4. The Use of the Sabbath, 12:1–14
4. The Use of the Sabbath, 12:1–14
1At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath; and his disciples were hungry and began to pluck heads of grain and eat them. 2But when the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what it is not lawful to do on a Sabbath.” 3But he said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he and those with him were hungry, 4how he entered the house of God and they ate the loaves of offering, which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but for the priests alone? 5Or have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless? 6But I say to you, that there is something here greater than the temple. 7And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. 8For the Son of man is lord of the Sabbath.”
9And he went on from there and came into their synagogue. 10And look, a man who had a withered hand. And they asked him, saying, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”—so that they might accuse him. 11But he said to them, “What man of you will there be who will have one sheep, and if it falls into a ditch on the Sabbath, will he not take hold of it and lift it out? 12How much more is a man worth than a sheep! So then it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.” 13Then he says to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” And he stretched it out and it was restored, whole as the other. 14But the Pharisees went out and took counsel against him, so that they might kill him.
In the first days of his ministry it is plain that Jesus won a wide measure of acceptance. He did works of mercy and was a popular preacher. But in the course of time the Jewish establishment came to see that what he was doing and what he was teaching were incompatible with an acceptance of their essential position. So they came to oppose him, and that with a virulence that would eventually lead to his death. In this chapter Matthew has gathered a number of incidents that enable the reader to see the kind of opposition that was aroused and something of the reason for that opposition. He begins with Jesus’ attitude toward the Sabbath.
The Jews took Sabbath observance very seriously. Thus when the enemy attacked on the Sabbath in the days of the Maccabees, they let themselves be slaughtered, men, women, and children, rather than break the Sabbath by defending themselves (1 Macc. 2:31–38). At a later time Pompey was able to erect the earthworks that made his siege of Jerusalem successful quite unhindered by the defenders because he did it on the Sabbath (Josephus, Ant. 14.63). The Jews were ready to suffer rather than break the Sabbath. It is clear from all four Gospels that Jesus had a continuing controversy with the Pharisees over the right use of the Sabbath, though Matthew’s account of it is not extensive; indeed, he concentrates it into the stories in the opening part of this chapter. From the Mishnah and Talmud tractates on the Sabbath it is plain that the right use of this day was of the utmost importance to religious Jews in Jesus’ day. Morgan points out that the Sabbath was “the only symbol peculiar to Judaism” (p. 124); he finds sacrifices, circumcision, and the place of the temple in the religions of the peoples around Israel, but the Sabbath was different.1 To most Jews the Sabbath was a delight,2 even though there was a mass of regulations, drawn up with the laudable intention of ensuring that the day was kept holy (the Mishnah devotes the whole of Shab. 7 to what constitutes work on the Sabbath). Even the Mishnah laments that “the rules about the Sabbath … are as mountains hanging by a hair, for [teaching of] Scripture [thereon] is scanty and the rules many” (Ḥag. 1:8). Some of these regulations were very curious, and there can be no doubt that taken the way the Pharisees took them they could be extremely burdensome.3 We should not overlook the fact that Matthew places this section immediately after Jesus’ words about his yoke being easy and his burden light. The different attitudes to the Sabbath form an excellent illustration of what Jesus’ invitation meant.
But we should not think that the controversy arose because Jesus was trying to relieve people of the mass of regulations. It was not that he thought the Pharisees were too rigorous in their Sabbath observance and was trying to relieve a grievous burden. Rather, he held that they had the wrong idea of the Sabbath altogether. It was a day for honoring God, which meant doing good; thus works of healing were not simply allowed, they were obligatory. It was a day for refreshing people, for meeting their need. But for the Pharisees it was primarily a day for keeping the regulations that expressed their desire to honor God. In this chapter Matthew shows how Jesus taught from the examples of David and of the priests that the right use of the Sabbath is very different from the usage of the Pharisees. Scripture shows the Pharisees to be in error.
1. At that time is a very general expression, locating what follows in the general period of the preceding, just as that had been linked with what went before it (so also in 11:25; 14:1). Matthew does not tell us where Jesus was going, only that it was on the Sabbath,4 the day of rest and worship. The Jews generally and the Pharisees in particular were strict in their observance of the Sabbath. To go astray on the Sabbath was for the Pharisees a matter of first importance. Jesus’ journey took him through the fields of grain;5 Matthew does not say that the disciples were with him, but that can be assumed. He tells us that they were hungry (neither Mark nor Luke includes this; Matthew has the verb “to hunger” more than a third of all its New Testament occurrences; for some reason he is interested in hungry people). So they began to pluck some of the grain and eat it. The fact of their eating shows that they were satisfying a genuine hunger and not wantonly breaking the Sabbath regulations.
2. But is adversative: it sets the Pharisees over against Jesus. Matthew does not say how the Pharisees came to be in that particular grainfield, but clearly they were in a position to observe what was done. They complain to Jesus, not the disciples, though it is not said that he was joining in the plucking and eating. But Jesus was the Master; it must be accepted that the disciples were acting with their Master’s approval. In any case it was Jesus who was the concern of the Pharisees. And in this instance they were not acting on the basis of reliable reports; they were there and saw it for themselves. They were acting on sure knowledge. They said that what the disciples were doing was not lawful to do on a Sabbath. Travelers were permitted to eat grain from the fields they passed through (Deut. 23:25); it was not the action that was the problem, but the fact that it was done on the Sabbath. As they understood it, plucking the grain was reaping, rubbing it to separate the grain from the husks (Luke tells us that they did this) was threshing, blowing away the husks may well have been interpreted as winnowing, and for good measure they may have seen the whole as preparation of food, which they also regarded as prohibited (all food eaten on the Sabbath had to be prepared on the previous day). That it was but a small amount did not excuse the disciples, for it was blameworthy to reap and grind corn of a bulk no more than that of a dried fig (Shab. 70b); it would have required a good deal more than that to satisfy a person’s hunger.6
3–4. Another adversative construction7 moves the narrative along as Jesus confronts the Pharisees with a question on an apparently unrelated subject. “Have you not read?” points them to the Scripture whose authority they were so committed to uphold, though “They had read the letter, without perceiving the spirit” (Bengel).8 We should perhaps notice that when Jesus is speaking to the people he says, “You have heard” (5:21, 27, etc.), but these men were educated: they would have read for themselves. Jesus refers them to an action of David when he and his men were hungry. This is an argument of a well-known rabbinic type, called qal wahomer (“the light and the weighty”); if a thing was true for the less important, then much more was it so of the more important. Here David is the less important and Jesus, the Son of David, the more important. David and his men did not content themselves with the grainfields, but David entered the house of God. Not only so, but he and his men9 ate the loaves of offering (1 Sam. 21:1–6),10 the holy bread. The recipe for the bread and its manner of arrangement Sabbath after Sabbath are detailed in the law (Lev. 24:5–9),11 where it is specified that this bread “belongs to Aaron and his sons” (v. 9); it was not for others than priests to eat. The singular for entered seems to mean that David went into the holy place to get the bread (unless the loaves were those taken out of the holy place and not yet eaten by the priests). He then brought it out, and his little band ate it. They were in need and there was no other bread, so they ate the holy loaves. For him fastens the responsibility on David; his men are then joined with him, but Jesus makes it clear that the great David, whom everyone honored, was the principal figure in this breaking of the strict provisions of the law. Jesus goes on to make it clear that the bread belonged to the priests alone, the priests of Aaron’s line. They alone prepared the loaves, set them out in the sanctuary, and consumed them when the time came for removal and replacement. Eating the holy loaves was a priestly prerogative—laymen were not allowed to do it. But the Scripture, the very Scripture on which the Pharisees professed to rely, did not condemn David or his men. David was not breaking the Sabbath; the relevance of what he did was that the need to satisfy hunger overrode a liturgical provision. His men were not starving, just badly in need of food. This makes a powerful argument: if these men’s hunger set aside a divine regulation without blame, how much more should the hunger of Jesus’ disciples set aside a rabbinical rule!
5. Verses 5–7 have no parallel in Mark or Luke; Matthew alone has Jesus’ citation of the practice of the priests as they offered sacrifice. Or12 introduces an alternative. Again Jesus appeals to Scripture, with “have you not read…?” He points his hearers to that reading which brings them knowledge of what God commands. The law is, of course, the Pentateuch, the heart of revelation as the Jews understood it. What they read in the law they held to be especially sacred. Daube points out that this argument (which is found in Matthew only) would be of greater weight for Jews than the previous one. In appealing to David Jesus was appealing to an example; the argument is based on an incident, on something that happened. But the appeal to the sacrifices rests on an explicit commandment of Scripture. It is definitely commanded that two lambs be offered on the Sabbath (Num. 28:9–10), so that temple service takes precedence over Sabbath observance.13 Jesus draws attention to the fact that in the law it was prescribed that every Sabbath the priests should offer the sacrifice of two lambs as well as the normal daily offerings. The command does not specially mention the priests, but since they were the only ones who could offer sacrifices it was they who would work on the Sabbath. The Talmud recognizes that “the sacrificial service supersedes the Sabbath” (Shab. 132b). That the priests performed work on the Sabbath—every Sabbath—should give cause for those who reverenced Scripture to think hard about what God meant the Sabbath to be and what people should do to keep it holy. They had too easily accepted views that made the Sabbath a burden and had overlooked the fact that Scripture did not fit into their pattern. Jesus speaks of the priests in the temple, and it might be pointed out that the regulations in the Pentateuch concerned the tabernacle; there was no temple in those early days. But, of course, the tabernacle pointed forward to the temple, and what was laid down for the former applied in due course to the latter. Jesus uses a strong and startling word when he says that the priests profane (Moffatt, “desecrate”)14 the Sabbath; certainly the physical work they performed was not inconsiderable and far exceeded the small labors of the disciples. But everyone agrees that the priests are guiltless; no blame attaches to them despite their vigorous Sabbath activities.
6. “But I say to you” puts some emphasis on what follows. Some MSS read “someone greater than the temple,” but it appears that we should read something greater. …15 Turner, however, points out that the neuter may be used of persons “provided that the emphasis is less on the individual than on some outstanding general quality” (M, III, p. 21). We should understand this to refer to the nature of the service and the person of Jesus as one sent to bring in the kingdom, to the launching of the saving events. What God was doing in the sending of Jesus far surpassed what he did in setting up the temple worship. The argument is from the less to the greater: the satisfaction of the hunger of David and his men and even the offering of sacrifice by the priests in the temple do not compare in significance with the coming of the Christ to bring salvation. Or, to put it in another way, while it was true that God’s presence was to be discerned in the offering of sacrifices in the temple, even more so and in a fuller and deeper way his presence was to be discerned in the mercy at work in Jesus.16 Is indicates a present reality: Jesus is talking about what is really there at that time, not prophesying that some great happening would take place in the future. And just as he speaks of the present time, so he speaks of the present place, here. The Pharisees who criticized were not aware of present realities.
7. Jesus’ conditional, “if you had known …,” implies that in fact they had not known, and further that they had condemned the guiltless.17 They prided themselves on their devotion to the law and the prophets, but yet again Jesus complains that they did not really know the writings they claimed as sacred. They had read them, but they had not entered into what they really meant.18 He quotes Hosea 6:6, exactly as in LXX. Mercy in the Old Testament often means the compassion of God as it does in the New Testament (Luke 1:50), or of Christ (Jude v.21), but here the mercy that people should show one another is what is in mind. Matthew cites the same passage in 9:13, and he has the concept of mercy in 23:23. I desire points to the exercise of the divine will.19 Over against that is set sacrifice. The negative does not mean that sacrifice was not really of divine ordinance, but that it could not compare in importance with mercy. It is the practice of compassion that should distinguish the people of God rather than the punctilious observance of outward regulations, no matter how sacred. When we reflect that the performance of sacrifice was at the heart of almost all religion in antiquity, we see the courage and the insight of the prophet that in God’s name he could downgrade a practice so universally and so feelingly accepted. But, of course, sacrifice could so easily become merely mechanical and external. Compassion is much more important and much more characteristic of those who really are the servants of God. The compassionate do not rush to condemn people, as these Pharisees had condemned people who were guiltless. Jesus expressly says that the disciples were innocent.
8. For introduces a consideration that justifies what has just been said. Jesus uses his favorite self-designation, the Son of man (see on 8:20), and declares that he is lord of the Sabbath (NEB, “sovereign over the Sabbath”). Lord is used in the New Testament in a variety of ways, but here there can be no doubt that it refers to the person who has supreme authority. Jesus is saying that he, the Son of man, has complete authority over the Sabbath. Some commentators reflect that son of man20 in Aramaic may be understood to mean “man” and hold that Jesus is saying that any human being is entitled to modify the Sabbath regulations as seems good. But this understanding of the text misses Matthew’s strong christological emphasis. He is saying something important about Jesus. Further, it is more than difficult to hold that Jesus taught that any member of our sinful race is entitled to modify a divine ordinance as he chooses. No. He is saying that he, being who and what he is, can declare what are the rules for observing the Sabbath.21 It must immediately be added that in the context this does not mean simply that Jesus has the authority to relax harsh restrictions. He, the Lord of the Sabbath, shows what the observing of the Sabbath really means; he determines how the principle of Sabbath observance is to be worked out. He makes the point that Sabbath observance means mercy. He has himself shown mercy to his disciples, and Matthew goes on immediately to the way he will show mercy to the man with the shriveled hand. Sabbath observance led to a full and rich life.
9. Matthew follows the incident in the grainfields on the Sabbath with a healing on the Sabbath. He had taught the right use of the Sabbath from the Scriptures, and he backs that up with teaching about the deeds of mercy that are appropriate on the Sabbath. He is emphasizing the importance of a right use of God’s holy day. It is a day on which deeds of mercy are not merely permitted, but required. He begins by saying that Jesus went on from there, but since the previous passage has done no more than locate him in a field of grain this does not help us greatly in discerning where the incident took place.22 But wherever it was, Jesus went into the local synagogue (see on 4:23). It was the center of community life, but here it is its function as the place of worship that is in mind. Their synagogue means that of the local people. The previous verses have referred to the Pharisees, but it would not be their synagogue.23 Lacking further information about the locality, we can scarcely say more.
