10:23 Unfulfilled Expectation?
In the freedom of God, he chose to deal with Israel after its exile under his attribute of grace and compassion. God is not like any human being whose emotions swing back and forth arbitrarily and whose wrath might suddenly turn vindictive rather than be equitable. He is God, not a man. He is the Holy One and therefore is set apart from all that is fallible, unpredictable, vacillating and arbitrary. It is his holiness that determines his difference from humans, especially in his qualities of thinking and in his moral behavior.
The passage sets up a contrast between Ephraim’s stubborn, selfish rebellion and Yahweh’s sovereign holiness and grace. Since God had exercised the necessary judgment for Israel’s sin, he chose now to exercise his compassion and protection and to spare the people of Israel rather than obliterating them. Even though they deserved the fate of Admah and Zeboiim, he would bring them back home from captivity, just as he had promised the patriarchs in times past. God’s ways are above the ways of Israel.
Grace is able to overcome the shameful effects of sin. God would rescue the Israelites in spite of themselves.
The threats of Deuteronomy 4 and 30, with their parallels in Leviticus 26, were always two-sided. Judgment must come when sin has dominated, but since the covenant was a unilateral, one-sided agreement, in which only God obligated himself to fulfill its terms while humans were not asked to take on a similar obligation, God can restore the erring party back into the agreement. Since the sin of those who had been disobedient had been dealt with, God could now deal in mercy with the new generation.
This is one of the biblical passages that most clearly reveal the character and motives of God. God’s heart was stirred within him (Hos 11:8; 12:6) when he thought of how lonely, desperate and needy his people were in their exiled state. Thus he would reverse his judgment for his own name’s sake.
This revelation makes this passage one of the great texts on the mercy, love and compassion of our Lord. Where sin abounded, God’s grace abounded much more vigorously, overcoming even the unattractiveness and unworthiness of the recipients of that grace.
12:3–4 With Whom Did Jacob Wrestle?
See comment on genesis 32:23–32.
13:14 Is Death Conquered?
Either this text is one of the greatest notes of triumph over death in the Old Testament,
or it surrenders the helpless to all the weapons of death. Which is true: the first view with its long history of translations going all the way back to the Greek Septuagint, or the second view, which shows up in such modern translations as the RSV [RSV
Revised Standard Version] (“Shall I redeem them from Death? O Death, where are your plagues?”), NEB [NEB New English Bible] (“Shall I ransom him from death? Oh, for your plagues, O death!”) and TEV [TEV Today’s English Verision] (“Bring on your plagues, death!”)?
The first part of this verse has no sign of an interrogative, and therefore I understand it as one of the most beautiful gospel promises in the Old Testament. The Lord, who spoke in Hosea 13:4–11, is the speaker, not Hosea. Our Lord affirms that he will ransom and redeem Israel from the grip of death and the grave. To ransom means to buy the freedom of a person by paying the stipulated price for deliverance. The opening couplet gives a ringing challenge that makes it a straightforward promise. Our God will deliver mankind by fulfilling the law (Mt 3:15), removing the guilt (Jn 1:29) and personally suffering the penalties due to mankind for their sin (Jn 3:16).
How then shall we translate it? “Where, O death … ?” and “Where, O grave … ?” or
“I will be your plagues, O death” and “I will be your destruction, O grave”? Normally the translation which denotes permission, as in “I will be,” is restricted to the second-and third-person pronouns (you and he/she) forms; however, the first-person Hebrew jussive form does occur in some exceptional cases.
But Hosea 13:10 of this chapter had just translated this same Hebrew word as
“where.” That would seem to settle the matter, even though that has an added Hebrew adverb in this same expression. The form probably reflects Hosea’s special northern dialect.
But some protest that a promise of redemption is incompatible with the threats pronounced in Hosea 13:7–13 and repeated in Hosea 13:15–16. The complaint charges that this promise is surrounded contextually with curses and judgments.
The answer, of course, is that the same situation is found in Genesis 3:15. It too is surrounded with the curses on the woman, the serpent, the man and the ground (Gen 3:8–14; 16–19). Often God will interject this note of hope right in the midst of humanity’s darkest moments and most deserved judgments.
Therefore, the taunt song to death and the grave is the most appropriate rendering of the last part of Hosea 13:14. It is this same paean that the apostle Paul will raise in 1
Corinthians 15:55. It only asks in mocking tones what the first part of the verse had clearly affirmed as a statement: God can and will ransom them from the power of the grave. He can deliver them even after death has done its worst. No wonder the prophet cries out with such triumphant glee and says (after a manner of speaking), “Come on, death, let’s see your stuff now! Come on, grave, put up your fists and fight!”
So certain is this affirmation that even God himself can see no cause or condition for changing his mind or intentions. He will have no repentance, says the end of verse 14.
There will be no regrets or remorse over this decision in the divine mind, for God has spoken and that will be that.
See also comment on genesis 5:23–24; 25:8; 2 samuel 12:21–23; job 19:23–27; ecclesiastes 3:19–21.
1:15 The Day of the Lord
What will this day of the Lord be like? And how can Joel say it is near or imminent when five different prophets in four different centuries (the latter ones aware of the earlier ones) declared that it was just that—near? If it were so near, why hadn’t it happened in over four hundred years?
Ten times the prophets warned that that day was near (Joel 1:15; 2:1; 3:14; Obad 15; Is 13:6; Zeph 1:7, 14 [twice]; Ezek 30:3 [twice]). But these prophets ministered in the ninth century b.c. (probably, but not with total certainty, Joel and Obadiah), the eighth century (Isaiah), the seventh century (Zephaniah) and the sixth century (Ezekiel). Yet each repeatedly warned that the day of the Lord was imminent and certain to come.
They even gave their contemporaries instances of what impact it would have on people and the nations. But they always reserved the worst and final fulfillment for the future.
The day of the Lord is much too complex a subject to be contained in a brief discussion, for the prophets found it a most engaging topic in their ministries and writings. But it does not completely defy description. It will be a time when God judges the wicked as never before and simultaneously completes the salvation and deliverance of the redeemed.
The Lord will come to “judge the world” (Ps 9:8; 96:13; 98:9). In that day, “The Lord will be king over the whole earth. On that day there will be one Lord, and his name the only name” (Zech 14:9).
It will also be a day of theophany or the appearance of God. He will appear on the Mount of Olives, just where the Son of God told the men from Galilee that he would come again in like manner as they had seen him go (Zech 14:3–4). When he appears, Jerusalem will be attacked and he personally will lead his people against the nations that have gathered there to settle the Jewish question once and for all (Zech 14:3–12; Joel 3).
Because of this insurrection against the Lord and his cause, Amos describes this day as one of darkness and mourning (Amos 5:18–20) for those who had only the popular concept that the Messiah would return to magically right all wrongs for everyone, regardless of the person’s personal belief in him. Amos went on to show how false this hope was.
In the New Testament this day is still being discussed. It is known as that day (Mt 7:22; 1 Thess 5:4), the day of God (2 Pet 3:12), the day of wrath (Rom 2:5–6) and the day of our Lord Jesus Christ (2 Cor 1:14; Phil 1:6, 10). It had the same foreboding aspect of horrors for the unbeliever, yet it was a bright day of release and joy for all who looked forward to Christ’s coming.
But this day always had an impending nature to it. Though it found partial fulfillment in such events as Joel’s locust plagues, the destruction of Jerusalem and the threat of national invasions, its final and climactic fulfillment always remained in Christ’s future return.
Therefore, the day of the Lord was a term rich in content. It marked off a divinely inaugurated future period, which already had in some sense begun with the ongoing history of the kingdom of God. In such a blend of history and prophecy, the prophet’s promise that that day was coming in the eschatological (last days) setting was reinforced by God’s present-day foreshadowings of what was to come. This would induce men and women to repent and to prepare for that day. Its blessings would extend to a new Jerusalem, the endowment of the Holy Spirit in a unique way and the cleansing and purification of all that needed it.
When this came, the kingdom would be the Lord’s and all other rivalries would cease—forever!
Amos
3:6 Is God the Author of Evil?
See comment on exodus 9:12; lamentations 3:38–39; isaiah 45:7.
4:4 Does God Encourage Sinning?
Is the invitation to go up to Bethel or Gilgal and get a special offer on sinning: perhaps four sins for the price of two today (to be just as cynical)? Nowhere else in Scripture does God encourage sin; why here, or so it would appear?
The prophet Amos speaks with real irony and sarcasm to an audience that has grown somewhat deaf and tired of hearing his calls for repentance. In an attempt to startle an otherwise recalcitrant nation, Amos spoke in a dissimulating way to see if that would bring any reaction.
To be sure, the people zealously went on their pilgrimages to Bethel, Gilgal and Beersheba, all places with religious connotations and associations. At Bethel, of course, the ten northern tribes had set up for themselves a rival altar to the one in Jerusalem, so that worshipers would not need to travel there and one’s politics and potential allegiances would not get confused. But this was in contradiction to the will of God, for God had prescribed that his name would dwell only in Jerusalem. King Jeroboam, amazingly enough, set up a golden calf at Bethel and one at Dan, saying:
“Here are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt” (1 Kings 12:28).
Amos wasn’t the only one who was contemptuous of the site of Bethel; the prophet Hosea changed the name Bethel, meaning “house of God,” into Beth Aven, meaning
“house of wickedness” (Hos 4:15), while he too castigated Gilgal as an improper place to worship God.
The irony of this invitation to go and sin at Bethel and Gilgal comes out in the word for “sin,” for it also could mean to “fall away” from God. The Israelites would even prefer to do too much than do too little in their false worship. Thus, they burnt on the altar a portion of the leavened loaves of their praise-offerings, which were intended to be eaten at the sacrificial meals, even though only the unleavened bread was allowed to be offered (Amos 4:5). They were really proud of the fact that they offered freewill offerings in addition to all the rest of the religious acts that they were doing.
But why mention Gilgal along with Bethel as a place of idolatrous worship? This was not the Gilgal in the Jordan Valley, where Israel had camped after crossing over the river Jordan. It was northern Gilgal upon the mountains, to the southwest of Silo or Seilun, where there had been a school of the prophets in the days of Elijah and Elisha (2 Kings 2:1; 4:38). Now in the eighth century b.c. it had been chosen as the seat of idolatrous worship (Hos 4:15; 9:15; 12:11; Amos 5:5).
No, God does not encourage sin. The prophet was merely using ironic and graphic words in hopes of getting the attention of those whose moral quotients had sunk to new lows.
Jonah
1:4–5, 7 Casting Lots Encouraged?
The use of “lots,” or the throwing of dice, in order to discover what is unknown seems more at home in the world of divination and enchantment than in the biblical world of the will of God. It is not surprising, I suppose, that these sailors would have resorted to this means of discovery in such terrifying circumstances. But it is surprising to learn that this method did uncover the real culprit—that it worked. How can this fact be explained and reconciled with the rest of Scripture?
The sailors’ use of divination in order to learn the source of their problem was altogether fitting to the culture of those times. As far as they were concerned, a storm of this intensity and ferocity must have represented some sort of divine punishment.
Someone on their ship must have angered his god in some way, they reasoned. If they were to come out of the experience alive, they had to find out who the offender was and what he had done.
As best we can tell, lots were very similar to our dice, usually with alternating light and dark sides. Some think the mysterious Urim (possibly “lights”) and Thummim (possibly
“darks”) may have been lots used by the high priest and kept in his ephod for discerning the will of God (Ex 28:30).
The casting of lots was probably interpreted along these lines: two dark sides up meant no, while two light sides up meant yes. A combination of a light and a dark side might have meant that one should throw again. On this system, the sailors probably asked the lots “yes” or “no,” taking each sailor in turn until it came Jonah’s turn and the lots both came up light.
The use of lots was not altogether foreign among the people of God. At several key points in the history of Israel, lots had been used with the apparent approval and blessing of God. This may be one more case where it was not the use but the abuse of a cultural tool that made it objectionable. Lots were used to determine which of the two goats would be sacrificed on the Day of Atonement (Lev 16). Joshua used lots to ferret out Achan as the guilty party after the defeat at Ai (Josh 7:14). Lots were used in the allocation of land (Josh 18–19; Ps 16:6) and in the assignment of temple duties (1 Chron 24:5). In the New Testament, our Lord’s clothes were gambled for by the casting of the dice (Mt 27:35). In fact, the whole church decided between two men to fill the position left by Judas’s death by the use of lots (Acts 1:15–26). True, here the
casting of lots was accompanied with prayer, but my point is that lots were used. Some are fond of pointing out that all these examples were prior to Pentecost, but there seems to be no scriptural significance to such an observation.
The best way to explain the use of lots is by noting the mild endorsement expressed in Proverbs 16:33: “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.”
Though this proverb is quite brief, its point seems to be that the Lord, not fate, is the reason for success, if there is any. It also seems to warn that the casting of lots does not carry with it an automatic validity, for in every case the freedom to answer lies with God, who is not at the beck and call of the thrower.
It may please God to use this means to give further confidence that one’s decision, when it does not conflict with Scripture or with one’s best discernment, is indeed his will. But in no sense should the casting of lots be used or viewed as a means of bypassing what can be known of God and his will through Scripture, prayer and the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit.
Accordingly, what might appear to be no more than raw superstition to a twentieth-century Westerner was an evidence of divine intervention and providence. Even the casting of lots came under the controlling eye of God.
1:17 Myth or History?
Could Jonah really have been swallowed by a great fish, survive for three days inside that creature and live to tell about it? Is this a myth, a parable, an allegory or real history?
The Bible, of course, does not speak of Jonah being swallowed by a “whale”; it specifically mentions a “great fish” (Jon 1:17). Some English versions of Matthew 12:40 use the word “whale,” but the Greek original is keµtos, a general word meaning a huge sea-monster. Taken as such, there are several sea-monsters that would be able to swallow a full-grown man easily enough, but the true whale, which has its home in the Arctic seas and is not found in the Mediterranean Sea, has a narrow throat that would generally prevent such a swallowing. There is another species of the same order in the Mediterranean Sea, however, which could swallow a man.
Ambrose John Wilson in the Princeton Theological Review for 1927 mentions a case of a sailor on a whaling ship near the Falkland Islands who was swallowed by a large sperm whale. The whale was later harpooned, and when it was opened up on deck the surprised crew found their lost shipmate unconscious inside its belly. Though bleached from the whale’s gastric juices, he recovered, even though he never lost the deadly whiteness left on his face, neck and hands.1 [1 A. J. Wilson, “The Sign of the Prophet Jonah,” Princeton Theological Review 25 (1927): 636. For more examples, see R. K. Harrison, Introduction of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1969), pp. 907–8. See also the interesting article by G. Macloskie, “How to Test the Story of Jonah,” Bibliotheca Sacra 72 (1915): 336–37, and, more recently, G. Ch. Aalders, The Problem of the Book of Jonah (London: Tyndale, 1948).]
The problem with claiming that this text is a parable, allegory or myth is that each
“solution” presents its own problems of literary genre. For example, parables are simple; they treat one subject. But the book of Jonah has at least two distinct parts: his flight and his preaching. Neither does Jonah fit the category of allegory, for there is no agreement on what the values are for each of the characters and events. The very diversity of answers is enough to state that allegory is not the solution. The same
judgment would hold for suggesting that Jonah is a myth.
The book of Jonah, up until modern times, was everywhere treated as an historical record of the repentance of the city of Nineveh under the preaching of a man named Jonah. The apocryphal book Tobit has Tobit commanding his son Tobias to go to Media, for Tobit believes the word of God spoken about Nineveh. The Greek Septuagint text says that the preacher who predicted judgment on Nineveh was Jonah.
