Mark 12:26

in the book of Moses They had brought forward the name of Mosesto perplex Him, He now appeals to the same great name in order to confute them. He does not reprove them for attaching a higher importance to the Pentateuch than to the Prophets, but for not tracing the Divine Mind on the important subject of the Resurrection even there.

in the bush i. e. in the section of the Book of Exodus (Mark 3:6) called "the Bush." Similarly "the lament of David aver Saul and Jonathan" in 2 Samuel 1:17-27 was called "the Bow;" and Ezekiel 1:15-28 "the Chariot." Compare also Romans 11:2; "in Elias" = the section concerning Elias. In the Koran the Chapter s are named after the matter they contain, and so also the Homeric poems. Wyclif alone of our English translators gives the right meaning, "Han ye not rad in the book of Moyses on the bousche, how God seide to him."

God spake unto him, saying On that momentous occasion, which marked an epoch in the national history, God had revealed Himself to Moses as a personal God, by the august and touching title of "the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob," and therefore as bearing a personal relationto these patriarchs, upon whom He had set His seal of Circumcision, and so admitted them into covenant union with Himself. How unworthy would such a title be, if He, the Eternal and Unchangeable, had revealed Himself only as the God of men who had long since crumbled to dust and passed away into annihilation! How meaningless such a Name, if the souls of men at death perished with the body, "as the cloud faileth and passeth away"! Was it possible to believe He would have deigned to call Himself the God "of dust and ashes"?