Then Elijah appeared to them along with Moses, and they were conversing with Jesus.
Mk 9:2-10
v. 2. After six days Jesus took Peter,
James, and John and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves. And he was
transfigured before them.
High mountain:
Speculation about the identity of the
mountain is quite idle. Very possibly St Mark himself had no ideas on the
subject. For him the significance of this trait in the story will have lain in
the fact that a mountain top was traditionally the setting for theophanies and
supernatural revelations. Cf. Ex 24 and 34, 1 Kgs 18:20, 19:8. 11; Mt 28:16ff.; Acts 1:12; Mark
13:3ff.; Mt 5:1, etc. Cf. 2 Pet. 1:18
where it is called “the holy mountain”.
v. 3. And his clothes became dazzling white,
such as no fuller on earth could bleach them.
Such as no fuller on earth could bleach
them:
A touch meant to put beyond question the
wholly supernatural, divinely originated character of what happened.
v. 5. Then Peter said to Jesus in reply,
“Rabbi, it is good that we are here! Let us make three tents: one for you, one
for Moses, and one for Elijah.”
It is good that we are here:
It may mean:
- “…because it give us the opportunity of serving you and your heavenly visitors.”
- Or “…because it is an experience we should like to prolong!”
v. 7. Then a cloud came, casting a shadow
over them; then from the cloud came a voice, “This is my beloved Son. Listen to
him.”
The general meaning is: the voice declares
Jesus to be the messianic Son of God.
In this context “beloved” (agapetos) is
equivalent to “chosen” or “elect” (eklektos). “The Elect One” is known from
contemporary Jewish literature to have been a common title for the Messiah.
FURTHER ELABORATION
In the preceding section the disciples have
formally declared that Jesus is the Messiah, and in return have received
teaching about the way this Son of man-Messiah is to accomplish his work so
unexpected as to cause bewilderment and grave doubts in their minds. But now –
(a) the truth of their declaration is
confirmed, for Jesus appears in a glory which can only be messianic (v. 3), and
(b) Jesus' teaching that he must suffer is
shown to be fully in accordance with the will of God by a voice from God
himself which designates him as the one whose teaching God wants all men to
accept (v. 7).
It is noteworthy that in St Mark's version
of it 'the whole event, from first to last, takes place solely for the sake of
the three disciples. "He was transfigured before them"; "there
appeared unto them Elijah with Moses"; "there came a cloud
overshadowing them"; "this is my only Son; hear him";
"and suddenly, looking round about, they saw no one any more, save Jesus
only with themselves".
The opening statement (v. 2), after six
days, is a precise note of time so unparalleled in St Mark's account of the
ministry that he must have included it because it seemed to him specially significant,
probably as binding this and the preceding episode together in a single
complex, one part of which must be interpreted in the light of the other.
But there is some evidence that this was
traditionally the length of time required for preparation and self-purification
before a close approach to God (cf. Ex 24:16).
Also unexplained is the precise sense of
transfigured (v. 2) (metamorphothe). The literal meaning is 'to be transformed'
, or 'to change one's form', and in the light of v. 3, the idea seems to be
that Jesus temporarily exchanged the normal human form that he bore during his
earthly life for that glorious form he was believed to possess after his
exaltation to heaven, and which believers also hoped to be clothed with after
his second coming. Cf. carefully Phil 3:21; 1 Cor 15:43.49. 51-53; and 2 Cor 3:18 where the same Greek
word is used. We have to bear in mind that at the time ‘glory' was' conceived
as actual shining ethereal substance ... the sort of body generally supposed to
belong to heavenly beings and indeed to be the vesture of God Himself.
The idea that in the final state the
glorification of the form would extend to clothes was quite a common one at the
time. Cf. Rv 4:4; 7:9; and 3:5, etc.
It would therefore seem that what was granted
to the three disciples was a glimpse of Jesus in that final state of Lordship
and glory to which he would eventually be exalted.
It was widely believed by Jews of Our
Lord's time that various prominent figures of Old Testament history would
appear at the end of this world and play a part in the events leading up to it.
