Iv. The End Of Jesus’ Ministry In Galilee, 13:53–18:35

Iv. The End Of Jesus’ Ministry In Galilee, 13:53–18:35

IV. THE END OF JESUS’ MINISTRY IN GALILEE, 13:53–18:35

Although Matthew has not tried to disguise the fact that there was some opposition to Jesus from the first, his book so far has been mostly concerned with the wonderful teaching of Jesus and with the way people flocked around him to hear him teach and to see the miracles he did. But this did not last. Matthew now makes it clear that the opposition grew. There were still faithful and loyal followers, but in these chapters he tells us of people who failed to respond in the right way. We see the opposition growing and becoming increasingly bitter; in time it would lead to the cross. Matthew begins with two stories of rejection: the rejection of Jesus by the people of Nazareth and the rejection of John the Baptist, slain at the hands of Herod. These two stories make a fitting introduction to the next section of this Evangelist’s narrative.

A. A Prophet without Honor, 13:53–58

⁵³And it came about that when Jesus had finished these parables, he went away from there. ⁵⁴And when he had come to his hometown, he taught them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished and said, “Where did this man get this wisdom from, and the miraculous powers? ⁵⁵Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary, and his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? ⁵⁶And his sisters, are they not all with us? Where then did this man get all these things?” ⁵⁷And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own hometown and his own household.” ⁵⁸And he did not do many miracles there on account of their lack of faith.

All three Synoptists tell of a visit Jesus paid to his hometown, though neither Matthew nor Mark mentions its name, and only Luke says that it was Nazareth. It is not certain that the visit in Luke is the same as that in Matthew and Mark: it seems to be located earlier and contains an account of Jesus’ sermon in the synagogue that is lacking in Matthew’s account, as is the attempt to throw Jesus over a cliff. Earlier Matthew spoke of Jesus as going away from Nazareth (4:13), which might refer to an earlier visit. All the accounts agree that Jesus received a poor reception in his hometown. Luke has far and away the longest narrative, including as it does Jesus’ sermon in the synagogue. As is usual, Mark’s narrative is longer than that of Matthew (127 words, compared to 106). But Matthew has the essentials; he makes it clear that the people of Nazareth were astonished at Jesus’ wisdom and his miraculous powers. But they still rejected him.

53. For And it came about that and its place as marking the end of a major discourse and a transition to another section see the note on 7:28. The construction is often used to carry the narrative along in Luke (and in the Old Testament), but Matthew has only five examples; this one points to the end of the teaching session in which Jesus had told these parables, that is, those Matthew has just narrated. Jesus went away from there, which means that he left the place by the sea (v. 1) where Matthew locates the teaching of the parables. He gives no indication of whether Jesus embarked on a preaching tour, or whether he decided to rest for a time or engage in some other activity. Matthew simply marks the end of the parable session and moves on to Jesus’ visit to Nazareth.‍¹²²‍

54. Jesus came to his hometown.‍¹²³‍ Matthew says nothing about what he did there until he went to the synagogue and began to teach (the imperfect is probably inceptive; so ‍NIV‍, “began teaching”). The synagogue (see on 4:23) was the center of community life; this is Matthew’s last mention of a synagogue (though he has a couple of references to what went on “in synagogues,” 23:6, 34); from this point on Jesus’ ministry was carried on outside official Judaism. The synagogue exercised a variety of functions; in a small town like Nazareth it would be especially important. Here what is to the fore is the fact that it was a place for teaching, and Matthew is interested in Jesus’ function as teacher. He does not tell us how Jesus came to be teaching, but it was common for synagogue officials to invite visitors to teach, and they would certainly be interested to hear what one of their own people had to say. Matthew does not tell us what Jesus said, only that it impressed the hearers, with the result that they were astonished.‍¹²⁴‍ They were impressed by two things: Jesus’ wisdom and his miraculous powers. They asked where he got these things from: he certainly did not get them from Nazareth. The question of origin was important for them: Did these things come from God? Or were they of human or even demonic origin? Wisdom is a word covering a wide range, from shrewdness in ordinary daily life to “mental excellence in its highest and fullest sense” (‍AS‍); in the New Testament it is used of purely human wisdom but also of the divine wisdom and the wisdom God gives to people. The Nazarenes spoke of this wisdom, so it was wisdom that Jesus demonstrated in his teaching that impressed them. He was wise beyond the possibilities of a village sage, and they recognized this. With this they join miraculous powers (or “mighty works,” “miracles”),‍¹²⁵‍ which presents us with a problem because Jesus did not do many such works in Nazareth (v. 58) and none is recorded up to this point. It may be that Jesus did do something that astonished them (and which the Gospels do not record), or, more probably, they may be referring to what they had heard about him. They are not denying that Jesus had wisdom and miraculous powers; they only question the source.

55–56. They explode in a series of questions stressing the fact that Jesus was no more than “one of us.” The questions are expressed in such a way as to look for the answer “Yes.” There may be a note of contempt in their use of “this” in their first question, for the term often conveys the notion of “this fellow.” They start with his parentage as they knew it, asking “Is he not the carpenter’s‍¹²⁶‍ son?” (Mark has “Is he not the carpenter?”), and move on to speak of his mother, whose name is Mary. For good measure they add his brothers and give their names. They go on to his sisters, though without giving their names. But they are all with us.‍¹²⁷‍ That is the point. Jesus comes from a village family, and that is proved by the fact that the father and mother, the four boys, and the girls are all well known to the speakers and perhaps still living there. There is no denying that Jesus did not belong with the higher-ups. He is a villager, they are saying, just like them. They ask where he got all these things. In view of his family connections, they are reasoning, his rightful place was in their own community, doing the things that villagers did. He had no business teaching people and doing miracles. In their minds they cut him down to size.

57. And because they saw him as no more than another villager like them, they took offense‍¹²⁸‍ at him.‍¹²⁹‍ He did not fit into their categories, so they rejected him. This led Jesus to speak about the way a prophet is commonly treated. Matthew is more than a little interested in prophets; he uses the word “prophet” more often than does any other writer in the New Testament (37 times; next is Acts with 30). It refers to the great religious leaders who spoke the word of God, not by way of reinterpreting words spoken previously, but as those in direct touch with God who passed on what God said. It is used of the great religious figures of the Old Testament who set forth the way of God, and it is used of John the Baptist (14:5; 21:26). Here in what may have been a proverbial saying Jesus clearly uses it of himself. This is an important claim, for, apart from John the Baptist, there had been no prophet for centuries. Jesus had immediate communion with the Father, and he could and did authoritatively set out what God said. But what God says is not immediately obvious to people in general, nor is it often palatable. So a prophet is often rejected. Jesus points out that this is particularly true of those who know him best, those in his own hometown and especially those of his own household. Like Jesus’ own earthly family, they find it difficult to think that one of their own could possibly be different. He grew up with them, he belongs to them, he cannot be different from them. It is sobering to reflect that what is true of prophets in general Jesus experienced too.

58. The story concludes with the sad comment that Jesus did not do many miracles in Nazareth. This is seen by many as a contradiction of Mark, who says that Jesus could not do any miracles there. But this is not quite accurate. Mark goes on to say, “except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them” (Mark 6:5). Matthew incidentally does not mention these healings. Both Evangelists are saying that in his own hometown Jesus met with unbelief and that he did not do many miracles, though he did do some.‍¹³⁰‍

Matthew 14

B. The Death of John the Baptist, 14:1–12

¹At that time Herod the Tetrarch heard the report about Jesus. ²And he said to his servants, “This is John the Baptist; he has risen from the dead, and therefore miraculous powers are at work in him.”

³For Herod had arrested John, bound him, and put him in prison because of Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip. ⁴For John had said to him, “It is not lawful for you to have her.” ⁵And he wanted to kill him, but was afraid of the people, for they held him to be a prophet.

⁶But when Herod’s birthday came, the daughter of Herodias danced before them and pleased Herod. ⁷Therefore he promised with an oath that he would give her whatever she asked. ⁸Prompted by her mother, she said, “Give me the head of John the Baptist here, on a plate.” ⁹And although the king was grieved, because of the oaths and the guests he commanded it to be given. ¹⁰And he sent and had John beheaded in the prison. ¹¹And his head was brought on a plate and was given to the girl, and she brought it to her mother. ¹²And his disciples came and took the body and buried it; and they came and told Jesus.

Matthew follows his account of Jesus’ rejection by telling us of the way John the Baptist was put to death. He has given an account of John’s ministry in chapter 3, and he has mentioned him briefly in 4:12; 9:14. He has told his readers also of John’s imprisonment, of the questions he asked of Jesus, and of Jesus’ response (11:2–19). Now he rounds it all off by telling how John’s death came about.‍¹‍

1. At that time (again in 11:25; 12:1) is an indefinite expression, indicating that what follows took place at around the time of the events just described, but without attempting any precision. Matthew has the name Herod (for the Tetrarch) 4 times in this chapter, but not elsewhere (it is used for King Herod throughout ch. 2). Tetrarch‍²‍ means strictly “ruler over a fourth part,” but it was also used to denote petty rulers of various kinds (NEB has “Prince Herod”). It denoted a status below that of ethnarch (2 Cor. 11:32), which in turn was below a king. Precisely what the reasons were for bestowing any of these titles and the exact differences they denoted are not now clear; probably the size of the territory to be ruled and the measure of independence the Romans allowed were significant factors. There seems to have been a certain fluidity in the use of the titles; natural human vanity meant that, for example, tetrarchs liked to be called “king” and flattering courtiers were always ready to oblige. People in general may well have used the term “king” of their ruler (Mark speaks of “King Herod” here, and Matthew calls him “the king,” v. 9). Archelaus, though an ethnarch, is said to “reign as king” (2:22; see also Josephus, Ant. 18.92). King Herod the Great in his will divided his kingdom into three parts; the title Ethnarch was given to Archelaus who ruled over Judea, and Tetrarch to Herod Antipas and Herod Philip. Herod Antipas, the Tetrarch mentioned here, thus ruled one of three parts (not four, as his title suggests); he was Tetrarch of Galilee and Perea 4 B.C.–A.D. 39, and accordingly the ruler over the region in which Jesus lived out most of his life. Herod heard the report about Jesus.‍³‍ Matthew does not say who brought the report, but obviously any tetrarch would have sources of information about what went on in his region.

2. Herod reacted by speaking to “his boys.”‍⁴‍ This is John the Baptist (for this expression see on 3:1) is a curious reaction. It would seem that Herod had been unwilling to kill John but had been maneuvered into it, and that he still had a conscience about it. He evidently had regarded John as a real prophet and had had a deep respect for him. He should have known that John could not be identified with Jesus, for the ministries of the two had overlapped and Jesus had been active at the very time that Herod had imprisoned John. But he was probably not well informed about what must have seemed unimportant movements at the grass-roots level. In any case superstition and a bad conscience make a strong couple, and they led Herod into this curious affirmation. He goes on to say that “he‍⁵‍ has risen from the dead.”‍⁶‍ Therefore introduces the reason, but the logic of it is far from obvious. If in fact John had come back from the dead, that scarcely seems to be a reason for him to exercise miraculous powers, all the more so since John did no miracle (John 10:41). But it is perhaps not too big a step from a man miraculously alive to a man working miraculously; that he was now alive when everyone knew that he had been killed may have seemed to Herod to mean that he had miraculous power.‍⁷‍ Herod does not say “he does miracles,” but “miracles are at work in him”; clearly the miracles made a deep impression.

3. Now Matthew slips in an account of the events that led up to the death of John. His account is very much shorter than Mark’s, but he has the essentials and the reader has a well-rounded account of John’s death even if we must look elsewhere for many details. Herod‍⁸‍ had arrested John, we read, bound him (“he had him chained,” ‍GNB‍, is too explicit; there is no mention of chains), and imprisoned him. He did this because of Herodias. This lady was a granddaughter of Herod the Great, being the daughter of his son Aristobulus. She married her uncle Herod Philip (who is to be distinguished from the tetrarch Philip, Luke 3:1), who was half brother to Herod Antipas.‍⁹‍ Herod Philip and Herodias had a daughter, Salome. Herod Antipas married a Nabatean princess (whose name is not known), the daughter of King Aretas, but he and Herodias fell in love. They agreed to marry, and Herodias left his half-brother Herod Philip (as Matthew says, she was the wife of his brother Philip; she was also his niece). The daughter of Aretas got wind of what was happening and fled to her father, who promptly went to war with Herod and defeated him (which provoked Roman intervention).‍¹⁰‍ It was a tangled and complex situation, but what is clear is that the marriage of Herod Antipas and Herodias was contrary to Old Testament law (Lev. 18:16; 20:21).

