St. Luke does not give the words that follow, and the omission is significant. Either he did not know of them, and then we must infer the entire independence of his record, or knowing them, he, writing for Gentiles, thought it best to omit words here which our Lord had afterwards repeated, and which he had therefore another opportunity of recording (Luke 13:28). Such verbal reproduction of what had been said before was, it will be remembered, entirely after our Lord’s manner.
Many shall come from the east and west. — It is clear that our Lord saw in the centurion the first-fruits of the wide harvest of the future. Like the words of the Baptist in Matthew 3:9, what He now said contained, by implication, the whole gospel which St. Paul preached to the Gentiles. “East and west,” even without the formal addition of “north and south,” which we find in the parallel passage of Luke 13:29, were used as limits that included all the nations of the earth.
Shall sit down. — Literally, shall recline, as at the table of a feast; that being, as in the phrase of Abraham’s bosom, the received parable of the blessedness of the kingdom.