Cf. Mt 8:11 and Lk 13:28ff. From the time of the writing of Malachi 4:5f Elijah's
is the name most frequently mentioned in this connection, and it is perhaps for
this reason that Mark puts his name first.
In the last days false prophets were
expected to appear, and so Moses and Elijah will have been seen as the two
great representatives of the Law and Prophets who, by their presence with Jesus
as he comes, testify to him as the true Christ. We have in fact an expression,
in concrete historical terms of the early Christian conviction that the Law and
the Prophets testified to Christ. Cf. Mt 5:17; Lk 24:27. 44; 16:29. 31.
But then, lest there should be any danger
of Christ's being misunderstood as simply one among the others - a further
prophet of the old order - the voice in v. 7 clearly singles him out as the
prophet of the last days whom Moses had foretold as superseding himself. (Cf. Dt
18:15. 18-19)
But Jesus is more than that - he is
actually God's own Son - indeed his only Son, the one to whom alone now men
should give ear. The voice which makes this pronouncement is described as
coming out of the cloud which had overshadowed the scene, and for St Mark this
will have meant that it was the voice of God himself; for, in the later Jewish
writings, the cloud was par excellence the vehicle of God's “shekinah” (The
Hebrew word to denote the ‘presence’ or ‘dwelling’ of God in any place,
normally accompanied by a glorious outward manifestation.) and the medium in
and through which he manifested himself (This idea runs all through the Exodus
story - cf. Ex 16:10; Nm 14:10; and Ex 19:9. 16; 24:15ff. Also Ez 14ff.)
In view of their beliefs about the past, it
was natural for the Jews to include a cloud-manifestation of God in their
expectation of the end, and for evidence that they did. The early Christians
certainly thought that it was in this way that Christ would appear at his final
corning (Luke 21:27; Mark 13:26; 14:62;
Mt 24:30; 26:64; Rv 1:7, etc.) and even that it was in, or on, clouds that they
themselves would be taken up to meet him and ascend with him to heaven (1
Thess. 4:17). All this suggests that what the three disciples were understood
to have seen was the final corning of Christ in the glory of his Father; and in
that case there is close connection between the story and the verses
immediately preceding (8:38-9:1). Did St Mark perhaps see the incident as at
least a partial fulfillment of the promise made in 9:1?
The words of Peter may simply express a
desire on his part to prolong the blessedness of the experience when in fact it
was God's will for Christ and the disciples that they should return into the
world and enter upon the path of suffering. Certainly the last verse - always
an important verse in any pericope - underlines the essentially temporary
character of the episode, stressing as it does the completeness and abruptness
with which the conditions of the transfiguration pass. The cloud and the two
heavenly figures disappear, and Jesus stands among the disciples once more a
man among men. But probably once again St Mark saw a rather more precise meaning.
In contemporary Judaism the day of
salvation was often pictured as a day when God would once more pitch his tent
with his people as he had done during me
forty years in the wilderness. (The English words tent, tabernacle, and booth
are simply variant translations for the same Greek word skene.) The Jewish Feast
of Tabernacles itself had acquired an eschatological significance, not only
looking back to the tent-dwelling of the wilderness days (Lv 23:42f.) but also
forward to the new age when God would again 'tabernacle' with his people, and
members of all nations would gather in Jerusalem to 'tabernacle' there and
worship God together (Zech. 14:16-19).
The Christians too made large use of the
image of tent-dwelling in their thought about the new age. Cf. 2 Cor. 5:1-4; Rv
21:1-3 (literally 'the tent of God is with men ') and 7:15. This being so, St
Mark may well have understood Peter's words eschatologically - as an offer to
build the sort of dwellings God and Christ were expected to share with men in
the age to come. In that case what Peter was overlooking was that this scene
was not the parousia, but only its foreshadowing. Before the end, there
remained much to be done and much to be suffered both by Jesus and by his
disciples. That suffering is not to be bypassed or evaded, as Peter here seems
to think (cf. his attitude to the prediction of suffering in the previous
episode).
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