<p>14:22 <i>And as they were eating- </i>Eating the Passover lamb. The bread and wine were accessories, side dishes, and the Lord takes these things and makes them so significant. He doesn't, e.g., take some lamb and divide it between the guests with the message that &quot;This represents My body&quot;. Even though the lamb was the more obvious symbol of Himself than the bread was. He wanted the last supper to be repeated by poor and ordinary people, who had bread but not lamb each week; He used common, readily available bread because that spoke more of His humanity, His ordinariness. He used what was to hand, just as we can for the breaking of bread.</p><p>Note that Judas was still present at this point. Jn. 13:18 makes the point concerning him that &quot;He that eats bread with Me has lifted up his heel against Me&quot;. If Judas broke bread with the Lord, this surely indicates that there is nothing intrinsically sinful in breaking bread with sinners. The quotation from Psalm 41 is interesting in the LXX: &quot;the man of my peace, on whom I set my hope&quot;. There was special potential in Judas, and the Lord on one hand had hopes for him. It has been argued that the giving of the &quot;sop&quot; to him was the sign of special love and fellowship. Jn. 13:20 goes on to say: &quot;He that receiveth whomsoever I shall send, receiveth me&quot;. The 'receiving' in this context is receiving at the Lord's table. To reject others from His table is to reject the Lord.</p><p><i>He took bread- </i>Taking bread, blessing and breaking it and giving to the disciples was exactly what the Lord did at the feeding of the 5000 and 4000 (Mt. 14:19; 15:36), and we are thereby justified in seeing what He did then as having a religious dimension, practicing thereby an extremely open table. To 'take bread' can mean although not always to actually eat bread. Consider: &quot;The disciples had forgotten to take bread,<i> neither</i>&nbsp;did they have with them more than one loaf&quot; (Mk. 8:14)- the force of &quot;neither...&quot; is that they had not eaten bread, rather than that they had forgotten to bring any with them. Philip complained that there would not be enough bread for each of the crowd to 'take' even a little, i.e. to eat just a little (Jn. 6:7). So it could be that the Lord took and ate bread, blessed it, and then asked the disciples to eat it. This sequence of events would then make the eating of bread a more conscious doing of what Jesus had done. He took the bread, and then He asks them to take the bread (&quot;Take, eat&quot;). He is inviting them to mimic Him.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p><i>And when he had blessed it- </i>It was usual to bless a meal, especially the Passover lamb, but here the Lord offers a special prayer for the accessory to the meal, the side dish of bread. He wanted to highlight the significance of the most ordinary thing on the table and show that it represented Him.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p><i>He broke it and gave it to them, and said: Take, eat</i>- The use of&nbsp;<i>didomi</i>&nbsp;&quot;gave&quot; is set in the context of all the talk about how the Lord would be&nbsp;<i>para-didomi</i>, betrayed / handed / given over to the Jews. The idea is that what happened was ultimately the Lord's choice. He gave Himself, to God and to His people, rather than being given over to death against His will. Lk. 22:29 says that the Lord then used the word&nbsp;<i>didomi</i>&nbsp;again: &quot;This is My body, which is given for you&quot;. The giving of the bread to them was symbolic of how He would give His body to crucifixion, and how the 'giving over' of Jesus by Judas was not something outside of the Lord's control. It was not a misfortune which changed plans, rather was it precisely in line with the Lord's own giving of His body.</p><p><i>This is my body-&nbsp;</i>He said &quot;This is My body which is given for you&quot; (Lk. 22:29), and also &quot;This is My body which is broken for you&quot; (1 Cor. 11:24). He surely said both, repeating the words as the disciples ate the bread. He chose bread and not lamb to represent His body because He wished to emphasize His ordinariness and thereby His presence in the human, daily things of life. To give ones&rsquo; body is a very intimate statement, almost to the point of being sexual. This is the sober intensity and extent to which the Lord gave Himself for us.</p><p>When Jesus said &ldquo;this is My body&rdquo; we are to understand that &lsquo;this&nbsp;<i>represents</i>, this is a symbol of my body&rsquo;. Jesus was clearly referring to what was usually said at the Passover: &ldquo;This is the bread&nbsp;of affliction which our forefathers ate in the land of Egypt&rdquo;. It wasn&rsquo;t of course literally the same bread. &ldquo;This is&rdquo; clearly means &lsquo;this represents&rsquo; in Zech. 5:3,8; Mt. 13:19-23,38; 1 Cor. 11:25; 12:27. In some Bible versions, when we read the word &lsquo;means&rsquo;, it is simply a translation of the verb &lsquo;to be&rsquo; (Mt. 9:13; 12:7; Lk. 15:26; Acts 2:12). &lsquo;This is&rsquo; should be read as &lsquo;this means / this represents&rsquo;. The deftness of the way He broke that bread apart and held the cup comes out here in Mt. 26:26. He knew what that breaking of bread was going to mean.</p>