“Et respondens Jesus dicebat, docens in templo : Quomodo dicunt scribæ Christum filium esse David ?”
“And Jesus answered and said, while he taught in the temple, How say the scribes that Christ is the Son of David?”
“While Jesus was teaching in the temple courts, He asked, “How can the scribes say that the Christ is the Son of David?”
“Jesus responded, as he taught in the temple, “How is it that the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David?”
“And Jesus answered and said, as he taught in the temple, How say the scribes that the Christ is the son of David?”
According to St. Matthew it was principally to the Pharisees that Christ proposed this question. See Matthew 22, 41.
1. They told the people that the Messiah was to be the Son of David (v. 35), and they were in the right; he was not only to descend from his loins, but to fill his throne (Luke 1 32); The Lord shall give him the throne of his father David. The scripture said it often, but the people took it as what the scribes said; whereas the truths of God should rather be quoted from our Bibles than from our ministers, for there is the original of them. Dulcius ex ipso fonte bibuntur aquæ—The waters are sweetest when drawn immediately from their source.
Verses 35-40 When we attend to what the Scriptures declare, as to the person and offices of Christ, we shall be led to confess him as our Lord and God; to obey him as our exalted Redeemer. If the common people hear these things gladly, while the learned and distinguished oppose, the former are happy, and the latter to be pitied. And as sin, disguised with a show of piety, is double iniquity, so its doom will be doubly heavy.