In New Testament times, Jesus and the early believers took Jonah to be a real character. Thus, the objections to the book come down to this: it has too many miracles! But that is hardly an adequate basis on which to reject the internal claims of the book itself. Jonah is a believable account of a harrowing sea experience and of an unprecedented Gentile response to an ever-so-brief exposure to preaching about the need for repentance. But it happened!
3:10; 4:1–2 A God Who Relents?
So sharp is the contrast between what God had said would happen to Nineveh and what actually took place that we are left to wonder whether divine words are always fulfilled or whether God is presented in the Old Testament as a rather fickle person.
Even though from the start Jonah had suspected, because of God’s gracious character, that he would not carry out his threats against Nineveh, we are still left in doubt over God’s ability to predict the future or his constancy of character.
Some have attempted to rescue the situation by distinguishing between God’s secret will and his declared will. The former, so this line of argumentation goes, is his real intention, which remains fixed and unchangeable, while the latter varies depending on conditions. But this representation of God’s will does not accord with Scripture elsewhere, for it still conveys the appearance of insincerity on the part of God—as if God were deceptive, representing his thoughts differently from what they really were, and representing future events differently from what he knew would eventually happen!
The language of this verse, which represents our Lord as “relent[ing]” or “repent
[ing],” is undoubtedly an anthropomorphism—a depiction of God in human terms.
Certainly the infinite, eternal God can be known to us only through human imagery, and thus he is represented as thinking and acting in a human manner. Without anthropomorphisms, we could never speak positively of God; to try would be to entangle ourselves in deism, which makes God so transcendent that he is never identified with us in our world. When we rush to get rid of the human forms in our talk about God, we sink into meaningless blandness.
Nevertheless, when it comes to the eternal principles of righteousness, Scripture is just as insistent about the impossibility of change in God. Consider, for example, the declaration made to Balaam: “God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind” (Num 23:19). Similarly in 1 Samuel 15:29 Samuel informs Saul, “He who is the Glory of Israel does not lie or change his mind; for he is not a man, that he should change his mind.”
The descriptions of God that have to do with his inherent and immutable righteousness allow no room for change in the character of deity or in his external administrations.
His righteousness calls for consistency and unchangeableness.
But such representations argue nothing against the possibility, or even the moral necessity, of a change in God’s carrying out of his declarations in cases where the people against whom the judgment was issued have changed, so that the grounds for the threatened judgment have disappeared. For God not to change in such cases would go against his essential quality of justice and his responsiveness to any change that he had planned to bring about.
If this is the case, some wonder why the announcement made by Jonah took such an absolute form: “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned” (Jon 3:4). Why not plainly include “if the people do not repent”?
This objection assumes that the form given to the message was not the best suited to elicit the desired result. Actually, as the record shows, this message indeed awakened the proper response, and so the people were spared. As delivered, it was a proper account of how God felt and the danger to which Nineveh was exposed.
Of course God’s warnings always carried with them the reverse side of the coin, the promises. This element of alternatives within one prophecy can be seen best in Jeremiah 18:9–11 and Ezekiel 18:24 (see, too, Rom 11:22). The good things promised in these prophecies cannot be attributed to any works righteousness or to any merited favor, but are always found in connection with the principles of holiness and obedience to God’s Word.
Does this imply that all the predictions from the prophets’ lips were operating under this same rule, that nothing was absolute or certain in the revealed predictive realm?
Far from it! There are portions that may be regarded in the strictest sense as absolute, because their fulfillment depended on nothing but the faithfulness and power of God.
Such were the declarations of Daniel about the four successive world empires. All the statements about the appearance of Christ, in his first and second advents, are included here, along with predictions about the progress of the kingdom of God and promises connected with our salvation.
But when the prophecy depicts judgment or promises good things to come, the prophetic word is not the first and determining element; it is secondary and dependent on the spiritual response of those to whom the words are delivered.
God changed, but his character and nature as the altogether true and righteous One has never changed. As a living person, he changed only in response to a required change in the Ninevites to whom Jonah’s word was delivered. Thus he exhibits no fickleness or instability. He remains the unchanging God who will withdraw his threatened judgment as soon as the human responses justify his doing so.
See also comment on genesis 6:6; 1 samuel 13:13–14; 15:29; acts 1:26.
Micah
5:2 A Ruler from Bethlehem?
The difficulty attached to this verse is whether the “ruler” who is depicted here is claimed to be both human and divine. Furthermore, is he the promised Messiah? And if he is, why does the text not link him more directly with David and his family? And
what is the significance of adding the word Ephrathah to Bethlehem?
To answer the questions in reverse order, Ephrathah is not to be explained as the name for the environs of the village of Bethlehem. In Genesis 35:19, Ephrathah is exactly equivalent with Bethlehem. It was the older name for the same town.
But that was not the only reason for introducing the name Ephrathah; the prophet wanted to call attention to the theology of the passage where these two names were first associated: Genesis 35:16–19. As in that passage, which tells of the birth of Benjamin, a new birth is about to happen. The old name Ephrathah (coming from a verb meaning “to be fruitful”) is not meant to suggest the inferior things and persons in that city; instead, this town is to be most blessed, the source of fruitfulness on a grand scale for all the earth.
Bethlehem is referred to here in a masculine rather than its usual feminine form, for the prophet is viewing the city in the image of its ideal representative or personification.
The city and the person are thus identified with each other.
Had the prophet intended to indicate the Bethlehem that was in Judah, not the one in Zebulun (Josh 19:15), he normally would have said “Bethlehem Judah.” Obviously he had more in mind than that, and thus the allusion to Genesis 35 seems certain.
Bethlehem’s smallness in size and significance is evidenced by its omission from the list of the cities of Judah in Joshua 15 (even though some later copyists tried to amend this presumed oversight by adding it to their manuscripts).
Here is the marvel: out of a place too small to merit mention goes forth one who is to be head over Israel! But he is not called “the ruler,” only “a ruler.” He will be unknown and unheralded at first—merely a ruler. But for the moment the focus is on the idea of dominion, not on the individual.
“Out of you will come for me” does not refer to the prophet, but to God. The contrast is between human meanness and the greatness of God. Now it must be seen that it is God who is able to exalt what is small, low and inferior.
The ruler was, in the first instance, David. He sprang from these lowly roots in Bethlehem, but that was not the end of it. The promise he carried went far beyond his days and his humble origins. The soil from which Messiah sprang began in ancient times, the days of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Boaz, who took Ruth the Moabitess as is wife, was from Bethlehem (Ruth 2:4). David, the great-grandson of Boaz, was born in Bethlehem as well (1 Sam 16:1; 17:12).
But the conclusion of the matter will be the “days of eternity.” Two Hebrew phrases, in parallel position, speak of “from ancient times” and “from days of eternity.” The first refers to the distant past, the second to the actions that God initiated from before time began and that will last into eternity future. The sending of the Messiah was not an afterthought; it had been planned from eternity. In other words, Messiah existed before his temporal birth in Bethlehem. His eternity is thus contrasted with all the days of the Bethlehem families through which line he eventually came, as regards his human flesh.
The Hebrew >oÆlaµm, “eternity,” is used in connection with either God himself or the created order. While it can just mean “ancient times” within history, given the contrast here with the early beginnings of David in olden days, the meaning that best
fits the context would be a reference to Christ’s preexistence. Thus, our Lord came in the line of David (2 Sam 7:8–16; Ps 89:35–37), yet he was one with the Father from all eternity.
6:6–8 Salvation Through Righteousness?
Two different and opposing kinds of false claims are made about this text. Some readers see the text as refuting all external, ceremonial religion in favor of a totally internalized faith response to God. Others, reacting against more conservative theologies of the atonement, argue that essential religious acts focus solely on issues of justice, mercy and humility; all else is beyond what God expects of even the most devout.
Unfortunately, both positions are extremes that fail to grasp the prophet Micah’s point.
His answer to the question “With what [things] shall I come before the Lord?”
certainly went beyond the people’s appalling response. They were convinced that they could earn God’s favor by deeds and various types of religious and even pagan acts, such as the human sacrifice of their oldest child. They were ready to bargain with God and to bid high if need be. But their attempts to earn righteousness availed them nothing in God’s sight.
The prophet’s answer, on behalf of his Lord, was very different from theirs, though it was hardly novel. They had already known what was good and pleasing to God, because God had revealed it time and time again. Each time they had refused to acknowledge it as God’s way.
Three items are mentioned: justice, mercy and humility before God. The norm of justice had been set by the character and person of the living God, not by human standards. God’s norm of justice, announced in his law, demanded perfect righteousness available only by faith in the God who had promised to send the seed of promise.
Mercy, the second demand, should be patterned after God’s mercy as defined in his Word—an unselfish love toward God and one’s neighbor.
The third was a call for the people to remember that any good found in them was due to the Lord’s enabling. Those claiming the Lord as their God were to prove it by a godly lifestyle. Pride was the antithesis of what was required here: faith. To walk humbly was to live by faith. Such faith sought to give God first place instead of usurping it for oneself. In our Lord’s use of this passage in Matthew 23:23, he listed the three requisites for pleasing God as “justice, mercy and faithfulness.”
Thus, this passage is more than just an ethical or cultic substitute for all inventions of religion posed by mortals. It is duty, indeed, but duty grounded in the character and grace of God. The question asked in Micah 6:6 is very similar to the question posed in Deuteronomy 10:12: “And now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you?”
The background for both questions is the same, for in Deuteronomy 10, as in Micah 6, God had announced himself ready to destroy Israel, in that case for their disobedience in the golden-calf episode.
Thus this saying is not an invitation, in lieu of the gospel, to save oneself by kindly acts of equity and fairness. Nor is it an attack on the forms of sacrifices and cultic acts
mentioned in the tabernacle and temple instructions. It is instead a call for the natural consequence of truly forgiven men and women to demonstrate the reality of their faith by living it out in the marketplace. Such living would be accompanied with acts and deeds of mercy, justice and giving of oneself for the orphan, the widow and the poor.
See also comment on genesis 26:3–5; psalm 51:16–17, 19.
Nahum
1:2–3 A Jealous God?
The declaration of Exodus 34:6, which appears to assure us that God is not jealous, is repeated ten times in the Old Testament: “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.”
Other texts, however, appear to assert that God is indeed jealous. Exodus 20:5 clearly states, “I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God.” Deuteronomy 29:20 reiterates, “The Lord will never be willing to forgive [the person who invokes God’s blessing on himself and goes his own way thinking it is safe to do as he pleases]; his wrath and zeal
[jealousy] will burn against that man.” Psalm 78:58 asserts, “They angered him with their high places; they aroused his jealousy with their idols.” Ezekiel 36:5 confirms,
“This is what the Sovereign Lord says: In my burning zeal [or jealousy] I have spoken against the rest of the nations and against all Edom, for with glee and with malice in their hearts they made my land their own possession so that they might plunder its pastureland.” So how are we to understand God?
The anthropopathic descriptions of God (which describe God’s emotions in human terms) help us understand that God is not just an abstract idea but a living and active person. He does have emotions similar to our human emotions of jealousy, vengeance, anger, patience and goodness—with the exception that none of these are tainted with sin.
Certainly God has many agreeable traits, as Nahum 1:7 goes on to affirm: “The Lord is good. … He cares for those who trust in him.” In Nahum 1:3 God is also described as being “slow to anger and great in power.” But what of his seemingly less attractive emotions?
God’s jealousy is often linked in Scripture with his anger. As such, it is an expression of his holiness: “I will be zealous [or jealous] for my holy name” (Ezek 39:25). But in no sense is his jealousy or zeal explosive or irrational. Those depicting the God of the Old Testament as having a mysterious if not primal force, which could break out against any of his creatures at any time for any or no reason, have an overly active imagination. Never does God’s zeal or wrath border on caprice or the demonic.
God’s wrath is indeed a terrible reality in both Testaments, but it always reflects a totally consistent personality which cannot abide the presence of sin. God’s anger never causes him to avenge himself or retaliate, as if he were briefly insane. In our Lord, anger may be defined as his arousing himself to act against sin.
The same could be said about the word translated “vengeance” in the hard saying at
hand. Divine vengeance can only be understood in the light of the Old Testament’s teaching on the holiness and justice of God. Of the seventy-eight times this word is used in the Old Testament, fifty-one involve situations where God is the perpetrator.
The classical text is Deuteronomy 32:35, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay.” God cannot be God if he allows sin and rebellion to go unpunished. His very character cries out for the opposite.
Basically, there are two ways in which God takes vengeance: (1) he becomes the champion of those oppressed by the enemy (Ps 94) and (2) he punishes those who break covenant with him (Lev 26:24–25).
If the book of Nahum appears to exhibit savage joy over the crushing defeat of the Assyrian capital, Nineveh, the question must arise: When is one justified in rejoicing over the downfall of a despotic and tyrannical nation? If the answer is that one must wait until the rejoicing nation has been purged of their own sins, then we should be careful in our smugness over the destruction of Nazi Germany. Our own purging may lie ahead.
Contrary to the popular criticism of the book of Nahum, Nahum’s condemnation of Nineveh grows out of a moral and ethical concept of God. In the prophet’s thought, God is sovereign Lord over the whole creation, including all the nations. As a holy God, he abhors any form of unrighteousness, but all the more when it is committed on an international scale.
There are three basic reasons why God decreed the end of the Assyrian empire. First, the Assyrians not only opposed Israel, they opposed God (Nahum 1:9, 11, 14).
Second, they flouted the law and moral order of God. Not only did Assyria draw her own citizens into the dragnet of idolatry, but she also lured many other nations into her practices, just as a harlot lures her prey to destruction (Nahum 2:13; 3:4). Finally, Assyria’s imperial greed provoked robberies and wrongs of every sort.
God, therefore, does not indifferently and helplessly watch the sins of the nations multiply. Instead, he is a warmhearted, understanding, but thoroughly just and righteous God who will act against those who persist in flouting everything he is and stands for. The fact that God expresses jealousy, vengeance or wrath is a sign that he cares for his people and champions their cause. He can and he will administer justice with equity among the nations.
The words jealousy—or, as it is more accurately rendered when referring to God, zeal—and vengeance may both be used in a good and a bad sense. When applied to God, they denote that God is intensely concerned for his own character and reputation.
Thus, everything that ultimately threatens his honor, esteem and reverence may be regarded as the object of his jealousy and vengeance. The metaphor best depicting this emotion is that of the jealous husband, which God is said to be when false gods and false allegiances play the parts of suitors and potential paramours. He cannot and will not tolerate rivalry of any kind—our spiritual lives depend on his tenacious hold on us.
See also comment on exodus 20:4–6; psalms 5:5; 11:5.
Habakkuk
1:5–6 Why Does God Use Pagan Nations to Judge His People?
See comment on 2 kings 9:6–10; isaiah 45:7; lamentations 3:38–39; hosea 11:8–9.
3:16–18 Joy in All Circumstances?
The prophet Habakkuk had been given a vision that left him deeply agitated. He was so shaken by the terrifying news that God would bring the Babylonian hordes down on Judah that his body seemed to collapse. There can be no doubt that the prophet experienced real fear with pronounced physical and psychological effects.
The amazing aspect of this saying, and the fact that makes it so noteworthy, is that in spite of all the trauma, Habakkuk received the gift of joy. This was not merely resignation about things over which he had no control. The prophet wasn’t saying,
“Let’s make the best of it; one thing is for sure: you can’t fight city hall.”
