Authorship. In contrast to, say, Paul’s letters, attributions of authorship in the Gospels are generally based on church tradition rather than evidence in the biblical text itself. Although these traditions surface in various parts of the second-century empire, there appears to be unanimity regarding the authorship of the four Gospels, suggesting the traditions are early. Rarely were works the size of the Gospels published anonymously, so the first generation would have probably remembered and transmitted accurately traditions about their authorship.
Some question the specific tradition about Matthew, in part because the earliest tradition also claims that the original Gospel of Matthew was written in Hebrew, which is not true of our First Gospel. Some suggest that Matthew authored an earlier Hebrew work, perhaps especially involving Jesus’ sayings; translated into Greek, this material was used by other Gospel writers but especially developed in our Gospel of Matthew. Most scholars also believe that our current Gospel of Matthew uses Mark. Although this observation might count against direct authorship by Matthew, one could argue against it being decisive by itself. Xenophon, for example, depends on an earlier written source even while reporting events of which he was an eyewitness, presumably because that source had become standard. Whatever one’s conclusions, it seems best to speak of “Matthew” for lack of any better designation. There was also likely a reason for the church’s tradition. Some scholars note that tax collectors (Mt 9:9) would be among the Galileans most apt to be able to take notes.
Date. The date of Matthew is debated (from before 70 to around 90). Even fairly conservative scholars differ in their views of Matthew’s date and authorship. Most scholars, however, do not date Mark before 64, and do believe that our current Gospel of Matthew depends on Mark at a time when the latter was circulating widely. Because Matthew shows more concern for the emerging power of the Pharisaic rabbinic movement than Mark, and these *rabbis began to achieve some political power in Syria-Palestine mainly after 70, some argue that Matthew wrote in the seventies. Scholars lack unanimity; suggestions range earlier and later.
Where Matthew Was Written. The most likely proposed locale is in the area of Syria-Palestine. Some do so because that is where the rabbis may have exercised their greatest influence in the seventies and eighties of the first century. Whether or not that is the case, much of Matthew’s language fits that of Jewish sages from the eastern Mediterranean, suggesting such a milieu. But again certainty is not possible.
Setting, Purpose. Matthew addresses the needs of his Jewish-Christian hearers, whom many scholars believe were in conflict with a Pharisaic religious establishment (cf. Mt 3:7 with Lk 3:7; Mt 5:20; 23:2-39). Members of the early rabbinic movement, mainly successors of the earlier *Pharisees, never achieved the power that later rabbis claimed, but they began to consolidate as much juridical and theological influence as possible, especially in Syria-Palestine, in the years and decades following A.D. 70.
Matthew presents the traumatic destruction of the temple (on many views this event had occurred recently; see the previous discussion on date) as judgment on the earlier Judean establishment (though it was mainly Sadducean) in chapters 23–24. He wants to encourage his community to evangelize *Gentiles as well as their own people (cf. 1:5; 2:1-12; 3:9; 8:5-13; 15:21-28; 24:14; 28:19). Many scholars believe that Matthew’s collection of Jesus’ teachings (especially chaps. 5–7, 10, 13, 18, 23–25) is to be used to make other disciples for Jesus, just as other Jewish disciples passed on their rabbis’ teachings to their own disciples (28:19).
Genre and Sources. Most scholars think that when Matthew wrote his Gospel, Mark was already in circulation. (Not all scholars accept this position, but it is widely viewed as the consensus.) In line with a common literary practice of the day, Matthew followed an important source—Mark—and then wove in material from other sources around it. Given the character of ancient biography (see introduction to the Gospels), Matthew would have used only sources that he believed to be reliable; given the range of dates proposed, most of Matthew’s primary sources would have come from the generation immediately following Jesus’ ministry. Due to space limitations in this commentary, much of the material found in both Matthew and Mark receives more detailed treatment only under Mark.
Matthew and Luke also follow other material they share in common. Given Luke’s birth *narratives and other material, the majority of scholars think it unlikely that Luke was depending on our current Gospel of Matthew. Instead, both share a common source or sources, sometimes in the same sequence (as one might expect particularly for a written source). Like most sources from antiquity, this one has not survived, except insofar as we might infer it from Matthew and Luke.
Biographies were written differently in Matthew’s day than they are today. Biographers could write either in chronological order (e.g., Luke usually follows the order of his sources as carefully as possible) or, more frequently, in topical order. Matthew arranges the sayings of Jesus according to topic, not chronology: the ethics of the *kingdom in chapters 5–7, the mission of the kingdom in chapter 10, the presence of the kingdom in chapter 13, church discipline and forgiveness in chapter 18 and the future of the kingdom in chapters 23–25. Some commentators have argued that Matthew grouped Jesus’ sayings into five sections to parallel the five books of Moses. (Other works were also divided into five to correspond with the books of Moses, e.g., Psalms, Proverbs, the rabbinic tractate Pirke Avot, 2 Maccabees and perhaps *1 Enoch.) This could be the case, although one cannot parallel specific speeches with specific books of the Pentateuch.
Matthew’s Message. Some scholars believe that this Gospel or one of its sources was used as a training manual for new Christians (Mt 28:19); rabbis taught oral traditions, but Jewish Christians needed a body of Jesus’ teachings in writing for Gentile converts. Matthew repeatedly emphasizes that Jesus fulfills the Jewish Scriptures, and argues from those Scriptures the way a trained *scribe would. He portrays Jesus as the epitome of Israel’s hopes for his Jewish audience, but also emphasizes missions to the Gentiles: outreach to the Gentiles is rooted both in the *Old Testament and in Jesus’ teaching. Matthew is quick to counterattack the religious leaders of his day who have attacked the followers of Jesus, but he also warns of the growing dangers of unfaithful religious leadership within the Christian community.
Commentaries. For background material, very useful commentaries include Craig S. Keener, The Gospel of Matthew: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009); W. D. Davies and Dale Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, ICC, 3 vols. (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1988–); and R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007). On a more popular level, see, for example, R. T. France, Matthew, TNTC (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2008); Joe Kapolyo, “Matthew,” in Africa Bible Commentary, ed. Tokunboh Adeyemo (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006), pp. 1105-70; Craig S. Keener, Matthew, IVPNTC (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1997); and Charles H. Talbert, Matthew, Paideia (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010).
Those most familiar with Matthew’s milieu, however, will recognize my debt to primary sources and to various scholars on Jesus and his Jewish setting, both earlier voices such as I. Abrahams, Joachim Jeremias, T. W. Manson and Gustaf Dalman; and more recent scholars such as E. P. Sanders, Geza Vermes and Martin Goodman. For examples of useful specialized studies, see, for example, Marshall D. Johnson, The Purpose of the Biblical Genealogies, SNTSMS 8, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), whose treatment includes Matthew 1:2-16; and on John the Baptist, works such as Carl H. Kraeling, John the Baptist (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1951); and Joan E. Taylor, The Immerser: John the Baptist Within Second Temple Judaism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997).
Ancient biographies typically began by rehearsing the noble lineage of their subject. Here Jesus is connected with the history of his people from the beginning.
1:1. Greek readers often called the book of Genesis “the book of generations,” and the title is also used for genealogies and other accounts contained in it (Gen 2:4; 5:1 LXX). In Genesis genealogies are named for the first person cited, but Matthew’s genealogy is named for the person in whom it climaxes, Jesus Christ. For Matthew, Jesus’ ancestors depend on him for their historical significance no less than others expected descendants to depend on their ancestors.
The *Messiah was to be a “son [descendant] of David”; “son of Abraham” was applied to Jewish people in general, so Matthew begins by reminding us that Jesus is Jewish. Genealogies could provide unity to a survey of history between major figures (as with Adam, Noah and Abraham in Gen 5, 11).
1:2-16. As in *Old Testament genealogies, but in contrast to Luke and Greco-Roman genealogies, Matthew records the names beginning with the oldest and moving to the most recent.
Genealogies reminded Jewish people of God’s sovereignty in arranging marriages and providing offspring. Sometimes they also used genealogies to explain why a person behaved a particular way (e.g., perhaps Moses’ descent from lawbreakers like Reuben, Simeon and [directly] Levi in Ex 6:12-30); Greek biographers could use illustrious ancestry to honor a person about whom they wrote. Most important, Jewish genealogies were essential to document a person’s proper lineage as a pure Israelite (i.e., not descended from converted *Gentiles), a member of the priesthood, or royalty. Genealogies could also be used as unifying links between major figures in history; Genesis links Adam, Noah and Abraham in this way (Gen 5, 11). Matthew connects Jesus with the Old Testament narratives about the patriarchs, the Davidic kingly line and the exile.
Tradition records that at least partial genealogical records of important (especially priestly) families were kept in the temple. Though the temple was destroyed in A.D. 70, the claim for Jesus’ Davidic descent was made before 70, when it still could have been checked (Rom 1:3). Even after 70, tradition reports that the evidence for his Davidic descent was still sufficient to provoke trouble for some of Jesus’ relatives with the Roman government.
Ancient genealogies usually omitted women, but Matthew includes four women (1:3, 5-6).Three of these women were Gentiles (Gen 38:6; Josh 2:1; Ruth 1:4) and the other was at least associated with a Gentile (2 Sam 11:3)—though Matthew omits the four matriarchs prominent in Jewish tradition, Sarah, Rebekah, Leah and (less relevantly here) Rachel. Thus he hints from the Old Testament that God has always planned a mission to all peoples (Mt 28:19). Yet Jews emphasized their pure ancestry!
Scholars have suggested that some ancient genealogies incorporated symbolic material based on the interpretation of biblical texts. Jewish interpreters of Scripture sometimes would modify a letter or sound in a biblical text to reapply it figuratively. Thus the Greek text of Matthew 1:10 reads “Amos” (the prophet) rather than “Amon” (the wicked king—2 Kings 21), and Matthew 1:8 reads “Asaph” (the psalmist) rather than “Asa” (a good king turned bad—2 Chron 16); most translations have obscured this point.
1:17. Matthew omits some names, as was customary in genealogies (in this case perhaps following the Greek translation of the Old Testament); creating patterns like three sets of (roughly) fourteen made lists easier to remember. Dividing history into eras was common; a later Jewish text, *2 Baruch, divided history into fourteen epochs. By surveying Israel’s past, Matthew suggests that Israel was due (or overdue) for a new event in salvation history. Less certainly, some commentators have argued that Matthew uses fourteen generations because the numerical value of David’s name in Hebrew letters is 14. (Unlike letters in the English alphabet, Greek and Hebrew letters were also used as numerals; the Jewish practice of counting the numerical values of words and deriving meaning from them came to be called gematria.)
Ancient biographers often included stories about the virtue of their subjects’ birth or upbringing. Sometimes they even praised miraculous features of the births of their subjects (especially prominent in the *Old Testament), but there are no close parallels to the virgin birth. Greeks told stories of gods impregnating women, but the text indicates that Mary’s conception was not sexual; nor does the Old Testament (or Jewish tradition) ascribe sexual characteristics to God. Many miraculous birth stories in the ancient world (including Jewish accounts, e.g., *1 Enoch 106) are heavily embroidered with mythical imagery (e.g., babies filling houses with light), in contrast with the straightforward *narrative style of this passage (cf. similarly Ex 2:1-10).
1:18. Betrothal (erusin) then was more binding than most engagements are in the Western world today. If Joseph followed earlier tradition, he would pay a bride price, at least part of it offered during the betrothal. Betrothal, which commonly lasted a year, meant that bride and groom were officially pledged to each other but had not yet consummated the marriage; advances toward anyone else were thus regarded as adulterous (Deut 22:23-27). Two witnesses, mutual consent (normally) and the groom’s declaration were necessary to establish Jewish betrothals (in Roman betrothals, consent alone sufficed). Although Romans sometimes used engagement rings, Palestinian Jews probably did not use them in this early period.
Mary may have been between the ages of twelve and fourteen (or even as old as sixteen); if this was Joseph’s first marriage, he may have been between the ages of eighteen and twenty (the age for men’s marriage considered ideal by later *rabbis). Their parents likely arranged their marriage, with Mary and Joseph’s consent. Later traditions suggests that premarital privacy between betrothed persons was permitted in Judea but frowned upon in Galilee, so Mary and Joseph may well not have had any time alone together at this point.
1:19. The penalty for adultery under Old Testament *law was death by stoning, and this penalty applied to infidelity during betrothal as well (Deut 22:23-24). In *New Testament times, Joseph would have merely been required to divorce Mary and expose her to shame; the death penalty was rarely if ever executed for this offense. (Betrothals were so binding that if a woman’s fiancé died, she was considered a widow; betrothals could otherwise be terminated only by divorce.) But it could be difficult for a woman with a child, divorced for such infidelity, to find another husband, leaving her without means of support if her parents died. The unfaithfulness of a betrothed woman would also dishonor the man to whom she was pledged.
A husband could divorce his wife publicly before a judge if he were charging her with an offense; in this case he could dissociate himself from her publicly, get back any bride price he had paid, and acquire any dowry her father had given her for the marriage. Because divorces could be effected by a simple document with two witnesses, Joseph could divorce her without making her shame more widely known. Much later rabbinic tradition charges that Mary slept with another man, but Joseph’s marrying her (v. 24) demonstrates that he did not believe this was the case.
1:20. In the Old Testament, angels often brought messages in dreams; in Greek literature, deceased people (as well as pagan deities) often brought messages, but this occurs nowhere in the Bible. The Old Testament does mention expert dream interpreters, like Daniel (Dan 1:17; 2:19-45) and Jacob’s son Joseph (Gen 37:5-11; 40–41). Most stories from here in Matthew 1 to the end of Matthew 2 involve supernatural guidance (dreams or the star).
1:21. The name Jesus (*Aramaic Yeshua, Greek Iesous) means “God is salvation” in Hebrew. Parents often intended the names they gave children to have some meaning, but if God gave the name, it had special significance (cf. Gen 16:11; 17:19). The Old Testament taught that God’s people would be saved in the time of the *Messiah (Jer 23:5-6), and Jewish readers in the first century would have understood this salvation to mean more than just personal forgiveness. They prayed for the day when God would deliver his people from the consequences of their sins—from subjugation beneath their enemies; many believed that this deliverance would occur when their people as a whole reformed and turned wholeheartedly to God. Jesus also came to deliver his people from personal sin and thus to deliver them from its judgment.
1:22-23. Matthew cites Isaiah 7:14 and indicates a broad familiarity with Isaiah’s context. In that context, Assyria would lay waste Israel and Aram before the promised son was grown (Is 7:14-17); “a son” thus seems to refer to Isaiah’s own son in Isaiah 8:3-4. But all the names of Isaiah’s children were meant as signs pointing to significant events beyond themselves (8:18), and to whom would “Immanuel,” or “God with us” (7:14), more aptly point than to the son of David rightly called “Mighty God” (9:6; cf. 10:21; 11:1)?
1:24-25. Joseph acts like Old Testament men and women of God who obeyed God’s call even when it went against all human common sense. Marriage consisted of covenant (beginning at the betrothal; the marital contract also involved a monetary transaction between families), a celebration and a consummation, which ratified the marriage, normally on the first night of the seven-day wedding banquet. Joseph here officially marries Mary but abstains from consummating the marriage until after Jesus is born. They abstain even though she could have proved her virginity on the wedding night; in this way Jesus has not only a virgin conception but a virgin birth (1:23). Newly married couples sometimes lived in very small quarters. Jewish teachers thought that men had to marry young because they could not resist temptation (many even blamed a woman’s uncovered hair for inducing lust). Joseph, who lives with Mary but exercises self-control, thus provides a strong role model for sexual purity.
Ancient writers and audiences often compared or contrasted characters in the *narratives. Here Israel’s ruler acts like a pagan king, while *Gentiles come to honor Israel’s true king; meanwhile, the religious teachers who knew the most (2:5) failed to act on the truth, even already at Jesus’ birth.
2:1. Herod the Great died in 4 B.C.; Jesus was thus born before 4 B.C., rather than in A.D. 1; our calendars are off by several years. “Magi” (not “wise men”—KJV) were pagan astrologers whose divinatory skills were widely respected in the Greco-Roman world; astrology had become popular through the “science” of the East, and everyone agreed that the best astrologers lived in the East. The *Old Testament explicitly forbade such prognostication from signs (Deut 18:11; cf. Is 2:6; 47:11-15), prescribing true *prophecy instead (Deut 18:15).
2:2. Astronomers have offered various proposals for the appearance of this star in the first decade B.C. The ancients thought comets and falling stars predicted the fall of rulers; some emperors even banished from Rome astrologers who issued such predictions. Despite the biblical prohibition of divination, by this period many Jewish people accepted the idea that the stars could accurately predict the future (especially for Gentiles). Even though these Magi were pagans, God had chosen to reveal himself to them.
2:3. Many rulers feared astrological signs of their demise; the Emperor Nero later reportedly slaughtered many nobles in the hope that their deaths (rather than his own) would fulfill the prediction of a comet. Jerusalem was an important trade center; the Magi must have come with quite an entourage for the whole city to notice them. Then again, many people resented Herod’s rule and rumors could have circulated quickly. King Herod, who was aware of broad currents of thought in the Roman Empire and sponsored pagan temples among Gentile cities in his realm, might have been especially apt to consider the Magi’s mission significant.
2:4. The chief priests (*Josephus shows that in this period, the plural title applied to the aristocratic priests generally) belonged mainly to the wealthy aristocracy of *Sadducees; “*scribes” in the narrow sense in which the term is used here applies to experts in the Jewish *law, most of whom were also teachers of the law. That Herod exercised a great deal of influence over the prominent leaders of the people is not surprising; Josephus says that he executed the earlier Sanhedrin and after that assembled councils as he wished.
2:5-6. Micah 5:2 predicted Bethlehem as the *Messiah’s birthplace, because the Messiah was to be a descendant of David, and Bethlehem had been David’s hometown. It was a small town about six miles south of Herod’s capital, Jerusalem. The Magi had come to Jerusalem because that was where they expected to find any Judean king—but Herod had apparently not had any new sons lately. Remarkably, the scribes who knew where the Messiah would be born did not act on that knowledge; successors of these Jerusalem leaders later sought Jesus’ execution (26:3-4, 57).
2:9-10. The text might imply only that the star appeared to move due to the Magi’s own movement. Even had the object been close enough to earth to calculate its relation to Bethlehem, Bethlehem was so close to Jerusalem that any distance would have been negligible unless the object was only a mile high. But the description of God’s leading of the Magi by a moving, supernatural sign may recall how God had led his own people by the fire and cloud in the wilderness (Ex 13:21-22).
2:11. Their posture of worship was appropriate toward gods or toward kings in the East. (Unlike most Mediterranean peoples, the Magi may not have been polytheists; they may have been Zoroastrian dualists. Scholars do, however, debate the exact nature of Zoroastrianism in this period.) Incense and myrrh were treasures characteristic of the East that the Mediterranean world typically imported from there (cf. 1 Kings 10:10; Ps 72:10-11, 15).
2:12. Most kings reacted with hostility to potential usurpers and to astrological predictions of their demise. That the Magi had to be warned by a dream not to return to Herod thus suggests their naiveté, an innocence Jews rarely expected of Gentiles. Most peoples in the ancient world paid attention to special dreams (1:20); some even had rules on how to interpret them; and the Greeks thought that Magi were specially adept at dream interpretation.
The main road they would need to take northward from Bethlehem went directly through Jerusalem, then eastward through Syria. Given the probably large size of their entourage, the Magi could not approach Jerusalem without being noticed, as Herod knew very well. Indeed, no major route could take them homeward without passing through Jerusalem. They may have ventured far south to Hebron; perhaps they then followed the rugged road to Gaza on the coast, where another road could lead them northward, then through Galilee and on to Damascus.
2:13-14. A very large Jewish community lived in Egypt in this period. Perhaps one-third of Alexandria, located in northern Egypt, was Jewish; with a population estimated at about one million, it was one of the empire’s largest cities. Alexandria included a well-to-do Jewish element, schooled in Greek thought; most inhabitants of Egypt, however, were agrarian peasants, some of the poorest in the empire. Other Jewish communities had existed farther south, especially in Elephantine, for centuries. Literature from Palestinian Jews indicates that many of them questioned the devoutness of their Egyptian Jewish kinfolk, although Egyptian Jews considered themselves faithful to God.
The Nile made travel easy within Egypt, but the coastal road to Egypt from Palestine was not the finest. From Bethlehem one would take the poorer route southward to Hebron (see comment on 2:12). Egypt had served as a place of refuge in the past (1 Kings 11:40; Jer 26:21). In one Jewish tradition, God in a dream predicted to Moses’ father that Moses would be a deliverer, before Moses was born. By leaving “at night,” Joseph’s family made their route of departure impossible to trace; the language might also evoke Jewish readers’ memory of Exodus 12:31. Especially if they had an animal, they could have taken some of the gifts (2:11) for their life in Egypt.
2:15. Matthew builds almost every paragraph from the genealogy to the Sermon on the Mount around at least one text in the *Old Testament, explaining some event of Jesus’ life from Scripture. In context Hosea 11:1 refers plainly to the Israelites leaving Egypt in the exodus; Matthew applies this text to Jesus because Jesus epitomizes and fulfills Israel’s history (Mt 1:1). The broader context of Hosea 11 promises a new exodus and era of salvation (Hos 11:5, 11).
Matthew could have learned this Israel/Messiah interpretive analogy from his reading of Isaiah. Isaiah 42–53 narrows down the mission of Israel as a whole to the one who can ultimately fulfill that mission and suffer on behalf of the whole people—the one whom Christians would later understand to be Jesus (see Mt 12:17-21).
Herod died in 4 B.C.
2:16. Because the most natural route by which the Magi could have returned was through Jerusalem (2:12), Herod knew that the Magi had purposely avoided returning to him. He was known for acts like the massacre described here. A young but popular competitor, a *high priest, had a “drowning accident” in a pool that was only a few feet deep. Enraged at his favorite wife, Herod had her strangled (discovering her innocence only afterward); he was deceived into having two innocent sons executed; and on his own deathbed Herod had another son executed (admittedly a guilty one). Although probably fictitious, a purported comment of the emperor is appropriate: Better to be one of Herod’s pigs than his son. Josephus reports that Herod ordered nobles executed at his death to ensure mourning when he died; they were instead released at his death, producing celebration.
One of his fortresses, the Herodium, was within sight of Bethlehem, and he could have dispatched guards from there. Jewish people saw infanticide (killing babies) as a hideous, pagan act; sometimes applied by the Romans to deformed babies, it had also been used to control oppressed populations (Ex 1:8-22; 1 Maccabees 1:60-61; 2 Maccabees 8:4). Herod thus acts like a pagan tyrant, particularly Pharaoh in Exodus 1:22 (and secondarily Antiochus Epiphanes). Like Moses, Jesus escaped the fate of other male babies (Ex 1:22–2:10), and some Jews were expecting the coming of a prophet “like Moses” (Deut 18:15, 18).
2:17-18. Jeremiah 31:15 refers to the figurative weeping of Rachel, who was buried near Bethlehem (Gen 35:19). Jeremiah said she mourned for her descendants carried off into captivity during the Babylonian exile. Israel’s corrupt ruler Herod is not only like Pharaoh; he is like Israel’s subsequent oppressors. As Jesus’ escape presaged a new exodus (Mt 2:15), so here his people’s suffering echoes the captivity (cf. 1:11-12). The context of Jeremiah’s *prophecy might remind Matthew of Hosea 11:1 (see Jer 31:20), but the suffering in the context becomes a prelude to the hope of the new covenant (31:31-34; cf. Mt 26:28).
2:19. On dreams, see comment on 1:20.
2:20-21. Matthew’s first readers would have undoubtedly caught the comparison Matthew implies between Jesus and Moses here (cf. Ex 4:19).
2:22. Archelaus, one of Herod’s surviving sons, not only exhibited his father’s worst flaws but also lacked his administrative skill. That his mother was a *Samaritan surely also failed to commend him to his Jewish subjects. His rule was unstable, and the Romans ultimately deposed him and banished him to Gaul (France); see Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 17.334; Jewish War 2.111.
2:23. Archaeological evidence in the region of Nazareth suggests that many people had moved there from Judea, including from the area near Bethlehem. Joseph may have had friends or relatives in Nazareth (cf. Lk 2:4). Nazareth was on a major road from the coast to Syria and only a few miles from the more cosmopolitan city of Sepphoris, which was being rebuilt during Jesus’ childhood (cf. Mt 13:55). Some scholars believe that only a few hundred people lived in Nazareth proper. Though small, Nazareth would not have been isolated from broader cultural currents of antiquity. Nevertheless, it also appears to have been fairly conservative in its Jewish practice.
No single text provides Matthew’s citation here. But ancient authors sometimes blended texts together, and both Jews and Greeks used plays on words to make points in argumentation, so this text could be a play on the Hebrew word netser, “branch,” a title for the *Messiah (Jer 23:5; Zech 3:8; 6:12; cf. Is 11:1). (The only problem with this suggestion is that it assumes Matthew’s original readers already knew Hebrew; but perhaps some of the more skilled among them did.) Or it could be a play on “Nazarene”: by changing some letters slightly, it could refer to the Nazirites, a class of people dedicated to God (cf. Num 6:1-21).
See Mark 1:2-8 for more detailed comments. Isaiah 40:3, cited in Matthew 3:3, refers to a herald of the new exodus, when God would save his people again from the oppression they suffered.
