‘And afterwards he was revealed to the eleven themselves as they sat at their meal, and he upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart because they did not believe those who had seen him after he was risen.'
The constant stress on their unbelief, even heightened here, suggests an Apostolic hand behind the basic tradition. No other would have been quite so blatant. It stresses that the Jerusalem appearance to them as described here was not what He had intended and agrees with the testimony that He had expected them to respond by going to Galilee to the place which He had previously told them about (Matthew 28:16). Galilee, not Jerusalem, had been intended as the springboard for the furtherance of the Gospel. Had He been obeyed it might well have prevented many of the problems that arose in the future. But as through history God was willing to fit in with the weakness of those whom He called.
For this incident compare Luke 24:36-43. The immediacy in Luke 24:36 reflects the speed of God's change of purpose. We can compare the incident where Moses required a spokesman when God had intended him to be the spokesman (Exodus 4) and Aaron was immediately appointed. God's messengers are never fully satisfactory, nor do they always respond rightly, for they are but men.
‘Upbraided -- unbelief -- hardness of heart.' The language is strong. It is stressed that they were blameworthy. Had their hearts not been hard they would have believed. ‘Hardness of heart'. The word is rare but appears elsewhere in Mark (Mark 10:5 compare Mark 3:5). It results in a situation which is second best.