Instead, this text teaches us to rejoice in God even when every instinct in our bodies is crying out with grief. Though fully alarmed at the outrage that would take place, Habakkuk experienced a holy joy, a divine enabling to rejoice in the Lord.
The object of his joy was the God of his salvation. Some things are just more abiding and important than this temporal world. Sometimes it seems as if history is out of control and no one knows where it all will end. Since God is ultimately behind the course of history, he is in control and he knows where it will end.
Thus, all the symbols of prosperity (the fig tree, the vine, the olive, the fields, the flocks and the herds of cattle) could be removed, but none of these compared with the joy that came from the living God himself. Even though that joy did not in itself mitigate the depth of the physical pain felt in the body, it did transcend it in worth, reality and depth.
This text has enormous relevance for a Christian view of history and for those who are oppressed and experiencing the reality of the conqueror’s or enemy’s wrath.
See also comment on james 1:2.
Haggai
2:6–7 The Desired of All Nations?
The translation “desire of all nations” in Haggai 2:7 has taken such deep root, through its use in sermons, Christmas hymns and a long history of Jewish and Christian commentary, that it is difficult to handle this text objectively.
The King James rendering, “The Desire of all nations shall come,” has been challenged by almost every modern translation in English. The 1901 ASV [ASV American Standard Version] changed “desire” to “precious things,” while the NASB [NASB
New American Standard Bible] now reads, “They will come with the wealth of all nations.” The NEB [NEB New English Bible] has “The treasure of all nations shall
come hither,” and the NAB [NAB New American Bible] uses the word “treasures.”
Clearly, the trend is away from giving the word desire a messianic connotation, favoring instead the impersonal idea of “valuables” or “desired things.”
All the controversy stems from the use of the singular feminine noun desire with a plural verb, [they] come. As soon as this is pointed out, modern commentators drop any further search or references to a person and assume that the noun must be plural in meaning.
Actually, both the singular and plural forms of this Hebrew noun, h\emdaÆh are used in the Old Testament to refer to persons. Saul was described as being “the desire of Israel” in 1 Samuel 9:20. Likewise Daniel 11:37 speaks of “the one desired by women.” The plural form of the same word appears three times to refer to Daniel himself in Daniel 9:23 and 10:11, 19. In these cases, the word is usually translated as
“highly esteemed” and a “man of high esteem” ( <éÆsû-h\‡mud_oÆt_).
This same word is also used to describe valuable possessions, especially silver and gold. In this construction the emphasis usually falls on the preciousness of the items.
Did Haggai intend to talk about the valuables that the Gentiles would bring, or did he intend to refer to the Messiah himself, as most of the ancient commentaries and the Vulgate had it?
Those opting for a reference to precious gifts believe this rendering makes contextual sense. The precious gifts would compensate for the temple’s lack of adornment.
Accordingly, the Gentiles would come laden down with gifts for the temple out of homage to the Lord of the earth, a foretaste of the good things to come in the New Covenant. This interpretation is said to square with the plural verb and the feminine singular subject.
However, the earliest Jewish interpretation and the majority of early Christian interpreters referred this passage to the Messiah. Since the word desire is used to refer to a person in several key passages, and since there is a longing of all the nations for a deliverer, acknowledged or not, it seems fair to understand this passage as a reference to the Messiah, our Lord Jesus Christ.
Hebrew often places the concrete word for an abstract noun. Nor should we be thrown off balance by the presence of a plural verb, for often when one verb is controlled by two nouns, the verb agrees with the second noun even if the verb actually belongs with the former.
Although some are reluctant to adopt a messianic interpretation, the word desire can be treated as an accusative—a construction which is frequently adopted with verbs of motion: “And they will come to the desire of all nations [namely, Christ].” This rendering avoids the problem of the plural verb come, as was first suggested by Cocceius.
In accordance with a messianic interpretation, just as the first temple was filled with the glory of God, so this temple will yet be filled with the divine glory in Christ (Jn 1:14), a glory which shall be revealed at his Second Coming (Mal 3:1).
Zechariah
See comment on job 1:6–12.
6:12–13 Who Is This Branch?
Who is this one who is called the Branch and who seems to possess the office and authority of both priest and king? Is this a messianic passage, or does it refer to a postexilic prophet?
When the Babylonian captives heard the temple was being rebuilt, they sent a delegation of three men with a gift for the temple. The Lord, pleased with the exiles’
response, instructed the prophet to make the gift of silver and gold into a crown and to place it on the head of Joshua, the high priest. Although the action was merely symbolic, such transference of the royal crown from the tribe of Judah to the tribe of Levi must have met with surprise. Had God not promised in Genesis 49:10–12 that the privilege of reigning would be vested in the tribe of Judah? And would not the coming Messiah King come from David’s line (2 Sam 7:12–20)?
Many unbelieving modern scholars attempt to harmonize these facts by substituting the name Zerubbabel (the Davidic descendant and governor of Judah at the time) for the name Joshua. But the Lord himself reveals the interpretation of this symbolic act in verses 12–15.
It is clear that the term Branch is a messianic term, for under this title four different aspects of his character are presented in four major teaching passages: he is the king (Jer 23:5–6), the servant (Zech 3:8), the man (Zech 6:12) and the Branch of Yahweh (Is 4:2). Indeed, many have noted how this fourfold picture of the Messiah corresponds to the fourfold picture of the historical Christ in the four Gospels of the New Testament.
This prophecy promises four particulars regarding the Messiah’s character and rule: (1) “He will be a priest on his throne”; (2) “He … will build the temple of the Lord”; (3) “He will be clothed with majesty and will sit and rule on his throne”; and (4)
“Those who are far away [Gentiles] will come and help to build the temple of the Lord.”
It is easy to identify these features with the character and the program of Jesus of Nazareth. He is represented as the High Priest and King in the New Testament. It is also true that Gentiles, those who were “far off” (Acts 2:39; Eph 2:13), will come in the end time and acknowledge his dignity.
Accordingly, there is perfect harmony and accord between the two offices of priest and king in the Messiah—“harmony between the two” (Zech 6:13). The Messiah as Priest-King will produce peace because he will personally hold both the administrative and judicial functions: the ecclesiastical and spiritual ones combined! He becomes our peace.
The crowning of the high priest in the temple of the Lord was to be a reminder concerning the coming union of the king and priest in one person, the Messiah. Such
princely gifts coming from the far-off Babylonian exiles were but a harbinger and precursor of the wealth of the nations that would pour into Jerusalem when Messiah the Branch would be received as King of kings and Lord of lords.
See also comment on genesis 14:18–19; 49:10; psalm 45:6; micah 5:2.
11:12–13 Thirty Pieces of Silver—A Confused Prophecy?
Two difficulties appear when Zechariah’s prophetic actions are compared with their fulfillment recorded in Matthew 27:7–10. First, certain details of Zechariah’s prophetic symbolism do not seem to fit the historical account. Second, Matthew ascribes these words to Jeremiah, but he clearly is quoting Zechariah.
Zechariah’s prophetic parable followed his prophecy of the Good Shepherd’s relations to the flock. In Zechariah 11:11 the people reacted to Zechariah’s breaking his staff.
They realized that God was annulling the covenant of protection over them. Some terrible acts of judgment were ahead!
In Zechariah 11:12 the prophet requested payment for his services and for alerting the people. He posed his request delicately, assuming that they might not wish to pay him because they had treated their Shepherd so contemptibly. In effect, he said, “If you don’t care to pay me, fine; don’t bother!” However, the people did not realize that Zechariah’s abrupt termination of his pastoral role reflected more their own abandonment of their Shepherd than his choice to end his service.
Their reply insulted him and the cause he represented. They paid him thirty pieces of silver, the same price fetched by a slave gored by an ox (Ex 21:32). Zechariah, here impersonating the Messiah, was then advised to take this most “handsome” (surely said in irony and sarcasm) price and cast it to the potter in the house of the Lord. The expression “to cast it to the potter” usually was an idiomatic proverb approximately meaning “Throw it to the dogs” or “Get rid of it.” But its connection with the house of the Lord makes that solution unlikely. Moreover, it is doubtful that the potter would have been in the house of the Lord. Rather, this phrase could be a cryptic description of his casting the money into the temple where it was taken up and used to purchase a field of the potter, since tainted money was unwelcome in the temple (Deut 23:18).
But what of Matthew’s use of this acted-out parable? Matthew probably attributed the text to Jeremiah because Jeremiah, in many Hebrew manuscripts, headed up the collection of the prophets and his name was used to designate all in the collection. Our book titles with their chapter and verse divisions are a fairly recent innovation. Also Matthew may have attributed this quotation to Jeremiah because this text was paired with Jeremiah 18:1–4, 32:6–9. Thus he cited the name of the better-known and more prominent prophet. In fact, in not one of the four other places where the New Testament quotes from Zechariah does it mention his name (Mt 21:4–5; 26:31; Jn 12:14; 19:37).
On the second problem, Matthew’s use of this text, we counter by arguing that the New Testament citings of the Old very much agree with the meaning found in the Old Testament. Judas did receive thirty pieces of silver for betraying Jesus of Nazareth.
Because these wages represented blood money, with stricken conscience Judas took the money and threw it into the temple. However, because this money was unfit for
temple service, it was used to buy a potter’s field as a burial place for strangers (Mt 27:6–10).
Certainly these actions follow the pattern set by the prophet, even though there are a few slight differences, such as “I threw” being rendered in the Gospel as “and they used them” (Mt 27:10), and “I took the thirty pieces of silver” becoming “they took the thirty silver coins” (Mt 27:9), and “at which they priced me” becoming “the price set on him by the people of Israel” (Mt 27:9). But these changes are required by the position of the narrator, his use of his own tenses and the place where he introduced this text into his story.
Zechariah, we may conclude, accurately saw the tragic events connected with the betrayal of our Lord and warned Judah long before the events took place. What a fantastic prophecy!
12:10 They Will Look on Me, the One They Have Pierced?
Does this text teach, or even imply, that there will be two comings of Messiah to earth? Few texts have been cited in Jewish-evangelical discussions more than this one.
And if one were to search the Old Testament for evidence that Christ would come twice, this is probably the only text that could be used.
At the heart of debate over this verse are the following questions. Is the subject of the verb look the same as the subject of pierced? Is me to be equated with him in Zechariah 12:10? Are those who participated in the piercing the same ones who in the eschatological day will look on him and grieve bitterly? One final problem is this: is it possible to pierce God, who is spirit?
That God is spirit and not corporeal flesh is taught not only in John 4:24 but also in Isaiah 31:3. The mystery of this Zechariah passage is that the speaker is Yahweh himself. He is the One who will pour out grace and supplication on the house of Israel and David. Moreover, the first person occurs over and over again in this chapter (Zech 12:2, 3, 4, 6, 9 and 10), but in every case it refers to the Messiah, the one who is pictured as one with God himself. In fact, Zechariah 11 says that Yahweh’s representative, the Good Shepherd, will be rejected. Thus, one can only conclude that it is the Messiah who is divine and who will be rejected and pierced. However, he will be deeply mourned at some time in the future and then finally appreciated by all those who had previously rejected him.
“On that day” (Zech 12:11), when Messiah is restored to rightful recognition by all those who formerly rejected his person and work, he will return to restore paradisiacal conditions. Most Jewish interpreters will concede that there will indeed be such a coming of Messiah—when there will be peace. They insist, however, that he could not have come previously.
That is precisely where this text comes into play. If it is agreed that the context has to do with Messiah’s coming when there is peace, then it must be recognized that he has at some previous time been pierced. When did this happen? And by whom? And for what? Only the Christian claims for Jesus of Nazareth can fit the details of this passage.
Others have seen the irresistible force of this argument and therefore have sought to show a switch in pronoun antecedents in the middle of the verse. This interpretation
makes the people of Israel the ones looking, but the nations are the ones piercing.
Since the two occurrences of they are separated in the text solely by the prepositional phrase on me and the pronominal expression whom ( the one in NIV [NIV New International Version] ), it would be most unnatural to assume that the antecedent has changed. The only reason for doing so would be to avoid the obvious force of the statement.
The New Jewish Publication Society’s translation Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures (1988) has rendered this verse a bit more smoothly: “But I will fill the House of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem with a spirit of pity and compassion; and they shall lament to Me about those who are slain, wailing over them as over a favorite son and showing bitter grief as over a first-born” (emphasis mine—to point out the section where the problem occurs).
The problem with this translation is that it breaks the rules of Hebrew grammar to avoid the obvious implications of this Hebrew verse. It turns the active form of pierce into passive, and the subjects into objects; and this the Hebrew will not allow! It is a heroic effort to bypass the logical implication that the one who speaks is the one who was pierced by those who now stare in amazement in the eschatological, or future, day.
Other Jewish interpreters have given up and have instead found here a case for two Messiahs: Messiah son of Joseph, who did in fact suffer, and Messiah son of David, who did not suffer, but who is to come in glory and power to rule at a time when peace comes on earth. This is a late invention, created in response to the claims of the Christian movement.
Messiah has already come once. He suffered on the cross for our sin. He will come again in power and with glory.
Malachi
1:2–3 I Have Hated Esau?
If God is depicted as being good to all (Ps 145:9), how can he hate Esau? Surely this runs counter to all we know about the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
With his usual abruptness, Malachi announces his message succinctly enough to please even the most impatient listener. It is simply this: “I have loved you.”
Typical for this crowd, as Malachi reported, they answered back in that incredulous tone of unbelief, “Who? Us? God has loved us? Since when?” This, then, became the basis for the contrast which now had to be drawn between Jacob and Esau, two brothers who represented two different ways that God works.
God’s election love illustrates how God can claim to love Jacob. Both Esau and Jacob were the sons of that man of promise, Isaac. However, even though Esau was the firstborn, God chose Jacob, emphasizing that his grace had nothing to do with natural rights or works. From Esau came the nation of Edom, and from Jacob came the nation of Israel. It is said that God hates Edom and loves Israel. Why?
When Scripture talks about God’s hatred, it uses a distinctly biblical idiom which does not imply that Yahweh exhibits disgust, disdain or a desire for revenge. There are clear objects meriting God’s hatred, including the seven evils of Proverbs 6:16–19, all forms of hypocritical worship (Is 1:14; Amos 5:21) and even death itself, as Jesus demonstrated at the grave of Lazarus in John 11:33, 38 (see also Mk 3:5; 10:14; and Jn 2:17). Hate can be a proper emotion for disavowing and for expressing antipathy for all that stands against God and his righteous standards. Only one who has truly loved can experience burning anger against all that is wrong and evil.
But in this antonymic pair of love and hate, as used in Scripture, there is a specialized meaning. A close parallel to the emotions expressed for Jacob and Esau is Jacob’s response to his wives, Rachel and Leah, in Genesis 29:30–33. While Genesis 29:31, 33
says that Jacob hated Leah, Genesis 29:30 clarifies this usage by stating in the same context that he loved Rachel more than Leah. A similar situation is found in Deuteronomy 21:15–17.
To summarize, the hated one is the one loved less. The New Testament uses the same terminology in Matthew 6:24 and Luke 16:13. There are two parallel lists which use the formula even more dramatically. Matthew 10:37 says, “Anyone who loves … more than me,” while Luke 14:26 states the same concept as, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate … ”
God does not experience psychological hatred with all its negative and sinful connotations. In this text, he merely affirms that Jacob had had a distinctive call, for when he had been blessed, all the nations of the world would eventually, if not immediately, profit from his blessing. Thus there came a ranking and a preference, in order to carry out God’s plan and to bring the very grace that Esau would also need.