4. Matthew has explained that John’s imprisonment was on account of Herodias, but he has not explained how this came about. Now he tells us that the Baptist had said or, better, “used to say”; the tense is imperfect,‍¹¹‍ “It is not lawful for you to have her.” The marriage was a clear breach of the law of God, but the Herods had little regard for the laws of God and their marriages and intermarriages make a bewildering pattern.‍¹²‍ They saw themselves as above the laws that governed their subjects. Not so John. This man boldly pointed out that the laws of God are as binding on the highest in the land as on anyone else, and he was fearless in his denunciations of evil in high places as in low.

5. Grammatically he wanted could refer to John, but the sense makes it clear that Matthew is referring to Herod.‍¹³‍ We should probably understand this of his initial reaction, for the whole of the present story, and especially verse 9, makes it clear that at this point he was very unwilling to have John executed. This lack of desire was reinforced by the fact that he was afraid of the people.‍¹⁴‍ Herod may have been more superstitious than religious, but that was not the case with all his people. There were those who could recognize‍¹⁵‍ a prophet when they saw one. They recognized that John certainly brought a message from God and that he was rightly called a prophet. Herod might take many actions of which his people did not approve, but he was sensible enough to realize that there was no point in antagonizing them over a man like John. We should bear this in mind when it is contended that there is a contradiction between Matthew and Mark. Matthew, it is said, has altered Mark’s story that Herodias wanted to kill John but could not because Herod saw him as a righteous man and therefore protected him, into another story that it was Herod who was the main opponent of the Baptist. But surely the situation that both Evangelists envisaged was that there was hostility from both husband and wife in the palace. Herodias took strong exception to what John had said about her marriage and, careless of the consequences, wanted his execution. Herod also wanted to kill John, but he was not careless of the consequences. He hesitated, for he knew the sort of man John was and was afraid of the reaction from the people if such a holy man were executed.

6. In the modern world birthday celebrations are accepted as important and enjoyable social occasions, but this was not the Israelite custom. Of this present passage F. B. Knutson says, “When Herod celebrated his birthday he was acting in accord with a Hellenistic custom; there is no evidence for the celebration of birthdays in Israel in pre-Hellenistic times” (‍ISBE‍, I, p. 515). It seems that at first there was a celebration of the birthday only of someone who had died, but in later times this was extended so that there were celebrations of the birthdays of living persons.‍¹⁶‍ Herod, more of a Hellenist than a Jew, clearly celebrated his birthday with gusto. It is somewhat surprising that the daughter of Herodias featured in a public dance of this kind; we would expect that there would be dancing, but it would come from paid performers, not from a princess. This may be the point of the word order: “there danced the daughter of Herodias” with its emphasis on what was actually done.‍¹⁷‍ Salome danced before them,‍¹⁸‍ which makes it plain that it was a public performance. Some dancing meets with approval in Scripture, such as that at the time of the deliverance from Egypt (Exod. 15:20). The Jews also found acceptable the dancing of the maidens at the end of the ceremonies of the Day of Atonement (‍Ta‘an.‍ 4:8). But there is something repulsive about a princess performing before a crowd of (presumably) drunken men. However, whatever our scruples, the dance pleased Herod (‍REB‍ has, Herod “was delighted”).

7. For this reason‍¹⁹‍ he made an extravagant promise, and made it sure by swearing an oath. It is not clear why he used an oath; it certainly was not necessary in such a situation. His promise was far reaching: he said he would give her whatever she asked (Mark adds that he added, “up to half of my kingdom”).‍²⁰‍ The scarcely sober ruler was in earnest about expressing his appreciation of the dancing.

8. But how to take advantage of it? This must have been puzzling as well as exciting for the girl, so she consulted her mother (Mark tells us that she did this; Matthew as usual abbreviates the narrative). It was on her mother’s prompting‍²¹‍ that she asked for the head of John the Baptist. Nothing in the narrative indicates that the daughter had any particular animosity against John, but clearly John’s accusation had rankled with Herodias more than it did with Herod, and she was able to communicate enough of her anger to her daughter to get her to make the request. Some commentators hold that Matthew shifts the blame to Herod’s shoulders, whereas Mark makes Herodias the more guilty party. But it is clear from this verse that the proposal for John’s execution came from Herodias, not Herod. It was on her urging that Salome specified that she wanted the head here (Mark has “at once”) and that she wanted it on a plate,‍²²‍ which seem unusual specifications. Perhaps Herodias feared that Herod would vacillate if he were given the opportunity; after all, his heart was not in it and he did not want to execute John. So the girl says that she wants the head here and now, while her on a plate spells execution.

9. The request was far from pleasing to the king (this is the only place where Matthew gives him this title);‍²³‍ ‍Phillips‍ brings out something of his consternation by translating, “Herod was aghast at this”; alternatively we could understand the meaning as “stricken with grief.” Clearly the request was totally unexpected and totally unwelcome. It was no part of Herod’s plan to see John dead. But two things weighed with him: the oaths and the guests.‍²⁴‍ Matthew has referred to only one oath, but there is nothing surprising in the tetrarch’s repeating what he had said;‍²⁵‍ his promise was effusive. And while Herod was in many respects an evil man, he did not want to go back on sworn oaths, especially oaths sworn before so many guests.‍²⁶‍ So the oaths and the guests were decisive. He gave the necessary order.‍²⁷‍

10–11. Herod sent and beheaded John, there, where he was in the prison. It was against Jewish law to execute a man without a trial, and beheading was not a Jewish form of execution, but Herod could be careless of Jewish law and customs. Josephus tells us that John was imprisoned at Machaerus, and since there was a palace there, evidently that was where the birthday feast and the execution took place. And, as the girl‍²⁸‍ had requested, the head was brought‍²⁹‍ on a plate and given to her. Not surprisingly, she gave it to her mother. It had been the mother’s idea, and it was the mother above all who wanted John dead.

12. Matthew rounds off the narrative with John’s disciples providing for his burial and then letting Jesus know what had happened. We have met John’s disciples before, namely when they came to Jesus with John’s question (11:2). On this occasion they were apparently not hindered in taking John’s body and making arrangements for its burial. We are not told where the burial was carried out, only that it was done (the MSS are divided on whether to read they buried “it” or “him,” but there is no great difference). The burial completed, they came and told Jesus. Matthew does not say why they did this, but they would certainly have realized from Jesus’ answer to John’s question that he was very much in sympathy with John, much more so than, say, the Jewish hierarchy. And Matthew may be saying that some at any rate of John’s followers now considered Jesus to be their leader.

C. Some Miracles of Jesus, 14:13–36

Matthew has sounded the note of rejection, both of Jesus and of John the Baptist, and sad notes will be struck more frequently as his narrative proceeds. But all is not doom and gloom, and he now lets us see Jesus still at work and finding acceptance among the people. He relates a number of miracles, including the feeding of the five thousand, walking on the water, and some healings. Despite the rejections, it is still the same Jesus of whom Matthew writes, the Jesus who does wonderful things.

1. The Feeding of the Five Thousand, 14:13–21

¹³Now when Jesus heard this, he went away from there privately by boat to a deserted place; and when the crowds heard of this, they followed him from the towns on foot. ¹⁴And when he came ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick.

¹⁵Now when evening came, the disciples approached him, saying, “The place is remote and the time is already late; send the crowds away so that they may go off to the villages and buy themselves food.” ¹⁶But Jesus said to them, “They have no need to go away; you give them something to eat.” ¹⁷But they say to him, “We have here nothing but five loaves and two fish.” ¹⁸But he said, “Bring them here to me.” ¹⁹And he told the crowds to recline on the grass, took the five loaves and the two fish, looked up to heaven, gave thanks, broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples to the crowds. ²⁰And they all ate and were satisfied; and they took up what remained over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. ²¹Now those who ate were about five thousand men, apart from women and children.

All told there are six accounts of miraculous feedings in the Gospels, two each in Matthew and Mark and one each in Luke and John (15:32–39; Mark 6:30–44; 8:1–10; Luke 9:10–17; John 6:1–15). Loaves and fish often appear in the art of the early church. Clearly the early church was very interested in this aspect of Jesus’ ministry. Perhaps this was because believers remembered that God had fed his people with manna in olden days in the wilderness (this is brought out in the discourse in John 6 immediately after the story of the feeding of the five thousand), and they looked forward to the messianic banquet at the end of the age. John says that the miraculous feeding took place near the Passover (John 6:4), so it happened about a year before Jesus’ crucifixion. The feeding of the five thousand is the only miracle of Jesus (apart from his resurrection) that finds a place in each of the four Gospels; clearly it was a story that appealed to the Evangelists. We should bear in mind that it was concerned with bread, the basic food. In modern times we have so many other foods that we scarcely realize how central bread was to life in Bible times. But for people then bread was desperately important; it can stand for “necessary food” (e.g., Gen. 3:19, where ‍NIV‍ translates the Hebrew for “bread” as “food”; so also in Gen. 28:20 and elsewhere). Similarly the end of a period of drought is signaled by the Lord providing “bread” (Ruth 1:6). Times of trouble may be brought out with expressions like “bread of adversity” (Isa. 30:20) or people seeking for bread (Lam. 1:11). God’s provision for his people is spoken of as “bread from heaven” (Neh. 9:15), while blessing may be described as a plentiful supply of bread (Prov. 28:19). A miracle that meant multiplying bread was thus especially significant; it pointed to God’s giving his people abundance of blessing.

We should notice that this incident introduces a section in which Matthew brings out the disciples’ shortcomings and their failure to understand what Jesus was doing and to believe in him (vv. 15, 26, 30; 15:16, 23, 33; 16:5, 22; 17:4, 16). It is often said that Matthew glosses over the failures of the disciples, so this series of statements should be borne in mind.

The miracle has been understood as a “miracle” that took place in people’s attitudes. When the small boy gave his lunch to Jesus, this reasoning runs, he shamed those many who were keeping the food they had brought with them well hidden lest they have to share it. Now they brought it out and shared, and behold! there was enough for all and plenty over. Another suggestion is that we should understand a token meal, something like Holy Communion (indeed, ‍Gundry‍ speaks of Jesus as “the host at this ‘Lord’s Supper,’ ” p. 293). But neither suggestion does justice to what the Evangelists say. Any fair exegesis of the Gospels leads us to see a striking miracle wherein the incarnate Son of God multiplied a small amount of food so that there was abundance for the crowds. “It is impossible to reduce the event to ordinary human dimensions. It stands as witness to the fact that God can and does supply human need in the way he sees best” (‍Melinsky‍).‍³⁰‍

13. Verses 3–12 have been a parenthesis in which Matthew responds to Herod’s view that in Jesus’ ministry John the Baptist had been raised from the dead by explaining how that great man died. We should take what he writes now as following on from verse 2 rather than from the immediately preceding. When Jesus heard of Herod’s reaction to his ministry, he withdrew‍³¹‍ from there. Matthew does not say where he went, but it was to a deserted place and, since he and his followers went there by boat, clearly it was on the other side of the lake (Matthew often has the definite article with “boat,” but not here). The destination was deserted (“a remote place,” ‍REB‍; not “a desert,” for there was grass there, v. 19) and they went privately, so evidently they were looking for a place where they could be alone. But such hopes were to be disappointed. Evidently they spoke of their destination, and the crowds heard it. They were just as determined to be with Jesus as he and the disciples were to be alone. So the people followed him. The Sea of Galilee is not a huge area of water, and it would be fairly obvious from the direction the men in the boat took where they would come to land. The people were from the towns, which indicates that the word had spread from the center at which Jesus embarked to other towns. The people went on foot; there was no transport, and they evidently had no access to boats.

14. The result was that when Jesus came ashore‍³²‍ he found a large group of people instead of the solitude for which he had crossed the lake. Matthew ignores the disciples at this point and concentrates on what Jesus saw and did. He saw large numbers of people, and he had compassion on them;‍³³‍ Jesus was deeply moved at the plight of the afflicted and the poor. So on this occasion he healed their sick.‍³⁴‍ Matthew does not qualify this in any way, but leaves the impression that Jesus healed all who were unwell in that crowd. Mark tells us that Jesus taught the people “many things,” and Luke that he spoke about “the kingdom of God,” but Matthew concentrates on the healing.

