b. Commissioning the Twelve (10:1–4)

OVERVIEW

Matthew’s arrangement of the pericopes in chs. 8–9 is demonstrably topical, not chronological. All these pericopes except 8:5–13, 18–22; 9:32–34 are paralleled in Mark, but not in the same order, and these three are paralleled in Luke. Mark 1:40–2:22 appears to provide the basic framework with numerous exceptions. The events in Matthew 8:18–22 originally occurred not only after the Sermon on the Mount but apparently after the “day of parables” (ch. 13; cf. Lk 8:22–56). On the other hand, Matthew 8:2–4; 8:14–17; 9:2–13 almost certainly took place before the Sermon on the Mount (cf. Mk 1:29–34, 40–45; Lk 4:38–41; see Hendriksen). Matthew does not purport to follow anything other than a topical arrangement, and most of his “time” indicators are very loose.

This does not mean that Matthew’s arrangement is entirely haphazard but that it is governed by themes. Linkage from pericope to pericope is provided by ideas, catchwords, and dominant motifs (cf. K. Gatzweiler, “Les récits de miracles dans l’évangile selon saint Matthieu,” in L’Évangile selon Matthieu [ed. Didier], 209–20). However, it does not follow that all the outlines suggested by various scholars to explain this topical design are equally convincing. Klostermann, for instance, notes the central place of the ten plagues in Jewish thought (e.g., Pirke Avot 5:5, 8) and suggests that the ten miracles in these chapters are planned to picture Jesus as the new Moses or the church as a new exodus (cf. Grundmann; Davies, Setting, 86–93). But this is not convincing: Matthew lays no stress on the number ten, his miracles are not individually parallel to the plagues, and his main themes run on other lines.

J. D. Kingsbury (“Observations on the Miracle Chapters of Matthew 8–9,” CBQ 40 [1978]: 559–73) ably discusses and rejects outlines proposed by Christoph Burger (Jesus als Davidssohn), William Thompson (Matthew’s Advice), and others, and he opts for a modification of Burger’s fourfold division: (1) 8:1–17 treats Christology; (2) 8:18–34 concerns discipleship; (3) 9:1–17 focuses on questions pertaining to the separation of Jesus and his followers from Israel; (4) 9:18–34 centers on faith; and over all the “Son of God” Christology predominates.

But it is hard to avoid the feeling that this outline, like the others, is too simplistic. Christology extends beyond 8:1–17; a new title appears in 8:20 and reappears in 9:6; and Jesus’ godlike authority to forgive sins does not appear until ch. 9. Why discipleship should be restricted to 8:18–34 when Matthew is called in 9:9–13 and the distinctive habits of Jesus’ disciples are discussed in 9:14–17 is unclear. The distinctions between Jesus’ followers and racial Israel can scarcely be said to await 9:1–17 in the light of 8:10, 28–34. Faith, far from awaiting the fourth division, is already central in 8:5–13. And we have already seen that Kingsbury tends to emphasize the “Son of God” theme while minimizing other equally strong christological emphases (see

). Luz (Studies in Matthew, 221–40) argues that the arrangement is designed to draw the readers into the accounts, so that the miracle stories not only speak of what happened but are presented so that readers make analogous connections with their own historical situation. That is the sort of theory that is reasonable enough when painted with broad strokes, but when it is defended in excruciating detail, these details become speculative and frankly unbelievable.

Certainly these chapters cannot legitimately be broken down in some simplistic fashion. Though Matthew’s pericopes cohere nicely, he intertwines his themes, keeping several going at once like a literary juggler. Thus these chapters are best approached inductively; and one can trace emphases on faith, discipleship, the Gentile mission, a diverse christological pattern, and more. At the same time, these chapters prove that Jesus, whose mission in part was to preach, teach, and heal (4:23; 9:35), fulfilled the whole of it.

OVERVIEW

Matthew has shown Jesus preaching the gospel of the kingdom (4:17, 23) and teaching (chs. 5–7). Now he records some examples of his healing ministry.

The first miracle, the healing of a leper, is much shorter in Matthew (8:1–4) than in Mark (Mk 1:40–45). The omission of Mark 1:41a, 45 and several other bits prompts some to think Matthew is here independent of Mark (Lohmeyer, Schlatter), others to think oral tradition is still having its influence (Bonnard, Hill), still others to offer some theological explanation, e.g., that Matthew suppressed any reference to Jesus’ compassion because it did not fit the image the Matthean church members had formed of Christ (Sabourin; cf. Hull, Hellenistic Magic, 133–34). But when Matthew follows Mark, he condenses controversy stories by about 20 percent, stories that prove Jesus is the Christ by about 10 percent, actual sayings of Jesus scarcely at all, and miracle stories by about 50 percent (cf. Schweizer). Matthew, though allusive, is a highly disciplined writer, rigorously eliminating everything unrelated to his immediate concerns. So we must take it as a rule of thumb that Matthew’s theology cannot be accurately discovered by studying what he omits—which cannot show more than what is not his immediate concern, and even then some of his omissions are purely stylistic—but primarily by what he includes. This is especially significant in the miracles, where Matthew leaves out so much. In the leper’s healing, Sabourin’s suggestion is especially implausible since Matthew stresses elsewhere Jesus’ compassion and draws theological meaning from it (9:35–38).

1When he came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him. 2A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”

3Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately he was cured of his leprosy. 4Then Jesus said to him, “See that you don’t tell anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.”

COMMENTARY

1 Jesus came down out of the hills (see

), where the Sermon on the Mount had been delivered, and still the great crowds (4:23–25; 7:28–29) pursued him.

2–3 The introductory kai idou (lit., “and behold”; also in Luke, absent from Mark, untranslated in NIV) does not require that this healing immediately follow the sermon. In Matthew, kai idou has a broad range, sometimes serving as a loose connective, sometimes introducing a startling thought or event, and sometimes, as here, marking the beginning of a new pericope.

Whether NT leprosy was actual leprosy (Hansen’s disease; cf. NIDNTT, 2:463–66) or a broader category of skin ailments including leprosy is uncertain. But the Jews abhorred it, not only because of the illness itself, but because it rendered the sufferer and all with whom he came in direct contact ceremonially unclean. To be a leper was interpreted as being cursed by God (cf. Nu 12:10, 12; Job 18:13). Healings were rare (cf. Nu 12:10–15; 2Ki 5:9–14) and considered as difficult as raising the dead (2Ki 5:7, 14; cf. Str-B, 4:745ff.). In the messianic age there would be no leprosy (cf. 11:5).

The man prosekynei (“knelt,” GK 4686) before Jesus, but the verb can also mean “worshiped.” Clearly the former is meant in this historical setting. Yet, as with the title “Lord” (see

), Christian readers of Matthew could not help concluding that this leper spoke and acted better than he knew.

“If you are willing” reflects the leper’s great faith, prompted by Jesus’ healing activity throughout the district (4:24). He had no question about Jesus’ healing power but feared only that he would be passed by. In affirming his willingness to heal, Jesus proved that his will is decisive. He already had the authority and power and only needed to decide and act. J. D. Kingsbury (“Retelling the ‘Old, Old Story,’” Currents in Theology and Missions 4 [1976]: 346) suggests that “reached out his hand” symbolizes the exercise of authority (cf. Ex 7:5; 14:21; 15:6; 1Ki 8:42), but Matthew’s use of the same Greek expression elsewhere (Mt 12:13 [2x], 49; 14:31; 26:51) shows that Kingsbury’s interpretation is fanciful. More probably, Jesus had to reach to touch the leper because the leper did not dare come close to him.

By touching an unclean leper, Jesus would become ceremonially defiled himself (cf. Lev 13–14). But at Jesus’ touch nothing remains defiled. Far from becoming unclean, Jesus makes the unclean clean. Both Jesus’ word and touch (8:15; 9:20–21, 29; 14:36) are effective, possibly implying that authority is vested in his message as well as his person.

4 Despite Heinz Joachim Held’s view (“Matthew as Interpreter of the Miracle Stories,” 256), this verse is not the “entire goal of this story.” That is reductionistic and ignores the intertwined themes (see

; Heil, “Significant Aspects of the Healing Miracles,” 280 n. 25). While prohibitions against telling of cures and exorcisms are more common in Mark than Matthew, they are not unknown in the latter (8:4; 9:30; 12:16; cf. 16:20; 17:9). They have nothing to do with the so-called messianic secret proposed by William Wrede (The Messianic Secret [Greenwood, S.C.: Attic, 1971; German ed., 1901]; see Introduction in Mark, p. 674), as Hill rightly holds. Nor does this particular prohibition enjoin silence only until the cured leper has been to Jerusalem to be cleared by the priest (so Lenski). The synoptic parallels (Mk 1:45; Lk 5:15) as well as other similar occurrences in Matthew demonstrate that these commands to be silent have other functions—to show that Jesus is not presenting himself as a mere wonder worker (Stonehouse, Witness of Matthew, 62; Maier) who can be pressured into messiahship by crowds whose messianic views are materialistic and political. Jesus’ authority derives from God alone, not the acclaim of men (Bonnard); he came to die, not to trounce the Romans. The people who disobeyed Jesus’ injunctions to silence only made his mission more difficult.

Jesus commanded the cured man to follow the Mosaic prescriptions for lepers who claimed healing (cf. Lev 14). This, he said, was eis martyrion autois (“as a testimony to them”). Much debate surrounds autois. Is the testimony positive, “for them” (Trilling, Das wahre Israel, 128–29), as proof of the healing, or negative, “against them” (Hummel, Auseinandersetzung, 81–82), as a sort of denunciation of their unbelief? Such conflicting categories are not helpful and leave some commentators undecided (e.g., Nolland). Of the other places where the Synoptics use eis martyrion (“for a witness”; 10:18; 24:14; Mk 1:44; 6:11; 13:9; Lk 5:14; 9:5; 21:13), only two require “witness against” (contra Frankemölle, Jahwebund und Kirche Christi, 120 n. 193, who insists 10:18 and 24:14 are also negative). Most of the rest are “neutral” and imply division around the “witness” presented.

Better progress can be made by asking why, in this setting, Jesus commands obedience. It cannot be simply to prove that Jesus remains faithful to the law (Calvin) and so encourages Matthew’s Jewish Christians to be similarly faithful (Hill, Schniewind, Schweizer). Formally speaking, Jesus has already transcended the law by touching the leper without being defiled, a confirmation of our exegesis of 5:17–20. Furthermore, if around AD 85 (when Hill thinks the first gospel was written) Matthew were simply trying to get his community to adhere (unlike Pauline communities) to the details of OT law, he chose a singularly ill-suited story to make his point, because by that date the destruction of the temple had effectively abolished priests and offerings. It is far easier to deduce from the setting that this material is authentic.

In one sense, Jesus does submit to the law. He puts himself under its ordinances. But the result is startling. The law achieves new relevance by pointing to Jesus. In conforming to the law, the cured leper becomes the occasion for the law to confirm Jesus’ authority as the healer who needs but to will the deed for it to be done. Thus the supreme function of the “gift” Moses commanded is not as a guilt offering (Lev 14:10–18) but as a witness to men concerning Jesus. In this context, “to them” is relatively incidental. It might refer to the priests or the people, but in either case it points to Jesus Christ (see

OVERVIEW

If this story (cf. Lk 7:1–10) comes from Q, then at least in this instance Q contains more than short sayings of Jesus; or, better, this is evidence against a unitary Q. It is uncertain whether this account is the same as the one in John 4:46–53. The many differences argue against this, though admittedly some of these are overemphasized. In John, Jesus rebukes the centurion and the onlookers for their love of signs. Though there is no mention of that here, Matthew treats that theme elsewhere (12:38–39; 16:1–4). Most modern scholars, unlike those of earlier generations, simply assume there is but one incident. However, the matter is ably discussed by Edward F. Siegman, “St. John’s Use of Synoptic Material,” CBQ 30 (1968): 182–98. (On the distinctive theological emphases of Matthew and Luke, cf. R. P. Martin, “The Pericope of the Healing of the ‘Centurion’s’ Servant/Son [Mt 8:5–13 par. Lk 7:1–10]: Some Exegetical Notes,” in Unity and Diversity in the New Testament [ed. R. A. Guelich; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978], 14–22.)

Form critics find the purpose of the story in the dialogue to which the miracle leads and call it a “pronouncement story” or “apophthegm” rather than a “miracle story.” One wonders why it can’t be both (cf. Stephen H. Travis, “Form Criticism,” in New Testament Interpretation [ed. Marshall], esp. 157–60). The chief difference, apart from theological emphases, between vv.5–13 and Luke 7:1–10 is the use of intermediaries in the latter. Probably Matthew, following his tendency to condense, makes no mention of the servants in order to lay the greater emphasis on faith according to the principle qui facit per alium facit per se (“he who acts by another acts himself”)—a principle the centurion’s argument implies (vv.8–9).

5When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking for help. 6“Lord,” he said, “my servant lies at home paralyzed and in terrible suffering.”

7Jesus said to him, “I will go and heal him.”

8The centurion replied, “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. 9For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”

10When Jesus heard this, he was astonished and said to those following him, “I tell you the truth, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. 11I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. 12But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

13Then Jesus said to the centurion, “Go! It will be done just as you believed it would.” And his servant was healed at that very hour.

COMMENTARY

5 This is Matthew’s second mention of Capernaum (cf. 4:13). In Jesus’ day it was an important garrison town. No Roman legions were posted in Palestine, but there were auxiliaries under Herod Antipas, who had the right to levy troops. These were non-Jews, probably recruited from outside Galilee, perhaps from Lebanon and Syria. Centurions were the military backbone throughout the empire, maintaining discipline and executing orders. Luke stresses this centurion’s Jewish sympathies and his humility, Matthew his faith and race (vv.10–11). Indeed, one reason Matthew says nothing of the intermediaries may be that they were Jews, and he does not want to blur the racial distinction.

6–7 On “Lord,” see

. The word pais (GK 4090) can mean “servant” or “son.” Luke’s word (doulos, GK 1528) means “servant,” and many (e.g., Bultmann, History of the Synoptic Tradition, 38 n. 4) insist Matthew’s pais means “son.” But fair examination of NT usage (cf. France, “Exegesis in Practice,” 256) reveals that only one of twenty-four NT occurrences requires “son,” namely, John 4:51. This further supports the view that John 4 records a different healing on a separate occasion. Conceivably it was the earlier healing of an official’s son (Jn 4) that strengthened the centurion’s faith in this instance. Though paralysis coupled with severe pain is attested elsewhere (e.g., 1 Macc 9:55–56), the nature of the servant’s malady is unknown. Derrett’s psychosomatic speculations (Studies in the New Testament, 1:156–57, 166–68) are fanciful.

Jewish rabbis, like ministers today, were often invited to pray for the sick (cf. Str-B, 1:475); but the parallels are not close, for the centurion is implicitly asking for healing, not prayers. Many (Zahn; Klostermann; Turner [Grammatical Insights, 50–51]; Held [“Matthew as Interpreter of the Miracle Stories,” 194]) interpret Jesus’ response (v.7) as a question: “Shall I [ego, emphatic; i.e., I, a Jew] come and heal him?” This is probably right. The parallel with the Canaanite woman (15:21–28) is compelling, and otherwise it is difficult to explain the emphatic “I.” Jesus’ response was not based on fears of ritual defilement—vv.1–4 set that to rest—or even on his general restriction of his ministry to Israel (see

;

; but even in Matthew there are significant exceptions, e.g., 8:28–34). It was based on a desire to find out exactly what the centurion was after and what degree of faith stood behind his ambiguous request (v.6).

8–9 Both here and in the story of the Canaanite woman (15:21–28), faith triumphs over the obstacle Jesus erects. Luke records neither Jesus’ question nor the story of the Canaanite woman; his treatment of faith is not quite so pointed. The centurion’s reply opens with “Lord,” implying tenacity and deference (cf. v.6; 7:21–23). As John the Baptist felt unworthy to baptize Jesus, so this centurion felt unworthy to entertain him in his home. The feeling of unworthiness did not arise from an awareness that the centurion might render Jesus ceremonially defiled (contra Bonnard); race had nothing to do with it. Hikanos (“sufficient,” “worthy,” GK 2653) here as elsewhere (3:11; 1Co 15:9; 2Co 2:16) reveals the man’s sense of unworthiness (NIV, “do not deserve”) in the face of Jesus’ authority (cf. TDNT, 3:294; France, “Exegesis in Practice,” 258). “Here was one who was in the state described in the first clauses of the ‘Beatitudes,’ and to whom came the promise of the second clauses; because Christ is the connecting link between the two” (Edersheim, Life and Times, 1:549; emphasis his).