God’s love and hate (in his deciding to prefer one person for a certain blessed task) were bestowed apart from anything these men were or did. God’s choice of Jacob took place before Jacob’s birth (Gen 25:23; Rom 9:11). Thus it is unfair to interpret these verses as evidence of favoritism or of partiality on the part of God. They express a different set of realities from what English words generally signify.
See also comment on psalms 5:5; 11:5.
1:11 The Worship of Gentiles?
Malachi has the ability to startle and shock both his audience and his readers as few prophets can. In Malachi 1:11, in the midst of an otherwise dull recital of the priests’
sins, Malachi suddenly announced that God would indeed triumph with or without the obedience of those entrusted with the nation’s spiritual care. But Malachi’s outburst of good news was so shocking that many have found this passage a hard saying indeed.
Malachi meant his words to startle, for he began them in verse 11 with a Hebrew word that is almost a shout of joy like “Yes, indeed!” This truth would be so unexpected, transcending as it did the paltry service and heartless attitudes of the priesthood, that it was necessary for Malachi to awaken the reader before introducing a whole new concept.
The new wave of excitement heightened when Malachi foretold that God’s name
would be exalted by Gentiles worldwide. Though Israel’s spiritual leaders despised and demeaned the Lord’s great name, that did not mean God was stuck with these worshipers or his cause was at an impasse. God could, and would, raise up true worshipers to his name from all the nations of the world. His cause and his great name would succeed. God was not saddled with Israel, just as he is not saddled with any contemporary group of Christians.
The geographical, political and ethnic scope of this promise is set forth in even more startling tones. The text affirms that it will be from “the rising to the setting of the sun.” The sweep of God’s success from east to west reaffirmed the state of affairs noted in 1:5, “Great is the Lord—even beyond the borders of Israel!”
Furthermore, incense and offerings, in fact “pure” offerings, will be offered up “in every place.” That must have shaken all those who remembered that only in Jerusalem were they to offer sacrifices and burn incense before God. In the terms of Leviticus 11
and Deuteronomy 14:3–19, an offering was pure when an unblemished animal was offered as the law prescribed. But the word for “without blemish” was not used here; it was the word that involved one’s moral and physical purity as well as ceremonial purity.
That raised the question of how the Gentile nations could offer a pure offering in places other than Jerusalem. This could only be possible in a day yet unseen when the good news would reach beyond the borders known to Malachi’s audience.
The term incense referred, no doubt, to the altar of incense with its symbolic sweet aroma of the saints’ prayers constantly rising to God. But this incense would no longer emanate from the temple alone; it would be offered “in every place.”
Some try to say this verse refers only to the Jews of the Dispersion or to Gentile proselytes. This is only partially true, for it hardly embraces all the terms and conditions of Malachi’s text. The Jewish Diaspora and the Gentile proselytes signaled just the first fruits of the harvest that was to come in the messianic age. Moreover, the fact that offerings would be offered worldwide indicated something bigger and newer than what Israel had ever seen or imagined. No wonder Malachi exclaimed, “My name will be great among the nations.” The middle wall of partition had been destroyed (Eph 2:14) and God’s kingdom had been announced over all the earth.
2:16 God Hates Divorce
In all Scripture, Malachi 2:16 is at once one of the most succinct and most contested statements on the permanence of marriage. The difficulty comes, in part, from the Hebrew text, which some have pronounced the most obscure in the Old Testament.
Further problems come from trying to fathom the Old Testament’s position on marriage and divorce. Many have (wrongly) assumed that Malachi voiced an opinion that contradicts earlier statements in Scripture.
The section opens with a double question that amounts to a double premise: (1) all Israel has one Father—God, and (2) God created that nation (Mal 2:10). Sadly, however, the population was dealing treacherously with each other and thereby profaning the covenant God had made with their fathers. Malachi 2:10–16 discusses Israel’s disloyalty to their national family (Mal 2:10), spiritual family (Mal 2:11–12)
and marriage partners (Mal 2:13–16), evidenced by spiritual harlotry, mixed marriages with unbelieving partners, adultery and, finally, divorce.
In Malachi 2:11–12, Israelites are charged with unashamedly marrying women who worshiped other gods. Such religiously mixed marriages flew right in the face of warnings to the contrary (Ex 34:12–16; Num 25:1–3; Deut 7:3–4; 1 Kings 11:1–13).
But there were more accusations: “Another thing you do” (Mal 2:13). They had caused the Lord’s altar to be flooded with such tears and mourning that the Lord refused to accept further sacrifices. The tears resulted from broken marriage vows to which the Lord was a party, being a witness at every wedding. Put very simply, God said, “I hate divorce” (Mal 2:16).
Two key words dominate this text: the word one (which occurs four times in Mal 2:10, 15) and the word breaking/broken faith (which appears five times in Mal 2:10, 11, 14, 15, 16).
The identity of the “one” in Malachi 2:10 is not “Abraham, your father” (Is 51:2), as Jerome and Calvin thought, or the patriarch Jacob, whom Malachi did mention elsewhere very frequently (Mal 1:2; 2:12; 3:6). Instead, it is God, who created Israel (Is 43:1). Thus those who have the same Father should not be dealing so treacherously with each other.
But who is the “one” in Malachi 2:15? Again it is not Abraham (as if the sentence read:
“Did not one, that is to say, Abraham, do so [take a pagan Egyptian named Hagar to wife]?” with the prophet conceding the point and replying, “Yes, he did!” But Abraham is never called the “one,” nor could his conduct in “putting away” Hagar be the issue here, since the divorced wives in Malachi’s context were covenant wives, not pagan wives.
The subject of Malachi 2:15 must be God, and “the one” must be the object of the sentence, not its subject. As such, the “one” would parallel the “one flesh” of Genesis 2:24, for returning to God’s original instructions would be a natural way to dispute covenant-breaking divorces. In a similar manner, our Lord referred to Genesis in Matthew 19:4–6: “‘Haven’t you read,’ he replied, ‘that at the beginning the Creator
“made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh”?’” (see also Mk 10:7–9).
Even though the Hebrew does not explicitly indicate that the first clause of Malachi 2:15 is an interrogative or that he refers to God, both possibilities fit the context, previous Scripture and normative Hebrew grammar and syntax observed in other passages.
The resulting thought would be as follows: Why did God make Adam and Eve only one flesh when he could have given to Adam many wives or to Eve many husbands?
Certainly God had more than enough creative power to furnish multiple sex partners!
So why only “one”? Because God was seeking a godly offspring, a process incompatible with multiple partners.
The two examples of faithlessness this passage raises are divorce and being unequally married to unbelievers. Both violate God’s holy law. Marriage’s covenant status is seen in other Old Testament passages, such as Genesis 31:50, Proverbs 2:17, Ezekiel 16:8 and Hosea 1–2. Genesis 2:24 most clearly defines marriage: It consists of
“leaving” one’s parents and “cleaving” to one’s wife. The leaving and cleaving go together and in that order. Marriage, then, is a public act (leaving), in order to establish a permanent relationship (cleaving), and is sexually consummated (becoming one flesh). Any violation of this covenant is a breach of promise made in the presence of God and each other.
So fundamental and inviolable is the union created by this marriage covenant that nothing less than a rupture in sexual fidelity can begin to affect its durability (note Mt 5:31–32; 19:3–12). That such a rift may lead to one of the two grounds for breaking the marriage covenant (1 Cor 7 treats the other one) is hinted at in Jeremiah 3:8, where God “gave faithless Israel her certificate of divorce and sent her away because of all her adulteries.” In effect, God divorced Israel. But note the grounds!
Accordingly, the Bible is not silent, either on divorce or on the reasons it may be granted. But when God still says that he hates divorce, we gather how strongly he desires to see marriage covenants succeed.
The Mosaic legislation never encouraged, enjoined or approved of divorce in Deuteronomy 24:1–4. Instead, it merely prescribed certain procedures if and when divorce tragically took place. The main teaching of Deuteronomy 24:1–4 forbids a man to remarry his first wife after he had divorced her and either he or she had remarried in the meantime. Unfortunately, the AV [AV Authorized Version] (King James), the ERV [ERV English Revised Version] , the ASV [ASV American Standard Version]
and some others have adopted a translation of Deuteronomy 24:1–4 that adds to the confusion. On their incorrect rendering, divorce is not just permitted or tolerated, it is commanded when some “uncleanness” is present! But in fact the conditional if which begins in Deuteronomy 24:1 continues through verse 3 with the consequence of the conditional sentence coming in verse 4 (contrary to all the incorrect renderings noted above). No Old Testament law instituted divorce; Hebrew law simply tolerated the practice while condemning it theologically.
Those objecting that the absolute statement of Malachi 2:16 precludes all arguments for a biblically permissible divorce do not take Scripture holistically. God is certainly able to qualify his own teaching with further revelation in other contexts. For instance, in Romans 13:1–7 God states that citizens must obey the civil powers that be, yet he qualifies that absolute in Acts 5:29: Citizens should obey God rather than any sinful civil law.
God’s hatred of divorce is further expressed in the statement “one who covers his garment with violence.” The “garment” refers to the ancient custom of spreading a garment over a woman, as Ruth asked Boaz to do to claim her as his wife (Ruth 3:9; see also Deut 22:30; Ezek 16:8). Thus to cover one’s bed with violence was to be unfaithful to the marital bed and one’s nuptial obligations. The symbol of wedded trust, much like our wedding ring, became the agent of violence toward these wives.
See also comment on deuteronomy 24:1–4.
3:6 I the Lord Do Not Change?
See comment on genesis 6:6; 1 samuel 13:13–14; 15:29; jonah 4:1–2.
3:10 Does Tithing Always Pay Off?
If we faithfully give to God a tithe, that is, a tenth of all our income, will that mean that we will automatically receive a blessing every time? What is the meaning of the promise in Malachi 3:10? And is the “storehouse” to which we bring the tithe solely the local church?
God had no other recourse than to show the people one example of their failure of turning back to him: their failure to tithe and make offerings to him. This is not to imply that this was the only area where the nation had failed, but it would serve well enough for those who were unconvinced that they had turned their backs on God.
They were robbing God of the tenth that belonged to him.
The tithe was generally considered to be a tenth of what a person earned, for that is what the priest of Salem (Jerusalem), Melchizedek (Gen 14:20), received from Abraham even before the law of Moses gave similar instructions (Lev 27:30). From this tithe, a tenth of it went to the priests, while others who benefited were widows, orphans and resident aliens (Deut 14:28–29).
The offerings, however, were those portions of the animal sacrifices designated for the priests (Ex 29:27–28; Lev 9:22; Num 5:9) or those gifts that were voluntarily given for a special purpose (Ex 25:2–7).
But are Christians governed by any law that requires us to give a tithe? No, there is no such direct statement; however, it must be noticed that the practice of tithing antedates the law of Moses, therefore it cannot be said to be a legal or ceremonial legislation, limited to the Mosaic covenant. It must also be noticed that, if it was appropriate under the law to give a tenth, Christian believers would not want to do less, seeing how much more we have received and know today. No one robs God without badly cheating themselves in the bargain.
But can we count on an automatic blessing—the tithe goes in here and the blessing comes out here? No, we cannot. The motivation for doing something so poorly ought to be its own best rebuke. Why would we wish to give only to get more? The reason for giving would be so selfish and so sinful that it could hardly command the attention and respect of the God it purported to serve.
One other matter: some have argued that this text requires that all tithing be done through the local church, the “storehouse.” But this text will not bear that weight. The storehouse is best viewed as God’s storehouse, not simply or exclusively the local church. In the eighty times this word appears in the Old Testament, the storehouse is either the treasury of the temple (for example, 1 Kings 7:51) or, in a more figurative sense, the place from which all of God’s blessings proceed (for example, in Deut 28:12, and obliquely in Jer 50:25, God’s treasury house is in the heavens).
Matthew
2:1–2 Is Astrology Biblical?
The term magi was used in Greek to refer to “a wide range of astronomers, fortune tellers, priestly augurers, and magicians.”1 [1 Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1977), p. 167.] The reference to the star makes it most likely that, unlike Simon Magus in Acts 8:9, these men were astrologers. The text is not clear about where they came from, for “the east” could refer to Persia, where the people to whom the term was originally applied lived, to Babylonia, which was said to be full of astrology, or to the desert areas east of Palestine, where the types of gifts the magi brought were often found. What is clear is that these men saw some type of astronomical phenomenon (“star” could refer to any one of a variety of such phenomena), quite possibly a particular planetary conjunction, and interpreted it to mean that a king had been born in Judea.
Even as early as a.d. 110 Christians struggled with the account of these magi. Ignatius (Ephesians 19:3), followed by many other ancient writers, argued that by means of this event these occult sciences ended. However, we do not read that evaluation in Matthew. The fact is that the Bible is quite unapologetic not only about these magi, but also about Daniel, who was more learned than all of the magi of Babylon (Dan 1:17, 20), having been trained as a Chaldean or astrologer-priest (Dan 1:4, compare Dan 2:2). Likewise, a Jewish contemporary of Matthew viewed Balaam as a magi who had received true revelation from God (Philo On the Life of Moses I, 50 [I, 276–77]).
However, neither Philo writing about Balaam nor the writer of Daniel believed that divine revelation came to their respective subjects through astrology, but that the fact that the person was an astrologer did not seem to hinder God from giving them his prophetic Spirit. In the case of Matthew it is different, for the revelation of the birth of Jesus comes to them through their astrological observations.
The truth is that the Old Testament does speak against a large number of occult arts (e.g., Ex 22:18; Deut 18:10), but astrology is not among them. The Hebrew term for astrologer appears only in Daniel 1:20 and 2:10. Even in the Greek Old Testament it is only in Daniel that the term magi appears. Unlike the case with other occult arts, the Old Testament is more concerned with the weakness or inability of the astrologers when compared with the Spirit of God in Daniel than with their evil nature. This does not mean that the Old Testament approves of astrology, but simply that it does not contain a specific condemnation of it.
All of this, however, does not explain what Matthew is trying to say. Who are these magi (whether there were two or ten of them, for the text only indicates that there was more than one)? There were many Jewish magi in the ancient world, but since these men ask for “the king of the Jews” (rather than “our king” or something like that), they are being presented as pagan magi. They come to Herod, the reigning king of the Jews (although he was an Idumean by race), who gathers the Jewish leaders. What is more, the city of Jerusalem hears about this and is “frightened” or “disturbed” just like Herod is. None of these Jewish people (for Herod practiced Judaism, at least when living in Judea) makes any move to seek Jesus, let alone to worship him. It is the pagan astrologers who have come to worship him and who go on to fulfill their purpose.
Now Matthew is known as a very Jewish Gospel, but there is also a clear theme in Matthew about Jesus’ rejection by the Jewish people and the gospel reaching out to the Gentiles. Of course this outreach of the gospel is clear in Matthew 28:19–20, but the dual theme is even clear as early as Matthew 8:10–12 (and John the Baptist in Mt 3
indicates the rejection of the Jewish leaders). Thus throughout Matthew we learn about Jews rejecting Jesus and pagans showing faith.
Now the meaning of the story becomes clear. God speaks to some pagan astrologers by means of natural revelation through the language that they would understand (either a planetary conjunction or a comet or some other astronomical phenomenon). They respond in faith and travel a long distance seeking the king to honor and worship.
