John Lightfoot on Luke 22:26

[As the younger.] The vulgar and interlinear, sicut junior. We, as the younger, very well. For, as Beza hath it upon the place, it is properly to be understood of age. I ask therefore,

I. Whether Peter was not the oldest of the whole company? What reason can any have to deny this? It was necessary that some one of them should be the first both in number and order; and it was as fit and equal that the oldest amongst them should be reckoned the first. And who will you say was older than Peter? Hence was it that he had the first place in the catalogue of the apostles, because he was the oldest. For this reason he sat at table in the uppermost place next our Lord: for this reason did our Saviour so often direct his discourse so immediately to him: and for this reason were his answers to Christ taken in the name of all the rest, viz., because the oldest. Which brings to mind the interpreter of the doctor in the school of the Rabbins, who was the interlocutor between the master and the disciples, and for that reason the chief in the school, but without any primacy. Whereas therefore St. Peter, after our Saviour's ascension into heaven, was (to speak vulgarly) the prolocutor in that sacred college, what more probable reason can be offered why he was so, than this seniority? Were not others as capable as speaking as he? had they not equal authority, zeal, faith, knowledge with him, &c.? but he indeed was the eldest man.

II. I cannot therefore but suspect from the proper signification of the word younger, (to which the greater, respecting age, does answer) that some one amongst them had been challenging some privilege and primacy to himself upon the account of seniority: and unless any can make it out that there was somebody older than Peter, pardon me, if I think that he was the chief in this contention, and that it was chiefly moved betwixt himself and the two sons of Zebedee. For it seems unlikely that the other nine would have contended for the primacy with Peter, James, and John; whom Christ had so peculiarly distinguished in their presence with marks of his favour. So that the struggle seems to be especially between these three and Peter the beginner of the strife: which appears, partly in that our Saviour rebukes him by name, and partly in that he could not forget without some grudge, that request of the two brothers, "Lord, let us sit one on thy right hand the other on thy left."