10. Matthew helps us see the scene with his vivid And look and his lack of a verb: And look, a man. …24 This man had trouble with atrophied muscles in one of his hands (Luke tells us that it was his right hand).25 Besides the discomfort and unsightliness, this would have made it difficult for the man to earn his living.26 Matthew pictures the enemies of Jesus as taking the initiative: the man who was in trouble was right there in the synagogue with an obvious need. The man himself apparently did not begin proceedings (none of the three Synoptists says that he asked for healing), but Jesus’ opponents were watching him closely to see whether he would heal and so that they might accuse him of healing on the Sabbath (Mark and Luke both say this). The rabbis permitted healing on the Sabbath if life was in danger, and they were fairly liberal in their interpretation: “Whenever there is doubt whether life is in danger this overrides the Sabbath” (Yoma 8:6). But if there was no danger there was to be no healing. In this case, of course, there was no danger; the man could well have waited until the next day. Matthew tells us that they led off with a question, almost provoking him to heal the man. He does not say who they were, but Luke speaks of scribes and Pharisees; clearly they were opponents of Jesus who thought that he might well heal the man before him. Matthew records their question, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”27 but makes it clear that this was not so much a genuine search after information as the first shot in a battle. They asked so that they might accuse him.28
11. But he29 sets Jesus over against his questioners. He counters with a question of his own. “What man of you…?” makes it personal. They were ready to accuse him of Sabbath breaking in a situation of their choice; what then would they do on the Sabbath in a situation of his choice? He looks to the future possibility that one of his hearers who owned just one sheep would have it fall into a ditch on the Sabbath. It is his entire flock. What will he do? Will he not30 lay hold on the animal and haul it out? The Jews in general showed great care for their animals and would take whatever action was necessary to deliver them from such a plight as the one Jesus outlines.31
12. With a “How much more” construction Jesus finishes his refutation of the position his opponents were taking up.32 A man, he says, differs from33 a sheep, which means that a man excels a sheep. Jesus simply states the fact as something obvious and does not draw out in what ways the excelling is to be discerned. He draws the important conclusion that if it is in order to help a sheep in trouble on the Sabbath, much more is it right to do so to a man. It is not only a good idea, but it is lawful to do good to people. His adversaries appealed to the traditional interpretation of the law, but Jesus pointed out that their practice in matters concerning animals contradicted their exposition of the law. The accepted practice in helping animals (which all agree are of less worth than people) leads to the conclusion34 that on the Sabbath it is quite lawful to do good.35 This is a general conclusion applying to every Sabbath, and not simply an affirmation that applies only to the specific case before Jesus. For him human need was primary. Even though this man’s life was not in danger, Jesus saw no reason why he should suffer for one moment more.
13. There was apparently no rejoinder from those objecting to healing. How could there be to such an argument? With no further discussion in sight Jesus turns his attention to the sufferer. He did nothing like lay hands on him, but he simply gave the command, “Stretch out your hand,” a feat that was obviously quite beyond the man in his crippled state. Matthew’s use of the present tense (says) makes it all the more vivid. Jesus’ word of command was a word of healing. The man’s withered hand was restored, healed in a moment. Matthew brings this out with his addition, whole36 as the other. Matthew makes it clear that the man’s hand was completely healed, making for a memorable Sabbath.
14. But has adversative force; the Pharisees, who had not been mentioned earlier in this incident (indeed, not since v. 2), are set over against Jesus. They had had an effective argument that healing on the Sabbath was to be accepted, but they did not respond. Matthew has an interesting conjunction of activities when he says that they went out of the synagogue and plotted a murder. So can a perverted and legalistic piety blind people. God had done a wonderful thing for the formerly crippled man, but it was not this that impressed them. Rather, they were concerned with a breach, not of the commands of God, but of their own understanding of what the command of God required. It is not said with whom they took counsel, but the expression indicates a determination to explore all the possibilities. Their opposition was so bitter that nothing less than death for Jesus would satisfy them, a curious reaction to a miracle of healing, even if it was done on a Sabbath. And it was a curious action for men who were so keen on keeping the Sabbath lawfully.37 But, of course, what Jesus did called in question their understanding of the law of God,38 and thus their whole theological position. If his popularity led people to follow him in this, then their leadership was threatened; they could lose everything. More was at stake than the health of an unknown cripple.39
5. Jesus Fulfilling Prophecy, 12:15–21
15But Jesus knew it and went away from there. And many followed him, and he healed them all. 16And he gave them strict instructions that they should not make him known, 17so that what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled, saying: 18“Look, my servant whom I chose, my beloved in whom my soul is well pleased; I will put my spirit upon him, and he will proclaim justice to the nations. 19He will not quarrel, nor will he shout, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets. 20A shattered reed he will not break, and a smoking wick he will not snuff out, until he brings out justice into victory. 21And nations will set their hope in his name.
Matthew inserts a paragraph to bring out the truth that Jesus’ messiahship fulfils Old Testament prophecy. In this chapter we have seen unreasoning opposition to him on the part of religious men, and Matthew will bring this out more fully as he unfolds his story. But, though there will be vicious and unprincipled opposition to Jesus, and though he will stoutly resist his enemies, there will be no hitting back at them as one with his unusual powers might conceivably do. Rather, Jesus will take a lowly way, not quarreling with his opposition, nor entering into brawls, verbal or otherwise. Before he develops this theme further, Matthew quotes from Isaiah 42:1–4, a passage that shows that God’s servant does not bluster but quietly proceeds on his chosen path, whatever the cost, until the eventual divine victory.
15. But has adversative force; Matthew sets Jesus over against the plotters.40 He tells us that Jesus knew (which may mean “came to know”) what his adversaries were planning (neither Mark nor Luke mentions this piece of knowledge), but he gives no indication of how Jesus knew it. It would have been obvious in the synagogue that there were people who were opposed to Jesus, but here Matthew seems to be referring to the plot to kill him. Somehow Jesus came to know of this plot. His reaction was to avoid provocation; he would die courageously when the right time came, but he would not engage in needless provocation of his enemies until his ministry drew to its close. So now he went away from the place where the plotters were, though evidently he did this quite openly (and not by way of hiding from his foes), for many followed him.41 Since he healed them all, it is a fair inference that many came because they had infirmities of one kind or another and wanted his help. All indicates that there were no failures; as many as came to Jesus for healing received it.
16. But Jesus did not want undue publicity. Obviously with a large crowd following him a certain amount of publicity was inevitable. But he was no publicity seeker, apparently not because he would be in danger if his enemies knew where he was, but because he preferred to do his work quietly and without fuss. Matthew will quote Isaiah to that effect, and here he says that Jesus gave strict instructions to minimize publicity.42 The people were not to make him known, but Matthew does not say to whom they might take the news. What he makes plain is that Jesus, while ready to heal any in need who came to him, did not want undue publicity.
17. Neither Mark nor Luke quotes the prophecy at this point, but for Matthew it is significant that there is scriptural support for what Jesus is doing (for Matthew’s characteristic appeal to prophecy see on 1:22). This is not only the longest quotation from Scripture in this Gospel but it also appears to be very important for Matthew, bringing out as it does essential truths about the kind of person Jesus is and the way his work is done. We should not miss Bonnard’s point that the quotation presents us with “an original reinterpretation of messianic authority” (p. 177); in popular expectation messiahs exercised their authority by crushing opposition, but Jesus showed his authority in his concern for the helpless and downtrodden. Matthew’s introductory so that indicates the purpose; the divine purpose must be worked out through the fulfilment of prophecy. On this occasion the name of the prophet is given (Isaiah; the passage is 42:1–4), as it is not in quite a few of Matthew’s quotations. The quotation is not exact; indeed, there are so many variations from LXX that it is clear either that Matthew is making his own translation or that he is citing some other Greek version (the translation also seems to make use in some places of a Hebrew text that differs from the Massoretic text).43
18. Matthew’s characteristic Look begins the quotation (though it is not found in the Isaiah passage). The person to whom attention is directed is my servant;44 immediately we have the thought of lowliness, a thought that runs through the passage quoted. Matthew can use terminology like “the Son of David” that directs our attention to the royalty of the Messiah, but here he stresses the servant motif. But I chose points us to the divine action that sets this servant apart from all others; God has chosen45 him for a special task. The lowliness is qualified by the truth that this servant has a divine destiny. And it is followed by the thought of the divine love. Beloved is not common in Matthew; apart from this quotation he has it twice only (3:17; 17:5); all three refer to Jesus as beloved by God. The prophecy moves on to God’s pleasure in the chosen and beloved servant. My soul is, of course, a way of referring to “myself” and refers to a person at the center of his being.46 The prophecy is making the point that God is delighted in his servant. God says that he will put his spirit on the servant.47 The Spirit is given in some measure to all who serve God, but clearly here it is envisaged that the servant will have a special endowment. This will enable him to proclaim justice48 to the nations. The word is in an emphatic position: among the Jews the nations generally were despised since the people of God saw themselves as specially favored. But the prophet regarded all the world’s peoples as having worth before God, and it will be the function of the servant of whom he writes to make sure that justice is done for them. This was not a conspicuous feature of Jesus’ ministry here on earth, but the salvation he brought about was available to people of all nations and by the time Matthew wrote something of a fulfilment of this part of the prophecy was evident.
19. Those who lead the nations are mostly forceful characters, insistent on getting their own way. They tend to quarrel with anyone who hinders them, so sure are they that what they are seeking to accomplish is the right thing for the people they lead. The prophecy points out that God’s servant is not set in this mold. He will not quarrel means that his mission is one of peace. It does not, of course, mean that he will not strongly oppose those who do evil. But it affirms in strong terms that he will not try to impose his will on everybody regardless of their desires. JB’s “He will not brawl” and GNB’s “He will not argue” represent different ways of bringing out the servant’s quiet approach. Nor will he shout49 carries on with the same idea. He will do his work quietly, making no loud claims to underline his importance. So, too, his voice will not be raised in the streets (GNB, “will not … make loud speeches in the streets”).50 So far from fanfares and the like, there will not even be a voice in the streets. The Lord’s work will be done without noise and publicity.
20. And it will be done in gentleness. A reed might be used as a flute, a measuring rod, a pen, and in many other ways. But for whatever purpose it was wanted, a whole reed was desirable. Reeds grew plentifully and were cheap. “The reed, growing by millions in every marsh and riverside, was a type of commonplace insignificance” (Glover). The natural thing was to discard an imperfect reed and replace it with a better one. But the Lord’s servant does not discard those who can be likened to shattered51 reeds, earth’s “broken” ones. A perfect reed is at best fragile, so the imagery emphasizes weakness and helplessness. The same truth is brought out with the reference to a smoking wick.52 A wick that functioned imperfectly was a nuisance: it would not give out good light and its smoldering released a certain amount of smoke. The simple thing was to snuff it out and throw it away. A little bit of flax did not cost much, so replacing it was the normal procedure. It took time and patience and the willingness to take pains to make anything useful out of a bruised reed or a smoking wick. People in general would not take the trouble. In a similar fashion most of us regard the world’s down-and-outs as not worth troubling ourselves over; we do not see how anything can be made of them. But love and care and patience can do wonders, and that is what the prophet is talking about.53 God’s servant will persevere to the end. He will persist until he brings out54 justice into victory. The prophet cannot acquiesce in the thought that evil will finally have the victory. For him it is clear that in the end the servant will bring about the triumph of justice.
21. The prophet’s horizons are widespread. He is not talking about a petty salvation for one little group, but about what the servant will do for the nations generally. The word for nations is that which is often translated “Gentiles,” but it seems unlikely that that is the meaning here. The focus is not on nations outside Israel as the people of God, but rather on the nations of the world as a whole. With his broad vision the prophet sees them all as coming within the scope of God’s compassionate love and of the servant’s saving activity. The name, of course, stands for the whole person; the prophet is saying that the peoples will come to trust in God as he is in his essential character. Matthew does not use the concept of hope very often (this is his only use of the verb “to hope”). But it is an important concept in the New Testament generally and in this prophecy in particular. With whatever vicissitudes along the way, in the end the peoples of the world will come to see that the one in whom they must put their hope is the servant of God, the emissary of love who effectively brings salvation to the downtrodden. And he does it in lowliness. That the servant himself takes a lowly place matters to Matthew. Indeed, this prophecy sums up a good deal of his understanding of the work Jesus would do and the way he would do it.
6. Conflict with the Pharisees, 12:22–37
22Then a blind and dumb demoniac was brought to him; and he healed him, so that the dumb man both spoke and saw. 23And all the crowds were astonished and they were saying: “Can this be the Son of David?” 24But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, “This fellow does not cast out demons except by Beelzeboul, the ruler of the demons.”
25But he knew their thoughts and said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself is ruined, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand. 26And if Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself; how then will his kingdom stand? 27And if I cast out demons by Beelzeboul, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore they will be your judges. 28But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. 29Or how can anyone enter the strong man’s house and seize his goods unless he first binds the strong man? Then indeed he will plunder his house. 30He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters.
31“For this reason I say to you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy of the Spirit will not be forgiven. 32And whoever speaks a word against the Son of man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, neither in this age nor in that to come.
33“Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree rotten and its fruit rotten; for the tree is known by its fruit. 34You offspring of snakes, being evil how can you speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. 35The good man brings good things out of his good treasure, and the evil man brings evil things out of his evil treasure. 36But I say to you, that every careless word that men shall speak, they will render account for it on the Day of Judgment. 37For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”
Matthew narrates the casting out of a demon that resulted in speech and sight being given to the sufferer. But this provoked a controversy with the Pharisees; evidently they were set to oppose him whatever he did. Jesus pointed to the weakness in their argument that he was in league with the evil one, and he went on to give significant teaching about the nature of good and evil and the importance of doing what is right. Throughout this whole section Matthew is concerned with the opposition of two kingdoms strongly opposed to one another, that of Satan (v. 26) and that of God (v. 28). The length of the section is noteworthy. Matthew is usually very concise, but he evidently regards this passage as very important and he treats it more fully than is his custom.