Their revelation is imperfect, for Jerusalem appears to have been a guess (Would not a king be born in the capital city?); and it is only after getting information from Scripture that their trip to Bethlehem is confirmed by the reappearance of the “star” (the apparent disappearance and reappearance is what makes some scholars believe this to be a planetary conjunction in which the planets came together, then parted, then reconverged). Meanwhile the Jewish people have the Scriptures that clearly indicate the birthplace of the Messiah, yet far from carefully watching that town, even when confronted by the magi they respond with upset and anger rather than faith.
Can God speak through astrology? Yes, for he did it once. Is it then a normal means of his revelation? By no means! God has given us his Word, a far more accurate and fuller means of revelation. Yet when his people are ignoring his Word, it may well be that God will speak to some pagan through the stars and that pagan will respond with a faith that shames the indifference of the people who claim to be God’s and who are custodians of his revelatory book.
4:5–10 Order of the Temptations?
See comment on luke 4:1–13.
4:5–10 Tempted in Every Way Like Us?
See comment on hebrews 4:15.
5:11–12 Rejoice in Persecution?
See comment on james 1:2.
5:13 Saltless Salt?
See comment on mark 9:50.
5:17–20 Eternal Law?
Here is surely an uncompromising affirmation of the eternal validity of the law of Moses. Not the smallest part of it is to be abrogated—“not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen.” The “jot” (KJV [KJV King James Version] ) is the smallest letter of the Hebrew alphabet; the “iota” (RSV [RSV Revised Standard Version] ) is the smallest letter of the Greek alphabet. The “tittle” (KJV [KJV King James Version]
) or “dot” (RSV [RSV Revised Standard Version] ) was a very small mark attached to a letter, perhaps to distinguish it from another which resembled it, as in our alphabet G
is distinguished from C, or Q from O.
What is hard about this uncompromising affirmation? For some readers the hardness lies in the difficulty of recognizing in this speaker the Christ who, according to Paul,
“is the end of the law, so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes”
(Rom 10:4).
Others find no difficulty in supposing that Paul’s conception of Jesus differed radically from the presentation of his character and teaching in the Gospels. The view has indeed been expressed (not so frequently nowadays as at an earlier time) that Paul is pointed to as the man who “breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same.” This implies that the saying does not come from Jesus, but from a group in the early church that did not like Paul. Even where the reference to Paul would not be entertained, it is held by many that these words come from a group in the early church that wished to maintain the full authority of the law for Christians.
The saying, according to Rudolf Bultmann, “records the attitude of the conservative Palestinian community in contrast to that of the Hellenists.”2 [2 Rudolf Bultmann, The History of the Synoptic Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 138.]
There were probably several selections of sayings of Jesus in circulation before the Gospels proper began to be produced, and one of these, which was preferred by stricter Jewish Christians, seems to have been used, along with others, by Matthew.
Such a selection of sayings could be drawn up in accordance with the outlook of those who compiled it; sayings which in themselves appeared to support that outlook would be included, while others which appeared to go contrary to it would be omitted. The teaching of Jesus was much more diversified than any partisan selection of his sayings would indicate. By not confining himself to any one selection Matthew gives an all-around picture of the teaching. A saying such as has just been quoted had three successive life-settings: its life-setting in the historical ministry of Jesus, its setting in a restricted selection of Jesus’ sayings, and its setting in the Gospel of Matthew. It is only its setting in the Gospel of Matthew that is immediately accessible to us. (In addition to these three settings, of course, it may have acquired subsequent life-settings in the history of the church and in the course of interpretation. The statement “I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” has been used, for example, to present the gospel as the crown of fulfillment of Hinduism,3 [3 For example, by J. N. Farquhar, The Crown of Hinduism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1913); compare E. J. Sharpe, Not to Destroy But to Fulfil (Lund: Gleerup, 1965).]
but such a use of it is irrelevant to the intention of Jesus or of the Evangelist.) To the remark that it is only in its setting in the Gospel of Matthew that the saying is immediately accessible to us there is a partial exception. Part of it occurs in a different context in the Gospel of Luke. In Luke 16:16–17 Jesus says, “The Law and the Prophets were proclaimed until John. Since that time, the good news of the kingdom of God is being preached, and everyone is forcing his way into it. It is easier for heaven and earth to disappear than for the least stroke of a pen to drop out of the Law.” The second of these two sentences is parallel to (but not identical with) Matthew 5:18.
The selection of sayings which is supposed to have been drawn up in a more legally minded Christian circle, and which Matthew is widely considered to have used as one of his sources, is often labeled M (because it is represented in Matthew’s Gospel only).
Another, more comprehensive, selection on which both Matthew and Luke are widely considered to have drawn is commonly labeled Q. It may be, then, that the form of the
“jot and tittle” saying found in Matthew 5:18 is the M form, while that found in Luke 16:17 is the Q form. T. W. Manson was one scholar who believed that this was so, and he invited his readers to bear two possibilities in mind. The first possibility was that
Luke’s form of the saying is closer to the original wording and that the form in Matthew “is a revision of it to bring it explicitly into line with Rabbinical doctrine.”
The other possibility, which follows on from this one, was “that the saying in its original form asserts not the perpetuity of the Law but the unbending conservatism of the scribes,” that it is not intended to be “sound Rabbinical dogma but bitter irony.”
Jesus, that is to say, addresses the scribes and says, “The world will come to an end before you give up the tiniest part of your traditional interpretation of the law.”4 [4 T. W.
Manson, The Sayings of Jesus (reprint; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1979), p. 135.]
It is plain that Jesus did not accept the rabbinical interpretation of the law. Indeed, he charged the scribes, the acknowledged students and teachers of the law, with “break
[ing] the command of God for the sake of your tradition” (so the wording runs in Mt 15:3, in a passage based on Mk 7:9). He said that by their application of the law “they tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders” (Mt 23:4); by contrast, he issued the invitation “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for … my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Mt 11:29–30).
But he did not relax the requirements of God’s law as such, nor did he recommend a lower standard of righteousness than the “Pharisees and the teachers of the law”
required. On the contrary, he insisted that admittance to the kingdom of heaven called for righteousness exceeding that of the scribes and Pharisees. This last statement, found in Matthew 5:20, serves as an introduction to the paragraphs which follow, in which Jesus’ account of what obedience to the law involves is given in a succession of hard sayings, at which we shall look one by one. But at the moment we may mention two principles by which he interpreted and applied the law.
First, he maintained that the proper way to keep any commandment was to fulfill the purpose for which it was given. He did this with regard to the law of marriage; he did it also with regard to the sabbath law. On the sabbath day, said the fourth commandment, “you shall not do any work.” In the eyes of some custodians of the law, this called for a careful definition of what constituted “work,” so that people might know precisely what might or might not be done on that day. Circumstances could alter cases: an act of healing, for example, was permissible if it was a matter of life and death, but if the treatment could be put off to the following day without any danger or detriment to the patient, that would be better. It was precisely on this issue that Jesus collided repeatedly with the scribes and their associates. His criterion for the keeping of this law was to inquire for what purpose the sabbath was instituted. It was instituted, he held, to provide rest and relief for human beings: they were not made for the sake of the sabbath, but the sabbath was given for their sake. Therefore, any action which promoted their rest, relief and general well-being was permissible on the sabbath. It was not merely permissible on the sabbath: the sabbath was the most appropriate day for its performance, because its performance so signally promoted God’s purpose in instituting the sabbath. Jesus appears to have cured people by preference on the sabbath day, because such an action honored the day.
He did not abrogate the fourth commandment; he interpreted it in a different way from the current interpretation. Did his principle of interpretation “surpass the righteousness of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law”? Perhaps it did. There are some people who find it easier to have a set of rules. When a practical problem arises, they can consult the rules and know what to do. But they have to decide which action best fulfills the purpose of the law. That involves thought, and thought of this kind, with the personal responsibility that accompanies it, is a difficult exercise for them.
Second, Jesus maintained that obedience or disobedience to the law began inwardly, in the human heart. It was not sufficient to conform one’s outward actions and words to what the law required; the thought-life must be conformed to it first of all. One of the Old Testament psalmists voiced his feelings thus: “I desire to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart” (Ps 40:8). This Psalm is not quoted by Jesus in the Gospels, but in another place in the New Testament its language is applied to him (Heb 10:7, 9). It does indeed express very well the attitude of Jesus himself and the attitude which he recommended to his hearers. Where the mind and will are set to do the will of God, the speaking and acting will not deviate from it.
Besides, where this is so, there will be an emphasis on the inward spiritual aspects of ethics and religion, rather than on outward and material aspects. The idea that a religious obligation could be given precedence over one’s duty to one’s parents was one with which Jesus had no sympathy (see Mk 7:10–13). This idea was approved by some exponents of the law in his day, but in general Jewish teaching has agreed with him here. Again, Jesus set very little store by details of ritual purification or food regulations, because these had no ethical content. Mark goes so far as to say that by his pronouncements on these last matters he “declared all foods ‘clean’” (Mk 7:19). If Matthew does not reproduce these words of Mark, he does reproduce the pronouncements of Jesus which Mark so interprets (Mt 15:17–20).
But did the ritual washings and food restrictions not belong to the jots and tittles of the law? Should they not be reckoned, at the lowest estimate, among “the least of these commandments”? Perhaps so, but in Jesus’ eyes “justice, mercy and faithfulness” were of much greater importance (Mt 23:23). And what about the sacrificial ceremonies?
They were included in the law, to be sure, but Jesus’ attitude to such things is summed up in his quotation from a great Old Testament prophet: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice”
(Hos 6:6). It is Matthew, and Matthew alone among the Evangelists, who records Jesus as quoting these words, and he records him as using them twice (Mt 9:13; 12:7).
The law is fulfilled ethically rather than ceremonially. Jesus confirmed the insistence of the great prophets that punctiliousness in ceremonial observances is worse than useless where people neglect “to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with …
God” (Mic 6:8). It is human beings, and not inanimate things, that matter.
The law for Jesus was the expression of God’s will. The will of God is eternal and unchangeable. Jesus did not come to modify the will of God; he fulfilled it. The standard of obedience to that will which he set, by his example and his teaching alike, is more exacting than the standard set by the written law. He insisted that the will of God should be done from the heart. But, in so insisting, he provided the means by which the doing of God’s will from the heart should not be an unattainable ideal. If Paul may be brought in to interpret the teaching of Jesus here, the apostle who maintained that men and women are justified before God through faith in Jesus and not through keeping the law also maintained that those who have faith in Jesus receive his Spirit so that “the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit” (Rom 8:4). The gospel demands more than the law, but supplies the power to do it. Someone has put it in doggerel but telling lines:
To run and work the law commands,
Yet gives me neither feet nor hands;
But better news the gospel brings:
It bids me fly, and gives me wings.
See also comment on romans 10:4.
5:22 “You Fool!” Merits Hell?
This is the first of a series of statements in which Jesus makes the requirements of the law more radical than the strict letter might indicate. Quoting the sixth commandment, Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I say to you … ” and then comes the hard saying under discussion.
Murder was a capital offense under Israelite law; the death penalty could not be commuted to a monetary fine, such as was payable for the killing of someone’s domestic animal. Where it could be proved that the killing was accidental—as when a man’s axe-head flew off the handle and struck his fellow workman on the head—it did not count as murder, but even so the owner of the axe-head had to take prudent measures to escape the vengeance of the dead man’s next of kin. Otherwise, the killer was brought before the village elders and on the testimony of two or three witnesses was sentenced to death. The death penalty was carried out by stoning: the witnesses threw the first stones, and then the community joined in, thus dissociating themselves from blood-guiltiness and expiating the pollution which it brought on the place.
Jesus points out that the murderous act springs from the angry thought. It is in the mind that the crime is first committed and judgment is incurred. The earthly court cannot take action against the angry thought, but the heavenly court can—and does.
This in itself is a hard saying. According to the KJV [KJV King James Version] ,
“whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment,” but the phrase “without a cause” is a later addition to the Greek text, designed to make Jesus’ words more tolerable. The other man’s anger may be sheer bad temper, but mine is righteous indignation—anger with a cause. But Jesus’ words, in the original form of the text, make no distinction between righteous and unrighteous anger: anyone who is angry with his brother exposes himself to judgment. There is no saying where unchecked anger may end. “Be angry but do not sin,” we are told in Ephesians 4:26 (RSV [RSV Revised Standard Version] ); that is, “If you are angry, do not let your anger lead you into sin; let sunset put an end to your anger, for otherwise it will provide the devil with an opportunity which he will not be slow to seize.”
There seems to be an ascending scale of seriousness as Jesus goes on: “subject to judgment … answerable to the Sanhedrin … in danger of the fire of hell.” “The Sanhedrin” is apparently a reference to the supreme court of the nation in contrast to a local court. Evidently, then, to insult one’s brother is more serious than to be angry with him. This is clearly so: the angry thought can be checked, but the insult once spoken cannot be recalled and may cause violent resentment. The person insulted may retaliate with a fatal blow, for which in fact if not in law the victim of the blow may be as much to blame as the one who strikes it. The actual insult mentioned by Jesus is the word “Raca” as it stands in the KJV [KJV King James Version] . The precise meaning of “Raca” is disputed; it is probably an Aramaic word meaning something like
“imbecile” but was plainly regarded as a deadly insult. (Words of abuse are above all others to be avoided by speakers of a foreign language; they can have an unimagined effect on a native speaker of the language.)
But “anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.” From this we might gather that “You fool!” is a deadlier insult than “Raca,” whatever “Raca” may mean. For “the hell of fire” (RSV [RSV Revised Standard Version] ) or “hell fire”
(KJV [KJV King James Version] ) is the most severe penalty of all. The “hell of fire” is the fiery Gehenna. Gehenna is the valley on the south side of Jerusalem which, after the return from the Babylonian exile, served as the city’s rubbish dump and public incinerator. In earlier days it had been the site of the worship of Molech, and so it was thought fit that it should be degraded in this way. In due course it came to be used as a symbol of the destruction of the wicked after death, just as the Garden of Eden became a symbol of the blissful paradise to be enjoyed by the righteous.
But was “You fool!” actually regarded as being such a deadly insult? In this same Gospel of Matthew the cognate adjective is used of the man who built his house on the sand (Mt 7:26) and of the five girls who forgot to take a supply of oil to keep their torches alight (Mt 25:2–3), and Jesus himself is reported as calling certain religious teachers “blind fools” (Mt 23:17). It is more probable that, just as “Raca” is a non-Greek word, so is the word moµre that Jesus used here. If so, then it is a word which to a Jewish ear meant “rebel (against God)” or “apostate”; it was the word which Moses in exasperation used to the disaffected Israelites in the wilderness of Zin:
“Listen, you rebels; must we bring you water out of this rock?” (Num 20:10). For these rash words, uttered under intense provocation, Moses was excluded from the Promised Land.
Whether this was the word Jesus had in mind or not, he certainly had in mind the kind of language that is bound to produce a murderous quarrel: chief responsibility for the ensuing bloodshed, he insisted, lies with the person who spoke the offending word.
But behind the offending word lies the hostile thought. It is there that the guilty process starts; and if the hostile thought is not killed off as soon as the thinker becomes aware of it, then, although no earthly court may be in a position to take cognisance of it, that is what will be the first count in the indictment before the judgment-bar of God.
5:28 Adultery in the Heart?
