Commentaries:
Robertson's Word Pictures (NT)
Cover his face (perikaluptein autou to proswpon). Put a veil around his face. Not in Matthew, but in Luke 22:64 where Revised Version translates perikaluyantev by "blind-folded." All three Gospels give the jeering demand of the Sanhedrin: "Prophesy" (profhteuson), meaning, as Matthew and Luke add, thereby telling who struck him while he was blindfolded. Mark adds "the officers" (same as in verse Mark 14:54) of the Sanhedrin, Roman lictors or sergeants-at-arms who had arrested Jesus in Gethsemane and who still held Jesus (oi sunexontev auton, Luke 22:63). Matthew 26:67 alludes to their treatment of Jesus without clearly indicating who they were.
With blows of their hands (rapismasin). The verb rapizw in Matthew 26:67 originally meant to smite with a rod. In late writers it comes to mean to slap the face with the palm of the hands. The same thing is true of the substantive rapisma used here. A papyrus of the sixth century A.D. uses it in the sense of a scar on the face as the result of a blow. It is in the instrumental case here. "They caught him with blows," Swete suggests for the unusual elabon in this sense. "With rods" is, of course, possible as the lictors carried rods. At any rate it was a gross indignity.
Other commentary entries containing this verse:
Luke 1:2
Luke 22:56
Luke 22:64
John 18:3
John 18:22
John 18:28
John 19:1
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