And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to shew him the buildings of the temple.
Ver. 1. Departed from the temple] Never to return more to it. In Ezekiel 9:3; Ezekiel 10:4; Ezekiel 10:18,19; Ezekiel 11:22,23, God departs by degrees, and still as he goes out, some judgment comes in; and when he was quite gone, then followed the fatal calamity in the utter ruin of the city and temple. So it was then, and so it was now, according to that Hosea 9:12; "Woe also to them when I depart from them." So Jeremiah 6:8; "Be instructed, O Jerusalem, lest my soul be disjointed from thee, lest I make thee desolate, a land not inhabited." Whatever therefore we do, let us retain Christ with us; lay hold on him, as Magdalene did, take him by the feet, as the Shunamite did the prophet, as the Shulamite held her spouse; constrain him to stay with us, as the two disciples going to Emmaus; cry
" Vespera iam venit, nobiscum Christe maneto:
Extingui lucem ne patiare tuam. "
To show him the buildings of the temple] As thinking by that goodly sight, haply, he might be moved to moderate the severity of that former sentence of leaving their house desolate unto them, Matthew 23:38. True it is, that Herod (to get the people's good will, which yet he could never do) had been at a wonderful charge in building and beautifying the temple. Josephus the Jew (Antiq. xv. 14) tells us that for eight whole years together he kept 10,000 men at work building it; and that for magnificence and stateliness, it exceeded Solomon's temple, if his words exceed not the truth of the matter. This the disciples fondly thought would work upon our Saviour to reverse his former sentence, as above said; but his thoughts were not as their thoughts. Animo magno nihil magnum, With great spirits, nothing is great, saith Seneca. The bramble reckoned it a great matter to reign over the trees; not so the vine and olive,Judges 9:15 .