[25] This was a common opinion among the Fathers of the Church.
[27] Stanley's "Sinai and Palestine," p. 188-191. A work of rare interest, which condenses in one volume the literature of the Holy Land.
[29] Bethphage, _lit._ "the house of figs."
[31] "If the miracles generally have a symbolical import, we have in this case one that is _entirely_ symbolical."--NEANDER.
[32] "Trench on the Miracles," p. 444. See a full exposition of the design and import of this miracle in this exhaustive and admirable dissertation.
[33] "The fig-tree, rich in foliage, but destitute of fruit, represents the Jewish people, so abundant in outward shows of piety, but destitute of its reality. Their vital sap was squandered upon leaves. And as the fruitless tree, failing to realise the aim of its being, was destroyed, so the theocratic nation, for the same reason, was to be overtaken, after long forbearance, by the judgments of God, and shut out from His kingdom."--NEANDER.
[35] "In that of the devils in the swine there was no punishment, but only a permitting of the thing."--See "Stier's Words of the Lord Jesus," vol. iii. p. 100.
[38] "On the wild uplands," says Mr Stanley, "which immediately overhangs the village, He finally withdrew from the eyes of His disciples, in a seclusion which, perhaps, could nowhere else be found so near the stir of a mighty city, the long ridge of Olivet screening those hills, and those hills the village beneath them, from all sight or sound of the city behind; the view opening only on the wide waste of desert rocks, and ever-descending valleys, into the depths of the distant Jordan and its mysterious lake. At this point the last interview took place. He led them out as far as to Bethany. The appropriateness of the whole scene presents a singular contrast to the inappropriateness of that fixed by a later fancy, 'Seeking for a sign' on the broad top of the mountain, out of sight of Bethany, and in full sight of Jerusalem, and thus an equal contradiction to the letter and the spirit of the Gospel narrative."--P. 192.
The same writer, in another place (p. 450), says, "Even if the evangelist had been less explicit in stating that He led them out 'as far as to Bethany,' the secluded hills (that especially to which Tobler assigns the name of Djebel Sajach) which overhang that village on the eastern slope of Olivet, are evidently as appropriate to the whole tenor of the narrative, as the startling, the almost offensive publicity of the traditional spot, in the full view of the whole city of Jerusalem, is wholly inappropriate, and (in the absence, as it now appears, of even traditional support) wholly untenable."