3:1. “In those days” was a common *Old Testament expression, especially in (but not limited to) prophecies concerning the future. Many people in Jesus’ day expected a great leader to bring deliverance to God’s people from the wilderness, in a new exodus. In times of severe national apostasy in the Old Testament, some prophets (like Elijah) found it necessary to live outside society’s boundaries.
3:2. The Jewish people recognized that God ruled the universe in one sense now, but prayed daily for the time when his *kingdom, or rule, would be established over all peoples of the earth. (See further comment on Mk 1:14-15.)
3:3. Isaiah 40:3 is in the context of Isaiah’s *prophecy of a new exodus, when God would again deliver his people and lead them back to Jerusalem from all the nations among which they were scattered. Highways required adjustment of terrain to make them straight and level, and ancient kings, especially the kings of the East, expected the roads to be well prepared before they would travel on them. Perhaps in the interest of technical accuracy, Matthew deletes Mark’s citation of Malachi here (used in Mt 11:10; Lk 7:27).
3:4. John’s diet is that of the very poor; although domestic beekeepers were common, John eats only wild honey. (Honey was normally procured by smoking the bees out and then breaking open the honeycomb; honey was the only sweetener for food and was considered the sweetest of tastes.) But *Essenes and other pious Israelites (2 Maccabees 5:27) ate such diets to avoid unclean food.
John dressed like Elijah (2 Kings 1:8) and other people who lived outside society (some, like *Cynics and *Josephus’s Essene tutor Bannus, were more *ascetic). Elijah was to prepare the way for God’s coming, suggesting Jesus’ identity (Mal 4:5-6; cf. 3:1).
3:5-6. Pagans wanting to convert to Judaism would repent and be baptized, but John here treats Jewish people on the same terms as pagans (see further comment on Mk 1:4-5.)
3:7. An ancient tradition suggested that some kinds of vipers ate their way out of their mothers (see, e.g., Herodotus, *Plutarch). It was bad enough to be called a viper, but to be called a viper’s child was even worse—killing one’s mother or father was the most hideous crime conceivable in antiquity.
3:8. *Repentance meant turning from sin. The *Pharisees themselves are known to have questioned professions of repentance if the supposedly repentant person continued sinning. The Old Testament prophets had sometimes described the obedience one owed God, or God’s future blessing of his people, in terms of fruit (a natural image in an agricultural society; cf. Is 5:2; 27:6; Hos 10:1, 12-13; 14:7-8; Prov 11:30-31).
3:9. Jewish people commonly believed that they were saved as a people by virtue of their descent from Abraham. The idea of God raising up people from stones would have sounded to John the Baptist’s Jewish hearers more like pagan mythology (the Greeks had such stories) than reality, but ancients often used the metaphor figuratively. Some scholars have also suggested a wordplay on “children” and “stones” in *Aramaic; biblical prophets sometimes used puns to hold attention. The God who could create from dust (Gen 2:7; cf. 1:24) or ribs (2:21) could create from stones; moreover, stones could be used to symbolize God’s people (Ex 24:4; 28:9-12; Josh 4:20-21; 1 Kings 18:31). Other prophets had emphasized that God did not need Israel to fulfill his purpose (as in Amos 9:7).
3:10. Jewish literature sometimes used trees (like many other things) to symbolize Israel; at times the Old Testament used trees in *parables of judgment against the nations (Is 10:33-34; Ezek 31:2-18; Amos 2:9) or Israel (Is 10:18-19; Jer 11:16; Ezek 15:6). The wood of a thick tree (like a cedar from Lebanon) would have been used for building, but much of the wood from Palestine’s many slender fruit trees (e.g., olive or fig trees) would be useful only for small items or, often as here, for fuel.
3:11. Slaves of high-status individuals often had higher status than free persons. A slave (unlike a *disciple, who also served a master) carried the master’s sandals; John here claims that he is not worthy even to be Christ’s slave—even though earlier prophets were often called “servants” of God (e.g., 2 Kings 9:7; Jer 7:25; Dan 9:6, 10).
The prophets had predicted the outpouring of God’s *Spirit on the righteous at the time when God established his kingdom for Israel (Is 44:3; Ezek 39:29; Joel 2:28). They also decreed fire upon the wicked (Is 26:11; 65:15; 66:24; Jer 4:4; 15:14; etc.). In Matthew 3:11, the wicked are baptized, or immersed, in fire (3:10, 12), the righteous in the *Holy Spirit.
3:12. Because the same Greek (and Hebrew) word can mean both “spirit” and “wind,” the picture of wind and fire carries over from 3:11. Winnowing was familiar to all Palestinian Jews, especially to the farmers: they would throw harvested wheat into the air, and the wind would separate the heavier grain from the lighter chaff. The chaff was useless for consumption and was normally burned. Some other writers also described the day of judgment as a harvest (*4 Ezra 4:30-32; cf. Jer 51:33; Joel 3:12-14) or the wicked as chaff (Is 17:13; Jer 13:24; 15:7; etc.). That the fire is “unquenchable” points beyond the momentary burning of chaff to something far more horrible (Is 66:24). Indeed, John presupposes the harshest view of hell available in his day, since Jewish tradition was far from unanimous concerning its duration (see “*Gehenna” in glossary).
See Mark 1:9-11 for further details.
3:13-15. John anticipates Jesus’ immediate *baptism in the Spirit (see comment on 3:11); Jesus identifies with Israel.
3:16. Many believed that the Spirit was no longer available in their time; others believed that the Spirit simply did not work as forcefully as in the days of the prophets, until the time of the end. That the Spirit comes on Jesus indicates the inauguration of the messianic era and marks Jesus out as the Spirit-bearer and hence *Messiah (3:11). The dove might evoke a new era (cf. Gen 8:11-12).
3:17. Many believed that voices from heaven were the closest anyone came to *prophecy in their time. Both kinds of witness support Jesus: the heavenly voice and John’s prophecy. Matthew intends his more erudite readers to see allusions not only to a royal Messiah in Psalm 2:7, but also to the suffering servant of Isaiah 42:1-4 (see comment on Mt 12:18-21).
The devil tried to shape Jesus’ understanding of “sonship” (3:17) according to worldly models of power; Jesus allowed Scripture to define his mission. The three texts from Deuteronomy (6:13, 16; 8:3) he cites (Mt 4:4, 7, 10) were commands God gave to Israel when he tested Israel for forty years in the wilderness, the context of the first one addressing God’s “son.” Unlike Israel of old, Jesus as Israel’s representative (1:1; 2:15) passes the tests. Some scholars have compared the battle of wits between Jesus and the devil to the way rabbinic debates were conducted. Jewish stories also praised those who endured and passed the severest moral tests.
4:1. One of the most common recitations of God’s acts in the *Old Testament was that he “led” his people in the wilderness (see especially Is 63:14), where they were tested. Although the Old Testament only rarely mentions the devil, his activity as tempter (cf. Job 1-2) had come into focus much more by Jesus’ day. A surprising feature here for most Jewish readers would not have been that the devil was providing temptation, but that he was doing it in person.
4:2. Moses also fasted forty day and nights; Jesus may appear here as a new Moses, the new lawgiver (see Mt 5:1-2). Israel also was in the wilderness forty years (see the introduction to this section).
4:3. The ancients attributed this sort of feat to magicians, who claimed to be able to transform themselves into animals and to transform other substances, like stones into bread. Many Jewish people were also hoping for a new exodus led by a new Moses—complete with new manna, or bread from heaven. The devil challenges or seeks to define Jesus’ sonship against God’s Word (3:17; cf. Gen 3:1); models of power in that culture included magicians and (as in 4:8) worldly rulers. The devil wants to conform the definition of Jesus’ divine role to contemporary expectations.
4:4. The devil offers worldly models for what it means to be God’s “son” (4:3); trusting the Father’s voice (3:17), Jesus defines his mission instead from Scripture. Jesus would have known the context of Deuteronomy 8:3, which he cites: he can depend on God’s provision of manna in the wilderness because God is Jesus’ Father as God was Israel’s (Deut 8:5).
Other Jewish circles (as evident, e.g., in the *Dead Sea Scrolls and later rabbinic texts) also used the phrase “It has been written” to introduce Scripture.
4:5-6. “The holy city” was a standard title for Jerusalem. The devil takes Jesus to a part of the temple that overlooked a deep valley; a fall from there would have meant certain death. Later *rabbis acknowledged that the devil and *demons could handle Scripture expertly. Here the devil cites Psalm 91:11-12 out of context; 91:10 makes clear that God’s angelic protection (cf. Mk 1:13) is for events that befall his servants, not an excuse to seek out such dangers. The devil phrases his temptation in language a popular Jewish work applied to the wicked mocking the righteous (Wisdom of Solomon 2:18).
4:7. Using the same general context as previously, Jesus cites Deuteronomy 6:16, which refers to how the Israelites had tested God at Massah by refusing to accept that God was among them until he wrought a sign for them (Ex 17:7).
4:8-9. This realm did not technically belong to the devil (see Dan 4:32), who owned human hearts only as a usurper. The best the devil could do would be to make Jesus the political, military sort of *Messiah most Jewish people who expected a Messiah were anticipating.
4:10. Deuteronomy 6:13, which Jesus cites from the same context as previously, prohibits idolatry (see Deut 6:14), a commandment anyone who worshiped the devil would obviously violate. Cf. Mt 16:22-23.
4:11. The promised angels of Ps 91:11 serve Jesus (cf. perhaps Ps 104:4), who refused to abuse the promise out of context in Mt 4:6-7.
4:12-13. Nazareth was a small agricultural village and suburb of the old Galilean capital, Sepphoris; Capernaum was a larger fishing town (some estimate of one or two thousand) on the northwest edge of the Sea of Galilee. The trade routes brought *Gentiles through those parts. Capernaum lay in the borders of Naphtali but not Zebulon; Matthew mentions the latter because they occur together in Isaiah 9:1, which he cites in 4:15.
4:14-16. Citing here Isaiah 9:1-2, Matthew undoubtedly knows the context: the light to which it refers involves the promised Davidic king (Is 9:6-7). (Matthew again is anticipating the evangelization of non-Jews by foreshadowing it in his *narrative.) Many non-Jews in Galilee had been forcibly converted to Judaism in the second century B.C.; they had previously been aligned with Judea’s Phoenician enemies (1 Maccabees 5:15). Subsequently, however, many Judeans settled in Galilee, and its inhabitants were primarily ethnically as well as religiously Jewish. More to the point, Galilee was surrounded on all sides (except its southern, *Samaritan border) by *Hellenistic city territories. Capernaum (like Sepphoris and Nazareth farther south) was situated along one of the major trade routes of Palestine, later called “the way of the sea.” This was a caravan route from Damascus to Caesarea Maritima, which was on the Mediterranean coast.
4:17. Jesus’ message is summarized as *repentance to be ready for the *kingdom; see comment on 3:2. First-century Jewish hearers would have heard in this proclamation a warning of the imminent day of judgment.
Ancient writers often illustrated their teachings (here, 4:17) with narrative examples. See comment on Mark 1:14-20 for further details.
4:18. Most Galileans depended especially on salted fish, wheat and barley for sustenance; fish products like fish gravies were thus also common. The fish of the Sea of Galilee included large carp; the fish would be dried, salted or pickled to preserve them. Fishermen were central to the Galilean economy and could make a good living by the standards of their culture, far better than the large numbers of peasants who worked the land through much of the Roman Empire. It is thought that the casting net had a narrow end pulled by the boat and a wide end sunk by leads (contrast the larger dragnet of 13:47); nets were probably made of rope or cords woven from flax, papyrus or hemp. Archaeologists have recovered an ancient Galilean fishing boat.
4:19-20. *Disciples normally chose to become students of a particular rabbi. Only the most radical teachers called their own disciples.
4:21-22. Fishermen had more income than average people in Galilee, so James and John were not leaving their job just because it did not pay well. More than that, however, they suddenly left behind their father and the family business; such abandonment could easily bring them dishonor in the community. (Both Jews and Greeks, however, had similar accounts and would recognize this sudden departure as a sure sign of radical discipleship.)
Ancient literature commonly includes not only longer *narrative segments but also summary statements like this passage (also 9:35; 19:1-2; etc.).
4:23. Visiting teachers, especially popular ones, were normally invited to speak in *synagogues, which in this period were led by priests or laymen who were prominent members of their communities.
4:24. Because many Jewish people lived in Syria, Matthew presumably intends Syrian Jews here (Matthew probably would have eagerly mentioned Gentiles had they come). The presence of multitudes seeking relief at hot springs (like Hammath-Tiberias) in Galilee testifies to the vast numbers who sought healing in the first century; the few figures reputed as wonder-workers (e.g., Jewish exorcists or Gentile magicians) could also draw great crowds.
Although some (not all) contemporary medical writers thought epilepsy was due to demonic activity, Matthew here distinguishes the two.
4:25. The Decapolis, the “Ten Cities,” was a Gentile area that included a large Jewish population.
Matthew 5–7 is the first block of teaching material in Matthew, dealing with the ethics of the *kingdom. In 4:17 Jesus summarizes his message: “Repent, for the kingdom is at hand”; Matthew 5-7 shows in greater detail the repentant lifestyle that characterizes the people of the kingdom. This block is introduced by a common *Old Testament literary form called beatitudes: “Happy are those who . . . for they shall . . . ” (e.g., Ps 1:1). (The form appears also in some Greek literature, but is more common in Jewish sources.) Here the blessings are the promises of the kingdom for those who live the repentant life. Jesus’ hearers would have understood them especially as promises for the future time of God’s reign; we must read them in the light of the present aspect of the kingdom as well (see “kingdom” in the glossary). The future kingdom was sometimes defined by images from the creation *narratives or from Israel’s exodus from Egypt, which the Jewish people regarded as their original redemption.
5:1-2. Although one would stand to read Scripture publicly, the most respected Jewish teachers would usually sit to expound it, often with *disciples sitting at their feet. Some scholars have compared the “mountain” (cf. Lk 6:17) here to Mount Sinai, where God through Moses first taught his ethics by the *law (Ex 19-20; cf. Is 2:2-3).
5:3. Ancient writers and speakers would sometimes bracket a section of material by beginning and ending with the same phrase. These blessings involve the gift of the kingdom (5:3, 10).
Many Jewish people believed that the kingdom would be ushered in only by a great war and force of arms; Jesus promises it for the “poor in spirit,” the “humble” or “meek” (5:5), the peacemakers (5:9). Poverty and piety were often associated in Judaism; the term poor could encompass either physical poverty (Lk 6:20), or the faithful dependence on God that it often produced (“in spirit,” as here).
5:4. Mourning was usually associated with either *repentance or bereavement; the conjunction with “comfort” means that the second aspect is in view here. It could mean grief over Israel’s sins, but in this context probably refers to the pain of the oppressed (it involves the broken, as perhaps in 5:3). “Comfort” was one of the blessings promised for the future time when God would restore his mourning people (Is 40:1; 49:13; 51:3, 12; 52:9; 54:11; 57:18; 61:2; 66:13).
5:5. Here Jesus cites Scripture (Ps 37:9, 11). Not those who try to bring in the kingdom politically or militarily but those who humbly wait on God will “inherit the earth.” The Hebrew of the psalm could mean “inherit the land” in a narrower sense (Ps 25:13), but in Jesus’ day Jewish people expected God’s people to reign over all the earth, as some other Old Testament passages suggest.
5:6. On the physically needy, see comment on Lk 6:20. Jewish people understood that God would also satisfy his people’s needs in the future kingdom (Is 25:6; 41:17-18; 55:2), as he had supplied for them in the exodus when he first redeemed them (Deut 6:11; 8:7-10). But the greatest object of longing should be God (Ps 42:1; 63:1) and instruction in his righteousness (Ps 119:40, 47, 70, 92, 97, 103; Jer 15:16).
5:7. Some later *rabbis uttered similar statements (cf. also Prov 11:17). Like the peacemakers (v. 9), the merciful are not those who seek to bring in the kingdom by force. The mercy Jewish people generally hoped to receive was expected in the day of judgment (cf. Mic 7:18-19).
5:8. The “pure in heart” (Ps 73:1) were those in Israel whose hearts were “clean,” or undefiled, those who recognized that God alone was their help and reward (Ps 73:2-28). The righteous would see God on the day of judgment (e.g., Is 30:20), as in the first exodus (Ex 24:10-11).
5:9. Both the Jewish people and the righteous were called “sons of God” in Jewish tradition; the ultimate declaration of that fact would be made in the sight of the nations on the day of judgment (cf. Hos 1:10). Those teachers who came to dominate Pharisaism after the war of A.D. 66–70 were the ones who emphasized the way of peace rather than the way of revolt espoused by others. But many other Jewish leaders had joined in the spirit of revolt and were killed or came to be viewed as illegitimate leaders after the revolt’s failure.
5:10-12. Many of the Old Testament prophets suffered in bringing God’s word to Israel (e.g., Jer 26:11); Jewish tradition amplified the number of prophetic martyrs further and made it a major emphasis. The burden of proof was always on the prophet who spoke what people wanted to hear (Jer 28:8-9; cf. 6:14; 8:10-11; 23:17).
Most Jewish people did not believe that prophets still existed in the Old Testament sense, so Jesus’ comparing his followers to the prophets indicated that they would have an extraordinary mission. To suffer for God was meritorious (Ps 44:22; 69:7), and Judaism highly honored martyrs for God’s law; yet no other rabbi called disciples to die for his own teachings or name.
A *disciple of the *kingdom who does not live like a disciple of the kingdom (5:3-12) is worth about as much as tasteless salt or invisible light.
5:13. Various scholars have emphasized different uses of salt in antiquity, such as a preservative or an agent regularly added to manure; but the use of salt here is as a flavoring agent: “if salt has become tasteless” (the Greek word can also mean “become foolish,” so it may include a play on words).
Although the salt recovered from impure salt substances taken from the Dead Sea could dissolve, leaving only the impurities behind, the point here may be closer to that expressed by a rabbi at the end of the first century. When asked how one could make saltless salt salty again, he replied that one should salt it with the afterbirth of a mule. Being sterile, mules have no afterbirth, and the rabbi was saying that those who ask a stupid question receive a stupid answer. Real salt does not lose its saltiness; but if it did, what would you do to restore its salty flavor—salt it? Unsalty salt was worthless.
5:14. Jewish tradition considered Israel (Is 42:6; 49:6) and Jerusalem (as well as God and the *law) the light of the world. The “city” here could thus be Jerusalem; or it may be any elevated city at night, whose torch lights would make it visible to the surrounding countryside.
5:15-16. The small wicker oil lamps of this period gave little light in the average home, which had few windows; they would be most effective by being set on a lampstand. Something large placed over them would presumably extinguish the light altogether.
Jesus’ ethical demands (5:3-16) are no weaker than those of the *law given by Moses; cf. 5:21-26.
5:17. Jewish teachers said that one “abolished” the law by disobeying it (cf. Deut 27:26), because one thereby rejected its authority. Such highhanded rebellion against the law—as opposed to particular sins—warranted social and spiritual expulsion from the Jewish community. The charge of openly persuading others that the law was no longer in force would be even worse. Jesus opposed not the law but an illegitimate traditional interpretation of it that stressed regulations more than character.
5:18. Jesus refers here to the yod, the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet. Later rabbis told the story that when God changed Sarai’s name to Sarah, the yod that was removed complained to God for generations till he reinserted it, this time in Joshua’s name. In another later story, a yod protested that King Solomon was trying to uproot it from the Bible; God replied that a thousand Solomons would be uprooted, but not a single yod would pass from Scripture. Jewish teachers used illustrations like this to make the point that the law was sacred and one could not regard any part as too small to be worth keeping.
5:19. Later rabbis debated which commandments were the greatest. Some decided that the greatest commandment was honoring one’s father and mother, and the least, respecting a mother bird; they reasoned that both merited the same reward, *eternal life (based on “life” in Ex 20:12; Deut 22:7). A modern reader might ask, What happens to the person who breaks one and keeps another? But such a question misses the point of this hyperbolic language which other Jewish teachers also typically used to say, “God will hold accountable anyone who disregards even the smallest commandment.”
5:20. The *Pharisees were the most respected religious people in Judea, and the *scribes the supreme experts in the law (especially, no doubt, the Pharisaic scribes). Verses 21-48 show what Jesus’ demand for a “higher” righteousness involves. The Pharisees also stressed the right intention of the heart (kavanah); Jesus’ criticizes not their doctrine but their hearts as religious people. Religious communities led by Pharisaic teachers may have also been opponents of Jewish Christians in Syria-Palestine in Matthew’s day, giving Matthew additional incentive to record these words.
Six times in verses 21-43 Jesus cites Scripture and then, like a good rabbi, explains it (5:21, 27, 31, 33, 38, 43). The sort of wording he uses (especially “You have heard”) was used by other Jewish teachers to establish the fuller meaning of a text, although Jesus speaks with greater authority than Jewish teachers normally claimed.
5:21-22. “Raca” is *Aramaic for “empty-headed or worthless”; the insult is about the same as the one that follows it, “Fool!” The punishments are also roughly equal: the (day of God’s) judgment, the heavenly Sanhedrin or supreme court, and hell. (Jewish literature described God’s heavenly tribunal as a supreme court, or sanhedrin, parallel to the earthly one.) “The hell of fire” is literally “the *Gehenna of fire.” Teachers envisioned Gehinnom as the opposite of paradise; in Gehinnom the wicked would be burned up (according to some Jewish teachers) or eternally tortured (according to other Jewish teachers). Here the addition of “fire” makes Gehinnom’s fiery character all the more emphatic. Some other Jewish teachers would have agreed that not only the outward act of murder but also the inward choice of anger that generates such acts violates the spirit of God’s *law against murder.
5:23-24. Judaism stressed reconciliation between individuals; God would not accept an outward offering if one had oppressed or mistreated one’s neighbor and did not make it right. In the *Old Testament God accepted only sacrifices offered with a pure heart toward him and one’s neighbor (Gen 4:4-7; Prov 15:8; Is 1:10-15; Jer 6:20; Amos 5:21-24).
5:25-26. Again Jesus returns to the image of the heavenly court (5:22). Here he may use the custom of debt imprisonment as another image in the *parable; this was a non-Jewish custom, but Jewish hearers would have known about it among the *Gentiles. No mercy would be shown: the amount of money to be repaid extended to the last (literally) quadrans, almost the least valuable Roman coin, the equivalent of only a few minutes’ wages. (Details like the “officer” make the parable work as a story but do not symbolize anything in particular. Ancient storytellers did not invest meaning in every detail of their parables; see “parable” in the glossary.)
5:27-28. Many ancient Jewish sources warned against lust and emphasized women’s seductiveness; Jesus here emphasizes only the responsibility of the one lusting. Other Jewish teachers also looked down on lust; some even went as far as Jesus in regarding it as adultery. The issue is thus not the doctrine of Jesus’ hearers but their heart. The Greek word here is the same as in the opening line of the tenth commandment in the *Septuagint (the Greek version of the *Old Testament): “You shall not desire your neighbor’s wife” (Ex 20:17). The tenth commandment, against coveting, forces Jesus’ hearers to internalize Moses’ other commandments.
5:29-30. Corporal punishment (cutting off appendages, e.g., Ex 21:24-25) is easier to bear than capital punishment, the decree of eternal death pronounced by the heavenly court. Some Jewish thinkers believed that one would be resurrected in exactly the form in which one had died (e.g., with limbs missing, as in the case of many martyrs) before being made whole, and Jesus employs this image. Many sources used physical “stumbling” (literally) as a metaphor for sin.
Jewish *law about adultery technically addressed only intercourse with married women; the marital status of the man was not relevant. For this reason Matthew addresses here only the status of the divorced wife.
Some Pharisaic rabbis allowed divorce for almost anything (just as Roman law did); others allowed it only if the wife were unfaithful (see comment on 19:1-10; both Jewish and Roman law required divorce for adultery). Most recognized it as tragic. Yet the stricter rabbis did not view more lenient divorces as invalid. Jesus thus goes beyond the stricter position: not only does he allow divorce only if one’s wife is unfaithful, but he regards divorce for any other reason as invalid, thus making remarriage in those cases adulterous. This seems, however, to be *hyperbole (as in 5:29-30), a graphic way of forbidding divorce except when the other partner has already irreparably broken the marriage covenant (see comment on Mk 10:11).
If Jesus’ interpretation of the law was stricter than what the law said at face value, no one would have thought that he was therefore contradicting the law; “building a fence” around the law was a standard Jewish practice that involved making certain that the law’s intent was not broken.
Oaths invoked the witness of a deity; people assumed that the deity would avenge any false appeals to his or her testimony. People swore by all sorts of things other than God to testify that their word was true. They reasoned that if they broke their oath based on any of these lesser things, at least they were not bringing God’s name into disrepute. It eventually became necessary for rabbis to decide which oaths were completely binding. Like a small number of other thinkers, Jesus emphasizes having such integrity that oaths are unnecessary. He says that everything by which one could swear is ultimately God’s, and demands that people simply be as good as their word. Jesus argues the point in part from Scripture; Isaiah 66:1 declared that heaven is God’s throne and earth is his footstool.
Most people in Jewish Palestine had black or dark hair, unless they were older, in which case their hair was turning white; verse 36 would have been heard as referring to God’s control over aging. Jesus’ rule here is stricter than the letter of the *law but in accord with its spirit (Deut 23:21-23; Eccles 5:5). It is possible that the *Essenes also avoided oath-taking after their initial oath to join their sect.
