TEXT [Commentary]

III. The Galilean Ministry Continues (8:1–10:42)

A. Three Cycles of Miracles and Discipleship (8:1–10:4)

1. Three healing miracles (8:1-17)

1 Large crowds followed Jesus as he came down the mountainside. 2 Suddenly, a man with leprosy approached him and knelt before him. “Lord,” the man said, “if you are willing, you can heal me and make me clean.”

3 Jesus reached out and touched him. “I am willing,” he said. “Be healed!” And instantly the leprosy disappeared. 4 Then Jesus said to him, “Don’t tell anyone about this. Instead, go to the priest and let him examine you. Take along the offering required in the law of Moses for those who have been healed of leprosy.[*] This will be a public testimony that you have been cleansed.”

5 When Jesus returned to Capernaum, a Roman officer[*] came and pleaded with him, 6 “Lord, my young servant[*] lies in bed, paralyzed and in terrible pain.”

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

8 But the officer said, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come into my home. Just say the word from where you are, and my servant will be healed. 9 I know this because I am under the authority of my superior officers, and I have authority over my soldiers. I only need to say, ‘Go,’ and they go, or ‘Come,’ and they come. And if I say to my slaves, ‘Do this,’ they do it.”

10 When Jesus heard this, he was amazed. Turning to those who were following him, he said, “I tell you the truth, I haven’t seen faith like this in all Israel! 11 And I tell you this, that many Gentiles will come from all over the world—from east and west—and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob at the feast in the Kingdom of Heaven. 12 But many Israelites—those for whom the Kingdom was prepared—will be thrown into outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

13 Then Jesus said to the Roman officer, “Go back home. Because you believed, it has happened.” And the young servant was healed that same hour.

14 When Jesus arrived at Peter’s house, Peter’s mother-in-law was sick in bed with a high fever. 15 But when Jesus touched her hand, the fever left her. Then she got up and prepared a meal for him.

16 That evening many demon-possessed people were brought to Jesus. He cast out the evil spirits with a simple command, and he healed all the sick. 17 This fulfilled the word of the Lord through the prophet Isaiah, who said,

“He took our sicknesses

and removed our diseases.”[*]

NOTES

8:1 mountainside. This recalls 5:1 and frames the intervening discourse. A mountain is repeatedly mentioned in Matthew at theologically significant junctures (4:8; 5:1; 8:1; 14:23; 15:29; 17:1, 9, 20; 21:21; 24:3, 16; 26:30; 28:16). Some argue that this implies a comparison between Jesus and Moses. The “crowds” are also frequently mentioned in Matthew (4:25; 5:1; 8:1, 18; 9:8, 33, 36, 37; 11:7; 12:15; 13:2; 14:22-23; 15:30; 19:2; 21:9; 26:55).

8:2 Here the first of three sets of three miracle stories begins (see the analysis in the following commentary). The first set involves individuals who were at the margins of Israelite society.

a man with leprosy. Matthew’s first story is about a leper who was healed by Jesus (cf. Mark 1:40-44; Luke 5:12-14). Lepers were social and religious outcasts in biblical times. Leprosy in the Bible can refer to a variety of skin problems and should not be equated with the dreaded modern malady known as leprosy (Hansen’s disease). Even garments could become “leprous” (Lev 13:47-59). In all these cases, the priests were responsible to make official rulings on the ritual status of the questionable individual, impurity or uncleanness versus purity or cleanness. They were to quarantine questionable individuals until their status became clear. Lepers were not permitted any social contact with other Israelites but were to shout warnings of their impurity to those who might come near them (Lev 13:45-46). As such, this leper was rather audacious even to approach Jesus (contrast Luke 17:12) and to request cleansing, although his posture, his calling Jesus “Lord” (See the discussion under Christology in the Major Themes section of the Introduction.), and his confidence in Jesus’ power indicate his great respect for Jesus (8:2). Although this leper’s faith is striking, the next story involves even greater faith. (For the OT background on leprosy see Lev 13-14; Num 12:10-15; 2 Kgs 5 [cf. Luke 4:27]; 2 Chr 26. In the Gospels see Matt 8:2-3; 10:8; 11:5; 26:6; Mark 1:40-42; 14:3; Luke 4:27; 5:12-13; 7:22; 17:12. See also m. Negai’m.)

