They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.
All Commentaries on Mark 16:18 Go To Mark 16
Jerome
AD 420
But He appeared when allthe eleven were together, that all might be witnesses, and relate to all men what they had seen and heard in common. It goes on: “And upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they believed not them who had seen Him after His Resurrection. "But there were some there who did not believe; when these then were sitting at meat, (as Mark says,) and were still speaking, (as Luke relates,) “The Lord stood in the midst of them, and saithunto them, Peace be unto you;” say. The rebuke therefore which Mark here mentions must have been amongst those words, which Luke and John say, that the Lord at that time spoke to the disciples. But another question is raised, how Mark says that He appeared when the eleven sat at meat, if the time was the first part of the night on the Lord's day, when John plainly says that Thomas was not with them, who, we believe, had gone out, before the Lord came in to them, after those two had returned from the village, and spoken with the eleven, as we find in Luke’s Gospel. But Lukein his relation leaves room for supposing that Thomas went out first, while they spoke these things, and that the Lord entered afterwards; Mark however from his saying, “for the last time He appeared to the eleven as they sat at meat,” forces us to believe that he was there, unless indeed, though one of them was absent, he chose to call them, the eleven, because the company of the Apostles was then called by this number, before Matthias was chosen into the place of Judas. Or if this be a harsh way of understanding it, let us understand that it means that after many appearances, He shewedHimself for the last time, that is, on the fortieth day, to the Apostles, as they sat at meat, and that since He was about to ascend from them, He rather wished on that day to reprove them for not having believed those who had seen Him risen before seeing Him themselves, because after His ascension even the Gentiles on their preaching were to believe a Gospel, which they had not seen.
But He rebukes their wantof faith, that faith might take its place; He rebukes the hardness of their stony heart, that the fleshy heart, full of love, might take its place.