The language is partly *hyperbole—*disciples did not all engage in behavior that would immediately lead to homelessness (cf. 2 Cor 11:20). But hyperbole was meant to provoke hearers to consider the radical nature of what they were being told. To put the point more literally, Jesus is calling his followers to value relationships supremely and regard possessions as nothing. (The point is absolute unselfishness, motivated by love; cf. 5:43-44.)
5:38. The “eye for an eye” and “tooth for a tooth” are part of the widespread ancient Near Eastern law of retaliation. In Israel and other cultures, this principle was enforced by a court and refers to legalized vengeance; personal vengeance was never accepted in the *law of Moses, except as a concession for a relative’s murder (Num 35:18-21). The *Old Testament did not permit personal vengeance; David, a great warrior, recognized this principle (1 Sam 25:33; 26:10-11).
5:39. The blow on the right cheek (e.g., Job 16:10; Lam 3:30) was the most grievous insult in the ancient world (apart from inflicting serious physical harm), and in many cultures was listed alongside the “eye for an eye” laws; both Jewish and Roman law permitted prosecution for this offense. A prophet might endure such ill treatment (1 Kings 22:24; 2 Chron 18:23; Is 50:6).
5:40. The poorest people of the empire (e.g., most peasants in Egypt) had only an inner and outer garment, and the theft of a cloak would lead to legal recourse. Although conditions in first-century Palestine were not quite that bad, this verse could indicate divestiture of all one’s possessions, even (hyperbolically) one’s clothes, to avoid a legal dispute affecting only oneself. Jesus gives this advice in spite of the fact that, under Jewish law, a legal case to regain one’s cloak would have been foolproof: a creditor could not take a poor person’s outer cloak, which might serve as one’s only blanket at night as well as a coat (Ex 22:26-27).
5:41. Roman soldiers had the legal right to impress the labor, work animal or substance of local residents (cf. Mk 15:21). Although impressment may not have happened often in Galilee, it happened elsewhere, and the fact that it could happen would be enough to raise the eyebrows of Jesus’ hearers at this example of nonresistance and even loving service to the oppressor.
The Jewish hierarchy favored the status quo with Rome; some revolutionaries wanted to revolt. Most Palestinian Jews in this period wanted freedom but were not revolutionaries; at least some Galilean villagers, however, may have sympathized with bandits known for their hostility toward the existing powers. By A.D. 66 Jewish Palestine was caught up in a war, and by 70 the wisdom of Jesus’ course was evident: Rome won the war, and the Jewish people, led to defeat by the revolutionaries, were crushed.
5:42. Beggars were widespread. The Bible stressed giving to those in need (Deut 15:11; Ps 112:5, 9; Prov 21:13). God would take care of the needs of those who helped the poor (Deut 15:10; Prov 19:17; 22:9; 28:8). Biblical laws against usury and especially about lending to the poor before the year of release (Deut 15:9; every seventh year debts were to be forgiven; cf. Lev 25) support Jesus’ principle here, but Jesus goes even farther in emphasizing unselfish giving (especially Lk 6:35).
5:43-44. The *Old Testament did not explicitly teach hatred for one’s enemies (Ex 23:4-5; Prov 25:21-22), although hating God’s enemies was a pious way to feel (Ps 139:19-22); some Jewish groups, like the *Essenes, emphasized hatred toward those outside the covenant. Greek ethics sometimes stressed learning from one’s enemies’ criticism but also could stress making sure to hurt one’s enemies more than one was hurt by them (so Isocrates, a fourth-century B.C. Athenian orator and rhetorician).
Although vengeance belonged only to the Lord (Lev 19:18; Deut 32:35), prayer for one’s persecutors (except that God would strike them dead!) had not generally characterized even the most pious in the Old Testament (cf. 2 Chron 24:22; Jer 11:20; 15:15; 17:18; 18:23; 20:12; often in Psalms, e.g., 137:7-9). Some philosophers valued nonresistance, but others answered their critics harshly and arrogantly.
5:45. Jewish teachers emphasized this universal aspect of God’s mercy and that he alone was sovereign over rain. (Many also stressed that the prayers of the righteous could bring rain in times of drought, an issue not addressed here.) Some Jewish texts said that by being like God, one would be his child (i.e., imitator; e.g., Sirach 4:10).
5:46-47. Some Jewish teachers emphasized kindness to pagans (*Gentiles) to draw them to the truth, but most people greeted and (apart from charity) looked after only those they knew. *Tax gatherers were considered among the most apostate Jews; Gentiles were considered (usually rightly) immoral, idolatrous, often anti-Jewish pagans. Jews agreed that one should not be like the pagans (so also the Old Testament: Lev 18:3; Deut 18:9; Jer 10:2).
5:48. Ancient rhetoric often included summary statements at the end of a speech or section. The *Aramaic word for “perfect” can mean “complete” or “whole,” including the nuance of “merciful” (Lk 6:36). The Bible already commanded being holy as God is holy (Lev 11:44-45; 19:2; 20:26), and Judaism (as well as some Greek philosophers) sometimes argued ethics on the basis of imitating God’s character.
6:1. Where appropriate, ancient speakers liked to offer a starting summary, and sometimes to illustrate with three main points. This verse is the thesis statement that introduces the three examples of private piety in 6:2-16. Judaism stressed that one should not perform deeds for the sake of reward but nonetheless promised reward, as Jesus does here; this reward is rendered at the day of judgment, as in Judaism. Prayer, fasting and gifts to the poor were among the basic components of Jewish piety (Tobit 12:8), and many *rabbis listed qualities (e.g., virtues on which the world was founded) in sets of three.
6:2-4. In general, Greeks and Romans did not emphasize personal charity; wealthy contributions to public projects or to *clients of slightly lower status were meant to secure the giver’s popularity. In contrast, charity was central to Jewish piety; some writers even said that it saved a person, although some later rabbis’ restrictions technically did not permit one to give over twenty percent above his tithes.
Some commentators have taken the trumpet sounding literally, but it is hyperbolic (people did not blow trumpets when giving alms) and might reflect a play on words (charity boxes were often shaped like trumpets). Not letting one’s left hand know about the right hand’s gift is *hyperbole (cf. Jon 4:11), and some similar graphic pictures appear elsewhere. The language of “having” a reward “in full” is the language of repayment in ancient business receipts.
The parallel structure of the larger section (6:1-18) and of this passage on prayer is augmented by the presence of a sample prayer (6:9-13; thus how one should not pray, 6:5, 7-8; and how one should pray, 6:6, 9). Judaism was much more serious about regular prayer than were Greek and Roman religions.
6:5-6. The problem is not public prayer but motives directed toward other people rather than toward God. It was probably common for pious people to recite their prayers at least individually in the *synagogue; it is not clear that everyone prayed simultaneously in all synagogues as early as Jesus’ time. Some suggest that the “chamber” was a storeroom; most people did not have private rooms in their houses, and only that room would have a door on it. Standing was a common posture for prayer.
6:7. Jewish scholars were debating the use of fixed prayers in this period; they generally held them to be acceptable if one’s intent was genuine. Greek prayers sometimes piled up as many titles of the deity addressed as possible, hoping to secure his or her attention. Pagan prayers typically reminded the deity of favors done or sacrifices offered, attempting to get a response from the god on contractual grounds.
6:8. Judaism recognized that God knew everything; the issue here (and often with respect to Jesus’ teaching) is thus not Jesus’ hearers’ doctrine but their hearts. Jewish people saw God differently than Greeks saw their gods (even though even monotheistic faith was not always what it should have been). In Judaism, God was a Father who delighted in meeting the needs of his people; Judaism also recognized that God knew all a person’s thoughts. Jesus predicates effective prayer on a relationship of intimacy, not a business partnership model, which was closer to the one followed by ancient paganism.
6:9-10. Greek sources often called the supreme deity “father,” including in prayers, but this practice is pervasive in Jewish sources as well, even as early as the *Old Testament (Deut 32:6; Ps 68:5; Is 63:16; 64:8; Jer 3:4, 19; 31:9; Mal 1:6; 2:10) and other very early Jewish works (e.g., Tobit 13:4; *3 Maccabees 5:7; 7:6). Jewish people commonly addressed God as “our heavenly Father” when they prayed, although such intimate titles as “Abba” (Papa) were rare (see comment on Mk 14:36). One standard Jewish prayer of the day (the Kaddish) proclaimed, “Exalted and hallowed be his . . . name . . . and may his kingdom come speedily and soon.” Because God was Father, his children could depend on him (cf. 18:3).
Jewish prayers recognized that God’s name would be “hallowed,” or “sanctified,” “shown holy,” in the time of the end, when his *kingdom would come, as the Bible also said (Is 5:16; 29:23; Ezek 36:23; 38:23; 39:7, 27; cf. Zech 14:9). Jewish people would also recognize the importance of living consistently with what they valued in prayer. In the present God’s people could hallow his name by living rightly; if they lived wrongly, they would “profane” his name, or bring it into disrepute among the nations (cf. also Ex 20:7; Jer 34:16; 44:25-26; Ezek 13:19; 20:14; Amos 2:7). Some regard the kiddush hashem, the hallowing of God’s name, as the most fundamental principle of later rabbinic ethics; they counted profaning God’s name as almost unforgiveable.
It was understood that after his kingdom came God’s will would be done on earth as in heaven.
6:11. This verse alludes to God’s provision of “daily bread” (manna) for his people in the wilderness after he first redeemed them. Some Jewish people looked for a renewal of manna in the end time, but prayers for God to supply one’s basic needs—of which bread and water are the ultimate examples—were common in the ancient world (cf. Prov 30:8).
6:12. Prayer for forgiveness appears in standard ancient Jewish prayers (note the sixth of the Eighteen Benedictions). Jewish teaching regarded sins as “debts” before God; the same *Aramaic word could be used for both. Biblical *law required the periodic forgiveness of monetary debtors (in the seventh and fiftieth years), so the illustration of forgiving debts would have been a graphic one (especially since Jewish lawyers had found a way to circumvent the release of debts so that creditors would continue to lend).
6:13. Parallels with ancient Jewish prayers, and possibly the Aramaic wording behind this verse, suggest that the first line means: “Let us not sin when we are tested”—rather than “Let us not be tested” (cf. 4:1; 26:41 in context; cf. Ps 141:3-4). Some scholars have suggested an allusion to the final time of suffering here, which was expected to precede the coming kingdom, but while such testing could be included, most Jewish prayers about testing were for strength in the present era. Because Jewish prayers were commonly used in liturgical contexts that ended with a statement of praise, later texts’ addition of the benediction (“Thine is the kingdom . . . ”) to the original text of Matthew is not surprising.
6:14-15. Although others felt differently, some Jewish sages recognized that only those who forgave would be forgiven (Sirach 28:1-8). The principle of forgiveness that Jesus states here seems to be that only people of *grace know how to accept grace. See comment on 18:21-35.
Jewish people conjoined fasting with mourning, *repentance, or sometimes prayer; most fasts ran from sundown to sundown. During at least the dry seasons, many of the most pious people fasted (without water, though this was unhealthy) two particular days a week. This fasting was considered meritorious, although *ascetic fasting (e.g., fasting only to “beat down the flesh”) was forbidden. Jewish fasting required abstinence not only from food but also from other pleasures, which would include the usual practice of anointing one’s head with oil to prevent dry skin; avoiding all these practices made fasting obvious. (Greeks oiled their bodies before exercise and then used a metal utensil called a strigil to scrape off the sweaty dirt accumulated on the oil. But Jews did not practice this custom, and it is not in view here in Mt 6.) God had never settled for outward fasting only (Is 58:3-12; Jer 36:9).
One should not value possessions enough to seek them (6:19-24)—or enough to worry about them—because God will provide one’s basic needs (6:25-34). Ancient views on possessions varied from denial of personal possessions (like the *Essenes) to viewing wealth as a blessing (more common); but most people then, like most people today, sought as much as possible.
6:19. Ancient teachers like *Hillel, a famous Jewish teacher, generally acknowledged the corruptibility of earthly treasure. Because thieves could dig through walls and steal a strongbox in one’s home, well-to-do people usually tried one of several other methods to safeguard their wealth: investing money with moneychangers, depositing it in a temple for safekeeping (even most robbers balked at “robbing gods”), or burying it in the ground or in caves, where, however, moth (for expensive apparel) or rust (for coins, cf. Sirach 29:10-11; but the term here in Matthew may involve decay by creatures, e.g., worms) could destroy its value in time.
6:20-21. Jewish texts spoke of “laying up treasure” with God or in heaven (e.g., Tobit 4:7-10). Sometimes this meant that the generous person could trust that God would help him in time of need; sometimes it referred (as here) to treasure in the world to come.
6:22-23. Jesus speaks literally of a “single” eye versus a “bad” or “evil” one. This saying may involve several plays on words. A “single” eye normally meant a generous one but also sets the reader up for 6:24. A “bad” eye in that culture could mean either a diseased one or a stingy one. Many people believed that light was emitted from the eye, enabling one to see, rather than that light was admitted through the eye. Although here Jesus compares the eye to a lamp, he speaks of “diseased” eyes which fail to admit light. Such eyes become a symbol for the worthlessness of a stingy person.
6:24. Two masters rarely shared slaves, but when they did (sometimes through joint inheritance) it led to divided interests. “Mammon” is an *Aramaic word for possessions or money, and Jesus seems to be personifying it as an idol, using another ancient figure of speech (personification).
6:25. Most people in antiquity had little beyond basic necessities—food, clothing and shelter. Because their acquisition of these necessities often depended—especially in rural areas—on seasonal rains or (in Egypt) the flooding of the Nile, they had plenty of cause for stress even about food and clothing.
6:26-27. Some ancient philosophers taught about or drew morals from nature as well as from philosophy. Many Jewish teachers said that God’s concern in the laws of the Bible was only for humans (although it was clear that God watched over all creation; cf. Ps 104:27). But Jesus’ argument was a standard Jewish “how much more” (qal vahomer) argument: If God cares for the birds (and rabbis agreed that he sustained all creation), how much more does he care for humans?
6:28-30. Jesus’ term could apply to any of the flowers in Galilee’s fields, though some commentators have suggested anemones, which were purple, the color that many ancient readers would have envisioned for Solomon’s royal robes (6:29). In any case, such flowers were fuel for women’s bread-baking ovens. The perishing of grass and flowers as they dried up in each year’s summer heat was a natural image for human mortality (cf. Ps 103:15-16; Is 40:6-8).
6:31-33. The pagan world did indeed seek after such necessities, but Jesus reminds his hearers that they could trust their Father (v. 32; see comment on 6:7-8) and should seek the kingdom (v. 33).
6:34. Other Jewish teachers after Jesus gave the same advice; whether Jesus used a common saying or his teaching in this case became a common saying is hard to determine.
7:1-2. The idea of a measuring scale (the image is from the ancient marketplace) was used elsewhere for the day of judgment or divine retribution. “As one measures it will be measured back to one” occurs a number of times in later Jewish sources and may have been a maxim. For the principle, see 5:7, 6:14-15 and Proverbs 19:17. Compare also the *Old Testament principles that false witnesses were to receive the penalty they sought for the accused (Deut 19:18-21) and that God opposed unjust judges (Ex 23:6-8; Deut 16:18-20).
7:2-5. Although ancient eye surgery sometimes involved lancing the eye, here Jesus clearly uses *hyperbole. The imagery is vivid, shocking, ludicrous and probably humorous to Jesus’ hearers, but it communicates the point. The prophets had appealed to graphic images, often employing plays on words to communicate their message (e.g., the Hebrew of Mic 1; Jer 1:11-12). The Old Testament (e.g., Prov 15:32) and subsequent Jewish tradition stressed that people should always be humble enough to accept correction.
7:6. Pigs and dogs were considered unclean animals (Prov 26:11; 2 Pet 2:22), which had no appreciation for valuable things (Prov 11:22). Pigs typically ate the vilest foods, and dogs were scavengers, consuming even human blood. Stray dogs were known to growl at those who tossed them food as well as those who ignored them. The image would thus be forceful and beyond dispute for ancient hearers.
The more debated question is what the verse means in the context. Perhaps it means not correcting (cf. Mt 7:1-5) those who would not listen (cf. Prov 23:9).
7:7-8. Even as a general principle, the boldness with which this text promises answers to prayer is quite rare in ancient literature; only a few special men of God were thought to obtain most of what they requested.
7:9-11. Jesus adapts a standard Jewish argument here called qal vahomer arguing from the lesser to the greater (if the lesser is true, how much more the greater). Fish and bread were basic staples, integral to the diet of most of Jesus’ hearers; they do not stand for the fineries of the wealthy.
7:12. That one should not do to others what one would not wish done to oneself was a common teaching; it occurred in the Jewish book of Tobit, reportedly in the teaching of the early Jewish teacher Hillel and in Greek sources as well (cf., e.g., the negative form in Tobit 4:15; Philo, Hypothetica 7.6; Babylonian Shabbat 31a; positively, Letter of Aristeas 207; cf. also Sirach 31:15; Greek sources and even Confucian teaching). The version attributed in a later source to *Hillel adds, “This is the whole law” (cf. Mt 22:40).
7:13-14. Jesus’ hearers would have been familiar with the image of “two ways”—one leading to life and the other to death; it was common in Judaism (see already Deut 30:15). Jesus’ emphasis that few are on the right way occurs in *4 Ezra but is not as common as the general image of the two ways. Apparently most Jewish people believed that Israel as a whole would be saved and that the few who were lost would be exceptions to the general rule.
7:15. Although many educated Jewish people did not believe that prophets had continued in the *Old Testament sense, they believed that false prophets (cf., e.g., Jer 2:8; 5:30) continued; *Josephus mentioned many of them in the first century. The contrast between vicious wolves and harmless lambs or sheep was proverbial. Stories existed of some using skins as disguises, but the image here is more graphic: wolves do not wear clothes.
7:16. Like wheat and barley, grapes and figs were among the most valuable and widely consumed fruits of the earth; thorns and thistles were worthless and troublesome to harvesters, as the Old Testament often mentions. For a figurative use of “fruits” in the Old Testament, see Isaiah 5:6 and comment on Matthew 3:8.
7:17-20. The repetition of “know them by their fruits” (7:17, 20) brackets this illustration; such bracketing was commonly used as a literary device (called inclusio) to mark off a paragraph. Prophets were known to be false if they led people away from the true God (Deut 13) or their words did not come to pass (Deut 18:21-22). The *rabbis allowed that prophets might temporarily suspend a teaching of the *law the way rabbis themselves would, but if they denied the law itself or advocated idolatry, they were false prophets. Jesus teaches that if they do not live right, they are false (Mt 7:21-23). Cf. Luke 6:43-45.
7:21-23. The miracles Jesus mentions are not necessarily false; it is possible to prophesy by the *Spirit’s inspiration and yet be disobedient to God and unsaved (1 Sam 19:20-24). The admonition to depart is from a psalm about the vindication of the righteous (Ps 6:8; cf. 119:115; 139:19). Some tried to use Solomon’s name to cast out demons (Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 8.47), but many acted or prophesied in God’s name (Deut 18:22; 1 Sam 17:45; 1 Esdras 6:1).
7:24-27. The rabbis debated whether hearing or doing the law was more important; most concluded that hearing it was more important, because one could not do it without hearing it. But they did insist that both were necessary.
Again the image is of the day of judgment. The idea of ultimately being judged for hearing but not obeying was familiar (Ezek 33:32-33). But no Jewish teacher apart from Jesus claimed so much authority for his own words; such authority was reserved for the law itself. Some of Jesus’ more biblically literate hearers may have thought of Proverbs 24:3 (“by wisdom a house is built”) and the contrast between wisdom (which builds a house in 9:1) and folly in Proverbs 9:1-18. Later rabbis told a *parable very similar to that of Jesus here, but whereas their foundation involved heeding the Torah (e.g., Avot de Rabbi Natan 24A), here it involves heeding Jesus’ words.
The teachers of the *law never claimed as much authority as Jesus had (7:24-27); they derived their authority especially from building on previous tradition.
Matthew groups together nine stories containing ten specific miracles (some commentators have suggested that Matthew wants his readers to remember Moses’ ten miracles) in chapters 8–9: three miracles in 8:1-17, then teaching on true discipleship (8:18-22); three more miracles (8:23–9:8), then teaching on true discipleship (9:9-17); and finally three more miracle stories, one of which includes two miracles (9:18-33).
Ancient writers used examples to illustrate points: Jesus’ authority over sickness, *demons and nature summons people to recognize his authority over their lives. In ancient thought, miracles could call attention to or attest teachers or their views (in contrast to modern rationalistic attempts to deny them).
8:1. People in power viewed mobile teachers with followings of large crowds as threats to social stability; the Romans were always concerned about uprisings in Jewish Palestine. Readers familiar with this situation in pre-70 Jewish Palestine might recognize here a hint of impending conflict.
8:2. Leprosy was an unattractive skin disease for which the Bible had prescribed quarantine from the rest of society (Lev 13:45-46). Lepers were thus largely outcasts from society (2 Kings 7:3). In personal address, “Lord” could also mean “Sir”; the degree of respect connoted depended on the person addressed. Prostrating oneself before another signified extreme respect for another’s dignity or power to meet a difficult need.
8:3. Touching a leper was forbidden (cf. Lev 5:3), and most people would have been revolted by the thought of it. Indeed, the *law enjoined the leper’s isolation from society (Lev 13:45-46). See further comment on Mark 1:40-45. The miracle itself would have been viewed as the work of a mighty prophet, however (cf. 2 Kings 5:14).
8:4. Jesus here follows the injunctions detailed in the *Old Testament law of leprosy (Lev 14:1-32). The instructions not to tell anyone else resemble the clandestine activity of some Old Testament prophets; they would also appear honorable in view of ancient Mediterranean disdain for boasting and perhaps because Jesus avoids competing with those in power here. Of course, preventing excessive crowds that could deter his mission could be another consideration, since reports about divine works drew crowds. On the messianic secret, see further the discussion of Mark’s message in the introduction to Mark.
By including this story from his source, Matthew encourages his Jewish Christian readers in the *Gentile mission. Even a single exception should be enough to challenge racist stereotypes.
8:5. The nearest legion of Roman troops was stationed in Syria; in Judea, several cohorts were stationed at Caesarea on the Mediterranean coast with additional soldiers in the fortress Antonia in Jerusalem; Capernaum, as a customs post, might have warranted some soldiers, or the centurion might come from elsewhere or be retired. Soldiers in Palestine were largely auxiliaries, many of them from the local region; while they would become Roman citizens when discharged (and would represent Rome for Matthew’s audience), many were Syrian ethnically. Centurions commanded a “century,” but in practice this consisted of roughly eighty troops, not one hundred. Unlike higher officers, most centurions worked their way up through the ranks. They were the backbone of the Roman army, in charge of discipline. In view of the Judean-Roman War (or even soldiers’ abuses in the East; see comment on 5:41), most of Matthew’s audience would probably not typically like centurions.
8:6. On “Lord,” see comment on 8:2. During their minimum of twenty years of service in the Roman army, soldiers were not permitted to marry. Many had illegal local concubines, an arrangement that the army overlooked and the concubines found profitable; but centurions, who might be moved around more frequently, might be less likely to have such informal families than most soldiers. The centurion may or may not have had an unofficial wife and children. By ancient definitions, however, a household could include servants, and household servants and masters sometimes grew very close—especially if they made up the entire family unit. Centurions were paid much better than lower-ranking troops. At average prices, a slave would have cost about one-third of the annual wages of the best-paid legionary (and more for other soldiers), but centurions made between fifteen and sixty times the wages of typical soldiers.
8:7. Jesus’ response may be read as a question, a challenge, rather than a statement: “Shall I come and heal him?” (cf. 15:26). If one reads it as a statement, it declares Jesus’ willingness to cross an important cultural boundary. It seems that pious Jewish people did not normally enter Gentile homes; see comment on Acts 10:27-29.
8:8. The centurion, who knows that Jewish people rarely entered Gentile homes, concedes Jesus’ special mission to Israel (cf. 15:27). At the same time he expresses great faith, for among all the stories (both true and spurious) of healing miracles in antiquity, long-distance healings were rare and considered especially extraordinary.
8:9. The centurion’s response demonstrates that he (backed by Rome’s authority) understands the principle of authority that Jesus exercises. Roman soldiers were very disciplined and (except in times of mutiny) followed orders carefully; they provided the ultimate model of discipline and obedience in the Roman Empire. “Go” and “come” appear elsewhere as summary examples of expressing authority.
8:10. Gentiles were generally pagans, with no faith in Israel’s God.
8:11. This verse reflects the standard Jewish image of the future banquet in God’s *kingdom. Although the Bible declared that it was for all peoples (Is 25:6; cf. 56:3-8), Jewish literature by this period emphasized that it was prepared for Israel, who would be exalted over its enemies. People were seated at banquets according to rank. They “sat” at regular meals but “reclined” (as here) at feasts; table fellowship signified intimacy, so fellowship with the great patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, was thought to represent a future hope for the Jewish people, not for Gentiles, with whom Jewish people did not eat.
8:12. The “rightful” heirs are cast out; other Jewish texts used outer darkness to describe hell, often where mighty evil spirits were imprisoned; the gnashing of teeth may allude to Psalm 112:10.