The centurion believed that Jesus’ word was sufficient to heal his servant. It is significant that we have no recorded evidence that up to this point Jesus had performed a healing miracle at a distance and by word alone (unless Jn 4:46–53 is an exception). The centurion’s thinking here is profound. There is no need to take the first clause in v.9 as implying that the only parallel between his authority and that of Jesus was in their ability to order things to be done: “I, although I am a man under orders, can effect things by my word” (Hill). That is a barely possible rendering of the opening kai gar ego; the more natural translation is that of the NIV (“for I myself”), which applies the words to the entire verse. This means that the centurion’s words presuppose an understanding of the Roman military system. All “authority” (exousia, as in 7:29) belonged to the emperor and was delegated. Therefore, because he was under the emperor’s authority, when the centurion spoke, he spoke with the emperor’s authority, and so his command was obeyed. A foot soldier who disobeyed would not be defying a mere centurion but the emperor, Rome itself, with all its imperial majesty and might (cf. Derrett, Studies in the New Testament, 1:159–60). This self-understanding the centurion applied to Jesus. Precisely because Jesus was under God’s authority, he was vested with God’s authority, so that when Jesus spoke, God spoke. To defy Jesus was to defy God; and Jesus’ word must therefore be vested with God’s authority that is able to heal sickness. This analogy, though not perfect, reveals an astonishing faith that recognizes that Jesus needed neither ritual, magic, nor any other help; his authority was God’s authority, and his word was effective because it was God’s word.

10 In Mark 6:6, Jesus is astonished at deeply rooted unbelief. Here he is astonished (same verb) at the faith of the centurion. “Though amazement is not appropriate for God, seeing it must arise from new and unexpected happenings, yet it could occur in Christ, inasmuch as he had taken on our human emotions, along with our flesh” (Calvin). Jesus spoke to those following him (not necessarily his disciples; cf. 4:25; 8:1) with the prefatory notice (“I tell you”; see

) that warns of the solemn remark to follow.

Jesus commended the man’s faith (cf. v.13). The greatness of his faith did not rest in the mere fact that he believed Jesus could heal from a distance but in the degree to which he had penetrated the secret of Jesus’ authority. That faith was the more surprising since the centurion was a Gentile and lacked the heritage of OT revelation to help him understand Jesus. But this Gentile penetrated more deeply into the nature of Jesus’ person and authority than any Jew of his time. Matthew’s words stress even more than Luke’s the uniqueness of the centurion’s faith and underline the movement of the gospel from the Jews to the Gentiles, or rather from the Jews to all people regardless of race—a movement prophesied in the OT, developed in Jesus’ ministry (see

;

;

;

), and commanded by the Great Commission (28:18–20). “This incident is a preview of the great insight which came later through another centurion’s faith, ‘Then to the Gentiles God has granted repentance unto life’ (Acts 11:18)” (France, “Exegesis in Practice,” 260).

11–12 Again “I say to you” solemnizes what follows (cf. v.10). Most interpreters assume that Matthew has added these two verses (not in Luke) to the narrative, taking them from an entirely different setting (namely, Lk 13:28–29; e.g., Chilton, God in Strength, 179–201). But this is problematic apart from clear criteria distinguishing it from the obvious alternative—that Jesus said similar things more than once. The words of the saying are not very close in the two passages, but the imagery is so colorful that an itinerant preacher could have used it repeatedly, especially if warnings to the Jews and the prospect of Gentile admission to the fellowship of God’s people were two of his major themes.

The picture is that of the “messianic banquet,” derived from such OT passages as Isaiah 25:6–9 (cf. 65:13–14) and embellished in later Judaism (cf. TDNT, 2:34–35). These embellishments did not usually anticipate the presence of Gentiles at the banquet, which symbolized the consummation of the messianic kingdom (cf. 22:1–14; 25:10; 26:29). But Jesus here insists that many will come from the four points of the compass and join the patriarchs at the banquet. These “many” can only be Gentiles, contrasted as they are with “subjects of the kingdom” (hoi huioi tēs basileias, lit., “the sons of the kingdom,” v.12).

“Son of” or “sons of” can mean “belonging to” or “destined for” (cf. “sons of the bridal chamber” [9:15; NIV, “guests of the bridegroom”] and “son of hell” [23:15; cf. Str-B, 1:476–78; 1QS 17:3; see

]). So the “subjects of the kingdom” are the Jews, who see themselves as sons of Abraham (cf. 3:9–10), belonging to the kingdom by right. Some Jews (e.g., those at Qumran) restricted the elect to a smaller group of the pious within Israel. But Jesus reverses roles (cf. 21:43), and the sons of the kingdom are thrown aside, left out of the future messianic banquet, consigned to darkness where there are tears and gnashing of teeth—elements common to descriptions of gehenna, hell (cf. 4 Ezra 7:93; 1 En. 63:10; Pss. Sol. 14:9; 15:10; Wis 17:21; cf. Mt 22:13; see

). Yet although this reversal theme cannot be overlooked and is stressed by many commentators (e.g., Hagner; France [NICNT]; Luz) who rightly see in these verses an anticipation of the Great Commission (28:18–20), others are right to remind us (e.g., Turner; Witherington) that the “reversal” is not absolute. The patriarchs in these verses are Jews, as are Jesus and his apostles (who will rule the twelve tribes of Israel in the world to come, 19:28), and even after the resurrection most of the earliest disciples were Jews (Ro 11:1–5).

The crucial point for both Jews and Gentiles is their relation to Jesus. Certainly Jesus’ words could only shock his hearers. The attempt of Davies and Allison to argue that these “many ... from the east and the west” are not Gentiles but underprivileged Jews is unconvincing since the central figure in this account, apart from Jesus, is a Gentile centurion whose faith Jesus contrasts with that of Jews. If these verses do not quite authorize the Gentile mission, they open the door to it and prepare for the Great Commission (28:18–20) and Ephesians 3.

The definite articles with “weeping” (klauthmos, GK 3088) and “gnashing” (brygmos, GK 1106) emphasize the horror of the scene: the weeping and the gnashing (Turner, Syntax, 173). Weeping suggests suffering and gnashing of teeth despair (McNeile).

There may be a still deeper implication in these words of Jesus. OT passages that may be reflected in vv.11–12 can be divided into three groups: (1) those that describe a gathering of Israel from all quarters of the earth (Ps 107:3; Isa 43:5–6; 49:12); (2) those that predict the worship of God by Gentiles in all parts of the earth (Isa 45:6; 59:19; Mal 1:11); (3) those that predict the coming of Gentiles to Jerusalem (Isa 2:2–3; 60:3–4; Mic 4:1–2; Zec 8:20–23). The closest literary parallels lie between vv.11–12 and the first group (cf. Gundry, Use of the Old Testament, 76–77). On this basis France (“Exegesis in Practice,” 261–63) proposes that a typology is assumed—the true “Israel” is now being gathered from the four corners of the earth, i.e., from the Gentiles. This is possible, for we have already seen several ways Matthew treats OT history as prophetic. But because he is not using fulfillment language here, Jesus may be using OT language without affirming that the relationship between OT and NT at this point is typological.

13 The hōs (NIV, “just as”) must be rightly understood. Jesus performed a miracle, not in proportion to the centurion’s faith, nor because of the centurion’s faith, but in content what was expected by the centurion’s faith (cf. 15:28, where the emphasis is also on faith).

NOTES

9 The three commands are aorist, present, and aorist respectively. Sometimes “the tense appears to be determined more by the meaning of the verb or by some obscure habit than by the ‘rules’ of Aktionsart” (Moule, Idiom Book, 135).

11 The verb ἀνακλιθήσονται (anaklithēsontai, lit., “will recline,” GK 369) describes the normal posture when eating: people lay on low couches or pallets (cf. Jn 13:23; 21:20). In the NT, reclining is not restricted to banquets (e.g., Mk 6:39; Lk 7:36), and there is no theological or symbolic significance in the act itself (contra Schlatter; Lohmeyer). Hence the NIV’s paraphrastic “take their places.”

12 Stonehouse (Witness of Matthew, 231–32), to avoid saying that the “subjects of the kingdom” are such only in appearance and self-estimation, understands βασιλείας (“kingdom,” GK 993) to refer to the “theocratic kingdom” as opposed to the “kingdom of heaven.” But strictly speaking, the theocratic kingdom was no longer in existence, and it is difficult to see how “kingdom” in the phrase “subjects of the kingdom” may properly be taken as anything other than the kingdom just mentioned (v.11).

14When Jesus came into Peter’s house, he saw Peter’s mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever. 15He touched her hand and the fever left her, and she got up and began to wait on him.

COMMENTARY

14–15 In Mark 1:29–31 and Luke 4:38–39, this incident follows the driving out of a demon on a Sabbath from a man in the synagogue at Capernaum. Presumably this healing takes place on that same Sabbath. Matthew, however, condenses the account by omitting what does not bear on his immediate theme—Jesus’ authority.

Peter was married (1Co 9:5) and had moved with his brother Andrew from their home in Bethsaida (Jn 1:44) to Capernaum, possibly to remain near Jesus (Mt 4:13). His mother-in-law’s fever (v.14) may have been malarial; fever itself was considered a disease, not a symptom, at that time (cf. Jn 4:52; Ac 28:8). Jewish halakah forbade touching persons with many kinds of fever (Str-B, 1:479–80). But Jesus healed with a touch (v.15). As in v.3, the touch did not defile the healer but healed the defiled.

The imperfect diēkonei (GK 1354) is best taken as conative: “began to serve,” almost certainly a reference to waiting on him. Matthew mentions her service, not to tell his readers that those touched by Jesus become his servants (contra P. Lamarche, “La guérison de la belle-mère de Pierre et le genre littéraire des évangiles,” NRTh 87 [1965]: 515–26), but to make it clear that the miracle was effective and instantaneous (cf. v.26, where the result of Jesus’ stilling the storm is complete calm). Jesus’ authority instantly accomplishes what he wills.

16When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to him, and he drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick. 17This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah:

“He took up our infirmities

and carried our diseases.”

COMMENTARY

16 Because the context is still the Sabbath in Mark 1:32–34 and Luke 4:40–41, mention of the evening there suggests that the people waited until Sabbath was over at sundown before again flocking to Jesus with their sick. Here in Matthew, where there is no indication this is a Sabbath, mention of the evening simply shows the pace of Jesus’ ministry (cf. other summaries—4:23–24; 9:35; 11:4–5; 12:15; 14:35; 15:30; 19:2).

With the exception of the quotation from Isaiah 53 in v.17, most of Matthew’s other changes are not very significant. The addition of “a word” is neither typical (vv.3, 8) nor atypical (v.15) of Matthew’s healing reports. The change from “many” (Mark) to “all” (Matthew) is less significant than is often claimed, for Mark does not say Jesus healed many but not all the sick; rather, when “the whole town gathered at the door,” he healed “many” of the people (Mk 1:33–34). Matthew does not say that Jesus forbade the demons to tell who he was; he prefers to focus attention on Jesus’ power and on the Scripture witness to his person and ministry. Other differences are even more minor. (Omission of Lk 4:41 may tell against Kingsbury’s view of the centrality of the “Son of God” theme.)

Jesus drives out ta pneumata (“the spirits” [“demons” in Mark and Luke]), often recognized in intertestamental literature as agents of disease. They are normally qualified by the adjective “evil” in the NT. On the idiom for “the sick,” see

17 On the fulfillment formulas, see

;

;

; Introduction, .

This quotation is Isaiah 53:4. Matthew’s rendering does not follow LXX or Targum, both of which spiritualize the Hebrew. Most likely, v.17 is Matthew’s own translation of the Hebrew (Stendahl, School of St. Matthew, 106–7). Because Isaiah 52:13–53:12, the fourth “Servant Song,” pictures the Servant suffering vicariously for others, whereas, on the face of it, Matthew renders the Hebrew in such a way as to speak of “taking” and “carrying” physical infirmities and physical diseases but not in terms of suffering vicariously for sin, many detect in this passage strong evidence that Matthew cites the OT in an indefensible and idiosyncratic fashion. McConnell (Law and Prophecy, 120) sees this as another instance of Matthew’s using an OT passage out of context for his own ends (cf. Rothfuchs, Erfüllungszitate, 70–72). McNeile suggests Isaiah 53:4 had already become detached from its context when Matthew used it.

There are, however, better ways of interpreting this passage:

1. It is generally understood since the work of C. H. Dodd (According to the Scriptures [London: Nisbet, 1952]) that when the NT quotes a brief OT passage, it often refers implicitly to the entire context of the quotation. This is very likely here, for Matthew has a profound understanding of the OT. Moreover, Isaiah 53:7 is probably alluded to in Matthew 27:12, Isaiah 53:9 in 27:57, and Isaiah 53:10–12 in 20:28, the last in a context affirming vicarious atonement theology. Any interpretation of v.17 that does not take into account the thrust of the entire Servant Song is therefore dubious.

2. Both Scripture and Jewish tradition understand that all sickness is caused, directly or indirectly, by sin (see

; cf. Gundry, Use of the Old Testament, 230–31). This encourages us to look for a deeper connection between v.17 and Isaiah 53:4.

3. Isaiah is thinking of the servant’s “taking the diseases of others upon himself through his suffering and death for their sin” (Gundry, Use of the Old Testament, 230). The two verbs he uses are nāśā ʾ (“took up [our infirmities]”) and s^ebālām (“carried [our sorrows]”), which do not themselves necessarily have the force of substitution, though they can be interpreted that way. The LXX spiritualizes “infirmities” to “sins”; and in this sense the verse is referred to in 1 Peter 2:24 in defense of substitutionary atonement. That interpretation of the verse is legitimate because the flow of the Servant Song supports it. But strictly speaking, Isaiah 53:4 simply speaks of the Servant’s bearing infirmities and carrying sicknesses; and it is only the context, plus the connection between sickness and sin, which shows that the way he bears the sickness of others is through his suffering and death.

4. Isaiah 53, as we have seen, is important among NT writers for understanding the significance of Jesus’ death (e.g., Ac 8:32–33; 1Pe 2:24); but when Matthew here cites Isaiah 53:4, at first glance he applies it only to Jesus’ healing ministry, not to his death. But in the light of the three preceding points, the discrepancy is resolved if Matthew holds that Jesus’ healing ministry is itself a function of his substitutionary death, by which he lays the foundation for destroying sickness. Matthew’s two verbs, contrary to some opinion, exactly render the Hebrew: the Servant “took up” (elaben, GK 3284) our infirmities and “carried” (ebastasen, GK 1002) our diseases (Gundry, Use of the Old Testament, 109, 111). Matthew could not have used the LXX and still referred to physical disease. Yet his own rendering of the Hebrew, far from wrenching Isaiah 53:4 out of context, indicates his profound grasp of the theological connection between Jesus’ healing ministry and the cross.

5. That connection is supported by various collateral arguments. The prologue insists Jesus came to save his people from their sin, and this within the context of the coming of the kingdom. When Jesus began his ministry, he not only proclaimed the kingdom but healed the sick (see

). Healing and forgiveness are tied together, not only in a pericope such as 9:1–8, but by the fact that the consummated kingdom, in which there is no sickness, is made possible by Jesus’ death and the new covenant that his death enacted (26:27–29). Thus the healings during Jesus’ ministry can be understood not only as the foretaste of the kingdom but also as the fruit of Jesus’ death. It could be that Matthew also judges Isaiah 53:4 appropriate because it seems to form a transition from the Servant’s being despised to his suffering and death. Certainly at least some rabbinic tradition understood Isaiah 53:4 to refer to physical disease (cf. Str-B, 1:481–82).

6. This means that for Matthew, Jesus’ healing miracles pointed beyond themselves to the cross. In this, he is like the evangelist John, whose “signs” similarly point beyond themselves.

7. But even here there is a deeper connection than first meets the eye. These miracles (ch. 8) have been framed to emphasize Jesus’ authority. This authority was never used to satisfy himself (cf. 4:1–10). He healed the despised leper (8:1–4), a Gentile centurion’s servant who was hopelessly ill (vv.5–13), and other sick people (vv.14–15), no matter how many (vv.16–17). Thus when he gave his life as a ransom for many (20:28), it was nothing less than an extension of the same authority directed toward the good of others (cf. Hill, “Son and Servant,” 9, 11, who also points out how reductionistic Kingsbury’s “Son of God” Christology is in light of such intertwining themes). Jesus’ death reflected the intermingling of authority and servanthood already noted (e.g., 3:17) and now progressively developed. After all, following the momentous miracles of vv.1–17, the Son of Man had nowhere to lay his head (v.20).

Despite the stupendous signs of kingdom advance, the royal King and Suffering Servant faced increasingly bitter opposition. The Father had committed everything to him, but he was gentle and humble in heart (11:27, 29). This moving theme needs to be traced out inductively (cf. B. Gerhardsson, “Gottes Sohn als Diener Gottes: Messias, Agape und Himmelherrschaft nach dem Matthäus-evangelium,” ST 27 [1973]: 73–106). If the Davidic Messiah of Jewish expectation (Pss. Sol. 17:6) purifies his people by annihilating sinners, Matthew’s Davidic Messiah–Suffering Servant purifies his people with his death, takes on himself their diseases, and opens fellowship to sinners (cf. Hummel, Auseinandersetzung, 124–25).