22. For Matthew’s use of then see on 2:7; it does not necessarily signify that what he next narrates took place immediately after the preceding, merely that it was later in time. Luke speaks of Jesus’ healing a dumb demoniac, but only Matthew says that the man was blind as well. This man was brought to Jesus, though none of the Evangelists says who brought him (but being blind and dumb he certainly needed help).55 There is no indication how Jesus performed the healing, whether with laying on hands or with a word or in some other way. Matthew concentrates on the fact of healing, without specification of the means; indeed, few healings are described as briefly as this one; the Evangelist seems to be more intent on the controversy to which the incident led than on the healing itself. It is unusual to have a demoniac described as healed (though cf. 17:18; perhaps also we are meant to see a link with v. 15); more commonly the demon is said to be “cast out.” But Matthew has other things to say, and he moves through this healing quickly: it is really the trigger for the discussion that follows. Matthew specifies that the man both spoke and saw; the cure was complete.
23. The people who witnessed the cure were astonished.56 Characteristically Matthew says that all had this experience, and he uses the plural for crowds (the combination all the crowds occurs here only in this Gospel). Matthew emphasizes the impact of what Jesus had done; not just a handful of the people were affected but all the crowds. This is the one place in his Gospel where Matthew says that Jesus had this effect on the crowds. He is describing something very unusual, which may explain the strong reaction of the Pharisees and the discussion that followed. The response of the people is crystallized in a question: “Can this be the Son of David?” The question is worded in such a way as to indicate a measure of perplexity, but also to open the door to an interesting possibility.57 Jesus was so unlike what they expected in the Messiah, but could he yet really be the Son of David? Like the Pharisees they probably did not look for the Messiah in such a person as the Man from Nazareth, but unlike them they were open-minded enough to ask the question. They are clearly using the expression “Son of David” (see on 1:1) as equivalent to “Messiah,” and they are so impressed by the miracle they had witnessed that they wonder whether they are in the presence of the Messiah.
24. But is adversative and sets the Pharisees in contrast to the crowds. Unlike the crowds they were not puzzled: they were sure that Jesus was evil, and they gave expression to this conviction by explaining how Jesus cast out demons. This fellow58 is contemptuous; their statement is confident. They are sure that the only way Jesus can cast out demons (for this term see on 7:22) is with the help of one they name as Beelzeboul (see on 10:25) and describe as the ruler of the demons. Jesus is in league with the powers of evil, they say, and because the prince of the forces of evil is at work in him he is able to do things that ordinary people cannot do. They were spectators of some of the wonderful things that God did through Jesus and were perverse enough to ascribe these divine works to the forces of evil. The same charge is made in 10:25.
25. Matthew tells us that Jesus knew their thoughts; he may be ascribing supernatural knowledge to the Lord or he may mean that Jesus had the normal human capacity for penetrating to some extent into what others have in mind (people sometimes say, “I know what you’re thinking!”). Whichever it was, Jesus was aware that they ascribed his good deeds to Satan, so he pointed out that the facts were all against it. He starts with the general proposition that a divided group, be it a kingdom or a house or a city, is impotent; it cannot overcome its opponents. In this Gospel kingdom mostly refers to the kingdom of heaven, but here it clearly refers to the ordinary kingdoms of the earth. If a kingdom is united it may well set forth its aims, but if it is divided the factions waste their energy in disputing with those who ought to be their allies. The result is disaster for the kingdom.59 There is no future for a kingdom divided against itself, and the same is true for smaller groupings (Jesus retains the same expression for divided against itself but changes ruined to will not stand). Factional strife and division are just as fatal to success in the smaller sphere of a city or household as in the larger affairs of a kingdom; it will always prevent the group from standing firm and holding its ground whatever the ground may be. This is an elementary piece of the wisdom of this world, and Jesus is suggesting that the Pharisees are naive if they think that Satan is not well aware of it.
26. From his hypothetical kingdom or city or family Jesus moves to Satan and looks at what would happen if what the Pharisees were saying were in fact correct. His conditional is put positively: “If it were really to happen —.”60 If it is by Beelzeboul that Jesus casts out devils, then Satan is in effect casting himself out: he would then be enabling Jesus to deliver people from his own power. That would mean hopeless division in the ranks of evil, with demon ranged against demon. In that case how could Satan effect his purpose? Satan would be removing Satan from the afflicted man and thus diminishing his sphere of influence while delivering the man over into the sphere of goodness. It is not to be presumed that Satan is stupid: the Pharisees were taking up an impossible position. Theoretically, of course, it might be argued that Satan could allow the expulsion of one demon in order to effect some diabolical purpose, but this would be met by the fact that Jesus kept on expelling demons; he carried on an unrelenting war against all the demonic forces.
27. And adds another to Jesus’ objections to the Pharisaic position, “introducing someth. new, w. loose connection” (BAGD, 1.5). The conditional construction is the same as that in verse 26, and again it is put strongly to indicate what consequences would follow if it were the case. I is emphatic: Jesus is stressing that it is the things that he, being who and what he is, does. It prepares for the contrast that follows. “Let us suppose for a moment that you are right,” he is saying, “then what follows in the case of other exorcists?”61 There were apparently many who claimed to cast out demons, and some of them could be characterized as your sons. The expression is important, and it is set forth in a way that gives it emphasis: “your sons, by whom do they cast out?” Matthew is fond of the word “son,” which he uses more often than in any other New Testament book (89 times). It most often denotes the male child of a parent, of course, but it may be used also in the sense of a pupil, one who was a son in the sense of deriving his academic being from his tutor (cf. Sir. 7:3); it may be used here in the sense that the people of whom Jesus was speaking derived their spiritual being from their Pharisaic tutors. The only possible logic behind the Pharisaic position was that a mere human could not overcome a demon. If Jesus did have such a victory, therefore, it would show that he had aid from a superhuman source, and in their hostility their logic led them to hold that that source could only be Satan. But they had spoken hurriedly; they had not stopped to reflect that some of their own people claimed to cast out demons.62 The Pharisees would have vehemently denied that their sons were in league with the evil one, but they had not realized that such exorcisms said something about Jesus also. Therefore they will be your judges; your own sons will prove you wrong! The logic of a Pharisaic denial that their followers cast out demons through the evil one meant that Jesus did not use the powers of evil either. Their sons would be able to testify to the fact that casting out demons was not a work of Satan. They would “judge” them for ascribing to Satan what they, the exorcists, knew came from God.
28. But if introduces the contrary position. I is the emphatic pronoun again, and the construction assumes that Jesus does in fact cast out demons by the Spirit of God. Jesus invites his hearers to reflect on the implications of this fact. Nobody disputes the fact of his exorcisms; the only question is the source of his power. For Spirit see on 1:18; here the Spirit of God precedes I, though “I” precedes “by Beelzeboul” in verse 27; the effect is to give strong emphasis to the Spirit of God (in the parallel passage Luke has “the finger of God” [Luke 11:20; cf. Exod. 8:19; 31:18]; both ways of putting it emphasize that the power is from God). If, as Jesus says, his power came from the Spirit of God, then there are implications. Then63 there has come upon you64 nothing less than the kingdom of God.65 This expression (found again in 19:24; 21:31, 43; Matthew mostly has “kingdom of heaven”) is put last in the sentence, a position that gives it emphasis. The coming of the kingdom is to be discerned in Jesus’ defeat of the demons. Mostly Matthew speaks of the kingdom as future, but here it is a present reality.
29. Or66 is a disjunctive particle that introduces an alternative way of looking at the facts. Jesus puts this in the form of a question; he asks how anyone can67 take possession of the goods of the strong man unless he first binds him. He speaks of entering the man’s house (for house see on 2:11), which, of course, would be the part of his possessions that he would guard most closely. Jesus does not explain who he means by the strong man,68 but it seems clearly enough to be a designation of Satan; the alternative is to regard Jesus as speaking in parabolic fashion of any mighty man here on earth (as Isaiah does, Isa. 49:24–25). Such a man’s possessions are safe until he is overcome. In that case we are to think of Satan as being in much the position of the strong man; therefore the two interpretations come to much the same in the end. Jesus asks how anyone can enter the strong man’s house and seize69 his goods unless he first binds the strong man, which means that he must overcome him. While he has any strength left the strong man will resist being bound, and when at length he is bound that in itself is clear proof that he has been defeated. When that happens his house and all that is in it is at the mercy of the conqueror: he will plunder70 his house. The picture is that of a tyrant in complete and utter defeat.
30. The illustration has brought out the point that Jesus is engaged in a struggle with a powerful enemy. Now he goes on to the point that in this struggle there is no neutrality. In any moral issue we are forced to take sides. I may have little power to influence the outcome, but if I do nothing I am saying in effect, “As far as I am concerned the tyrant can do as he wishes.” So Jesus says of anyone who does not side with him in his conflict with evil that this person is against me. His influence, however great or small it is, is not thrown into the cause of good and therefore it helps the cause of evil.71 The same point is made with gathering and scattering. The imagery is apparently taken from tending flocks. Animals tend to scatter, and if any given person takes no part in gathering the scattered members he in effect scatters them; by doing nothing he casts his vote in favor of scattering.
31. There are consequences of this impossibility of neutrality. For this reason links what follows closely to the preceding, and I say to you lends a certain solemnity to the words. Sin (see on 1:21) is here linked with blasphemy.72 When Jesus says that every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven73 he does not, of course, mean that these sins are not serious or that they will automatically be set aside. They will be forgiven in the normal way of forgiveness when the sinner repents and seeks pardon in penitence and lowliness and faith. Sins of this kind are serious; if they are not repented of and forgiven, they will have eternal consequences. But they are forgivable.
Jesus contrasts this with another sin that he calls the blasphemy of the Spirit, a sin that will not be forgiven. We must understand this in the context of the Pharisaic attribution to Satan of the good deeds Jesus was doing. The sin that cannot be forgiven is not to be understood as the utterance of any particular form of words. It is impossible to hold that any form of words is unforgivable, granted that the sinner subsequently repents and turns to God. Jesus is talking about the set of the life, not any one isolated saying. When a person takes up a position like that of the Pharisees, when, not by way of misunderstanding but through hostility to what is good, that person calls good evil and, on the other hand, makes evil his good, then that person has put himself in a state that prevents forgiveness.74 It is not that God refuses to forgive; it is that the person who sees good as evil and evil as good is quite unable to repent and thus to come humbly to God for forgiveness. And there is no way to forgiveness other than by the path of repentance and faith.75 As I have written elsewhere, “They called good evil. People in such a situation cannot repent and seek forgiveness: they lack a sense of sin; they reject God’s competence to declare what is right. It is this continuing attitude that is the ultimate sin.”76
32. And links on a further proposition, and whoever77 makes it general. The offenses of which Jesus proceeds to speak are, on the surface of it, purely verbal: both refer to what the sinner says. First, there is a reference to speaking against the Son of man (see on 8:20), which in Jesus’ teaching is a solemn way of referring to himself, but referring to himself in his messianic function (not as people in general understood messiahship, but as Jesus understood it). People may oppose him, and they may speak strong words against78 him in ignorance (cf. Acts 3:17). But there is no reason why a person who sins in this way should not later repent and find forgiveness in the way he finds forgiveness for any other sin. After all, it was not obvious to everybody that Jesus was the Son of God; it was possible for people to make a mistake about his Person.
But blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is another matter. To deny that God was at work in the exorcism that had just amazed the crowds (vv. 22–23) was inexcusable. This is more than merely verbal, more than a difference of opinion. If it were no more than a matter of words or opinions, there is no reason why it should not be forgiven following due penitence. Carr points out that the Pharisees might have had a conscientious difference from Jesus over the observance of the Sabbath, but “now they have no excuse.” They are objecting to what was obviously a good deed and ascribing it to the evil one. The context here is that of people ascribing to Satan deeds done by the Son of God in the power of the Holy Spirit. This makes it difficult to hold, as some suggest, that the sin against the Spirit is post-Pentecostal sin.79 Jesus is not prophesying about the future, but speaking to people who had just ascribed to Satan a marvelous work of the very Spirit of God. In that good work Jesus said that nothing less than the kingdom of God had come upon them, so that they were refusing to accept the divine rule. To call good evil in the way they did is evidence of “the lie in the soul,” a complete perversion of values. And since the Spirit is especially characteristic of the new life Christ offers, to reject that new life80 is to reject the divine Spirit. It is to set oneself in opposition to the very Spirit of God. People who take up such a position make themselves unforgivable; in maintaining that goodness is satanic they place themselves outside the possibility of salvation.81 Jesus brings out the seriousness of all this by declaring that such people will not be forgiven, neither in this age82 nor in that to come. This does not, of course, mean that some of those who are not forgiven in this world may hope for forgiveness after death. Such a possibility is not contemplated. The meaning is something like “neither in time nor eternity; never!” The blasphemy against the Spirit has eternal as well as temporal consequences. Those who commit this sin cut themselves off from forgiveness here and now and from forgiveness in eternity.83
33. Jesus sees two possibilities for trees:84 they may be good or bad. It is not easy to understand why the verb make is used; the sense appears to be something like “Suppose a tree is good, then its fruit will be good.”85 But make may be used to provoke people to action. In the context Jesus is saying that in the end there are two kinds of people. Those who are like good trees produce good fruit, whereas those who are like rotten trees produce rotten fruit. For good see on 3:10. Jesus is saying that a good tree and good fruit go together, so that if the tree is sound there will be nothing wrong with the fruit. The alternative is for the tree to be rotten,86 in which case its fruit will also be rotten. The fruit shows what kind of tree the tree is. The pious professions of those who opposed Jesus cannot hide the fruit in their lives, fruit of hatred, intolerance, injustice, and the like. What they did showed what kind of people they were.
34. John the Baptist used the expression offspring of snakes to describe the Pharisees and Sadducees who came to his baptism (3:7, where see note). Jesus takes up the same words to bring out the venomous nature of the opposition with which he was confronted, and their oneness with those who had opposed God’s messengers in previous generations. They bewailed the opposition and frustration the prophets had encountered, blissfully unconscious of the fact that they themselves were reproducing the same attitude toward Jesus. They are evil (a term Matthew has 26 times, which is exactly twice as often as the next highest use, Luke with 13),87 and therefore they are simply unable88 to say good things (for good see on 5:45). It is with the tree and the fruit as with the fathers and their offspring. Being what they are, they can produce only rotten fruit, or follow in the steps of their impious forebears. From another angle Jesus brings out the importance of the source when he proceeds to affirm that what one says proceeds from the abundance of the heart. The heart is used here as an inclusive term to denote “the seat of physical, spiritual and mental life … as center and source of the whole inner life, w. its thinking, feeling, and volition” (BAGD, 1 and 1b). It is what the heart is full of (abundance) that determines what anyone says. People do not speak out of character.
