You Will Not Have Gone through All the Towns of Israel
You Will Not Have Gone through All the Towns of Israel
`When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next; for truly, I say to you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel, before the Son of man comes' (Matt. 10:23)
This saying, found in Matthew's Gospel only, comes at the end of Jesus's commission to the twelve apostles when he sent them out two by two. It was brought to public attention early in the twentieth century when the great Albert Schweitzer made it the foundation of his interpretation of the ministry of Jesus. Jesus, he believed, expected the kingdom of God to dawn with power and glory at harvest time that year, before the twelve had completed their mission. `He tells them in plain words ... that He does not expect to see them back in the present age." Jesus would be supernaturally revealed as the Son of man, in a manner involving his own transformation, as well as the transformation of his followers, into a state of being suited to the conditions of the resurrection age. But the new age did not come in; the twelve returned from their mission. Jesus then tried to force its arrival. He `lays hold of the wheel of the world to set it moving on that last revolution which is to bring all ordinary history to a close. It refuses to turn, and He throws Himself upon it. Then it does turn; and crushes Him.'2 Yet in the hour of his failure he released a liberating power in the world which is beyond description.
The teaching of the Sermon on the Mount and related passages in the Gospels was understood by Dr. Schweitzer to be an `interim ethic' to guide the lives of Jesus's disciples in the short interval before the manifestation of the Son of man in power and glory. When, on Dr. Schweitzer's reading of the evidence, the hope of that manifestation was disappointed, what happened to the interim ethic? Logically, it should have been forgotten when its basis was removed. Actually, the interim ethic survived in its own right, as is magnificently evident from Dr. Schweitzer's own career. It was the driving force behind his life of service to others in West Africa. What, on his understanding, was but the prologue to the expected drama `has become the whole drama ... the ministry of Jesus is not a prelude to the Kingdom of God: it is the Kingdom of God.'3
The commission to the twelve, as given in Matthew 10:5-23, has two parts, each with its own perspective. The first part (verses 5-15) deals with the immediate situation, within the context of Jesus's own Galilean ministry. The second part (verses 16-23) envisages a later period, when the apostles will be engaged in a wider ministry - the kind of ministry in which in fact they were engaged in the period following the resurrection of Jesus and the coming of the Spirit. Think of the warning: `Beware of men; for they will deliver you up to councils, and flog you in their synagogues, and you will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake, to bear testimony before them and the Gentiles' (Matt. 10:17-18). This reference to the Gentiles presents a contrast with the reference to them in verse 5, where they are excluded from the scope of the earlier preaching tour. The warning just quoted has a close parallel in Mark 13:9-10, where the situation is that leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. And in both places the warning is followed by an assurance that, when the disciples are put on trial and required to bear witness to their faith, the Holy Spirit will put the right words into their mouths. It is this second part of the commission in Matthew 10 that is rounded off with the saying of verse 23: `You will not have gone through all the towns of Israel, before the Son of man comes.'
What, then, does the saying mean in this context? It means, simply, that the evangelisation of Israel will not be completed before the end of the present age, which comes with the advent of the Son of man. The parallel passage in Mark has a similar statement, which however takes more explicit account of Gentile as well as Jewish evangelisation: before the end-time, `the gospel must first be preached to all the nations' (Mark 13: 10). (This statement is reproduced in slightly amplified form in Matthew 24:14: `This gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, as a testimony to all the nations; and then the end will come'.) Paul, from his own perspective, expresses much the same hope when he foresees the salvation of `all Israel', the sequel to the ingathering of the full tale of Gentile believers, being consummated at the time when `the Deliverer will come from Zion' (Rom. 11:25-27).
The wording of Matthew 10:23 is earlier in its reference than that of the other passages just mentioned: here witness-bearing to the Gentiles receives a brief mention, but all the emphasis lies on the mission to the Jews. This mission, as we know from Galatians 2:6-9, was taken seriously by the leaders of the Jerusalem Church in the early apostolic age, and they carried it out with some sense of urgency. For anything they knew to the contrary, the Son of man might come within their own generation. We must not allow our understanding of their perspective to be influenced by our own very different perspective. We know that their mission, in the form in which they pursued it, was brought to an end by the Judaean rebellion against Rome in A.D. 66, but it would be unwise to say that that, with the fall of Jerusalem four years later, was the coming of the Son of man of which Jesus spoke.