8. One cannot fail to observe that of the many healing miracles Matthew could have related in the first half of this chapter, he has focused on a leper, a Gentile, and a woman. The leper was ceremonially unclean and therefore an outcast; the Roman centurion, though a man of status within Roman legions, was a Gentile and therefore without religious status in this Jewish context; as a woman, Peter’s mother-in-law would have been excluded from some privileges and responsibilities open only to males. But they are the ones whose healing Matthew reports.

This discussion does not resolve two related questions.

1. Did Jews in Jesus’ day understand Isaiah 53 messianically? Most scholars say no. Joachim Jeremias answers more cautiously—namely, many Jews did so interpret Isaiah’s “Servant” but ignored references to his suffering (cf. J. Jeremias and W. Zimmerli, The Servant of the Lord [London: SCM Press, 1965]).

2. Did Jesus interpret his own ministry in terms of the Suffering Servant? Verse 17 does not help us because it gives us no more than Matthew’s understanding of the significance of Jesus’ healing miracles. (See

; cf. Hooker, Jesus and the Servant; T. W. Manson, The Servant Messiah [Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1953], 57–58, 73.)

This discussion cannot be used to justify healing on demand. This text and others clearly teach that there is healing in the atonement; but similarly there is the promise of a resurrection body in the atonement, even if believers do not inherit it until the Parousia. From the perspective of the NT writers, the cross is the basis for all the benefits that accrue to believers, but this does not mean that all such benefits can be secured at the present time on demand, any more than we have the right and power to demand our resurrection bodies. The availability of any specific blessing can be determined only by appealing to the overall teaching of Scripture.

OVERVIEW

Compare Luke 9:57–62, in a later but detached setting, with three inquirers, not two. The stilling-of-the-storm incident (vv.23–27; Mk 4:35–41), following the “day of parables,” shows that v.18 parallels Mark 4:35. Matthew does not specify the time of this pericope (vv.18–22) beyond saying that it was one of many occasions when crowds pressed Jesus. Apparently Matthew chose to insert these two vignettes here because they help show the nature of Jesus’ ministry and the disciples he was seeking. M. Hengel’s attempt (Nachfolge und Charisma [Berlin: Topelmann, 1968], 68–70) to limit to a few selected individuals Jesus’ call to discipleship is insensitive to Jesus’ place in the history of redemption and the ambiguity of what it meant at that time to be his disciple (see comments below).

18When Jesus saw the crowd around him, he gave orders to cross to the other side of the lake. 19Then a teacher of the law came to him and said, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.”

20Jesus replied, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”

21Another disciple said to him, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”

22But Jesus told him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.”

COMMENTARY

18–19 Perhaps Jesus’ imminent departure to the east side of the lake prompted certain people to beg him to include them in the circle of disciples going with him. Discipleship in the strict sense required close attachment to the master’s person. The fact that the first candidate was “a [heis, “one,” can have the force of tis, “a certain,” in NT Greek: cf. Zerwick, Biblical Greek, para. 155; Moule, Idiom Book, 125] teacher of the law” (see

) has led to no little controversy; for it is often argued that the opponents in Matthew are Pharisees and scribes (“teachers of the law”), yet here a scribe appears as a candidate for discipleship. Rolf Walker (Heilsgeschichte, 26–27) and others say Jesus rejected this teacher of the law (v.19). By comparison with the next inquirer, he is neither called a disciple nor told to follow Jesus (vv.21–22). But this reasoning will not stand up.

1. “Disciple” (mathētēs, GK 3412) does not necessarily refer to a fully committed follower and cannot have that force in v.21 (see

). Albright and Mann dislike this fact so much that they are reduced to emending the text. It is difficult to see why a wedge should be drawn between the two inquirers, both “disciples” in this loose sense.

2. Verse 21 reads “Another disciple,” implying that the teacher of the law was also a disciple in this loose sense. Moreover, heteros (“another,” sometimes “another of a different kind”) cannot normally be distinguished in the NT from allos (“another,” sometimes “another of the same kind”), and certainly not in Matthew (cf. BDAG, 399).

3. Judged by their respective approaches to Jesus, if either of the two people approaches Jesus with no hesitation, it is the teacher of the law, not the “other disciple.” Significantly, the scribe, a teacher of the law, addressed Jesus as “teacher” and simply promised to follow him anywhere.

4. In this light, Jesus’ response to the second man—“Follow me”—does not mean he is preferred but is necessary precisely because the inquirer is not at this time planning to follow Jesus.

Scholars who reject the reconstruction of Walker and others argue that Matthew, far from being opposed to teachers of the law, has positive things to say about them (v.19; 13:52; 23:8–10, 34), some of which even suggest that Matthew’s church had leaders who called themselves “teachers of the law” (cf. Grundmann; Hummel, Auseinandersetzung, 27; Kilpatrick, Origins, 110ff.).

But this reverse argument is too strong. What other categories could Jesus have used for his church’s future leaders than those already established (13:52; 23:34)? A great deal of the reconstructed Matthean church hangs by the thread of overdrawn exegesis. But these scholars have correctly pointed out that vv.19–20 and similar passages show that Matthew is not in principle anti-scribe or anti-anyone else. Rather, in Matthew’s view, all people, scribes or not, divide around the absolute claims of Jesus and must be weighed according to their response to him (cf. van Tilborg, Jewish Leaders, 128–31). This is the fruit, not of anti-Semitism (see ), but of claims to truth and, like other matters judged offensive by both Jews and Gentiles (1Co 1:21–23), cannot be eliminated without relativizing truth and him who is the truth.

20 Jesus’ response shows that he identifies the scribe’s request as less the commitment of an Ittai (2Sa 15:21) than the overconfidence of a Peter (Lk 22:33). “Nothing has done more harm to Christianity than the practice of filling the ranks of Christ’s army with every volunteer who is willing to make a little profession, and talk fluently of experience” (J. C. Ryle, Matthew, in Expository Thoughts on the Gospels [repr., Grand Rapids: Baker, 1977], 1:78). “Nothing was less aimed at by our Lord than to have followers, unless they were genuine and sound; he is as far from desiring this as it would have been easy to attain it” (Stier, Words of the Lord Jesus, 1:354, emphasis his). Jesus’ reply says nothing about the inquirer’s response. Strictly speaking, it was neither invitation nor rebuke but a pointed way of saying that true discipleship to the “Son of Man” (see

, below) is not comfortable and should not be undertaken without counting the cost (cf. Lk 14:25–33). In the immediate context of Jesus’ ministry, the saying does not mean that Jesus was penniless but homeless; the nature of his mission kept him on the move (cf. 4:23–25; 9:35–38) and would keep his followers on the move.

21–22 For the significance of the reference to “disciples,” see

. If the scribe was too quick in promising, this “disciple” was too slow in performing (v.21). Palestinian piety, basing itself on the fifth commandment (Ex 20:12; cf. Dt 27:16), expected sons to attend to the burial of their parents (cf. Tob 4:3; 14:10–11; m. Ber. 3:1; see Ge 25:9; 35:29; 50:13). Jesus’ reply used paradoxical language (as in 16:25): Let the (spiritually) dead bury the (physically) dead (see Notes). Yet the response seems harsh to many interpreters; thus they understand the inquirer to be requesting a delay to wait for an aged parent to die rather than a delay to bury a father who has died. Hebrew or Aramaic could mean that, Greek only with difficulty, and it is difficult to see how it makes Jesus’ answer (v.22) more compassionate. Though in the OT, certain people were not permitted to come into contact with corpses (Lev 21:1–12; Nu 6:7), it is doubtful that Jesus saw his followers as priests or Nazirites needing special ceremonial safeguards (contra Trench, Studies in the Gospels, 169). More likely, vv.21–22 provide a powerful way of expressing the thought in 10:37—even closest family ties must not be set above allegiance to Jesus and the proclamation of the kingdom (Lk 9:60).

In actuality, we may well question whether Jesus was really forbidding attendance at the father’s funeral, any more than he was really advocating self-castration in 5:27–30. In this inquirer he detected insincerity, a qualified acceptance of Jesus’ lordship. And that was not good enough. Commitment to Jesus must be without reservation. Such is the importance Jesus himself attached to his own person and mission.

NOTES

22 Black (Aramaic Approach, 207–8) suggests that the original Aramaic may have read “Let the [m^etinîyn, ‘waverers’] bury their [mîtîhûn, ‘dead’]”—and the first of the two Aramaic words has been mistakenly translated as if it were from (mîtîn, “corpses”). But like many of Black’s suggestions, though philologically plausible, these hardly help explain the text and are hampered by the implausible thesis that Matthew (or some unknown person in the process of the oral tradition) was rather incompetent in Hebrew and Aramaic.

REFLECTIONS: “THE SON OF MAN” AS A CHRISTOLOGICAL TITLE

During the last fifty years, dozens of books and scores of important articles on the Son of Man have appeared. My reflections here on the Son of Man as a christological title will provide some of the evidence and its interpretation in this debate and will sketch in the approach adopted for the commentary. Good summaries of earlier treatments are found in the works of A. J. B. Higgins, Jesus and the Son of Man [London: Lutterworth, 1964]), J. Neville Birdsall (“Who Is This Son of Man?” EvQ 42 [1970]: 7–17), and I. H. Marshall (“The Son of Man in Contemporary Debate,” EvQ 42 [1970]: 67–87).

Treatments of the term and its major theological implications may be found in the works and bibliographies of C. Colpe (TDNT, 8:400–477), C. F. D. Moule (Origin of Christology, 11–22), I. H. Marshall (The Origins of Christology [Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1976], 63–82), the essays edited by R. Pesch and R. Schnackenburg (Jesus und der Menschensohn [Freiburg: Herder, 1975]), L. Goppelt (Theologie des Neuen Testaments, 226–53), G. E. Ladd (Theology of the New Testament, 145–58), J. D. G. Dunn (Christology, 65–97), D. Guthrie (New Testament Theology, 270–82), Matthew Black (“Jesus and the Son of Man,” JSNT 1 [1978]: 4–18), G. N. Stanton (Jesus of Nazareth, 156ff.), and A. J. B. Higgins (The Son of Man in the Teaching of Jesus (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1980).

To this can be added works by Maurice Casey (see his 1980 and 2007 volumes). The best recent summary of the debate is in the commentary by Davies and Allison. The comprehensive volume by Delbert Burkett (The Son of Man Debate: A History and Evaluation [Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000]) is less reliable.

The expression “Son of Man” occurs eighty-one times in the Gospels, sixty-nine in the Synoptics. In every instance it is found either on Jesus’ lips or, in two instances, on the lips of those quoting Jesus (Lk 24:7; Jn 12:34). Outside the Gospels it is found in the NT as a christological title only in Acts 7:56; Revelation 1:13; 14:14 (Heb 2:6–8 is not relevant). The gospel occurrences are usually classified according to the themes associated with the title: (1) the apocalyptic Son of Man who comes at the end of the age, (2) the suffering and dying Son of Man, and (3) the earthly Son of Man, engaged in a number of present ministries (in this context the title may serve as a circumlocution for “I”). Ladd (Theology of the New Testament, 149–51) offers a typical breakdown of all the passages. There is some overlap of these categories and room for differences of interpretation. But of the thirty occurrences of “Son of Man” in Matthew, approximately thirteen belong to the first category (13:41; 16:27; 19:28; 24:27, 30 [2x], 37, 44; 25:31; 26:64; probably 24:39; and possibly 10:23; 16:28), ten to the second (12:40; 17:9, 12, 22; 20:18, 28; 26:2, 24 [2x], 45), and seven to the third (8:20; 9:6; 11:19; 12:8, 32; 13:37; probably 16:13; cf. the variant at 18:11).

The meaning of any term or title depends at least in part on the way it has been used before. Much of the debate surrounding the precise significance of “Son of Man” in the Gospels turns on the influence ascribed to one or the other of the following backgrounds.

1. Daniel 7:13–14 pictures “one like a son of man” who approaches the Ancient of Days and is given “authority, glory and sovereign power” and “an everlasting dominion that will not pass away” in which “all peoples, nations and men of every language” worship him.

2. In Psalm 8:4, it is used generically for human beings.

3. In Ezekiel, it appears repeatedly in the vocative as God’s favorite way of addressing the prophet.

4. Psalm 80:17 places “son of man” in the context of vine imagery in such a way that it clearly refers to the nation Israel.

5. In 1QapGen 21:13 it appears as a Semitism for humankind generically (“I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth, which no son of man can number”). According to G. Vermès (“The Use of in Jewish Aramaic,” appendix E, in Black, Aramaic Approach), “son of man” or “the son of man” in Aramaic was used in Jesus’ day to refer generically to man or as a circumlocution by which a speaker might refer to himself (cf. G. Vermès, “The ‘Son of Man’ Debate,” JSNT 1 [1978]: 19–32). But some of his claims must be tempered by the more sober dating and philology of Joseph A. Fitzmyer (“Another View of the ‘Son of Man’ Debate,” JSNT 4 [1979]: 58–68).

6. Many detect a background in the Similitudes of Enoch (1 En. 37–71) or other apocalyptic literature. Some have raised grave doubts that such literature is pre-Christian, based largely on the fact that the Similitudes are not found in the Dead Sea Scrolls copy of 1 Enoch; and if they are right, clearly the use of “Son of Man” in 1 Enoch 37–71 cannot have influenced Jesus’ use of the term (cf. Longenecker, Christology of Early Jewish Christianity, 82–88; Dunn, Christology, 67–82). The consensus among specialists of 1 Enoch, however, is that the Similitudes were in fact written before Jesus’ ministry, but that the “Son of Man” in these writings unambiguously refers to Enoch. The famous but unsupported emendation by R. H. Charles (“This is the Son of Man who was born unto Righteousness,” 1 En. 71:14) is without warrant. The text reads “Thou, O Enoch, art the Son of Man” (cf. James H. Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha and the New Testament [Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985]). We thus reach an ironic conclusion: the Similitudes are pre-Christian and therefore must be considered a possible influence on Jesus’ usage of “the Son of Man,” but they narrowly identify the figure with Enoch, and so whatever influence they exercised cannot be more than that of model or pattern, if that.

Against such diverse backgrounds, then, how are we to understand “the Son of Man” in the NT? Numerous proposals have been made, many of which fail to explain the evidence. The following are the most important.

1. Bultmann (Theology of the New Testament, 1:29–31, 49) made popular the view that Jesus never used the title “Son of Man” of himself but only of another figure coming in the future; this future figure was based in Jesus’ mind on the apocalyptic redeemer figure in 1 Enoch. This idea has been developed by other scholars, who say that Jesus originally justified his authority by referring to a future apocalyptic figure who would come and vindicate him but that the church connected that figure with Jesus himself. This will not do, for even if the Similitudes are not a late addition to 1 Enoch, the “Son of Man” figure there may not be an apocalyptic figure (cf. Casey, Son of Man, 99–112) and in any case refers primarily to Enoch. Moreover, the NT evidence connects Jesus with the Son of Man (e.g., Mk 14:62 and par.), and more important yet, any interpretation is called in question that flies in the face of the fact that the gospel writers never use the term to describe Jesus but always report it as being on Jesus’ lips. On the face of it, this shows that it was Jesus’ favorite self-designation and that the early church respected this, even when it did not always know what to make of it (cf. Jeremias, New Testament Theology, 267–68).

2. Jeremias (pp. 257–76) has argued that some of the Son of Man sayings in all three classifications are authentic; but where in synoptic parallels one gospel includes the reference to the Son of Man and another omits it (e.g., 24:39—Lk 17:27; Mt 10:32—Lk 12:8), the latter is authentic. On the last point, some have argued just the reverse (e.g., F. H. Borsch, The Son of Man in Myth and History [London: SCM Press, 1967]). The weakness of Jeremias’s view lies primarily in the consistency with which the expression occurs on Jesus’ lips alone. If evangelists were adding the title to displace “I,” it is at least strange they never use the title to refer to Jesus in contexts where there is no synoptic parallel. Here it seems best to side with Borsch, though we cannot be sure. Moreover, Jeremias’s chosen background runs from Daniel 7:13–14 in a straight line through the Similitudes of Enoch to the NT. Thus he depends on an established apocalyptic Son of Man figure that the sources do not support.