8:13. Some Jewish stories circulated about miracle workers, but reports of long-distance healings were rare and regarded as extraordinary. This healing would thus have been viewed as especially miraculous.
8:14. Archaeologists have found what some think is this very home in a site close to the *synagogue. Adult children were expected to care for their aged parents. Newly married couples often lived with the groom’s family. (For more details, see comment on Mk 1:29-34.)
8:15. Some religious men refrained from touching women in general to avoid any possibility of becoming unclean, unless they had means by which they could ascertain their status (based on Lev 15:19). That Peter’s mother-in-law was able to “serve” them at table, a common womanly role in antiquity (cf. Lk 10:40), indicates the extent to which she was genuinely healed.
8:16. Exorcists often used magical incantations and sought to manipulate higher spirits into helping them drive out lower ones; sometimes they also used smelly roots and similar techniques to expel *demons. In contrast, Jesus simply drives out spirits “with a word.” Anthropologists have documented experiences indigenously interpreted as spirit possession in a majority of the world’s cultures.
8:17. In context Isaiah 53:4 emphasizes particularly healing from the ravages of sin (53:5-6; cf. Hos 14:4, etc.), as some other Christian writers noted (1 Pet 2:24-25). But given Isaiah’s emphasis on physical restoration in the messianic era (35:5-6) and the connection between physical and spiritual healing in Jewish tradition (cf. also Is 33:24), it makes good sense that Matthew also finds the nuance of physical healing here: Jesus inaugurates the messianic era, making some of its benefits available even in advance of the cross.
8:18. *Disciples generally acted as servants to their *rabbis, following practical orders relevant to the work of the teacher and his school as well as learning his teachings.
8:19-20. Disciples usually sought out their own teachers. Some radical Greek philosophers who eschewed possessions sought to repulse prospective disciples with enormous demands, for the purpose of testing them and acquiring the most worthy. Those who joined radical Jewish sects such as the *Essenes had to relinquish their property. David warned a prospective follower about the suffering that would attend following him (2 Sam 15:19-20), but the proper response was to follow anyway (2 Sam 15:21-22). Like fishermen and *tax gatherers, carpenters had a much better income than agrarian peasants; Jesus’ call, not involuntary poverty, summoned him and his followers to a sacrificial lifestyle.
Comparisons with animals constituted a fairly common teaching technique (e.g., the now famous animal fables attributed to Aesop). Jewish people could compare righteous sufferers with birds finding refuge for nesting only with difficulty (Ps 11:1; 84:3; 102:6-7; 124:7); foxes nested in desolate places (Lam 5:18; Ezek 13:4).
8:21-22. One of an eldest son’s most basic responsibilities (in both Greek and Jewish cultures) was his father’s burial; failure to meet this obligation could make one a social outcast in one’s village. The initial burial took place shortly after a person’s decease, however, and family members would not be outside talking with rabbis during the reclusive mourning period immediately following the death. Thus some argue that what is in view here instead is the secondary burial: a year after the first burial, after the flesh had rotted off the bones, the son would return to rebury the bones in a special box in a slot in the tomb’s wall. The son in this *narrative could thus be asking for as much as a year’s delay. Others note that in some Semitic languages, “wait until I bury my father” is a way of asking for delay until one may complete one’s filial obligations, even if the father is not yet dead.
Even on these interpretations, however, Jesus’ demand that the son place him above the greatest responsibility a son had toward his father would have horrified hearers: in Jewish tradition, honoring father and mother was one of the greatest commandments (see, e.g., Josephus, Apion 2.206), and to follow Jesus at the expense of not burying one’s father would have been viewed as dishonoring one’s father (on the need to bury parents, cf. Tobit 4:3-4; 6:15; 4 Maccabees 16:11). While some sages demanded greater honor than parents, only God could take precedence over them to this degree (cf. Deut 13:6).
Greek stories about those who could subdue nature were normally about gods or about demigods who had acted in the distant past. Jewish tradition reported some earlier teachers who could pray for rain or its cessation like Elijah. But absolute authority over waves and sea in Jewish tradition belonged to God alone. It is not difficult to understand why the *disciples did not know what to make of Jesus!
Only local people described the lake of Galilee as a “sea” of Galilee, as here (8:24). Philosophers valued serenity during storms at sea as a sign of genuine belief in philosophy; similarly, ability to sleep in the face of danger could reveal faith in God (Ps 3:5; 4:8).
Proposals vary on why Matthew has two, and Mark but one, demoniac here (see comment on Mk 5:1-20); one suggestion is that Matthew knows of one that Mark omitted. Another is that he includes an extra one here because he left one out by omitting the story recorded in Mark 1:21-28; the doubling of characters here would not have violated standard Jewish writing conventions of that time.
8:28. Tombs were ceremonially unclean and were thought to be popular haunts for evil spirits (a belief the spirits were apparently happy to accommodate). Both Gadara (here) and Gerasa (Mk 5:1) were predominantly *Gentile cities in the region of the Decapolis, but Gadara was much closer to the Sea of Galilee (Gerasa, a prominent and magnificent city, was over thirty miles southeast). Roughly six miles to the southeast, Gadara probably controlled the land where this *narrative occurs. Violent behavior is still frequently associated with many cases of spirit possession in cultures that recognize the phenomenon.
8:29. “Before the time” means before the day of judgment. Apparently even the *demons did not expect the *Messiah to come in two stages, a first and second coming.
8:30. Jewish people lived in this region, but it was predominantly non-Jewish; hence the pigs. Herds could be huge; one ancient source speaks of a thousand pigs from a single sow.
8:31. Ancient stories about demons suggest that they liked to negotiate the least difficult terms if they were going to have to leave one whom they possessed. Hearing that demons would want to inhabit unclean pigs, Jewish listeners might have responded, “But of course!”
8:32. Though it was known that pigs could swim, they could not survive in this situation. In Jewish tradition, demons could die or be bound (sometimes beneath bodies of water); because Matthew says nothing to the contrary, his readers would probably assume that these demons have been imprisoned or otherwise deactivated.
8:33-34. Pigs required little oversight to graze, but some herdsmen, responsible to the owners, would nevertheless watch over them, and pigs might respond to their voices. The *Old Testament *narratives of Elijah and Elisha allowed Jewish people to place some miracle workers in the category of “prophet,” but Greeks usually categorized miracle workers as magicians or sorcerers. Because magicians and sorcerers were usually malevolent and Jesus’ coming had already cost these Gentiles from the Decapolis economically (a lot of pork), they were naturally terrified of him.
It was common to abridge accounts, as Matthew often does; reciting Mark’s story about the paralytic (see comment on Mk 2:1-12), he omits even the dramatic letting down through the roof.
9:1-2. For many poor people, “beds” could be mats; thus the paralytics’ friends may have carried him on the bed on which he lay all the time. “His own town” here is Capernaum (4:13).
9:3. Judaism believed that only God could forgive sins, but most Jews allowed that some of God’s representatives could speak on God’s behalf. The *Old Testament penalty for blaspheming God’s name—reproaching rather than honoring it—was death (Lev 24:10-23). According to later rabbinic law, blasphemy technically involved pronouncing the divine name or perhaps inviting people to follow other gods. According to the more common, less technical usage, it applied to any grievous insult to God’s honor (cf. Num 15:30). But these legal scholars were mistaken in interpreting Jesus’ words as blasphemy, by any definition.
9:4. Judaism recognized that God sometimes revealed to prophets what others were thinking or planning.
9:5-7. Jewish teachers knew that only God could ultimately forgive (on the Day of Atonement in response to sacrifice); but they also recognized that healing ultimately came from God as well. *Josephus shows us that many false prophets in Jesus’ day promised to work miracles but actually failed to work them; some of Jesus’ critics may have placed him in this category, until they witnessed the miracles.
9:8. When ancient writers reported accounts of miracles, they generally concluded the account with the amazed response of the crowds who witnessed it.
9:9. Levi may have been a tax farmer working for Herod or the municipal government; situated at an office in Capernaum, many think that he was a customs agent, charging import duties on wares brought through this town on important nearby trade routes. Whether or not this is the case, his reputation seems to at least associate him with other kinds of tax collectors. Even more than the fishermen, he had a secure and prosperous job, which he surrendered to follow Jesus’ call.
9:10. Most people regarded a man of wealth inviting a religious teacher over for dinner as honorable behavior. *Tax gatherers, however, were regarded as collaborators with the Romans or Herod’s dynasty and were despised by religious people. Tax gatherers assessing property were free to search anything except the person of a Roman matron, seizing undeclared property; some were so brutal that they might beat an elderly woman to discover where her son had fled to evade payment. In poor areas in Egypt, we even hear of entire villages relocating to evade the tax gatherers. Presumably few agents in Galilee would have been so brutal, but tax gatherers were generally ill-liked. Even when tax gatherers did not extort additional money, taxes were high.
Some commentators have argued that “sinners” may refer to all who did not eat food in ritual purity, but the term probably refers to anyone who lived sinfully rather than religiously, as if they did not care what the religious community thought of them.
9:11. Table fellowship indicated intimate relations among those who shared it. Later *rabbis sometimes contrasted tax gatherers and *Pharisees as the epitomes of impiety and piety respectively. The Pharisees were particularly scrupulous about their special rules on eating and did not like to eat with less scrupulous people, especially people like tax gatherers and sinners. Here they assume that Jesus, being a wise teacher, ought to share their religious convictions, which they believed were scriptural (Ps 1:1; 119:63; Prov 13:20; 14:7; 28:7; the biblical principle, however, is to avoid being influenced by, not to avoid influencing, the ungodly). Judaism affirmed God’s mercy (cf. Ps 25:8), but for Jesus as a teacher to pursue those known as sinners violated conventional expectations of holiness.
9:12. Jesus’ reply plays on a common image of the day (comparing physicians and teachers) to make his point. Quick, witty repartee was characteristic of popular teachers in both Jewish and Greek traditions.
9:13. Other rabbis often said, “Go and learn” or “Come and see” to direct hearers to scriptural proofs for their position. Hosea 6:6 does not reject sacrifice or ritual, but elevates right relationship with God and right treatment of the poor, the oppressed and the outcasts above sacrifice and ritual (cf. similarly 1 Sam 15:22; Ps 40:6; 50:7-15; 51:16; 69:30-31; Prov 21:3).
9:14. People often held teachers responsible for the behavior of their *disciples. The *law required fasting only on the Day of Atonement, but many other fasts had been added by religious Jews, especially by groups like the Pharisees. Many of the Pharisees may have fasted two days a week without water, especially during the dry season (cf. Luke 18:12). Fasting was an important practice to join with prayer or penitence, so it would have been unusual for disciples (prospective rabbis) to have avoided it altogether. A teacher was regarded as responsible for the behavior of his disciples. If Jesus compares himself with the bridegroom (one should not press comparisons into every detail in *parables), it may be significant that God is the bridegroom in some OT images (e.g., Hos 2:14-20).
9:15. Wedding feasts could involve seven days of festivity; so crucial an obligation was joy that rabbis were said to pause their instruction to hail passing bridal processions. One was not permitted to fast or engage in other acts of mourning or difficult labor during a wedding feast. Jesus makes an analogy about the similar inappropriateness of fasting in his own time.
9:16. Again, the issue is the inappropriateness of fasting in the present circumstance. Older clothes would have already shrunk somewhat from washing.
9:17. Wine could be kept in either jars or wineskins. The animal skins were often goatskins, often with two or three sewn together. Old wineskins had already been stretched to capacity by fermenting wine within them; if they were then filled with unfermented wine, it would likewise expand, and the old wineskins, already stretched to the limit, would burst.
Raising the dead was an extraordinary miracle, attributed to Elijah (1 Kings 17:21-22) and Elisha (2 Kings 4:33-35) in the Old Testament. Physical contact with either communicated ritual impurity (Lev 15:19-33; Num 19:11-12). See comment on Mark 5:21-43 for further details.
9:18-19. “Rulers of the *synagogue” were leaders in synagogues and were prominent members of their communities. (When honorary, the title may refer to benefactors only, but most Jewish people with this title were likely both significant donors and influential in the synagogue.) If the setting is still Capernaum (9:1), it is significant that Jesus’ following could include both this man and more questionable elements of the community (9:9).
One would fall at the feet of someone of much greater status (like a king) or prostrate oneself before God; thus for this prominent man to humble himself in this way before Jesus was to recognize Jesus’ power in a serious way.
9:20-21. This woman’s sickness was reckoned as if she had a menstrual period all month long; it made her continually unclean under the *law (Lev 15:19-33)—a social and religious problem in addition to the physical one. If she touched anyone or anyone’s clothes, she rendered that person ceremonially unclean for the rest of the day (cf. Lev 15:26-27). Because she rendered unclean anyone she touched, she should not have even been in this heavy crowd. Many teachers avoided touching women altogether, lest they become accidentally contaminated. Thus she could not touch or be touched, she had probably never married or was now divorced, and she was marginal to Jewish society. Leviticus forbade intercourse with a menstruating woman, and Jewish tradition mandated divorce when marriages did not yield children.
In an act of scandalous faith, she touches Jesus’ garment’s “fringe”—no doubt one of the tassels (zizith) worn by Jewish men, in obedience to Numbers 15:38-41 and Deuteronomy 22:12, on the four corners of their outer garment, and later on the prayer shawl (tallith). The tassels were made of blue and white cords woven together.
9:22. Many ancient people believed that only teachers closest to God had supernatural knowledge. Jesus uses his supernatural knowledge to identify with the woman who had touched him—even though in the eyes of the public this would mean that he had contracted ritual uncleanness.
9:23-24. Flute players were there to lead the crowd in mourning. Tradition preserved in the rabbis insisted on several professional women mourners for the funeral of even the poorest person; the funeral of a member of a prominent family like this one would have many mourners. The cathartic release of mourning included shrieking and beating of breasts. Because bodies decomposed rapidly in Palestine, mourners were to be assembled, if possible, immediately upon someone’s death. Sleep was a common euphemism for death (though contrasted here).
9:25-26. The most defiling kind of ritual uncleanness one could contract in Jewish law came from touching a corpse, generating seven days’ impurity (Num 19:11-22).
9:27-31. “Son of David” was the title of the *Messiah, but in most expectations the Messiah was a political or military figure rather than a healer. But these blind men understand a connection between healing and Jesus’ identity that went beyond Jewish tradition. God ruled over blindness and sight (Ex 4:11; Prov 20:12) and could answer prophets’ prayers to remove and restore human sight (2 Kings 6:18-20). Matthew repeats or offers an analogous account at 20:29-34; Genesis and other earlier works likewise reported analogous incidents, inviting their audiences to read each incident in light of the others (e.g., Gen 12:10-20; 20:1-18; 26:7-11).
9:32-34. Elijah and Elisha had done extraordinary healing miracles; David is the only recorded *Old Testament figure God used in exorcism (1 Sam 16:23). Matthew 9:33 thus indicates that the crowds were greatly impressed with his miracles.
The works of Jesus in 8:1–9:35 must become those of his disciples in chapter 10. Disciples were typically expected to carry on their teachers’ works.
9:35-36. Without Moses (Num 27:17) or a king (1 Kings 22:17; 2 Chron 18:16) Israel had been said to be “without a shepherd,” or ruler. When Israel was without other faithful shepherds (religious leaders), God himself would become its shepherd (Ezek 34:11-16, esp. 34:5: scattered for lack of a shepherd); the shepherd’s ministry included feeding (34:2-3), healing (34:4) and bringing back the lost sheep (34:4-6). Matthew 9:36 thus also implies that those charged with shepherding Israel, its leaders, were failing.
9:37-38. Harvest was urgent and had to be completed within a narrow window of time. “Harvest” could be used as an image for the end time (cf. comment on 3:12). A late first-century rabbi said something similar to 9:37; perhaps it was already a standard Jewish saying.
Israel had twelve tribes, and groups that chose twelve leaders (as in the *Dead Sea Scrolls) did so because they believed that their own group was the true, obedient remnant of Israel.
Ancient sources often include lists of names, including of *disciples. Some of the names here are among the most common in ancient Judea and Galilee: Simon, James, Judas, and the like (“Mary” was most common among women). The lists in Luke and Acts replace Mark and Matthew’s “Thaddeus” with “Judas son of James” (cf. also Jn 14:22). Ancient documents show that it was common for people to go by more than one name, so the different lists of apostles probably do refer to the same people. Nicknames were common, appearing even on tomb inscriptions. “Cananaean” is *Aramaic for “zealot” (Lk 6:15); thus some translations simply read “Simon the *Zealot” here. In Jesus’ day, this word could just mean “zealous one,” but it may mean that he had been involved in revolutionary activity before becoming Jesus’ follower, as it would probably mean when the Gospels were written.
“Apostles” means “sent ones,” or commissioned representatives. The analogous Hebrew term was used for business agents, although the general concept is broader than that; a “sent one” acted on the full authority of the sender to the extent that one accurately represented the sender’s mission. Commissioning *narratives appear in the *Old Testament, as when Moses commissions Joshua to carry on Moses’ work and take the Promised Land (Deut 31:23). Teachers often allowed their advanced students to practice teaching while they were still students, to prepare them for their own future work.
10:5. “Way of the Gentiles” probably means a road leading only to one of the pagan, Greek cities in Palestine; many Jewish people avoided roads that led into such cities anyway. Galilee was surrounded by *Gentile regions except in the south, where it shared borders with Samaria. (On *Samaritans, see comment on Jn 4:1-4.)
10:6. A common Jewish belief was that ten tribes of Israel had been lost and would be found in the time of the end. Here, however, Jesus uses “lost sheep of Israel” in the more common Old Testament sense: they have gone astray from the Lord (Is 53:6; Jer 50:6; cf. Ezek 34:5). But cf. Matthew 10:18.
10:7-8. That the apostles’ mission is the same as Jesus’ is appropriate for “sent ones” (see comment on 10:1-4): they acted within the limits of their authorization. “As I [God] [gave the *law] for free, so you should” was a later Jewish saying applied to teachers of the law; whether it was a proverb Jesus was citing this early we cannot be sure.
10:9-10. They are to travel light, like some other groups: (1) peasants, who often had only one cloak (cf. 5:40); (2) some traveling philosophers, called *Cynics (not present in Jewish Galilee, though probably represented as nearby as Tyre and the Decapolis, Gentile cities surrounding Galilee), who ideally had only a cloak, staff, cup, and, for begging, a bag; (3) some prophets, like Elijah and John the Baptist (see e.g., 1 Kings 18:13; 2 Kings 4:38; 5:15-19; 6:1; Mt 3:4). They are to be totally committed to their mission, not tied down with worldly concerns. A traveler could use a staff to fend off animals or robbers, or to keep one’s balance when walking; though homeless, even Cynics used staffs. The prohibited “bag” could have been used for begging (so the Cynics used it), different from depending on hospitality in 10:11; on “money belts,” see comment on Luke 6:38. It is said that *Essenes received such hospitality from fellow Essenes in various cities that they did not need to take provisions when they traveled.
10:11-13. Showing hospitality by taking in travelers was one of the most important virtues in Mediterranean antiquity, especially in Judaism; Jesus could have drawn on Old Testament precedent for traveling ministers depending on such hospitality (2 Kings 4:8-11); cf. comment on Matthew 10:41. (Indeed, Israelite tradition had required even most wicked kings to respect prophets and to spare them despite their criticisms, which other ancient kings would not have endured.) Though hospitality was a virtue highly valued in Mediterranean antiquity generally, hospitality might prove less dependable during later missions in the *Diaspora. In Galilee, however, probably only the inhospitable or those hostile to Jesus’ message would refuse them altogether.
To whom and under what circumstances greetings should or should not be given were important issues of social protocol, especially because the common Jewish greeting, “Peace,” was really a blessing (a prayer implicitly invoking God but addressed to the recipient) meant to communicate peace. Jesus cuts through such issues of protocol with new directives.
10:14-15. Pious Jewish people returning to holy ground would not want even the dust of pagan territory clinging to their sandals; Jesus’ representatives here treat unresponsive regions as unholy or pagan. Sodom is set forth as the epitome of sinfulness both in the prophets and in subsequent Jewish tradition; the point here is probably that they rejected God’s messengers, albeit lesser ones than Jesus (Gen 19). Earlier Scripture often used Sodom as the archetypical site of judgment (Is 13:19; Jer 50:40; Zeph 2:9) and applied the image to Israel (Deut 32:32; Is 1:10; 3:9; Jer 23:14; Lam 4:6; Ezek 16:46-49).
10:16. The contrast between vicious wolves and harmless lambs or sheep was proverbial, and aggressors were often compared with wolves. Jewish people sometimes viewed themselves (Israel) as sheep among wolves (the Gentiles). Many also viewed doves as weak, timid or inconspicuous.
10:17. Before A.D. 70, local courts, or councils deciding cases, were run by local elders or priests, probably with an average of seven of them (in later rabbinic tradition, a minimum of three). Synagogues were the local places of public assembly, and thus provided the natural location for hearings and public discipline. Sometimes discipline was administered in the form of flogging; under second-century *rabbis’ rules, Jewish flogging consisted of thirteen harsh strokes on the breast and twenty-six on the back with a strap of calf leather (forty is the maximum permissible, Deut 25:3). These words would have struck Jewish Christians as particularly painful, because they signified rejection of their preaching among their own people.
10:18. In Jewish thinking, a Jew betraying any Jew to Gentile persecutors was a horrendous act. “Governors” are Roman overseers in the provinces; the three levels were propraetors, proconsuls and procurators. “Kings” may refer only to Rome’s vassal princes (e.g., Herod the Great earlier or Agrippa I later) but probably includes Parthian and other rulers from the East, indicating virtually universal persecution.
10:19-20. Jewish people thought of the *Holy Spirit especially as the Spirit of *prophecy who had anointed the prophets to speak God’s message. Greek and Roman rhetoric emphasized careful preparation, yet people also respected those skilled enough to speak extemporaneously based on the knowledge they had already acquired.
10:21-22. See Micah 7:5-7 (more explicit in Mt 10:35-36); this family divisiveness also became part of other Jewish images of the end time (e.g., *1 Enoch 100:2). In a culture where family loyalty was essential and honor of parents paramount, these words would have sounded particularly horrific.
10:23. A Jewish tradition that may have been in circulation in Jesus’ day warns that in the time of final tribulation, Jewish people persecuted for their faith would have to flee from one city to another. The disciples may have understood Jesus’ words in these terms. Jesus may emphasize that his followers’ mission to Israel will continue until the end (cf. 23:39), and some will survive till then (cf. 24:22). Some people viewed fleeing as dishonorable, but (at least outside battles) most people preferred it to death (cf. 2:13).
Like most early Christians and zealous Christians in many parts of the world today, Matthew’s readers faced persecution and often other dangers as part of their daily lives. Jesus’ words would comfort them.
10:24-25. Disciples were to serve their teachers, in hopes of ultimately becoming master teachers themselves, yet always owing the teacher respect. A slave could attain status if owned by a prominent master, and under rare circumstances (e.g., if owned by a *freedperson), he could attain equal status after—but never before—becoming free and attaining wealth too. Verse 25 contains a play on words: by reading “Beelzebul” as if it meant “master” (*Aramaic be’el) of the house (Hebrew zebul), Jesus spoke of the “master of the house.” “How much more” arguments were common (see e.g., 7:11; 10:29-31).
10:26-27. Secretive acts were often performed in darkness. Everything would come to light on the day of judgment, as was widely agreed; there was therefore no point in concealing anything now. The flat rooftops provided the best place for shouting messages out over the crowded streets.
10:28. Fearing (respecting, only in a much stronger way than we use the term respect) God was central to Jewish wisdom tradition and is repeatedly stressed in Jewish literature; some Jewish writers made affirmations about martyrdom similar to this passage (*4 Maccabees 13:14-15). Body and soul were instantly destroyed in some Jewish traditions about hell; in others, they were perpetually destroyed and tormented. Contrary to the assertions of many modern scholars, many Jewish people in this period agreed with most Greeks that soul and body were separated by death.
10:29-31. Sparrows were one of the cheapest items sold for poor people’s food in the marketplace, the cheapest of all birds. Two were here purchased for an assarion, a small copper coin of little value (less than a sixteenth of a denarius, hence less than an hour’s wages); Luke 12:6 seems to indicate that they were even cheaper if purchased in larger quantities. Some Jewish traditions preserved later recognize God’s sovereignty even over birds, which they sometimes considered inconsequential. This is a standard Jewish “how much more” argument: If God cares for something as cheap as sparrows, how much more does he care for people! “Not a hair of (one’s) head” falling was a familiar biblical promise of protection (1 Sam 14:45; 2 Sam 14:11; 1 Kings 1:52; Acts 27:34). While not itself a promise of universal protection, Matthew 10:30 thus invites trust in God’s care and ability to protect.
10:32-33. Jewish teachers spoke of “confessing” God and warned against denying him; Jesus here speaks of himself in these terms. In some Jewish descriptions of the day of judgment, the testimony of righteous persons for or against others bore much weight with God. Rabbis spoke of God’s angels or his attributes of mercy or judgment pleading a case before him. Here Jesus’ advocacy before the Father weighs more heavily than anything else in this world.
10:34. It was generally believed that there would be great sufferings before the end, and that the *Messiah would lead his people in a triumphant war, followed by a time of peace. Jesus assures his listeners that the promised era of peace is yet some time off and goes on to explain the nature of the current sufferings and conflict.
