Now when he came near to the gate of the city, behold, there was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow: and many people of the city were with her.
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Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
Now when he came nigh to the gate of the city, behold, there was a dead man carried out, &c. "Behold," i.e. by accident, humanly speaking, Christ met the bier; but the meeting was foreseen and fore-ordained of Christ, that He might raise the dead to life. He willed, however, that it should seem accidental and not designed, in order that it might be the more esteemed; for as the proverb runs, "that is of little value which is voluntarily offered for sale."
"There was a dead man carried" without the city. Because, for sanitary and other reasons, the Jews had their burial places without the walls.
So the sepulchre of Joseph of Arimatha, in which the body of Christ lay, was without Jerusalem. So also the valley of Jehoshaphat, the scene of the judgment to come and the general resurrection, is the common burial-place of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, with the exception of the kings, for whom David had provided a sepulchre in Zion1Kings ii10. For similar reasons the Romans , who were forbidden by the twelve tables to bury their dead within the city, used the Campus Martius as a place of sepulture, until Theodoric revoked the law; and there is abundant evidence to show that the Christians also, in the time of the persecution, used the crypts which they had excavated without the city for purposes of interment, but afterward, when peace was given to the Christians, they consecrated burial places within the walls near the temples in which they were wont to worship:
1. That the remembrance of death might be continually presented to the faithful as an incentive to a holy life. Like as the Spartans were commanded by Lycurgus to bury their dead within the city, in order to teach their young men that death was to be honoured and, not to be feared.
2. That by their consecration they might be secure against the wiles of the devils, who are wont to dwell in the tombs and possess the bodies of those departed. S. Luke 8:27.
3. And also that the faithful when on their way to worship might be led to pray that those who lay buried around might be released from purgatory, and counted worthy of a glorious resurrection at the last day, and also that they might be partakers in the holy sacrifices offered in the temples and might benefit by the merits and by the prayers of those Saints who either lie buried, or are in some way especially commemorated therein. Thus Constantine the Great wished to be buried in the porch of the Church of the Holy Apostles at Constantinople, and Theodosius in the Church of S. Peter at Rome. And Song of Solomon , as most of the churches at Rome show the Christians built altars over the tombs of the martyrs, for reasons which I have given in my comments on the text, "I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain." Revelation 7:9.
The only Song of Solomon , לן×ןדו××—Ì€×¢, i.e. the only child of his mother, and therefore the sole object of her love. For he was to her her hope and her future, the support of her declining years, and the light of her eyes. Hence the mother"s grief was of the bitterest kind, like to that which the prophets tell of: "They shall mourn for him as one mourneth for his only Song of Solomon ," Zechariah 12:10. And again, "0 daughter of my people, gird thee with sackcloth and wallow thyself in ashes: make thee mourning as for an only Song of Solomon , most bitter lamentation." Jeremiah 6:26.
And much people of the city was with her. This widow seems to have been a woman highly esteemed by her fellow-citizens, "out of respect for whom they joined in the funeral procession." S. Ambrose. Furthermore, there is generally at the gate of a city a great crowd of people going in and coming out, particularly as formerly the gate was not only the market-place, but also the seat of judgment.
Hence God willed that the miracle should be thus publicly wrought, that many being witnesses of it, many might be led to give praise to Him. Bede.