3. By appealing to Aramaic background, G. Vermès (appendix E, in Black, Aramaic Approach) argues that only those passages are authentic in which “Son of Man” is no more than a circumlocution for “I,” by which the speaker refers to himself obliquely out of modesty or humility; the other uses in the Gospels are the creation of an apocalyptically minded church. Somewhat similar stances are adopted by Casey and Lindars. Casey holds that Jesus himself used first-century Aramaic idiom, in which “son of man” was a way of referring to human beings, and that Jesus used this expression to refer to himself. Only eleven such expressions in the NT are authentic; all others are the creation of the church. Similarly Barnabas Lindars (“Jesus as Advocate: A Contribution to the Christology Debate,” BJRL 62 [1980]: 476–97; “The New Look on the Son of Man,” BJRL 63 [1981]: 437–62) argues that the use of the article (ho) in Greek, making the expression “that Son of Man” or “the [known] Son of Man” or “the [expected] Son of Man,” shows that it was the translation of the tradition from Aramaic to Greek that gave messianic or Danielic meaning to the term. Therefore, usages reflecting such meaning cannot be authentic. Quite apart from problems surrounding the dating of the linguistic evidence (cf. Fitzmyer, “Another View”), this theory postulates a creative church and a comparatively dull Jesus even though the evangelists consistently restrict the creative use of “Son of Man” to Jesus. The more it is argued that the church exercised a creative role in the theological development of this title, the stranger it is that the evangelists themselves do not apply the term to Jesus. Moreover, however insightful this or that back-translation (from Greek to Aramaic), we cannot avoid the reality that theories that depend entirely on the credibility of back-translations are intrinsically speculative.

4. In his book The Son of Man in the Teaching of Jesus, A. J. B. Higgins reiterates and polishes his thesis that the “kernel” (i.e., authentic) sayings are all from Q and refer without exception to some of the future activities of the Son of Man but not to his “coming” or “coming in glory,” based on the “reasonable assumption of the existence of a Son of man concept in Judaism” (p. 124), and on a strange appeal to multiple attestation even though all his “kernel” sayings originally spring from Q (p. 125). Higgins says Jesus does not so much identify himself as the Son of Man (counterevidence, such as Mk 14:62, he ascribes to the church) as confine the term “to Jesus’ clothing of his message of his anticipated judicial function in the judgment in symbolic imagery” (p. 125). The theory thus falls under the strictures raised against 1 and 2.

5. C. F. D. Moule (“Neglected Features in the Problem of ‘the Son of Man,’” in Neues Testament und Kirche [ed. Gnilka], 413ff.), in contrast to Vermès, insists that the definite article (used everywhere except Jn 5:27) proves the designation to be titular, and thus whatever Semitic construction lay behind it, it must have referred to a particular, known “Son of Man.” The only candidate is the figure in Daniel 7:13–14, possibly expounded in Judaism. This figure was understood to refer in a corporate way to “the saints of the Most High” (Da 7:18); applied to Jesus, the title simultaneously affirms that he represents those saints and is a part of them. “Son of Man” is less a title than “a symbol of a vocation to be utterly loyal, even to death, in the confidence of ultimate vindication in the heavenly court.... Jesus is thus referring to the authority (whether in heaven or on earth) of true Israel, and so, of authentic Man, obedient, through thick and thin, to God’s design” (Moule, Origin of Christology, 14). This theory has been updated by Thomas Kazen (“The Coming Son of Man Revisited,” JSHJ 5 [2007]: 155–74).

Despite attractive features of this reconstruction, some reservations must be voiced. There appears to be more titular (indeed, messianic) force in some passages than Moule allows (e.g., Mt 16:13–20; 26:63–64); yet ironically, he may be overemphasizing the significance of the definite article, since there is evidence in the Gospels that the people of Jesus’ day did not always understand the designation to refer to the “well-known” Son of Man (e.g., 16:13–30; Jn 12:34).

The best explanation attempts to avoid the reductionism that is implicit in most of the previous approaches, which too quickly rules out certain kinds of evidence or takes them as late creations of the church. Apart from the fact that in the Gospels “Son of Man” is always found on Jesus’ lips, the authenticity of the Son of Man sayings stands up well under the criteria of redaction criticism (cf. R. N. Longenecker, “‘Son of Man’ Imagery,” JETS 18 [1975]: 8–9; Davies and Allison).

But what did Jesus mean by the expressions? The simplest answer is that he used the term precisely because it was ambiguous; it could conceal as well as reveal (cf. E. Schweizer, “The Son of Man,” JBL 79 [1960]: 128; Longenecker, “‘Son of Man’ Imagery,” 10–12; Hendriksen; Marshall, Origins of Christology, 76–78). When Jesus vested the term with its full messianic significance, it could refer only to Daniel 7:13–14. He did this most often toward the end of his ministry when alone with his disciples and talking about eschatological events (esp. Mt 24:27, 30 and par.), or when under oath at his trial (26:63–64).

Despite the fact that the Danielic figure is often said to be a symbol for the saints of the Most High (Da 7:18), this is not certain. A good case can be made for the hypothesis that “one like a son of man” is not a symbol for the saints (7:18, 27). He is in the presence of the Ancient of Days; they are on earth during the time of the “little horn” (7:8, 21). Perhaps “one like a son of man” secures the everlasting kingdom for the saints of the Most High (cf. W. J. Dumbrell, “Daniel 7 and the Function of Old Testament Apocalyptic,” RTR 34 [1975]: 16ff.; esp. Christopher Rowland, “The Influence of the First Chapter of Ezekiel on Jewish and Early Christian Literature” [PhD diss., Cambridge University, 1974], 95). One “like a son of man” is a representative figure, not a corporate one; and the use of the symbol of the cloud rider favors a personal rather than a corporate interpretation.

Be that as it may, the messianic import of the title in some NT passages can scarcely be doubted. But Daniel 7:13–14 did not wield such large influence on first-century Judaism that simple reference to “the Son of Man,” even with the article, would be instantly taken to refer to the Messiah. John Bowker (“The Son of Man,” JTS 28 [1977]: 19–48) has decisively shown how many Semitic passages—in Ezekiel, Psalm 8, the Targums—use the term to contrast the chasm between frail mortal man and God himself. This admirably suits a host of NT references, not only the suffering and passion texts, but others, such as Matthew 8:20. Jesus combined the two, Danielic Messiah and frail mortal, precisely because his own understanding of messiahship was laced with both themes.

We have already detected in Matthew the intermingling of Davidic Messiah and Suffering Servant. While “Son of Man” captures both authority and suffering, it is ambiguous enough that people who did not think of the Messiah in this dual way would have been mystified until after the cross. It may well have been an acceptable way for a speaker to refer to himself, in which case the titular usage could only have been discerned from the context. Moreover, it would have been extremely difficult for Jews expecting a purely political and glorious Messiah to know what the title meant, because just when they thought they had discerned its messianic significance, Jesus inserted something about the Son of Man’s sufferings. This explains the perplexed question, “Who is this ‘Son of Man’?” (Jn 12:34; cf. Lk 22:69–70). Even the disciples, who had at some level begun to recognize Jesus the Son of Man as Messiah (Mt 16:13–16), could not accept or comprehend Jesus’ repeated assertions that the Son of Man was destined to suffer and die (16:21–23; 17:9–12, 22, and par.). Only when under oath and when it no longer mattered whether his enemies heard his clear claim to messiahship did Jesus reveal without any ambiguity at all that he, the Son of Man, was the messianic figure of Daniel 7:13–14 (Mt 26:63–64 and par.); and then his opponents did not realize that an essential part of his messiahship was suffering and death. In Jesus’ ministry, “Son of Man” both reveals and conceals. Therefore, he chose it as the ideal expression for, progressively and to some extent retrospectively, revealing the nature of his person and work.

After the passion, Jesus’ disciples could not help but find in his frequent earlier use of the term a messianic claim. Indeed, it is a mark of their fidelity to the separate historical stages of the unfolding history of redemption that in describing Jesus’ prepassion ministry they confine the designation to the lips of Jesus alone. Thus no reader of Matthew who through the prologue knows that Jesus, though a man, is more than a man and through 16:13–20; 26:63–64 knows that the Son of Man is the Messiah could fail to see irony in 9:1–8. Jesus forgives sins and performs a miracle so that the onlookers may know that the “Son of Man” has authority on earth to forgive sins; but the people praise God because he has given such authority “to men.” They are right (Jesus, the Son of Man, is mortal, a man born of woman, and heading for suffering and death), and they are wrong (they do not yet recognize him as more than a man, virgin born, and the messianic figure who appeared “as a son of man”—i.e., in human form—in one of Daniel’s visions). So the interpretation that prevailed from the second century on—that “Son of Man” designates Jesus’ humanity and “Son of God” his divinity—is not so much wrong as simplistic.

In 8:20, “the Son of Man” could easily be replaced by “I.” Moreover, it occurs in a setting that stresses Jesus’ humanity and may foreshadow his sufferings. For postpassion Christian readers, it could only speak of the Messiah’s wonderful self-humiliation. For the teacher of the law (vv.18–19), Jesus’ words constituted a great challenge—just how great a one could only be known after the resurrection.

OVERVIEW

Jesus’ authority over nature is now displayed. He may have less shelter than the beasts and birds of nature (v.20); yet he is nature’s master (cf. parallels in Mk 4:35–41; Lk 8:22–25). O. Lamar Cope’s attempt (Matthew, 96–98) to argue that the pericope, at a pre-Matthean level, has been structured on Jonah is far from convincing. His parallels are either painfully forced (“a miraculous stilling related to the main character”) or so general that it is difficult to conceive of any miraculous “stilling of the sea” story that would not fit in his list of parallels.

23Then he got into the boat and his disciples followed him. 24Without warning, a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat. But Jesus was sleeping. 25The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!”

26He replied, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm.

27The men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!”

COMMENTARY

23–25 The narrative moves forward from v.18. The order to cross the lake to escape the crowd is now carried out. A ploion (“boat,” GK 4450) was a vessel of almost any size and description. Here it is doubtless a fishing boat, big enough for a dozen or more men and a good catch of fish, but not large, and without sails.

Bornkamm’s insight—namely, that this pericope faces Matthew’s readers with the demand for greater faith (v.26) in a setting requiring total discipleship (vv.18–22; cf. Bornkamm, “Stilling of the Storm,” 52–57)—has been distorted to make discipleship the exclusive concern. Because the disciples “followed” Jesus into the boat, Matthew, it is alleged (e.g., Bonnard, Hill), is using a characteristic theme, almost a technical term, to describe discipleship: those who follow Jesus need not fear, for they will be safe in any storm. But in Matthew akoloutheō (“follow,” GK 199), though it can refer to true followers (e.g., 4:20, 22; 9:9), often describes the action of the crowd as opposed to the disciples (e.g., 4:25; 8:1, 10; 12:15). When someone is physically following another, it is risky to invest the term with deep notions of discipleship; in 9:19 Jesus and his disciples “followed” (NIV, “went with”) the ruler but were certainly not his disciples! And if “follow” is so crucial a category for Matthew, why in 8:28–34 does he omit the parallel reference to following Jesus (Mk 5:18–20)?

Tertullian (Bapt. 12) saw in the boat a picture of the church. Therefore, some conclude that the storm “is a threat to the boat, rather than to the disciples” because it stands for the church, “and, in particular, the church facing the upheaval of persecution (perhaps under Domitian, AD 81–96)” (Hill). But aside from the anachronistic nature of this appeal to Domitian, it is historically very doubtful whether there was widespread persecution under his reign (cf. John Sweet, Revelation [London: SCM Press, 1979], esp. 25–27). And is Matthew’s story greatly helped by seeing danger for the boat but not the disciples? One wonders what would happen to them if the boat were destroyed.

While Matthew may have seen some kind of valid application of the principles in this pericope to his own situation, the story was for him primarily a miracle story with christological implications (see

). Some redaction critics, in their desire to interpret the gospels exclusively in terms of reconstructed church life settings instead of hearing the church’s thoughtful witness to the historical Jesus, come close to undisciplined allegorizing.

It is well-known that violent squalls (the term seismos can refer to an earthquake or a sea storm, GK 4939) develop quickly on Lake Galilee (v.24). The surface is more than six hundred feet below sea level, and the rapidly rising hot air draws from the southeastern tablelands violent winds whose cold air churns up the water. Those among Jesus’ contemporaries who really knew the OT would remember that in it God is presented as the one who controls and stills the seas (cf. Job 38:8–11; Pss 29:3–4, 10–11; 65:5–7; 89:9; 107:23–32).

The form of the cry Kyrie, sōson (lit., “Lord, save!” v.25) is often thought to reflect liturgical influence (cf. Mk 4:38; Lk 8:24). But it is doubtful that the disciples all used the same words, and the verbal differences among the Synoptics may reflect not theological motivation but historical recollection of various cries (esp. if Matthew was present). This event almost certainly occurs later chronologically than Matthew’s call (9:9–13; cf. Lk 5:27–32). The words of later liturgy took on this form. Yet we know almost nothing about first-century liturgy, and it is more likely that the Bible influenced the shape of liturgy than vice versa. Significantly, later textual tradition adds “us” (cf. Metzger, Textual Commentary, 22). The verb sōzō (“save”) does not require a direct object, though it is difficult to see why “us” should have been eliminated if it had been there originally. The later liturgical form prefers to abandon the “us.” If that form was not strong enough to control the textual tradition, is it likely that it was strong enough (let alone early enough) to control the shape of the cry in the transfer from Mark to Matthew?

26–27 “He does not chide them for disturbing him with their prayers, but for disturbing themselves with their fears” (Matthew Henry). The word oligopistoi (“you of little faith,” v.26, GK 3899) occurs five times in the NT (6:30; here; 14:31; 16:8; Lk 12:28; cf. the cognate noun at 17:20) and always with reference to disciples. Lack of faith among those for whom faith must be central is especially disappointing. Mark (4:40) has “Do you still have no faith?” and Matthew’s “little faith” is therefore taken by many as a conscious toning down of the rebuke, perhaps because he cannot envisage discipleship apart from some faith (Gundry). But there are reasons for thinking this conclusion is somewhat hasty.

1. It may be pushing Mark’s question too hard to understand it as meaning that the disciples were utterly without faith. An exasperated preacher might well berate those he regards as believing disciples with words like those in Mark precisely because he believes their conduct in the face of some crisis belies their profession of faith. The large change in meaning ascribed to Matthew may therefore rest on too pedantic an understanding of Mark. This is confirmed by Mark’s not developing the notion of “disciples” who have no faith.

2. Both Matthew (17:17) and Mark (9:19) preserve sayings about the unbelieving generation that must in context be applied to Jesus’ disciples.

3. The word oligopistoi (“you of little faith”) probably does not refer merely to quantity of faith but to its poor quality (see

). If so, Matthew may be credited with a little more theological precision than Mark but scarcely a radically new meaning. The change from a question (Mark) to the one-word epithet oligopistoi (Matthew) is quite within the range of reportage in the Gospels. What Jesus’ exact words were we cannot know; nor can we be certain that Matthew’s only access to the event was Mark’s report.

4. If Matthew were so eager to insist that true discipleship involves some faith and changes Mark’s expression for this reason, it is strange that he would insert a verse such as 17:20 (contrast Mk 9:29). It is more likely that Matthew favors oligopistoi as part of his working vocabulary, but without heavy, theological implications the demonstrable redactional tendencies of an author do not necessarily bear on questions of authenticity (see Introduction, ).

5. What is clear is that both Mark and Matthew set faith over against fear. Faith chases out fear, or fear chases out faith.

That the disciples could cry to Jesus for help reveals that they believed, or hoped, he could do something. More than others, they had witnessed his miracles and apparently believed he could rescue them. Jesus’ rebuke is therefore not against skepticism of his ability, nor against the fear that the disciples, like others, might drown. Rather, they failed to see that the one so obviously raised up by God to accomplish the messianic work could not possibly have died in a storm while that work remained undone. They lacked faith not so much in his ability to save them as in Jesus as Messiah, whose life could not be lost in a storm, as if the elements were out of control and Jesus himself the pawn of chance. This aspect of their unbelief is hinted at in Mark and Luke; in Matthew it is rendered more explicit with the disciples’ cry to save them, for here they cannot be thought to be awakening Jesus because of pique at his still being asleep. Jesus’ sleep stems not only from his exhaustion (see

) or from the Son of Man having nowhere to lay his head (v.20) but from his confidence that, to use John’s language, his hour had not yet come.

The disciples’ response to the miracle (v.27) does not weaken this interpretation, as if their surprise shows they were not expecting Jesus to intervene. Just as a crowd expects a magician to do his trick, yet marvels when it is done, so the disciples turn to Jesus for help, yet are amazed when he stills the storm so that there is complete calm. What kind of man is this? Readers of this gospel know the answer—he is the virgin-born Messiah who has come to redeem his people from their sins and whose mission is to fulfill God’s redemptive purposes. But the disciples did not yet understand these things. They saw that his authority extended over nature and were thus helped in their faith. Yet they did not grasp the profundity of his rebuke. Indeed, wherever oligopistos is used in Matthew, a root cause of the “little faith” is the failure to see beyond the mere surface of things. Thus the pericope is deeply christological. Themes of faith and discipleship are of secondary importance and point to the “kind of man” (cf. BDF, para. 298 [3]) Jesus is.

It may also be that Matthew is again juxtaposing Jesus with human limitations and Jesus with God’s authority, a device he so effectively uses in this gospel. As Jesus is tempted but rebukes Satan (4:1–11), as he is called the devil but drives out demons (12:22–32), so he sleeps from weariness but muzzles nature.