This is another instance of Jesus’ making the law more stringent by carrying its application back from the outward act to the inward thought and desire. The seventh commandment says, “You shall not commit adultery” (Ex 20:14). In the cultural context of the original Decalogue, this commandment forbade a man to have sexual relations with someone else’s wife. To infringe this commandment was a capital offense; the penalty was stoning to death (as it still is in some parts of the Near and Middle East). Another commandment seems to carry the prohibition back beyond the overt act: the second clause of the tenth commandment says, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife” (Ex 20:17), where his wife is mentioned among several items of his property. In a property context one might covet someone else’s wife not by way of a sexual urge but because of the social or financial advantages of being linked with her family.
However that may be, Jesus traces the adulterous act back to the lustful glance and
thought, and says that it is there that the rot starts and it is there that the check must be immediately applied. Otherwise, if the thought is cherished or fed by fantasy, the commandment has already been broken. There may be significance in the fact that Jesus does not speak of someone else’s wife but of “a woman” in general. Parallels to this saying can be found in rabbinical literature.
Pope John Paul II excited some comment in 1981 by saying that a man could commit adultery in this sense with his own wife. Emil Brunner, in fact, had said something to very much the same effect over forty years before.5 [5 Emil Brunner, The Divine Imperative (London: Lutterworth Press, 1937), p. 350.] But there is nothing outrageous about such a suggestion. To treat any woman as a sex object, and not as a person in her own right, is sinful; all the more so when that woman is one’s own wife.
See also comment on job 31:1.
5:29 Gouge Out Your Right Eye?
This saying is not so hard in the NIV [NIV New International Version] form as it is in some older versions. The KJV [KJV King James Version] says, “If thy right eye offend thee … ,” which is generally meaningless to readers today; the verb offend no longer means “trip up” or anything like that, which in literary usage it still did in 1611. Less excusable is the ERV [ERV English Revised Version] rendering, “If thy right eye causeth thee to stumble … ,” because this introduced an archaism which in 1881 was long since obsolete.
The NIV [NIV New International Version] rendering, however, is more intelligible. It means, in effect: “Don’t let your eye lead you into sin.” How could it do that? By resting too long on an object of temptation. Matthew places this saying immediately after Jesus’ words about adultery in the heart, and that is probably the original context, for it provides a ready example of how a man’s eye could lead him into sin. In the most notable case of adultery in the Old Testament—King David’s adultery with the wife of Uriah the Hittite—the trouble began when, late one afternoon, David from his palace roof saw the woman bathing (2 Sam 11:2). Jesus says, “Better pluck out your eye—
even your right eye (as being presumably the more precious of the two)—than allow it to lead you into sin; it is better to enter into eternal life with one eye than to be thrown into Gehenna (as a result of that sin) with two.”
Matthew follows up this saying about the right eye with a similar one about the right hand. This strong assertion seems to have stayed with the hearers; it is repeated in Matthew 18:8–9 (in dependence on Mk 9:43–48), where the foot is mentioned in addition to the eye and the hand.
Shortly after the publication of William Tyndale’s English New Testament, the attempt to restrict its circulation was defended on the ground that the simple reader might mistakenly take such language literally and “pluck out his eyes, and so the whole realm will be full of blind men, to the great decay of the nation and the manifest loss of the King’s grace; and thus by reading of the Holy Scriptures will the whole realm come into confusion.” So a preaching friar is said to have declared in a Cambridge sermon; but he met his match in Hugh Latimer, who, in a sermon preached the following Sunday, said that simple people were well able to distinguish between literal and figurative terms. “For example,” Latimer went on, “if we paint a fox preaching in a
friar’s hood, nobody imagines that a fox is meant, but that craft and hypocrisy are described, which so often are found disguised in that garb.”6 [6 Hugh Latimer, Sermon preached in St. Edward’s Church, Cambridge, in 1529, quoted in J. P. Smyth, How We Got Our Bible (1885; London: Religious Tract Society, 1938), p. 102.]
In fact, it is not recorded that anyone ever mutilated himself because of these words in the Gospels. There is indeed the case of Origen, but if the story is true that he made himself a eunuch “for the kingdom of heaven’s sake,” that was in response to another saying, at which we shall look later.
5:34 Do Not Swear at All?
Perjury is a serious offence in any law code. It was so in the law of Moses and is forbidden in the third commandment: “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain” (Ex 20:7 RSV [RSV Revised Standard Version] ). To swear an oath falsely in the name of God was a sin not only against the name but against the very person of God. Later the scope of the commandment was broadened to include any light or thoughtless use of the divine name, to the point where it was judged safest not to use it at all. That is why the name of the God of Israel, commonly spelt Yahweh, came to be called the ineffable name, because it was forbidden to pronounce it. The public reader in the synagogue, coming on this name in the Scripture lesson, put some other form in its place, lest he should “take the name of the Lord [his] God in vain” by saying “Yahweh” aloud. But originally it was perjury that was in view in the commandment, and in other injunctions to the same effect from Exodus to Deuteronomy. Summing up the sense of those injunctions, Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oaths, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord’” (Mt 5:33).
Realizing the seriousness of swearing by God if the truth of the statement was not absolutely sure, people tended to replace the name of God by something else—by heaven, for example—with the idea that a slight deviation from the truth would then be less unpardonable. From another passage in this Gospel (Mt 23:16–22) it may be gathered that there were some casuists who ruled that vows were more binding or less binding according to the precise wording of the oath by which they were sworn. This, of course, would be ethical trifling.
It was necessary that people should be forbidden to swear falsely, whether in the name of God or by any other form of words. “Fulfill your vow,” says the Preacher whose practical maxims enrich the Old Testament Wisdom literature; “It is better not to vow than to make a vow and not fulfill it” (Eccles 5:4–5). But Jesus recommends a higher standard to his disciples. “Do not swear at all,” he says; “Simply let your ‘Yes’ be
‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one” (Mt 5:37).
An echo of these words is heard in a later book of the New Testament: “Above all, my brothers, do not swear—not by heaven or by earth or by anything else. Let your ‘Yes’
be yes, and your ‘No,’ no, or you will be condemned” (Jas 5:12).
The followers of Jesus should be known as men and women of their word. If they are known to have a scrupulous regard for truth, then what they say will be accepted without the support of any oath. This is not mere theory; it is well established in experience. One body of Jesus’ followers, the Society of Friends, has persisted in applying these words of his literally. And such is their reputation for probity that most people would more readily trust the bare word of a Friend than the sworn oath of
many another person. “Anything beyond this,” said Jesus, “comes from the evil one”; that is to say, the idea that a man or woman can be trusted to speak the truth only when under oath (if then) springs from dishonesty and suspicion, and tends to weaken mutual confidence in the exchanges of everyday life. No one demands an oath from those whose word is known to be their bond; even a solemn oath on the lips of others tends to be taken with a grain of salt.
5:39 Turn the Other Cheek?
This is a hard saying in the sense that it prescribes a course of action which does not come naturally to us. Unprovoked assault prompts resentment and retaliation. If one wants to be painfully literal, the assault is particularly vicious, for if the striker is right-handed, it is with the back of his hand that he hits the other on the right cheek.
This is one of a number of examples by which Jesus shows that the lifestyle of the kingdom of God is more demanding than what the law of Moses laid down. “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth’” (Mt 5:38). This was indeed laid down in Israel’s earliest law code (Ex 21:24), and when it was first said it marked a great step forward, for it imposed a strict limitation on the taking of vengeance. It replaced an earlier system of justice according to which if a member of tribe X injured a member of tribe Y, tribe Y was under an obligation to take vengeance on tribe X.
This quickly led to a blood feud between the two tribes and resulted in suffering which far exceeded the original injury. But incorporated into Israel’s law code was the principle of exact retaliation: one eye, and no more, for an eye; one life, and no more, for a life. When wounded honor was satisfied with such precisely proportionate amends, life was much less fraught with hazards. The acceptance of this principle made it easier to regard monetary compensation as being, in many cases, a reasonable replacement for the infliction of an equal and opposite injury on the offending party.
But now Jesus takes a further step. “Don’t retaliate at all,” he says to his disciples.
“Don’t harbor a spirit of resentment; if someone does you an injury or puts you to inconvenience, show yourself master of the situation by doing something to his advantage. If he gets some pleasure out of hitting you, let him hit you again.” (It should not be necessary to say that this saying is no more to be pressed literally than the saying about plucking out one’s right eye and throwing it away—it is not difficult to envisage the other cheek being turned in a very provocative manner.) If a soldier or other government official conscripts your services to carry a load for him so far, you are under compulsion; you are forced to do it. But, when you have reached the end of the stipulated distance, you are a free person again; then you can say to him, “If you’d like it carried farther, I will gladly carry it for you.” The initiative has now become yours, and you can take it not by voicing a sense of grievance at having been put to such inconvenience but by performing an act of grace. This way of reacting to violence and compulsion is the way of Christ.
To have one’s services conscripted to carry a soldier’s pack for him is not an everyday experience in the Western world. How, in our situation, could this particular injunction of Jesus be applied? Perhaps when a citizen is directed by a policeman to assist him in the execution of his duty. But if (say) it is a matter of helping him to arrest a larger number of suspicious characters than he can cope with single-handed, would they not also come within the scope of duty to one’s neighbor? This simply reminds us that Jesus’ injunctions are not usually of the kind that can be carried out automatically; they
often require careful thought. Whatever sacrifices he expects his followers to make, he does not ask them to sacrifice their minds. What they are urged to do is to have their minds conformed to his, and when careful thought is exercised in accordance with the mind of Christ, the resulting action will be in accordance with the way of Christ.
Another parallel might be the Christian’s reaction to his income tax demand. The tax demanded must be paid; no choice can be exercised there. But suppose the Christian taxpayer, as an act of grace, pays double the amount demanded, or at least adds a substantial amount to it; what then? The computer would probably record it as tax overpaid, and the surplus would come back to him as a rebate. Perhaps it would be wisest if he were to send it to the government anonymously—not only so as not to let his left hand know what his right hand was doing, but to forestall unworthy suspicions and enquiries. Once again, the carrying out of the simple injunctions of Jesus in a complex society like ours is not so easy. But where the spirit which he recommended is present, the performance should not go too far astray.
The admonition to turn the other cheek is given by Jesus to his disciples. It belongs to the sphere of personal behavior. There are many Christians, however, who hold that this teaching should be put into practice by communities and nations as well as by individuals. Where Christian communities are concerned, we may well agree. The spectacle of the church enlisting the aid of the “secular arm” to promote its interests is rarely an edifying one. “It belongs to the church of God,” someone once said, “to receive blows rather than to inflict them—but,” he added “she is an anvil that has worn out many hammers.”7 [7 Theodore Beza to King Charles IX of France at the Abbey of Poissy, near Paris, in 1561.] But what about a political community?
The situation did not arise in New Testament times. The first disciples of Jesus did not occupy positions of authority. Joseph of Arimathea might be an exception: he was a member of the Sanhedrin, the supreme court of the Jewish nation, and according to Luke (Lk 23:50–51), he did not go along with his colleagues’ adverse verdict on Jesus.
As the gospel spread into the Gentile world, some local churches included in their membership men who occupied positions of municipal responsibility, like Erastus, the city treasurer of Corinth (Rom 16:23); but neither Paul nor any other New Testament writer finds it necessary to give special instructions to Christian rulers corresponding to those given to Christian subjects. But what was to happen when Christians became rulers, as in due course some did? Should the Christian magistrate practice nonretaliation toward the criminal who comes up before him for judgment? Should the Christian king practice nonretaliation toward a neighboring king who declared war against him?
Paul, who repeats and underlines Jesus’ teaching of nonretaliation, regards retaliation as part of the duty of the civil ruler. “Would you have no fear of him who is in authority?” he asks. “Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain; he is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer” (Rom 13:3–4 RSV [RSV Revised Standard Version] ). For Paul, the ruler in question was the Roman emperor or someone who held executive or judicial authority under him.
But his words were relevant to their chronological setting. The time had not yet come (although it did come in less than ten years after those words were written) when the empire was openly hostile to the church. Still less had the time come when the empire capitulated to the church and emperors began to profess and call themselves Christians. When they inherited the “sword” which their pagan predecessors had not
borne “in vain,” how were they to use it? The answer to that question cannot be read easily off the pages of the New Testament. It is still being asked, and it is right that it should; but no single answer can claim to be the truly Christian one.
See also comment on exodus 21:23–25.
5:44 Love Your Enemies?
We agree that we should resist the impulse to pay someone who harms us back in his own coin, but does that involve loving him? Can we be expected to love to order?
Jesus’ command to his disciples to love their enemies follows immediately on his words “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy’”
(Mt 5:43). “You shall love your neighbor” is a quotation from the Old Testament law; it is part of what Jesus elsewhere referred to as the second of the two great commandments: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev 19:18). On this commandment, with its companion “Love the Lord your God” (Deut 6:5), which he called “the greatest and first commandment,” Jesus said that all the law and the prophets depend (Mt 22:36–40). But the commandment does not in fact go on to say
“hate your enemy.” However, if it is only our neighbors that we are to love, and the word neighbors be defined fairly narrowly, then it might be argued that we are free to hate those who are not our neighbors. But Jesus said, “No; love your enemies as well as your neighbors.”
One difficulty lies in the sentimental associations that the word love has for many of us.
The love of which the law and the gospel alike speak is a very practical attitude: “Let us not love with word or tongue [only] but with actions and in truth” (1 Jn 3:18). Love to one’s neighbor is expressed in lending him a helping hand when that is what he needs: “Right,” says Jesus, “lend your enemy a helping hand when that is what he needs. Your feelings toward him are not the important thing.”
But if we think we should develop more Christian feelings toward an enemy, Jesus points the way when he says, “Pray for those who persecute you” (or, as it is rendered in Lk 6:28, “Pray for those who mistreat you”). Those who have put this injunction into practice assure us that persistence in prayer for someone whom we don’t like, however much it goes against the grain to begin with, brings about a remarkable change in attitude. Alexander Whyte quotes from an old diary the confessions of a man who had to share the same house and the same table with someone whom he found unendurable. He betook himself to prayer, until he was able to write, “Next morning I found it easy to be civil and even benevolent to my neighbour. And I felt at the Lord’s Table today as if I would yet live to love that man. I feel sure I will.”8 [8 Alexander Whyte, Lord, Teach Us to Pray, 2nd ed. (London: Oliphants, 1948), pp. 33–35.]
The best way to destroy an enemy is to turn him into a friend. Paul, who in this regard (as in so many others) reproduces the teaching of Jesus, sums it up by saying, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Rom 12:21). He reinforces it by quoting from Proverbs 25:21–22: “If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” Whatever that proverb originally meant, Paul adapts it to his purpose by omitting the self-regarding clause which follows those he quotes: “and the Lord will reward you.” In this new context the “burning coals” may mean the sense of shame which will be produced in the enemy, leading to a change of heart on his side too. But
first do him a good turn; the feelings can be left to their own good time.
See also comment on psalms 137:8–9; 139:20; matthew 5:39; 5:48; romans 12:20.
5:48 You Must Be Perfect?
Some students of Christian ethics make a distinction between the general standards of Christian conduct and what are called “counsels of perfection,” as though the former were prescribed for the rank and file of Christians while the latter could be attained only by real saints.