10:35-36. The context of Micah 7:6, cited here, describes the awful evils in the land and the untrustworthiness of even the closest relatives and friends that would continue until the Lord would come to vindicate those who hoped in him. At least some Jewish people applied that text to the final tribulation. Given the belief held by many Jewish people that a time of sufferings would precede the end, the *disciples may have understood this saying as suggesting that they were already experiencing the sufferings of that time. A newly married couple often lived with the groom’s parents (hence the daughter-in-law and mother-in-law here).
10:37. Jesus here expounds on the text just cited (Mic 7:6) to make a point virtually inconceivable to most of his hearers. Loving family members, especially parents, was one of the highest duties in Judaism; the only one who could rightfully demand greater love was God himself (Deut 6:4-5; cf. Exod 32:27; Deut 13:6-11; 2 Maccabees 7:22-23).
10:38. Crucifixion was a violent, painful and humiliating death by slow torture. A condemned criminal would carry on his back the horizontal beam of the cross out to the site of his execution, generally amid an antagonistic, jeering mob. This verse means a shameful, painful road to a dreadful execution.
10:39. Most Jewish people contrasted the life of this world with the life of the world to come.
This passage returns to the theme of hospitality toward the messengers of the *gospel (10:11-14). The principle here is like that of the appointed messenger or agent in Judaism, who represented his sender to the full extent of his commission. God, his glory and *law, and Israel were also connected in this way in Jewish tradition. This principle had always been true of the prophets (e.g., Exod 16:8; 1 Sam 8:7; cf. Num 14:2, 11; 16:11): one who embraced them embraced their message and thus God’s will. Those who provided for them were likewise rewarded (1 Kings 17:9-24; 2 Kings 4:8-37). A cup of water was the only gift of hospitality the poorest person might have available, but it would symbolize enough. Cold water was highly preferred for drinking (see comment on Rev 3:15-16).
Matthew 11:1 is an epilogue to 9:37–10:42; in 11:2-19, John, like Jesus and the Twelve, becomes a model for Christian discipleship.
11:1. Emissaries would often be sent to prepare people for the coming of a king or other important figure before his arrival. “Cities” is meant in a broad rather than a technical Greek sense: there is no indication that Jesus approached major cities like Sepphoris or Tiberias. Even most of the larger agricultural towns had fewer than three thousand inhabitants, and the Galilean countryside was full of villages.
11:2-3. John’s attitude here contrasts strikingly with 3:14. Some commentators have suggested that John is concerned about reports that Jesus has been touching the unclean (8:3; 9:20, 25); to this report Jesus replies with the results of those touches (11:5). More likely, John, like most of his contemporaries, is tempted to think of a *kingdom bringer (3:11) or royal *Messiah rather than a “mere” miracle worker, so Jesus vindicates his healing mission with a text about the blessings of the messianic era (11:5). John’s *disciples had probably traveled on the main road northward from Herod’s Perean fortress Machaerus, where John was imprisoned, through Perea beside the Jordan, to cross west into Galilee, where Jesus was teaching.
11:4-6. Jesus cites signs from Isaiah 35:5-6 that refer to the arrival of the messianic era; cf. Isaiah 26:19; 61:1. (In a messianic context, a *Qumran text apparently attributes to God *eschatological healing and Isaiah 61’s preaching to the poor, as here.)
11:7. Reeds were fragile (Is 42:3; *3 Maccabees 2:22), so a figurative “reed shaken by the wind” was notoriously weak (1 Kings 14:15) and undependable (2 Kings 18:21; Ezek 29:6). Tall reeds (as high as five meters) grew around the Jordan where John ministered. The image may also contrast with the pampered prince implied in 11:8: Antipas employed a reed as an emblem on his coins a few years earlier (up until A.D. 26).
11:8. Prophets were rarely well-to-do, and in times of national wickedness they were forced to operate outside societal boundaries. (In David’s time, Nathan and Gad could be court prophets; but by Ahab’s time the court prophets were corrupt, and Elijah and others had to hide out in the wilderness or, in better days, at least remain outside the king’s palace.) Even the plural “houses” could allude to Antipas’s multiple palaces (or to multiple buildings comprising such palaces), although a broader application is also possible. Though Antipas was no king (see comment on 14:1), he was closer to royalty than anyone else in Galilee; his palaces included the fortress of Machaerus where John was executed.
11:9-10. Some Jews in the first century believed that full-fledged prophets had died out long ago, but they would have been open to the restoration of prophets in the end time. By fulfilling Malachi 3:1, John is more than just any herald of God; he is the direct announcer of the Lord, fulfilling the *prophecy of Elijah’s return (Mal 4:5-6).
11:11. This statement elevates Jesus’ disciples rather than demeans John (cf. 11:9-10). One may compare the early rabbinic saying that Johanan ben Zakkai, one of the most respected scholars of the first century, was the “least” of *Hillel’s eighty disciples; this saying was not meant to diminish Johanan’s status but to increase that of his contemporaries. Greek rhetoric often used comparison with an esteemed person to praise another all the more. Calling John the “greatest” was a typically Jewish form of praise, which could even be applied to more than one person at a time; *rabbis, for instance, could in the same breath speak of both Joseph and Moses as the greatest figures of Israel’s history (in the *Old Testament cf., e.g., 2 Kings 18:5; 23:25). Those “born of women” was a familiar Old Testament and Jewish expression for humans (e.g., Job 14:1).
11:12. Revolutionaries, such as those later known as *Zealots, wanted to bring in the kingdom by military force. Jesus may use their zeal (cf. Prov 11:16) in a figurative way for the single-minded commitment necessary to enter the kingdom; he describes his followers as spiritual zealots (cf. Mt 10:34).
11:13. Jewish people sometimes summarized the Bible as “the Law and the Prophets”; many of them believed that after the biblical prophets the prophetic voice was muted until the messianic time. John thus introduces the messianic era.
11:14-15. Malachi 4:5 had promised the return of Elijah, who had reportedly never died (2 Kings 2:11); Elijah’s return thus became part of Jewish expectation for the future.
11:16-17. “To what may we compare . . . ?” was a familiar idiom preceding a rabbinic *parable or argument from analogy. The marketplace was a town’s open, most public place.
Although scholars debate the question, spoiled children who pretend to have weddings and funerals (one later game was called “bury the grasshopper”) may stand for Jesus’ and John’s dissatisfied opponents; dissatisfied with other children who will not play either game, they are sad no matter what. The term for “mourn” here can mean “beat the breast,” a conventional mourning custom in Jewish Palestine. Custom mandated that bystanders join in any bridal or funeral processions.
11:18-19. John the Baptist fit the role of an apparently *ascetic prophet, like Elijah; Jesus follows a godly model more like David, but both are proper in their place. The charge that John “has a *demon” suggests either that he is a false prophet possessed by an evil spirit, or that he is a sorcerer who manipulates a spirit guide; either charge would warrant the death penalty under earlier biblical *law (Deut 13:1-11; 18:9-20). “Glutton and drunkard” was also a capital charge (Deut 21:20). The charges against both prophets thus constitute serious accusations.
Judgment oracles against nations were standard in the Old Testament prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Amos); they also appear in the Jewish *Sibylline Oracles before, during and after the *New Testament period. The principle that those who had more light were judged more strictly appears in the Old Testament (cf. Amos 3:2; Jon 4:11).
11:20-21. Jewish people thought of Tyre and Sidon as purely pagan cities (cf. 1 Kings 16:31), though some of their inhabitants who were exposed to the truth had been known to repent (1 Kings 17:9-24). “Sackcloth and ashes” was dressing characteristic of mourning, including the mourning of *repentance (Job 42:6; Dan 9:3). Chorazin and Bethsaida were among the small villages on the lake of Galilee where Jesus ministered; Chorazin was a short walk, less than two miles, from Capernaum. It was unknown to people outside Palestine.
11:22. According to some Jewish stories about the time of the end (“the day of judgment,” as it was often called), the righteous among the pagan nations would testify against the rest of their people, making clear that no one had any excuse for rejecting the truth about God.
11:23. Judgment was often described in the terms Jesus uses here (Is 5:14; *Jubilees 24:31), especially against a ruler who exalted himself as a deity (Is 14:14-15, of the Babylonian king’s death).
11:24. See comment on 11:22.
In Jewish wisdom tradition, it was not those who were wise in their own eyes and leaned to their own understanding who were genuinely wise (Job 12:24-25; Prov 3:5-7; 12:15; 16:2; 21:2; 26:12), but the simple who began with the fear of God (Job 28:28; Ps 111:10; Prov 1:7; 9:10). God confounds the wisdom of the “wise” (Is 19:11-12; 29:14; 47:10; Jer 8:8-9; Ezek 28:3-12). Only God fully knew personified Wisdom (Baruch 3:31-32), so only he could reveal it (Wisdom of Solomon 9:16-17). As the revealer of God in 11:27, Jesus assumes a position often assumed by divine Wisdom in Jewish tradition. For the image of infants, cf. 10:42 and 18:1-10; God had always favored the lowly (e.g., 1 Sam 2:3-9).
11:28. God offered rest to the weary (Is 40:28-31; cf. the invitation of divine Wisdom in Sirach 24:19).
11:29-30. Animals often carried yokes; when a man carried a yoke he was normally very poor and would carry it on his shoulders (cf., e.g., Jer 27:2); Judaism applied this image to subjection or obedience. Jewish people spoke of carrying the yoke of God’s *law and the yoke of his *kingdom, which one accepted by acknowledging that God was one and by keeping his commandments. Jesus speaks of his own yoke in similar terms. Matthew intends Jesus’ words about rest as a contrast with Pharisaic sabbath rules in the following passage (12:1-14): the promise of “rest for your souls” comes from Jeremiah 6:16, where God promises to stay his wrath if the people turn to him instead of to the words of the false religious leaders (6:13-14, 20). The labor, rest and yoke together also echo Sirach 51:23-27; greater than the sage Ben Sira, Jesus presents himself as wisdom itself.
Using the term translated “gentle” or “meek” here, Greeks did praise rulers who showed kindness and mercy. Except for those of low status, Greeks did not normally welcome self-abasement, a value more prominent in Jewish piety.
Other details are noted in Mark 2:23-27, although details in Matthew, written mainly for Jewish Christians, would have sounded less like a sabbath violation to Jewish ears than Mark’s wording would. Matthew’s structure follows the standard form for many ancient reports of arguments: he summarizes the situation (12:1-2), presents arguments by example (12:3-4), analogy (12:5), comparison (12:6), citation (12:7) and ultimate basis (12:8).
12:1. Jewish *law based on Deuteronomy 23:25 (cf. Ruth 2:2-3) provided for the poor to eat food as they passed through a field. The issue here is thus not that the *disciples took someone’s grain but that they picked it on the sabbath; later rabbinic interpretation specifically designated harvesting and grinding grain as forbidden on the sabbath.
12:2. The modern picture of *Pharisees as legalists unfairly trivializes the Pharisees’ piety (sometimes intentionally, so modern legalists will not have to address Jesus’ real bases for criticism). Not only the Pharisees but other Jewish people throughout the ancient world honored the sabbath and celebrated it with joy. The Bible itself had forbidden infractions of the sabbath under pain of death.
12:3-4. Although highhanded rejection of the sabbath was regarded as rebellion against God, different Jewish groups made arguments for differing interpretations of sabbath laws and were not in a position to legally enforce their views against others. Jesus’ arguments here would not have satisfied the Pharisees, but they might have satisfied elders or priests serving as judges on local courts. Outright rejection of the sabbath was viewed as rejecting the law, but Jesus rejects only its abuse.
12:5-6. As we know from later sources, most *rabbis would have questioned an argument based merely on an example such as the one in 12:3-4 and Mark 2:25-26; it is significant that Matthew, writing for Jewish readers, has an argument from the law itself. The stricter school of Pharisees, the *Shammaites, accused the more lenient *Hillelite school of Pharisees of breaking holy days; Hillelites, like Jesus in 12:5, offered analogies with the priests or could appeal to temple service overriding the sabbath.
The law of Moses commanded work for priests on the sabbath (Num 28:10). This is a Jewish “how much more” argument: if acceptable for the guardians of the temple, how much more for one greater than the temple? The temple had become the central symbol of the Jewish faith, and the suggestion that a human being could be greater than the temple would have struck most ancient Jewish ears as presumptuous and preposterous. Jewish teachers could, however, accept and argue from the principle that some things took precedence over sabbath observance (temple ritual, saving a life, defensive warfare, etc.).
12:7-8. Jesus goes on the offensive here with a still higher principle of the *Old Testament; cf. 9:13.
Other details are noted in the comment on Mark 3:1-6. Whereas Mark’s argument would not have been as persuasive to Pharisees, being an argument from analogy from greater to lesser (3:4), Matthew includes a more helpful argument from lesser to greater (12:12).
12:9-10. As one may gather here, informal dialogues could occur in smaller *synagogue gatherings in this period that are quite different from the stricter ritual observed in most *churches and synagogues today. The predominant school of Pharisees in this period, the *Shammaites, did not allow praying for the sick on the sabbath; the minority school, however, the *Hillelites (who later became predominant after 70), allowed it.
12:11. The *Essenes would have forbidden even rescuing an animal on the sabbath, but many Pharisees and most other Jewish interpreters would have agreed with Jesus. Pits were sometimes dug to capture predators such as wolves, but livestock could fall into them as well. Counterquestions (as here, answering 12:10) were common in the debates of Jewish teachers.
12:12. Jesus here uses a standard Jewish argument, “how much more” (qal vahomer): If one is concerned for a sheep, how much more for a person? This too was an argument his opponents had to understand, and by analogy it showed the inconsistency of their interpretation of biblical sabbath laws.
12:13. Pharisees debated whether medicine could be applied on the sabbath. By contrast, Jesus here not only applied no medicine; he did not even lay hands on the man.
12:14. Pharisees, who had little political power in this period, could do no better than plot. Jewish courts could not enforce the death penalty in this period, although the law of Moses allowed it for sabbath violation (Ex 31:14; 35:2). Indeed, these Pharisees violate standard Pharisaic ethics, which could tolerate opposing biblical arguments and which emphasized leniency, especially regarding death sentences. The issue is not their official ethics (which often resemble those of Jesus) but their hearts.
12:15-16. Withdrawing from this synagogue with new followers was not actually destroying the synagogue; first-century Palestinian Judaism was very diverse, and not everyone in a synagogue need hold the same views.
12:17-18. The servant passage in Isaiah 42:1-4 in context refers inescapably to Israel, not to the *Messiah, despite a later Jewish tradition applying it to the Messiah (see 44:1, 21; 49:3). But because God’s servant Israel failed in its mission (42:18-19), God chose one within Israel to restore the rest of the people (49:5-7), who would take the remainder of the punishment due Israel (cf. 40:2) in its place (52:13–53:12). Thus Matthew declares that the Messiah takes up the servant mission of Isaiah 42:1-4, and he is marked by the presence of the *Spirit. Matthew translates Isaiah to conform to the language of Matthew 3:17 (“my beloved . . . in whom I am well pleased”), which was otherwise closer to Genesis 22:2.
12:19-21. This passage stresses Jesus’ meekness, in contrast to the warlike Messiah many people hoped for; this was a reason for the messianic secret (on which see the introduction to Mark in this commentary). It was customary to quote only part of a passage, because the more biblically informed hearers would know the context; Matthew wants all of his readers to catch the note on which he concludes: salvation for non-Jews (12:21; cf. 12:18).
See further comment on Mark 3:20-30.
12:22-23. The *Messiah of Jewish expectation, a descendant of David, was not a miracle worker, but since God was with Jesus in such extraordinary ways, it is not difficult to see how messianic hopes would be attached to him. David was also the closest example to an exorcist reported in the Old Testament (1 Sam 16:23); Jewish tradition associated exorcism especially with his son Solomon.
12:24. Pagan exorcists sought to remove *demons by magical incantations. In the second century rabbis still accused Jesus and Jewish Christians of using sorcery to achieve the miracles that everyone acknowledged they were performing. Sorcery merited the death penalty under Old Testament *law (Ex 22:18).
The title Beelzebul, “Lord of the House,” probably alludes to “Beelzebub” (“lord of flies,” a possible corruption of Baal-zebul), the local deity of Ekron (2 Kings 1:2-3). The title was appropriately applied in some later Jewish sources to *Satan (*Testament of Solomon 3).
12:25-26. Jesus does not deny the existence of other exorcists here. But a demon’s retreat that meanwhile drew attention to another of Satan’s servants would only be a strategic retreat; such possible activity of magical exorcists contrasts with the wholesale exorcizing of the masses that Jesus undertakes, which clearly signifies a defeat of Satan (12:29). Quick, witty repartee was characteristic of popular teachers in both Jewish and Greek traditions.
12:27. Other Jewish circles also affirmed the need for exorcism (Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 8.47; 4Q242 f1 3.4; cf. Tob 8:3).“Your sons” probably means “members of your own group” or disciples (just as, e.g., “sons of the prophets” in the Old Testament meant “prophets”). Because some of the Pharisees’ associates also cast out demons (by methods that would look more magical than Jesus’), they should consider their charge carefully. On being the judges of others in a group, see comment on 12:41-42.
12:28. It was generally believed that the *Spirit had been quenched or muted in some way after the Old Testament prophets had died, but that this withdrawal of the Spirit would be reversed in the time of the *kingdom, when the Messiah came. In the context of 12:18, Matthew wishes his readers to hear this text as Jesus’ claim to be the Messiah (12:23).
12:29. Many early Jewish sources report that Satan or demons were “bound,” or imprisoned, after God subdued them; magical texts often speak of “binding” demons by magical procedures. Here, however, the *parable about tying up a protective householder means that Jesus had defeated Satan and could therefore plunder his possessions—free the demon-possessed. Some plausibly find an allusion to God’s activity in Isaiah 49:24-25.
12:30. Ancient Jewish teachers stated their points as starkly as possible; this statement and the one in Mark 9:40 both mean “A person is either on one side or the other.” Other contrast sayings similar to this one circulated in antiquity.
12:31-32. Many Jewish teachers taught that one’s sufferings in this life could make up for sins; but certain grave sins would be carried over into the world to come. (Some teachers declared similarly that King Manasseh’s *repentance allowed him to be forgiven in this world but not in the world to come.) “Highhanded” sins—deliberate rebellion against God—could not be *atoned for under Old Testament law. Blasphemy was punishable by death (Lev 24:10-23).
Jesus thus regards blasphemy against the Spirit—permanently rejecting his identity (Mt 12:18) even when attested by the Spirit’s works (12:28)—as the worst of sins. (On the meaning of blasphemy in general, see comment on 9:3-8.)
12:33. For a figurative use of “fruits” in the Old Testament, see comment on 3:8; the fruits here are their words (12:34-37).
12:34-35. Their words (12:36-37) against him revealed their heart; on “offspring of vipers,” see comment on 3:7 (cf. also Is 57:3-4; 59:5-8). Other Jewish teachers also often stressed the importance of a right heart (though believing something and being something are not always the same thing, as the lives of many who claim to be Christians today testify). People were characterized by their actions or speech as fools, wise, sinners, etc., in Jewish wisdom tradition.
12:36-37. Many proverbs emphasize the importance of sound speech and that silence is better than unhealthy speech (e.g., Prov 10:11; 15:4; 17:27-28). In context (Mt 12:32), Jesus’ opponents reveal their hearts especially by rejecting testimony about Jesus’ identity that was just as critical as the basic Jewish confession, the Shema’ (Deut 6:4). Most Jewish people would have agreed that God will bring everything to light on the day of judgment.
Here Jesus returns the charge: they, not he, are servants of Satan. Returning charges was standard practice in ancient courts and presumably other accusation settings.
12:38-41. Jewish discussions of the end times featured converts among the poor who would testify against those who said they were too poor to follow God, converts among the rich, converts among the Gentiles and so on. Here Jesus appeals to pagans who converted. Some Jewish teachers disliked Jonah for his initial disobedience to God “on behalf of Israel”—they said that he feared that Nineveh’s repentance would leave unrepentant Israel condemned (Mekilta Pisha 1.80-82). In the Old Testament, Nineveh, responsible for permanently destroying the northern kingdom of Israel, epitomized wickedness (e.g., Nahum 2:8; 3:1, 7); but the repentance of Nineveh in Jonah 3:10 also taught that God could spare pagans who turned to him (Jon 1:15-16; 4:10-11) as well as judge his disobedient servants (1:14-15). (Some rabbis appreciated Jonah, suggesting that he resented Gentile repentance because it showed up Israel’s lack of it.)
“Three days and nights” (Jon 2:1) need not imply complete days; parts of a twenty-four-hour day counted as representing the whole day. In early Jewish law, only after three days was the witness to a person’s death accepted.
12:42. Some traditions identified the “Queen of the South,” the queen of Sheba (1 Kings 10:1), with the queen of Ethiopia (cf. Acts 8:27).
12:43-45. Jesus’ point: Although he is casting out *demons, this wicked generation is inviting all the more back in. The desert was a natural haunt of demons in much of Jewish tradition, and “sevenfold” was a traditional way to express severe punishment (Gen 4:15, 24; Lev 26:18), so the hearers would have readily caught Jesus’ point. Jesus thus reverses his opponents’ charges in 12:24; reversing charges was standard practice (including in ancient defense speeches in courts).
See comment on Mark 3:31-34. Fidelity to and respect for one’s family were so heavily emphasized that such words must have struck their hearers quite forcefully. Many Jewish interpreters regarded the command to honor father and mother as the most important in the *law.
Family relationships in the ancient world were often defined by hierarchy even more than by kinship ties, so that wives and especially children (and, in wealthy homes, slaves) were expected to obey the father of the household. Jesus can thus define his “mother, brothers and sisters” as those who obey his Father. To disavow literal family members was so repulsive that even using the image would have been culturally offensive. Further, spiritual or figurative kinship language in Judaism (especially “brothers”) was usually viewed ethnically (fellow Israelites).
Jewish sages from before till long after Jesus’ era commonly taught in *parables, sermon illustrations to communicate their main point or points. Parables illustrated their teaching and also could provoke new ways of considering it. In the *New Testament, though others use illustrations, only Jesus uses story parables, a Palestinian Jewish teaching form; it cannot be attributed to composition by the later *church outside Jewish Palestine. The range of Jesus’ parables (e.g., stories, similes, riddles) fit the *Old Testament range of the Hebrew term mashal.
Later *rabbis developed fuller story parables like those of Jesus, though theirs (reflecting their higher-scale audience) included more royal courts and conventional values and fewer purely agrarian images. Most of the Roman Empire’s inhabitants were rural peasant farmers or herders. The literate elite often ignored this large population, but Jesus’ illustrations show that he ministered frequently among this class.
13:1-2. Jesus gets in the boat for the purpose of relieving the overcrowding, but this would also make him easier to hear; a speaker to a crowd on shore would produce an ideal acoustic situation.
13:3-4. Jewish teachers often told illustrative stories like this one, although Jesus, addressing Galilean farmers, focuses more on agrarian images than later rabbis usually did. See “parable” in glossary. Most Galileans (like the majority of people in the empire generally) were agrarian peasants; Galilee had only two significant cities, in neither of which is Jesus recorded as ministering. Seed was sometimes (though not always) sown before the ground was plowed; it thus commonly befell any of the fates reported here. A farmer could either cast the seed by hand, as probably here, or let it trickle from holes in a sack carried by an animal. The “path” or “road” is one of the many footpaths through the field.
13:5-6. Much of the land in Palestine has only a thin layer of soil over rock; if the sower had not plowed first, he would not be aware that he wasted seed on this soil until after the fact.
13:7. These thistles were probably unseen too; instead of having been pulled out, they may have just been cut or burned, leaving roots from which thistles could grow with the seed to choke it out. In April, thistles could grow taller than a meter around roads.
13:8. Thirtyfold, sixtyfold and a hundredfold are tremendously good harvests from Galilean soil. The Jordan Valley normally yielded between ten- and a hundredfold, so a hundredfold need not be a miraculous harvest (Gen 26:12; cf. Amos 9:13). But for much of Palestine, the average yield was tenfold (meaning that ten seeds were harvested for every seed sown), and all the figures Jesus reports here are very good yields.
13:9. *Disciples learned especially by carefully listening to their teachers.
That some members of the community of disciples would not persevere fits Old Testament models; in the Old Testament, some persons, like Saul, turned away from obedience to God, whereas others, like David, persevered through many trials.
13:10. Disciples asked their teacher questions, normally away from crowds and interlocutors, till they understood what he meant. In the case of obscure or vague public teaching, they sometimes questioned their teacher privately as a group.
13:11-13. Parables were meant to explain a rabbi’s point by illustrating it; the majority of ancient Jewish parables include an interpretation, sometimes with multiple points of correspondence to the story (in contrast to what some earlier modern scholars contended). If the point of the parable were not stated, however, the parable would amount to no more than a story—or a riddle. The *Qumran sectarians believed that God had given them special revelation of divine mysteries not available to outsiders. Rabbis (and some other ancient teachers) had some more secretive teachings that they thought only their closest disciples could handle, and they reserved these for private instruction. The meaning of Jesus’ parables, then, would be understood only by those who chose to become insiders. They functioned like sages’ riddles, inviting contemplation.
13:14-15. The people in Jesus’ day were like the people in Isaiah’s day who heard the word but could not really hear and repent (Is 6:9-10).