OVERVIEW

All three synoptists (cf. Mk 5:1–20; Lk 8:26–39) place this event after the boat landed, after the storm had been stilled. Matthew’s account is much shorter than the other two, and he does not refer to “Legion” or to the desire of the liberated men to follow Jesus. The central motif, Jesus’ authority over the evil spirits, is accented and only lightly interwoven with other themes.

28When he arrived at the other side in the region of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men coming from the tombs met him. They were so violent that no one could pass that way. 29“What do you want with us, Son of God?” they shouted. “Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time?”

30Some distance from them a large herd of pigs was feeding. 31The demons begged Jesus, “If you drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs.”

32He said to them, “Go!” So they came out and went into the pigs, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and died in the water. 33Those tending the pigs ran off, went into the town and reported all this, including what had happened to the demon-possessed men. 34Then the whole town went out to meet Jesus. And when they saw him, they pleaded with him to leave their region.

COMMENTARY

28 The locale seems to have been in the district controlled by the town of Gadara, near the village of Gerasa (see Notes), which lay about midpoint on the lake’s eastern shore. On the adjacent hillside are ancient tombs. Probably small antechambers or caves provided some protection from the weather, and a graveyard would, apparently, prove a congenial environment for demons and render the man ceremonially defiled. This region lay in the predominantly Gentile territory of the Decapolis (see

). The presence of the pigs (v.30), inconceivable in a Jewish milieu, points to its Gentile background. Jesus has withdrawn here, not for ministry, but to avoid the crowds (v.18). Yet there can be no rest as long as the hosts of darkness oppose him.

On differences between Jewish and NT views of demon-possession, see Edersheim (Life and Times, appendix 16; cf. Str-B, 1:491–92). Matthew mentions two men; Mark and Luke only one. This pattern occurs elsewhere (20:30), making it very unlikely that Matthew changed the number because he saw an implication of more than one man in Mark’s “Legion” (applied to the demons). It is even less likely that Matthew introduced the extra person to make up the legally acceptable minimum of two witnesses, since not only is the witness theme not found in either of the two Matthean pericopes (vv.28–34; 20:29–34), but here Matthew has eliminated the witness theme (cf. Mk 5:18–20). While the disciples could have served as witnesses, the best explanation is that Matthew had independent knowledge of the second man. Mention of only one by the other gospel writers is not problematic. Not only was one sufficient for the purpose at hand, but where one person is more remarkable or prominent, it is not uncommon for the Gospels to mention only that one (cf. “I saw John Smith in town today. I hadn’t seen him in years”—even though both John and Mary Smith were actually seen).

The violence of these demoniacs is more fully described by Mark and Luke.

29 “While the men in the boat are doubting what manner of man this is, that even the winds and the sea obey him, the demons come to tell them” (Theophylact, cited in Broadus). They knew who Jesus was and yet remained demons; to know Jesus yet hate him is demonic. The question the demoniacs hurled at Jesus could be either harsh or gentle, depending on context (2Sa 16:10; Mk 1:24; Jn 2:4). Here it is hateful and tinged with fear. Despite the assertions of some that the title “Son of God” had no messianic overtone before it was applied to Jesus, the title seems to have been connected with the promised Davidic Messiah (see Adela Yarbro Collins, “Mark and His Readers: The Son of God among the Jews,” HTR 92 [1999]: 393–408; cf. 4Q246; see

). Here, however, the title “Son of God” is probably to be taken in its richest sense: he has authority even over the demonic world. Even if Jesus had already begun to confront them when they reacted so venomously (cf. Mk 5:7–8), there was nothing in Jesus’ command in itself to betray his identity. We must suppose that the demons enjoyed some independent knowledge of Jesus’ identity (cf. Ac 19:15; Ladd, Theology of the New Testament, 165).

The second question shows there will be a time for demonic hosts to be tortured and rejected forever (cf. Jude 6; Rev 20:10; cf. 1 En. 16:1; Jub. 10:8–9; T. Levi 18:12, 1QS 3:24–25; 4:18–20). As the question is phrased, it recognizes that Jesus is the one who will discharge that judicial function at the “appointed time”; therefore it confirms the fullest meaning of “Son of God.” That Jesus was in any sense circumscribing their activity before the appointed time (Matthew only) already shows that Jesus’ driving out of demons was an eschatological function, a sign that the kingdom was dawning (cf. 12:28).

The significance of “here” is disputed. It can mean either (1) “here in this Gentile territory,” reflecting “the difficulty of the church’s mission in those regions of Palestine” (Hill)—but surely demon-possession was not restricted to Gentile territory (cf. 10:5, 8; 12:22–24), and “the appointed time” makes little sense in such an interpretation—or (2) “here on earth, here where we have been given some freedom to trouble men before the end.” This obvious sense of the text presupposes that Jesus has come to the earth before the end. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Jesus’ preexistence is presupposed. See Simon J. Gathercole, The Preexistent Son: Recovering the Christologies of Matthew, Mark, and Luke (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006).

30–31 Mark (5:13) puts the number of the herd at two thousand and says it was “there.” Matthew says it was “some distance from them” (v.30), the sort of detail an eyewitness might well remember. This detail also weakens the suggestion that the pigs stampeded because of the men’s convulsions. J. D. M. Derrett’s proposed reconstruction (“Legend and Event: The Gerasene Demoniac: An Inquest into History and Liturgical Projection,” in Studia Biblica 1978 [ed. Livingstone], 2:63–73), based on the Romans’ sacrificing of pigs and on Jewish myths connecting Gentiles with bestiality, has no textual support. There are other reasons why the demons may have pled (v.31) to be sent into the herd of pigs: (1) desire for a bodily “home”; (2) hatred of God’s creatures; (3) desire to stir up animosity against Jesus. The first does not seem likely because the first thing the demons do is precipitate the death of their new “home.” The second and third are more plausible, because the Gospels elsewhere show that exorcised evil spirits sometimes expressed their rage by visible acts of violence or mischief (e.g., 17:14–20 = Mk 9:14–32; cf. Josephus, Ant. 8.48 [2.5], often cited, but of doubtful relevance because the exorcist there commands the demon to manifest himself).

Gundry observes that the herd rushes down the slope but that in Matthew “they” (plural) die; i.e., Matthew has transformed Mark to make the demons die. Thus Jesus “tortures” the demons “before the appointed time” by sending them to the torments of hell, and Matthew thus “deals in a bit of realized eschatology.” This reconstruction is far from convincing for these reasons: (1) There is no hint that the drowning of the pigs sends the demons to hell. (2) Mark also shifts from the singular—the herd rushing down the slope—to the plural—“were drowning”; the only difference is that Matthew has omitted reference to the number “two thousand.” (3) But if Matthew’s plural verb cannot refer back to “two thousand,” its most natural subject is the word “pigs,” found in this same verse (v.32). The reason Matthew does not use a singular verb for died is that it would be awkward to speak of a herd’s dying. Matthew has therefore preserved Mark’s pattern—single verb followed by plural verb.

32–34 The question as to why Jesus would grant the demons their desire and let them destroy the herd of pigs (v.32), the livelihood of their owners, is part of larger questions as to why human beings are possessed or why disease, misfortune, or calamity overtake us—questions only to be answered within the context of a broad theodicy outside the scope of this commentary (cf. D. A. Carson, How Long, O Lord? Reflections on Suffering and Evil [2nd ed.; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006]). But the context offers some hints. He who is master of nature (vv.23–27) is also its ultimate owner (vv.28–34; cf. Ps 50:10). The “appointed time” (v.29) for full destruction of the demons’ power has not yet arrived. The pigs’ stampede dramatically proved that the former demoniacs had indeed been freed (v.33). But in the light of vv.33–34, the loss of the herd became a way of exposing the real values of the people in the vicinity. They preferred pigs to persons, swine to the Savior.

This ending of the pericope bears significantly on its total meaning. If the story shows once more that Jesus’ ministry was not restricted to the Jews but foreshadowed the mission to the Gentiles, it likewise shows that opposition to Jesus is not exclusively Jewish. To this extent it confirms earlier exegesis (see

) that showed that opponents in Matthew are not selected on the basis of race but according to their response to Jesus.

NOTES

28 The textual evidence in all three Synoptic Gospels, though highly complex, has been well summarized by Metzger (Textual Commentary, 23–24). The three options are Gadara, Gerasa, and Gergesa. In Mark and Luke the textual evidence is strongest for Gerasa, probably in reference to a little village (modern Kersa or Koursi) on the eastern shore. However, there was a city of the Decapolis named Gerasa (modern Jerash) some thirty miles southeast of Galilee. Clearly that is geographically incompatible with v.32, so early copyists made emendations.

Gadara (modern Um Qeis), also a Decapolis city, was five miles southeast. Origen (Comm. Jo 6.41) objected to both Gerasa (as commonly understood to refer to the city thirty miles off) and Gadara for similar reasons of distance. But Josephus (Life 42.9) says Gadara had territory and villages on the border of the lake, and probably this included the little village of Gerasa. Indeed, coins of Gadara sometimes display a ship (cf. Schürer, History of the Jewish People, 2:132–36). Gadara was thus the regional or toparchic capital (cf. Sherwin-White, Roman Society, 128 n. 3). The external evidence in Matthew favors Gadara. For some reason, the name of the toparchic capital was preferred to Gerasa (which in Matthew enjoys only versional support).

Origen, rejecting Gerasa and Gadara, proposed Gergesa, but on entirely inadequate grounds, including doubtful etymology (see Metzger, above; Tj. Baarda, “Gadarenes, Gerasenes, Gergesenes, and the ‘Diatessaron’ Traditions,” in Neotestamentica et Semitica [ed. Ellis and Wilcox, 181–97). Gergesa could also be suggested by a very guttural r in Gerasa. Other variants doubtless resulted from later attempts at “correction” and from mutual assimilation (cf. Lane, Mark, 181 n. 6; Franz Annen, Heil für die Heiden [Frankfurt: Knecht, 1976], 201–4).

32 The phrase κατὰ τοῦ κρημνοῦ (kata tou krēmnou, “down the steep bank”) is a very rare instance of this preposition plus genitive in a local sense and here means “down and over” (BDF, para. 225) or “down along” (Moule, Idiom Book, 60).

OVERVIEW

Again Matthew’s account is shortened (cf. Mk 2:2–12; Lk 5:17–26), the entrance through the roof having been eliminated. The interrelationships among the Synoptics in this pericope are complex. It has been shown, as Bo Reicke says, that the various narrative elements “cannot be derived from any source that did not include the essentials of the quotation elements represented by three gospels together” (“The Synoptic Reports on the Healing of the Paralytic: Matt. 9:1–8 with Parallels,” in Studies in New Testament Language [ed. Elliott], 325; though it is doubtful that Reicke has disproved the two-source hypothesis, as he seems to think).

The shortened opening does not change this from a “miracle story” to a “controversial story” (contra Held, “Matthew as Interpreter of the Miracle Stories,” 176–77). John Paul Heil (“Significant Aspects of the Healing Miracles,” 276–78) has shown that the form-critical marks of a miracle story are retained. Still less is this a miracle story into which a controversy about forgiving sin has been inserted, sparked by the church’s attempt to tie its own forgiving function to Jesus’ ministry (so Bultmann, History of the Synoptic Tradition, 14–16). The pericope is exclusively christological and has nothing to do with the disciples. Form-critical categories are handled mechanically if taken a priori to require that no controversy triggered by the way Jesus performed a healing could have been passed on! Moreover, the close connections between sin and sickness (see

) and this extension of Jesus’ authority beyond healing, nature, and the demonic realm to the forgiveness of sins make the narrative internally coherent and contextually suitable.

1Jesus stepped into a boat, crossed over and came to his own town. 2Some men brought to him a paralytic, lying on a mat. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven.”

3At this, some of the teachers of the law said to themselves, “This fellow is blaspheming!”

4Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said, “Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts? 5Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? 6But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins ...” Then he said to the paralytic, “Get up, take your mat and go home.” 7And the man got up and went home. 8When the crowd saw this, they were filled with awe; and they praised God, who had given such authority to men.

COMMENTARY

1 It is unclear whether this verse ties in more closely with 8:28–34 or with 9:2–8. The problem is not just academic, for the preceding pericope is almost certainly chronologically later (cf. Mk 5:1–20) than this one (cf. Mk 2:2–12); and a break more easily fits between 9:1 and 9:2 than between 8:34 and 9:1. Begged to leave (8:34), Jesus embarked in the boat he had so recently left and returned to “his own town,” namely, Capernaum (4:13), on the western shore of the lake.

A larger problem concerning synoptic interrelationships now faces us. Matthew 9:14 and Luke 5:33 show that the questions about fasting sprang from the dinner Matthew sponsored. And 9:18 shows that the healing of Jairus’s daughter and of the hemorrhaging woman immediately followed. Mark 5:21–23 and Luke 8:40–44 place the raising of Jairus’s daughter after Jesus returned from Gadara (as in Matthew) but the healing of the paralytic (Mk 2:2–12; Lk 5:17–26) much earlier—even though Matthew places it after Gadara and seems to tie it to the pericopes that follow in his account.

Harmonization should be avoided where details are obscure, but refusal to attempt harmonization of documents treating the same events is methodologically irresponsible. Here a fairly straightforward solution is possible. There is a significant time lapse between Matthew’s calling and the dinner he gives his friends. All three synoptists put these two personally related events side by side. But significantly no synoptist makes a temporal connection between the two. The following shows the arrangement.

Thus all the Synoptics put the raising of Jairus’s daughter in the correct chronological order. Mark and Luke report the healing of the paralytic and the calling of Matthew at the earlier time, when they occurred, but then link to them Matthew’s dinner—a topical arrangement. Matthew connects all four together, placing them later, though there is a chronological break at vv.1–2 (see above) and again between Matthew’s call and Matthew’s dinner. The first evangelist has introduced the first chronological break in order to preserve the topical arrangement of his presentation of Jesus’ authority, and the second break (vv.9–10), along with Mark and Luke, because of the personal connection (Matthew’s call and Matthew’s dinner). This rather obvious solution is invalid only if Matthew’s (and Luke’s) sole source of information in this pericope is Mark. But despite some critics, this is most unlikely (see Introduction, ).

2 Many (e.g., Hill) insist that though in Mark and Luke the paralytic is lowered through a roof, here the imperfect prosepheron (NASB, “they were bringing”) means the paralytic and his bearers met Jesus in the street. But the imperfect tense often adds color to action (cf. the imperfect even in Luke), and little is gained by manufacturing discrepancies.

Jesus “saw” their faith—presumably that of the paralytic and those carrying him—exemplified in their coming. But he spoke only to the paralytic. “Son” (teknon) is no more than an affectionate term from one’s senior (see, e.g., 1Jn 2:1, 28). What Jesus went on to say implies a close link between sin and sickness (see

)—perhaps in this case a direct one (cf. Jn 5:14; 1Co 11:29–30). It implies that of the two, paralysis and sin, sin is the more basic problem. The best MSS read aphientai (“Your sins are forgiven,” GK 918), not the perfect apheōntai (“Your sins have been forgiven”; see Notes). The latter might imply that the man’s sins were forgiven at some time in the past and now remain forgiven.

3 Some teachers of the law (see

;

) muttered among themselves that Jesus was blaspheming. It is God alone who forgives sin (Isa 43:25; 44:22), since it is against him only that men commit sin (Ps 51:4). The verb blasphēmeō (GK 1059) often means “slander”; and when something is said that slanders God, the modern meaning of “blaspheme” is not far away. Though among Jews in Jesus’ day the precise definition of blasphemy was hotly disputed (cf. Str-B, 1:1019–20), the consensus seemed to be that using the divine name was an essential element. Here the teachers of the law, in their whispered consultation, expanded blasphemy to include Jesus’ claim to do something only God could do.

4 Jesus had seen the faith of the paralytic and his friends; now he saw the evil thoughts of some of the teachers of the law (see Notes). Such discernment may have been supernatural, though not necessarily so. In this situation, it would not have been difficult to surmise what the teachers of the law were whispering about. Jesus’ charge probed beyond their talk of blasphemy to what they were thinking in their hearts. And what they were thinking was untrue, unbelieving, and blind to what was being revealed before their eyes.

5–7 Jesus did not respond to his opponents’ thoughts according to the skeptical view—namely, that to say “Your sins are forgiven” is easier to say than “Get up and walk.” On the contrary, he responded according to the perspective of the teachers of the law—namely, that to say “Get up and walk” is easier since only God can forgive sins. Jesus claimed to do the more difficult thing. Thus v.6 is ironical—“All right, I’ll also do the lesser deed.” Yet if Jesus had blasphemed in pronouncing forgiveness, how could he now perform a miracle (cf. Jn 9:31)? But so that they might know that he had authority to forgive sin, he proceeded to the easier task. The healing therefore showed that Jesus truly had authority to forgive sins. To do this is the prerogative of the “Son of Man.” This expression goes beyond self-reference and, seen in the light of the postresurrection period, surely indicates that the eschatological Judge had already come “on earth” (cf. “here” in 8:29) with the authority to forgive sin (cf. Hooker, Son of Man, 81–93). This is the authority of Immanuel, “God with us” (1:23), sent to “save his people from their sins” (1:21). Jesus did not finish the sentence. The broken syntax (BDF, para. 483) is followed by Jesus’ word of power and his command to the paralytic to go home (hypage, “go,” is here gentle as in 8:13, not rough as in 4:10). To sum up, the healing not only cured the paralytic (v.7); it also assured him that his sins were forgiven and refuted the charge of blasphemy.

