but the disciples could not enter into the meaning of the words that spoke of it. St. Luke, indeed (as if he had gathered from some of those who heard them what had been their state of feeling at the time), reports that “they understood none of these things, and this saying was hid from them, neither understood they the things that were spoken” (Luke 18:34). All was to them as a dark and dim dream, a cloud upon their Master’s soul which time, they imagined, would disperse.