Matthew 11:25-27

Jesus worshipping (Luke 10:21-22). It is usual to call this golden utterance a prayer, but it is at once prayer, praise, and self-communing in a devout spirit. The occasion is unknown. Matthew gives it in close connection with the complaint against the cities (ἐν ἐκείνῳ τῷ καιρῷ), but Luke sets it in still closer connection (ἐν αὐτῇ τῇ ὥρᾳ) with the return of the Seventy. According to some modern critics, it had no occasion at all in the life of our Lord, but is simply a composition of Luke's, and borrowed from him by the author of Matthew: a hymn in which the Pauline mission to the heathen as the victory of Christ over Satan's dominion in the world is celebrated, and given in connection with the imaginary mission of the Seventy (vide Pfleiderer, Urchristenthum, p. 445). But Luke's preface justifies the belief that he had here, as throughout, a tradition oral or written to go on, and the probability is that it was taken both by him and by Matthew from a common document. Wendt (L. J., pp. 90, 91) gives it as an extract from the book of Logia, and supposes that it followed a report of the return of the disciples (the Twelve) from their mission.