35. In this verse good is used 3 times and evil is also used 3 times, the repetitions serving to underline the contrast. It is essentially the same point that has just been made in the previous verse, but emphasized for its importance. The good man is the man of inner excellence, the man whose goodness is not merely on the surface but at the center of his being. He produces good89 things from his good treasure (see on 6:19). The word signifies what is valuable, but also where one keeps what is valuable. Either meaning is possible here: Jesus may be saying that it is from the things he values that the good man produces his good things, or he may mean that he gets them from his innermost storehouse, his heart. In the end there is not a great deal of difference. What the good man produces is what he values, and it comes from the center of his being. So with the evil man. In both cases what one brings forth proceeds from what one is at the core of one’s being. The evil man produces evil just as surely as the good man produces goodness. One’s deeds accord with what one is essentially. A good person does not do good sporadically or haphazardly, but habitually, and so with the evil person. Our deeds are a reflection of what we are, and they show what we really value, deep down. And, of course, we can produce from our treasure only what is there.
36. The words about the way speech reflects character are found only in Matthew. “But I say to you” puts emphasis on what follows: it draws attention to it as significant. Jesus emphasizes the importance of what people say by speaking of every careless word they utter. When people speak lightly without paying serious attention to what they are saying, the careless90 word, the word uttered without any thought of the effect it will have on other people, then that word shows something of what they are, deep down (objection may legitimately be made to JB’s “unfounded”; Jesus is talking about words that certainly have a foundation, even though this is not realized). This makes it more significant than the person uttering it may think, and it will be taken into account on Judgment Day. Jesus is saying that in the end we must all give account of ourselves and that words we take lightly will then be seen to have meaning, for they show what we are in our innermost being.
37. For introduces the reason; people’s words will be of the utmost significance when the judgment takes place.91 Justified means “declared to be righteous”; the verb is used in the strict sense of obtaining the verdict when brought to judgment. It is not common in the Gospels, being found twice in Matthew, 5 times in Luke, and not at all in the other Gospels. But Paul uses it 27 times, and for him it is a very important concept. It brings out the truth that our salvation has a legal aspect and that we are saved in a manner that accords with right, not simply because God is stronger than the devil and overcomes every force of evil (though that, of course, is also true and is taught in the New Testament). We should not understand the Evangelists to be in contradiction of Paul; it is simply that they have different ways of describing what Christ has done in bringing us salvation, and the way used here is more characteristic of Paul than of Matthew. Jesus is not, of course, saying that in the end the only thing that matters will be our words, that our deeds do not matter in comparison with what we say. That is completely false. What Jesus is saying is that at the judgment what we are is what matters, and that our words, especially those to which we give no particular thought, reveal what we are. The other side of this particular coin is, of course, that where our words do not lead to our justification they lead to our condemnation (cf. Luke 19:22, “Out of your own mouth will I condemn you”; cf. Prov. 18:21). As is true throughout the New Testament, there are just two ultimate possibilities.
7. The Sign of Jonah, 12:38–42
38Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying, “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.” 39But he answered them, saying, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks a sign, and no sign will be given it except the sign of Jonah the prophet. 40For as Jonah was in the belly of the sea monster for three days and three nights, so the Son of man will be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights. 41The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and will condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and look, something greater than Jonah is here. 42The queen of the South will rise up in the judgment with this generation and will condemn it, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and look, something greater than Solomon is here.”
It is curious that after the miracles that Matthew has just recorded (vv. 13, 22–23) people should be asking Jesus for a sign. But since both Mark and Luke tell us that they were “testing” (or “tempting”) him, we should not take this to be a sincere request. It leads Jesus to point out their failings as a generation; compared with even some Gentiles from earlier days they were found wanting. Perhaps (as Bruner thinks) they held that a sign “was a divine credential. It was proof or documentation that a person truly spoke for God.” He goes on, “The difference between a sign and a miracle was that signs were believed to be delivered immediately from heaven, while miracles were done here on earth, mediately, through people and things … a sign appeared in or from the sky; a miracle happened on earth” (p. 466). There may be something in this, but “the sign of Jonah” does not fit the definition, nor do the “signs” done by R. Jose and R. Eliezer as noted on verse 38.92
38. Then is often used in Matthew without any great precision, indicating simply that something happened at a later time (see on 2:7), but it is not unlikely that on this occasion it points to something that followed pretty closely. Although the verb answered may be used somewhat loosely, the fact that these men answered Jesus seems to indicate a response to what he had just said. The scribes (see on 5:20) were the experts in the law, scholars whose field was the study of Scripture; here as often they are linked with the Pharisees (see on 3:7). As Matthew speaks of some of them, it seems that this was an informal group, and not anything in the way of an official delegation. This little group addressed Jesus courteously as Teacher (for this term see on 8:19; it corresponded to the title “Rabbi”), and said that they wanted to see a sign93 from him. They do not explain what they mean by a sign, but it is clear that they were asking him to accredit himself by doing some striking miracle; apparently they did not regard his miracles of healing as meeting their need. After all, in antiquity there were many “healers” who did things that ordinary folk could not understand but who in the end proved to be no more than charlatans. The Pharisees had already ascribed some of Jesus’ work to Beelzeboul (v. 24). They were asking him now for something that unmistakably came from God. In the Old Testament sometimes such signs were given (Exod. 4:8–9; Isa. 7:11), but they were God’s good gift, not the result of a demand from unbelieving sceptics. The Pharisees evidently saw a “sign” as a miraculous happening produced on demand to prove that God was with a person.94 Could Jesus produce evidence that it was God who was enabling him and not some unusual human power or some demonic force? In that they were testing him out (Mark 8:11), it is plain that they did not expect him to come up with anything that would satisfy them. The kind of miracle they were demanding Jesus consistently refused to perform. His miracles were always directed toward the fulfilling of a need felt by those for whom the miracle was performed. Jesus was no circus performer, gratifying the appetite for wonders on the part of people who were not serious about spiritual things. From the beginning he refused to demand that God should do miraculous things for him (4:5–7).
39. Jesus’ strong reaction demonstrates his abhorrence of the showmanship his inquisitors were seeking. He castigates them as an evil and adulterous generation,95 where generation extends the scope of his condemnation beyond his immediate questioners to the sum total of the contemporaries they represent. They are evil (see on 6:23), for their profession of religion is joined to a massive selfishness whereby they impose their own rules on God, and adulterous, for they have turned their proper relation of fidelity to God into spiritual adultery;96 their demand97 for a sign showed their failure to trust God and their readiness to try to impose on him a miraculous act of their own choosing where they should have been content with faithful service. People who serve God in faithfulness may indeed see signs, but sensation-seeking unbelievers will not see them. Signs are granted to faith, so how can the faithless ever see them?
“No sign will be given it,” Jesus says, where given points to the fact that “signs” are not to be obtained by aggressive demand; if they come at all, they are the gift of God. And in this case there will be no such gift; the sign of Jonah the prophet is sufficient. Jesus is saying that Jonah himself is the sign,98 which means that it is what is recorded of the man that constitutes the marvel. It is in vain for the people who confront Jesus to look for a sign; the sign they need is there, in the book of the prophet that they value so highly.
40. Jesus explains. It was not the whole life of the prophet that was significant but the fact that he was three days in the belly99 of the sea monster.100 As we count time, three days and three nights points inexorably to three periods of twenty-four hours each; we thus have a problem with the use of this expression for the time between Jesus’ death and resurrection: the period from toward the middle of the day on Friday (when he was crucified) to early on Sunday morning (when he was seen alive) comes short of what we understand by three days and three nights. But the Jews did not reckon as we do: they counted the day on which any period began as one day, and they did the same with the day on which the period ended. Thus we have Friday, Saturday, Sunday, three days; it does not matter that neither the Friday nor the Sunday was complete.101 According to the method of counting in use at the time, this is the period during which Jesus would be in the heart of the earth. Matthew elsewhere speaks of Jesus as rising “on the third day” (16:21) and “after three days” (27:63); there is no reason to think that he sees any difference between these expressions.102 However we understand it in detail, the expression indicates that after the crucifixion Jesus will be three days in the tomb.103
41. Jesus turns to those associated with Jonah, and refers to the inhabitants of Nineveh,104 who, he says, will rise up in the judgment. The verb is often used of a literal rising (26:62), and is not uncommonly used of rising from the dead (e.g., 1 Thess. 4:16), but here it seems to refer to initiating a process of judgment (perhaps standing up to make an accusation in court?). Jesus speaks of the judgment, that is, the judgment at the end of the world, the judgment that counts.105 In that judgment the Ninevites will confront this generation (i.e., the people living at the time Jesus was speaking) and will condemn it. This does not mean that they will issue edicts in the manner of judges, but long ago their conduct had set a standard that the current generation should have attained but did not. Jesus further explains that this condemnation will arise from the fact that the Ninevites repented (see on 3:2) because of106 Jonah’s preaching. The word Jesus uses for preaching means strictly the proclamation of a herald.107 The point of the word is that a herald was not given latitude to vary the proclamation in any way; it was not for him to improve on it by substituting what he regarded as better words or better news. His task was simple—to say what he was told to say. This formed a good word for the message God gave to his preachers, and it is used in this sense here: Jonah did not compose a message of his own, but he told the Ninevites what God told him to say. Confronted with the word of God, the Ninevites responded with wholehearted repentance. The people of Jesus’ day should likewise have responded to his message with repentance, but they did not. And their guilt was all the more serious because something greater than Jonah is here. We might have expected the masculine “someone greater,” but the neuter points to God’s whole work in Jesus, the sending of his Son, the decisive provision for the salvation of repentant sinners, the bringing in of the kingdom. All this represents something far greater than the coming of a Jewish prophet to the ancient city of Nineveh. We should notice two contrasts: the Ninevites repented and the people of Jesus’ day did not; and again, the Ninevites were confronted with Jonah, these Jews with someone far greater.
42. The same construction is repeated with an appeal to another Gentile. Jesus cites Scripture to show that on a second occasion, in strong contrast to the Jews of his day, a Gentile responded to the teaching of a Hebrew man of God. The queen of the South108 is not defined more closely, but clearly Jesus is referring to the Queen of Sheba, who came from a distant land to listen to Solomon (1 Kings 10:1–10). The verb for rise up is changed from that used of the Ninevites in the preceding verse, but the sense appears to be much the same. Like the conduct of the Ninevites, what she did will form a condemnation of the current generation, for she went to great lengths to hear the wisdom of a mere mortal and they refused to be impressed when confronted with something greater than Solomon. The ends of the earth means that she came a long way to meet Solomon; it is generally agreed that Sheba was in the region we now call Yemen, and with conditions of travel in King Solomon’s day that meant a long and difficult journey. In some ways she forms a more impressive example than the Ninevites, for they responded to a man who came and preached to them on their own home turf, whereas she embarked on a lengthy journey to hear Solomon. But she made it in order to hear the wisdom she regarded as outstanding. Yet the men of Jesus’ day refused to be impressed with the presence of the greatest of all. Wisdom may be used of the best human sagacity or of a good gift of God (1 Cor. 2:6–7, 13). Solomon was proverbial for wisdom, but his wisdom was not to be compared to what had happened with the coming of Jesus. And yet the people of that generation would not believe.109 They had merited a greater condemnation. We should notice these points of comparison: the queen came from a long distance whereas the Jews did not have to travel, she responded but they did not, and she was confronted with Solomon but they with a greater than Solomon.
8. The Return of the Unclean Spirit, 12:43–45
43“But when an unclean spirit goes out from a man, it goes through waterless places looking for rest, and does not find it. 44Then it says, ‘I will go back to my house from which I went out.’ And when it comes, it finds it empty, swept, and tidied. 45Then it goes and takes along with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they come in and settle down there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first. So will it be with this evil generation.”
Jesus underlines the impossibility of being neutral on moral issues with a little story about a man who is forsaken by an unclean spirit who has taken possession of him. But simply to be rid of the spirit results in a vacuum that in the end will be filled in an undesirable manner. The paragraph follows on from verse 32 in Luke’s version, and it certainly continues to bring out the thought that the power of God is needed to defeat evil. And it hammers home the lesson that one cannot be neutral toward Jesus. The attempt at neutrality ends with the coming in of the equivalent of seven devils, so that the person finishes in a worse state than at first.
43. When has the meaning “whenever”;110 Jesus is speaking of what may be expected to happen from time to time. The spirit is described as unclean, an expression that originally pointed to what cultically might not be brought into contact with the deity, but that came to be used in a moral sense. Thus an “unclean” spirit was an “evil” spirit. In the Gospels such spirits are often said to reside in people, and Jesus not infrequently casts them out. The spirit in this little story leaves voluntarily and wanders about looking for rest. Waterless places reflects the idea that demons were wont to frequent dry and desert places (cf. Isa. 13:20–21; 34:14; in Tob. 8:3 an expelled demon fled to “the remotest parts of Egypt”). It is not clear why the spirit should seek rest (or “a resting-place,” REB), but presumably spirits, like people, may seek respite from whatever it is that spirits do. But this spirit was unable to find the rest it sought.
44. The spirit soliloquizes. It can still refer to the man it left as my house (see on 2:11). No one else has taken up residence, so the man still is open for the spirit’s reoccupation. The spirit returns111 and finds its former home empty, swept, and tidied, a very satisfactory situation for a homeless spirit. It is empty,112 so there is no barrier to the spirit’s return. But if it is empty, it is not desolate; the man has evidently been busy on himself so that the place vacated by the spirit may now be said to be swept and tidied.113 Jesus is talking about a pleasant, moral reformation, but with the man thinking that he is still in control of himself and with no reference to the Spirit of God. The man is empty; he is open to invasion from all kinds of evil, and in fact the original spirit comes back with reinforcements.