8 The external evidence for “were afraid” is early and in three text types (Alexandrian, Western, Caesarean). Copyists, failing to see the profundity of the verb, softened it to “were amazed.” The NIV’s “were filled with awe” implies fear but is too paraphrastic. Men should fear the one who has the authority to forgive sins. Indeed, they should fear whenever they are confronted by an open manifestation of God (cf. 17:6; 28:5, 10). Such fear breeds praise.

Matthew alone adds the clause “who had given such authority to men.” Many argue that “to men” refers to the church and cite 16:19; 18:18 in support (e.g., Benoit; Hill). But this is unlikely. If “Son of Man” (9:6) refers to the eschatological Judge, then it is unlikely this function is to be shared with the church, at least in the same way (cf. TDNT, 8:405). The pericope has christological, not ecclesiastical, concerns, compatible with the prologue (1:21, 23; see

). The onlookers simply saw a man exercising the authority of God, but readers recognize him as “God with us” and eschatological “Son of Man.” God’s gracious reign has come “on earth” (v.6); the kingdom of David’s Son, who came to save his people from their sins, has dawned.

NOTES

2 The reasons the perfect displaced the present in many MSS are clear enough: the present in Greek is often durative, which here makes little sense (“your sins are being forgiven”), and there is assimilation to Luke 5:20, where the text is firm (Mk 2:5 has a similar difficulty).

4 “Seeing their thoughts,” not “knowing their thoughts,” is almost certainly the correct reading, not least because the change from the former to the latter is comprehensible, but the reverse is highly unlikely. But “seeing” is obviously metaphorical, a point recognized by the KJV and NIV in their periphrastic rendering “knowing.”

9As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.

COMMENTARY

9 The locale is probably the outskirts of Capernaum. Matthew was sitting “at the tax collector’s booth,” a customs and excise booth at the border between the territories of Philip and Herod Antipas. On attitudes toward tax collectors, see

(cf. Str-B, 1:377–80). Having demonstrated his authority to forgive sins (vv.1–8), Jesus now called to himself a man whose occupation made him a pariah—a sinner and an associate of sinners (cf. 1Ti 1:15).

The name “Matthew” may derive from the Hebrew behind “Mattaniah” (1Ch 9:15), meaning “gift of God,” or, in another etymology, from a word meaning “the faithful” (Heb. ʾ^emet, GK 622). In Mark the name is “Levi” (though in Mark there are difficult textual variants), and the change to “Matthew” in the first gospel has prompted much speculation. The most radical theory is that of R. Pesch (“Levi-Matthäus,” ZNW 59 [1968]: 40–56), who says that the first evangelist purposely substituted a name from the apostolic band because he habitually uses “disciple” for the Twelve and therefore could not allow an outsider to stand. The evangelist then made a “sinner” out of him to represent the “sinners” among the apostles. “Matthew” in the first gospel is thus reduced entirely to a redactional product. But Pesch’s understanding of “disciple” is questionable (see

;

), and his skepticism is vast.

Across the centuries, the simple equation of Levi and Matthew has been the most obvious course to take. Matthew may have been a Levite. Such a heritage would have assumed an intimate acquaintance with Jewish tradition. Mark and Luke have “Matthew” in their lists of apostles (Mk 3:18; Lk 6:15; Pesch has to say Mk 3:18 is also redactional). On the ground of the formidable onomastic evidence gathered by Tal Ilan (Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity: Part I: Palestine 330 BCE–200 CE [TSAJ 91; Tübingen: Mohr, 2002]), Bauckham has argued (Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 108–12) that it is unlikely that one man had two common Jewish names. Bauckham himself works through possible exceptions, judging they are either not convincing or rather rare. The better-known instances where one Jewish man has two Jewish names (e.g., 27:16–17; Ac 4:36; Josephus, Ant. 12.285; 18.35, 95; 20.196), commonly adduced by commentators (e.g., Gundry; Davies and Allison; Turner), Bauckham rules out of court because in each instance the second name is likely either a nickname (like “Barnabas”) or a family name. Yet whatever the onomastic improbability, the identification of Levi (Mark’s gospel) with Matthew (here) seems less implausible than Bauckham’s explanation: the unknown evangelist knew that Matthew was a tax collector (like Levi), and knew he was one of the Twelve, and so simply transferred the story across (on the assumption that the conversion of one tax collector would be very much like the conversion of another?).

Gundry (Use of the Old Testament, 181–83) suggests that Matthew’s work as a tax collector assured his fluency in Aramaic and Greek and that his accuracy in keeping records fitted him for note taking and later writing his gospel. Hill, following Stendahl (“Matthew,” in Peake’s Commentary), thinks it unlikely that a person living on “the despised outskirts of Jewish life” could be responsible for this gospel. But does it not also seem unlikely that “a son of thunder” should become the apostle of love, or that the archpersecutor of the church should become its greatest missionary and theologian? If Matthew wrote 9:9 regarding his own call, it is significant that it is more self-deprecating than Luke’s account, which says that Matthew “left everything” and followed Jesus.

OVERVIEW

On the chronological relation between v.9 and vv.10–13, see

. Matthew abbreviates the account of Jesus’ eating with tax collectors and sinners, excluding descriptive elements that do not contribute to the confrontation but adding an OT quotation (v.13).

10While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and “sinners” came and ate with him and his disciples. 11When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and ‘sinners’?”

12On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 13But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

COMMENTARY

10–11 For more on the opening words kai egeneto (“and it came to pass”; NIV, “while”), see

. The Greek text does not mention “Matthew’s” house, though v.9 implies it is Matthew’s, and both Mark and Luke specify it (so NIV). Jesus himself had said that even a tax collector has his friends (5:46), and Matthew’s dinner substantiates this. “Sinners” may include common folk who did not share all the scruples of the Pharisees (cf. TDNT, 1:324–25); hence the quotation marks in the NIV. But almost certainly it groups together those who broke Pharisaic halakoth (rules of conduct)—harlots, tax collectors, and other disreputable people (cf. Hummel, Auseinandersetzung, 22ff.). Though eating with them entailed dangers of ceremonial defilement, Jesus and his disciples did so. The Pharisees’ question, put not to Jesus but to his disciples, was less a request for information than a charge, and contemptuously it lumped together tax collectors and “sinners” under one article (cf. 11:19; Lk 15:1–2 for the same attitude).

There can be little doubt that Jesus was known as a friend to tax collectors and sinners (11:19; cf. M. Volkel, “‘Freund der Zöllner und Sünder,’” ZNW 69 [1978]: 1–10; Blomberg, Contagious Holiness; see Notes, 5:46).

12–13 These verses again connect Jesus’ healing ministry with his “healing” of sinners (see

). The sick need a doctor, and Jesus healed them; likewise the sinful need mercy, forgiveness, restoration, and Jesus healed them (v.13). The Pharisees were not as healthy as they thought (cf. 7:1–5); more important, they did not understand the purpose of Jesus’ mission. Expecting a Messiah who would crush the sinful and support the righteous, they had little place for one who accepted and transformed the sinner and dismissed the “righteous” as hypocrites. Jesus explained his mission in terms reminiscent of 1:21. There is no suggestion here that he went to sinners because they gladly received him; rather, he went to them because they were sinners, just as a doctor goes to the sick because they are sick.

The quotation (v.13) is from Hosea 6:6 and is introduced by the rabbinic formula “go and learn,” used of those who needed to study the text further. Use of the formula may be slightly sardonic: those who prided themselves in their knowledge of and conformity to Scripture needed to “go and learn” what it means. The quotation, possibly translated from the Hebrew by Matthew himself, is cast in Semitic antithesis: “not A but B” often means “B is of more basic importance than A.”

The Hebrew word for “mercy” (ḥesed, GK 2876) is close in meaning to “covenant love,” which, according to Hosea, is more important than “sacrifice.” Through Hosea, God said that the apostates of Hosea’s day, though continuing the formal ritual of temple worship, had lost its center. As applied to the Pharisees by Jesus, therefore, the Hosea quotation was not simply telling them that they should be more sympathetic to outcasts and less concerned about ceremonial purity, but that they were aligned with the apostates of ancient Israel in that they too preserved the shell while losing the heart of the matter, as exemplified by their attitude to tax collectors and sinners (cf. France, Jesus and the Old Testament, 70). Jesus’ final statement (v.13b) therefore cannot mean that he viewed the Pharisees as righteous people who did not need him, who were already perfectly acceptable to God by virtue of their obedience to his laws so that their only fault was the exclusion of others (contra Hill, Greek Words, 130–31). If the Pharisees were so righteous, the demand for righteousness surpassing that of the Pharisees and teachers of the law (5:20) would be incoherent.

On the other hand, it may not be exactly right to say that “righteous” is ironic here. The saying simply defines the essential nature of Jesus’ messianic mission as he himself saw it. If pushed, he would doubtless have affirmed the universal sinfulness of man (cf. 7:11). Therefore, he is not dividing men into two groups but is disavowing one image of what Messiah should be and do, replacing it with the correct one. His mission was characterized by grace, a pursuit of the lost, of sinners. The verb kalesai (“to call,” GK 2813) means “to invite” (unlike Paul’s usage, where the call is always efficacious). By implication, those who do not see themselves in the light of Jesus’ mission not only fail to grasp the purpose of his coming but exclude themselves from the kingdom’s blessings.

If Matthew does not add “to repentance” after “sinners” (as Lk 5:32), it is not because he is disinterested in repentance (cf. 3:2; 4:17). Rather, the words are not in his principal source (Mark) and do not contribute to his present theme.

Hosea 6:6 is also quoted in 12:7, again in a context challenging the Pharisees’ legal scruples. Cope (Matthew, 68–70) suggests that the verse reveals a contrast between the substantial demands of mercy and merely legal and ceremonial piety, a contrast traceable in the following pericopes (vv.14–17, 18–26, 27–34, 35–38). But his evidence is slightly overdrawn. In vv.27–34, for instance, vv.27–31 raise no overt hints of ceremonial defilement.

14Then John’s disciples came and asked him, “How is it that we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?”

15Jesus answered, “How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them? The time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; then they will fast.

16“No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse. 17Neither do men pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.”

COMMENTARY

14 Mark (2:18–22; cf. Lk 5:33–39) says that both the Pharisees and the disciples of John were fasting—probably on one of the regularly observed but voluntary fast days (see

;

)—and that “some people” asked this question. Luke makes it the Pharisees, Matthew the disciples of John. On the face of it (see Luke), the setting is the same as for the previous pericope, and regarding fasting, the disciples of John are in accord with the Pharisees. The Baptist himself showed a noble freedom from jealousy when Jesus’ ministry began to supersede his own (cf. esp. Jn 3:26–31). But some of John’s disciples felt differently now that he was in prison (4:12), and because they kept up their leader’s asceticism (11:18), not heeding his strong witness to Jesus, they saw an occasion for criticism.

Most modern commentators believe that here Matthew is referring to the Baptist’s followers who never accepted Jesus’ supremacy and who by the end of the first century had developed their own sect. Doubtless Matthew would have cheerfully applied Jesus’ response to them also. But there is no reason to deny that this incident happened during Jesus’ ministry. Moreover, after the bridegroom was taken away (v.15), Jesus’ disciples often fasted (e.g., Ac 13:3; 14:23; 27:9), making it less likely that these Baptist sectarians would have leveled their charge after the passion and resurrection than before it. Just as the “questioners” (accusers?) had approached Jesus’ disciples about his conduct (v.11), so now questioners approached Jesus about his disciples’ conduct.

15 In his response, Jesus used three illustrations (Lk 5:39 adds a fourth), all given in the same order by the Synoptics. There seems little to be gained by supposing that the sayings were at one time separate.

The first illustration about the “guests of the bridegroom” (lit., “the sons of the bridal chamber”; see

;

) picks up a metaphor from the Baptist, who saw himself as the “best man” and Jesus as the groom (Jn 3:29). This similar metaphor would therefore be the more effective to this audience—Jesus is the groom and the disciples his “guests” who are so overjoyed at being with him that for them to fast is inappropriate.

In exonerating his disciples’ eating, Jesus used messianic-eschatological terms. In the OT, the bridegroom metaphor was repeatedly applied to God (Isa 54:5–6; 62:4–5; Hos 2:16–20); and Jews sometimes used it of marriage in connection with Messiah’s coming or with the messianic banquet (cf. Str-B, 1:500–518; in the NT, cf. Mt 22:2; 25:1; 2Co 11:2; Eph 5:23–32; Rev 19:7, 9; 21:2). Thus Jesus’ answer was implicitly christological: he himself is the messianic bridegroom, and the messianic age has dawned.

The objection is often made that the second part of Jesus’ answer, regarding the disciples’ mourning once the groom is “taken” (aparthē may bear overtones of Isa 53:8 LXX) from them, is not authentic on two chief grounds.

1. Such an obvious reference to the passion (and ascension?) comes too early in Jesus’ ministry. Some try to avoid this objection by supposing that Jesus was saying no more than that he, like other men, must die sometime. Neither the objection nor its proposed solution is relevant to one who has already revealed so formidable a messianic self-consciousness.

2. Matthew has allegorized the original parable—a sign of late accretion or adaptation. Yet this simplistic view of “parable” will not withstand scrutiny (see

). Above all, the language is so cryptic that it is doubtful whether even Jesus’ disciples grasped the messianic implications of these words until the early weeks of the postresurrection church.

16–17 Luke 5:36 labels these illustrations a “parable.” In general terms, the first of this pair is clear enough: a piece of unshrunk cloth tightly sewed to old and well-shrunk cloth in order to repair a tear will cause a bigger tear (v.16). Admittedly, the grammar is difficult (see Notes). The second (v.17) is also a “slice of life” in the ancient world. Skin bottles for carrying various fluids were made by killing the chosen animal, cutting off its head and feet, skinning the carcass, and sewing up the skin, fur side out, to seal off all orifices but one (usually the neck). The skin was tanned with special care to minimize disagreeable taste. In time, the skin became hard and brittle. If new wine, still fermenting, were put into such an old skin, the buildup of fermenting gases would split the brittle container and ruin both bottle and wine. New wine was placed only in new wineskins still pliable and elastic enough to accommodate the pressure.

These illustrations show that the new situation introduced by Jesus could not simply be patched onto old Judaism or poured into the old wineskins of Judaism. New forms would have to accompany the kingdom Jesus was now inaugurating; to try to domesticate him and incorporate him into the matrix of established Jewish religion would succeed only in ruining both Judaism and Jesus’ teaching.

Two extreme interpretations must be avoided.

1. Some, noticing that the words “and both are preserved” (v.17) are found only in Matthew, conclude that this first gospel, unlike Mark, envisages the renewal and preservation of Judaism, not its abolition. This will not do. The “both” that are preserved refers to the new wine and the new wineskins, not the old wineskins. Jesus’ teaching and the kingdom now dawning must be poured into new forms. Matthew makes it at least as clear as does Mark that the new wine can be preserved only in new forms. Is it any surprise that Matthew includes explicit mention of the church (16:18; 18:17)?

2. Some dispensationalists are inclined to make this wine so new that there is no connection whatsoever with what has come before. Walvoord (70) cites Ironside: “[Jesus] had not come to add something to the legal dispensation but to supersede it with that which was entirely new.... The new wine of grace was not to be poured into the skin-bottles of legality.” So sharp an antithesis is suspect on three grounds: (1) the grace-legality disjunction is greatly exaggerated; (2) it is not very obviously a set of Matthean categories; and (3) Matthew, as we have seen, repeatedly connects the OT with his own message in terms of prophecy and fulfillment.

The two parables of vv.16–17 are frequently said to be independent sayings tacked on here, since they go beyond the question of fasting. That may be, but all three synoptists put them in the same place. Moreover, they go beyond the question of fasting only to lay the groundwork for the coherence of Jesus’ answer about fasting. The newness Jesus brings cannot be reduced to or contained by traditions of Jewish piety. The messianic bridegroom has come. These parables bring unavoidable and radical implications for the entire structure of Jewish religion as its leaders then conceived it. Scholars who understand the first gospel to reflect a Jewish Christian community that preserves all the old forms of piety not only misinterpret 5:17–20 but do not adequately weigh this pericope.

