The response of the armed crowd to the words of Jesus should have indeed been them falling to the ground, but they should have fallen face first in humble prostration to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Instead, they fight His rightful position over them to the last and fall backward.

What caused these men to fall? Was it awe or terror or a recognition of the divine much as Isaiah had in (Isa 6:5)? Maclaren speculates that “here the one stray beam of manifest divinity that shot through the crevice, as it were, for an instant, was enough to prostrate with a strange awe even those rude and insensitive men. When He had said ‘I am He,’ there was something that made them feel, ‘This is One before whom violence cowers abashed, and in whose presence impurity has to hide its face.’” Whatever they saw or felt was a small indication of the power of Jesus and a glimpse of what He could have done to His enemies if He had not desired to follow the will of the Father and embrace His sufferings for mankind.

Isaiah 6:5  “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.”

Gazing upon this scripture Augustine wonders, “What will he do when he shall come to judge, seeing he did this when he came to be judged?” (2 Thess 2:8, Rev 19:21) An interesting thought indeed!

2 Thessalonians 2:8  And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendour of his coming.

Revelation 19:21  The rest of them were killed with the sword that came out of the mouth of the rider on the horse, and all the birds gorged themselves on their flesh.