45. Then (see on 2:7) takes us to the next stage in the process. The spirit goes off and takes along with it seven other spirits, described as more evil than itself. Along with it114 associates the newcomers with the original demon; the picture we get is of one of willing cooperation in taking over the empty man. That there are seven of them may be significant; seven is the number of perfection, and while that is a strange category to apply to evil spirits the point may be that the takeover is made by the most appropriate number of demons. The newcomers are worse than the first demon; the man is not simply reverting to his previous state, but has more demons and of a more evil type. The eight evil spirits go into the man and settle down;115 henceforth he will never be free of evil spirits. His last state116 is worse than anything earlier. It is not without its interest that when the first spirit left the man, he was better off than he had been previously. He was able to set himself in order. But there was no dynamic about the change, no new power that would enable him to escape being demon-ridden. And his lack of spiritual resources left him open to a worse fate than he had known previously.117
Jesus rounds off the story by driving home the application to his hearers. So (“as it was with the spirit-ridden man”) will it be with those before him. They had seen him cast out a demon, he had refuted the suggestion that he did this by Beelzeboul and had pointed out that the Spirit of God was at work in him, he had pointed out that it is unforgivable to blaspheme the Holy Spirit, he had made it plain that they were in the presence of something greater than Jonah or Solomon, and he had told his little story about the man from whom the unclean spirit went out. In his casting out of the evil spirit that started this chain of events (v. 22) Jesus had bound the strong man. Clearly he was now pointing out the danger in which his conversation partners stood. They had been confronted with divine power, and if they tried to live empty lives, lives that did not replace evil by the presence of the Holy Spirit, there was nothing before them but the grimmest of prospects. If it continued on its self-opinionated way, the generation that refused the opportunity presented to it by the appearance in its midst of the very Son of God, the generation already characterized as “evil and adulterous,” faced a future that was bleak indeed.
9. Jesus’ Family, 12:46–50
46While he was still speaking to the crowds, look, his mother and his brothers were standing outside, trying to speak to him. 47And someone said to him, “Look, your mother and your brothers are standing outside, trying to speak to you.” 48But he answered, saying to the man who spoke to him, “Who is my mother? And who are my brothers?” 49And he stretched out his hand toward his disciples and said, “Look! My mother and my brothers. 50For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven, he is my brother and sister and mother.”
Jesus’ earthly family seem not to have understood exactly who he was and what his mission demanded. John tells us that his brothers did not believe in him (John 7:5), and Mark that on one occasion his family (or perhaps his friends) tried to seize him because they thought he was beside himself (Mark 3:20–21). There may well be something of the same attitude here. They were probably moved, not by any spirit of opposition, but by concern; they seem to have wanted to preserve him from unfortunate consequences (as they saw them) of what he had been doing. At any rate they appear to be claiming special treatment on account of their family ties, and Jesus makes it plain that in his ministry his relation to his family is different from what it had been in the days of his growing up. At the same time we must bear in mind that Jesus is not so much downgrading loyalty to a human family as insisting on the importance of loyalty to God.
46. Jesus’ family seem to have tried to claim him while he was still118 speaking to the crowds (characteristically Matthew has the plural). The brothers should probably be understood as children of Joseph and Mary born subsequent to the birth of Jesus. After the doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary made its appearance, there were conjectures that these were children of Joseph by a former marriage or cousins. But since there is no support for such views in the New Testament, we should take the natural understanding of the words. The impression Matthew gives is that the family felt that they had prior rights; they could interrupt him in the middle of a teaching session, and he should stop what he was doing and come to them. This might arise out of the very strong family loyalty that was universally accepted: a dutiful son and brother would not leave his family in order to teach the crowds. Matthew is quite interested in the family. We have already noticed that he uses “brother” more often than in any other book in the New Testament apart from Acts (he has it 39 times, the same number as in 1 Corinthians; Acts has it 57 times). John exceeds his total of 64 for “father,” but nobody else does, and his 27 uses of “mother” is ten more than the next most frequent users (Mark and Luke). It is quite in keeping with this that he draws attention to Jesus’ family at this point and very significant that he records the words that set a firm limit to any family claim on Jesus. On this occasion the family were outside (unable to get closer because of the crowds?), but were trying to speak to him.
47. They were able to get a message to him. Someone (there is no indication who managed to get through) told him that both his mother and his brothers were trying to talk to him. The verse simply repeats the statement of the previous verse. Some MSS omit it (א* B L etc.), but it seems required for the sense and may well have been omitted by the eye passing from the last word in verse 46 to the identical word at the end of verse 47. We should accept it (Metzger’s committee indicated no more than “a certain amount of doubt” about it).
48. Jesus answered the implied request with a couple of questions of his own, the first relating to his mother and the second to his brothers. The mother as the matriarch is singled out, but the two questions basically ask the same thing: In the light of the ministry he is exercising in the name of God, what do ordinary family ties mean? Must Jesus forsake the service of the heavenly Father in order that he may please his earthly family?
49–50. Jesus proceeds to answer his own question. He acccompanies it with the action of stretching out his hand and pointing at his disciples. Matthew frequently uses Look for greater vividness (see on 1:20), but here it may well be used in the sense “Look at these people” (the ones to whom he is pointing). Jesus transfers the name mother to those whom he respects and loves as a mother, or perhaps those who respect and love him as a mother would. This is an unusual way of using “mother,” but it is a not uncommon way of using brother. Jesus is saying that those with whom he is closely associated in the service of God have become “family” to him. He spells this out. Whoever119 means anyone at all: the way into the heavenly family is open wide and there are no restrictions on who may enter. When he speaks of “doing the will” of the Father,120 Jesus is not opting for salvation by works, but pointing to the importance of conforming to God’s way and not imposing one’s own pattern on heavenly things. It is relationship to the heavenly Father that constitutes membership in the family. He is emphatic, “he and no other”; he is the whole family, brother and sister (who appears for the first time in this paragraph) and mother. Jesus is not saying that earthly familial ties are unimportant, only that they are not all-important. Doing the will of God is all-important.
This chapter has drawn attention to a variety of ways in which Jesus was opposed. Matthew has made it clear that his Lord faced constant and bitter and unjustified hostility from people who ought to have been giving him a welcome.121 Even Jesus’ own family did not understand him. But the chapter ends with the firm reminder that there were those who, despite all the opposition, committed themselves wholeheartedly to Jesus.
Matthew 13
G. Teaching in Parables, 13:1–52
This chapter marks something of a turning point for Matthew. Until now he has pictured for us Jesus teaching in synagogues, but here he speaks of him as teaching on a beach. Increasingly Jesus will forsake the synagogue and teach the people out of doors. A further change is the use of parables. Previously there has been some teaching of a parabolic nature (e.g., 7:24–27), but the fully developed parable appears here for the first time. A parable may take the form of a story or a simile or a metaphor; it is an appeal from what people know in the realm of ordinary life to truths Jesus wants to teach in the spiritual life, in the classic definition “an earthly story with a heavenly meaning.” Sometimes details in a parable are significant, but mostly there is one great truth that takes hold of us; as Barclay puts it, Jesus’ parables “were designed to make one stabbing truth flash out at a man the moment he heard it” (II, p. 56).1
But perhaps we learn best what a parable is by looking at the way Jesus used it rather than by trying to produce a satisfactory definition. Parables formed an important part of Jesus’ teaching, and it is significant that no other New Testament character is recorded as having told as much as one parable. The parabolic method is Jesus’ own.2 Parables were, of course, known outside Jesus’ teaching; there are parables in the Old Testament, and the rabbis told parables.3 But nobody used the method as effectively or as extensively as Jesus did. To this day his parables are known and loved the world over, but who can name even one parable from his contemporaries? Jesus used the method apparently in order to convey his teaching vividly and to stimulate his hearers to think, with the result that those who apply themselves learn to their profit, whereas those who do not never find the truths Jesus is teaching (cf. vv. 11–15). The use of parables teaches not only the lesson of the individual parable, but also the importance of thinking about spiritual things.4
Matthew at this point relates seven parables, beginning with the parable of the sower, perhaps to show what a parable is. It is given importance by being followed by an explanation of Jesus’ purpose in using parables and then an explanation of this parable. The other six are divided into two groups of three, separated by an explanation of the parable of the weeds. Each of the last six is introduced by “the kingdom of heaven is like—” (all seven are often called “parables of the kingdom,” but we should respect Matthew’s usage; he does, however, speak of “the word of the kingdom” in his explanation of the first, v. 19). Four of them are found in this Gospel only (the weeds, the pearl, the hidden treasure, and the net). It is often said that Matthew has gathered these parables, though they were spoken originally at different times. This may be so, but verse 53 seems to mean that Jesus gave them as a coherent series.
1. The Parable of the Sower, 13:1–9
1On that day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the sea. 2And great crowds were gathered around him, so that he got into a boat and sat down, and all the crowd stood on the beach. 3And he told them many things in parables, saying, “The sower went out to sow. 4And as he sowed, some seeds fell beside the path, and the birds came and devoured them. 5And others fell on the rocky places, where they did not have much soil; and immediately they sprouted because they had no depth of soil. 6But when the sun rose they were scorched, and because they had no root they withered away. 7And others fell among thornbushes, and the thornbushes grew up and choked them. 8And others fell on good soil and produced a crop, some a hundredfold, some sixtyfold, and some thirtyfold. 9He who has ears let him hear.”
This well-known and much applied parable is drawn from the processes of agriculture, which would have been very well known to Jesus’ hearers. For that matter even modern city-dwellers can understand it. It makes effectively the point that the one message can produce different results in different hearers. It is common in recent discussions to have it said that the parable is concerned simply with eschatology: it stresses the greatness of the coming kingdom in contrast to the present small beginnings. Perhaps this view does not give sufficient attention to such facts as the absence of any reference to the kingdom in this parable and the amount of attention that is given to the variety of ways in which the seed may come to nothing.
1–2. On that day connects the following session of teaching with the preceding time of discussion with the Pharisees and scribes. Jesus went out of the house where he was; it is probably significant that Matthew uses the same verb here as that in the opening of the first parable where the sower went out to sow. Later in the chapter the sower of the good seed is the Son of man (v. 37). Clearly Matthew wants the reader to see that it is Jesus who is the sower. Having gone out of the house, Jesus made his way to the shore of the lake (it is not necessary to add the name; there was only one lake that could be meant). There he sat down, which is the posture for teaching and indicates that he was getting ready to teach the crowd. This is supported by the fact that large numbers of people came around5 him: clearly they saw that he was going to teach. But there is a limit to the number of people who can crowd on a beach with comfort to the teacher, so Jesus got into a boat and sat there, while the people stood on the shore. Mostly in this Gospel lengthy pieces of teaching are addressed to disciples, but this one is aimed at the crowds.6
3. It was apparently quite a long discourse, for Jesus told7 them many things. This is Matthew’s first use of the term parable (though, as we have noted, some of the teaching he has recorded is of a parabolic nature, e.g., 7:24–27). There are several parables in this chapter, but we cannot be sure that they were all spoken on this one occasion. It seems more likely that Matthew has given us the information that it was a long discourse, making extensive use of parables, and that he has given us a sample of what Jesus said and added other parables. The word “parable” is hard to pin down. We use it mostly for a story taken from this life that conveys spiritual truth, and it certainly is used in this way. But it may also denote a short, pithy saying, a wise saying. Not much, however, turns on our definition. It is more important to notice what Jesus said and what it means to us.
The first parable8 begins with the information that the sower9 went out to sow. In agriculture as we know it, this would mean that the land had been prepared by ploughing or digging, but in Palestine it was common for the sower to sow his seed first and then plough it in (I have observed this process quite recently, so it has persisted through the centuries). P. B. Payne has produced evidence that both practices were in vogue: sometimes farmers ploughed the land first to clear it of weeds, sometimes they did it after sowing to put the seed underneath the soil, and sometimes they did it both times.10
4. In the process of sowing the seeds fell into a variety of situations with diverse results for the crop. Jesus begins with those seeds that fell on hard places. In those days plots of ground were not, of course, fenced off, and people seem regularly to have gone on their journeys through the fields as well as around them. There were paths that ran through the fields, and when the sower was scattering his seed it was inevitable that some of it would fall on or close beside such paths.11 Since there was no soft soil there in which the seeds might sink, they remained where the birds12 could reach them and they were speedily devoured.13
5. Others14 fell into stony ground.15 This will mean not ground littered with stones, but ground where the bedrock came close to the surface, with the result that these seeds had no depth of soil. There would have been a small amount over the bedrock, but not enough to sustain full growth. This did not stop a promising beginning, for immediately these seeds sprouted.16 “Because”17 is unexpected; but the shallow soil would have warmed quickly and encouraged rapid growth. But in that it had no depth of soil there was no future for any plant in this position.
6. When the sun18 rose is not to be taken with strict literalness: the sun rose every day, and the meaning is not that the plant withered the day after the seed was sown; the reference is rather to hot days that came early in the plants’ life. When this happened the little plants were scorched19 and withered away.20 Where the previous verse said they had no “depth of soil,” this one says they had no root; but this amounts to much the same. Plants that grow in rocky places seem all right at first, but they soon wither away. Lacking abundance of soil the roots cannot develop, and plants with defective root systems are not equipped to stand hot weather. They wither away.
7. Jesus moves on to seeds that lodged where thorny bushes were growing.21 The point about these plants is that they were sturdy, robust plants, not easily to be defeated in the struggle for life. The plants as such would be ploughed in with the good seeds, but they would have their own seeds or pieces of roots that would enable them to spring into growth. So the good seeds found intense competition for the nourishment in the soil, and the thorny plants were too strong. They choked out the new plants by preventing them from getting the nourishment they needed.
8. Finally we come to the seeds that fell on good soil (for good see on 3:10). Matthew uses this word good more than do other writers; it has the notion of “beautiful” about it. Good seed going into good ground bears22 a good crop. The magnitude varies from a hundredfold (cf. Gen. 26:12) down to thirtyfold. The first mentioned is an extraordinary crop, but even thirtyfold is very good.
9. This verse is identical with 11:15 (where see note). Jesus invites his hearers to think through what he has said. It is a responsibility easily overlooked. Great words like “repent,” “believe,” and “do good” strike a chord, but in every age it has been easy not to take care how or what we hear.
2. The Purpose of the Parables, 13:10–17
10And the disciples came and said to him, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” 11But he answered them, saying, “Because to you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. 12For whoever has, it will be given to him, and he will have in abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. 13For this reason I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see and hearing they do not hear, nor understand. 14And there is be fulfilled in them the prophecy of Isaiah that says,
‘You will hear and hear and will not understand,
and you will see and see and will not perceive.
