And it came to pass, that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions.
And it came to pass, that after three days they found him in the temple. Do you inquire how he subsisted all this time? I do not. This is one of those impertinences which we should avoid indulging. The spurious gospels, we daresay, would tell their readers all that: how everybody vied with his neighbour who should have Him to keep, and how angels came and fed Him with nectar, or how He needed neither food nor sleep, and so on. But where God has dropt the veil, let us not seek to raise it. Well, they found Him. Where? Not gazing on the architecture of the sacred metropolis, or studying its forms of busy life, but "in the temple" - not of course in the "sanctuary" х too (G3588) naoo (G3485)], as in Luke 1:9, to which only the priests had access (see the note at Luke 2:27), but in some one of the en-closures around it, where the rabbis, or "doctors," taught their scholars.
Sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions. The method of question and answer was the customary form of rabbinical teaching; teacher and learner becoming by turns questioner and answerer, as may be seen from their extant works. This would give full scope for all that "astonished them in His understanding and answers." Not that He assumed the office of teaching - "His hour" for that "was not yet come," and His furniture for that was not complete; because He had yet to "increase in wisdom" as well as "stature" (Luke 2:52). In fact, the beauty of Christ's example lies very much in His never at one stage of His life anticipating the duties of another. All would be in the style and manner of a learner, "opening His mouth and panting-His soul breaking for the longing that it had unto God's judgments at all times," and now more than ever before, when finding Himself for the first time in His Father's house. Still there would be in His questions far more than in their answers; and, if we may take the frivolous interrogatories with which they afterward plied Him-about the woman that had seven husbands and such like-as a specimen of their present drivelling questions, perhaps we shall not greatly err, if we suppose that the "questions," which He now "asked them" in return, were just the germs of these pregnant questions with which He astonished and silenced them in after years: "What think ye of Christ?-Whose Son is He? If David call him Lord, how is he then his son?" - "Which is the first and great commandment?" - "Who is my neighbour?"