8:3-4 I am willing. Jesus’ willingness, not his touch, was all that was necessary for the healing (cf. 8:8), but the touch was probably the first human contact the leper had experienced throughout the duration of his illness. Touching the leper was even more audacious than the leper’s approaching Jesus, since Jesus would also became ritually unclean when he touched the leper (Lev 5:3). But the touch, instead of defiling Jesus, immediately cleansed the leper.

Don’t tell anyone about this. Instead, go to the priest. Jesus’ instructions (8:4) for the cleansed leper were twofold. First, he was to tell no one about his cleansing. This surprising command may be due simply to the necessary priority of the second instruction, to go to a priest to certify the cleansing and to offer a sacrifice (cf. Luke 17:14), which was in keeping with Lev 13–14, especially 14:2ff. The instructions were also intended to make the cleansing of the leper a testimony to the religious leaders (cf. 10:18; 24:14). This is not simply a testimony of the cleansed leper’s fitness to rejoin society, as Hagner maintains (1993:200). Jesus commissioned his disciples to cleanse lepers (10:8), and he mentioned the cleansing of lepers as a messianic sign when he was asked by John’s messengers whether he was the Messiah (11:5).

Why did Jesus command silence about the healing (cf. 9:30; 12:16; 16:20; 17:9)? W. Wrede’s “messianic secret” theory (cf. Tuckett 1983) took texts like this one, which are more prominent in Mark, as non-historical interpolations by the early church, designed to explain why so few people believed in Jesus during his lifetime. But such a theory is not only dubious on historical grounds, it is also unnecessary given the nature of Jesus’ mission. At times, Jesus found it necessary to withdraw from the scene when his popularity due to his miracles reached near-riot proportions (e.g., 4:23–5:1; 8:18; 13:2; 21:11). At other times, he seemed simply to need solitude, a respite from the press of the multitudes (14:23). Also, there was the looming presence of the religious leaders, whose hostility seemed to grow in direct proportion to Jesus’ popularity with the masses (9:32-34; 12:22-24; 15:21; 16:4, 20). But it was not only prudent for Jesus to avoid inflaming the messianic speculations of the crowds and to keep a low profile at times (9:30; 14:13; 17:9), it was also in keeping with messianic prophecy (12:15-21; cf. Isa 42:1-4).

8:5-9 Matthew’s second story is about the healing of a Roman officer’s servant at Capernaum (cf. Luke 7:1-10).

Roman officer. This is often translated “centurion” since the Gr. word’s etymology contains the word “one hundred” (cf. Cornelius in Acts 10).

young servant. Or “child” (NLT mg). This reflects the semantic range of the Gr. word pais [TG3816, ZG4090], which can connote a child (cf. 2:16; 17:18; 21:15; Luke 2:43) or a servant (14:2; Luke 7:7; 12:45; 15:26). Some think the term should be translated “boy” or “son” (e.g., Hagner 1993:204). Capernaum has already been mentioned as Jesus’ hometown in 4:13 (cf. 9:1; 17:24). It will later be excoriated by Jesus for its unbelief (11:23), a marked contrast to the officer’s faith.

8:8 Lord. As in the previous case of the leper, the officer sought out Jesus and called him “Lord.” He pled for his servant because he had severe pain and paralysis (8:6; cf. 4:24). Jesus immediately agreed to go to the servant and heal him but the officer then displayed his amazing faith. He acknowledged he was unworthy (cf. 3:11) for Jesus to come to his house, which may imply both a degree of perception of Jesus’ Lordship and an awareness that coming to the house of a Gentile was not an acceptable Jewish practice (cf. Acts 10:28; 11:3). Having already addressed Jesus as “Lord” twice (8:6, 8), the officer compared Jesus’ authority (cf. 7:29; 9:6-8) to his own position in the military chain of command.