15For this people’s heart has become dull,
and with their ears they scarcely hear,
and their eyes they have shut,
lest they should see with their eyes,
and hear with their ears,
and understand with their heart,
and turn, and I should heal them.’
16But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. 17For truly I tell you, that many prophets and righteous men have wanted to see the things that you see and have not seen them, and to hear the things that you hear and have not heard them.”
Although Matthew has recorded only one parable prior to this one, he tells us that the disciples came to Jesus and asked him why he taught in parables. Clearly he had used the method much more than Matthew records. The explanation is given in terms of prophecy: Jesus points to Isaiah 6:9–10, a passage that tells of the way people refused to accept divine direction. He is saying that although the people heard the words, they did not understand them and did not want to understand them. That was the fault of the people in Isaiah’s day, and it was the fault of the people in Jesus’ day.
10. The disciples lacks any indication as to whose they were, but there is no doubt that Jesus’ disciples are meant. They came23 to him and asked, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” where them evidently refers to people as yet uncommitted to Jesus. We may understand speak in the sense “keep speaking”; it certainly means more than that Jesus had told one parable. Commentators differ as to whether parables were meant to make the truth plain and simple or whether they were a way of making a veiled witness to truth. Paradoxically there is truth in both suggestions, but certainly in the present passage the emphasis is on hearers who did not understand. As Patte says, the disciples’ question “presupposes that the crowds—together with the readers—do not understand this kind of speech” (p. 186). The parable is a powerful method of teaching, but perhaps some measure of commitment is required in hearers if they are really to understand what a parable is saying. It is a fallacy that everyone can understand a parable. Did David understand Nathan’s parable, even though it referred directly to him? An unexplained parable is usually open to interpretation in any one of a number of ways,24 and those who lack devotion to Jesus may be relied on to go astray even when they hear the very stories that convey truth so vividly to disciples. Jesus expressly speaks of those who know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven as those who understand. If someone does not know the great basic truths of the kingdom, what is he to make of the parables that set it forth or indeed of other parables? Commitment to Jesus is the prerequisite for a true understanding of his parabolic teaching.
11. But he answered25 puts a difference between Jesus and the disciples. The doctrine of election lies behind these words. It is not a merit in the disciples that they understand where others do not; their comprehension is due to the fact that God has chosen them and given them the gift of understanding. They have received a gift that outsiders have not received (to you is emphatic), and the perfect tense signifies that the gift remains with them.26 This is Matthew’s one use of the word mystery (which is found 20 times in the Pauline corpus). It signifies something that people could never work out for themselves, which is why it is a “mystery.”27 But in the New Testament it usually carries the further thought that that which people can never work out for themselves God has now made known to them (it is not without its interest that some translate it by “secret” [e.g., NRSV] and some by “open secret” [e.g., Moffatt]). Jesus is saying that the truths about God’s kingdom were not known to people in general. Nobody could know such truths unless they were revealed to them. This had happened to the disciples (which was why they were disciples), but the crowds had not responded to the revelation; they were still ignorant of the mysteries of the kingdom (for the kingdom of heaven see on 3:2). Now the most significant truth about the kingdom was the place of Jesus in it. It was precisely because they had accepted the revelation that Jesus was the Messiah who would bring in the kingdom that the disciples were able to understand and respond to the teaching in the parables. And it was because people like the Pharisees had not accepted it that they did not understand.28 Jesus does not explain who he means by them, but clearly it is the multitudes who came to hear him but who did not commit themselves to his cause. They had heard Jesus’ words, but they had not apprehended the revelation.
12. The words of this verse (repeated with small alterations in 25:29; it is found also in Mark 4:25; Luke 8:18; 19:26; the repetition shows that it is an important saying) are an occasion of offense for some people, who consider it grossly unfair that more should be given to the rich and that the poor should be stripped of what little they have. And that, of course, is unfair, but it is not what Jesus is speaking about. He is referring to spiritual truth; he has just drawn attention to the importance of God’s gifts of grace, and he now emphasizes the importance of human responsibility. When anyone uses the spiritual truth he has, that truth grows. More is added to it. By contrast, if he does not use it, he finds that it vanishes away little by little (Plummer says, “the purpose is educational to disciples, and disciplinary to those who refuse to become disciples,” p. 189). The principle is capable of application in many areas of life (the achievement of sports people, for example).29 But Jesus was not speaking of such areas; he was referring to a spiritual truth of permanent importance.30 He confines himself to saying whoever has, without specifying what it is that he has, but in a land where the very poor had nothing at all it was enough to separate the haves from the have nots. The person who responds will receive much more. The saying is an encouragement to those who have committed themselves to following Jesus. They have made a good beginning and have received blessing and understanding; therefore they will receive more. It has nothing to do with the selfishness that aims only at piling up earthly goods.31 But the saying is a warning as well as an encouragement. The person with little and who does nothing with that little will find that his little disperses.
13. That is the reason,32 Jesus says, that he speaks33 to them in parables (cf. Mark 4:33–34). Many think that Jesus would not have used parables (or any other method) “in order that” people would not understand. There is a sense in which this is true, but it is not the whole truth, for the whole truth includes election and the complete purpose of God. We must bear in mind that everything that is has its place in the purpose of God, who created it all. The disciples were not disciples because, left to themselves, they had decided that this would be a good thing. They were disciples on the Gospel view because God had chosen them. And it was in the outworking of this divine choice that they came to see Jesus for who he was and for what he was doing in bringing in the kingdom of God. They could understand the parables because of the insight that God gave them, but God did not give this insight to those who rejected Jesus. The word of God is always effective: it brings enlightenment or judgment—enlightenment to the disciples, judgment to those who rejected Jesus. It was in this sense that it was the divine purpose that they should not understand. If people rejected the Christ and set themselves in opposition to God, how could they understand the teaching that came from God through the Christ?
There is a certain emphasis on the word parable: “that it is in parables that I speak to them.” Jesus proceeds, because seeing they do not see, a Hebraic construction signifying that, while there is a sense in which they certainly see, there is a more meaningful sense in which they do not see at all. Gutzwiller draws attention to Augustine’s remarks about a man who looks at beautiful writing in a foreign tongue; he may admire the calligraphy, but the meaning he cannot appreciate. So when a person who rejects Jesus hears parables. He may find things in them that he can appreciate and admire, but their essential meaning he cannot attain.34 So is it with hearing. The repetition indicates that the people in question are shallow. They have the habit of seeing and hearing without appreciating the real significance of what they have seen and heard. This is brought out in the final expression, nor understand; they have no comprehension of what their sense perception has brought them.
14. Characteristically Jesus sees a fulfilment of prophecy, and he specifies that the words he quotes were spoken by Isaiah before going on to cite the passage he has in mind (for fulfilment of prophecy in this Gospel see on 1:22).35 The quotation, which is as in LXX, opens with the accusation that the people addressed will not respond to what they hear.36 They will not understand what they are hearing, which evidently means that they will have their minds so made up and will be so set in their ways that when they hear the word of God that challenges them to new thinking and new ways of living they simply do not understand it. They interpret what they hear in terms of they have always thought and done. So will it be with what they see. There will be no shortage of things they see, but there will be no perception.37
15. There is a change of approach. In the previous verse the people are addressed (“you will hear,” etc.), but now God describes them. For gives a reason for the foregoing. The heart stands for the whole of the inner being (see on 5:8), thought, will, and feelings, but here the emphasis is on thought. They have become sluggish38 in the way they think. So they hear new teaching from God but do not take it in nor model their lives on it. The same truth is put in terms of their ears and their eyes. With their ears they scarcely39 hear, while as for their eyes, they have shut them. This is probably to be understood as a stage worse than the preceding. It would be possible to have a problem of partial deafness, but the shutting of the eyes is a deliberate refusal to see.
The prophet brings this out with a series of clauses introduced with lest.40 He traverses the ground he has covered, mentioning the eyes, the ears, and the heart (the last-mentioned is singular, though referring to many, a Semitic construction, M, III, p. 23). Those to whom the prophetic words come make sure that they are not disturbed by it. At the end of the quotation the prophet comes to what God would do if the people responded. Their response is that they should turn (“be converted,” JB), which signifies an alteration in the whole direction the life is taking. It is a turning away from worldliness and self-centeredness, a turning to God. And when that happens, God heals.41 Sin is a disease, and the people of whom Jesus speaks decline to be healed of it. Using the imagery of eyes that refuse to see and ears that refuse to hear, he rebukes people who refuse to heed God’s gracious invitation and choose to go their own way. So, Jesus says, is it with the people of his day. They are the very fulfilment of the ancient prophecy.
16. But is adversative; it sets the disciples over against the people that fulfil the prophecy. For blessed see on 5:3; it points not only to a happy state but to one in which the blessing of God is operative. The word your comes first in the Greek, which gives it emphasis. Jesus is not pronouncing a blessing on the human race at large or on the Jews as the people of God. He is singling the disciples out; they have received and continue to receive a blessing from God. The reason? Their eyes see and their ears hear. As throughout this passage, this refers to spiritual perception; the disciples are perceptive in spiritual things whereas the evil generation with which Jesus was confronted was not.
17. For introduces a reason for this blessedness and one that might not have occurred to them, namely that what they are seeing and hearing is that to which prophecy has been pointing throughout the centuries. Many of God’s great ones would have liked to have taken part in the events then taking place; the disciples should be mindful of their very great privilege. Truly (see on 5:18) adds solemnity to what Jesus is saying; this is a reliable saying. Primarily in mind with prophets are the great prophetic figures of the Old Testament, though the word is broad enough to include any who have received the prophetic gift. They are the mouthpieces of God here on earth, and they speak words that can be relied on. They live close to God and have insight into the ways of God. With the prophets are linked righteous men (see on 1:19). These will be people who lacked the prophetic gift, but who nevertheless served God well in their generation. Such giants of faith from of old would have liked to see and hear what the disciples see and hear, but did not attain that blessing. Jesus is saying that his mission in the world is the culmination of the purpose of God made clear in prophecies from of old. The servants of God in olden times may have looked for these days and desired to be involved in them. But that was not their privilege. Let the disciples accordingly appreciate what God is doing before their very eyes.
3. The Meaning of the Parable of the Sower, 13:18–23
18“You, therefore, listen to the parable of the sower. 19When anyone hears the message of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away that which was sown in his heart; this is he who was sown beside the path. 20But he who was sown on the rocky places is the person who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; 21yet he has no root in himself but is temporary, and when there is trouble or persecution on account of the word he immediately takes offense. 22But he who was sown among the thorns is the one who hears the word, and the worry of the world and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful. 23But he who was sown on the good earth is the one who hears the word and understands it; who indeed bears fruit and produces, some a hundredfold, some sixtyfold, and some thirtyfold.”
It is often said that the interpretations given in the Gospels are those of the early church rather than of Jesus. These interpretations not infrequently contain an element of allegory, and it is urged that a parable is used to convey one point strongly and that therefore allegorical interpretations are to be rejected. There is something to this approach, for it is important to understand that Jesus’ parables are not to be taken as allegories, with a detailed explanation required for each several point. But it is possible to go too far in the other direction. Allegory was used in the Old Testament and also in the New Testament period; it is not wise to affirm dogmatically that Jesus never used it. Why not? We should further notice that to dismiss the interpretations given in the Gospels as erroneous and due to the early church rather than to Jesus comes up against the difficulty that in that case Jesus’ closest followers did not understand what he was teaching. It seems preposterous that they should all be completely wrong and that twentieth-century scholars should alone at last have discovered what Jesus meant. We should also bear in mind that the fact that an interpretation has a certain suitability and value in the life situation of the early church does not mean that it does not go back to Jesus. We cannot take up the position that Jesus could speak only to the needs of his day. His teaching has enriched the church through the centuries; every age has found it relevant.42
18. We might well translate “Hear the parable” (as many translations do), but this overlooks the fact that Jesus begins with an emphatic You (cf. Knox, “The parable of the sower, then, is for your hearing”). Jesus has made the point that the parables are meant to conceal truth from those who lack genuine religious seriousness (like his scribal opposition), and he proceeds to set his close followers apart from that kind of approach to religious truth. The parable may go over the heads of Jesus’ enemies and of the careless crowd, but those who have committed themselves to Jesus will not remain in ignorance. Therefore conveys the reason: because of their privilege in knowing “the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven” (v. 11) in contrast to the careless crowd they are to know what the parable signifies. In modern times the parable is often called “the parable of the soils,” but Jesus calls it the parable of the sower. In interpreting it Calvin warns us that we should not think that Jesus meant that only one seed in four will bring forth fruit, or that the four reactions are the only ones (“there is no mention here of the despisers who openly repulse God’s Word,” II, p. 71). We should be on our guard against looking for information the parable does not purport to give.
19. Jesus begins with the careless hearer.43 This person hears what is said,44 indeed, but without any comprehension; he hears a parable but does not perceive the spiritual truth it conveys. When this happens the devil45 becomes active. He snatches46 what has been sown in this hearer’s heart. The verb sown is in the perfect, which points to a firm lodgment; perhaps we can say that the seed is beginning to put down roots. The implication of heart, which refers to a person’s innermost being, is that Jesus is speaking of something more than mere outward hearing. The word points to a certain receptiveness; this person is not hostile to the message. The hearer knows that there is some spiritual truth here intended for his profit, but since he does not act on it, he soon finds that what he heard is lost. The failure to attend to the message and to find out what it means results in total loss, first of the message and ultimately of the hearer. Jesus explains, “This is he who was sown beside the path.” In the parable he had the neuter plural, proper to seeds, but in the interpretation he emphasizes the people who respond to the seeds in such different ways (cf. JB, “this is the man who received the seed on the edge of the path”). Beside the path reproduces the language of the parable.
20. In the previous verse we moved from the neuter (“that which was sown”) to the masculine, but here we have the masculine throughout. He who was sown on the rocky places stands for the person who receives the word straightaway and does so with joy; the picture is one of happy enthusiasm. Unfortunately, as we shall see, it is all too shallow, but the joy and the enthusiasm are to be noted.
