Then the band and the captain and officers of the Jews took Jesus, and bound him,
Then the band and the captain and ('the') officers of the Jews took Jesus, and bound him - but not until He had made them feel that "no man took His life from Him, but that He laid it down of Himself" (John 10:18).
In the first three Gospels we have here the following additional particulars: Matthew 26:55, "In that same hour," probably on the way to judgment, when the crowds were pressing upon Him, "said Jesus to the multitudes" - or as in Luke 22:52, "unto the chief priests, and captains of the temple, and the elders, which were come to Him" - "Are ye come out as against a thief with swords and staves for to take Me?" He thus keenly yet loftily expresses the indignity which He felt to be done to Him. "I sat daily with you teaching in the temple, and ye laid no hold on Me." "But this is your hour, and the power of darkness" (Luke 22:53.) Matthew continues (Matthew 26:56) "But all this was done, that the Scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled."
Here follows, in the first two Gospels, an affecting particular, the mention of which somewhere we should have expected from the sad announcement which Jesus had made at the Supper-table - "All ye shall be offended because of Me this night," etc. (Matthew 26:31; Mark 14:27: see opening remarks at Luke 22:31-39). It is the same two Evangelists that report this warning who record the too speedy fulfillment.
DESERTION AND FLIGHT OF THE DISCIPLES
"Then all the disciples forsook Him, and fled."
A singular incident is here recorded by Mark alone (Mark 14:51-52): "And there followed Him a certain young man, having a linen cloth cast about his naked body" - they were wont, says Grotius, to sleep in linen, and in this condition this youth had started up from his bed: "and the young men laid hold on him" - the attendants of the chief priests, mentioned in John 18:3, or some of their junior assistants [but hoi (G3588) neaniskoi (G3495) seems not to be genuine]: "And he left the linen cloth, and fled from them naked" - for, as Bengel says, in great danger fear conquers shame. The general object for which this was introduced is easily seen. The flight of all the apostles, recorded in the preceding verse, suggested the mention of this other flight, as one of the noticeable incidents of that memorable night, and as showing what terror the scene inspired in all who were attached to Jesus. By most interpreters it is passed over too slightly. One thing is stamped on the face of it-it is the narrative of an eye-witness of what is described. The mention of the fate of one individual, and him "a certain young man" - expressively put in the original х eis (G1519) tis (G5100) neaniskos (G3495)] - of his single piece of dress, and that of "linen," of the precise parties who laid hold of him [though hoi (G3588) neaniskoi (G3495) cannot be relied on], and how he managed to make a hair-breadth escape, even though it obliged him to part with all that covered his nakedness-this singular minuteness of detail suggests even more than the pen of an eye-witness. It irresistibly leads to a further question-Had the writer of this Gospel himself nothing to do with that scene?-`To me,' says Olshausen, 'it appears most probable that here Mark writes concerning himself.' So also Lange.
Remarks:
(1) But once only from the time that the officers came to take Him until He expired on the cross, did Jesus think fit to show, by any overt act, how voluntarily He endured all that was inflicted on Him by the hands of men; and that was immediately before they proceeded to their first act of violence. One such manifestation of His glorious superiority to all the power of earth is what we should perhaps expect; and as it was put forth at the critical moment-when His disciples would be watching with breathless interest to see whether He would endure to be seized, and perhaps His captors were apprehensive of some difficulty in the matter-so it was of such a nature as rendered a second manifestation of it altogether superfluous. From this time forth it must have been seen, by any eye that could read what He had done, that all-unforced, He went as a Lamb to the slaughter.
(2) How quickly, when men "sell themselves" to do evil, do their hearts become steeled against all feeling, and capable of whatever blackness of demon-like ingratitude and treachery may be required for the perpetration of the crimes they have resolved on! Think of Judas but a brief hour or two before this, sitting at the supper table as one of the apostles of the Lord Jesus, all unsuspected by the rest; think of him but six days before this at the house of Simon the leper, unsuspected in all likelihood even by himself, until his disappointment in the matter of the "three hundred pence" ripened into rage and suggested, apparently for the first time, the foul deed (see the notes at Mark 14:1-11, Remark 8 at the close of that section); and then think of the pitch of wickedness he had now reached. It may be thought that only the continual overawing presence of his Lord kept down the already matured wickedness of his heart. But it should rather be said, it kept the seeds of that wickedness, which undoubtedly were there from the first (John 6:70), from coming to maturity and acquiring their full mastery before the time. Nay, the end which Judas made of himself seems clearly to show how far he was from being a long hardened wretch, what quick work Satan had made of his natural tendencies at the last, and how, when his full criminality stared him in the face, instead of being able to wipe his mouth, as those whose conscience is seared as with a hot iron, he felt it to be insupportable. We make these observations, not to lessen the execration with which the deed and the doer of it are instinctively regarded, but to show that there is nothing in this case of Judas but what may in substance have been done once and again since that time-nothing exceptional to the ordinary working of evil principles in the human heart and life. "Let him" then, "that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall!"