15. Matthew moves to the coming of evening, which we must not put too late because of the events that took place after this; late afternoon will be the meaning—perhaps it was after the normal time for the evening meal.‍³⁵‍ The disciples is a general expression and could refer to any follower of Jesus, but here it clearly refers to the Twelve (or some of them; Luke has “the Twelve”). These men saw that the day was wearing on, and it seemed that neither Jesus nor the crowd was preparing to bring things to an end, so they took the initiative. They pointed to both place and time: the place was remote and the hour was already late.‍³⁶‍ They thought it would be prudent to do something about bringing proceedings to a close so that the people would be able to get something to eat. There might not be supplies enough in the villages round about to meet the needs of so many people, but there would, they thought, be better prospects than in a place totally bereft of shops. So they make their suggestion in the form of a command, “Send the crowds [this time the word is plural, as often in Matthew] away.” They consider it important that the people get away from their lonely situation so that (the conjunction indicates purpose) they may go off to the villages and buy themselves food. We do not know exactly where they were, but it seems that there were no large centers of population nearby. The disciples thought that villages, however, would provide what was needed. Considering the size of the crowd this might have been a trifle optimistic, but at least it was a start; where they were nobody could buy food, but some of them at least would be fed if they went to the neighboring hamlets. And if they spread out, perhaps not too many would go to any one village? Since they speak of buying food,‍³⁷‍ it would seem that people either had not brought food with them or had eaten all they had brought. The disciples were probably hungry themselves, and they knew that many people in the crowd would be more than ready for food. It was therefore important that they be transferred to places where their need could be met.

16. But has adversative force; Jesus rejects the suggestion that he should dismiss the crowd. There is no need for that. Matthew’s account is shorter than those of Mark and John and not much longer than Luke’s, so that there is very little in this account that is not found in the others, but “They have no need to go away”‍³⁸‍ is such a touch; only Matthew records these words. The disciples can do better than sending people off, Jesus says, and he goes on, “You give them something to eat”;‍³⁹‍ give is a command, not a suggestion. Jesus does not say what is to be eaten or how the disciples are to obtain it. He simply turns their attention away from the hopelessness of the situation and their easy solution and invites them to think how they could help.

17. But is another adversative conjunction setting the disciples over against Jesus as they reject the suggestion. Matthew uses the present tense they say, which gives greater vividness. They explain the slenderness of their limited resources, and they start with a negative “We have not here—”‍⁴⁰‍ after which they add their exception, “except five loaves and two fish.” The “loaf” would have been quite small, perhaps the size of a bun. Five of them might well be eaten in one meal, and the two fish would go with them. In John 6:9 we learn that Andrew told Jesus that a small boy had this food. How did Andrew know? John does not tell us, but the small amount looks like his mother’s provision for a small boy’s lunch and it is tempting to think that the boy had offered it to Jesus, there being nothing to eat in their deserted situation and no possibility of buying anything. John tells us that the loaves were “barley loaves” (John 6:9), the food of the poor.

18. The disciples had put forward their evidence of this meager supply as a way of indicating the impossibility of their doing anything, but Jesus thinks of it as the basis for action. For the third verse in succession we have an adversative But as Jesus rejects the position the disciples were taking up. Without giving any indication of what he was about to do, he told them to bring the food to him, a little detail found in this Gospel only.

19. There is an authoritative note about Jesus’ verb for told.‍⁴¹‍ He is now taking over the situation and giving instructions as to how it is to be resolved. The people are to recline‍⁴²‍ on the grass. We do not know what their posture was up to this point, but reclining would indicate preparation for a meal. Then Jesus took the loaves and the fish. Until now he has given orders but other people have done what had to be done; now Jesus is beginning to act. Looking up‍⁴³‍ to heaven was a normal attitude for prayer (cf. John 17:1), so it was appropriate as Jesus gave thanks,‍⁴⁴‍ the normal Jewish practice before a meal. So was breaking‍⁴⁵‍ the bread, though this was normally a symbolic gesture and here it is evidently a way of breaking the bread and the fish into pieces for distribution to the multitude. A number of scholars draw attention to the resemblance of the words to eucharistic language (the verbs “took … blessed … broke … gave” occur in the narrative and in every communion service known to us), but this cannot refer to a celebration of Holy Communion. Jesus had not yet instituted that ordinance, there is no use of wine, and fish have no place in the eucharist.‍⁴⁶‍ Matthew is describing a meal. He tells us that when Jesus had broken the loaves and the fish, he gave the pieces to the disciples, and the disciples passed them on to the people.‍⁴⁷‍

20. So everybody ate,‍⁴⁸‍ where all makes it clear that the whole multitude was included. That they were satisfied‍⁴⁹‍ shows that Matthew is not talking about a symbol or a token repast. It may not have been a banquet (bread and fish were the food of the poor), but it was a full and satisfying meal (‍M. Green‍ says, “Those who merely touched a crust of bread during the Feeding were filled,” p. 149; but that is not what Matthew is saying). This is further underlined with the information that the disciples took up what had not been eaten (John has the information that this was done in response to a command from Jesus). All four Evangelists tell us that what was over amounted to twelve baskets full.‍⁵⁰‍ It would seem that each of the apostles had a basket and filled it (the baskets were full). So there was an abundant meal, but also there was no waste.

21. Matthew gives us the total of those who ate.‍⁵¹‍ He gives an approximation only (about), which is to be expected. Who would have laboriously counted the full total? Interestingly he gives the count of men; for first-century Jews it was the number of adult males that mattered. The word for five thousand is used in each of the four Gospels for the number of this crowd, and for nothing else. Matthew specifically excludes women and children from the total.

2. Peter Walking on Water, 14:22–33

²²And immediately he made the disciples embark in the boat and go before him to the other side, until he had sent the crowds away. ²³And when he had sent the crowds away, he went up into the mountain by himself to pray; and when evening came, he was there alone. ²⁴Now the boat was already many stadia distant from the land, tossed by the waves because there was a head wind. ²⁵In the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea. ²⁶But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were frightened and said, “It’s a ghost!” And they cried out in fear. ²⁷But Jesus straightaway spoke to them, saying, “Take courage, it is I, don’t be afraid.” ²⁸Peter answered him, saying, “Lord, if it’s you, tell me to come to you on the waters.” ²⁹And he said, “Come.” And Peter got down from the boat and walked on the waters and came to Jesus. ³⁰But when he saw the wind boisterous he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, saying, “Lord, save me.” ³¹And Jesus at once stretched out his hand and took hold of him, and says to him, “Man of little faith, why did you doubt?” ³²And when they got up into the boat, the wind dropped. ³³And those in the boat worshipped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

Matthew, Mark, and John follow the feeding of the five thousand with the striking story of Jesus walking on the water. Matthew adds to this, as the others do not, the story of Peter’s success and failure in attempting to do the same thing. Many expositors see in these stories no more than acted parables that teach us God’s care when in difficulties and the importance of faith when the winds blow hard. But while we may thankfully appropriate these spiritual teachings, such understandings are not exegesis; they proceed from the presuppositions of the expositor.

22. We learn from John’s account that some of the people who were there when the five thousand were fed were so impressed that they tried to make Jesus king (John 6:15). This was evidently the reason that he packed the disciples off straightaway and sent them away to the other side of the lake. It was important that the Twelve be not involved in king making and, indeed, that the whole project be squashed without delay, and Matthew stresses this.‍⁵²‍ He is quite clear that Jesus was determined to get the disciples out of the way without delay, and this will be the point also of his sending them to the other side.‍⁵³‍ No destination is given; the important thing was that the disciples be gotten out of the way until he had dismissed (for the verb see on 5:31) the crowds (characteristically plural).

23. Jesus finished the task of sending the people away, then went up into the mountain (see on 5:1; it is a Matthean word) to pray. After the big day with the crowds Jesus turned to his Father in prayer; the infinitive will indicate purpose. This was done privately; Matthew has two expressions, by himself and alone, so that he is emphasizing that what took place was between Jesus and his Father only; Matthew is not referring to any public expression of devotion. The day had been wearing; Jesus found solace in quietness with the Father.‍⁵⁴‍

24. Matthew turns his attention to the disciples. The boat (see on 8:23) was making progress, and when he takes up the story it was quite a long way from land — many stadia in fact. A stadion was about 600 feet (‍LSJ‍ makes it 606.75 feet; this was about 185 meters); John tells us that the disciples had gone 25 to 30 stadia. The greatest width of the lake is 61 stadia, but their crossing would have been shorter, even though we do not know their exact route. But clearly they were well into their journey, though with quite a way still to go. The distance was compounded by the weather: a strong wind was blowing, and they were tossed by the waves‍⁵⁵‍ and facing a head wind.‍⁵⁶‍ Matthew is describing a situation in which the sailors were in some difficulty with the head wind and a rising sea. Matthew does not say how long they had been in making the crossing, but they had started right after the meal finished (v. 22), so they had been battling against the elements all night. They must have been very weary.

25. The Romans divided the night (the time between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. on our system) into four “watches,”‍⁵⁷‍ and the Jews into three. Mostly in the New Testament the term refers to the Roman system (cf. Mark 13:35), and this is obviously the meaning of the fourth watch, there being no such watch in the Jewish system. The fourth watch would cover the time “between three and six o’clock in the morning,” as ‍GNB‍ translates. Somewhere in this period Jesus came to the disciples walking on the sea.

26. But will have some adversative force; it sets the agitation of the disciples over against the calm of Jesus as he walked on the sea‍⁵⁸‍ in the midst of the storm. The disciples were agitated‍⁵⁹‍ and scared. They could not envisage any mortal doing what Jesus was doing, so they gave their verdict, “It’s a ghost!” What else?

27. Jesus recognized that they were scared and immediately took steps to calm them. He said first, “Take courage,” where the verb is one normally used in the New Testament of being cheerful (see 9:2, 22). In all three Gospels Jesus identifies himself with the words “it is I,”‍⁶⁰‍ employing the emphatic pronoun commonly used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament where God is the speaker. The expression is sometimes used in the Old Testament where God is revealing himself, such as “I am who I am” (Exod. 3:14). Its use on the lips of Jesus at this point might perhaps be said to be natural under the circumstances. The disciples were scared and in need of reassurance; it was important that they should know right away that the one they were seeing was no ghost, so Jesus identifies himself. But the expression has overtones of deity, and who but God could walk on the stormy waters? At the least Matthew is giving us a hint that Jesus was more than a mere man. “Don’t be afraid” is a note of reassurance that runs right through this Gospel (1:20; 10:26, 28, 31; 17:7; 28:5, 10). Matthew likes to make the point that Jesus’ own need never fear.

28. The incident with Peter is related in this Gospel only and is part of Matthew’s portrait both of that impetuous disciple and of Jesus, the sustainer of his people. It is characteristic that it is Peter‍⁶¹‍ who calls out to Jesus. He addresses him with the respectful, “Lord” (see on 7:21), which here will have a full meaning, addressed as it is to one who walks on water in the middle of a storm. “If it’s you” betrays some element of doubt, though the construction suggests reality.‍⁶²‍ “Tell me” is authoritative and sits well with the address “Lord” as Peter asks Jesus to give the necessary command. Peter has no word like “to walk,” but speaks generally of coming to Jesus. It is interesting that Peter is of the opinion that if this really is Jesus, then he will enable his servant to move on the face of the waters.

29. Jesus gives a one-word command, taking up Peter’s verb, “Come” (an ingressive aorist, “Start to come”). And Peter did. He got down‍⁶³‍ from the boat and walked (the aorist says nothing about duration as an imperfect would; it simply points to the fact as having occurred)‍⁶⁴‍ on the waters. There is no indication of how far Peter’s remarkable walk went, but wherever Jesus was his servant managed to come to him. The preposition could mean “to” or “toward” Jesus, but the fact that when Peter began to sink Jesus took hold of him means that Peter was pretty close. We usually remember that Peter’s faith failed and that Jesus drew attention to this. But we should bear in mind that it took courage for the apostle to venture on the water at all.