Such a distinction was not made by Jesus himself. He did make a distinction between the ordinary standards of morality observed in the world and the standard at which his disciples should aim; but the latter was something which should characterize all his disciples and not just a select few. For example, the principle that one good turn deserves another was observed by quite irreligious people and even by pagans. For anyone to repay a good turn with a bad one would be regarded as outrageous. But Jesus’ followers were not to remain content with conventional standards of decent behavior. According to conventional standards one good turn might deserve another, but according to the standards which he laid down for his disciples, one bad turn deserves a good one—except that “deserves” is not the right word. One bad turn may deserve a bad one in revenge, but one bad turn done to his disciples should be repaid by them with a good one. They must “go the second mile”; they must do more than others do if they are to be known as followers of Jesus. If you confine your good deeds to your own kith and kin, he said to them, “what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?” (Mt 5:47). It is immediately after that that the words come:
“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
This indeed sounds like a “counsel of perfection” in the most literal sense. “Be perfect like God.” Who can attain perfection like his? Is it worthwhile even to begin to try?
But the context helps us to understand the force of these words. Why should the disciples of Jesus, the heirs of the kingdom of God, repay evil with good? The ancient law might say, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev 19:18), but the fulfillment of that commandment depends on the answer given to the question “Who is my neighbor?” (Lk 10:29). When Jesus was asked that question, he told the story of the good Samaritan to show that my “neighbor” in the sense intended by the commandment is anyone who needs my help, anyone to whom I can render a
“neighborly” service. But those Israelites to whom the commandment was first given might not have thought of a Canaanite as being a “neighbor” within the meaning of the act, and their descendants in New Testament times might not have thought of a Roman in this way.
Most systems of ethics emphasize one’s duty to one’s neighbor, but progress in ethics is marked by the broadening scope indicated in the answer to the question “Who is my neighbor?” Why should I be neighborly to someone who is unneighborly to me? If someone does me a bad turn, why should I not pay him back in his own coin? Because, said Jesus, God himself sets us an example in this regard. “Your Father in heaven …
causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Mt 5:45). He bestows his blessings without discrimination. The followers of Jesus are children of God, and they should manifest the family likeness by doing good to all, even to those who deserve the opposite. So, said Jesus—go the
whole way in doing good, just as God does.
The same injunction appears in a similar context, but in slightly different words, in Luke 6:36: “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful” (RSV [RSV Revised Standard Version] ). When we find one and the same saying preserved in different forms by two Evangelists, as we do here, the reason often is that Jesus’ Aramaic words have been translated into Greek in two different ways. We do not know the precise Aramaic words that Jesus used on this occasion, but they probably meant, “You must be perfect (that is, all-embracing, without any restriction) in your acts of mercy or kindness, for that is what God is like.”
When the books of the law were read in synagogue from the original Hebrew, the reading was accompanied by an oral paraphrase (called a targum) in Aramaic, the popular vernacular. There is a passage in the law (Lev 22:26–28) which prescribes kindness to animals. In one of the Aramaic paraphrases, this passage ended with the words “As our Father is merciful in heaven, so you must be merciful on earth.”
Perhaps, then, some of Jesus’ hearers recognized a familiar turn of phrase when this hard saying fell from his lips. It is not, after all, hard to understand; it is sometimes hard to practice it.
See also comment on matthew 5:44; hebrews 10:14.
6:13 Lead Us Not into Temptation?
The traditional rendering of the Lord’s Prayer in English contains as its second-last petition, “And lead us not into temptation.” It is a petition that has puzzled successive generations of Christians for whom the word temptation ordinarily means temptation to sin. Why should we ask God not to lead us into this? As if God would do any such thing! “God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone” (Jas 1:13).
Perhaps this was absolutely the last petition in the original form of the Lord’s Prayer, as it is to this day in the authentic text of Luke’s version. The petition which follows it in the traditional rendering, “but deliver us from evil,” found in Matthew’s version, was perhaps added to help explain the preceding one—whether the added petition means
“Deliver us from what is evil” or “Deliver us from the evil one.” Is God asked to deliver his children from evil by preserving them from temptation or by preserving them in temptation? By preserving them in temptation, probably. It is appropriate to be reminded of a very similar petition which occurs in the Jewish service of morning and evening prayer: “Do not bring us into the power of temptation.” That seems to mean,
“When we find ourselves surrounded by temptation, may we not be overpowered by it.”
Temptation, when the word occurs in the older versions of the Bible, means more than temptation to sin; it has the wider sense of testing. God tempts no one, according to James 1:13; yet the same writer says, according to the KJV [KJV King James Version]
, “Count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations” and “Blessed is the man that endureth temptation” (Jas 1:2, 12). What he means is brought out by the RSV [RSV
Revised Standard Version] : “Count it all joy … when you meet various trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness” and “Blessed is the man who endures trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life which God has promised to those who love him.” To the same effect other Christians
are assured in 1 Peter 1:6–7 that the purpose of their being called to undergo various trials—“manifold temptations” in the KJV [KJV King James Version] —is “so that your faith … may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.” That is to say, when faith is tested it is strengthened, and the outcome is reinforced stability of character.
It was so in Old Testament times. When the KJV [KJV King James Version] of Genesis 22:1 says that “God did tempt Abraham,” the meaning is that he tested him—
tested his faith, that is to say. An untested faith is a weak faith, compared with one that has passed through a searching test and emerged victorious.
Jesus himself was led into “temptation.” So Matthew implies when he says (Mt 4:1) that “Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil.” Mark (Mk 1:12) uses an even stronger verb: after Jesus’s baptism, he says, “the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness” (RSV [RSV Revised Standard Version] ). What was the nature of his “temptation”? It was the testing of his faith in God, the testing of his resolution to accept the path which he knew to be his Father’s will for him in preference to others which might have seemed more immediately attractive. It was from that testing that he returned—“in the power of the Spirit,” says Luke (Lk 4:14)—to undertake his public ministry.
So, whatever is meant by the petition “Lead us not into temptation,” it is highly unlikely that it means “Do not let our faith be tested” or, as the NEB [NEB New English Bible] puts it, “Do not bring us to the test.” “Do not bring us to the test” is at least as obscure as “Lead us not into temptation.” It invites the question “What test?”
Perhaps Paul had this petition in his mind when he says to his friends in Corinth, “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it” (1 Cor 10:13). This could well be regarded as an expansion of this problem petition, which unpacks its concentrated meaning. It was evidently so regarded by those whose thought lies behind the fifth-century Eastern Liturgy of St. James. In this liturgy the celebrant, after reciting the Lord’s Prayer, goes on:
Yes, O Lord our God, lead us not into temptation which we are not able to bear, but with the temptation grant also the way out, so that we may be able to remain steadfast; and deliver us from evil.
This implies something like the following as the intention of our petition. We know that our faith needs to be tested if it is to grow strong; indeed, the conditions of life in this world make it inevitable that our faith must be tested. But some tests are so severe that our faith could not stand up to the strain; therefore we pray not to be brought into tests of such severity. If our faith gave way under the strain, that might involve us in moral disaster; it would also bring discredit on the name of the God whom we call our Father.
When we use the prayer, we may generalize this petition along these lines. But in the context of Jesus’ ministry and his disciples’ association with him, the petition may have had a more specific reference. What that reference was may be inferred from his admonition to some of his disciples in Gethsemane just before his arrest: “Watch and
pray so that you will not fall into temptation” (Mk 14:38). When some regard is paid to the Aramaic wording which probably lies behind the Evangelist’s Greek rendering of the admonition, there is much to be said for the view of some scholars that it meant,
“Keep awake, and pray not to fail in the test!” The disciples had no idea how crucial was the test which was almost upon them. It was the supreme test for him; what about them? Would they, who had continued with their Master in his trials thus far, stand by him in the imminent hour of ultimate trial, or would they fail in the test? We know what happened: they failed—temporarily, at least. Mercifully (for the world’s salvation was at stake), he did not fail. When the Shepherd was struck down, the sheep were scattered. But he endured the ordeal of suffering and death and, when he came back to life, he gathered his scattered followers together again, giving them a new start—and this time they did not fail in the test.
Our perspective on the events of Gethsemane and Calvary, even when our lives are caught up into those events and revolutionized by them, is necessarily different from theirs at that time. Jesus was prepared for the winding up of the old age and the breaking in of the new—the powerful coming of the kingdom of God. The transition from the old to the new would involve unprecedented tribulation, the birthpangs of the new creation, which would be a test too severe even for the faith of the elect, unless God intervened and cut it short. This tribulation would fall preeminently on the Son of Man, and on his endurance of it the bringing in of the new age depended. He was ready to absorb it in his own person, but would he find one or two others willing to share it with him? James and John had professed their ability to drink his cup and share his baptism, but in the moment of crisis they, with their companions, proved unequal to the challenge.
Going back, then, from our Lord’s admonition in Gethsemane to the problem petition we are considering, we may conclude that in the context of Jesus’ ministry its meaning was “Grant that we may not fail in the test”—“Grant that the test may not prove too severe for our faith to sustain.” The test in that context was the crucial test of the ages to which Jesus’ ministry was the immediate prelude. If we adopt the rendering of the petition followed in the Series 3 Anglican Order for Holy Communion, “Do not bring us to the time of trial,” or the variant proposed by the International Consultation on English Texts, “Save us from the time of trial,” then the “time of trial” originally intended was one against which the disciples who were taught to use the petition needed to be forearmed. But the force of the petition would be better expressed by rendering it, “May our faith stand firm in the time of trial” or “Save us in the time of trial.” Through that trial we can no longer pass; the Son of Man passed through it as our representative. But the time of trial which will show whether we are truly his followers or not may come upon any Christian at any time. Those who have confidence in their ability to stand such a test may feel no need of the petition. But those who know that their faith is no more reliable than that of Peter and James and John may well pray to be saved from a trial with which their faith cannot cope or, if the trial is inescapable, to be supplied with the heavenly grace necessary to endure it: “Grant that we may not fail in the test.”
See also comment on genesis 22:1; james 1:13.
6:14–15 No Forgiveness for the Unforgiving?
6:24 You Cannot Serve Both God and Mammon?
Mammon (NIV [NIV New International Version] “money”) is a term that Jesus sometimes used to denote wealth. He was not the only teacher in Israel to use it, and whenever it is used it seems to indicate some unworthy aspect of wealth—not so much, perhaps, the unworthiness of wealth itself as the unworthiness of many people’s attitudes to it. The derivation of the word is uncertain. Some think that it originally meant that in which men and women put their trust; others, that it originally meant
“accumulation,” “piling up.” But the derivation is not very important; it is the use of a word, not its derivation, that determines its meaning.
Since the service of mammon is presented in this saying as an alternative to the service of God, mammon seems to be a rival to God. Service of mammon and service of God are mutually exclusive. The servant of mammon, in other words, is an idol worshiper: mammon, wealth, money has become an idol, the object of worship.
The man who depended on finding enough work today to buy the next day’s food for his family could pray with feeling, “Give us today our daily bread” (Mt 6:11) or, as Moffat rendered it, “give us to-day our bread for the morrow.” But the man who knew he had enough laid by to maintain his family and himself, whether he worked or not, whether he kept well or fell ill, would not put the same urgency into the prayer. The more material resources he had, the less wholehearted his reliance on God would tend to become. The children of the kingdom, in Jesus’ teaching, are marked by their instant and constant trust in God; that trust will be weakened if they have something else to trust in.
In the Western world today we are cushioned, by social security and the like, against the uncertainties and hardships of life in a way that was not contemplated in New Testament times. It was in a society that did not provide widows’ pensions that the words of 1 Timothy 5:5 were written: “She who is a real widow, and is left all alone, has set her hope on God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day”
(RSV [RSV Revised Standard Version] ). This is not a criticism of social security (for which God be thanked); it is a reminder of the difficulty we find in applying the sayings of Jesus and his apostles to our own condition. But when we hear of victims of famine or refugees fleeing war, we can try to imagine what it must be like to be in their situation and consider what claim they have on our resources. This will not get us into the kingdom of God, but at least it may teach us to use material property more worthily than by treating it as something to lay our hearts on or rest our confidence in.
A covetous person, says Paul, is an idolater (Eph 5:5), and in saying so he expressed the same idea as Jesus did when he spoke about mammon. “Watch out!” said Jesus on another occasion. “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions” (Lk 12:15). That should teach us not to say “How much is So-and-so worth?” when we really mean “How much does he possess?” Luke follows this last saying with the parable of the rich fool, the man who had so much property that he reckoned he could take life easy for a long time to come.
He went to bed with this comforting thought, but by morning he was a pauper—he was dead, and had to leave his property behind. He had treated it as mammon, the object of his ultimate concern, and in his hour of greatest need it proved useless to
him. If he had put his trust in God and accumulated the true and lasting riches, he would not have found himself destitute after death.
See also comment on james 4:4; 5:1.
7:6 Pearls Before Swine?
The construction of this saying seems to be chiastic. It is the swine that will trample the pearls beneath their feet and the dogs that will turn and bite the hand that fed them, even if it fed them with “holy” flesh.
The general sense of the saying is clear: objects of value, special privileges, participation in sacred things should not be offered to those who are incapable of appreciating them. Pearls are things of beauty and value to many people—Jesus himself in one of his parables compared the kingdom of God to a “pearl of great value”
(Mt 13:45–46)—but pigs will despise them because they cannot eat them. Holy flesh—
the flesh of sacrificial animals—has a religious value over and above its nutritive value for worshipers who share in a “peace offering,” but pariah dogs will make no difference between it and scraps of offal for which they battle in the street; they will not feel specially grateful to anyone who gives it to them.
But has the saying a more specific application? One could imagine its being quoted by some more restrictive brethren in the Jerusalem church as an argument against presenting the gospel to Gentiles, certainly against receiving them into full Christian fellowship. At a slightly later date it was used as an argument against admitting unbelievers to the Lord’s Supper; thus the Didache (Teaching of the Twelve Apostles), a manual of Syrian Christianity dated around a.d. 100, says, “Let none eat or drink of your Eucharist except those who have been baptized in the name of the Lord. It was concerning this that the Lord said, ‘Do not give dogs what is holy’” (9.5).
It would be anachronistic to read this interpretation back into the ministry of Jesus. It is better to read the saying in the context given it by Matthew (the only Gospel writer to report it). It comes immediately after the injunction “Do not judge, or you too will be judged” (Mt 7:1), with two amplifications of that injunction: you will be judged by the standard you apply in the judgment of others (Mt 7:2), and you should not try to remove a speck of sawdust from someone else’s eye when you have a whole plank in your own (Mt 7:3–5). Then comes this saying, which is a further amplification of the principle, or rather a corrective of it: you must not sit in judgment on others and pass censorious sentences on them, but you ought to exercise discrimination. Judgment is an ambiguous word. In Greek as in English, it may mean sitting in judgment on people (or even condemning them), or it may mean exercising a proper discrimination. In the former sense judgment is deprecated; in the latter sense it is recommended. Jesus himself knew that it was useless to impart his message to some people: he had no answer for Herod Antipas when Herod “plied him with many questions” (Lk 23:9).
7:23 I Never Knew You?
See comment on matthew 25:11–12.
8:5 Did the Centurion Come to Meet Jesus?
8:13 How Much Faith Do We Need?
See comment on mark 5:34.
8:20 The Son of Man Has No Place to Lay His Head?
See comment on luke 9:58.
8:22 Let the Dead Bury Their Dead?
See comment on luke 9:60.
8:28–34 Two Demoniacs or One?
When we compare Matthew 8:28 with Mark 5:2 and Luke 8:27, there is one major difference: Mark and Luke refer to one demonized man while Matthew refers to two.
This is not the only place in which Matthew has this difference in number. In Matthew 9:27, which may be parallel to Mark 8:22–23, there are two blind men, in Matthew 20:30 there are also two blind men, although Mark 10:46 has only one, whom he names as Bartimaeus, and in Matthew 21:1–11 there are two animals that are brought to Jesus. What are we to make of these Matthean doublets, as they have been called?
