Then Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you? bring him hither to me.
Ver. 17. O faithless and perverse generation] He reproves the nine disciples, but rejects them not. Christ in the very dunghill of unbelief and sinfulness can find out his own part of faith and holiness, as we see in Sarah, Genesis 18:12. That whole speech of hers was vile and profane (besides that for want of faith she laughed at the unlikelihood, and was therefore checked by the angel). One thing only was praise worthy in that sinful sentence, that she called her husband Lord: this God hath taken notice of, and recorded to her eternal commendation and others' imitation, 1 Peter 3:6 .
And perverse generation] Depraved, distorted, dislocated, Διεστραμμενη. Homo est inversus decalogus. Man now stands across to all goodness, is born with his back towards heaven, a perverse and crooked creature, Deuteronomy 32:5, having his upper lip standing where his nether lip should, Proverbs 19:1, and all parts else out of frame and joint. Rom 3:10-18
How long shall I suffer you? As they do, that willingly bear a burden and are content to continue under it. Christ bears with our evil manners, Acts 13:18, as a loving husband bears with a froward wife a but yet he is sufficiently sensible, and therefore complains of the pressure, Amos 2:13, and once cried out under the importable weight of it, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" The earth could not bear Korah and his company, but clave under and swallowed them up: as it soon after spewed out the Canaanites, who had filled it with filthiness from corner to corner,Ezra 9:11. Consider, how often thou hast straggled over the mouth of the bottomless pit, and art not yet fallen into the boiling caldron, that fiery furnace. Oh stand and wonder at God's patience, and be abrupt in thy repentance, lest abused mercy turn into fury.
a Ut qui volentes onus subeunt, et sub eo perdurant. Beza. ετροποφορησεν .