30. But has adversative force; over against the wonderful fact that Peter walked on the water Matthew sets this new fact: Peter’s attention moved from Jesus to the storm.‍⁶⁵‍ Matthew says, he saw the wind, which means, of course, that Peter saw the effects of the wind; he perceived the wind; with the movements of the waves and boat, the spray and the feel of the wind, there was no doubt that it was boisterous.‍⁶⁶‍ As Peter perceived all this, it came home to him that to be on the water in a storm like the one he was experiencing and to be outside the boat was to be in a position of some danger. The result was that Peter became afraid (‍Phillips‍, “he panicked”), and the onset of fear was accompanied by the beginning of sinking.‍⁶⁷‍ Peter’s shifting of concentration from Jesus, who could enable him to overcome difficulties, to the difficulties in which he found himself, was disastrous. So he cried out for help. Save can refer to deliverance in any one of a variety of ways; here clearly it means “save from sinking.”

31. And Jesus did. At once‍⁶⁸‍ he stretched out his hand and took hold of him. He could have delivered his servant by simply speaking, but Jesus’ firm grip must have been very reassuring to the sinking apostle. The other verbs around here are in the aorist tense, but Matthew uses the present says to him presumably for greater vividness. Jesus bestows on Peter the epithet “Man of little faith” (for this term see on 6:30; this is the only place where it is used of one individual; elsewhere it refers to disciples as a whole). “Why did you doubt?”‍⁶⁹‍ Jesus asked him. The leading apostle might have been expected to trust more wholeheartedly, more especially since he had already taken some steps in his alien environment. He was learning that problems arise when doubt replaces trust.

32. Matthew does not say that Peter ceased to sink and resumed his place on top of the water, but that is implied. The two of them proceeded to get up into the boat, and then the wind dropped.‍⁷⁰‍ Matthew does not say that Jesus caused the wind to cease its raging, but he may imply that this happened.

33. Matthew rounds off the story with the effect all this had on the rest of the apostolic band (‍Calvin‍ thinks that those in the boat includes not only disciples, but also “sailors and other passengers,” II, p. 154). The experiences of seeing Jesus walk on the water and then of seeing him call Peter to walk there and of delivering that disciple when his faith failed made a profound impression; as a result they worshipped Jesus. For the verb see the notes on 2:2; 4:9. It betokens the worship that should be offered to deity and thus shows us the effect the incident had had on those who saw it all. They gave utterance to what it all meant to them with “Truly you are the Son of God.” Truly is a strong affirmation of certainty.‍⁷¹‍ They leave no room for doubt. They affirm that Jesus is the Son of God,‍⁷²‍ which means that they are putting him in the highest place, though it is not easy to see precisely how they would have understood the expression at this time (after the resurrection it would have had a fuller significance for all Christians). But at least they are saying more than that Jesus is one among many whose godliness entitles them to be classed as “sons of God.” They are saying that Jesus is uniquely related to the one God.

3. Jesus Healing, 14:34–36

³⁴And they crossed over and came to land at Gennesaret. ³⁵And when the men of that place recognized him, they sent into all that region and brought all that were sick to him. ³⁶And they besought him that they might only touch the tassel of his cloak; and as many as touched were healed.

Matthew shares with Mark 6:53–56 information about a series of healings in Gennesaret. It is one of a number of passages in which this Evangelist speaks of numbers of people being healed from a variety of illnesses, but without reference to any one specific cure.

34. They crossed over.‍⁷³‍ That they came to land indicates that they reached the shore, and Gennesaret indicates their place of arrival, though since the name refers to “a coastal plain about 5 km. (3 mi.) long and 1.5 km. (1 mi.) wide, extending from Magdala to just S. of Capernaum,”‍⁷⁴‍ we cannot say that Matthew places the point of arrival with any great precision. It is enough for him that Jesus reached the western shore in an area that was fertile and well populated.

35–36. Whatever the precise point of disembarkation it was a place where Jesus was known. Thus the men of that place (which here appears to indicate a general area rather than a particular town) recognized Jesus and took action to secure what benefits they could for their own particular region. They sent word throughout the area that Jesus was there, with the result that all that were sick‍⁷⁵‍ were brought to him. Matthew does not say that these senders of good tidings said anything about healing: they just let people know that Jesus was there. But the result was that all the region’s sick folk were brought to him, and this leads us to another of Matthew’s quick and summary accounts of large numbers of healings. He does not describe any particular cure (he never does in his accounts of large numbers of healings); evidently it was not any one healing that stood out, but it was important that his readers should see that Jesus, in this time when there was such opposition to him, continued to to do good works.

When the people came, they besought Jesus that they might only touch the tassel of his cloak (it is not certain whether the word means “edge” or “tassel”; see on 9:20). We read elsewhere of a woman who was healed when she touched this tassel (or edge; 9:20), but it is not common. Matthew does not say that Jesus gave permission, but he apparently did, for the account goes on to speak of those who touched it. Whether it was the “edge” or the “tassel,” it meant that only this marginal contact with Jesus, when done in faith, brought about healing. And as many as touched were healed.‍⁷⁶‍ The cloak was the outer garment. Matthew makes it clear that Jesus had total control over sickness; he thoroughly healed all who came to him.

Matthew 15

D. Opposition and Loyalty, 15:1–16:12

Matthew continues his story of the growing opposition to Jesus, but he interweaves heartening evidence of loyalty from those who appreciate him. The Pharisees are his principal opponents in this section.

1. Blind Leaders of the Blind, 15:1–20

¹Then Pharisees and scribes from Jerusalem come to Jesus, saying, ²“Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat bread.” ³But he answered them, saying, “And you, why do you break the commandment of God on account of your tradition? ⁴For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’ and ‘Let him who speaks evil of father or mother be put to death.’ ⁵But you say, ‘Whoever says to his father or mother, “Anything of mine that might have benefited you is a gift [to God],” ’ ⁶is not to honor his father. You have nullified the word of God because of your tradition. ⁷Hypocrites, well did Isaiah prophesy about you, saying,

⁸‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me. ⁹In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines men’s commandments.’ ”

¹⁰And he called the crowd and said to them, “Listen and understand: ¹¹not that which goes into the mouth defiles a man, but that which goes out of the mouth, this defiles a man.”

¹²Then the disciples came and say to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard this saying?” ¹³But he answered, saying, “Every plant that my heavenly Father did not plant will be rooted up. ¹⁴Leave them alone. They are blind guides of blind men. And if a blind man guides a blind man, they will both fall into a ditch.”

¹⁵But Peter answered him, saying, “Explain this parable for us.” ¹⁶And he said, “Are you without understanding even now? ¹⁷Do you not perceive that everything that goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and goes out into the latrine? ¹⁸But the things that go out of the mouth come from the heart, and these defile the man. ¹⁹For out of the heart go evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, perjuries, blasphemies. ²⁰These are the things that defile the man. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile the man.”

“The tradition of the elders” arose because pious Jews were very careful about keeping the law. They saw the law as God’s greatest gift to the human race and regarded it as a wonderful privilege that the Jews, the people of God, had received it. They considered it important that they should treasure the law and practice its every provision. So they studied it with diligence; the Mishnah and the Talmud reveal the closeness of their study and the detail into which they went. They were anxious not to break any of its provisions, and this led to a mass of definition and interpretation. Exactly what had to be done to keep a given law? When two provisions of the law did not obviously agree, which had the preeminence?

To take an example of the kind of reasoning that went on, there is a command, “let no man go out of his place on the sabbath day” (Exod. 16:29). The words were an instruction to the people in the wilderness as they went out to gather the manna that fell from heaven. On the day before the Sabbath a double portion was provided, but there was none on the Sabbath, and the people were told that they must not go out on that day. But in later generations pious souls felt that there was something permanent about this command, as there was about every provision in the law. They interpreted this passage to mean that one must not go out of a house on the Sabbath carrying a burden of any sort.

But what if one wished to do a good deed on the Sabbath, such as making a gift to the poor? The Mishnaic tractate Shabbath begins with a situation where a householder wants to give something to a poor person on the Sabbath. If the householder stood inside his house and put his gift outside or if the poor person, standing outside, reached inside and took up the gift, in either case there was a transgression: a person had carried something out of a house on the Sabbath. The pundits decided that the way to do the good deed was this: neither person should cross the boundary carrying the gift. But if the poor man stood outside and reached his hand inside and if the householder then placed his gift into the poor man’s hand, the poor man could withdraw his hand and neither had transgressed (the forbidden act had not been completed by either one). The same result was, of course, obtained if the householder stood inside and held his hand containing the gift outside so that the poor man, standing outside, could simply receive the gift (‍Shab.‍ 1:1). In this case there is no transgression: neither man has carried the burden across the line. Apply such casuistry to the whole of the Pentateuch and there is a marvelous field for “the tradition of the elders.” Since the solutions offered to the problems that were discerned were often far from obvious, the experts had a magnificent field over which to roam. Some of their traditional interpretations were undoubtedly beneficial, but some produced extraordinary results. Jesus draws attention to some of them.

Matthew proceeds to a controversy that arose between Jesus and some Pharisees who had evidently come to provoke an argument. The discussion turned on the failure of Jesus’ disciples to keep the tradition of the elders in that they ate food without first engaging in a ceremonial washing of their hands. Jesus began by making it clear that the tradition that meant so much to the Pharisees was not to be accorded uncritical acceptance, for it could and sometimes did lead people to disobey the commandments of God. Having made this point, he turned to the question of unwashed hands and pointed out that defilement comes not from overlooking some physical regulation about ceremonial cleanliness but from the evils that people conjure up in their innermost being. In this passage Jesus addresses three distinct groups: the legal visitors (vv. 1–9), the people (vv. 10–11), and the disciples (vv. 12–20). Mark’s account is much fuller and deals with several Pharisaic practices, whereas Matthew concentrates on the one issue of eating with unwashed hands.

1. With a characteristic Then (see on 2:7) Matthew moves on to the next stage of his story. This brings us to a group of Pharisees and scribes (the only place in Matthew with this order; his habit is to speak of “scribes and Pharisees”). They were from Jerusalem, which is not quite what we expect in Galilee. Matthew’s word order, moreover, puts some emphasis on Jerusalem: there came to Jesus “from Jerusalem Pharisees and scribes.” Coming from the capital, the holy city, into this rural area, they would have been regarded as especially authoritative. It was not to be expected that people from the great city would make their appearance in such a remote area. Matthew also makes it clear that they came to Jesus. It was not that they were paying a pastoral visit to Galilee and happened to come across Jesus; it seems that they had come expressly to confront him. That they would come from so far in order to oppose him tells us something of the reputation that Jesus had built up and something also of the measure of the hostility of the Pharisees (for these religious teachers see on 3:7). They were accompanied by scribes (see on 5:20; most scribes were Pharisees, but there were many Pharisees who were not scribes), or legal experts. They would feel that they were well equipped to cope with whatever they would encounter in the northern area.

2. They come right to the point with a question about the tradition of the elders, though interestingly they do not complain about Jesus’ attitude to the tradition but about the practice of his disciples (cf. 9:14). This does, of course, imply an accusation against Jesus, for it was he who taught his followers to do these things. Indeed, the scribes would probably have regarded teaching people to disregard the tradition as much more serious than an occasional breach oneself. Teaching people to act contrary to the tradition meant a systematic and thought-out practice. It meant breaking the tradition as a matter of principle, not as a thoughtless aberration in a moment of weakness. Therefore to speak of the practice of the disciples implied a serious accusation against their Master. The disciples, the accusers affirm, break‍¹‍ the tradition‍²‍ of the elders.‍³‍ This was a body of teaching handed down from the religious leaders of the past. (Indeed, ‍REB‍ emphasizes the time element and ignores the people involved by rendering it as “the ancient tradition.”) Some of it was concerned with the way those leaders had understood passages in Scripture, especially passages whose meaning was not obvious or was ambiguous. It also gave guidance as to how passages that might be construed in more than one way were to be understood. In origin the tradition was praiseworthy and useful, but through the years, with the contributions of many teachers, some with less insight than others, it had come to amount to a very burdensome body of doctrine. Its huge volume meant that by New Testament times even to know what it comprised was a difficult chore, while to obey all its multitudinous regulations was too big a task for most people. The Pharisees and their adherents were distinctive in their regard for and their attempt to put into practice this vast body of tradition, and for them it was unthinkable that a religious teacher should take the traditions lightly. They could not understand why Jesus should allow his disciples to break any of the traditions. That amounted to being irreligious, and for a religious teacher that was a contradiction in terms.