13:16-17. Some Jewish texts describe how the righteous in the Old Testament longed to see the era of messianic redemption and a fuller revelation of God. Making a statement about someone (here, Jesus) by blessing someone else (here, those who saw him in contrast to the blind of 13:15) was an accepted rhetorical technique of the day.
13:18-19. Greek writers could use seed for word, and sometimes used “sowing seed” to symbolize education; Jewish writers applied God “sowing seed” in Israel to the *law (e.g., *4 Ezra 9:31-37). Contrary to the assumptions of many scholars about Jesus’ parables, ancient Jewish teachers often told parables with multiple points of comparison. Even more often, they offered interpretations immediately following their parables.
13:20-23. Outsiders chose what they would do with the word when it came to them. Rabbis sometimes said that one would be consumed with either the law or with the cares of this world (v. 22).
Wealthy landowners controlled most of the rural land throughout the Roman Empire; their estates were worked either by free peasants or by slaves, whose options in life were roughly the same (except that slaves could also be beaten or sold). Many of Jesus’ hearers (13:34) may have been rural farmers on larger estates, who would have readily identified with the difficulty of the situation he described.
13:24. “The kingdom is like someone who . . . ” does not mean that the *kingdom is compared only to the person. Rabbinic *parables often began with, “To what may such and such be compared?” or, “Such and such is like . . . ” In these parables the phrase meant that the subject was being explained by the whole analogy that followed, not just by the next word. Thus the kingdom here is compared not with the person alone, but with the entire situation Jesus goes on to describe. Parables sometimes compared God with a landowner.
13:25-27. People usually slept after lunch, but especially (and at greatest length) at night. Ancient farmers sometimes feuded, and Roman law even had to forbid the practice of sowing poisonous plants in a neighbor’s field. The most basic staple of the Palestinian diet (and the ancient diet in general) was bread; thus wheat was critical. But a poisonous weed, a kind of ryegrass known as darnel (lolium temulentum; usually translated “tares”) looked like wheat in the early stages and could only be distinguished from it when the ear appeared.
13:28-29. The fields were normally weeded in the spring, but if the weeds were discovered too late—as here—one would risk uprooting the wheat with them; the master does not want to risk his wheat. Once they were fully grown, however, harvesters could cut the wheat just below the head, leaving the shorter tares to be cut separately.
13:30. Although first-century Palestine was undoubtedly more forested than it became in subsequent times, much of the earlier forest had been cut down, and fuel could not be wasted; once dried, the darnel at least proved useful for something—fuel for burning.
The point of both *parables is that the mighty kingdom everyone expected could issue from apparently obscure beginnings—like Jesus and the *disciples.
13:31-32. Scholars still dispute what plant is meant by the “mustard seed.” Nevertheless, by no conjecture is it the smallest of all seeds that Jesus’ listeners could have known (the orchid seed is smaller); the point is that it was recognized as very small and yet yielded a large shrub. Around the Sea of Galilee, it can reach a height of ten feet and has sometimes reached fifteen feet. Its usual height, however, is about four feet; because it would grow anew each year, birds could not nest in it when they built nests in early spring. The *hyperbole Jesus applies to the best image of growth from tiny to large he had available does not change the point, however; the kingdom might begin in obscurity, but it would culminate in glory.
Even if birds could not nest in the mustard plant, they could perch in it (Matthew’s term here was sometimes used that way); Matthew’s language here alludes to Daniel 4:12, the splendor of another ruler’s kingdom. Sources suggest that Palestinian custom relegated mustard seeds to fields rather than gardens; one may thus contrast Matthew 13:31 with Luke 13:19, each adjusting the image for their respective readerships.
13:33. Roman cities had bakeries, but the image here is that of a rural Galilean woman fixing her own bread. Leaven, or yeast, would be mixed through the meal. Three pecks of flour, roughly a bushel, was all that a woman could knead, and the resulting bread would feed about a hundred people. This extraordinary quantity may prefigure the unexpected greatness of the kingdom.
See comment on 13:10-13. Matthew cites Psalm 78:2, where the psalmist describes his knowledge in traditional terms of Hebrew wisdom, then goes on to give its content in the rest of the psalm: the history of God’s faithful, saving acts and of his people’s rebellion.
Many *Essenes and a small number of other Jews withdrew from mainstream Jewish society to seek greater purity; *Pharisees limited certain kinds of contact with those they considered impure. But most expected the righteous and wicked in the world to be separated only on the day of judgment, recognizing that God alone knew the hearts of all people. Only at the end, at the day of judgment, would the righteous and the wicked be effectively separated. The harvest is used elsewhere (e.g., *4 Ezra 4:30-32; *2 Baruch 70:2; cf. Is 32:13-15; Jer 31:27-28; Hos 2:21-23; 6:11) as a symbol for the end, and Jewish texts sometimes compare hell with a furnace (*1 Enoch 54:6; some manuscripts in 98:3; 4 Ezra 7:36). The *Son of Man’s authority might evoke Daniel 7:13-14. Other Jewish texts (perhaps following Dan 12:2-3) also spoke of the righteous shining with glory in the future kingdom.
13:44. Treasures were often buried for safekeeping. The most likely circumstance envisioned here is that of a peasant who, while working the field of a wealthy landowner, found the treasure but covered it again lest the landowner claim it for himself. The peasant then invested all his own resources into that field to procure the treasure. Rabbis told stories of abandoning much for the study of the *law. Stories of finding lost treasures naturally circulated among the poor; they usually emphasized the wealthy outcome, but Jesus uses the story line to stir his hearers to sacrifice whatever necessary for a treasure far greater than any on earth.
13:45-46. Divers sought pearls in the Red Sea, Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean, and some pearls, imported by the rich, could be worth the equivalent of millions of dollars. Jesus’ hearers were probably familiar with the basic story line; there seems to have been a folktale that ran similarly, although it did not make the same point about the *kingdom.
For further discussion see 4:19; on separation, 13:36-43; for the furnace, see comment on 13:40. Different kinds of nets were used for fishing; dragnets (the kind used here) were much larger than the fishing nets employed in 4:18. Dragnets had floats on top and sinkers on the bottom to keep one part of the wide end of the net at the surface while the other part dragged below, catching fish in the seine.
The *law and wisdom were often compared with treasure (and sometimes with a pearl); *scribes, who were specially conversant with the law, naturally had the “old” treasure, and the message of the *kingdom gave them something new. The image is that of a householder paying out old and new coins kept in a strongbox hidden in his home. Some scholars have suggested that Matthew’s Gospel addresses especially Christian scribes whose vocation is to disciple the Gentiles to the greatest teacher, Jesus (28:19).
See comment on Mark 6:1-6 for more details. The tradition of prophets being rejected by their own town was old (Jer 1:1; 11:21-23), but the theme of prophets being persecuted had developed even further in subsequent Jewish lore.
When Jesus was growing up in Nazareth, the demand for carpenters there was great (to rebuild nearby Sepphoris, which had been burned and its surviving inhabitants enslaved); thus it is not surprising that this was Joseph’s occupation. Carpenters engaged in woodwork, such as wooden plows, chairs and the woodwork on roofs. They could also engage in masonry where buildings were made of stone. Nazareth itself was a small village in this period, with perhaps sixteen hundred to two thousand inhabitants according to high, older estimates and perhaps five hundred by some more recent ones; Jesus would thus have been known to most of his townspeople. The size of Jesus’ family here would not be unusual by the standards of his era. As in 13:57, biblical prophets were sometimes rejected in their home town (Jer 1:1; 11:21-23) and even more often by their own people; early Judaism developed this emphasis even further.
See Mark 6:14-29 for considerably more detail. This passage refers not to Herod the Great, who died within several years of Jesus’ birth, but to Herod Antipas, Herod the Great’s son by a *Samaritan mother, and full brother of Archelaus (2:22). He had ruled in Galilee and Perea (the latter was a narrow strip of land on the east of the Jordan) since about 4 B.C., and continued in power till A.D. 39. John’s martyrdom foreshadows that of Jesus; ancient authors and audiences understood suspense and foreshadowing.
14:1. Matthew uses Herod Antipas’s actual title, “tetrarch,” rather than the sarcastic or loose one Mark gives him (“king”). “Tetrarch” originally meant ruler of one-quarter of some territory, but Romans applied it to rulers of any portion; Herod the Great’s kingdom had been divided in 4 B.C. among Archelaus (later supplanted by Roman procurators), Antipas and Philip.
14:2. Probably Antipas envisions a temporary resuscitation like those performed on behalf of Elijah and Elisha (1 Kings 17:22; 2 Kings 4:34-35), rather than the permanent *eschatological *resurrection, which was a corporate resurrection reserved for the end of the age (Dan 12:2).
14:3-4. The first-century historian *Josephus also reports Herod Antipas’s affair with his sister-in-law Herodias. The tetrarch and his paramour divorced their spouses to marry one another, and Herod thereby offended his former father-in-law, the Nabatean king, ultimately leading to a war in which Herod’s honor suffered greatly. John thus surely expected that Herod would resent his preaching, but he preached anyway; Herod could well have taken John’s moral preaching as a political criticism. Many of Antipas’s own subjects, especially in the region where John was probably preaching and was finally imprisoned, were ethnic Nabateans with divided loyalties, and Antipas would want to stifle criticism.
14:5-6. Jewish people did not normally celebrate birthdays in this period (Josephus declares celebrating birthdays forbidden). But though most Jews considered birthday celebrations a *Gentile custom, culturally prestigious Greek customs influenced the aristocracy. Rejecting invitations to such parties without good excuse would risk enmity. Lewd dancing was common entertainment at drinking parties; normally a princess would never participate, but the Herodian family already had a reputation for its moral extravagances. At Herod’s fortress Machaerus, men and women dined in separate halls (a custom known in the eastern Mediterranean), so Herodias would not have directly witnessed Herod’s behavior toward her daughter Salome.
14:7. Herod’s oath is a drunken one; as a vassal of Rome, he had no authority to compromise any of his territory. (Cf. comment on Mark 6:23.) Hearers could also recoil at Herod’s lust (cf. Mt 5:28); to sleep with the daughter of one’s wife was incest (Lev 18:17).
14:8-9. It was an affront to one’s honor to break an oath in front of guests, even if (as in this case) Jewish teachers would have preferred to absolve the oath. Antipas would not wish to shame himself at a party designed for his honor.
14:10-11. Pious Jewish *law required a trial before execution; here Herod, given power by the Romans, ignores this tradition. Beheading was the fastest and least painful method of execution and was carried out with a sword. But it was a Greek and Roman custom, contrary to Jewish custom. In ancient literature, only the most brutal amused guests by executing someone or presenting a head at a banquet.
14:12. One’s son would normally be in charge of the burial; either John had no adult sons (which is probable) or his *disciples were the only ones ready to fulfill this role. Although the whole ancient world (except for some eccentric philosophers) considered lack of proper burial the worst possible fate, some tyrants forbade it or forbade public mourning. Even Jewish custom forbade public mourning for those executed according to Jewish law. Potentially Herod could have resented whoever showed up to claim the body.
See comment on Mark 6:32-44 for more details. The most significant ancient reports of feeding miracles are the reports of Israel’s eating manna in the wilderness of Sinai and miracles performed at the hands of prophets (e.g., Elisha in 2 Kings 4:42-44).
14:13-15. Bread and fish were basic staples of the Palestinian diet; meat was more expensive and rarely eaten except at feasts. Teachers were not normally responsible for feeding their disciples from their own means.
14:16. Ancient students often paid their teachers (though other teachers were self-supporting); it was honorable to invite teachers to dinner and to show them the utmost hospitality. But here Jesus, the teacher, assumes the role of host or provider. The ancient emphasis on hospitality included providing food as well as shelter for guests. Teachers sometimes delegated to disciples duties like procuring provisions for their school.
14:17-18. Even in a more inhabited region (cf. 14:13), an abundance of countryside villages could not have provided for a crowd of perhaps ten thousand people (cf. 14:20); even the largest villages rarely held more than three thousand residents. Compare especially 2 Kings 4:42-43 for the incredulity of prophet-disciples when Elisha tells them to distribute the food to the people.
14:19. It was customary for the head of the household to “bless,” or give thanks for, food before a meal.
14:20. It was expected that the most generous hosts who had means normally provided enough food that some was left over. Ancient moralists condemned wastefulness.
14:21. A crowd of five thousand men plus women and children was larger than most of the villages that covered the Galilean countryside.
See also Mark 6:45-52. Moses, Joshua, Elijah and Elisha had all done water miracles, parting the sea or the river Jordan; but the only one the *Old Testament said “trod” upon the waters was God himself.
14:22. Because a teacher controlled the duration of the learning situation, it would be understood that Jesus could send the crowds home.
14:23. The very pious could set aside two specific hours a day for prayer; Jesus here spends the whole remainder of the day in prayer (though how long this time was is uncertain, given Matthew’s ambiguous use of “evening” here—vv. 15, 23). Mountains were places of prayer for Moses and Elijah; here, away from the crowdedness of Galilean town life, Jesus could find solitude.
14:24. Harsh storms often arise suddenly on the Sea of Galilee.
14:25. The fourth, or final, shift of the night watch was between 3 and 6 a.m.; the watches started at 6 p.m. Jewish people often divided the night into three watches, but the Romans had four.
14:26. Belief in ghosts or disembodied spirits was common on a popular level in antiquity, even though the idea of ghosts contradicted popular Jewish teachings about the *resurrection from the dead.
14:27. Jesus’ answer is literally “I am”; although this can easily mean “It is I,” it may also allude back to God’s self-revelation in Exodus 3:14 and Isaiah 43:10, 13: “I am.”
14:28-32. Despite Peter’s failure to follow through, by beginning to walk on water he had done something that not even the greatest prophets of the Old Testament had done. Walking on water might remind readers of Israel passing through the Red Sea or the Jordan but was a greater miracle. (In one story told by the *rabbis—we cannot determine whether it is as early as Jesus’ time—the first Israelite to cross the Red Sea began to sink in the waves but was rescued by Moses’ rod, which divided the sea.) Faith to step into water could evoke Joshua 3:13-17. For Jesus’ rescue, cf. Psalm 18:16 and 144:7.
14:33. The term worship was applied to homage offered to pagan kings as well as that offered to deities. Although it could indicate prostration as a sign of respect (e.g., 1 Sam 24:8; 25:23), it is an unusual term to express Jewish disciples’ amazement at a human teacher, even in miracle stories. Though the disciples would not yet have verbalized Jesus’ deity, Matthew is ready to do so (cf. 28:17-19). Ancient miracle stories (including many in the Gospels) often concluded with the observers’ awe and praise.
The “fringe” of Jesus’ garment no doubt refers to the tassels he wore as an observant Jew; see comment on 9:20; cf. 23:5. Ancient literature commonly includes not only longer *narrative segments but also summary statements like this passage (cf. 4:23-25). Gennesaret was a plain on the northwest shore of the Lake of Galilee.
See Mark 7:1-23 for more detail.
15:1-2. Contemporary Jewish sources always characterize the *Pharisees as observing the traditions of the elders; in this way they felt they could depend upon a repository of the wisdom of the pious who preceded them. Washing hands before meals was one of the most prominent of those traditions but had no direct basis in Scripture.
15:3. Jesus responds to the Pharisees’ question with a counterquestion, as *rabbis often did.
15:4-6. Judaism universally demanded honor of father and mother and included financial support of aged parents as part of this honor. Some, like *Josephus and many rabbis, regarded this demand as the most important commandment in the *law. The Pharisees therefore could not have disagreed with Jesus’ example; they did not recommend that people fail to support their parents, but their allowance of special vows dedicating things only to “sacred” use created this loophole for those who could have wished to exploit it (cf. Prov 28:24). Some legal loopholes (such as the prozbul, an early rule circumventing the law’s cancellation of debts in the seventh year) were intended to uphold the spirit of the law; this one unwittingly undercut even that.
15:7-9. Jesus quotes Isaiah 29:13, which complained that Israel in Isaiah’s day was outwardly religious but inwardly far from God (cf. Is 1:10-20). It goes on to criticize the folly of Israel’s “wise” people.
15:10-11. In a later story Johanan ben Zakkai, a Jewish teacher from the generation after Jesus, admitted privately to his *disciples that outward impurity did not really defile; one should simply keep God’s commandments about purity. But this sort of teaching, even if it had been widespread, was not emphasized publicly, lest people fail to keep the ceremonial laws (as happened among some well-to-do Jews in Egypt).
15:12. Although the Pharisees (from whose teachers most of the later rabbis seem to have come) had virtually no political power as a group in this period, they were respected and highly influential among the people. Offending them thus did not not appear to be prudent.
15:13-14. The images of uprooting (Jer 42:10; 45:4; cf. 1:10; 11:16-19; 12:2; 24:6; 31:28), blindness (15:14; cf., e.g., Deut 29:4; Is 6:10; 42:19) and leaders guiding others astray with falsehood (Is 3:12-15; 9:16) are standard *Old Testament judgment language; the *Dead Sea Scrolls similarly describe the *Qumran community as a shoot planted by God. The image here is that of a farmer preparing his field and ridding it of unwanted weeds (cf. 13:30). The point of Jesus’ response to his disciples is: Do not worry about the Pharisees’ power, because their day of judgment is coming (Mt 3:10).
15:15-20. Such views were rare, and even more rarely divulged publicly; see comment on 15:10-11. Liberal Alexandrian Jews who no longer believed in literal observance of the food laws (Lev 11; Deut 14) were particularly despised by their more conservative colleagues. But everyone would at least have had to agree with Jesus that the heart matters most (see Is 29:13, cited in Mt 15:8-9; cf. also Is 59:13).
15:21. Tyre and Sidon were traditionally pagan territory; Sidon had been the home of Jezebel (1 Kings 16:31). But in the same generation a woman from that region had miraculously received food and healing for her child from the prophet Elijah and so became a full believer in Israel’s God (1 Kings 17:8-24). Some argue that in Jesus’ period, their territory stretched inland, so that one had to pass through territory belonging to Syrophoenicia, as here, even to get from Galilee to Caesarea Philippi. Many Jewish people still lived here, however.
15:22. Canaanites, many of whose survivors had been driven northward into Phoenicia during the Israelite conquest, were the most morally despised of Israel’s enemies in the Old Testament; Matthew’s characterizing this woman with this term may have set Jewish hearers on edge. But by acknowledging Jesus as “Son of David”—*Messiah—she also acknowledges the right of the kingdom of David (who had also embraced many non-Jews as allies) over the land. How could a Jewish person remain prejudiced against a Canaanite woman such as this one? David had welcomed many *Gentiles.
15:23-24. Jesus’ statement in verse 24 need not preclude a later mission to Gentiles. By way of comparison, the servant of Isaiah 53:6-8 suffers on behalf of the lost sheep of Israel (cf. 40:11; 56:11), but the servant’s mission was ultimately to reconcile all nations to God (42:6; 49:6-7; cf. 56:3-8; perhaps 52:15).
15:25-28. Certain people in the Old Testament, such as the Sidonian woman to whom Elijah came (1 Kings 17:18-19) and the Shunammite woman with Elisha (2 Kings 4:28), laid their need before a prophet and would not take no for an answer; God answered their prayers with a yes. (Some Jewish teachers closer to Jesus’ time were reported to exercise the same kind of holy chutzpah in praying for rain, etc.) Women, who often had little other access to justice and had less to lose than men by protesting, might also be specially insistent (see Mt 20:20-21; Luke 18:3). Even those who were most intimate with God approached him with only the greatest respect when praying an insistent prayer (Gen 18:22-32); but they also refused to be deterred. “Dog” was one of the harshest insults in antiquity. Even though here it is at most an implied analogy (playing more on the Gentile custom of using dogs as pets), it would take great humility for this woman to take up the analogy. People often respected witty retorts.
Here Jesus cures many traditional categories of serious ailments. Even in a culture where people did not deny the existence of miracles, these cures would be viewed as extraordinary. Matthew’s summary of such miracles may recall prophecies of Isaiah (35:5-6; cf. 29:18-19, 23).
Jesus’ first feeding miracle (see comment on Mt 14:13-21) was not an exception; he was able to repeat it at any time. Some have identified Magadan (v. 39), possibly Mary Magdalene’s home town, with the Galilean village of Tarichea, associated with fishing; it apparently imbibed some Greek culture, but had strong Jewish patriotism.
16:1. The *Pharisees and *Sadducees differed on most matters. The Pharisees had great popular support, whereas the Sadducees held most of the political power. Together they could make a dangerous team. Probably writing after 70, Matthew often links the various leaders together, though by this time the Sadducees and temple establishment had apparently lost power and Pharisees were gaining greater influence. On such testing, cf. 4:3. “From heaven” was sometimes a circumlocution for “from God,” but the context may suggest they mean a heavenly sign (16:2-3).
16:2-3. They ask for a sign from heaven in verse 1 (cf. 2 Kings 20:8-9; Is 38:7; 2 Chron 32:24); astrologers used signs in the heavens to predict the fall of emperors, and *rabbis also tried to interpret such signs. Jewish writers like *Josephus believed there were portents in the heavens when disasters were about to occur (cf. also Mt 24:29-30). Some prophets, like Elijah, actually had produced signs from heaven—he called down fire from heaven (1 Kings 18:38)—but most prophetic signs were not so spectacular (Judg 6:17; Is 7:11-14; 8:18; 19:20; 20:3; 37:30; 38:7; 66:19; Ezek 4:3; 12:11; 24:24, 27). But in ancient Jewish parlance, “from heaven” can mean “from God” (cf. Mt 21:25), so they could simply seek any sort of divine sign (but cf. 16:2-3). Perhaps Jesus’ opponents desire a sign to validate that he is a prophet—some rabbis believed that prophets could temporarily even set aside some commandments of the *law, provided they were attested by signs—or perhaps they merely want him to make a prediction. Many rabbis, however, rejected the validity of signs favoring positions that contradicted their interpretation of Scripture. In Palestine, a red morning sky indicated Mediterranean winds bringing rain from the west.
16:4. Like their ancestors who did not heed God’s acts already done among them, this generation is evil (Deut 32:5, 20 in context). Signs had already been given them (Mt 16:3), even clearer than God’s usual signs from the heavens (16:2), but the final attestation would be the *resurrection (12:40). Many Jewish people expected a particularly evil generation directly before the end. Sages sometimes challenged hearers with riddles.
16:5-6. Jewish tradition sometimes used yeast to symbolize evil; most fundamentally, it was something that spreads. Some Jewish teachers made such comparisons (e.g., describing false teaching as poisoned water); the *disciples should thus have recognized that their rabbi could speak figuratively. On the Pharisees and *Sadducees, see comment on 16:1 and glossary.
16:7-11. Like Israel in the wilderness, Jesus’ contemporaries quickly forgot God’s past provision, and he often called them to remember (e.g., Deut 8).
16:12. Among other beliefs, Sadducees denied the resurrection (Mt 22:23) and Pharisees held to human traditions (15:2-3); throughout Matthew, both oppose Jesus.
16:13. Caesarea Philippi (a city distinct from the usual *New Testament Caesarea, which was on the coast) was pagan territory, near a grotto devoted to the worship of the Greek woodland deity Pan; Herod had also dedicated a temple for the worship of Caesar there. Few Jewish people would have expected it as a site for a divine revelation. The city was some twenty-five miles from the Lake of Galilee and about seventeen hundred feet higher, hence they would have needed to stop along the way (15:21, 39); it lay near the source of the Jordan, at the *Old Testament Dan, the northern boundary of ancient Israel.
16:14. All these answers about who Jesus is fall into the “prophets” category; though many members of the Jewish elite held that prophets had ceased, popular expectation of end-time prophets remained strong. Elijah was expected to return (Mal 4:5), and many of Jesus’ miracles resembled Elijah’s. His judgment oracles (Mt 11:20-24) or downplaying the temple (cf. 12:6; 24:1-2) may have evoked the comparison with Jeremiah.
16:15-16. Peter has the right title, though the wrong concept of what *Messiah means (16:22). David’s royal line was adopted by God (2 Sam 7:14), so it was natural for the ultimate successor to his throne to be called God’s Son (Ps 2:7; 89:27), as a few Jewish interpreters in this period noticed (e.g., in the Florilegium from *Qumran Cave 4, an *Essene commentary on 2 Sam 7).
16:17. “Blessed are you” is a standard form of blessing (cf. comment on Mt 5:1-12). “Barjonah” is *Aramaic for “son of Jonah.” “Flesh and blood” was a typical Jewish phrase for “human being(s).” Although all Jews emphasized learning by studying the Scriptures, some also recognized divine illumination (e.g., in the *Dead Sea Scrolls) or revelation (*apocalyptic literature; some mysticism).
16:18. In Aramaic, “Peter” and “rock” are the same word; in Greek (here), they are cognate terms that were used interchangeably by this period. For the idea of a person as the foundation on which something is built, cf. Isaiah 51:1-2; Ephesians 2:20. (In context, the point appears to be that Peter is the rock in his role as confessor—v. 16—and others build on the foundation by their proclamation of the same confession.)
The Old Testament often spoke of those who “built” God’s people (e.g., Ruth 4:11; Jer 1:10) and prayed for God to build Israel up (Ps 51:18; 69:35; 147:2; Jer 24:6; 31:4, 28). The “gates of Hades” in the Old Testament (Job 38:17; Ps 9:13) and subsequent Jewish tradition referred to the realm and power of death; death itself (cf. Mt 16:24-26) would not silence the *church. Against those who presuppose that Jesus could not have planned the church, though he chose twelve disciples as the nucleus of a remnant for Israel (compare the symbolic use of twelve in the Dead Sea Scrolls), the language of a “church” was already being used for a remnant community among his contemporaries (Dead Sea Scrolls; see “church” in glossary for further information). Teachers who founded schools normally expected their disciples to carry on after them.