Just say the word. He realized that only a word from Jesus was necessary (8:8; cf. 8:16). Such healing from a distance is unprecedented in Matthew at this point and was quite unusual in the ancient world.

8:10-12 he was amazed. Since the officer was a Gentile, his astonishing faith (cf. 9:2, 22, 29; 15:28; 21:21 and contrast “little faith” in 6:30; 8:26; 14:31; 16:8) became the occasion of an even more astonishing teaching. Matthew 15:21-28 contains a very similar story.

those who were following him. This phrase implies discipleship at some level, and it likely includes both the inner circle and the crowd that was less committed to Jesus (cf. 8:1).

many Gentiles will come from all over the world. After contrasting the Gentile officer’s faith with the lack of faith shown by many Jews, Jesus spoke of the future Kingdom as a time when “many Gentiles” (“Gentiles” is not in the Gr. text but is a correct interpretation) from all over the world (cf. Ps 107:3; Isa 2:2-3) would sit with Abraham and the patriarchs, enjoying the great eschatological feast (cf. Isa 25:6-9; Matt 22:1-14; 25:10; Luke 14:15-16; Rev 19:9), while many Israelites would be excluded. Thus, the officer became a forerunner or harbinger of future Gentile salvation, a theme related to Matthew’s stress on the universal mission of the church (28:20).

The presence of many Gentiles at the feast signals a reversal in which many Israelites, “those for whom the Kingdom was prepared” (NLT; lit. “the sons of the Kingdom”; cf. the metaphor in 9:15; 23:15), will not experience its glories. Instead of being the privileged companions of the patriarchs at a banquet where they would sink their teeth into a sumptuous meal, they will be thrown into a horrible place of darkness (the opposite of Christ’s light in 4:16; cf. 22:13; 25:30), where they will grind their teeth in pain (cf. 13:42, 50; 22:13; 24:51; 25:30). This frightening imagery achieves for the reader one of the most sobering moments of Matthew’s story of Jesus and his teaching. Yet one must note that Matthew’s reversal and “universalism” must be qualified by the word “many,” which describes both the included Gentiles and the excluded Jews. The reversal is not as “absolute” as some indicate (e.g., Hagner 1993:206). For the inclusion of Gentiles in God’s plan, see also 1:1, 3-5; 2:1-12; 3:9-10; 4:15-16; 15:21-28. For the exclusion of unbelieving Jews, see 3:9-10; 21:43.

8:13 Jesus said to the Roman officer. Jesus turned from addressing his evidently stunned followers to the officer whose shocking faith led to the shocking teaching of 8:10-12. He told the man to go home since, lit., “Because you believed, it has happened” (cf. 9:29; 15:28). At that time his servant was healed, not by touch as in the case of the leper, but from a distance. The precise timing and the distance are noted to underline the supernatural authority of Jesus.

8:14-15 The third and final healing story in Matthew’s first set is the shortest. It involves Peter’s mother-in-law (cf. 1 Cor 9:5), who was sick in bed with a high fever at Peter’s house (cf. Mark 1:29-31; Luke 4:38-39). It is possible that excavations in Capernaum have uncovered the foundations of this very house (Davies and Allison 1991:33-34). The leper took the initiative for his own cleansing, the centurion took the initiative for his servant’s healing, but here the initiative is solely that of Jesus.

Jesus touched her hand. As in the case of the leper, this healing involved touch (cf. 9:29; 20:34). Again, the authority of Jesus is underlined, this time by the immediacy and totality of the healing. As soon as Jesus touched her, the woman got up and started serving Jesus. The NLT’s “prepared a meal” is plausible, but the Gr. text is not that specific. This brief story is clearly chiastic in structure (Hagner 1993:209), with the touch of Jesus transforming the situation from one in which he served her to one in which she served him:

Jesus sees Peter’s mother-in-law

She is sick in bed

with a fever

Jesus touches her

The fever stops

She gets up

She serves Jesus

8:16-17 The leper was healed somewhere on the journey between the mountain and Capernaum, the officer’s servant upon arrival in Capernaum, and Peter’s mother-in-law in Peter’s house. Evidently this string of healings encouraged the residents of the area to bring many other sick and demon-possessed people to Jesus later that evening (cf. Mark 1:32-34; Luke 4:40-41).

with a simple command. The exorcism of the evil spirits was lit. “by a word” (cf. 8:8), which again shows the authority of Jesus.

he healed all the sick. Jesus’ authority is further stressed by the statement that he healed “all” who were ill. This summary statement (cf. 4:23-24; 9:35) leads into another OT fulfillment formula in 8:17, which cites Isa 53:4.

He took our sicknesses and removed our diseases. Isaiah 53, a passage rich in messianic significance, describes the servant (Isa 52:13; 53:11) as a despised person who bears the sins (Isa 53:4-6, 8, 11-12) of others without complaint (Isa 53:7). The words used by Matthew in 8:17 are evidently his own translation of Isa 53:4 (he also alludes to Isa 53 in 26:28; 27:12, 38). The words usually refer to literal illness and pain but can also serve as metaphors for sin. Matthew obviously took them in the physical sense here. See the commentary below for further discussion of the matter of healing in the atonement.

COMMENTARY [Text]

As previously discussed (see the commentary on 7:28-29), Matthew presents the authoritative words of Jesus in chapters 5–7 and the authoritative works of Jesus in chapters 8–9. This prepares the reader for the mission of the disciples, who are commissioned in chapter 10 for a similar ministry of word and works. Thus, in chapter 8, Matthew begins a selected and representative list of Jesus’ miracles in order to demonstrate his authority (8:9; 9:6-8). Jesus’ miracles have already been generally noted (4:23-24) and will be summarized again (8:16; 9:35). Matthew’s tendency toward topical arrangement and the location of the parallel passages in Mark and Luke make it likely that some of these events actually occurred before the Sermon on the Mount.

The stories included in Matthew 8–9 are not presented in a random fashion but in a clear pattern. It appears that Matthew in 8:2–9:17 has interwoven three sets of three miracle stories with two sets of two discipleship stories. This is followed by a pericope stressing the need for messengers of the Kingdom (9:35-38). All in all, the emphasis is on faith, following Jesus in discipleship, and mission to the Gentiles. As Davies and Allison explain (1991:1-2), some have stressed that there are actually ten miracles in this section (8:18-26 contains two miracles), and have concluded that Matthew intended a comparison between Jesus’ miracles and Moses’ ten plagues on Egypt. But the arguments for this are unconvincing. Yet the structure of three cycles, each containing alternating stories about miracles and discipleship, remains, as the following analysis shows:

1a. Miracles (8:1-17): Three healing miracles

1b. Discipleship (8:18-22): Two would-be disciples confronted

2a. Miracles (8:23-9:8): Three miracles (storm, demons, paralytic)

2b. Discipleship (9:9-17): Association with sinners, newness

3a. Miracles (9:18-34): Three miracles (daughter/woman, blind men, demons)

3b. Summary/transition (9:35-38): Plentiful harvest yet few workers

The three miracle stories that comprise Matthew’s first set are about a leper (8:1-4), a Roman centurion (8:5-13), and a woman (8:14-17). It is interesting that the first and third stories are both about Jewish people and both conclude with Scripture citations (Lev 13:49; 14:2 in 8:4 and Isa 53:4 in 8:17). Although the second story does not contain a Scripture citation, it is nevertheless the featured story in this set because (1) it is given more space than the other two; (2) it stresses the key theme of Matthew 5–9, the authority of Jesus (8:9); and (3) it emphasizes the faith of a Gentile (8:10-12), another key Matthean motif.