The particular tradition that they took up with Jesus was that concerned with the washing of hands before eating. This was not a matter of personal hygiene but of the removal of ceremonial defilement. In the law it was prescribed that the priests must wash their hands (and feet) when they were ministering (Exod. 30:17–21), but the tradition extended this to all people and was concerned with removing ceremonial defilement incurred in daily life.‍⁴‍ The Pharisees discerned a great number of “unclean” things that one might encounter in the ordinary course of life and that might easily be touched with the hands. The contact made the hands unclean, and if unclean hands touched food, that, too, became unclean. When it was eaten the whole person was made unclean. To avoid such a dreadful happening the strict upholders of the traditions had evolved a ritual washing that removed defilement, and they practiced it scrupulously before eating. So important was this that a whole tractate of the Mishnah is devoted to it (called Yadaim, “Hands”). Water must be poured over the hands up to the wrist (‍Yad.‍ 2:3; a different opinion prescribes only parts of the fingers,  ‍Ḥul.‍  106b; Scriptural justification for the practice was somehow derived from Lev. 15:13). Defilement could be removed only by running water (hence the pouring). But Jesus’ followers did no such thing, and the Pharisees ask the reason for their practice.‍⁵‍ Eating bread, of course, refers to eating food in general; the Pharisees are speaking about the ordinary meals people ate day by day, whatever the food might be.

3. Matthew uses an adversative conjunction to set Jesus over against his interrogators‍⁶‍ and goes on to his normal formula for “having answered, said.” Jesus made no attempt to defend the practice of his disciples. That might well have invited the kind of argument that the Pharisees loved and in which they excelled. In any case he probably thought that failure to observe a ridiculous scribal regulation needed no defense. Instead he went to the root of the matter by drawing their attention to the fact that sometimes their tradition, which was intended to help people keep the law of God, could lead them to break that law. Their concentration on the tradition could lead them to neglect the law of God, and not only to neglect it, but to engage in practices that involved breaking it. His reply emphasizes you: they have been complaining about his disciples, but what about themselves? And his break is the same verb as that used in the previous verse by the Pharisees when they complain of the disciples breaking the traditions. But then he introduces a contrast: where they speak of “the tradition of the elders” he speaks of the commandment‍⁷‍ of God, a much more serious matter. And they break God’s commandment on account of‍⁸‍ their tradition. Jesus is not saying, “Despite your tradition you break the law of God.” He is saying, “Because of your tradition you break the law of God.” He does not speak of “the tradition of the elders” as the Pharisees had just done, but of “your tradition,” the tradition they had accepted and made their own. They could not evade responsibility by saying that others had compelled them.

4. Jesus proceeds to draw attention to one of the ways they broke the commandment and precedes it with, “For God said.” Since the divine origin of the commandment is important, he does not allow it to drop out of sight. What God has said is not to be put on a level with what even godly scribes laid down and handed on from one to another. The commandment he selects for attention is that which commands the Israelites to honor their parents. The Jews commonly respected their parents, but Jesus points out that this attitude was due not to a scribal requirement, but to a divine command. God, no less, has prescribed that proper respect be paid one’s parents (Exod. 20:12; Deut. 5:16). With this he links a further prescription that anyone who speaks evil‍⁹‍ of parents shall be put to death (Exod. 21:17; Lev. 20:9).‍¹⁰‍ Scripture leaves no doubt that parents are to be honored, and that extends even to the way people speak of their parents.

5. But is adversative and you is emphatic; Jesus is setting the Pharisees in contrast to God, whose words he has just quoted. “God said … but you say” means that the words of God stand in opposition to the words of the Pharisees. Whoever is general, “anyone at all.” This “anyone” is pictured as addressing either father or mother and announcing that he has made a gift to God of anything that the parent might be expected to get from him.‍¹¹‍ Gift comes first in this expression, which gives it emphasis, and while it may be used of gifts in general, in the New Testament it is used mostly for gifts made to God. In his version of the incident Mark at this point has korban, a transliteration of a Hebrew word meaning “offering” and always used in the Old Testament of offerings to God.‍¹²‍ What the child is telling the parent in this saying is that he has decided to give as an offering to God what the parent might have expected would be given to him or her in old age. Anything of mine is comprehensive.‍¹³‍ The son is vowing away all that he might have used to support his parents.

6. This verse begins with the emphatic double negative with the future, which is here used in the sense of an imperative.‍¹⁴‍ Honor is the word used in the commandment. Since what should have been used for parental support has been irrevocably vowed to God, there is nothing left for the parents (the better MSS omit “and his mother,” but the words are surely implied), and thus they are not honored. The tradition about the rash vow is honored, but the commandment of God is not kept. Jesus puts the responsibility on his hearers (and those who like them are tied to the tradition): “You have nullified‍¹⁵‍ the word of God,”‍¹⁶‍ no less, by your scrupulous observance of your tradition.

7. Hypocrites (see on 6:2; ‍AB‍ has “Shysters!”) is very much a Matthean word and one that was used a number of times of the Pharisees (22:18; 23:13, 15). Its appropriateness here arises from the fact that these opponents of Jesus professed a deep concern for the service of God and took issue with him over the way his disciples took lightly the traditions that seemed to the Pharisees essential to that service, but they used those very traditions to nullify the express commandment of God. They allowed the use of Korban to override one of the Ten Commandments. This leads to the application to the hypocrites of some words of Isaiah; indeed, Jesus says that Isaiah prophesied about them. This striking way of putting it does not, of course, mean that Isaiah did not mean to sting the people of his own day when he spoke these words or that he had primarily in mind people who would live centuries later. Rather, Jesus is saying that the prophet’s words fit the people who are opposing him so mindlessly, whatever other applications the prophet may have intended.‍¹⁷‍

8. “This people‍¹⁸‍ honors me with their lips,” God says, referring to people who say the right things though without really meaning them. Matthew uses the word for lips only here; it can, of course, refer simply to that part of the human body, but here it signifies the organ of speech. The people in question honor God in that they say all the proper things. But this is all a matter of outward profession. Their heart is not in it. The heart (for this term see on 5:8; the singular is the Semitic use for something that belongs to each person in a group, a construction “Contrary to normal Greek and Latin practice,” ‍M, III‍, p. 23) points to the inward part, the center of one’s being. Deep down, where it counts, the people gave no honor. On the contrary, their heart, God says, is far away from me. Despite their good words they were lacking in good works. They were far away from God where it counts, in the heart.

9. In vain‍¹⁹‍ is their worship. The people of whom the prophet speaks went through the motions of worship, evidently performing the outward ritual as they should, but quite oblivious of the fact that punctilious performance of rites and ceremonies is no substitute for genuine, inward devotion. We might have expected that this would be followed with some reference to the importance of the inward or to that of godly living, the fruit of true worship. But the interest of Isaiah (and of Jesus as he quoted the prophet) was in what their instruction brought about in other people; the emptiness of their worship is seen in what they teach others to do. Doctrines is from the same root as teaching; the expression means literally “teaching teachings”).‍²⁰‍ The prophet points out that the people of whom he complains inculcate men’s commandments as their doctrines. People who genuinely worship God will proceed to teach what God has commanded; the fact that these people teach what is of human origin demonstrates that their worship is a sham. Jesus’ charge against the Jewish scholars was that in the last resort they were substituting manmade regulations for the divine commands. Their motives may possibly have been excellent, but the results were deplorable.

10. Jesus then called the crowd. It would seem that the people had stood back while the Pharisees confronted Jesus, possibly as a mark of respect for these teachers from Jerusalem, possibly because they felt that questions like that of ceremonial uncleanness were not for the likes of them. Let the experts look to such matters! But there was something in the question being discussed that was important for the lowliest worshiper, and Jesus intended the people who were there to understand the significant thing about uncleanness. It was important for the people (and, for that matter, for the Pharisees themselves) to understand that in their concern for ceremonial purity the Pharisees were missing what was important about uncleanness. Breaking their pettifogging rules did not make people unclean in the sight of God, but they should not think that therefore it was impossible to become unclean before God. It was all too possible, and the people should understand what caused it. So Jesus calls them to “Listen and understand.” He wants them to hear what he has to say and to think hard about it, an injunction that is certainly justified by the novelty of the truth he is about to enunciate.

11. Not comes first with a certain emphasis: “it is not this that the Pharisees have emphasized so much that brings defilement.” That would have been a revolutionary statement for pious Jews of the time; for them careful ritual washing as a preliminary to eating was part of life. How else could one avoid eating something that had been defiled by contact with unclean hands? To say that nothing that goes into the mouth defiles‍²¹‍ a man cut across all the rules of defilement to which they had been accustomed all their lives; it challenged the accepted religious way of looking at a wide range of practices.

Jesus looked at those practices from a different perspective, which he proceeds to contrast with the accepted Jewish way. His but is a strong adversative, “but, on the contrary”; he is not introducing a comparatively minor modification of the Jewish practice but advocating something radically new. It is that which goes out‍²²‍ of the mouth that defiles a man. Jesus is warning that defilement is not something that may be casually acquired by physical contact (and which may easily be removed by appropriate ritual practices). It is something that affects the person at the root of his or her being. When one is evil there, then the words that come out of the mouth reveal the inner corruption. People should take more notice of the significance of their words than of the possibility that their hands may have made contact with a source of ritual defilement. Words that go out of the mouth are more likely to indicate defilement than food that goes in.‍²³‍

12. Matthew alone records the reaction of the Pharisees to Jesus’ saying. Not surprisingly the Pharisees took umbrage at a statement that so radically rejected a practice that had been dear to them all their lives. And it is not surprising either that they seem to have made their protest to the disciples rather than to Jesus himself. At any rate it is the disciples who came to Jesus and say (the present gives greater vividness) that the Pharisees took offense‍²⁴‍ at what Jesus had said. These religious experts found Jesus’ dictum a hard saying, something they could not accept and to which they took strong exception.

13. Jesus’ reply proceeds from scathing contempt for the position of the Pharisees. But is an adversative conjunction and sets Jesus over against the Pharisees. He proceeds to a horticultural metaphor to bring out his total rejection of their position, and speaks of the fate of plants that the heavenly Father did not plant.‍²⁵‍ Whether the plant refers to the teacher or the teaching, Jesus is saying that the heavenly Father (see on 5:16) has revealed truths; his word may denote the truths themselves or the people to whom the truths have been revealed. Either way the point is that what God has made known is the significant thing. What God has not made known and what people like the Pharisees teach so confidently and authoritatively has no future. Because it is not divine truth it will not last. In due course it will be rooted up, another horticultural metaphor, this one speaking of plants torn up by the roots. This signifies final and complete destruction. In this way Jesus makes clear his contempt for the teachers who so confidently claimed to know the ways of God, but who had not been “planted” by the God to whom they so brazenly appealed. So far from being reliable expositors of the kingdom of God, the Pharisees were not even in the kingdom.

14. “Leave them alone,”‍²⁶‍ Jesus says. People in general might look up to them and regard them as reliable religious guides, but the disciples should not share such attitudes. They are to keep away from the Pharisees and leave them unheeded; teachers like these could not lead them nearer to God; they could only becloud the issues. Jesus characterizes them as blind guides of blind men. Eye diseases were common in first-century Palestine, and the resulting blindness meant that blind beggars were not uncommon. Blind people were often in need of guides, but people who were themselves blind were not of much use as guides to others.‍²⁷‍ Indeed, Jesus says, where a blind man is acting as guide to another blind man, they are both certain to end up in a ditch.‍²⁸‍ Disaster is necessarily the ultimate outcome of such a situation. Here, of course, the meaning is metaphorical, and we should not miss the point that blind guides is a devastating description of the Pharisees, men who prided themselves on their enlightenment. We should not miss either the force of Jesus’ future tense, which gives an air of prophetic certainty. He is not speaking of a hypothetical possibility but of a certainty. Those who follow blind guides are headed for disaster; the Pharisees of whom Jesus speaks specifically cannot lead people to spiritual profit. This is all the more devastating in that Jewish teachers sometimes claimed to be guides to the blind (cf. Rom. 2:19; Luke has a reference to blind guides of the blind in a very different context, Luke 6:39).