NOTES

16 The verb αἴρει (airei, “takes,” “draws,” “pulls,” GK 149) is consistently transitive in the active voice (BDAG, 28–29), and therefore τὸ πλήρωμα αὐτοῦ (to plērōma autou, lit., “its fullness”; NIV, “patch,” GK 4445) must be construed as the direct object, perhaps referring to the overlapping section of the patch. See the rendering of Michael G. Steinhauser (“The Patch of Unshrunk Cloth [Mt 9:16],” ExpTim 87 [1975–76]: 312–13): “No one puts a patch of unshrunk cloth to an old cloak, because the patch of unshrunk cloth draws the overlapping section of the unshrunk cloth from the cloak and the tear becomes worse.”

OVERVIEW

For the chronology, see

. Matthew abbreviates Mark (Mk 5:21–43; cf. Lk 8:40–46) by almost one-third. Again, the three synoptists are very close in reporting the words of Jesus.

Gérard Rochais (Les récits de résurrection des morts dans le Nouveau Testament [Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1980], 88–99) reduces the point of Matthew’s account to the importance of faith. Faith is indeed an important theme (v.22) but scarcely exclusive of others. While these are best discovered inductively, we may note that in vv.18–34, Jesus performs three new kinds of miracles: raising the dead (the healing of the hemorrhaging woman is already an integral part of this account in the Markan source) and healing the blind and the dumb. The latter two appear in Matthew much earlier than in the closest parallels in Mark and Luke (see

), because his topical concerns demand it. He includes at this point these final examples of spheres over which Jesus has authority because they figure in his defense to the disciples of John the Baptist (11:2–5): the blind receive sight; the lame walk; those who have leprosy are cured; the deaf hear (deafness is usually associated with muteness); the dead are raised. Jesus’ messianic credentials are thus being grouped together.

18While he was saying this, a ruler came and knelt before him and said, “My daughter has just died. But come and put your hand on her, and she will live.” 19Jesus got up and went with him, and so did his disciples.

20Just then a woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak. 21She said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be healed.”

22Jesus turned and saw her. “Take heart, daughter,” he said, “your faith has healed you.” And the woman was healed from that moment.

23When Jesus entered the ruler’s house and saw the flute players and the noisy crowd, 24he said, “Go away. The girl is not dead but asleep.” But they laughed at him. 25After the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took the girl by the hand, and she got up. 26News of this spread through all that region.

COMMENTARY

18–19 Matthew tightly links this narrative to the dinner in his house. Mark 5:21 provides another setting: while Jesus was by the lake, etc. This anomaly has called forth numerous explanations, mostly unsatisfactory. Some have postulated that Matthew follows another source (a desperate expedient that does not explain why he chooses to contradict Mark); others that Matthew simplifies Mark in the interests of catechesis (How is catechesis helped by a different setting almost as long as the first?); others have supposed that the dinner party in v.10 took place in a house by the lake (barely possible but artificial); still others believe that vv.14–17 should be detached from the dinner (barely possible, but artificial in light of Lk 5:33).

The best solution accepts the connection between Matthew’s dinner (vv.9–13), the discussion about fasting (vv.14–17), and this miracle (vv.18–26). But the NIV rendering of Mark 5:21–22 links Jesus by the lake with the approach of the synagogue ruler (“While he was by the lake, one of the synagogue rulers ...”). The Greek does not suggest this. Syntactically, Jesus’ presence by the lake terminates the thought of Mark 5:21: Jesus crossed back after the Gadara episode, a large crowd again gathered, and he was by the lake. Verse 22 then begins a new pericope without a necessary transition—which is exactly what Mark does elsewhere (e.g., 3:20, 31; 8:22; 10:46; 14:66). In some instances, such as this one (Mk 5:22; cf. 1:40), the precise division is ambiguous. But Mark’s practice elsewhere encourages us to think this interpretation is right and the NIV translation wrong.

“A ruler” (see Notes), in the context of Capernaum, almost certainly refers to a synagogue ruler (v.18), a point made explicit by Mark 5:22, which also tells us his name was Jairus. He must therefore have been a Jew and a man of considerable influence in the lives of the people. He “knelt before” Jesus. The verb here does not suggest “worship” (contra KJV) but deep courtesy, a pleading homage before someone in a position to grant a favor (see

;

The daughter “has just died.” Mark (5:22) has “is dying”; Luke (8:42) has “was dying.” Matthew, having eliminated the messengers as extraneous to his purposes, condenses “so as to present at the outset what was actually true before Jesus reached the house” (Broadus). Such is Matthew’s condensed style elsewhere (see

The synagogue ruler felt Jesus’ touch had special efficacy, but his faith was not as great as that of the centurion, who believed that Jesus could heal by his word (8:5–13). Jesus did not refuse this man but responded to faith, small or great. He “got up” (v.19; the word egeirō [GK 1586] most likely means, in this context, “rose from reclining at table” [of v.10]; see comments on harmonization above) and “went with [akoloutheō, GK 199; evidence that this verb does not necessarily imply discipleship; see

] him.”

20–21 The nature of the woman’s hemorrhage is uncertain; if, as seems probable, it was chronic bleeding from the womb, then she was perpetually unclean (cf. Lev 15:25–33). The regulation of such a woman’s life was considered so important that the Mishnah devotes an entire tractate to the subject (Zabim) and gives some of the “remedies” for stanching the flow. Having heard of others who had been healed at Jesus’ touch, this woman decided to touch even a tassel of Jesus’ cloak (v.21). Moved in part by a superstitious view of Jesus, she struggled through the crowd, which, because of her “unclean” condition, she should have avoided.

The word kraspedon (GK 3192) can mean either “edge” or “tassel.” The former may be the meaning here (so NIV), but the latter is certainly the meaning in 23:5. Tassels (Heb. ṣîṣit, GK 7492) were sewn on the four corners of every Israelite’s cloak (Nu 15:37–41; Dt 22:12) as reminders to obey God’s commands. While the tassels could easily become mere showpieces (23:5), Jesus himself, like any male Jew, doubtless wore them.

22 Though Matthew’s account is again abbreviated, various explanations—e.g., short accounts are easier to memorize (Hill) or Matthew eliminates magical elements (Hull, Hellenistic Magic, 136–37)—are less convincing than the obvious one: Matthew keeps only what is of most interest to him. The account is so short that it is not entirely clear whether Jesus turned and saw the woman before or after she touched him. The parallel accounts say the latter, and this may well be reflected in the perfect tense “your faith has healed you.” The woman was healed after touching Jesus’ cloak. He said that it was her faith that was effective, not the superstition mingled with it.

This seems better than the view that holds that Jesus first encouraged the woman (“Take heart, daughter”) and then healed her without any reference to touching. Matthew 9:2; 14:27 are cited as parallels for this order. In fact, the three incidents differ somewhat; 9:2 according to the best variant says, in effect, “Take heart, for I now forgive you”; 9:22 says, “Take heart, for you have now been healed”; and 14:27 is quite different, since “Take heart” logically relates to “It is I,” and the miracle of the calming of the wind is yet future. The final clauses of v.22 should therefore be interpreted to mean, not that the woman was healed from the “moment” Jesus spoke, but that she was healed from the hōra (lit., “hour,” GK 6052) of this encounter with Jesus.

23–26 Flute players were employed both on festive occasions (Rev 18:22) and at funerals. Matthew alone mentions them, not so much because he had special knowledge of Jewish funeral customs (cf. m. Ketub. 4:4, which required even a poor family to hire two flute players and one professional wailing woman), but out of personal recollection. Jesus was about to reverse funeral symbolism of the finality of death. The “noisy crowd” was made up of friends mourning, not in the hushed whispers characteristic of our Western funerals, but in loud outbursts of grief and wailing augmented by cries of hired mourners. Jesus’ miracle not only brought a corpse to life (v.24) but hope to despair.

“Laughed” (katagelaō, GK 2860) occurs only here (v.24) and in the synoptic parallels. The crowd mocked Jesus, not just because he had said, “The girl is not dead but asleep,” but even more because they thought this great healer had arrived too late. Now he was going too far. Carried away by his own success, he would try his skill on a corpse and make a fool of himself. In such a situation, Jesus’ words became, in retrospect, all the more profound. They not only denied that death—confronted by his power—was final; they also assumed that, contrary to the Sadducean view (22:23), “sleep” better described the girl’s condition. In the Bible, “sleep” often denotes “death” but never “nonexistence” (cf. Da 12:2; Jn 11:11; Ac 7:60; 1Co 15:6, 18; 1Th 4:13–15; 2Pe 3:4).

The mocking crowd was ejected from the house (v.25). Matthew does not tell us, as Mark does, that the five witnesses remained; nor does he give us Jesus’ words. But Matthew says that Jesus touched the corpse, and the body, far from defiling him, came to life. By itself, the miracle did not prove Jesus to be more than a prophet or an apostle (cf. 1Ki 17:17–24; 2Ki 4:17–37; Ac 9:36–42). But prophets and apostles never claimed to be more than their office indicated. Jesus made vastly greater claims; so for Matthew the miracle showed that Jesus’ authority as the Christ extended even over the dead.

NOTES

18 ῍Αρχων εἷς (archōn heis) is a relatively rare but not unknown way of saying “a ruler” or “a certain ruler,” heis (lit., “one”) functioning more or less like the enclitic τις (tis, “a certain”). Interpretation is compounded by complex variants, probably generated not only by the rarity of the construction but the ambiguity of Uncial texts: ΕΙΣΕΛΘΩΝ could be read εἷς ἐλθών (heis elthōn, lit., “one having come”) or εἰςελθών (eiselthōn, lit., “having entered”), the latter presupposing the house of v.10. For a defense of the text behind the NIV, cf. J. O. Callaghan, “La variante εις/ελθων en Mt 9:18,” Bib 62 (1981): 104–6.

20 “Tassel” or “edge” in Matthew and Luke makes this one of the most important “minor agreements” of Matthew and Luke against Mark, one that has generated many theories. Some take it with other “minor agreements” as sufficient evidence to defend the Griesbach hypothesis (see Introduction, ); others postulate a shared source, a coincidence, a textual emendation, or (most recently) the influence of Mark 6:56 (J. T. Cummings, “The Tassel of His Cloak: Mark, Luke, Matthew—and Zechariah,” in Studia Biblica 1978 [ed. Livingstone], 2:47–61). However explained—and perhaps some theory of common information is best—it is scarcely enough to threaten the two-source hypothesis. Why Matthew should include such a descriptive detail when he eliminates so much is hard to say. Yet Matthew’s narrative is not unpolished. He includes the piquant touch and occasional small detail while eliminating characters and scenes not germane to his purpose.

OVERVIEW

This pericope is usually taken as a doublet of the Bartimaeus miracle (20:29–34; Mk 10:46–52; Lk 18:35–43). But close examination shows little verbal correspondence between the Synoptics, and such correspondence as exists is considerably less than that between two pericopes in Matthew telling of entirely different miracles (cf. Held, “Matthew as Interpreter of the Miracle Stories,” 219–20).

Blindness was and still is common in the Mideast. Jesus performed many such miracles (see

;

;

). The most striking parallel is the cry “Have mercy on us, Son of David” (v.27). But this also occurs in 15:22 in a story having nothing to do with blindness; so the title “Son of David” may well have another explanation (see

). Certainly the point of 20:29–34 is quite different from that of this pericope. Here the focus is on Jesus’ authority and the blind men’s faith; there it is on the compassion of Jesus the King as he interrupts his journey to Jerusalem to respond to their cries. Moreover, Matthew, as we have repeatedly observed, condenses his narratives. Proposals that similar stories are doublets (a form of lengthening) must therefore be treated with suspicion. Likewise the supposition that Matthew has two blind men because Mark (his source) has two stories (Mk 8:22–26; 10:46–52), each describing the healing of one blind man, and that Matthew has simply added the number of the men and put them into one story is fanciful. Mark does have two stories of separate healings, one of which Matthew takes over (Mk 10:46–52; Mt 20:29–34). And Matthew and Mark each add another healing-of-the-blind miracle (Mt 9:27–31; Mk 8:22–26). This is scarcely surprising in view of the prevalence of blindness and the extent of Jesus’ healing ministry.

27As Jesus went on from there, two blind men followed him, calling out, “Have mercy on us, Son of David!”

28When he had gone indoors, the blind men came to him, and he asked them, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?”

“Yes, Lord,” they replied.

29Then he touched their eyes and said, “According to your faith will it be done to you”; 30and their sight was restored. Jesus warned them sternly, “See that no one knows about this.” 31But they went out and spread the news about him all over that region.

COMMENTARY

27–28 Apparently Jesus was returning from the ruler’s house (v.23) either to his own house (4:13) or to that of Matthew (vv.10, 28—the article in Greek implies it was either his own dwelling or the one previously mentioned). We should probably envisage a large crowd after the dramatic raising of the ruler’s daughter. Attached to the crowd were two blind men who had faith enough to follow him indoors.

This is the first time Jesus is called “Son of David,” and there can be no doubt that the blind men were confessing Jesus as Messiah (see

). They may have been physically blind, but they really “saw” better than many others—further evidence that Jesus came to those who needed a doctor (vv.12–13; see

). “The use of the Davidic title [cf. 15:22; 20:30; 21:9, 15; 22:42] in address to Jesus is less extraordinary than some think: in Palestine, in the time of Jesus, there was an intense Messianic expectation” (Hill).

The messianic age was to be characterized as a time when “the eyes of the blind [would] be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped,” when “the lame [would] leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy” (Isa 35:5–6). If Jesus was really the Messiah, the blind reasoned, then he would have mercy on them; and they would have their sight. So their need drove them to faith. Perhaps this is what lies behind the fact that in the Synoptics “Son of David” is so often associated with the needy—those possessed by demons or, as here, in need of healing (cf. Burger, Jesus als Davidssohn; Dennis C. Duling, “The Therapeutic Son of David: An Element in Matthew’s Christological Apologetic,” NTS 24 [1978]: 392–410; K. Paffenroth, “Jesus as Anointed and Healing Son of David in the Gospel of Matthew,” Bib 80 [1999]: 547–54; Lidija Novakovic, Messiah, the Healer of the Sick: A Study of Jesus as the Son of David in the Gospel of Matthew [WUNT 170; Tübingen: Mohr, 2003]). See especially the magisterial study of Young S. Chae (Jesus as the Eschatological Davidic Shepherd).

Jesus did not deal with the blind men until they were indoors (v.28). This may have been to dampen messianic expectations (see

) on a day marked by two highly public and dramatic miracles (v.26). It may also have been a device to increase their faith. The latter is suggested by his question (v.28), which accomplished two other things: (1) it revealed that their cries were not merely those of desperation only but of faith, and (2) it showed that their faith was directed not to God alone but to Jesus’ person and to his power and authority. Their title for Jesus was therefore right; he is truly the messianic Son of David. Thus we return to the first reason for delaying the healing—its being done within the house prevented the excited crowd from witnessing an implicit christological claim.

29–31 Jesus’ touching the blind men’s eyes—perhaps no more than a compassionate gesture to encourage faith—was not the sole means of this healing; it also depended on Jesus’ authoritative word. “According to your faith” does not mean “in proportion to your faith” (so much faith, so much sight) but rather “since you believe, your request is granted”—cf. “your faith has healed you” (v.22). The miracle accomplished (v.30), Jesus “warned them sternly” to tell no one. Embrimaomai (“sternly warn”) occurs only five times in the NT and always in connection with deep emotion (cf. Mk 1:43; 14:5; Jn 11:33, 38). This rather violent verb reveals Jesus’ intense desire to avoid a falsely based and ill-conceived acclaim that would not only impede but also endanger his true mission (see

). But the men whose faith brought them to Christ for healing did not stay with him to learn obedience. So the news spread like wildfire throughout the region (cf. v.26).

NOTES

27 Instead of the vocative υἱέ (huie, “son,” GK 5626), the text offers the nominative υἱός Δαυίδ (huios Dauid, “son of David”). It is surprising that the nominative noun in such a construction is anarthrous. This may well reflect Hebrew construction (cf. BDF, para. 147 [3]).

OVERVIEW

Again many see in these verses a “partial doublet,” this time with 12:22–24; and again the verbal parallels are minimal. Hill says that 9:32–34 has been formed out of 12:22–24 “in order to complete the cases of miraculous healing presupposed in 11:5 and 10:1.” But Matthew 4:24 shows that Jesus performed many exorcisms. Was Matthew so pressed for another example that he had to tell the same story twice? If so, why is the demon-possessed man in ch. 12 both blind and mute and this one only mute? Moreover, if v.34 is genuine (see

), it is surely not surprising that the charge of being in league with Beelzebub (12:24) should begin on a private scale and take some time to explode into the open (12:24). In any case, the charge is presupposed by 10:25.

32While they were going out, a man who was demon-possessed and could not talk was brought to Jesus. 33And when the demon was driven out, the man who had been mute spoke. The crowd was amazed and said, “Nothing like this has ever been seen in Israel.”

34But the Pharisees said, “It is by the prince of demons that he drives out demons.”