Jesus and the Outsiders. Why did Matthew select—from the many stories about healing evidently available to him—these three stories about a leper, a Gentile, and a woman? It is very likely that the selection was made to show Jesus as a friend to those who were powerless in Jewish society. The leper was ceremonially impure and would thus have been an outcast from all Jewish social and religious functions. The Roman officer would have had military power over the Jews, whose land his empire occupied, but due to his ethnicity, he would have had no religious clout whatsoever in Judaism. Peter’s mother-in-law would have no ceremonial or ethnic handicaps, but her sex would preclude her from many privileges available only to males. None of the three would have been able to be admitted to the “court of Israel” in the Temple, where Jewish males presented their offerings to the priests (Bruner 1987:307-308). Nevertheless, it is these people, who for various reasons were at the margins of society, whose healing stories Matthew tells. Matthew does not feature stories about the social elite of his day but stories about those who lacked status. Why is that?

Matthew was consistently interested in those who were “down and out” because he knew they had been surprisingly open to the message of the Kingdom. From the tawdry women in Jesus’ genealogy (ch 1), to the appearance of the bizarre astrologers (ch 2), to those healed in Matthew 8, and on and on throughout this Gospel, Matthew frequently shows his readers not only that Jesus will save his people from their sins but also that his people are amazingly diverse. Matthew’s community was most likely made up of Christian Jews (See “Occasion of Writing and Audience” in the Introduction), and it was crucial for them to acknowledge their mission to disciple not only their own nation (10:5-6), but all the nations (24:14; 28:19). Matthew therefore presented Jesus not only as the Messiah of all nations but also as the model for ministry that brings the Messiah to all the nations. Jesus’ disciples in Matthew’s community must go beyond their understandable but mistaken scruples in the areas of ritual purity, ethnic exclusivity, and sexual stereotypes. And so must any Christian community today examine its own myopia in comparable areas. Whatever one’s culturally driven views of illnesses, ethnicity, and sex, one must submit to the Master’s model and love outsiders as he did (Bruner 1987:308; Keener 2000:364).

Healing and the Atonement. The use of Isaiah 53:4 in Matthew 8:17 has occasioned much debate over the relationship of Jesus’ ministry and death to physical healing. It is helpful to note that pain, illness, and death are rooted in sin (Gen 3), and that redemption from sin will ultimately result in the redemption of the body (Rom 8:23) and the end of pain (Rev 21:4). Matthew saw the healings and exorcisms performed by Jesus as indications of the presence of the Kingdom, the first few raindrops before the full outpouring of that future reality (11:2-6; 12:28-29). Therefore, Matthew connected Jesus’ healing of physical illnesses to his substitutionary death, as well as to his ministry of healing (20:28; 26:28). In connection with the Kingdom message, the healings are tokens of the ultimate eschatological results of Jesus’ redemption. While some have made far too much of this, taking it as supporting the notion that Christians need never be sick, the answer to the perennial question about whether there is healing in the atonement is “yes.” But this must be qualified by pointing out that such healing is guaranteed for all only in the future aspect of the Kingdom. There are individual experiences of healing in the present age, but these do not warrant the notion that Christians can simply “name and claim” their healing on the basis that it has already been guaranteed by the atonement. Matthew 8:17 applies Isaiah 53:4 to Jesus’ earthly ministry, not to his atoning death. The point of the miracles is to stress Jesus’ unique authority, not the blessings he brings to his people. This is Christology, not therapy.

The role of faith in these three healings is not uniform. Faith was obviously involved in the first two healings, that of the leper and the officer’s servant, though in the latter case it was not the faith of the servant but of the officer. In the third case, that of Peter’s mother-in-law, there is no indication of anyone’s faith precipitating the healing. Perhaps it is the leper whose words best imply an appropriate view of healing. The leper knew that Jesus could heal him if he wished to heal him. This puts omnipotence and providence side by side. There is no doubt about the former—Jesus is able. But the leper did not presume upon Jesus’ sovereignty—that would be putting the Lord to the test (cf. Matt 4:7). The disciple cannot dictate that God is willing to heal but must rest in a sovereign providence that makes no mistakes (Bruner 1987:299-300). The leper was not deficient in faith and was amazingly proficient in spiritual wisdom.