15. Characteristically it is Peter who responds, asking Jesus for an explanation.‍²⁹‍ Peter is referring to what Jesus has said about uncleanness (v. 11) and finding it not at all obvious. This is not really surprising, for, though he would never have accepted all that the Pharisees said about uncleanness, the view that defilement can arise from eating or drinking what has been touched by unclean hands was so much part of his heritage that he would not find its total abandonment easy (cf. ‍Diétrich‍, “There is something so revolutionary in his attitude that their minds have difficulty in following him”). We should notice further that Peter speaks of this saying as a parable; a parable is not necessarily a story, but may simply be a wise saying.‍³⁰‍

16. Again the Evangelist has the adversative conjunction,‍³¹‍ this time to set Jesus over against the disciples; clearly Peter is not alone in seeking the information, and Jesus’ plural recognizes that he is the spokesman for the group. Plainly Jesus thought that those closest to him ought to have picked up his meaning. He asks the question, “Are you without understanding even now?”‍³²‍ The disciples had been with Jesus for quite some time; they had seen what he did and heard what he taught. They ought to have had more understanding than is implied in Peter’s request.

17. Jesus’ explanation begins with a question, the construction showing that he expects the answer “Yes.” “Don’t you perceive—?” he begins, where his verb‍³³‍ points to mental activity. They ought to have been able to think through their problem. His everything is comprehensive; Jesus allows of no exceptions. Everything, then, that goes into‍³⁴‍ the mouth has one destination, the stomach. Jesus passes over the digestive processes (which formed no part of his reasoning) and comes to the point that the end product of the process passes out‍³⁵‍ of the body into the latrine.‍³⁶‍ The body uses what it needs and discards the remainder. Nothing remains of any “defiling thing” that may have entered it.

18. It is otherwise with what goes out of the mouth. The things anyone says come from the heart, the innermost being, and these‍³⁷‍ defile the man. It is a profound revolution in religious thinking when Jesus transfers the source of defilement from the merely outward to the state of the heart. At one stroke he removes the necessity for a multiplicity of regulations to cover a variety of situations and concentrates on an attitude that will take care of them all.

19. For‍³⁸‍ introduces a reason for the preceding statement. Out of the heart comes first with emphasis; this is the real source of the problem. Jesus proceeds to a list of evils that proceed from this source. He starts with evil thoughts,‍³⁹‍ which, of course, can lead to all sorts of evil deeds; such evils are far worse than any defilement that may result from the accidental contact of the hands with any one of the multiplicity of objects the scribes perceived as unclean. Matthew proceeds to a series of offenses arranged in the order in which they come in the Ten Commandments. They are all plural: Jesus is speaking of the many sins people commit. Matthew uses the word murders only here. Adulteries and fornications‍⁴⁰‍ between them cover the full range of unlawful sexual activities, involving either married or single people. Such sins proceed from evil desire within the persons concerned and defile them much more than any ritual transgression can possibly do. Jesus proceeds to thefts,‍⁴¹‍ which are obvious examples of evil that can proceed from premeditation. So with perjuries, literally “false witness,”‍⁴²‍ a sin that should be taken more seriously than it always is. Perjury, being false testimony that involves the name of a god, is taken as serious by people in all sorts of cultures. There is little future for society if testimony supported by an appeal to the deity cannot be relied upon. But to make a difference between sworn and unsworn testimony such that the former must be true while the latter need not be is to make the kind of pedantic distinction of which Jesus complains in the Pharisees. Unsworn testimony must be just as reliable as testimony on oath if a good deal of our social fabric is to hold together. It is important that we can trust what people say, and where we cannot life becomes a precarious affair. The last item on Jesus’ list is blasphemies,‍⁴³‍ which may be used in the sense of slanders against our fellows (the other items in the list are offenses against our fellow citizens). But the word is also used of offenses against God, and it would be unwise to exclude them in this context, especially in view of the fact that the word is plural. It would not be in the manner of Jesus to split hairs, declaring that some forms of blasphemy were acceptable and some were not. Clearly he is saying that any form of blasphemous speech, whether the object is God or people, is blameworthy and that, issuing from the heart, it defiles the person. We should not, of course, hold that this is the complete list of sins that defile, so that if we can avoid what Jesus has just named, we will be in the clear (to take up such a position is to make much the same error as that of the Pharisees). The list is no more than a sample of the evils that proceed from the heart. All sin defiles, and we should understand Jesus to mean that his followers must avoid evil of any sort. To follow the example of the Pharisees and concentrate on avoiding ceremonial defilement is to waste time and energy. Much more important is the avoiding of evil deeds, which really do defile the doers.

20. These are the things that defile, and it is the intention behind them, the purpose formed in the heart, that is the most serious thing, serious though the actual sin may also be. For the most part ceremonial defilement must have been accidental—people did not try to be defiled. But sins like those Jesus has mentioned are done with serious intent or with loss of self-control. It is this kind of thing that really defiles. ‍Bonnard‍ points out that Jesus is not differentiating between an internal and an external form of piety but is speaking of something quite different: his teaching “presupposes that man is not pure in himself; if that were the case he would only have to keep himself from the world’s impurities; but he is evil precisely in his interior, in his heart from which go out (v. 19) all his crimes” (p. 229). Eating with unwashed hands‍⁴⁴‍ was not, of course, the only way of contracting ceremonial defilement, but it is the one in question, and, of course, what Jesus says about this path to defilement applies equally well to other paths. By putting his emphasis on “the heart” Jesus is drawing attention to the fact that wickedness takes its origin in our innermost being. He is warning his followers against letting their personal desires and lusts be the guide to their conduct.

2. The Canaanite Woman, 15:21–28

²¹And Jesus went out from there and went away into the regions of Tyre and Sidon. ²²And look, a Canaanite woman from those parts came out and shouted, saying, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is wickedly demon-possessed.” ²³But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and requested him, saying, “Send her away, because she keeps shouting after us.” ²⁴But he answered, saying, “I was not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” ²⁵But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” ²⁶But he answered, saying, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” ²⁷But she said, “Yes, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from their masters’ table.” ²⁸Then Jesus answered her, saying, “O woman, your faith is great; be it as you wish.” And her daughter was healed from that hour.

From a story of unremitting hostility Matthew turns to one of outstanding and unexpected trust. This is one of very few stories of healings of people outside the Israelite nation, and it presents Christians with a problem in that Jesus seems to take up a harsh attitude toward the suppliant woman.‍⁴⁵‍ Mark has this story too, though with differences. But in both it is clear that the woman had exceptional faith and that her persistence received its due reward. H. J. Held views this story as an example of Matthew’s ability to stress the importance of faith when he has a fuller account than that of Mark as well as when his is shorter. He points out that for Mark it is the fact of the healing that matters, but “In Matthew the whole narrative is directed towards this last sentence (i.e. ‘your faith is great; be it as you wish’) which has a majestic note about it. … In Matthew only the fact and power of faith are expressed” (‍TIM‍, p. 199; cf. also pp. 239–41, 275–96).

21. Matthew tells us that Jesus went out, but he does not say from where he made his exit. Perhaps he had been in a house, but none is mentioned. Perhaps the thought is that he left Galilee, that he went out of his own country. He went away,‍⁴⁶‍ which may mean that after the encounter with the scribes and Pharisees mentioned earlier in the chapter Jesus deemed it politic to move into the adjoining territory for a time. He went into the regions‍⁴⁷‍ of Tyre and Sidon, the area to the north of Galilee. These were Phoenician cities on the Mediterranean coast, but they controlled territory inland. Matthew does not indicate with any precision just where Jesus went in this territory (nor does Mark). Sidon was about twenty-five miles north of Tyre, and that city was much the same distance from Jesus’ Galilean haunts, so this represents a considerable journey on foot. The round trip could have taken months, which is suggested by the references to sitting on the green grass (14:19) and on the ground (15:35), that is, the difference between spring and late summer. Mark tells us, as Matthew does not, that Jesus went into a house and did not want anyone to know where he was, but he could not be hidden. The desire for privacy suits Matthew’s narrative well, but this Evangelist does not mention it. It is enough for him that Jesus was in this foreign territory and that there he met the woman to whom he goes on to refer.

22. Matthew’s favorite And look (see on 1:20) introduces the lady who is to be the significant figure in the story he is about to narrate. She was a Canaanite‍⁴⁸‍ and thus a member of a race that goes back to c. 3000 B.C. Tyre and Sidon were great trading centers, and from them the Canaanites traveled far and wide. They were a cultured race, and, for example, the first-known alphabet comes from Canaanites working with Egyptians in the mines of the Sinaitic peninsula. A woman about whom we know nothing apart from what is told in this story came out, which appears to mean that she left her house and sought Jesus out (if we understand the Greek as “came out of those parts” [Moffatt], the meaning will be that she met Jesus in the border area). From those parts does not locate her precisely, but it does indicate that she belonged to the general area. That she shouted‍⁴⁹‍ probably means that she was agitated and spoke in an excitable way, while the imperfect tense indicates that she kept shouting. She said, “Have mercy on me”; or perhaps we should translate, “Take pity on me.” Whichever way we take it, she was not claiming a reward for merit, but looking for a boon for which she could claim no worthiness. But if she claimed nothing for herself, she discerned greatness in Jesus. She greeted him as “Lord”‍⁵⁰‍ and went on, “Son of David,” an expression Matthew has 8 times in referring to Jesus (as well as once of Joseph). It speaks of a descendant of the great King David and came to be used of the Messiah, viewing him as a great warrior like David, one who would establish a mighty kingdom. It is curious to find the title being used by a Canaanite woman for whom an Israelite ruler would presumably have no attraction. Perhaps she thought that it would be as well to address the one from whom she was looking for help in terms that he would recognize as signifying greatness. Or better, in view of the faith that this narrative shows she possessed, she had come to accept Jesus as Messiah.

She goes on to detail her need. She speaks of my daughter, but gives no indication of her age. Nor indeed does she indicate her problem with precision. The girl, she says, is wickedly demon-possessed, but says nothing about the way the demon possession was manifested. Elsewhere there are references to demoniacs who were deaf or dumb or blind (9:32; 12:22), and it is clear that a variety of physical complaints were ascribed to demon possession. This woman gives no indication as to the way her daughter was troubled, but she does emphasize the extent; she was wickedly possessed.‍⁵¹‍ The mother is making it plain that the daughter is in a pitiable plight.

23. Jesus said nothing to her, which is very unusual; he usually responded to any appeal for help, and indeed sometimes he took the initiative and helped before a request was made to him. Matthew emphasizes his silence by saying that Jesus did not answer a word, but he gives no reason for this. His disciples apparently had no doubts: the woman was a Canaanite, not a Jewess, and to them her crying out was nothing but a nuisance. So they came up to Jesus and asked‍⁵²‍ him to send the woman away. They give a reason for asking: “she keeps shouting after us.” They repeat the verb used in verse 22 of the shouting, but add a new element in that they view themselves as included in its scope; she is shouting not only at Jesus, they think, but at them.‍⁵³‍ They apparently felt that she was calling on them to do something, and they did not appreciate such a request from one who was both a woman and a Canaanite. Yet we should bear in mind that they do not say that Jesus should do nothing for her and that their words could, and probably should, be understood in the sense “Give her what she wants and send her off!” Cf. ‍JB‍, “Give her what she wants.”‍⁵⁴‍ They wanted to be rid of the woman and her embarrassing noise, but there is no indication that they did not want her daughter to be healed. This is supported by the fact that the disciples had never seen Jesus turn away anyone genuinely seeking his help; they would not have expected him to do it now. Mark has neither the silence of Jesus nor the suggestion of the disciples; we owe them both to Matthew.

