(22) While they abode in Galilee.--Better, as they went to and fro. The journeyings were apparently, like that to the coasts of Tyre and Sidon (Matthew 15:21), unconnected with the work of His ministry. Our Lord was still, as before, taking His disciples apart by themselves, and training them by fuller disclosures of His coming passion. "He would not that any man should know" of their presence (Mark 9:30), for at that crisis, as was shown only too plainly by what followed, their minds were in a state of feverish excitement, which needed to be controlled and calmed. St. Luke adds (Luke 9:44) the solemn words with which this second announcement of His death was impressed on their thoughts, "Let these sayings sink down into your ears" (literally, place these things). The substance of what they heard was the same as before, but its repetition gave it a new force, as showing that it was not a mere foreboding of disaster, passing away with the mood of sadness in which it might have seemed to originate.

Verses 22, 23. - Second official announcement of the Passion and Resurrection. (Mark 9:30-32; Luke 9:43-45.) Verse 22. - While they abode (ἀναστρεφομένων, went to and fro; conversantibus, Vulgate) in Galilee. After some weeks spent in the extreme north, Jesus and his disciples had returned secretly to Galilee (Mark 9:30), and were approaching the neighborhood of Capernaum. The privacy was connected with the special instruction which he was now giving to his disciples. The Son of man shall be betrayed... men. There is a reference to the preparation thus mercifully afforded to the twelve in the angel's address to the women at the sepulchre, "Remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee" (Luke 24:6). Jesus reiterates the prediction continually in order to familiarize his followers with the unwelcome, the incredible, reality. But the Messiah's Passion, death, and resurrection were ideas that they could not at once receive; so impossible they seemed in the very nature of things, so contrary to all their hopes and expectations. Shall be betrayed (μέλλει παραδιδοσθαι). Is ordained, in the counsels of God, to be betrayed. Tradendus est (Vulgate). Men. He had before named the chief priests (Matthew 16:21), afterwards he mentions the Gentiles (Matthew 20:19), as the agents in his death. So St. Peter, in his great sermon (Acts 2), says to the Jews, "Ye have taken him, and by wicked hands ['by the hand of lawless men,' Revised Version] have crucified and slain."

17:22,23 Christ perfectly knew all things that should befall him, yet undertook the work of our redemption, which strongly shows his love. What outward debasement and Divine glory was the life of the Redeemer! And all his humiliation ended in his exaltation. Let us learn to endure the cross, to despise riches and worldly honours, and to be content with his will.And while they abode in Galilee,.... Munster's Hebrew Gospel reads it "and while they were walking in Galilee", for they passed through it, when they departed from hence; see Mark 9:30 and as they were going to Capernaum, and so onward, to the coasts of Judea, in order to be at Jerusalem at the feast of the passover; where, and when, Christ was to suffer: and observing that the time of his death drew nigh, he inculcates it again to his disciples a third time, that they might be prepared for it, and not be discouraged and terrified by it;

Jesus said unto them, the son of man shall be betrayed into the hands of men: some copies read, "sinful men"; and so the angels report the words, in Luke 24:7 by whom may be meant the Gentiles, who, by the Jews, were reckoned very wicked men, and called sinners of the Gentiles. Now Christ intimates, that the son of man, meaning himself, should be betrayed by the Jews, into the hands of the Gentiles; than which, with the Jews, nothing was reckoned a fouler action, or a viler crime; their canons run thus (h):

"It is forbidden to betray an Israelite into the hands of the Gentiles, whether in his body or in his substance; and though he may be a wicked man, and a ringleader in sin, and though he may have oppressed and afflicted him; and everyone that betrays an Israelite into the hands of the Gentiles, whether in his body, or in his substance, has no part in the world to come.''

They forgot this rule, when they delivered Christ to Pontius Pilate. They go on to observe, that

"it is lawful to kill a betrayer in any place, even at this time, in which they do not judge capital crimes; and it is lawful to kill him before he betrays; but when he says, lo! I am about to betray such an one in his body, or in his substance, though his substance is small, he exposes himself to death; and they admonish him and say to him, do not betray: if he is obstinate, and says I will betray him, it is commanded to kill him; and he that is first to kill him, is a worthy man,''

(h) Maimon. Hilch. Chobel Umazzik, c. 8. sect. 9, 10.