21. Yet marks something of a contrast with the preceding; despite the joy and the initial growth the end result of this piece of sowing is tragic. It is put in two ways: the man has no root in himself and he is temporary. The lack of root points to the real problem: like seed in a place that lacks depth of soil, this superficial hearer lacks depth. With that is joined but is temporary (“has no staying-power,” REB).47 Jesus explains this by referring to the time of testing that will surely come to all believers. Sooner or later all face trouble48 such as persecution; there is no easy way for the servant of God. When trouble of this sort comes to the shallow enthusiast, the pretty bubble is burst and the profession of loyalty is exposed for the sham it is. Immediately, the same word as that used for the joyful reception of the word in verse 20, signifies that the test shows the person up straightaway; he is no more than a fair weather adherent. Most translations say that he “falls away” (so, e.g., NRSV, NEB), but there is something more than falling. He takes offense.49 That is to say, he comes to regard adherence to Christ as something of a trap; if it means persecution he wants nothing to do with it. He is repelled. The time of trial means the end of this person’s adherence to Christ.
22. Again we have the masculine, with its emphasis on he who. The one sown among the thorns is one who really listens to the word. He is no hardened rejector, nor a man given to shallow enthusiasm. But his attention to the word has to be understood in the light of the other truth that he is caught up in the affairs of this life. Jesus specifies two things that especially preoccupy him. The worry of the world50 is something with which every reader can empathize. It is one of the conditions of living here on earth that we do not know what a day can bring forth, and it is another of those conditions that we can always think of something that threatens us and of something that we would like but do not have. It is possible to be so taken up with the contemplation of the threats and opportunities of life that the word from God that we receive and welcome does not get sufficient attention. Jesus says that these worldly concerns choke51 the word. One life can hold only so many things, and he is referring to a life that is so full of worry that there is no room for serious attention to the word of God. With worry Jesus links the deceitfulness of wealth.52 To the poor riches seem desirable possessions that liberate the holder from many worries, and, of course, there is an element of truth in this. But things are not always what they seem (cf. Phillips, “illusions of wealth”); riches also bring problems. There is, for example, the problem of holding on to them, for there are always those who try to rob the owners in one way or another. And there can be an insidious consequence of being wealthy; the rich may so enjoy having riches that they find themselves caught up in the pursuit of more wealth and end on a treadmill, rich, but never rich enough.53
23. Finally Jesus comes to the seed that fell in a good place. Again we have the masculine, as the emphasis is placed on the person who receives the seed rather than the seed itself. The seed that fell into good soil finds its meaning in the person who hears the word and understands it; this is not a careless and unheeding person, nor one whose life is distracted by other considerations. The person receives the word with intelligent appreciation and acts on it. The result is that he indeed54 bears fruit and produces.55 There are three groups, those that produce a hundredfold, those that produce sixtyfold, and those that produce thirtyfold. Commentators disagree as to whether these figures are an exuberant exaggeration to bring out the bountiful nature of the crop or whether they are meant to be taken literally. Without knowing the seed, it is not easy to be dogmatic. Maize, for example, might well produce a hundred or more seeds, though with wheat that is not quite so likely. But in any case Jesus is making the point that in good ground carefully nurtured seeds will produce an abundant harvest. It may also be significant that not all produce the same amount; there are different responses that are accceptable.
4. The Parable of the Weeds, 13:24–30
24He put another parable before them, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is likened to a man sowing good seed in his field. 25But while men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds in the middle of the wheat, and went away. 26When the grain sprouted and produced a crop, then the weeds appeared too. 27But the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? Whence then does it have weeds?’ 28And he said to them, ‘An enemy did this.’ And the slaves say to him, ‘Do you want us, then, to go off and gather them up?’ 29But he says, ‘No, lest as you gather up the weeds you root up the wheat with them. 30Let them both grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will say to the harvesters, “First gather the weeds together and bind them into bundles to burn them up, but gather the wheat into my barn.” ’ ”
This parable is found only in Matthew, who has it as the first of a series of parables specifically said to refer to the kingdom of heaven. It has a strong eschatological emphasis, even though it says important things about the admixture of those who belong to the kingdom and those who do not in the time before the end. It is a story that people who lived close to the land could well appreciate.
24. Jesus put another parable before them.56 Them will mean the people generally, not the disciples (cf. vv. 34 and 36). For the kingdom of heaven see on 3:2; it is a major thrust of Jesus’ teaching as recorded in this Gospel. And it is a theme that recurs throughout the rest of this chapter. It was important that Jesus’ followers should have a good grasp of teaching on this subject. Jesus likens57 the kingdom to a man58 sowing his crop. Jesus specifies that he sowed good seed,59 his word for good being that used for the good ground in the preceding parable; it indicates careful choice of the right seed for his purpose. Matthew is fond of referring to fields, and he has the word field more than anyone else in the New Testament (16 times).
25. There is some adversative force in But;60 over against the careful preparation for a good crop there comes the evil act of an enemy. He moved while people were asleep and thus could do what he wanted unobserved. He proceeded to sow61 weeds62 right where the crop was growing. In the middle does not, of course, mean that the sowing was confined to the center of the field; rather, it signifies that it extended through the crop. We find now that the crop was wheat (darnel looks much like wheat, which would make the second sowing difficult to detect). The enemy sowed and departed.
26. Nothing the intruder had done was obvious until the grain began to grow.63 When the ears of wheat began to appear and the plants produced a crop, literally “made fruit,”64 it became obvious that some of the plants were not wheat. Before that the weeds appeared as wheat.
27. The slaves would have been more closely occupied with the management of the field than their master,65 and thus it was they who first came to recognize what had happened. They used the respectful “Sir” in their address (the appropriate way for slaves to speak to their owner) and asked him whether he had not sowed good seed (they will mean “caused good seed to be sowed”; it was they, not he, who had done the actual sowing). The answer to their question was not in doubt,66 so they proceed to another asking where the weeds came from. Their then really means “therefore”: in view of the fact that you had only good seed sown, what is the origin of the weeds?
28. There may be some adversative force in the master’s answer,67 as he responds to the bad news brought by his slaves. His answer is prompt and accurate as he recognizes the hand of an enemy in what had happened. Actually he says “a hostile man,” and while “man” is redundant (the adjective is often used by itself with the meaning “enemy”), it may put some emphasis on the fact that what had happened was of human origin. They were not faced with some curious plant mutation or with a supernatural intervention. The slaves respond (the tense of the verb changed to the present for greater vividness) with another question: they wonder whether he would like them to gather up the weeds. Their immediate reaction is that the weeds must be removed and destroyed.
29. But he has adversative force. The householder rejects the argument of his slaves with a firm “No.”68 He gives a reason.69 It would be difficult to pull out the weeds without rooting up some of the wheat with them.70
30. The householder had a better idea: “Leave them alone.”71 They can grow side by side without detriment to the wheat right up to harvest- time.72 Then he will issue an instruction to the reapers73 that Jesus cites as it will be given. When the crop is reaped, the first thing that is to be done is to take the weeds out and burn them. The owner gives priority to getting rid of the weeds; he perhaps reasons that it will not matter greatly if a little of the wheat is pulled up with them at that time, for it could be separated off with little difficulty. The weeds are then to be tied in bundles and burned. The wheat has some emphasis from its position; it is the wheat that is important, and the wheat will be gathered into the barn.
Carson makes an important point when he draws attention to the large number of commentators who interpret this parable of the church. But we should be clear that Matthew nowhere equates the kingdom with the church, and he explicitly says that this parable concerns the kingdom. Carson says, “The parable does not address the church situation at all but explains how the kingdom can be present in the world while not yet wiping out all opposition. That must await the harvest. The parable deals with eschatological expectation, not ecclesiological deterioration.” If we so choose, we may reflect that the situation described in the parable is much like what we see in our church, but we should not take this as Jesus’ meaning. He is talking about the kingdom.74
5. More Parables of Growth, 13:31–33
31He spoke another parable to them, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. 32It is the smallest of all the seeds; but when it is grown, it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and roost in its branches.” 33He spoke another parable to them: “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and put into three measures of flour, until it was all leavened.”
Jesus continues with his parables. Matthew has two of them that bring out the thought of growth before he goes on to the interpretation of the parable of the weeds. These parables are important. Over against the mighty numbers of the worshipers of heathen gods and even of the Jews who acknowledged the true God, those who proclaimed the kingdom were a tiny minority. Jesus teaches them not to be hypnotized by size. These tiny beginnings would grow into something greater by far than any of the religions found in the disciples’ contemporary world.
31. The formula Matthew has already employed in verse 24 is varied slightly75 to introduce another parable of growth, this one contrasting the smallness of the seed with the greatness of the plant. Again the parable is introduced with a reference to the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom has many aspects, and the theme is developed throughout this chapter. This time it is like a mustard seed76 that a man took and sowed. We notice again Matthew’s frequent use of man. Took and sowed may be a Semitism, or it may point to an element of deliberation and purpose. It is not usual to sow just one seed, perhaps especially if it is a very little seed, and if, as here, it is sown in a field rather than a garden.77
32. That mustard is the smallest of all the seeds does not mean that nowhere is there any smaller seed. It is a way of saying that among all the seeds mustard is a very little seed indeed. It was popularly held to be the smallest of the seeds (Lightfoot cites evidence that the size of the mustard seed “passed into a common proverb,” II, p. 215; indeed, Jesus himself used it that way when he spoke of faith like a grain of mustard seed, 17:20). We should understand Jesus as appealing to this well-known view rather than to his having surveyed all the seeds and come up with the conclusion that there is none smaller than this (in fact, some seeds are smaller). The point of the parable is that this very little seed grows into a sizeable plant, one larger than all the plants of the garden,78 and indeed in its mature state becomes a tree79 (it can grow to a height of 8 to 12 feet). Jesus passes over the various stages of its growth; for this parable they are irrelevant. He is concerned with the contrast between the tiny seed and the mature majestic plant. So that introduces the thought of result;80 the consequence of the great growth of the plant from the tiny seed is that birds81 come and roost82 in its branches (cf. Dan. 4:12, 20–21; Ezek. 31:6). The little detail about the birds roosting fills out the picture of the seed growing into a tree; in the end the mustard plant fulfils all the functions of a tree. This points up the strong contrast between the tiny seed and the tree that is the end result of the seed. The kingdom may be considered insignificant in its beginnings and was doubtless despised by many in Jesus’ day because of this. But in the end its growth would be extensive; it would be a very great kingdom indeed. There is also the thought of the continuity between the seed and the grown plant; it is from the mustard seed and that seed only that the mustard plant grew. So it is from Jesus and his little band that the mighty kingdom of heaven would emerge. And if we can reason from the connection with all the nations in the Ezekiel passage, there will be representatives of all peoples in the kingdom.
33. Jesus moves to a twin parable conveying much the same teaching (this one is not in Mark, but it is found in almost identical words in Luke). He repeats the formula of verses 24 and 31 as well as the reference to the kingdom of heaven. This time he gives us a picture of a woman at work preparing food. Bread was normally baked in homes, not obtained from bakers’ shops, and Jesus pictures a woman occupied in this task. Most translations refer to her as using “yeast,” but this is not strictly accurate. Leaven was a piece of last week’s dough, which certainly made this week’s dough rise, but was not strictly “yeast.”83 Some exegetes hold that leaven must be taken as a symbol for evil on the grounds that this is the way it is to be understood in the Old Testament (Morgan, for example). But this is not invariably the case, for leaven was sometimes specified for use in sacrificial offerings (Lev. 7:13; 23:17–18). That in some contexts it may be used as a symbol for evil forces does not mean that in others it cannot stand for what is good. We should take this parable as making much the same point as the previous one; they reinforce one another. Jesus speaks of the woman as putting84 her piece of leaven into three measures of flour85 (the quantity used by Sarah, Gen. 18:6; Gideon, Judg. 6:19; and Hannah, 1 Sam. 1:24) until the whole was leavened. The leaven was but a small amount, but in time it changed the large quantity of flour. Like the previous parable this one brings out the contrast and the continuity between the small beginnings of the kingdom and its great consummation. The little group of disciples might be despised as preaching a kingdom too insignificant to be noticed, but as surely as a tiny piece of leaven had its effect on a large mass of dough, so surely would the kingdom have its effect throughout the world. The parable also makes the point that the power that effects the change comes from outside the dough; the mass of dough does not change itself.86
6. Parables in Prophecy, 13:34–35
34All these things Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables, and without a parable he spoke nothing to them; 35so that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through the prophet, saying, “I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter things secret from the foundation of the world.”
At this point Matthew inserts a characteristic appeal to prophecy. He finds not only individual events in Jesus’ life and ministry to be fulfillments of prophecy but also the parabolic method.
34. All these things signifies the totality of the preceding section of teaching about the kingdom with its series of parables. The aorist tense in the first spoke views that teaching as a whole, but it should not be pressed to mean that it was all given on one occasion (though, of course, it is not inconsistent with that view). The second spoke is in the imperfect tense and has the force “he used to speak”; it points to the habitual mode of teaching. Matthew is not saying that Jesus never taught in any other way than by using parables, but he certainly maintains that this was his common practice, and perhaps also that this was the way he taught about the kingdom. The crowds could so easily understand plain teaching on the kingdom in a political sense, but parables made this much more difficult.
35. The purpose87 is to show that Jesus’ use of parables was in order to fulfil prophecy, this particular prophecy being contained in Psalm 78:288 (for Matthew the whole Old Testament comes from God and is thus prophetic; for him there is no problem in seeing prophecy contained in a Psalm, and in any case Asaph is expressly said to have prophesied, 1 Chron. 25:2, and to have been a seer, 2 Chron. 29:30). In this context parables indicates wise sayings of a pictorial kind in general and is not to be limited to the stories with which we are familiar from Jesus’ teaching. From his affirmation of his intention to speak in this way the Psalmist goes on to affirm that what he will say89 has been secret from the foundation of the world. That is to say, he intends to utter no commonplace, but things that God has revealed. That they have never been known from the beginning of the world90 indicates that they are not attainable by human search. Asaph picks out significant points in the history of Israel and shows that the divine purpose has been worked out despite the rebelliousness of the people. Just as God’s salvation was made clear in Asaph’s interpretation of history, Matthew is saying, so is God’s salvation brought out in the parables of Jesus.
