TEXT [Commentary]

13. Jesus heals an epileptic boy (17:14-21; cf. Mark 9:14-29; Luke 9:37-43)

14 At the foot of the mountain, a large crowd was waiting for them. A man came and knelt before Jesus and said, 15 “Lord, have mercy on my son. He has seizures and suffers terribly. He often falls into the fire or into the water. 16 So I brought him to your disciples, but they couldn’t heal him.”

17 Jesus said, “You faithless and corrupt people! How long must I be with you? How long must I put up with you? Bring the boy here to me.” 18 Then Jesus rebuked the demon in the boy, and it left him. From that moment the boy was well.

19 Afterward the disciples asked Jesus privately, “Why couldn’t we cast out that demon?”

20 “You don’t have enough faith,” Jesus told them. “I tell you the truth, if you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it would move. Nothing would be impossible.[*]”

NOTES

17:14-15 He often falls into the fire or into the water. The man’s son was an epileptic whose seizures were life-threatening. Still worse, the timing of the seizures when he was near water or fire pointed to something that was not accidental but sinister: he was demon-possessed (17:18).

17:16-17 your disciples . . . couldn’t heal him. The inability of Jesus’ disciples’ to heal the boy is puzzling in view of their commission in 10:8, but it is explained by a familiar theme in 17:20.

You faithless and corrupt people. Jesus spoke of his contemporaries in very negative terms (cf. 11:16; 12:39, 45; Deut 32:5, 20). They were not only faithless but also morally crooked or depraved. It is not clear whether Jesus directed this rebuke only to the crowd, including the man whose epileptic son was demon-possessed, or to the crowd and his own disciples. Blomberg (1992:267) and Davies and Allison (1991:724) take it that Jesus lumped the disciples in with the crowd here, but this is unlikely because the disciples’ “little faith” hardly characterizes them as a faithless and perverse generation. They received their own rebuke in 17:20, so it is better to take 17:17 as Jesus’ exasperation with the crowd, which continued to hound him for miracles while not grasping his unique identity and mission (16:13-14).

How long must I be with you? How long must I put up with you? These are very striking questions in light of Jesus’ previous compassion for the crowd (cf. most recently 15:29-32). The questions may remind the reader of God’s complaint against Israel in Num 14:27 or Isaiah’s question in Isa 6:11 (cf. John 14:9). Nevertheless, Jesus shows compassion in casting out the demon and healing the boy. On balance, Jesus was growing impatient with Israel’s unbelief and was expressing “prophetic exasperation” (Hill 1972:270).

17:19 Why couldn’t we cast out that demon? Privately the disciples came to Jesus to unravel the mystery of their inability to heal the boy. Their question reminds the reader of previous private questions (13:36; 15:12).

17:20 You don’t have enough faith. Jesus explained that the disciples’ inability was due to their all too familiar “little faith” (6:30; 8:26; 14:31; 16:8). The weakness of the disciples is repeatedly stressed in the narrative section between chapters 13 and 18 (see 14:16-17, 26-31; 15:16, 23, 33; 16:5-12, 22; 17:4, 10-11).

I tell you the truth. This underlines the importance and authority of what follows. This phrase occurs on Jesus’ lips over thirty times in Matthew.

if you had faith even as small as a mustard seed you could say to this mountain, “Move.” The disciples’ ability to do miraculous works (10:8) was evidently conditioned upon their faith in the power of God, so Jesus challenged them in that area by using hyperboles for both the minuscule size (“as small as a mustard seed;” cf. 13:31) and the huge potential (moving mountains; 21:21; 1 Cor 13:2) of their faith (cf. 17:1, 9).

17:21 This verse, noted in the NLT mg, is textually suspect because it is absent from the earliest manuscripts (including B Θ 0281 ite syrs, c copsa). It was likely borrowed from Mark 9:29 (cf. Metzger 1994:35, 85). The idea of this disputed verse is that true faith will manifest itself in prayer and fasting in difficult situations (cf. 6:16-18).

COMMENTARY [Text]

The story of the exorcism and healing of the epileptic boy has two main parts, the first dealing with the healing itself (17:14-18), and the second with the question raised by Jesus’ disciples. In both parts there is a request (17:14-16, 19) and a response from Jesus (17:17-18, 20-21). In both parts the inability of the disciples (17:16, 19) is contrasted with the power of Jesus (17:18, 20). The problem throughout the episode is lack of faith, on the part of both Jesus’ contemporaries (17:17) and his own disciples (17:20). The attentive reader is not surprised at either.

The pericope about the healing of the epileptic boy (cf. Mark 9:14-29; Luke 9:37-43) underlines two themes previously seen in Matthew. The “little faith” of the disciples was pointed out by Jesus as recently as 16:8, and the wickedness of Jesus’ generation is underlined in 3:7; 11:16; 12:34-45; 16:4; 17:17; 23:33, 36; 24:34. Both themes are striking in contrast to the glory of Jesus’ transfiguration, and both figure into Jesus’ rebuke in 17:17, which alludes to Deuteronomy 32:5, 20.

The lesson of this passage is that disciples are vulnerable to taking on the moral and spiritual values of their contemporaries. Jesus’ disciples had “little faith” as they lived among a faithless and depraved generation. This faithlessness was true even of those in the crowd who, like the man with the epileptic son, believed that Jesus could heal their illnesses. This sort of “faith” operated only in the material realm and did not recognize Jesus for who he was as the Messiah, the Son of the living God. Rather, he was acknowledged only as some sort of prophetic figure (16:14; 21:11). In contrast, Jesus’ disciples had “little faith,” but it was genuine faith that confessed the true identity of their Lord (14:33; 16:16). The issue is not the intensity or amount of faith but the degree to which that faith perceives its object. The power of faith is in the person in whom it is placed. Jesus’ disciples were unable to heal the epileptic boy because they had taken their eyes off of Jesus and looked at the obstacles, just as Peter did during the storm when he began to sink (14:31). Faith is not believing in faith but in the heavenly Father. It is not believing that the Father will do whatever we demand but believing that the Father can, and will, do whatever is best for us. We cannot assume that God will endorse and perform our selfish biddings, but we must believe he will empower us to do great things to extend his Kingdom through word and deed.