COMMENTARY

32–33 The word kōphos (“who could not talk,” GK 3273) in classical, Hellenistic, and biblical Greek means “deaf” or “dumb” or “deaf mute”; the two ailments are commonly linked, especially if deafness is congenital. Perhaps the man here was not only mute but a deaf mute. (On demon-possession, see

;

.) The NT frequently attributes various diseases to demonic activity; but since the same ailment appears elsewhere without any suggestion of demonic activity (e.g., Mk 7:32–33), the frequent connection between the two is not based on primitive superstition but presupposes a real ability to distinguish between natural and demonic causes. The crowd’s amazement (v.33) climaxes the earlier excitement (vv.26, 31). Nothing has ever been seen like this in Israel—and, by implication, if not among God’s chosen people, then nowhere. But the same amazement ominously sets the stage for the Pharisees’ cynical response (v.34).

34 This verse is missing from the Western textual tradition. Allen, Klostermann, Zahn, and others follow suit, detecting an intrusion from 12:24. But the external evidence is strong; and the verse seems presupposed in 10:25. This is not the first intimation of direct opposition to Jesus in Matthew (9:3, 11, 14, 24; cf. 5:10–12, 44), and even here the imperfect elegon (lit., “they were saying”; NIV, “said”) may imply that the ferment was constantly in the background. But the tide of opposition, which later brought Jesus to the cross, now becomes an essential part of the background to the next discourse (cf. 10:16–28).

OVERVIEW

As 4:23–25 prepares for the first discourse (chs. 5–7), so 9:35–38 provides a report and summary that prepares for the second (10:5–11:1). A new note is added; not only are we told again of the extensiveness of Jesus’ labors, but we now learn that the work was so great that many workers were needed. This leads to the commissioning of 10:1–4 and to the related discourse of 10:5–11:1.

Mark 6:6b has few affinities with this passage. Verse 35 is close to Matthew 4:23. Verse 36 is akin to Mark 6:34, and vv.37–38 to Luke 10:2 (cf. Jn 4:35).

35Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. 36When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. 38Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”

COMMENTARY

35 The setting is the same as in Mark 6:6b. For the exegesis, see

. The principal difference is the omission of any mention of Galilee, though doubtless that is the region in view. It is possible, as older commentaries suggest, that this represents a second circuit through Galilee, but in view of Matthew’s highly topical arrangement, it is precarious to deduce so much from it. Verse 35 summarizes the heart of Jesus’ Galilean ministry and prepares us for the new phase of mission via the Twelve. (On “their” synagogues, see

;

36 Like Yahweh in the OT (cf. Eze 34), Jesus showed compassion on the shepherdless crowds and judgment on the false leaders. The “sheep” Jesus sees are “harassed” (not “fainted” [KJV], which has poor attestation), i.e., bullied, oppressed. In the face of such problems, they are “helpless,” unable to rescue themselves or escape their tormentors. The language here is close to Numbers 27:17 (which could almost make Joshua a “type” of Jesus); but other parallels (e.g., 1Ki 22:17; 2Ch 18:16; Isa 53:6; Eze 34:23–24; 37:24) remind us not only of the theme’s rich background but also that the shepherd can refer either to God or to the Davidic Messiah God will send (cf. 2:6; 10:6, 16; 15:24; 25:31–46; 26:31).

37–38 The metaphor changed from sheep farming to harvest, as Jesus sought to awaken similar compassion in his disciples. Later on, the harvest is the end of the age (13:39) and the judgment it brings—a common symbol (cf. Isa 17:11; Joel 3:13). Many commentators see this verse as a warning to Israel that judgment time is near. The word “plentiful” stands in the way of this interpretation; it makes sense only if here therismos (GK 2546) does not mean “harvest time” but “harvest crop” (cf. BDAG, 453), as in Luke 10:2 and John 4:35b. In that case, the crop will be plentiful. Many people will be ready to be “reaped” into the kingdom.

Jesus is speaking here to “his disciples,” which many take to refer to the Twelve. More likely, “his disciples” designates a larger group exhorted to ask (v.38) that the Lord of the harvest (possibly “Lord who is harvesting,” if this is a verbal genitive, cf. G. H. Waterman, “The Greek ‘Verbal Genitive,’” in Current Issues [ed. Hawthorne], 292) will thrust laborers into his therismou (here in the sense “harvest field”). By contrast, the Twelve are immediately commissioned as workers (10:1–4). This interpretation best fits 10:1: Jesus “called his twelve disciples to him.” The clause is clumsy if they are the same as the “disciples” of vv.37–38 and natural only if they are part of the larger group.

1He called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out evil spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.

2These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon (who is called Peter) and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; 3Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; 4Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.

COMMENTARY

1 He whose word (chs. 5–7) and deed (chs. 8–9) were characterized by authority now delegates something of that authority to twelve men. This is the first time Matthew has explicitly mentioned the Twelve (cf. v.2; 11:1; 20:17; 26:14, 20, 47), who are introduced a little earlier in Mark (3:16–19). This commission appears to be the culmination of several previous steps (Jn 1:35–51; see

). Indeed, Matthew’s language suggests that the Twelve became a recognized group somewhat earlier. At the same time, this commission was a stage in the training and preparation of those who, after Pentecost, would lead the earliest thrust of the fledgling church. Twelve were chosen, probably on an analogy to the twelve tribes of Israel (cf. the council of twelve at Qumran, 1QS 8:1ff.), and they point to the eschatological renewal of the people of God (see

The authority the Twelve received enabled them to heal and drive out “evil [akathartos, lit., ‘unclean,’ GK 176] spirits”—spirits in rebellion against God, hostile to man, and capable of inflicting mental, moral, and physical harm, directly or indirectly. This is the first time in Matthew that demons are so described, and only again at 12:43 (but see

). “Every kind of disease and sickness” is exactly the expression in 4:23; 9:35. The authority granted the Twelve is in sharp contrast to the charismatic “gifts [plural] of healing” at Corinth (1Co 12:9, 28), which apparently were individually more restricted in what diseases each could cure.

2–4 For the first and only time in Matthew, the Twelve are called “apostles.” Apostolos (“apostle,” GK 693), cognate with apostellō (“send,” GK 690), is not a technical term in the background literature. This largely accounts for the fact that as used in NT documents it has narrower and wider meanings (cf. NIDNTT, 1:126–37). Luke 6:13 explicitly affirms that Jesus himself called the Twelve “apostles”; certainly Luke shows more interest in this question than the other three, partly in preparation for his work on the Acts of the Apostles. But in the NT, the term can mean merely “messenger” (Jn 13:16) or refer to Jesus (“the apostle and high priest whom we confess,” Heb 3:1) or elsewhere (esp. in Paul) denote “missionaries” or “representatives”—i.e., a group larger than the Twelve and Paul (Ro 16:7; 2Co 8:23). Nevertheless, the most natural reading of 1 Corinthians 9:1–5; 15:7; Galatians 1:17, 19 et al. is that even Paul could use the term in a narrow sense to refer to the Twelve plus himself (by special dispensation, 1Co 15:8–10).

Lists of the Twelve are found here and in three other places in the NT:

Matthew 10:2–4

Mark 3:16–19

Luke 6:13–16

Acts 1:13

Simon Peter

Peter

Andrew

James

Andrew

John

James

John

James

John

Andrew

John

Andrew

Philip

Bartholomew

Thomas

Matthew

Bartholomew

Matthew

Thomas

Matthew

James son of Alphaeus

10.

Thaddaeus

Simon the Zealot

11.

Simon the Cananaean (NRSV)

Judas brother of (or son of) James

12.

Judas Iscariot

[vacant]

Many significant things arise from comparing these lists.

1. Peter is always first, Judas Iscariot always last. Matthew uses “first” in connection with Peter. The word cannot mean he was the first convert (Andrew or perhaps John was) and probably does not simply mean “first on the list,” which would be a trifling comment (cf. 1Co 12:28). More likely it means primus inter pares (“first among equals”; see

2. The first four names of all four lists are those of two pairs of brothers whose call is mentioned first (cf. 4:18–22).

3. In each list, there are three groups of four, each group headed by Peter, Philip (not to be confused with the evangelist), and James son of Alphaeus respectively. But within each group the order varies (even from Luke to Acts!) except that Judas is always last. This suggests, if it does not prove, that the Twelve were organizationally divided into smaller groups, each with a leader.

4. The commission in Mark 6:7 sent the men out two by two; perhaps this accounts for the pairing in the Greek text of Matthew 10:2–4.

5. Some variations in order can be accounted for with a high degree of probability. For the first four names, Mark lists Peter, James, John, and appends Andrew, doubtless because the first three were an inner core privileged to witness the raising of Jairus’s daughter and the transfiguration and invited to be close to Jesus in his Gethsemane agony. Matthew preserves the order suggested by sibling relationships. He not only puts himself last in his group but mentions his less-than-savory past. Is this a sign of Christian humility?

6. Apparently Simon the Cananaean (Matthew, Mark) is the same person as Simon the Zealot (Luke, Acts). If so, then apparently Thaddaeus is another name for Judas the brother of (or son of) James (see comments below).

Not much is known concerning most of these men (see

below). For interesting but mostly incredible legends about them, see Hennecke (New Testament Apocrypha, 2:167–531).

NOTES

1 The construction ὥστε (hōste, “so that”) plus an infinitive to indicate purpose is extraordinary (cf. BDF, para. 391 [3]; Zerwick, Biblical Greek, para. 352) but cannot easily be taken any other way.

REFLECTIONS

Simon Peter. Simon is probably a contraction of Simeon (cf. Ge 29:33). Natives of Bethsaida on Galilee (Jn 1:44), he and his brother Andrew were fishermen (Mt 4:18–20) and possibly disciples of John the Baptist before they became disciples of Jesus (Jn 1:35–42). Jesus gave Simon the name Cephas (in Aram.; “Peter” in Gk. [Jn 1:42]; see

). Impulsive and ardent, Peter’s great strengths were his great weaknesses. NT evidence about him is abundant. Tracing Peter’s movements after the Jerusalem Council (Ac 15) is very difficult.

Andrew. Peter’s brother is not nearly so prominent in the NT. He appears again only in Mark 13:3; John 1:35–44; 6:8; 12:22, and in late and unreliable traditions. The Johannine evidence shows him to have been quietly committed to bringing others to Jesus.

James and John. James was probably the older (he almost always appears first). But as he became the first apostolic martyr (Ac 12:2), he never achieved his brother’s prominence. The brothers were sons of Zebedee the fisherman, whose business was successful enough to employ others (Mk 1:20) while his wife was able to support Jesus’ ministry (Mt 27:55–56). His wealth may help account for the family’s link with the house of the high priest (Jn 18:15–16), as well as for the fact that he alone of the Twelve stood by the cross. The brothers’ mother was probably Salome (cf. Mt 27:56; Mk 15:40; 16:1), and her motives were not unmixed (see

). Perhaps the sons inherited something of her aggressive nature; whatever its source, the nickname “sons of thunder” (Mk 3:17; cf. also Mk 9:38–41, Lk 9:54–56) reveals something of their temperament. John may have been a disciple of John the Baptist (Jn 1:35–41). Of James we know nothing until Matthew 4:21–22. John was undoubtedly a special friend of Peter (Lk 22:8; Jn 18:15; 20:2–8; Ac 3:1–4:21; 8:14; Gal 2:9). Reasonably reliable tradition places him after the fall of Jerusalem in Ephesus, where he ministered long and usefully into old age, taking a hand in the nurture of leaders like Polycarp, Papias, and Ignatius. Broadus’s summary does not seem too fanciful: “[The] vaulting ambition which once aspired to be next to royalty in a worldly kingdom [Mt 20:20–23] now seeks to overcome the world, to bear testimony to the truth, to purify the churches, and glorify God.”

Philip. Like Peter and Andrew, Philip’s home was Bethsaida (Jn 1:44). He too left the Baptist to follow Jesus. For incidents about him, see John 6:5–7; 12:21–22; 14:8–14. In the lists he invariably appears first in the second group of four. Polycrates, a second-century bishop, says Philip ministered in the Roman province of Asia and was buried at Hierapolis.

Bartholomew. The name means “son of Tolmai” or “son of Tholami” (cf. Jos 15:14 LXX) or “son of Tholomaeus” (cf. Josephus, Ant. 20.5 [1.1]). Many have identified him with Nathanael on the grounds that (1) the latter is apparently associated with the Twelve (Jn 21:2; cf. 1:43–51), (2) Philip brought Nathanael to Jesus (Jn 1:43–46), and (3) Philip and Bartholomew are always associated in the lists of apostles. The evidence is not strong, but if it is solid, we also know he came from Cana (Jn 21:2). He is remembered for Jesus’ tribute to him (Jn 1:47).

Thomas. Also named “Didymus” (Jn 11:16; 21:2), which in Aramaic means “Twin,” Thomas appears in gospel narratives only in John 11:16; 14:5; 20:24–29. Known for his doubt, he should also be known for his courage (Jn 11:16) and his profound confession (Jn 20:28). Some traditions claim he went to India as a missionary and was martyred there; others place his later ministry in Persia.

Matthew. See

; Introduction, .

James son of Alphaeus. The extra phrase distinguishes him from James son of Zebedee. If we assume (and this is highly likely) that this James is not the same as “James the brother” of Jesus (see

), we know almost nothing about him. Assuming Matthew = Levi (see

), Matthew’s father was also called Alphaeus (Mk 2:14); and if this is the same Alphaeus, then James and Matthew are another pair of brothers among the Twelve. Some have argued that Alphaeus is an alternative form of Cleophas (Clopas), which would mean that “James son of Alphaeus” is the same person as “James the younger” (Mk 15:40) and that his mother’s name was Mary (Mt 27:56; Mk 15:40; 16:1; Jn 19:25). But such connections are by no means certain.

Thaddaeus. The textual variants are difficult. The longer ones (e.g., KJV, “Lebbaeus, whose surname was Thaddaeus”) are almost certainly conflations. “Thaddaeus” has the support of early representatives from Alexandrian, Western, and Caesarean witnesses (cf. Metzger, Textual Commentary, 26). Through elimination he appears to be identified with (lit.) “Judas of James”—which could mean either “Judas son of James” or “Judas brother of James.” The former is perhaps the more normal meaning; but the author of the epistle of Jude designates himself as “Jude [Gk. Ioudas], ... a brother of James” (Jude 1, where adelphos [“brother”] is actually used). If Jude is the apostolic “Judas of James,” then the meaning of the latter expression is fixed. On the other hand, if canonical Jude is the half brother of Jesus and full brother of Jesus’ half brother James (see

), then “Judas of James” most likely means “Judas son of James.” “Thaddaeus” comes from a root roughly signifying “the beloved.” Perhaps this apostle was called “Judas the beloved” = “Judas Thaddaeus,” and “Thaddaeus” was progressively used to distinguish him from the other Judas in the apostolic band. Only John 14:22 provides us with information about him. Later traditions are worthless.

Simon the Zealot. Matthew and Mark have “Simon the Cananaean” (NRSV; Kananaios, GK 2831; not “Canaanite,” which would suggest a pagan Gentile; cf. the different Gk. word in 15:22: Chananaios). “Cananaean” (qanʾân) is the Aramaic form of “Zealot” specified in Luke–Acts. The Zealots were nationalists, strong upholders of Jewish traditions and religion. Some decades later, they became a principal cause of the Jewish War in which Rome sacked Jerusalem. The Zealots were probably not so influential in Jesus’ time. The nickname may reveal Simon’s past political and religious associations; it also distinguishes him from Simon Peter.

Judas Iscariot. Judas’s father is called “Simon Iscariot” in John 6:71; 13:26. Scholarly interest has spent enormous energy and much ingenuity on the name “Iscariot.” Explanations include (1) “man of Kerioth” (there are two eligible villages of that name [cf. ZPEB, 3:785; IDB, 2:830]); (2) transliteration of Latin sicarius, used to refer to a Zealot-like movement; (3) “man of Jericho,” an explanation depending on a Greek corruption; (4) a transliteration of the Aramaic š^eqāryaʿ (“falsehood,” “betrayal”; cf. C. C. Torrey, “The Name Iscariot,” HTR 36 [1943]: 51–62), which could therefore become a nickname for Judas only after his ignominy and not at this point in his life; cf. S. Morschauser, “A Note on Iskariot: ‘The Pariah,’” Journal of Higher Criticism 10 (2003): 66–74; (5) “Judas the dyer,” reflecting his occupation (cf. A. Ehrman, “Judas Iscariot and Abba Saqqara,” JBL 97 [1978]: 572–73; Y. Arbeitman, “The Suffix of Iscariot,” JBL 99 [1980]: 122–24); (6) as an adaptation of the last, “Judas the redhead” (Albright and Mann). The first and fifth seem most likely; the second is perhaps most popular. Judas was treasurer for the Twelve but not an honest one (Jn 12:6, 13:29; see ; ). Matthew and Mark add the damning indictment—“who betrayed him.” Luke 6:16 labels him a traitor.

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