7. The Meaning of the Parable of the Weeds, 13:36–43
36Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples came to him and said, “Explain for us the parable of the weeds of the field.” 37And he answered, saying, “He who sows the good seed is the Son of man; 38and the field is the world; and as for the good seed, these are the sons of the kingdom; and the weeds are the sons of the evil one; 39and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; and the harvest is the end of the age; and the reapers are the angels. 40Therefore as the weeds are gathered together and burned in fire, so will it be at the end of the age. 41The Son of man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all the things that cause sin and the people who commit lawlessness. 42And they will cast them into the blazing furnace; there there will be weeping and grinding of teeth. 43Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He that has ears, let him hear.”
For a second time Jesus explains the meaning of a parable; on the first occasion it was in response to a question from the disciples as to why he used this method, this time it is in response to their request for an explanation. His reply has a marked eschatological emphasis and makes it clear that he is speaking about what will happen at the end of the age. Then God’s righteous purpose will be vindicated and wickedness will receive its fitting recompense.91
36. Matthew’s favorite Then carries us along to the next item in the sequence. As often, this Evangelist speaks of the crowds, and he says that at this point in his teaching Jesus left them92 and went into the house (he had gone out of the house in v. 1). Matthew thus takes up the private instruction of those committed to Jesus as against Jesus’ public preaching to the crowds. Some students view this as the center point of this Gospel: until now Jesus has been largely engaged in teaching the people generally, but from now on he concentrates on the disciples. Since Matthew puts no emphasis on the words, we can scarcely regard it as his intention to mark the major turning point in his account of Jesus’ teaching, but there is undeniably a change of emphasis from here on. Matthew tells us that the disciples approached Jesus and asked for an explanation of the parable of the weeds.93
37. Matthew has his common formula for a reply (“having answered he said”), and he reports Jesus’ explanation. His series of ands94 links statements that explain the features of the parable in detail. He begins with the man who sows the good seed, who is the Son of man (see on 8:20); the seed is good (as in v. 24). If the present tense is significant, it may be meant to indicate that the sowing goes on; Jesus is not speaking of a once-for-all piece of sowing, but indicates that he is continually active in his field.
38. The field is the world indicates that the good seed is widely distributed. World is a term that may have any one of several meanings, but here it clearly denotes the entire population of this inhabited globe. Jesus is speaking of no narrow particularism. It is interesting that the good seed is not the words that tell of the kingdom, but the sons95 of the kingdom, the people who receive and respond to the word. They are characterized by their relationship to the kingdom; they belong to the kingdom. The weeds also belong—to the evil one! Jesus makes a sharp distinction: in the end people belong either to the kingdom or to Satan.
39. The enemy (see on 5:43) picks out the devil (see on 4:1) as THE foe of God and of good (for that matter of people, too, but this is not stressed in this parable). Satan then brings evil people into God’s good world. But they can flourish only for a time, for the harvest is coming. It is defined as the end of the age, where end points to the consummation,96 and age to this whole life. The word may be used of any age, the past, the present, or the future, but in a context like this the present age is clearly in mind; Jesus is speaking of the end of this life as we know it. The picture of harvest is carried on, with the reapers defined as the angels.97 The angels are associated with the consummation elsewhere (16:27; 24:31; 25:31). Jesus assigns to them an important part.
40. Therefore leads us to the consequence of the picture Jesus has painted. Since things are to take place as outlined in the parable, there will be the equivalent98 of the burning of the weeds. The parable led up to the point where the weeds were gathered and burned, and life in this world leads up to the end of the age (in v. 39 neither noun had the article; here both have it, but there seems to be no difference in meaning). Jesus is talking about “the end of time” (REB, JB), the completion of all that is involved in this age.
41. For the Son of man see on 8:20; at the end of the age he will have the supreme place. Some emphasis is put on send by placing it first in the sentence; Jesus is not referring to some function that the angels will naturally perform, but one that they will carry out only because it is he who will send them to do it. They will gather (the same verb as in vv. 28 and 30) the evil people out of the Son of man’s kingdom, an expression that indicates that in the end his kingdom will embrace all people, evil as well as good. There is no escaping his rule. His kingdom is not a common expression (though cf. 16:28; 20:21; Luke 22:29–30; John 18:36; Col. 1:13, etc.). The ultimate sovereignty is more usually ascribed to the Father, but it is clear that the Son is one with him in the final rule. The reaping process will include gathering the things that cause sin99 as well as the people who do lawless things. In the final state of affairs those traps will be taken away completely. Jesus speaks of people who do lawlessness,100 where the reference will be to the law of God. In this life there are people who overlook or defy the divine law, but that is not permanent: it lasts only for the here and now. The expression reminds us of the importance and the permanence of the divine law. For the thought of the whole parable cf. Zephaniah 1:3.
42. In words reminiscent of Daniel 3:6 Jesus speaks of the fate of the lawless ones. The angels will cast101 them into the blazing furnace (lit. “furnace of fire”), which fits in with other passages using the imagery of fire for the final destination of the wicked.102 In that place (there) there will be misery, symbolized by the specification of weeping and grinding of teeth.103 This expression occurs 6 times in Matthew, once in Luke, and nowhere else in the New Testament. It leaves no doubt about the unhappiness of the final state of the lost.104
43. At that time (see on 2:7 for Matthew’s frequent then) the righteous will shine. Here the righteous are those accepted as righteous on the last great day; the term points to their acceptability, not to their meritorious achievement. Shine represents a verb found here only in the New Testament; the comparison to the sun brings out the radiance of the life to which they have come (cf. Dan. 12:3). For kingdom see on 3:2; it is mostly in this Gospel the kingdom of heaven, with now and then the kingdom of God, but this appears to be the only place where God’s fatherhood is linked with the kingdom. It perhaps brings out the thought that the one who will rule us through eternity is a father to us. The kingdom is not harsh authority but fatherly love. For He that has ears see on 11:15. It is an injunction to the listener to understand what he hears.
8. Three Short Parables, 13:44–50
44“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid, and from joy over it he goes off and sells all he has and buys that field. 45Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls; 46and when he had found one pearl of great price, he went away and sold all he had and bought it. 47Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet cast into the sea and catching fish of every kind. 48When it was filled, they drew it up on the beach; and they sat down and gathered the good ones into baskets, but the bad they threw away. 49So will it be at the end of the age; the angels will go out and separate the wicked from the righteous, 50and will throw them into the blazing furnace; there there will be weeping and grinding of teeth.”
Matthew proceeds to record three little parables each of which starts with “the kingdom of heaven is like —.” The first two stress the value of the kingdom, and the third the finality of the separation that will take place at the end of this age. All three are found only in this Gospel.
44. Jesus likens the kingdom to a man who finds treasure (see on 6:19) hidden in the field. Treasure might denote the place where valuables are kept (2:11), but here it is the valuable thing itself. In a day when places for keeping things safe that we take for granted (like the safe deposits in banks) did not exist people had to make their own arrangements. One method they employed was to bury their valuable possessions (as did the unprofitable servant who hid his talent, 25:25). If anyone did this before going off on a journey and failed to return, the possessions remained there and might be found later through a chance discovery like that in this parable. So too, in frequent wars, people would hide valuables to keep them from looting soldiers, and sometimes the owners would not survive. The field might be a piece of ground used for growing crops or grazing animals, but the term sometimes denotes country as opposed to city, so we cannot insist on the location being a farm or the like. When anyone found treasure like this, the legal position appears to have been that the finder was entitled to keep it.105 But acquiring legal title to such a find was not always straightforward. If the finder was an employee, his employer could argue that he was acting as his agent, especially if the employer happened to own the land where the find was made. And if he was his employer’s agent in “lifting” the treasure, then the treasure belonged to the employer. This will be the reason the man hid the treasure instead of “lifting” it straightaway; if he “lifted” it before the field was his, it might be argued that when he did the “lifting” he was acting as the owner’s agent. By buying the land before “lifting” the treasure, he removed all possibility of dispute. It is in this connection that we should understand the man’s buying the field (that he had to sell all he had to buy it indicates that he was a poor man). Sometimes it is objected that it was not a very honest thing for a man to do to buy up a field in which he knew there was treasure. But in the first instance, Jesus does not say that he kept his knowledge hidden; we cannot say for sure that he did not disclose it. And in the second, the legal position was that the find belonged to him, but buying the field was the surest way of making his possession absolutely secure.106 In any case Jesus is not dealing with the morality or the legality of the man’s action, but making the point that there can be treasure such that it is worth selling everything in order to possess it. So with membership in the kingdom.
Jesus says that the man was very happy over his discovery; finding treasure must surely be a joyful experience. The Greek here could mean “in his joy” (NRSV) or “joy of it” (i.e., the treasure; cf. Knox, “for the joy it gives him”), but in practice there is no significant difference. The man’s joy leads him to go off and buy the field, even though this means that he must first sell all he has. Jesus is not saying that a man may buy his way into the kingdom; that would fly in the face of all his teaching. The selling of all he has is rather a way of bringing out the truth that one should count all well lost for the sake of the kingdom.107 It may not appear to be riches from the world’s point of view, but membership in the kingdom has superlative value.
45. Again is used often when a speaker takes up a formula he has used previously. Jesus moves to another parable of the same sort, this time referring to a merchant108 on the lookout for fine pearls.109 Whereas in the previous parable the man apparently stumbled across the treasure by accident when he had no such thing in mind, in this story the man knows quite well what he wants and is definitely on the lookout for the best in the way of pearls (Bruce speaks of the kingdom here as “the object of systematic quest and venturesome faith). Nevertheless there is still some element of the unexpected in his discovery: “this pearl he did not expect” (Hamann).
46. The quest is successful and the merchant finds just one pearl, but it is of great price.110 He acted as decisively and at the same cost as the man in the previous parable. He went off, sold111 everything,112 and acquired that wonderful pearl. The story is teaching us much the same as did the previous parable. Again we see that it is well to take decisive action while the opportunity is there, and that no cost is too great when it is a matter of gaining the kingdom. The sacrifice of all that a man has is not too much. But in this second parable there is the further point that, whereas the man with the treasure could sell part of it and still be wealthy, the man with the pearl must retain it; his delight was in possessing it, not in the profit he could make from it.
47. With this third parable comes a change of direction. Instead of a third story about the worth of the kingdom we have one that, like the parable of the weeds, tells us about the intermingling of good and bad at the present time and the certainty of their separation at the end of the age. Fisherfolk from around the Sea of Galilee would appreciate the reference to the dragnet,113 which must have been commonly used in that stretch of water. This story differs from both of the previous parables in that, whereas they were concerned only with acquiring one valuable thing, this one speaks of acquiring a host, comprising both what is valuable and what is valueless. There is no discrimination about netting fish; everything in the area, good and bad alike, is caught up.
48. Putting out the net is the first process, but then comes the drawing of it in with all the fish enclosed. The net is said to be filled; there has been a good catch. It is drawn up on the beach, so Jesus is speaking of the hauling in114 of the fish at the end of the operation. Sitting was apparently the normal position for the sorting operation, when they gathered the good ones into baskets (it is not without its interest that the same verb is used of gathering the evil “out of” the scene in v. 41 and of the good “into” their place here).115 The bad116 were discarded; they simply threw them away. They had no value, so what else could fisherfolk do with them?
49. So will it be at the end of the age is repeated exactly as in verse 40 (where see notes). Again the angels are seen in their function at the end of time. They will go out, but nothing is said about the place from which they will make their exit. It is possible that we should understand some such words as “from heaven,” but more probably the verb means that they will “make an appearance” or perhaps that they will commence their task. That task is described as separating117 the wicked from the righteous. The former term refers, of course, to those who have lived evil lives and have not repented and sought the divine forgiveness. The righteous are those who are accepted by God, those who are adjudged as in the right when they are judged before the divine tribunal. It is easy to misinterpret this as though Jesus were talking of an ethical virtue and holding that those who have attained this virtue by their own efforts are righteous.118 But throughout this Gospel there is an emphasis on the “little ones,” the “poor,” those who have no merit of their own, and it is those of whom Jesus speaks here. Those who are finally righteous are those who realize their own shortcomings and rely on God’s mercy.
50. This verse is identical with verse 42. See the commentary there.
9. The Householder, 13:51–52
51“Have you understood all these things?” They say to him, “Yes.” 52And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has become a disciple in the kingdom of heaven is like a man who is a householder who brings out of his treasure things new and old.”
Matthew rounds off the teaching session with a little section on understanding Jesus’ teaching and the importance both of the new and the old teachings. This is found only in Matthew’s Gospel.
51. This is the end of a solid session of teaching, and Jesus asks the disciples whether they have understood. They are in no doubt that they have understood, and they reply briefly, “Yes.”119 This may perhaps be a trifle glib, for there is evidence in the remainder of the Gospel that their understanding was somewhat imperfect. But Jesus raises no question, and we may be sure that, with whatever uncertainty there may have been about details, they had understood the main thrust of what Jesus had said. At any rate there were no questions.
52. Since the meaning of this little parable is not as obvious as is that of some of the other parables, there have been many interpretations (see Carson). We should probably reject interpretations that see a class of Christian scribes or that see Jesus as the householder. It is more likely that he is adding a little postscript about the happy state of the well-instructed disciple. Therefore connects with the preceding; because of their understanding certain things follow. For scribe see on 5:20; mostly in the Gospels it is used in a pejorative sense for learned people who strongly opposed Jesus and whose understanding of the real meaning of the law was superficial. But here it is not such scribes who are in mind, but one whose studies proceed from a genuine humility and lead him into a true understanding of the things of God. Jesus speaks of him as having become a disciple120 in the kingdom of heaven, which points to the truth that the scribe in question has not only applied himself to the teaching Jesus has been giving but has also committed himself to all that the kingdom stands for. Jesus likens such a person to a man (notice Matthew’s fondness for this word; he could have made the point by referring only to a householder, and most translations omit man) who is a householder,121 and thus a significant person, one with possessions. Treasure may denote the container in which valuables are kept or the treasure itself (as in v. 44); here it clearly refers to the container. The good householder has in his treasure box some new things and some old things: he despises neither the new nor the old as such. It is the temptation of both the radical and the conservative to value the one too highly and the other too lightly. Jesus is pointing out that there are fresh insights that are of value and that there are also teachings that have stood the test of time. If the word order is significant, the new matters more than the old and Jesus is saying that the new teachings his followers are embracing do not do away with the old teachings (those in the Old Testament), but are the key to understanding them. The new age has dawned, and it is only in recognition of that fact that the old can be understood in its essential function of preparing the way for the new.