And the multitude rebuked them, because they should hold their peace: but they cried the more, saying, Have mercy on us, O Lord, thou Son of David.
Ver. 31. And the multitude rebuked them] In prayer, we must look to meet with many rubs and discouragements; but God's Spirit is heroic, and gets over them all. The devil will interrupt us, as the Pythoness did Paul, Acts 16:16; as the birds did Abraham, Genesis 15:11; as those Samaritans did the Jews in building the temple, Neh 6:1-19 Hence we are bidden to strive in prayer, Colossians 4:2, and watch in prayer; for Satan will be at our right hand, as at Joshua's, Zechariah 3:1, watching his time to cast in, if not a profane, yet an impertinent thought, thereby to bereave us of the benefit of our prayers; besides our own natural lack of devotion through hardness of heart, heaviness of body, multiplicity of worldly distractions and disturbances. All which we must break through, and cry the more earnestly, as Bartimeus here did, though checked by the multitude, "Have mercy on us, O Lord," &c. Daniel would not be kept from his God for any danger of death, Daniel 6:10,11, nor the French Protestants restrain prayer, though King Henry III made a law to forbid them to pray with their families. The sun shall sooner stand still than the trade of godliness, and that continual intercourse that is between God and the Christian soul.