16:19. The keeper of the keys was one of the most important roles a household servant could hold (cf. Mk 13:32-34). Because keys were bulky and might be carried by only a single person, they also symbolized authority; a high official held the keys in a royal kingdom (Is 22:20-22) and in God’s house, the temple. Keys here may signify the authority to admit into the *kingdom (Mt 23:13), based on the knowledge of the truth about Jesus (16:16). The Qumran community also had officials deciding whether to admit members; the decision was made based on the prospective member’s acceptance of the community’s rule of life.
Many Jewish people felt that the Jewish high court acted on the authority of God’s tribunal in heaven, in a sense ratifying its decrees. “Binding” and “loosing” (also 18:18) could refer to detaining or releasing prisoners, hence could function figuratively in a judicial setting. Rabbis also used these terms regularly for legislative authority in interpreting Scripture (“prohibiting” and “permitting”). Because “binding” and “loosing” also were figurative images for punishing and releasing, they could likely be used judicially as well (cf. 18:18).
16:20. For comment on the messianic secret, see the introduction to Mark’s Gospel.
Peter had divulged Jesus’ secret identity (16:16) yet retained a faulty concept of what that identity entailed.
16:21. Even most of the *Old Testament prophets sought to avoid martyrdom insofar as possible and complained about their sufferings (1 Kings 19:3-4; Jer 20:7-18). Although martyrdom was associated with the prophets, it was not their goal; but it seems to be Jesus’ goal here (cf. especially 20:28). Jesus could foreknow his death as a prophet, but he also orchestrated it in a sense: no one could stir a commotion in the temple and defy its officials as Jesus did, then remain in the city unarmed, without expecting martyrdom.
16:22. Jewish tradition in this period emphasized a triumphant *Messiah; apparently only a century after Jesus’ teaching did Jewish teachers begin to accept the tradition of a suffering Messiah in addition to a triumphant one. One of the first rules of ancient discipleship (with noticeably rare exceptions) was: Never criticize the teacher, especially publicly. Here Peter breaks that rule, even on standard cultural grounds.
16:23. Disciples sometimes walked behind their teachers to signify submission. The term stumbling block, referring to something over which people tripped, had come to be used figuratively for things that led people to sin or stumble in their faith. Peter here offers the same temptation as *Satan: the *kingdom without the cross (4:9-10). Rabbis sometimes punned on the names of disciples; here the “rock” (16:18) becomes a “stumbling stone.”
16:24. For 16:24-28, see comment on Mark 8:34–9:1. Carrying the horizontal crossbeam en route to crucifixion (where the upright stake sometimes already stood awaiting the condemned person) often meant enduring mockery and scorn on a path leading to death as a condemned criminal. Crucifixion was the worst form of criminal death, the supreme Roman penalty, normally inflicted only on lower class provincials and slaves; even talk of it could evoke horror. “Follow” can be the language of discipleship, since disciples followed their teachers; here disciples follow to the cross.
16:25-26. Although God had sometimes accepted a substitution (Ex 30:12), no treasure could really ransom one’s life eternally (cf. Ps 49:7-8), and treasure was valueless without life. Various Jewish thinkers recognized that losing one’s life in the present age was worthwhile if it would preserve one’s life in the *age to come.
16:27-28. Jesus alludes to the *Son of Man in Daniel 7:13-14. He also applies Old Testament language for God as judge to himself (Ps 62:12; Prov 24:12; Jer 17:10; 32:19; Ezek 18:30). The reference to angels is probably from Zechariah 14:5, though it also fits the context of the image in Daniel 7:13-14. “Taste death” was idiomatic for “die.” Verse 28 is a transition to the proleptic revelation of the kingdom to follow in 17:1-8 (“proleptic” means that this revelation anticipates the kingdom).
This passage includes so many allusions to God revealing his glory to Moses on Mount Sinai that most ancient Jewish readers would certainly have caught them. For more details on the passage, see comments on Mark 9:2-10.
17:1. The six days alludes to Exodus 24:16, when God began to speak to Moses from his cloud on the mountain.
17:2. Both Greek myth and Jewish *apocalypses told of transformations or transfigurations (in the latter describing glorious angels or the resurrected righteous, sometimes shining like the sun). The most obvious primary background for biblically literate hearers, however, would have been Moses’ glorification on Mount Sinai (Ex 34:29, where Moses’ face radiated glory because of God’s revelation of himself to Moses).
17:3. Jewish people understood Scripture as denying that Elijah had ever died; God himself had buried Moses. Jewish people expected the return of both Elijah and Moses at the end of the age (Deut 18:15-18; Mal 4:5). Both of them (Ex 24:15-16; 1 Kings 19:8) heard from God at Mount Sinai (also called Horeb).
17:4. Israel had dwelt in tabernacles in the wilderness while the presence and glory of God was among them. Jews commemorated this annually by building shelters, so Peter would know how to build one.
17:5. The cloud of glory overshadowed the mountain in Exodus 24:15 and the tabernacle in 40:34 (the same Greek word is used in the *LXX of Ex 40:35 that Matthew uses here).
To the biblical allusions in Matthew 3:17, the voice in this passage apparently adds words from Deuteronomy 18:15: When the prophet like Moses comes, “give heed to him.”
17:6-8. The *disciples’ fear and falling on their faces were characteristic of people in the *Old Testament and later Jewish tradition when they experienced revelations of God (e.g., Ezek 1:28; Dan 8:17). The revealers also sometimes told people to arise and not be afraid (e.g., Ezek 2:1-2; Dan 8:18; 10:11-12)
17:9-13. Jewish people believed that Elijah would return before the time of the end to make matters right (Mal 4:5-6); the *resurrection of all the righteous dead was to follow his coming, at the end. Malachi 4:6 speaks of Elijah “restoring” families (not just their genealogies, as in later rabbinic tradition). Jesus interprets the promise of the end-time Elijah more figuratively than most of his contemporaries would have.
17:14-18. See comments on Mark 9:14-29 for more detail. It might be relevant that, like Moses, Jesus must deal with the failure of those he left in charge once he comes down from the mountain (Ex 24:14; 32:1-8, 21-25, 35), though Jesus has not been absent as long. In some cases of spirit possession noted by anthropologists, persons become violently out of control and risk injury to themselves, as here. Although some compare symptoms here with epilepsy, Matthew does not always associate that affliction with *demons (Mt 4:24).
17:19-21. The disciples might inquire privately to avoid further increasing their public shame. “Removing mountains” was apparently a Jewish figure of speech (attested among later *rabbis for extraordinary mastery of the Torah) for that which was incomparably difficult. Mountains were thought to be the most stable of all things (cf. Ps 46:2; 125:1; Is 54:10); mustard seeds were used to define a proverbially small quantity. Jesus is thus telling the disciples that nothing God asks them to do will be impossible if they trust him; the issue is not how small their faith might be, but how large is the God in whom their faith rests. Most relevant here may be Zechariah 4:6-9; before God’s servant, God would bring down all obstacles against the tasks God designates.
17:22-23. Jesus predicts what would have been obvious to the disciples had they known that he planned to drive the moneychangers from the temple courts without either flight or resistance: he would die (cf. Mt 18:31; 19:22; 26:22). Because the disciples understand his resurrection to mean the general resurrection at the end of the age (17:9-10), they miss his point. In ancient parlance, “after the third day” could mean parts of three days.
17:24. Although Capernaum apparently had a customs post (see comment on Mt 8:5), the tax at issue here was paid by free adult Jewish males throughout the world. They showed their solidarity with the temple and the Holy Land by paying a half-shekel tax (Ex 30:13-16). Though the literal Greek double drachma seems no longer to have been in circulation, scholars argue that “two drachmas” was now an expression for the payment of the half-shekel tax (Ex 30:13-16). So much was gathered that the keepers of the temple eventually began using the excess to construct a massive, golden vine. After 70, in Matthew’s time, the Romans confiscated this tax for the upkeep of a pagan temple, and some Jews may have refused to pay it on principle. In Jesus’ day, most Jews loyal to Judaism would have paid it, but *Sadducees disapproved and *Essenes believed they need pay only once in a lifetime. The local collectors of the tax may have wondered about Jesus’ position on the matter if he had already hinted God’s judgment on the temple (as later in 21:12-14; 23:38–24:15); moreover, collectors did not force those living off charity (as they could assume Jesus to be—27:55; Lk 8:3) or beggars to pay. Or they may have simply been wondering if he would pay it in this locality or elsewhere, because the disciples were moving about. (At the least, they know that Jesus sometimes disagrees with mainstream views.)
17:25-26. Like a good prophet, Jesus responds to Peter before Peter even brings up the matter (1 Sam 9:20; 1 Kings 14:6; 2 Kings 5:26; 6:32).
In tax contexts, “free” normally means “free from obligation” concerning tax or tribute (e.g., 1 Esdras 4:49-50). Since a royal family did not tax itself, Jesus’ point is that the *Son of God should not be taxed for the upkeep of his Father’s house. (The principle of an exemption was known: Roman provincial taxes often exempted Romans or high-class Greeks from payment. The principle was also known in Judaism: the temple’s attendants, the priests, applied it to themselves, to the chagrin of some of their Pharisaic contemporaries—Mishnah Sheqalim 1:3-4.) For Matthew’s readers this saying might mean: It is not because Jesus is not in solidarity with Judaism (for he is), but rather because he is the hope of Judaism, that he is not obligated to pay.
17:27. On the basis of solidarity with the rest of the Jewish community, however, Jesus pays the tax. If some of Matthew’s Jewish Christian readers were looking for an excuse to avoid paying the tax in their own day, this text would encourage them to pay it instead.
A stater was worth four drachmas (4 denarii); hence it covered the tax for both Jesus and Peter. Jewish teachers had several stories describing how God rewarded faithful Jews who bought fish and found gems in them; if these stories are as early as the first century (their date is not certain), Peter might be surprised that something similar had actually happened to him. Some fish in the Lake of Galilee had mouths large enough to hold staters; one such fish was what is now called the Chromis simonis (named after Simon Peter).
See comment on Mark 9:33-37 for more information.
18:1. Some Jewish texts speak of different rewards and ranks in the *kingdom. Rank and status were issues that members of ancient society confronted daily. Jewish sources valued the virtue of humility, often extolling *rabbis who humbled themselves, for example, before other rabbis or before their parents. Yet such humility was rarely expressed toward children or by exalting children.
18:2-4. The most powerless members of ancient society were little children; in most of ancient society, age increased one’s social status and authority. In Jewish culture, children were loved, not despised; but the point is that they had no status apart from that love, and no power or privileges apart from what they received as total dependents on their parents. The posture of children as dependents may recall 6:9. “Converted” may allude to the Jewish idea of turning, returning or repenting, often found in the biblical prophets.
18:5. On receiving representatives, see 10:40-42 (on the name, cf. also comment on Jn 14:12-14).
18:6. Both Greeks and Jews used “stumble” figuratively; for Jews, it often meant “sin” or “fall away from the faith.” Millstones were used to grind meal. They were extremely heavy, and the term here refers to the heavier kind of millstone turned by a donkey, rather than the lighter kind a woman would use. One of the most horrible punishments executed by Romans (abhorred by Jews) was to tie a person in a sack and throw them into a large body of water. Death at sea was considered terrible; some pagans believed that the ghost of the unburied would hover forever over the spot where the person had drowned. Others could apply this image to judgment (cf. *1 Enoch 48:9). Jewish teachers sometimes warned of judgments with, “Better for a person who . . . than if . . . ” (cf. also Mt 26:24).
This passage extends the metaphor to all the weak in the *church, certainly including children. Church leaders and members must seek not only to avoid causing stumbling but also to bring back anyone who has stumbled.
18:7-9. Judaism also balanced God’s sovereign plan with human choice and responsibility. To the extent that one’s poor eyes could cause one to trip, they could be viewed as a sort of stumbling block; on stumbling blocks, see comment on 18:6. An apparently widespread Jewish belief was that God in the future would raise the dead initially in whatever form they had (e.g., with missing limbs) before restoring them to wholeness; on the removal of limbs, cf. comment on 5:29-30 or Mark 9:42-47.
18:10. Jewish readers would generally recognize here the concept of the guardian angel; it was typically believed that every Jewish person had one (cf. Tobit 5:22; Pseudo-Philo, Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum 11:12; 59:4; Tosefta Shabbat 17:2-3; Sifre Numbers 40.1.5). Further, angels received their orders from God’s throne; but unlike lower angels and mortals, the very highest angels (normally not thought to be guardian angels) regularly saw God’s glory. Those who mistreated these “little ones” would hence be reported directly to God by the greatest angels, and the report would stand them in bad stead in the day of judgment.
18:12-14. One hundred was an average-sized flock in Palestine. Greek and Jewish literature affords other examples of pasturers who had to leave the flock or herd to look for a lost animal (cf. 1 Sam 9:3); a shepherd could leave his own flock with the other shepherds with whom he worked, who would be watching over their own flocks (cf. Lk 2:8). Shepherds did often graze flocks on mountains or in hill country, and sometimes became capable mountaineers. Religious leaders who failed to care for the broken and powerless are rejected by God (Ezek 34:2-10), and God himself would then seek after the sheep (34:11-16). God’s people were commonly described as sheep in the *Old Testament (cf. comment on Jn 10:1-18).
We should keep in mind that the whole context of this passage on church discipline is mercy and forgiveness; forgiveness qualifies (but does not annul) the force of this passage on disciplining unrepentant offenders in the Christian community. The contextual emphasis is the hope of bringing back the erring, not confirming them irreparably in their guilt.
18:15. This procedure reflects standard Jewish custom; the *Dead Sea Scrolls, the rabbis and others demand that one begin with private reproof. Publicly shaming someone unnecessarily was considered sinful, and Jewish teachers stressed the importance of receiving reproof.
18:16. Deuteronomy 19:15 (cf. 17:6-7) was the standard text Jewish authorities cited for requiring two witnesses. (Later rabbis took this principle so far that one eyewitness was not sufficient even if the eyewitness caught the murderer with the bloody knife in hand.) A final warning was merciful (e.g., Deut 25:8). Strict judicial procedures are being followed at this point because a judicial action is about to take place; Jesus here agrees with the Jewish practice of private rebuke, witnesses and finally, if *repentance is not forthcoming, the judicial assembly (18:17).
18:17. A church by definition would function as an ancient *synagogue would, and ancient synagogues were not only assembly halls for prayer and study but community centers where discipline would be inflicted on an erring member of the community. (Both “synagogue” and “church” ultimately render the same Hebrew expression for God’s community.) This discipline could take a variety of forms, including public beating, but the most severe were several levels of dismissal from the community. After the most severe level of discipline the offending member would be treated as a pagan instead of as a Jew. Pagans and *tax gatherers alike—tax gatherers were seen as agents of a pagan government—were excluded from the religious life of the Jewish community. Giving a person a final warning before a court would take action (e.g., Deut 25:8) was an act of mercy.
18:18. Continuing the judicial thought of 18:15-17: many Jews felt that the Jewish high court acted on the authority of God’s tribunal in heaven, in a sense ratifying its decrees (the verb tenses here probably indicate that the heavenly court has decided first). Those who judged cases on the basis of God’s *law accurately represented his will.
“Binding” and “loosing,” terms normally used for tying up or imprisoning versus freeing or releasing, provide a natural metaphor for condemning or acquitting in a court. As terms regularly used for rabbis’ legislative authority in interpreting Scripture, they could naturally apply to judicial situations as well.
18:19-20. The “two or three” must refer to the “two or three witnesses” of 18:16. These verses may refer to the prayer of execration given at a Jewish excommunication; or they could represent prayers for the repentance and consequent forgiveness of the excommunicated person (see 1 Jn 5:16). In either case, it is of interest to note that the witnesses in the Old Testament were to be the first to execute the judgment of the court (Deut 17:7); here they are the first to pray.
Later sources report that ten Jewish males was the minimum quorum to constitute a synagogue assembly, but also (probably reflecting a more widespread tradition) that God’s presence was with even two or three who met together to study his law (cf. Mishnah ʾAvot 3:2, 6; Mekilta Bahodesh 11). Jesus’ presence is thus presented here as identical with God’s (cf. also Mt 1:23; 28:20). (Indeed, one of the most common names for God among the later rabbis was “the Place,” i.e., the Omnipresent One.)
18:21-22. Seventy times seven (some interpreters read seventy-seven; cf. Gen 4:24) does not really specify 490 (or 77) here with mathematical precision; it is a typically graphic, hyperbolic way of saying “Never hold grudges.” Because true *repentance should involve turning from sin, some later rabbis limited opportunities for forgiveness for a given sin to three times; Peter might have thought his offer of seven times was generous, until hearing Jesus’ further expansion.
18:23. On “the kingdom may be compared,” see comment on 13:24. The story here is about a *Gentile king, such one of the Greek, Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt before the Romans conquered it. “Servants” here could mean his upper-level slaves—who were better off than nearly all the free people of Egypt, most of whom were peasants. In this case, however, “servants” might refer to free provincial satraps, who functioned as the ruler’s tax farmers in various regions; they too were vassals of the king. The ruler would allow them to collect taxes for him at a profit, but he demanded efficiency. If they collected taxes after the harvests, the king might settle accounts with them afterward.
18:24. Many peasant agricultural workers struggled to pay taxes, especially after droughts, but this difficulty did not mitigate the tax collectors’ responsibility to submit the requisite amount to the king. Some of the *disciples and perhaps Jesus himself could have smiled as the master storyteller told how far the king had let one of his servants get in debt: ten thousand talents (cf. Esther 3:9) probably represented more than the entire annual income of the king, and perhaps more than all the actual coinage in circulation in most kingdoms (such as Egypt) at the time! In one period, the silver talent represented six thousand drachmas, or six thousand days’ wages for an average Palestinian worker; ten thousand talents would thus be roughly sixty million days’ wages (in another period, one hundred million). Although taxes were exorbitant in those days, especially for rural peasants, *Josephus reports the annual tribute from Galilee and Perea under wealthy Herod to be only two hundred talents, with perhaps six hundred more from Judean territories; it was thus inconceivable that one official could get so far in debt.
Ancient Judaism often viewed sins as debts before God (see comment on 6:12).
18:25. Enslaving family members for the man’s debt was a Gentile practice that the Jewish people in this period found abhorrent. The math does not work here; the price of an average slave was between five hundred and two thousand days’ wages, hence the king cannot recoup even one-thousandth of his losses on this sale. But the *parable is deliberately hyperbolic, to speak of guilt before God. A king with better math skills would not have let the man get so far in debt to begin with! The point here in any case is not economics but anger.
18:26. “I will repay” was a standard promise in ancient business documents. But given the debt of ten thousand talents, however (18:24), this promise is as absurd as the hope of recouping the loss by debt enslavement in 18:25.
18:27. Jesus’ humorous *hyperbole continues. Given the ruthlessness of ancient Near Eastern kings and the greatness of the debt, that this ruler would forgive his servant is almost as impossible in the real world as the size of the debt. Sometimes rulers had to forgive Egyptian peasants’ past tax debts when failed crops rendered them simply unable to pay, but the sums involved were comparatively small.
18:28. One hundred denarii represented one hundred days of a common worker’s wages, which would be a small sum for his fellow tax farmer, after he had finished his accounting with the king (18:23). It was also a ridiculously minuscule sum compared to what the first servant had owed the king. But apparently the forgiven slave, instead of internalizing the principle of *grace, had decided to become ruthlessly efficient in his exacting of debts henceforth. Such extreme actions as choking are reported of angry creditors elsewhere in antiquity as well.
18:29-30. Someone in prison could not pay back what he owed (v. 34), unless friends came to his aid with the requisite funds. In pre-Roman Egypt, no one could charge a servant of the king, a policy the aggressor neglects.
18:31-33. The king is naturally angry; the forgiven servant has put another of his servants out of active commission, hence costing the king more lost revenues. The king had gained more advantage by convincing his people of his benevolence than he would have gained profit from the sale of the first servant; but once it was rumored that this first servant, his agent, was acting mercilessly, it reflected badly upon his own benevolence.
18:34. Jewish *law did not permit torture, but Jewish people knew that Gentile kings (as well as Herod) practiced it. Because this servant had fallen from political favor, he would have no allies who would dare come to his aid; and even if he had, given the sum he owed, his situation would have remained hopeless. He would never be released. (On liability for all sins if one did not stay righteous, cf. Ezek 18:24.)
18:35. The great contrasts of the parable are humorous and effective in relaxing the ancient listener’s guard, but the horrifying details of debt slavery, torture and so forth bring home the point forcefully. This story would have communicated effectively for the ancient hearer. For a parable’s sudden conclusion challenging the hearer, cf. 2 Sam 12:7.
This passage follows the sequence of a rabbinic debate.
19:1. *Pharisees (19:3) were more common in Judea than in Galilee. Sometimes Galilean pilgrims to Judea crossed the Jordan into Perea (to avoid Samaria), then crossed it again into Judea.
19:2-3. The Pharisees themselves debated the grounds for divorce implied in Deuteronomy 24:1-4: the school of *Shammai, predominant in Jesus’ day, argued that the passage allowed divorce only if one’s spouse was unfaithful; the school of *Hillel, which eventually won out, said that a man could divorce his wife if she burned the toast (a later *rabbi of this school added, “Or if you find someone more attractive”!); see Mishnah Gittin 9:10; Sifre Deuteronomy 269.1.1; more generally for the freedome to divorce, see, e.g., Sirach 25:26; Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 4.253; Life 415, 426; Philo, Special Laws 3.30 Although Shammai’s school was generally dominant before A.D. 70, other sources indicate that the more liberal position of Hillel’s school was closer to general practice on this issue (though Pharisees apparently widely regarded divorce as tragic). The success of a protagonist’s wisdom under “testing” with difficult questions was an ancient theme (cf. 1 Kings 10:1); some questioners had hostile intentions.
19:4-6. It was standard interpretive practice to counter one proof text by appealing to another. Like the sectarians who wrote the *Dead Sea Scrolls (who used the text against royal polygamy, CD 4.20–5.2; 11QT 56.18-19), Jesus appeals to God’s original purpose in creation in Genesis 1:27; 2:24.
19:7. They cite Deuteronomy 24:1, the basic text Jewish interpreters used to discuss grounds for divorce.
19:8. Jewish teachers of the *law recognized a legal category called “concession”: something that was permitted only because it was better to regulate sin than to relinquish control over it altogether. Given God’s purpose in creation (Gen 2:24), divorce naturally fell into such a category (cf. Mal 2:14-16). (Cf. similarly the law’s regulation rather than abolition of polygyny and debt slavery.)
19:9. The exception stated here (the spouse’s unfaithfulness) is one that counted as a charge in much ancient law. The school of Shammai (see comment on 19:1-3) did not permit divorce except for the wife’s unfaithfulness (whether successful or attempted), but they did not consider remarriage afterward adulterous. Because all ancients recognized that one could not remarry unless one’s divorce was valid, so Jesus presses the Shammaite position to its logical conclusion: if one divorces one’s spouse without valid grounds (unfaithfulness or analogous sins; cf. 1 Cor 7:10-13), the marriage is not truly dissolved and subsequent marriage is adulterous. This statement (that all subsequent unions are invalid unless the first marriage was dissolved by infidelity) may be hyperbolic rather than literal, but *hyperbole is stated the way it is to make its point forcefully. Divorce must never be taken lightly.
Because men could divorce women unilaterally but women could demand a divorce only under certain very narrow conditions (and then needed the court’s help), Jesus’ opposition to this sort of divorce was also a defense of married women. Unmarried women had limited access to economic support.
19:10. Jewish men took the right to divorce for granted. Parents arranged marriages; marriages created kin ties and social pressure to stay married, but if the marriage failed, people counted on having a way out. Ancient marriage contracts often included advance arrangements in case a divorce occurred.
19:11-12. Later rabbis recognized different categories of eunuchs—those born without sexual organs (i.e., made eunuchs by God) and those made eunuchs by people, such as served in Eastern courts. But particularly offensive to Jewish sensitivities was making someone a eunuch, a practice that would exclude him from the people of God (Deut 23:1). Jesus uses this graphic language figuratively (cf. Mt 5:29-30) to describe a call to singleness for the *kingdom, although singleness too was generally outside the mainstream of Jewish social life (see comment on 1 Cor 7). Cf. Isaiah 56:4-5.
See comment on Mark 10:13-16 for more details; Matthew’s form of the story is abbreviated, but abbreviating such accounts was a common practice in ancient writing.
Children were socially powerless and dependent. Some people in the *Old Testament would lay hands on others to bestow a blessing in prayer. Insensitive *disciples trying to keep from the master those seeking his help might remind Jewish hearers of Gehazi, a disciple of Elisha who eventually lost his position (2 Kings 4:27; cf. 5:27).
See Mark 10:17-22.
19:16. Greek traditions also reported aristocratic young men who wanted to study under a famous teacher but were too spoiled to carry out what the teacher demanded.
19:17. Jewish tradition emphasized the goodness of God (e.g., *Philo: “God alone is good”) and even used “the Good” as a title for him (as well as for the *law); by emphasizing God’s unique goodness, Jesus hopes to confront the man with his own need. “Enter into life”: “life” was sometimes used as an abbreviation for “*eternal life”—the life of the world to come.
