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"Then they have left marks of their handiwork behind them," said a horseman, pointing in the direction in which lay what had been the camp of Nicanor, now suddenly visible to the Syrians from the summit of the hill. "See you yon smoke arising from smouldering heaps? There has been a battle at Emmaus. The lion has broken through the toils. Maccabeus has not been sleeping through the night."
Upon this Lysias chose Ptolemy, the son of Dorymenes, and Nicanor, and Gorgias, very potent men among the king's friends, and delivered to them forty thousand foot soldiers, and seven thousand horsemen, and sent them against Judea, who came as far as the city Emmaus, and pitched their camp in the plain country.
He went out into Emmaus and engaging the unemployed of the thriftless town sent them broadcast into the hills in search of a pagan who was young, yet gray at the temples. Some of them went and they were chiefly boys who were not old enough to know that these strangers who come in pagan guise to Emmaus are full of guile. But none returned to him.
Judas, called Maccabeus, became the leader, and from him the whole family was named the Maccabees. He began war against the Syrians and apostate Jews. The Syrians, numbering fifty thousand, took up a position at Emmaus, while the Maccabees encamped at Mizpah. Although greatly outnumbered, they were victorious, as they were in another engagement with sixty thousand Syrians at Hebron.
He accuses them of "having pronounced generally, and without difference, all untruths unlawful," forgetful of the Egyptian midwives, and Rahab, and Solomon, and even of Him "who, the more to touch the hearts of the disciples with a holy dalliance, made as though he would have passed Emmaus."
John gives us the lovely account of our Lord's conversation with Mary Magdalene, Luke gives us in full detail the story of the interview with the two travellers on the road to Emmaus.
He was deeply impressed by the range of portraits and subject-pictures at the Hermitage Gallery, many of which, by the art of Mr. Mortimer Menpes, have been brought to the fireside of the untravelled; but the Christ at Emmaus revealed to him the heart of Rembrandt, and showed him, once and for all, to what heights a painter may attain when intense feeling is allied with superb craftsmanship.
The same explanation applies here which is required in reference to Christ's action to the two disciples at Emmaus: 'He made as though He would have gone further. In like manner, when He came to them on the water, He appeared as though He 'would have passed by. In all three cases the principle is the same. God desires to go, if we do not desire Him to stay. He will go, unless we keep Him.
Dear brethren, there are two kinds of meeting God: 'Thou meetest him that rejoiceth and worketh righteousness, and that is blessed, as when Christ met the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. There is another kind of meeting with God. 'Who, making war, sitteth not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand?
And, behold, two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs. And they talked together of all these things which had happened. And it came to pass that, while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were holden that they should not know him.
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