When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, “Lord, do You want us to call down fire from heaven to consume them?”
54. And when His disciples James and John saw it. The country itself had perhaps suggested to them the desire of thundering immediately against the ungodly; for it was there that Elijah had formerly destroyed, by a fire from heaven, the king’s soldiers who had been sent to apprehend him, (2 Kings 1:10.) It therefore occurred to them that the Samaritans, who so basely rejected...
This passage of story we have not in any other of the evangelists, and it seems to come in here for the sake of its affinity with that next before, for in this also Christ rebuked his disciples, because they envied for his sake.
Commenting on Luke 9:51-56
And it came to pass, as they went in the way,.... From one village of the Samaritans, to the other; though if this is the same history related in Mat 8:19 it was as Christ went from Capernaum to the sea side, in order to go to the other side of it; and must be inserted here, without regard to the order of time: a...