The Dramatic Interest of the Act
Monday Club
John 13:18-30
I speak not of you all: I know whom I have chosen: but that the scripture may be fulfilled…


There is perhaps a reason why this giving of a sop has an effect on our minds not unlike the knocking on the gate in "Macbeth," which succeeds the murder of Duncan. No words are spoken in either case. In this instance the effect is more startling, because the sign precedes rather than follows the crime. It produces a feeling of peculiar awfulness and solemnity. It is the casting of a die. We are made to feel, as De Quincey says of the device of the great poet, "that the human and Divine nature of love and mercy, spread through the hearts of all creatures, and seldom utterly withdrawn from man, is entirely gone, and that this fiendish nature has taken its place. By this sign and token we know that Satan has entered. It was not the Lord rejecting Judas, but Judas rejecting the Lord.

(Monday Club.)



Parallel Verses
KJV: I speak not of you all: I know whom I have chosen: but that the scripture may be fulfilled, He that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me.

WEB: I don't speak concerning all of you. I know whom I have chosen. But that the Scripture may be fulfilled, 'He who eats bread with me has lifted up his heel against me.'




The Conspicuousness of Apostates
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