And [one] shall say unto him, What [are] these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, [Those] with which I was wounded [in] the house of my friends.
Ver. 6. And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands?] Jerome here supposeth the false prophet crucified for his false doctrine, and thereupon thus questioned. This is better than that of the Popish interpreters, who will needs have it to be meant of Christ, and of his wounds on the cross, as a deceiver of the people, Oπλανος, Matthew 27:63, that deceiver to our very faces (Eustath.). Lucian the atheist villanously termeth him εσκολοπισμενον σοφιστην, the crucified deceiver; but the text is clear that the person here spoken to, and returning an answer, is the false prophet, now a true convert; as appeareth by his fruits, which he bears quick and thick; being like Aaron's rod, soon changed from a withered stick into a flourishing tree. Ashamed he is at heart of his former falsities; and as in heart, so in habit he is altered; for he will no longer wear a rough garment, the garb of prophets in those days, to deceive, as the Capuchins and other orders of friars, or rather liars, at this day, 2Ki 1:8 Isaiah 20:2 Matthew 3:4. He abrenounceth and abjureth, quasi conceptis verbis, his former profession of a prophet or chief speaker among others.
I am no prophet] But a plain husbandman, or a shepherd; that is all I can truly pretend to. And lastly, in this verse, having passed through the Church's discipline as a seducer, he shall do as Joshua advised Achan, Give glory to the Lord my son, and confess thy sin, Joshua 7:19; he shall approve of the Church's severity used for his correction, though he should go maimed or marked for it to his dying day. In point of seducement (saith Mr Cotton, descanting upon this text), if a man upon conviction shall see the wickedness of his way, and humble his soul before God, and give satisfaction to the Church and State where he shall be convinced, on such conviction and repentance we find liberty to pardon, but yet stigmatize him. But what reason had the convocation held at Oxford to set a brand of ignominy upon the cheeks of those outlandish divines that came to assist them, because they pleased them not in the point of priests' marriage, which they defended? Or Bishop Laud for his Stigmata Landis on renowned Mr Prinne, for his constancy to the truth? How much better his predecessors, Stephen Langton, who crucified that pseudo Christ, who showed marks of wounds in his hands, feet, and sides, A.D. 1206, and Odo Severus, who burnt King Edwin's concubine (whom he most doted on) in the forehead with a hot iron, and banished her into Ireland, A. D. 934.