Lord Himself, as even His words to Peter seem to imply: 'Get thee behind Me; thou art a
stumbling -block unto me.' For - as we have said - was not the remonstrance of the
disciple in measure a re-enactment of the great initial Temptation by Satan after the
forty days' fast in the wilderness? And, in view of all this, and of what immediately
afterwards followed, we venture to say, it was fitting that an interval of 'six' days should
intervene, or, as St. Luke puts it, including the day of Peter's confession and the night of
Christ's Transfiguration, 'about eight days.' The Chronicle of these days is significantly
left blank in the Gospels, but we cannot doubt, that it was filled up with thoughts and
teaching concerning that Decease, leading up to the revelation on the Mount of
Transfiguration.
There are other blanks in the narrative besides that just referred to. We shall try to fill
them up, as best we can. Perhaps it was the Sabbath when Peter's great confession
was made; and the 'six days' of St. Matthew and St. Mark become the 'abo ut eight days'
of St. Luke, when we reckon from that Sabbath to the close of another, and suppose
that at even the Saviour ascended the Mount of Transfiguration with the three Apostles:
Peter, James, and John. There can scarcely be a reasonable doubt that Christ and His
disciples had not left the neighborhood of Cęsarea,1 and hence, that 'the mountain'
must have been one of the slopes of gigantic, snowy Hermon. In that quiet semi -Gentile
retreat of Cęsarea Philippi could He best teach them, and they best le arn, without
interruption or temptation from Pharisees and Scribes, that terrible mystery of His
Suffering. And on that gigantic mountain barrier which divided Jewish and Gentile lands,
and while surveying, as Moses of old, the land to be occupied in all i ts extent, amidst
the solemn solitude and majestic grandeur of Hermon, did it seem most fitting that, both
by anticipatory fact and declamatory word, the Divine attestation should be given to the
proclamation that He was the Messiah, and to this also, that, in a world that is in the
power of sin and Satan, God's Elect must suffer, in order that, by ransoming, He may
conquer it to God. But what a background, here, for the Transfiguration; what
surroundings for the Vision, what echoes for the Voice from heave n!
1. According to an old tradition, Christ had left Cęsarea Philippi, and the scene of the
Transfiguration was Mount Tabor. But (1) there is no notice of His departure, such as in
generally made by St. Mark; (2) on the contrary, it is mentioned by St. Mark as after the
Transfiguration (ix. 30); (3) Mount Tabor was at that time crowned by a fortified city,
which would render it unsuitable for the scene of the Transfiguration.
It was evening,2 and, as we have suggested, the evening after the Sabbath, when the
Master and those three of His disciples, who were most closely linked to Him in heart
and thought, climbed the path that led up to one of the heights of Hermon. In all the
most solemn transactions of earth's history, there has been this selection and
separation of the few to witness God's great doings. Alone with his son, as the destined
sacrifice, did Abraham climb Moriah; alone did Moses behold, amid the awful loneliness
of the wilderness, the burning bush, and alone on Sinai's height did he commune with
God; alone was Elijah at Horeb, and with no other companion to view it than Elisha did
he ascend into heaven. But Jesus, the Saviour of His people, could not be quite alone,
save in those innermost transactions of His soul: in the great contest of His first
Temptation, and in the solitary communings of His heart with God. These are mysteries