We will deal with the issue of the two animals in a later chapter; here we will deal only with the problem of the two people being healed.
Several explanations have been given. First, it is quite possible that there were two men in each instance and that Mark has left one out. While this might be understandable in Mark 10:46, since he might know the name of only one of them or perhaps only one of them continued as a follower of Jesus, this is more of a problem in this passage. What reason could Mark have had for leaving one person out? Is it not more frightening and more dangerous and therefore a more significant miracle to be confronted by two demonized men than one? It is difficult to understand why Mark (and Luke, who, of course, may never have read Matthew and only copied Mark) would be so consistently different without any motive.
Second, some scholars have argued that it is simply the nature of miracle stories to grow in the telling. Thus, like a fish story, where originally there was one man, now there are two. This explanation is far too simplistic. If the stories were just being exaggerated, why would the number always be two? Why would not some of the stories have had two and others three or perhaps five or six? This explanation gives no reason for the consistency. Also, if this were true, there would be no analogy between these stories about healing and the two animals in the triumphal entry.
Third, other scholars have argued that Matthew has deliberately increased the number to two to make a theological point. They point out that the Gospels were not written as biographies and certainly not as modern biographies. In modern biographies we
want to present something like a photograph of the person, while in ancient biographies, and even more so in the Gospels, the authors wanted to paint an interpretive portrait of the person. An interpretive portrait could paint a king with both a prime minister from the first part of his reign and one from the last part of his reign, even though the two men never met and never served the king at the same time. We would not fault the portrait for that, for it is trying to express a truth: both of these men served the king (or perhaps, each of these men represents one theme of the king’s reign). This interpretive character is the nature of ancient historical writing: the important thing was not to get the details right but to present the main character so that his or her true nature and character was evident.
What, then, could be Matthew’s point? First, Matthew may be indicating that he has left out a story about a demonized person which he found in Mark (Mk 1:23–28); he also omits one story of healing a blind man (Mk 8:22–26, assuming that Mt 9:27 is too different to be a version of this story). On this view he is playing “catch-up” and indicating that Jesus did this sort of thing more than once. Yet, we may ask, why would he not be content with the single instance? Would it not be enough to show that Jesus could do these things?
We need to remember, second, that it is Matthew who, ever conscious of the law, in Matthew 18:16 quotes Deuteronomy 19:15 to the effect that “every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.” Furthermore, each of these passages has an important confession of Christ. In Matthew 8:29 it is “Son of God.” In Matthew 9:27–28 and 20:30–31 it is “Lord, Son of David.” Thus without having to tell two or more stories he gets his two witnesses to the title of Christ by including more than one demonized person and more than one blind man in the respective stories. While this might not be our idea of accurate reporting (for we, unlike Matthew, can simply add a few more pages to a book to fit in whatever we feel we need to), it would certainly fit the ancient concept, for Matthew has brought out the truth of the matter (for example, that Jesus did heal more than one demonized person and than many of them gave witness to him as the Son of God) in how he paints his picture.9 [9 For further discussion see Donald A. Hagner, Matthew 1–13, Word Biblical Commentary 33A (Dallas: Word, 1993), p. 227.]
Even if one chooses to accept that it is easier to believe that Mark left one of the persons out in each case (for we can never know for sure that this was not the case), the explanation above would certainly be a factor in why Matthew felt that having two was so important and Mark, lacking his concern about the law, would not have felt that it mattered.
8:31–32 Why No Concern for the Pigs?
In the age of Greenpeace and animal rights the idea that Jesus of Nazareth sentenced two thousand pigs, one of the more intelligent mammals, to death by drowning by allowing demons to invade and terrorize them raises problems for most readers. Didn’t Jesus care about animals? In the Old Testament God does (for example, Prov 12:10).
And even if Jesus did not care about pigs, shouldn’t he have cared about the livelihood of the swineherds and the owners? He certainly did not ask anyone’s permission.
The story in Matthew 8:28–34 and Luke 8:26–39 is drawn from Mark 5:1–20. In these accounts Jesus, confronted by a severely demonized man, does not immediately drive
the demons out, but instead ends up in a short discussion with them. The demons request that Jesus send them into a large herd of pigs feeding nearby. When he consents, the demons do enter the pigs. The herd stampedes, rushes into the Sea of Galilee and is drowned.
Before we turn to the main issues, we need to deal with two less important ones. First, the name of the place where this story occurs differs among the Gospels and their translations, which points to a very difficult textual situation. In the best Greek text Matthew has Gadarenes, Mark has Gerasenes, and Luke agrees with Mark. Most modern versions translate the terms accordingly, but the King James has Gergasenes in Matthew and Gadarenes in the two other Gospels, for it is following a later, probably corrupt, Greek text. But to what town do these names refer?
One possibility is Gerasa, modern Jerash, about thirty miles southeast of the Sea of Galilee. Although it was a very prosperous town in the first two centuries a.d., it is unlikely that its lands reached the lake. The second possibility is Gadara, a site now called Um Qeia, five miles southeast of the sea. Its lands certainly reached the lake, for Josephus mentions the fact and its coins show a ship. The final possibility is that the reference is to a lakeside town. The site of modern Khersa has been suggested, but it probably gave rise to the corrupt reading Gergasenes after Origen’s suggestion in the third century. Whatever the actual town (we will never know the names of all of the towns and villages on the east coast of the Sea of Galilee), Mark uses “Gerasene” to refer to its people, and Luke follows him. Matthew (who likely wrote his Gospel in Syria, thereby closer to the site) prefers to refer to the town he knows, in the region he believed the place was located. Later scribes, not knowing any of the places, confused the matter. One thing is certain: all of the places named are in the Decapolis, Gentile territory of the ten independent cities to the east of the Sea of Galilee.
The second preliminary issue is that Matthew mentions two demonized men, while Mark and Luke mention only one. This is a common problem in Matthew. For example, in Matthew 9:27 and Matthew 20:30 he mentions two blind men where the other Gospels mention only one, and in Matthew 21:2, 6 he says that two donkeys were brought to Jesus while the other Gospels mention only one. In each case it is not at all unlikely that two (or more) were present. Blind beggars (and other types as well) would group at city gates, a donkey young enough not to have been used for work would likely be with its mother, and more than one demonized person might find refuge in the same groups of tombs. But even if there is no necessity of seeing a historical problem, we may wonder why Matthew would mention two when one seems to do for the others. While other answers also may suffice, one reason is that Matthew’s interest in the miracles is due to his Christology. That is, the miracles show the power of Christ. By mentioning two he heightens that power. The healing of one may have been a coincidence, but not the healing of two. Similarly, if two donkeys are brought to Jesus, the significance of his fulfillment of the Scriptures is underlined.
Concerning the major issues in this passage, it becomes clear that the Gospel writers were interested in quite different issues than those with which modern readers have struggled. We tend to romanticize the role of animals, while in the first century animals were raised for food or for other useful purposes. Everyone was familiar with animal sacrifice, whether for a secular marketplace or in the temple. We also see the economics of the story, while the Gospel writers were far more concerned with God’s present provision (Mk 6:7–13) and future treasure in heaven than in preserving economic security now. Furthermore, we see the violence done to animals, while the
Gospel writers were concerned with the violent destructive behavior of demons and their effects upon human beings (which they knew from firsthand observation).
Therefore, the Gospel writers saw the whole story from another perspective.
In Mark, for example, Jesus comes into the land of the Gerasenes. Mark later notes that this is part of the Decapolis, underlining the fact that it is Gentile country, even if it once belonged to Israel. In other words, Jesus is in an unclean land. The demonized man even uses a title for God (“God Most High”) normally used by Gentiles. He lives in the tombs, an unclean place, the place of the dead. He is controlled by “an unclean spirit” [RSV [RSV Revised Standard Version] ] (Matthew and Luke simply say he is
“demonized”). The pigs, of course, are unclean animals (Lev 11:7; Deut 14:8), which Jews were not even to raise for others (so runs the rabbinic rule in Mishnah, Baba Kamma 7:7). So the unclean spirits go into the unclean pigs and drive them to their deaths, while the man who was in the place of the dead (and surely would soon enough die) is delivered and reenters life (returns to his own house). From this perspective the pigs are not the issue—they are unclean—and the townsfolk miss the point when they see only their loss of pigs and fail to see the delivered man. Indeed, the pigs plunging into the sea may suggest that the unclean land had been freed of the unclean spirits with the removal of the unclean animals; but the people do not want salvation, preferring pigs.
Another set of issues is also present in this passage. This is the only exorcism in the Gospels in which the demons answer back to Jesus. In fact, they do so after Jesus commands them to leave the man (a detail not mentioned in Matthew). Their concern is that they not be tormented, that is, sent to hell (Matthew specifically adds “before the time,” meaning before the final judgment). Why would they say this? First, Jewish teaching was that demons were free to torment people until the last judgment (see Jubilees 10:5–9 and 1 Enoch 15–16). Second, Jesus’ appearance and power to expel them looked to them as if he were beginning the final judgment too early. Therefore, the permission to enter the pigs is an admission that the last judgment is not yet taking place. The demons are still free to do their destructive work. Nevertheless, wherever the King is present he brings the kingdom and frees people from the power of evil.
There is no suggestion in this story that Jesus was not in control or that he was tricked.
He had just stilled a destructive (perhaps even demonically inspired) storm (Mt 8:23–
27; Mk 4:35–41; Lk 8:22–25). He remains the sovereign “Son of God” in the deliverance of the demonized man. But the account gives the Gospel writers a chance to point out that while the kingdom of God does come in Jesus, it is not yet the time of final judgment when evil will finally and totally be put down. Demons remain and act like demons, tormenting and killing what they inhabit, but they are limited in that Jesus could and still can free people by his power.
We moderns may not like the idea that demons do have this destructive nature, that of their master (see Jn 10:10, where the “thief” is an image for Satan). Jesus, of course, did not tell them to kill the pigs; the demons just did to them what they wished to do to the man in the long run. Nor do we like the idea that God is limited in his options here, choosing in his mercy to delay the final judgment, which would have been brought about had he removed the evil forces totally. But both of these facts underline the most important issue, the value of a person. So precious is human life that, when necessary, a whole herd of animals may be sacrificed for one or two people.
See also comment on matthew 8:28–34.
9:22 How Much Faith Do We Need?
See comment on mark 5:34.
9:24 Not Dead but Sleeping?
See comment on mark 5:39.
10:5–6 Not to the Gentiles?
These words occur in Matthew’s account of Jesus’ sending out the twelve apostles two by two at a fairly early stage in his Galilean ministry, in order that the proclamation of the kingdom of God might be carried on more extensively and more quickly than if he had done it by himself alone. The message they were to preach was the same as he preached: “The kingdom of heaven is near.” The works of healing that were to accompany their preaching were of the same kind as accompanied his.
Mark (Mk 6:7–13) and Luke (Lk 9:l) also report the sending out of the Twelve, but more briefly than Matthew does. Matthew is the only Evangelist to include these
“exclusive” words in his account. “The lost sheep of Israel” is an expression peculiar to his Gospel (although it is not dissimilar to “sheep without a shepherd” in Mk 6:34); it occurs again in his account of the healing of the Canaanite woman’s daughter (Mt 15:24).
Since Matthew is the only Evangelist to report these words, it might be argued that they were not originally spoken by Jesus but were ascribed to him by the Evangelist or his source. We cannot make Matthew responsible for inventing them; there is no reason to think that Matthew had an anti-Gentile bias or entertained a particularist view of the gospel. At the beginning of his record he brings the Gentiles in by telling how the wise men came from the east to pay homage to the infant king of the Jews—
the occasion traditionally referred to as the “epiphany” or “manifestation” of Christ to the Gentiles. In the course of his report of Jesus’ teaching he quotes him as saying that, before the end comes, “this gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, as a testimony to all nations” (Mt 24:14). At the end of the book (Mt 28:19) he tells how the risen Christ commissioned the apostles to “go … and make disciples of all nations” (that is, among all the Gentiles). And in the course of his record he tells of Jesus’ praise for the Roman centurion of Capernaum, in whom he found greater faith than he had found in any Israelite (Lk 7:2–10), and of his following assertion that “many will come from the east and the west, and will takes their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven,” while some of the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob would find themselves excluded from the feast (Mt 8:5–13; compare Lk 13:28–29). Those last words would certainly be a hard saying for Jewish hearers, just as hard as “Do not go among the Gentiles” might be for Gentile readers.
Matthew probably did derive some of the material peculiar to his Gospel from a source marked by a Jewish emphasis—perhaps a compilation of sayings of Jesus preserved by
a rather strict Jewish-Christian community. “Do not go among the Gentiles” may well have been found in this source.10 [10 To this source (commonly labeled M) may also be assigned Matthew 18:17, with its direction that the insubordinate brother should be treated “as a Gentile and a tax collector” (RSV).] But the source in question probably selected those sayings of Jesus which chimed in with its own outlook; that is no argument against their genuineness.
When Jesus sent out the Twelve, the time at their disposal was short, and it was necessary to concentrate on the people who had been specially prepared for the message of the kingdom. Even if the Twelve did confine themselves to the “lost sheep of Israel,” they would not have time to cover all of these. This has sometimes been thought to be the point of the cryptic words “you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel, before the Son of man comes” (Mt 10:23 RSV [RSV Revised Standard Version] ).
Moreover, it is taught in the prophetic writings of the Old Testament, and nowhere more clearly than in Isaiah 40–55, that when Israel grasps the true knowledge of God, it will be its privilege to share that knowledge with other nations. Nearly thirty years later, Paul, apostle to the Gentiles though he was, lays down the order of gospel presentation as being “first for the Jew, then for the Gentile” (Rom 1:16). This statement of primitive evangelistic policy was evidently founded on Jesus’ own practice. Even so, there are hints here and there in the Synoptic Gospels that the Gentiles’ interests were not forgotten. The incident of the Roman centurion of Capernaum has been mentioned; the healing of the Canaanite woman’s daughter will receive separate treatment (see comment on Mk 7:27). Such occasions, isolated and exceptional as they were during Jesus’ ministry, foreshadowed the mission to the Gentiles which was launched a few years after his death. The Fourth Gospel emphasizes this by relating an incident that took place in Jerusalem during Holy Week, only two or three days before Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion. Some Greeks who were visiting the city approached one of the disciples and asked for an interview with Jesus.
His reply, when he was told of their request, was in effect “Not yet, but after my death”—“when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to myself,” all without distinction, Gentiles and Jews alike (Jn 12:20–32). That is exactly what happened.
The ban on entering any town of the Samaritans is to be understood in the same way.
Samaritans were not Jews, but neither were they Gentiles. Jesus did not share his people’s anti-Samaritan bias (although the evidence for this is supplied by Luke and John, not by Matthew), and after his death and resurrection his message of salvation was effectively presented to Samaritans even before it was presented to Gentiles (Acts 8:5–25).
See also comment on mark 7:27; 10:31.
10:9–10 Were the Twelve to Take a Staff?
See comment on mark 6:8.
10:23 Unfulfilled Expectation?
This saying, found in Matthew’s Gospel only, comes at the end of Jesus’ 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.”11 [11 Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus (London: A. and C. Black, 1910), p. 357.] 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.”12 [12 Ibid., p. 369.] 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 Schweitzer to be an “interim ethic” to guide the lives of Jesus’ disciples in the short interval before the manifestation of the Son of Man in power and glory.