24. Another piece of information we owe to Matthew is Jesus’ reference to his mission to Israel. But has adversative force; it sets Jesus over against the disciples. Our best understanding of the next words is that they are are a response to the disciples’ suggestion that Jesus should grant the woman her request. How could he do this when his mission was to Israel? He speaks of being sent, another example of his consciousness of mission. His time here on earth was not his own, but he had been sent by the heavenly Father for a specific purpose. That purpose he sought to accomplish, and his whole life was given over to its fulfilment. He speaks now of his mission as only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,‍⁵⁵‍ an expression that may be taken in more ways than one: it may mean “all the house of Israel,” regarded as lost, or “those from the house of Israel who are lost.” During his time on earth Jesus did not go to Athens or Rome or Alexandria, indeed to any of the places that we might have anticipated. Apart from very occasional trips like this one (which did not interfere with his discharge of his mission) he spent all his time in Galilee and Judea. There are mysteries here that we cannot solve, but while Jesus came to make that atonement for sin which would mean salvation for people in any place throughout this whole wide world, he did not come to engage in a worldwide mission of healing or the like. His earthly mission was to the Israelites, here described as lost sheep. The word sheep is used frequently in metaphorical senses, usually to bring out thoughts like the timidity or stupidity or idleness of those described, or to depict them as followers of a leader. Among Christians it is sheep as the followers of the Good Shepherd who are most significant. But here the sheep are lost in the sense that they are spiritually astray, alienated from God. For house see on 2:11; here it stands for “nation,” a not uncommon use. Israel is the nation regarded as the people of God. Jesus is saying that his mission was to the ancient people of God,‍⁵⁶‍ and the Gospels show us quite clearly that this was the way it was worked out. His contacts with Gentiles were very few, and his preachers were sent only to Israel (10:5–6).

25. Once again But has adversative force. Over against Jesus with his words about a mission to Israel is this Gentile earnestly seeking healing for her daughter. That she came is a little puzzling, but perhaps she had not been close to Jesus until now; after all, she had been shouting, which may indicate distance as well as urgency. Now she came and knelt‍⁵⁷‍ before him. Her attitude gave expression to the deep reverence she had for Jesus. Then she put her plea in the simplest form, “Lord, help‍⁵⁸‍ me.” Again she addresses Jesus as “Lord” and pleads nothing but her need.

26. Jesus’ answer is on the surface a harsh one.‍⁵⁹‍ He appeals to family life with the reminder that the children’s bread is to be used for the children and not thrown to the dogs. For good see on 3:10; the word has the meaning “Ethically, good, in the sense of right, fair, noble, honorable” (‍AS‍); it is used of the “good works” people should do so that others may glorify their heavenly Father (5:16). Take here means “take away,” “deprive”; it points to an injustice if children are deprived of their food. Children are the helpless members of the family; senior members must see to it that their needs are met. Dogs‍⁶⁰‍ here are clearly house pets; they must be fed, but not at the expense of the children. There are priorities that must be observed. The expression is apparently a harsh one, but, as ‍Barclay‍ reminds us, “The tone and the look with which a thing is said make all the difference. Even a thing which seems hard can be said with a disarming smile. We can call a friend ‘and old villain’, or ‘a rascal’, with a smile and a tone which takes all the sting out of it and which fills it with affection. We can be quite sure that the smile on Jesus’ face and the compassion in his eyes robbed the words of all insult and bitterness” (p. 122). Filson also points to the importance of tone and facial impression. He also says, Jesus’ “blunt answer is not a literal statement, calling her and her countrymen dogs, but a parable or proverbial statement used to make clear that his work is with his own people.”‍⁶¹‍

27. Another adversative But introduces a different point of view. The woman begins tactfully with “Yes, Lord.” She agrees with what Jesus has just said; how could anyone possibly disagree with it? The needs of the children must be met, and care for the dogs must not interfere with this necessary duty. But this is not the whole story. For‍⁶²‍ is important; it draws an inference. The little dogs, the dogs that belong in the household, have their place, too. They eat the scraps‍⁶³‍ that fall from their masters’ table. The table here obviously is a table on which a meal is spread, and that the dogs eat what falls from the table shows that they have their recognized place in the house. Those who own dogs make sure that they are fed. This neat answer‍⁶⁴‍ shows that the woman was not presuming on her position. She knew that she did not belong to Israel and thus had no claim as belonging to the chosen people. But surely there would be crumbs!

28. For Matthew’s Then see on 2:7; “having answered, said” is an Aramaism, common in this Gospel (see the note on 3:15). O is not a common form of address in this Gospel (twice only).‍⁶⁵‍ Woman is not a harsh or cold form of address, as we see from the fact that Jesus is here using it in granting her request (he uses it also in his words to his mother from the cross, John 19:26). Matthew uses the word great quite often (20 times), but only here does he link it with faith; he has it in an emphatic position so that the greatness receives some stress (“Only she and another Gentile, the centurion at Capernaum [8:10], are praised publicly for their faith by Jesus,” ‍Hamann‍, p. 169). It is interesting that Jesus does not commend the woman’s persistence or her humility; it is her faith that is basic.‍⁶⁶‍ She believed in Jesus, and in the end she obtained her petition. Jesus says that it will be “as you wish”; the woman’s deep desire was granted. Matthew tells us that the girl was healed immediately. He never gives an indication of the nature of the illness; for him two things were important: the faith of the Canaanite woman and the immediacy of the cure of her daughter. As with another Gentile, the centurion whose slave was sick, there is healing at the request of another than the sufferer, healing at a distance, and a commendation of the Gentile’s faith.

3. The Feeding of the Four Thousand, 15:29–39

²⁹And Jesus went away from there and went along the Sea of Galilee. And he went up into the mountain and sat there. ³⁰And great crowds came to him, bringing with them lame, crippled, blind, dumb, and many others; and they put them down at his feet, and he healed them, ³¹so that the crowd was astonished when they saw dumb people speaking, cripples whole, lame walking, and blind seeing; and they glorified the God of Israel.

³²But Jesus summoned his disciples and said, “I have compassion on the crowd because they have stayed with me for three days already and have nothing to eat; and I do not want to send them away fasting, lest they faint on the way.” ³³And the disciples say to him, “Where will we get in a wilderness so many loaves to satisfy so many people?” ³⁴And Jesus says to them, “How many loaves do you have?” And they said, “Seven, and a few little fish.” ³⁵And having told the crowd to recline on the ground, ³⁶he took the seven loaves and the fish; and when he had given thanks, he broke them and kept giving to the disciples, and the disciples to the crowds. ³⁷And all ate and were satisfied, and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, seven baskets full. ³⁸Now those who had eaten were four thousand men, apart from women and children. ³⁹And when he had sent the crowds away, he got into the boat and came to the districts of Magadan.

Matthew has another of his little sections on healing, in which he speaks briefly of great numbers of people coming to Jesus and being healed of a variety of complaints. He goes on to speak of Jesus as taking pity on the crowds in the wilderness with no access to food. As he had done before, he multiplied a small amount of bread and fish and made it sufficient for a large crowd, the number being given as four thousand people. Discussions of the passage raise the possibility that we have here nothing more than a variant account of the feeding of the five thousand, but this is not what Matthew is saying. He clearly regards the two incidents as distinct: the numbers of people are different in the two incidents, as are the quantities of food and the amounts left over; the words for “basket” are different; the people in this incident had been with Jesus for three days (v. 32) whereas in the earlier incident they had just gone around the lake to head him off (14:13–14); and the times appear to be different, the earlier feeding being when the grass was green (Mark 6:39), that is, in spring, while here there is no mention of grass and the ground appears to be hard (v. 35); in other words, it is late summer.‍⁶⁷‍ The feeding of the five thousand is found in all four Gospels, but this miracle is related only in Matthew and Mark.

29. Jesus went away‍⁶⁸‍ from the place where the previous incident took place and returned to Galilee, where Matthew specifies that he went along the Sea of Galilee (see on 8:24). This is a common way of referring to this sheet of water, but Matthew uses it elsewhere only in 4:18. This Evangelist says that Jesus went along the shore or perhaps simply came to the shore. Matthew does not indicate whether it was the eastern or western shore of the sea, but Mark 7:31 says plainly that Jesus came to Decapolis, Gentile country to the east of the sea (Matthew’s reference to “the God of Israel,” v. 31, looks like the utterance of Gentiles). We should probably understand that Jesus came down from Phoenicia to the eastern side of the sea, thus remaining in Gentile territory. This means a continuing work among Gentiles, including healings and the feeding of the four thousand.‍⁶⁹‍ Jesus went up into the mountain (see on 5:1), which may refer to a particular mountain, but perhaps the expression means no more than “the hilly country.” That Jesus sat means that he took up the normal posture for teaching, though Matthew does not say that he taught, only that he healed. Since, however, the people were with him for three days (v. 32), it would seem that he engaged in teaching as well as healing.

30. Characteristically Matthew has the plural crowds as he speaks of large numbers of people coming to Jesus. He speaks first of the well, then of the afflicted that they brought with them, clearly seeking healing for their suffering friends.‍⁷⁰‍ Matthew specifies some of the ailments and starts with the lame.‍⁷¹‍ For blind see on 9:27; the Gospels have more examples of Jesus’ giving sight to the blind than of any other kind of healing, which is all the more striking in that there are no accounts of the giving of sight to the blind anywhere else in Scripture (the restoration of sight to the temporarily blind Saul, Acts 9:17–18, is the nearest we come to it). In the Old Testament the giving of sight to the blind is something God does (Exod. 4:11; Ps. 146:8). For dumb see on 9:32; the word may mean “deaf” as well as “dumb,” but since Matthew goes on to speak of the cured here as speaking (v. 31) there is no doubt that “dumb” is correct in this place. To these specific infirmities Matthew adds and many others, indicating that a great variety of complaints was represented in the crowds who came to Jesus. The word I have translated put, and which NEB renders “threw,”‍⁷²‍ means “to throw, cast, hurl” (‍AS‍), though presumably here it signifies a more gentle depositing than Judas’s hurling of the thirty pieces of silver into the sanctuary (27:5) or than that of the passengers who threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship in a storm (Acts 27:19). They put the sufferers at his feet (where they would have his full attention), and he healed them (for healed see on 4:23).

31. The result‍⁷³‍ was that the crowd (singular here as it is 19 times out of its 49 occurrences in this Gospel) was astonished; they recognized Jesus as a charismatic figure. Matthew particularizes by referring to the cures of each of the classes mentioned in the previous verse. Dumb people speaking indicates that these folk were not simply deaf (though, of course, they may well have been both; some MSS have “hearing and speaking”). Matthew speaks of the crippled as whole‍⁷⁴‍ and of the lame as walking. Both forms of impairment of limbs were cured. So with the blind seeing. Matthew makes it clear that Jesus’ healings were not confined to any narrow range of disabilities; whatever the physical problem, he solved it. The result was that people glorified Israel’s God. This is the one place in Matthew where we find the God of Israel (see also Luke 1:68; Acts 13:17). The genitive denotes a special relationship. It is the God who has chosen a people for himself that the people glorify. We should understand the words as an expression of thanks and praise.

32. There is not much adversative force in But;‍⁷⁵‍ it simply moves the narrative along to the next stage. Jesus summoned his disciples (see on 5:1; 8:21). This is the one place (together with its Markan equivalent) in which Jesus says, “I have compassion”; all the other occurrences of the verb (for which see on 9:36) are in the third person. It signifies that he was very deeply moved by the plight of the people.‍⁷⁶‍ The verbs are in the present tense: “they are staying with me throughout three days and they have not what they may eat.”‍⁷⁷‍ The people had evidently not come prepared for as long a stay as it had turned out to be. The meaning is not that the crowds had been fasting for three days, but that during that time they had exhausted their food supply. Now Jesus says that he does not want‍⁷⁸‍ to send them off without something to eat.‍⁷⁹‍ It would be a long way home for some of the people, and without food it would be a distressful journey. Jesus cares for them. They had come to him for help, and he is not willing to send them off in such a way that they would end up fainting (Hendriksen, “lest they collapse”) on the way.

33–34. The disciples do not discuss the plight of the people, nor do they dispute Jesus’ estimate of what might happen on the journey home. They concentrate on the problems of supply, asking where‍⁸⁰‍ in a remote wilderness (see on 3:1) they would get enough loaves to satisfy‍⁸¹‍ the needs of so many people.‍⁸²‍ Clearly the number of people was large and the food supplies were small. For the disciples this was a problem of some magnitude, and obviously they saw no way of solving it. Granted their situation and the size of the crowd, they regarded themselves as confronted with a hopeless situation. But Jesus proceeds to look at their resources, inquiring as to how many loaves they had. “Seven” is their reply, to which they add, “and a few little fish.”‍⁸³‍

35. Jesus took charge with a command‍⁸⁴‍ that the people recline‍⁸⁵‍ on the ground, as they did at the earlier miraculous feeding (14:19). Once again the setting for an act of heavenly magnificence is one of earthly lowliness.

