Commentary on Matthew, Chapter 33

While almost all of the works in this vault use Victorian translations, due to the only English translation of this commentary being in copyright, it was machine-translated (by Claude, 2026) from the public-domain Latin. It has not been checked by a human translator.

Hilary, bishop of Poitiers, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, written about 353–356, before his exile to the East. Chapter 33: On Pilate: when he was set down on the judgment seat, his wife sent unto him, saying, Have thou nothing to do with that just man; on those who passed by the cross, wagging their heads and saying, Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days.

1. When he was set down on the judgment seat, his wife sent unto him, saying, Have thou nothing to do with that just man. In her is the likeness of the people of the Gentiles: which, now faithful, calls the unbelieving people with whom it lived to the faith of Christ. And because she herself has suffered much for Christ, she invites him with whom she lived to the same glory of the hope to come. Then Pilate both washed his hands and declared to the Jewish people that he was innocent of the Lord’s blood: because, while the Jews take upon themselves and their children the guilt of the Lord’s blood that was shed, the people of the Gentiles, washed, passes over daily to the confession of faith.

2. And when Pilate offered, according to the privilege of the feast day on which one of the prisoners was to be released at the people’s request, to set Jesus free, the people, at the urging of the priests, chose Barabbas instead. Now the interpretation of the name Barabbas is “son of the father”. So already the secret of the unbelief to come is shown, in preferring to Christ the “son of the father”: that is, Antichrist, the man of sin and the son of the devil; and at the urging of their rulers they choose one kept for damnation rather than the Author of salvation.

3. Then, the Lord having been scourged, a scarlet robe is put on Him, and a purple garment, and a crown of thorns, and a reed in His right hand; and, with the knee bent, He is mocked with worship. That is, having taken upon Himself all the weaknesses of our body, He is then drenched in the colour of scarlet with the blood of all the martyrs, to whom the kingdom with Him was owed; and He is clothed, in the purple, with the precious honour of the prophets and patriarchs. He is crowned also with thorns, that is, with the sins of the Gentiles, which once pricked: so that out of things harmful and useless, which, set round His head, that is, round God, work against Him, a glory might be sought for sins. For the prick is in the thorns, out of which the crown of victory is woven for Christ. And in the reed the weakness and emptiness of those same Gentiles, held in His hand, is made firm. Moreover He is struck on the head with it. The blow of a reed on the head is, I think, no great injury: but a figurative meaning is kept in it, that the weakness of the bodies of the Gentiles, first taken into Christ’s hand, might rest also upon God the Father, who is His head. And in all these things Christ, while He is mocked, is worshipped.

4. And as they came out, they lay the wood of the Passion on a man of Cyrene. For the Jew was unworthy to bear the cross of Christ: because it was left to the faith of the Gentiles both to take up the cross and to suffer with Him. Then the place of the cross is such that, set in the middle of the earth, and standing as it were on the summit of this universe, it might be equally near to all nations for the taking hold of the knowledge of God. And He refused to drink the wine mingled with gall that was offered Him: for the bitterness of sins is not mingled with the incorruption of eternal glory. And His garment, divided by lot rather than torn, showed the incorruption of the body that would remain.

5. And so on the tree of life the salvation and life of all is hung; and two thieves are fastened to it, on the left and on the right — and they with Him, so that it might be understood that the death of men differs from the death of the Only-begotten: for He gave up the ghost of His own will, when He would, but the legs of these were broken — showing that the whole of the human race is called to the mystery of the Lord’s Passion. But because, through the difference between the faithful and the unfaithful, the division of all is made according to the right hand and the left, one of the two, placed on the right, is saved by the justification of faith. There is added also that reproach by which Israel itself might convict itself of unbelief, when it is said, Thou that destroyest the temple of God, and buildest it in three days, and the rest. It was not hard to come down from the cross; but the mystery of the Father’s will had to be fulfilled. But set on the cross He was doing greater works, by the shaking of all nature: is this, then, put forward as the greatest of all, and as it were the hardest? What pardon, then, will there be, when after three days the temple of God is seen rebuilt in the resurrection of the body? And as for both the thieves reproaching Him with His suffering, it signifies that the cross would be an offence even to all the faithful.

6. And the night that came out of the day is the dividing of the times. For so the third number, of three days and as many nights, is fulfilled: and the hidden mystery of the divine working is felt in the amazement of the whole creation. And the cry to God is the voice of the body, bearing witness to the parting of the Word of God as it withdrew from it. And so He cries out why He is forsaken, saying, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? But He is forsaken because the man had to be carried through even to death. Moreover this too must be carefully considered: that when He had drunk the vinegar given Him in a sponge on a reed, He cried out and gave up the ghost. Wine is both the honour and the strength of immortality, and it turns sour through a fault either of carelessness or of the vessel. So, since it had turned sour in Adam, He Himself took it and drank it from the Gentiles. For it is offered Him to drink on a reed from a sponge: that is, He took from the bodies of the Gentiles the vices of a corrupted eternity, and poured the vices that were in us into Himself and into the fellowship of immortality. And so in John, after He had drunk, He said, It is finished: because He had drained every vice of human corruption. And because nothing remained to be done outwardly, He sent forth His spirit with a cry and a loud voice: grieving that He did not bear the sins of all.

