Consider, saith he, the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; and yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, &c.
Matthew 6:28.
So therefore the grass of the field was now in flower, and by consequence the month of March with the Passover was past.
Let us see therefore how the rest of the feasts follow in order in Matthew’s Gospel: for he was an eye-witness of what he relates, and so tells all things in due order of time, which Mark and Luke do not.
Some time after the sermon in the mount, when the time came that he should be received, that is, when the time of a feast came that he should be received by the Jews, he set his face to go to Jerusalem: and as he went with his disciples in the way, when the Samaritans in his passage through Samaria had denied him lodgings, and a certain Scribe said unto him, Master, I will follow thee wherever thou goest, Jesus said unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head, Matthew 8:19; Luke 9:51, 57.
The Scribe told Christ he would bear him company in his journey, and Christ replied that he wanted a lodging. Now this feast I take to be the feast of Tabernacles, because soon after I find Christ and his Apostles on the sea of Tiberias in a storm so great, that the ship was covered with water and in danger of sinking, till Christ rebuked the winds and the sea, Matthew 8:23. For this storm shows that winter was now come on.
After this Christ did many miracles, and went about all the cities and villages of Galilee, teaching in their Synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness, and every disease among the people, Matthew 9; he then sent forth the twelve to do the like, Matthew 10; and at length when he had received a message from John, and answered it, he said to the multitudes, From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence; and upbraided the cities, Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, wherein most of his mighty works were done, because they repented not, Matthew 11. Which several passages show, that from the imprisonment of John till now there had been a considerable length of time: the winter was now past, and the next Passover was at hand; for immediately after this, Matthew, in chap. 12:subjoins, that Jesus went on the sabbath-day through’ the corn, and his disciples were an hungered, and began to pluck the ears of corn and to eat, — rubbing them, saith Luke, in their hands: the corn therefore was not only in the ear, but ripe; and consequently the Passover, in which the first-fruits were always offered before the harvest, was now come or past. Luke calls this sabbath, the second prime sabbath, that is, the second of the two great feasts of the Passover. As we call Easter day high Easter, and its octave low Easter or Lowsunday: so Luke calls the feast on the seventh day of the unleavened bread, the second of the two prime sabbaths.
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