36. As he had done in the previous miracle of feeding, Jesus took the loaves and the fish (which may mean that he took them from the disciples or that he took them into his hands preparatory to asking the blessing). Interestingly Matthew now speaks of “fish,” not “little fish”; we should understand that, while the fish were small, there is no particular emphasis on size. Jesus gave thanks (which means much the same as “said the blessing” in 14:19) and broke, which was the customary action when prayer was offered at the beginning of a meal. Matthew does not supply an object, so we are left wondering whether the fish as well as the bread were broken. The verb is in the aorist, which points to a single significant action, in contrast to kept giving, which points to a continuing action. This verb, too, has no object, but it would seem that the fish are included as well as the loaves. As in the earlier miracle, Jesus kept giving to the disciples, and they to the crowds.

37. Matthew tells his readers that all ate, which makes it clear that Jesus provided for the whole group; none was omitted. And all were satisfied, which means that they had an ample meal (the same verb is used as in v. 33). Matthew is not referring to a token meal or a snack. He adds that there was a substantial surplus; what was left over of the broken pieces essentially repeats the language of 14:20, but the size of the surplus here is seven baskets full.‍⁸⁶‍ But both indicate that the meal was more than adequate. Jesus provided for the needs of all the people and more.

38. Now‍⁸⁷‍ leads into a statement about the number of the eaters. As in the story of the feeding of the five thousand, it is the number of men that is specified; women and children are expressly excluded. Matthew tells us that the number of adult males was four thousand men (this number is mentioned in the New Testament only with reference to this miracle and in Acts 21:38). This was apart from‍⁸⁸‍ women and children. The last word is a diminutive and strictly means “little children,” but there is no emphasis here on size. Matthew is simply concerned to bring out that the number he has cited is that of adult males.

39. Jesus sent the crowds away (the same verb and the same process as in 14:15, 22). Evidently he did not simply walk away from people at the end of a session of teaching and healing, but in some more or less formal manner he “dismissed” his congregation. On this occasion he embarked in the boat (see on 8:23); again boat is preceded by the definite article, which may point to a definite boat, perhaps one owned by someone connected with the apostolic band. He went off, though Matthew tells us nothing about the voyage, only that he (“he,” not “they”; he concentrates on the movements of Jesus) came to the districts‍⁸⁹‍ of Magadan. The location of this town is unknown (as is the case with Mark’s “Dalmanoutha,” which may be a variant name for the same place, or there may have been two towns close together), and there are variations as to its spelling in the MSS. Some have identified it with Magdala (see ‍BEB‍, 2, p. 1375), but there seems to be no good reason for this.

Matthew 16

The opposition of the Pharisees to Jesus continues. On this occasion they are joined by the Sadducees. This is part of the way Matthew brings out the growth of hostility on the part of those opposed to Jesus. And here it leads to Jesus’ denunciation of the “leaven” of these two groups. We should not miss the point that Jesus has only just returned to Galilee from Gentile territory and that this opposition leads him to go away from Galilee again (v. 5; he returns in 17:22).

4. The Leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, 16:1–12

¹And the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and testing him they asked him to show them a sign from heaven. ²But he answered them, saying, “When it is evening you say, ‘Fine weather; for the sky is red’; ³and in the morning, ‘Stormy today, for the sky is red and dark.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but the signs of the times you cannot. ⁴An evil and adulterous generation looks for a sign, and a sign will not be given it except the sign of Jonah.” And he left them and went away.

⁵And when the disciples came to the other side, they had forgotten to take bread. ⁶And Jesus said to them, “Look out and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” ⁷And they reasoned among themselves, saying, “It is because we did not bring any bread.” ⁸But when Jesus knew this, he said, “Why are you reasoning among yourselves, you men of little faith, about having no bread? ⁹Do you not yet understand? Do you not remember the five loaves of the five thousand and how many baskets you took up? ¹⁰Nor the seven loaves of the four thousand and how many baskets you took up? ¹¹How is it that you do not understand that it was not about loaves that I spoke to you? But beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. ¹²Then they perceived that he had not told them to beware of the leaven of loaves, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

Matthew relates another incident in which Jesus’ enemies ask him for a “sign” (see 12:38–40 and the notes on that passage). This leads into a warning against the teaching of these leaders couched in terms that the disciples at first misunderstand.

1. For Pharisees and Sadducees see on 3:7; they were the principal religious and political parties among the Jews and together “they represent official Judaism in its entirety” (‍Hill‍). Here they are linked under one article, so Matthew is depicting them as united on this occasion. They were far from friendly with one another, and it is a measure of their hostility to Jesus that they combined on this occasion in an endeavor to discredit him (they came together to hear John the Baptist [3:7] and are linked again in vv. 6, 11, and 12). They had little in common, but it could be said that they both stood for the old ways as against Jesus, whom they saw as a dangerous innovator. They apparently reasoned that it was better to combine to discredit him; that done, they could resume their normal opposition to each other with which they were familiar and which represented the old paths. Matthew has 14 references to the Sadducees (Mark and Luke 1 each, Acts 5, and they are mentioned nowhere else in the New Testament); it accords with his interest in this group that he alone mentions them in connection with this incident. This is the only place in the New Testament where they are mentioned outside Judea. They were a comparatively small party with a great interest in the temple. The two groups came testing Jesus, where the verb mostly has a bad meaning, testing with a view to failure.‍¹‍ It signifies that they were not sincere in their seeking a sign. They evidently thought that Jesus could not produce it, and their intention was not so much actually to see a sign as to show people that Jesus could not produce one. On an earlier occasion “scribes and Pharisees” had come to Jesus asking for a sign with much the same motivation (12:38–39, where see notes). Now they made a request‍²‍ for a sign (see on 12:38) from heaven. In the Synoptic Gospels the word is mostly used in the sense of wonderfully impressive miracles accrediting the person who performed them (whereas in John they are actions pregnant with meaning, wonderful deeds certainly, but with deep spiritual significance). Jesus was asked for such a sign on a number of occasions, but he consistently refused to give it. Heaven (see on 3:2) may mean the sky or the divine abode, and sometimes it comes close to signifying God himself. Here the demand for a sign from heaven means that they want a miracle with divine significance, a miracle that will show beyond all contradiction that God is with him (see on 12:38). They demand that Jesus accredit himself by performing some spectacular marvel. It might reasonably be argued that Jesus’ miracles of healing were signs from heaven, but that was not the way his enemies saw them. They wanted something spectacular, not healings that others also claimed to do.

2. But has adversative force; far from giving the sign they asked, Jesus answered in the following way. There is textual doubt about his answer.‍³‍ As it stands, Jesus refers to the ability of his contemporaries to predict the weather. When it is evening‍⁴‍ a red sky indicates that fine weather‍⁵‍ is on the way, according to the accepted dictum in Palestine of that day (and elsewhere, as our saying “A red sky at night is the shepherd’s delight” indicates).

3. But the same astronomical feature coming at a different time of day has a different meaning. Early in the day the weather-wise see much the same phenomenon as indicating that stormy weather is on the way.‍⁶‍ The sky is red repeats from the previous verse the expression indicating fine weather but with the addition and dark.‍⁷‍ Jesus compliments his conversation partners on their ability to forecast the weather but links that with their inability to discern the great events that were taking place in their midst. The signs of the times are sometimes understood as referring to the signs that indicated that the end of all things is at hand (so ‍BAGD‍, 1), but “end” scarcely seems justified here. In the Old Testament there are references to “the day(s) of visitation” (as in Isa. 10:3; Hos. 9:7) and to “the time of their visitation” (Jer. 10:15) or “the year of their visitation” (Jer. 11:23), and the times here may well have such a meaning. In the person of Jesus God was visiting his people, but the Pharisees and Sadducees were quite unable to perceive what was happening right there, where they were. There may also be a reference to the restless spiritual and political currents that would in time bring disaster to the nation. You cannot points to complete disability. They were quite imperceptive, totally lacking in spiritual discernment.‍⁸‍ “The proof that they cannot discern the ‘signs’ is that they ask for a sign (v. 1)!” (‍Carson‍).

4. A generation‍⁹‍ here signifies the people alive at that time. He castigates it as evil, for it has turned away from goodness and right. It is also adulterous,‍¹⁰‍ for it is false to its vows; it professed to be the people of God but walked in the ways of the evil one. It looks‍¹¹‍ for a sign; it directs its energies to sign-seeking. But, Jesus says, this is all in vain; the generation in question will not get the sign it seeks.‍¹²‍ The only sign it seeks will be the sign of Jonah (a prophet mentioned in the New Testament only by Matthew [5 times] and Luke [4 times]; each time the name is used in connection with the Jews’ demand for a sign). At this point Jesus says no more, but in 12:38–40 he makes it clear that the sign of Jonah was that prophet’s reappearance after being in the belly of the great fish for three days and three nights. The resurrection of Jesus would be a sign comparable with this. But the point is not elaborated. Jesus leaves them to think over the sign of Jonah. Matthew says simply that Jesus left them.

5. The construction here is not quite as smooth as we might have expected, but the sense is clear. The little group went to the other side, clearly the other side of the lake. Matthew says nothing about how they crossed or why, simply that they did so. And it was only when they got there that the disciples realized that they had forgotten all about the need to take some bread with them.

6. Jesus proceeded to give them a warning. “Look out” translates a verb often used of bodily vision (as in 2:2), and sometimes of perceiving with the mind (9:2). But it is also employed to bring out the meaning “beware,” “take heed.”‍¹³‍ The warning is emphasized by adding “beware”; Jesus leaves no doubt but that those who follow the Pharisees and Sadducees are in no good state. He goes on to concentrate his warning on the leaven of these parties (for leaven see on 13:33). Leaven was a piece of last week’s dough used to make this week’s dough rise, and it lends itself to metaphorical uses for something that works away unseen but in the end produces considerable effects. It may be used of a moral tendency, normally in the New Testament for an evil tendency (cf. 1 Cor. 5:6–8; Gal. 5:9), although the parable of the leaven is an exception (13:33). Jesus is warning his hearers to be on their guard against the insidious and pervasive influence that the Pharisees and Sadducees represent (in the Marcan equivalent we have “the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod” [Mark 8:15], which is difficult but also points to evil influence; ‍Lenski‍ points out that one of Herod’s wives, Mariamne, was a daughter of the high priest and reasons that the high-priestly party, the Sadducees, “must thus be classed as Herodians,” p. 608).‍¹⁴‍

7. Evidently the minds of the disciples were running on their recent discovery that they had no bread. For them this was evidently the important thing (a dozen young men looked as if they were beginning an involuntary fast, and that for hearty appetites is a factor of some importance). They evidently found Jesus’ saying difficult, and they discussed‍¹⁵‍ it among themselves. Without coming up with any recorded conclusion about its meaning, they felt that it had something to do with their failure to remember the bread (what else would “leaven” be about than bread?).

8. But will have adversative force; Jesus is set over against the disciples. Matthew does not say how he came to know what they were saying, but there would have been loud voices among the Twelve, and there was no reason for keeping the discussion secret. So he asked a series of questions that would take their minds off speculation about their lack of loaves. His first question looks for the reason for their discussion among themselves, and the form of address, “you men of little faith” (see on 6:30 for this expression), indicates a shortcoming in that most important aspect of being disciples, trust in the Master. We might have expected that Jesus would complain about their lack of understanding, but it is not this that concerns him. Faith is the critically important thing. Those who wholly trust God will not enter into the kind of error Jesus is castigating. He does not go into what they have been saying, other than that they had been speaking about their lack of bread.

9–10. Jesus’ next question implies that the disciples ought to have been more understanding than they were; not yet indicates that they had been with Jesus long enough to be past the kind of reasoning they had just indulged in. They should have grown in understanding. His verb‍¹⁶‍ signifies “perceive with the mind,” “understand.” Then he invites them to engage in another mental process, that of memory; he asks whether they remember the first of the miracles with the loaves, the five loaves and the five thousand men, and how many baskets of food had been taken up. He repeats the process with the seven loaves and the four thousand men. He uses the same word for how many in the two questions, but changes the words for baskets as in the original accounts of the two miracles. The reminder of these two outstanding miracles should relieve the minds of disciples concerned about feeding a dozen or so people.‍¹⁷‍

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