Whom he is teaching

4. And hence we are naturally led to observe, whom it is that he is here teaching? Not the apostles alone; if so, he had no need to have gone up into the mountain. A room in the house of Matthew, or any of his disciples, would have contained the twelve. Nor does it in any wise appear, that the disciples who came unto him were the twelve only. Οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ, without any force put upon the expression, may be understood, of all who desired to learn of him. But to put this out of all question, to make it undeniably plain that where it is said, He opened his mouth and taught them, the word them includes all the multitudes, who went up with him into the mountain, we need only observe the concluding verses of the seventh chapter. And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the multitudes, οἱ ὄχλοι, were astonished at his doctrine (or teaching.) For he taught them (the multitudes) as one having authority, and not as the Scribes.

Nor was it only those multitudes who were with him on the mount, to whom he now taught the way of salvation: but all the children of men, the whole race of mankind, the children that were yet unborn: all the generations to come even to the end of the world, who should ever hear the words of this life.