7. And then the veil of the temple is rent: because from then on the people was divided into parts, and the honour of the veil is taken away, together with the guard of the protecting angel. The earth is moved: for it could not hold this dead man. The rocks are rent: for the Word of God and the might of eternal power had burst in, piercing everything that was then strong and mighty. And the graves are opened: for the bars of death were unlocked. And many bodies of the saints which slept arose: for, lighting up the darkness of death and illuminating the gloom of the underworld, He was taking the spoils of death itself in the resurrection of the saints who were then seen. And that the crime of Israel’s unbelief might be heaped up, the centurion and the guards, seeing this upheaval of all nature, confess Him the Son of God.

8. And as for Joseph’s asking Pilate to give up the body, and its being wrapped in a linen cloth, and laid in a new tomb hewn in the rock, and a stone rolled to the door of the tomb: although this is the order of the events, and He had to be buried who was to rise from the dead, yet each thing has not been set down without some significance in the events. Joseph bears the likeness of the apostles: and therefore, though he was not of the number of the twelve apostles, he is called a disciple of the Lord. He wrapped the body in a clean linen cloth. And indeed in this same linen sheet we find all kinds of living creatures let down from heaven to Peter. From which, perhaps, it is not idly understood that under the name of this linen the Church is buried with Christ: since then in it, as in the mixed company of the Church, a variety of clean and unclean animals was heaped together. The body of the Lord, then, is brought, as it were through the teaching of the apostles, into the empty and new resting-place of a hewn rock: that is, Christ is brought into the heart of Gentile hardness, hewn out by a kind of work of teaching — rough, that is, and new, and opened to no entering of the fear of God before. And because nothing besides Him ought to enter into our hearts, a stone is rolled to the door: so that, as no author of divine knowledge had before been brought into us, none may be brought in afterwards without Him. Then the fear that the body would be stolen, and the guarding and sealing of the tomb, are a witness to folly and unbelief: that they should wish to seal the tomb of Him at whose command they had seen a dead man raised from the tomb.

9. And the earthquake in the morning is the power of the resurrection on the Lord’s day: when, the sting of death being crushed and its darkness lit up, as the Lord of the heavenly Powers rises, the terror of the underworld is stirred. And the angel of the Lord, coming down from heaven, rolling back the stone, and sitting upon the tomb, is the token of the mercy of God the Father, who sends the ministry of the heavenly Powers to the Son as He rises from the dead. And so he is the first to make known the resurrection, so that the resurrection might be announced by a kind of service to the Father’s will. But at once the Lord meets the women, who had been encouraged by the angel, and greets them: so that, being about to tell the waiting disciples of the resurrection, they might speak by the mouth of Christ rather than of an angel. And as for the women first seeing the Lord, being greeted, falling at His knees, and being bidden tell the apostles: the order of the first cause is returned in reverse: so that, since death had begun from this sex, the glory, the sight, the fruit and the announcing of the resurrection should first be given back to it. And from the guards, who had seen all these things, the silence about Christ’s resurrection, and the lie of the theft, is bought with money: that is, by the honour and greed of the world — because its honour is in money — the glory of Christ is denied.

The ending added from Jerome

What follows is not Hilary’s. The Benedictine editors note that it was first printed in the Paris edition of 1605, apparently from a single manuscript, and that it stands at the foot of another in a second, later hand; it was “sewn on from Jerome’s commentary”, only its first words changed, by someone who wished to carry Hilary’s commentary to the last words of Matthew. It is given here because Migne prints it.

1. But the chief priests, who ought to have turned to repentance and sought Jesus risen, persevere in their wickedness; and the money that had been given for the uses of the temple they turn to buying a lie, as before the Jews had given thirty pieces of silver to the traitor. All, then, who misuse the offerings of the temple, and the things given for the uses of the Church, on other things by which they may satisfy their own will, are like the scribes and priests, who bought a lie and the Saviour’s blood.

2. Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them. After the resurrection Jesus is seen on a mountain, in Galilee, and is worshipped there, though some doubt; and their doubt increases our faith.

3. Then He is shown more plainly to Thomas, and points to His side wounded by the spear and His hands pierced by the nails. And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Power was given to Him who a little before had been crucified, who had been buried in the tomb, who had lain dead, who afterwards rose again. And power was given in heaven and in earth: so that He who before reigned in heaven might reign on earth through the faith of believers. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. First they teach all nations; then, when they have been taught, they dip them in water. For it cannot be that the body should receive the sacrament of baptism unless the soul has first received the truth of faith. And they are baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost: so that those whose Godhead is one may have one bestowal; and the name of the Trinity is one God.

4. Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. A most excellent order: He bade the apostles first teach all nations, then dip them in the sacrament of faith, and after faith and baptism teach them what was to be observed. And lest we should think that what was commanded was light and little, He added, all things whatsoever I have commanded you: so that those who have believed, who have been baptized in the Trinity, should do all things that have been commanded. And, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. He who promises that He will be with His disciples to the end of the world shows both that they will always live, and that He will never depart from those who believe. And He who promises His presence to the end of the world is not ignorant of that day on which He knows He will be with the apostles.