Matthew 26:26 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

And as they were eating, Jesus took bread— After they had done eating, &c. Our Lord instituted the holy communion after the paschal feast. See Luke 22:20 and 1 Corinthians 11:25. This passage might otherwise be rendered, as they were yet eating. The loaves of the Jews were round, flat, thin, and consequently very easy to break. The Jews, as appears from the Talmudists and Philo, never ate bread or received wine, without having first returned their thanks and praises to God their creator. Maimonides and other rabbles tell us, that it was a rule among the Jews, at the end of the supper, to take a piece of the lamb for the last thing they ate that night. If this custom was as old as Christ's time, it would make this action so much the more remarkable; it would plainly shew, that the bread here distributed, was a very distinct thing from the meal that they had been making together, and might be, in the first opening of the action, a kind of symbolicalintimation that the Jewish passover was to give way to another and nobler divine institution. Our Lord having taken the bread, and broken it, gave it to his disciples, Take, eat, this is my body, that is, "This is the representation of my body broken on the cross." This is agreeable to the style of the sacred writers. See Genesis 40:12; Genesis 40:18; Genesis 41:26-27. Daniel 8:20. Galatians 4:25. Revelation 1:20 and lastly, Exodus 12:11 where, after God had spoken of the paschal lamb, he says, It is the Lord's passover. Now our Savour, substituting the holy communion, instead of the passover, follows the stile ofthe Old Testament, and uses the same expressions as the Jews were accustomed to use at the celebration of the passover.