This is designed to be an exegetical commentary. Its primary aim is to provide information and comment which will help the reader of the Gospel of Matthew to understand and appreciate that text. If in the process I can share something of my own deep appreciation of the insight and skill of its author, as well as of the importance and fascination of its subject-matter, I shall be pleased.
It has been one of my major concerns to locate the individual parts of the gospel within the overall narrative flow of the whole—to look at the wood before focusing in on the trees. In the Introduction (pp. 2–5) I have set out my understanding of the structure of the gospel, which has determined the sections into which I have divided it for the purpose of commenting on it. Each section, large and small, is discussed as a whole before turning to the individual pericopae (a convenient scholarly term for “units” or paragraphs perceived in the text) into which I have subdivided it. It should be emphasized that these subdivisions, and indeed the overall structure which I have discerned in the narrative, represent my own reading of the text, and do not claim to follow a pattern disclosed by the author. I am too well aware of the differences of opinion on even the most basic structural issues to assume that any such “author’s design” is there to be read off from the surface of the text. Quite often I shall draw attention to competing views of the appropriate way of subdividing the text and explain my own decision. But it remains just that, my decision, representing only how one sympathetic reader has responded to the dynamic of the text.
Each of the pericopae into which I have divided the text is also discussed as a whole before any attempt is made to comment on the individual verses or groups of verses within it. This will often mean that the most fundamental issues for the meaning of the text will not emerge in my comments on a specific verse, as the long tradition of verse-by-verse commentary has conditioned many of us to expect. I have therefore dared to presume that the reader, even if seeking guidance on a particular phrase or sentence, will be prepared to read the comments on the pericope as a whole.
This last point applies also to the English translation of the text which I have given at the beginning of each pericope. The translations are my own, and the footnotes to them often explain my renderings of specific words and phrases which will then be presupposed in the commentary. The translations are designed to provide the basis for the commentary, rather than for use on their own. They attempt to use contemporary idiom, and where necessary give priority to clarity over literary elegance. The notes to these translations also draw attention to some textual variations which are likely to be of exegetical interest; for this purpose I have generally been guided by the selection of variants made by the editors of The Greek New Testament (4th edn., Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft / United Bible Societies, 1998), though I have not always agreed with their textual judgment.
Some readers may be interested to know how I have set about writing a commentary on a gospel on which I have already published a shorter commentary twenty years earlier (The Gospel according to Matthew: An Introduction and Commentary. Tyndale New Testament Commentaries, Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press / Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1985). This is not a revision or expansion of that commentary, but a new work. I have made it my practice to write the first draft of the present commentary on each pericope before looking again at what I wrote twenty years ago (and indeed before looking at any other commentaries as well). I hope thus to ensure that priority is given to what I now understand to be the significant issues. The agenda is set by my interaction with the text rather than by my response to someone else’s view of it, even my own twenty years ago. Often I have found that I agreed substantially with what I wrote earlier, though now expressing myself in a different way in the light both of my own development and of my awareness of more recent discussion. But sometimes I found that I had changed my mind (indeed sometimes I was quite surprrised to see what I had said before!); where the change seems significant I have drawn attention to it. As for other commentaries and exegetical discussions, I have tried to take those available to me into account, largely in the footnotes, but my intention has always been to make this a commentary on Matthew, not a commentary on other commentaries. It makes no pretense to interacting with all the vast range of current scholarship on this fascinating gospel.
It is a particular regret that the long-awaited commentary on Matthew by my friend John Nolland (New International Greek Testament Commentary, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005) did not appear in time for me to take it into account: my commentary was finished late in 2005, just before John’s was published.
R. T. FRANCE