p. 20 | Smote Their Breasts

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 25, 1867

Smote Their Breasts.

Luke xxiii, 48. And all the people that came together to that sight, beholding the things which were done, smote their breasts, and returned.

AMONG the Orientals, to smite the breast is a sign of penitence. Hence we read that the people who returned from Calvary after the crucifixion of our Lord, “smote their breasts.” The number of these witnesses of Christ’s death was large; probably not less than three millions of people were gathered at that time in the Jewish capital; and the testimony of Pilate to the innocence of Jesus, the confession of the penitent thief upon the cross, the strange cry of the Divine Sufferer there, the convulsion of nature, the rent veil of the temple, and the three hours’ darkness, moved the beholders deeply, awakened remorse as sharers in the death of the Holy One, and from the hills and plains around Calvary the dense throng of witnesses, collected from all parts of Palestine, returned to their places of abode—“smiting their breasts.” No wonder that they did so. It would have been strange had it been otherwise. This act, and what it betokened, were in harmony with the amazing scene. With reason might those who had rejected the Son of David, and crucified their immaculate Messiah, have been thus mournfully impressed.