‘In that hour Jesus said to the crowds, “Are you come out as against a robber with swords and staves to seize me? I sat daily in the temple teaching, and you did not arrest me.” '
This verse deliberately reverts back to Matthew 26:45-47. ‘In that hour.' Which hour? The hour in which the Son of Man was betrayed into the hands of sinners -- that is, those who came to Him with swords and staves (Matthew 26:45; Matthew 26:47). Both Jesus and Matthew want it to be clear what they are doing. Those who would have represented themselves as being described within the term a ‘son of man' (observers of the Law and faithful to the Temple) were in fact behaving like wild beasts towards One Who was the true Son of Man and had been teaching that very Law in the Temple. How incongruous it all was. Israel were rejecting the godliest Teacher of Israel that they had ever known, and trying to treat Him as though He was a fierce a robber who could only be arrested at night, when His only crime had been to teach among them quite openly in the Temple, using no violence and available to them without violence. And why? Because they were afraid of what the people would do if they arrested an innocent man. And now their swords and their staves witnessed against them. They marked them for what they were, brigands coming at night to arrest the One Who had only sought to bring them to God, treating Him as though He were a robber, because they were frightened that if they arrested Him by day the common people would react against them. Let them consider what kind of people this revealed them to be, men who surreptitiously used violence to achieve their ends, and that against One Who had shown no violence, sneaking around in the dark for the purpose so that they could do it without anyone knowing. (All they could therefore surely expect was to perish by the sword, as one day they would when Jerusalem was destroyed).