19:18-19. These commandments include the humanward (vs. Godward) ones among the Ten Commandments (except the humanly untestable prohibition of coveting) and the summary of humanward commandments: Love your neighbor as yourself (Lev 19:18; cf. Mt 22:39).
19:20. With the possible exception of the less specific “Love your neighbor as yourself,” most Jewish people could claim to have kept the specific commandments just mentioned. “Young man” probably places him between twenty-four and forty years of age.
19:21. Only a few radical Greek teachers demanded such things of would-be disciples. Jesus’ demands are more radical than later Jewish charity laws permitted (lest the benefactor reduce himself to poverty); later regulations limited charity to twenty percent (which was nonetheless considerable on top of tithes and taxes). This was a severe test, not only of whether the disciple would value the teacher above earthly possessions, but even of his claim to love his neighbor as himself.
19:22. The young man responds as most aristocrats would have responded and did respond when confronted with such demands. The *kingdom is not meant to be an extra benefit tagged onto a comfortable life; it must be all-consuming, or it is no longer the kingdom.
See Mark 10:23-31.
19:23-26. Here Jesus clearly uses *hyperbole. His words reflect an ancient Jewish figure of speech for the impossible: a very large animal passing through a needle’s eye. On regular journeys at twenty-eight miles per day, a fully loaded camel could carry four hundred pounds in addition to its rider; such a camel would require a gate at least ten feet high and twelve feet wide. (A needle’s eye in Jesus’ day meant what it means today; the idea that it was simply a name for a small gate in Jerusalem is based on a gate from the medieval period and sheds no light on Jesus’ teaching in the first century.)
Mainstream Judaism never denied the rich a place in the *kingdom of God; many of its benefactors and leaders were rich. Jesus allows that the rich may, by God’s mercy, enter in, but only by giving their abundance to the destitute.
19:27-29. “Regeneration” was a term used for the future renewal of the world in Greek circles and naturally applied to Jewish expectations of a new world order (such expectations appear in Is 65:17; 66:22; and in the Dead Sea Scrolls). That the twelve tribes would be restored was one of the standard Jewish beliefs about the end times. Judges were those who ruled Israel in the *Old Testament before the institution of Israelite kingship.
The agricultural setting of this *parable agrees with what is known from other ancient Palestinian Jewish sources. Other *rabbis also told parables like this one, although Jesus’ point is different from the one preserved in similar rabbinic parables; both, however, typically portray God as a king or landowner.
19:30. Ancient literature often employed a framing device called inclusio to bracket off sections of material on a particular topic; 19:30 and 20:16 bracket off this parable, which follows naturally on the message of sacrificing in this age in 19:23-29. Most Jewish people believed that the day of judgment would set all things right. It would reverse the injustices of the present age; most notably, the *Gentiles would be cast down and Israel exalted.
20:1. The agricultural setting of 20:1-15 fits with what we know of much life in Galilee. Although Jesus told parables with agrarian settings more often than did most other rabbis whose parables are preserved, both could portray God as king or landowner. On “the kingdom is like,” see comment on 13:24. Wealthy landowners often had tenants to work their estates, but both they and less wealthy landowners hired extra workers temporarily to gather in the harvest. Work began around sunrise, about 6 a.m., before the day became hot. Some day laborers were also tenant farmers, with small plots of their own land; others were sons of those owning small pieces of land and had not inherited any of their fathers’ land; still others had lost their land and traveled from place to place seeking employment.
20:2. A denarius was an average day’s wage (though landowners often paid extra to get workers during the harvest). The daylong workers would probably develop a sense of camaraderie, often singing together during reaping.
20:3. Daylight during this season began a little before 6 a.m.; the “third hour” of daylight was complete a little before 9 a.m.. If it was harvest season and these men had any land of their own, they might have spent the morning gathering in their own ripe harvest. Idlers as well as people looking for work would gather in the marketplace.
20:4. These workers would expect less than a full day’s wage.
20:5. The “sixth hour” is the period just before noon, and the “ninth hour” shortly before 3 p.m. About the sixth hour was the hottest time of the day, when workers would normally find a place in the shade to rest, eat or even nap for an hour or two; given the urgency of the harvest, they keep working (20:12). The laborers would finish by 6 p.m., so those newly hired would expect to receive considerably less than a full day’s wages.
20:6-7. These laborers are hired for only a single hour of work; but the harvest must be gathered in quickly, before the day ends, and the work is not yet done. These verses express the typical urgency surrounding the harvest in ancient times.
20:8. Jewish *law mandated that laborers be paid the same day, because the wages were often little more than sufficient for a day’s needs (Deut 24:14-15).
20:9-12. The wealthy throughout the Mediterranean world often bestowed significant gifts on society that were widely praised as beneficent, increasing the public status of the donors. Because status defined roles in ancient society, those who complained about receiving a day’s wage for a day’s work would be viewed as rude and ungrateful.
20:13-14. Orators could focus on a representative member of the crowd. Hired workers were not landowners’ “friends,” and certainly not in this case; the respectful title might shame the complainers for their own lack of respect (cf. Mt 22:12; 26:50).
20:15. An “evil eye” (literally; cf. KJV) meant a “stingy eye” in common idiom (cf. Prov 28:22). The landowner had been fair to those who worked all day and generous to those who had not; by charging the complainers with ingratitude (socially equivalent to hubris) he shamed them. Jewish people all affirmed that God, who alone rightfully owned all things, was beneficent whatever he gave; they acknowledged that only his attribute of mercy would enable even Israel to survive the day of judgment.
Jewish teachers employed a similar folk story about the day of judgment, but they used it to make the opposite point. Israel, who had worked hard, would receive high wages; the Gentiles, who had labored little, would receive little (Sifra Behuqotai pq. 2.262.1.9). In this context, however, Jesus’ point challenges those who have wealth and status in this world, Jewish or Gentile, and promises that in the world to come God will redress those who have been oppressed in this world.
In this context of those with low status being exalted, Jesus gives the extreme example: voluntarily submitting to ridicule and execution as a common criminal at the hands of the Romans, to be vindicated by God in the *resurrection. Jewish people generally expected a victorious leader—not a martyr. Against some who doubt that Jesus could have foreknown his death: even apart from Jesus’ knowledge of the future, he provoked the hostility of the ruling authorities, publicly challenging their virtue and honor in 21:12-13.
See comments on Mark 10:35-45.
20:20-21. The indirect intercession of a motherly woman (cf. Mt 15:22) was often more effective than a man’s direct petition for himself, in both Jewish and Roman circles (see also 2 Sam 14:2-20; 1 Kings 1:15-21; cf. 2 Sam 20:16-22). Women also could get away with making some requests that men could not. In this case, however, it does not work.
20:22-24. The “cup” represents Jesus’ death (Mt 26:27-28, 39); Jesus may borrow the image from the “cup of wrath” in the *Old Testament prophets (see comment on Mk 10:38 for references).
20:25. Like many ancient teachers, Jesus offers both negative (20:25) and positive (20:28) examples. *Gentile ways are as negative an example as possible in Jesus’ setting (5:47; 6:7; 18:17). Israelite kings had been bound by stricter moral conventions than neighboring pagan rulers (cf. Jezebel’s more ready abuse of power than Ahab’s). Jewish people recognized that most pagan rulers of postbiblical times were tyrants as well, including in their own time.
20:26-27. Inverting the role of master and slave was radical anywhere in antiquity; even the few masters who believed that slaves were theoretically equals did not go as far as Jesus goes here. (Even the temporary reversal during the Roman festival of Saturnalia served more to reinforce the traditional pattern than to overthrow it.) Jewish *disciples served their rabbis; in the *Qumran community, those of lesser rank obeyed those of greater rank.
20:28. Here Jesus probably alludes to the suffering servant of Isaiah 53, who offered his life on behalf of the many. It is also a standard Jewish “how much more” (qal vahomer) argument: if their master served, how much more ought they to do so.
20:29-30. Although the road from Jericho to Jerusalem was notorious for robbers (Lk 10:30), it was widely used, and larger companies (such as Jesus’) would face no threat. Jericho was one of the wealthiest cities of Judea, but beggars nevertheless remained at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale (if on the scale at all)—“nobodies” who were dependent on the pity of passersby. Judaism did value care for beggars, but had such a high work ethic that only the truly destitute, such as (in that society) the blind, would take this role. “Son of David” indicates that they acknowledge Jesus as *Messiah. “Have mercy on us” could be a common cry for alms, though here they seek more.
20:31. Those believing that their trek to Jerusalem was leading to the establishment of the *kingdom might well feel that Jesus had more important things to do than to be stopped by these beggars, whether they just want alms or are seeking something more.
20:32-34. The beggars want more than alms, and Jesus again demonstrates the difference between his kingdom and the militant kind most people were expecting.
See Mark 11:1-10 for some other details.
21:1. Bethphage was a suburb of Jerusalem at the Mount of Olives across the Kidron Valley from Jerusalem; it lay on the east side of Jerusalem, on the route from Jericho (cf. Mt 20:29).
21:2-3. This borrowing of a donkey may be seen in terms of royal emissaries temporarily impressing (demanding the service of) an animal; Jesus as Lord has the right to whatever his followers claim to own. On the historical level, the donkey’s owner might have viewed it as helpful hospitality to visitors to the feast or as the honor of helping on his way a famous *rabbi. Some commentators have also suggested that the owner was away and those who kept the house, hearing that “the master” had need of the donkey, thought they were sending it to its real owner; but they surely would have recognized that the *disciples were not part of the household.
21:4-7. Colts that had not yet been ridden sometimes accompanied their mothers. Following a common Jewish practice of reading the Hebrew text for all one can get from it, Matthew reads Zechariah 9:9 as referring to two animals instead of referring to the same animal in two ways. The text is messianic, as ancient interpreters generally acknowledged, but applying this part to himself redefines Jesus’ messiahship: officials used donkeys for civil, not military, processions (e.g., 1 Kings 1:33). Thus this text is not a “triumphal entry” in the sense of Roman triumphal processions; it is Jerusalem’s reception of a meek and peaceful king. With respect to leaders the term translated “meek” or “gentle” involved compassion and mercy as opposed to exploiting one’s power.
21:8. Festal pilgrims were often welcomed in this way, though the acclamation of 21:9 suggests that in Jesus’ case the welcome was on a larger and more significant scale. Cf. Psalm 118:27 (NIV).
21:9. Except for the acclamation “Son of David!” which indicates a recognition of Jesus’ ancestry and a hope that he is the *Messiah, their cry is taken from Psalm 118:25-26 (“Hosanna!” means “O save!”). The Hallel, composed of Psalms 113–118, was sung regularly during Passover season and would be fresh on everyone’s mind; later generations applied these psalms to the future redemption for which they hoped. Jesus cites Psalm 118 messianically in Matthew 21:42.
21:10-11. Jesus was better known in Galilee than in Judea; ancient sources often note regional divisions between the two.
Like Jeremiah’s smashing the pot in the temple centuries before (Jer 19), Jesus’ demonstration there was a prophetic act inviting *repentance and warning of the temple’s imminent destruction (see comment on Mt 24:1-2). Jesus’ act may have been brief enough to prevent the temple’s Levite police (or the Roman garrison, concerned about riot control) from intervening.
21:12. *Old Testament *law required visitors to the feast to purchase their sacrifices in Jerusalem, hence sellers of doves and other sacrificial animals were necessary. Because visitors would come with foreign currencies—even most Galilean towns had their own coinage—moneychangers had also become necessary. Although ancient moneychangers normally managed to turn an honest profit, those in the temple reportedly made very little. The issue appears to be not the commerce per se, and possibly not even whether it involves economic exploitation under the guise of religion, so much as where the commerce is occurring. Scholars have proposed several theories on the basis of later evidence, including that the sale of animals had been introduced into the Court of the *Gentiles very recently; but this theory is uncertain. Some other groups (like the *Essenes) believed that the corrupt priestly leadership had morally desecrated the temple.
21:13. The Old Testament temple did not officially restrict the access of women or non-Jews, but by extending Jewish purity laws the architects of Herod’s temple had excluded Jewish women from the Court of Israel, placing them on a lower level, and non-Jews outside even the Court of Women. Non-Jews could enter the Jewish part of the temple (including the Court of Women) only on pain of death, yet the noisy crowds around the merchants’ tables no doubt consumed a significant part of the large space in the Court of the Gentiles at the crowded festivals. Jesus here cites Isaiah 56:7, which goes on to speak of the temple being for the Gentiles as well, a subtlety some of Matthew’s more skillful readers might have caught. Matthew might emphasize especially Jesus’ second text, Jeremiah 7:11 (“den of robbers”), which addressed religious leaders of Jeremiah’s day who thought their vested interests in the temple would protect them from God’s wrath and the temple’s destruction. It did not.
21:14. Even hereditary priests who were blind or lame were not permitted in the sanctuary (Lev 21:18); at least some extended this rule in time to exclude all the blind and lame (cf. the Greek version of 2 Sam 5:8; see also the *Dead Sea Scrolls). Second-century rabbis permitted but did not require blind and lame men to attend the feasts like other men. Although those who controlled the temple would not have opposed their presence in the outer court (see, e.g., Acts 3:2), Jesus’ emphasis on ministry to them here makes a countercultural statement.
The powerful Sadducean priests who ran the temple were generally not looking for a *Messiah; but had they expected him, they would have expected him either to challenge their power militarily or to seek an alliance with them. From the aristocratic standpoint, seeking followers among the weak was dishonorable and a foolish way to try to establish a kingdom.
21:15-17. Messianic claims threatened the stability of the temple hierarchy as much as overturning the tables would (cf. 27:11). Most of the Sadducean families were the elite priests who exercised most control over the city and temple; most were not looking for a “Messiah.” This Galilean prophet had challenged their honor, and normally they would seek to avenge it by the challenger’s public discipline—or at this level of public insult, his death. (A generation later another prophet merely announced judgment against the temple; the leading priests handed him over to the governor, who had him flogged until, *Josephus reports, his bones showed.)
Because the *high priests probably spoke Greek as their first language (as suggested by their tomb inscriptions), Jesus quotes to them from the Greek translation of Psalm 8:2, which reads “praise,” rather than the Hebrew, which has “strength” (slightly less appropriate here). Jesus may argue qal vahomer (“how much more”): if God can bring strength or praise from the mouths of infants, how much more can he confound the powerful by the mouths of these children (cf. Mt 11:25; 18:3; 19:14)?
21:18. Jerusalem was full of visitors during Passover season—perhaps as many as five hundred thousand (Josephus even estimated more than five times that figure)—and many of the visitors consequently had to lodge in the countryside. “Morning” may mean as early as 6 a.m.
21:19-20. By this time of year fig trees near the Mount of Olives would have leaves, but only green fruit with an unpleasant taste appeared this early; edible figs appeared around early June. Often the green fruit would fall off, so that only leaves remained.
The sequence of events here differs from Mark (cf. Mk 11:12-14, 20-26); ancient biography was not required to be chronological, and Matthew’s changes in Mark’s sequence would have been considered negligible. For further details, compare comment on the Markan passage.
21:21-22. “Removing mountains” was a figure of speech for doing what was virtually impossible. From where Jesus and his disciples are standing, the Mount of Olives (cf. Zech 14:4, 10) and (from its slopes) perhaps the Dead Sea would be visible; thus Jesus’ illustration would have been vivid to his disciples. The Gospels’ own audiences might not know that, but Jesus, his disciples and the Gospel audiences all could have thought of Zechariah 4:6-9, where the *Spirit of God would remove all obstacles to God’s purposes; the obstacles appear as a mountain.
The conflicts with the authorities in the next several chapters reflect standard methods of debate in antiquity: questions and answers, witty responses, and attempts to trap opponents in their own words. The temple courts, the city’s most public venue, were a popular place for teaching and discussion. See comment on Mark 11:27-33 for more details.
21:23. Teachers in Jerusalem often lectured in the temple courts. Those who were publicly dishonored would seek to recoup their honor by publicly challenging their opponent. The next few chapters include many examples of the format of ancient public debate: questions, witty retorts and attempts to use a speaker’s words against him.
21:24. Jesus replies to the authorities’ question with a counterquestion, which was common in Jewish debate.
21:25-27. Jesus argues that his authority and John’s derive from the same source—“heaven” (one Jewish way of saying, “from God”). This response follows the Jewish legal principle that a commissioned messenger acts on the full authority of the one who sent him. The rest of the interaction follows the standard debate procedure of the period.
The chief priests, mostly *Sadducees, were elite politicians—less popular than the politically powerless *Pharisees—who had to balance the interests of both their people and the Roman authorities. They belonged to a hereditary elite whose power was backed by Rome; such groups usually despised popular teachers like Jesus as demagogues. At the same time, the aristocratic priests would also keep popular opinion in mind when making decisions that might incur the displeasure of the people (21:26).
21:28-30. That a father should have asked his son to go work in the vineyard was natural. That the son should have refused to go would have offended Jewish moral sensibilities: this was an openly disobedient son, and disobedience was a punishable offense. But failing to go after promising to go was worse than not having promised; this son violated his word to his own father. The son who refused to go but repented acted preferably (cf. Ezek 18:21-24).
21:31-32. The pious regarded *tax gatherers and prostitutes as outside practicing Judaism. Jesus could not have chosen a much more offensive comparison. The rhetorical question or invitation to reconsider at the end of the *parable was a long-standing technique for challenging hearers (e.g., Is 5:4; cf. 2 Sam 12:1-7). On tax gatherers, see comment on 9:9; Jewish religion despised prostitution but it did exist in Judea. “Way of righteousness” means a righteous lifestyle (Prov 8:20; 12:28; 16:31), which was both John’s practice and his message.
Much of the rural Roman Empire, including parts of rural Galilee, was controlled by wealthy landowners, whose income from the land allowed them lives of complete leisure. Their estates were generally worked by tenant farmers, who were usually free peasants (as in Egypt), but sometimes by slaves (as in much of Italy). Although landowners gained great honor among the poor if they were benevolent, such landowners normally had little incentive to do so. They generally lived far away, often in cities, and had little personal contact with their workers. But the landowner in this *parable is so benevolent that aristocrats would have considered him naive.
Jesus addresses those who fancy themselves rulers of Israel (21:23), reminding them that they are merely custodians appointed by God (like the shepherds of Jer 23 and Ezek 34) over his vineyard.
21:33. Jesus’ description follows the normal way to prepare a vineyard, but he clearly alludes to Isaiah 5:1-2, where Israel is the vineyard.
21:34. Payments were rendered at harvest time, either by percentage (usually at least twenty-five percent) or a predetermined amount; this would have been specified in the initial contract. Ancient business documents often called profit “fruit,” but here a proportion of the harvest seems likely to be meant. (Although probably not relevant to the point of the story, it might take a vineyard four years after planting to become profitable for the planter.)
21:35-37. Landowners in the ancient Mediterranean world always had power, socially and legally, to enforce their will on the tenants; a few reportedly even had squads of hired assassins to deal with troublesome tenants. Here the tenants act as if they are the ones with power, and they exploit it mercilessly (as opposed to the ideal of a benevolent landowner). Contrary to what some modern commentators have supposed, ancient sources show that their behavior would have horrified ancient hearers. This attitude fits the Jewish tradition that Israel martyred many of the prophets God sent. Peasants tended to praise benevolent landowners, but no ancient landowners would have patiently appealed to their sense of honor this long; people would have regarded such benevolence as folly.
21:38-39. The tenants presume too much about the inheritance. Although they could have seized it under certain legal conditions, the owner could also stipulate—and after their misdeeds certainly would—that someone else inherit the vineyard; or representatives of the emperor could have seized it. The story paints the tenants as incomparably wicked and stupid; yet the tenants are a transparent metaphor for the religious leaders who serve their own interests rather than yielding to God’s appointed heir—as Jesus’ hearers know (21:45).
21:40-41. Ancient hearers would wonder why the landowner had not intervened earlier to throw out the tenants. Landowners could replace tenants. Asking questions was a standard rabbinic way of involving hearers in the story or teaching; getting hearers of *parables to pronounce judgment on themselves was familiar from the biblical prophets (2 Sam 12:5-7; 14:8-17; 1 Kings 20:40-42).
21:42. Jewish parables often included a Scripture passage that the parable illustrated. This text is from Psalm 118:22-23, part of the Hallel, like 118:25-26 cited in Matthew 21:9. The building referred to seems to be the temple (see Ps 118:18-21, 25-27); as the cornerstone of a new temple, Jesus poses a threat to the builders of the old one (Jerusalem’s aristocracy). (Interpreters disagree as to whether the “cornerstone” refers to the stone located in the corner of the foundation or to the capstone of an arch, but this point is not crucial to the interpretation of the passage.)
21:43. Early Jewish parables especially often focused on the relationship between God and Israel. Israel was a “holy nation” (Ex 19:5-6), but the threat of transferring their status to others had been made before (Ex 32:10; Num 14:12). God rejected the builders’ rejection (Mt 21:42), and he could replace them (cf. 3:10). “Producing” fruit (cf. 3:8) here means turning over the fruit to the landowner (God), in contrast to the tenants in the parable (21:33-42).
21:44. Assuming that this verse is original in Matthew (as in Lk 20:18), “falling on” the cornerstone reflects Isaiah 8:14-15 (probably interpreted in conjunction with Is 28:16, which also mentions a cornerstone); the stone falling on the offender alludes to Daniel 2:34, 44, where God’s *kingdom, portrayed as a rock, crushes its earthly challengers. Jewish interpreters often explained texts by citing other texts employing the same term or idea (here, God’s powerful stone); Jesus here expounds a text (Mt 21:42) by citing others sharing the same concept of the divine stone. A later rabbi warned, “If a pot falls on a rock, woe to the pot; if a rock falls on the pot, woe to the pot—either way, woe to the pot!”
21:45-46. The priestly leaders were shrewd politicians who would be careful not to act publicly against the people’s wishes; the Pharisees were popular with the people but not popular enough to directly challenge Jesus’ own popularity here. The priestly aristocracy and the Pharisees acted in concert only when necessary to preserve their people against dangerous revolutionary sentiments; challenging a common adversary like a messianic claimant would fit this category.
22:1-2. On “the kingdom is like,” see comment on 13:24. In *parables *rabbis often compared God to a king, whose son represented Israel (though not necessarily here); the setting was also sometimes a wedding feast for the son. Wedding feasts were frequently large gatherings; a very wealthy person could invite an entire city to one. Coming to a wedding feast required some commitment of valuable time on the part of guests (Jewish hearers could assume a feast lasting seven days, and a king might expect his guests, unlike those in lesser circumstances, to remain throughout the feast); this commitment would be difficult for peasants working the land. But the honor of being invited by a king—and the terror of displeasing him—would have motivated intelligent invitees to attend; refusal constituted an insult. The invited guests may have been aristocratic landowners anyway (22:5), who had the leisure for such activities. Many Jewish people expected a “messianic banquet” in the time of the *kingdom (cf. Is 25:6).
22:3. *Papyri attest the custom of a preliminary invitation and response. These guests had apparently already confirmed plans to attend (hence “those who had been invited”) but now refused. To refuse the first invitation was rude and offensive; to refuse in concert after having agreed to come would be no accident, but a deliberately treasonous insult.
22:4. Astonishingly, the generous king responds with a further invitation rather than punishment. Because those preparing the food could not calculate the exact time it would be ready, guests had been told only when it was ready. But now it was ready, and if the meat were not consumed quickly, it would spoil.
22:5. See comment on 22:3.
22:6. This behavior would obviously have been illegal even had the servants not belonged to the king; but servants of a king had higher status than most free persons, and as a king’s messengers they represented his person. Ancient peoples universally despised the mistreatment of heralds, or emissaries. In addition, the mistreatment of royal representatives was outright treason, constituting a declaration of revolt. Yet this was the treatment God’s servant-messengers, the prophets, were known to have received.
22:7. Kings did not always live in the same place as most of their subjects (e.g., Rome’s emperor vs. Jerusalem); the burning of the city probably alludes specifically to the destruction of Jerusalem, which was burned in A.D. 70 (see 24:15). Burning a city was the final step in its complete destruction. That the king would delay the feast to accomplish this (despite the risk of the meat spoiling) bursts the bounds of realism to reinforce a point.
22:8-10. Preparations for the wedding of a king’s son would be massive, and it would dishonor the son not to have guests present. Thus, as a last resort, the king redefines “worthy” guests and invites commoners. The lower a person’s status, the more punctual they might be expected to be!
22:11. Even commoners knew better than to enter the king’s presence without appropriate (at least clean) attire; this would be a sign of insolent disrespect to the host (who at this point in the story is in no mood for further disrespect!). Even peasants often had a set of good clothes for special occasions, besides their work clothes (the latter would be soiled and not easily cleaned in time). (Some scholars also suggest that special attire was provided at the door.) Thus even some of those who showed up for the feast (perhaps representing Jesus’ purported followers, like Judas) dishonored him.
Scholars have suggested a parallel with a later Jewish story in which a king invited guests to a feast without advance notice of the date. In this story, only the diligent subjects were dressed and ready at the door when the date came; the others had to wait outside in shame.
22:12-13. Again Jesus bursts the bounds of realism to drive home his point. Porters would screen invitees at the door; on outer darkness and gnashing teeth, see comment on 8:12.
22:14. The last part of the story illustrates the point that many are invited (“called”) to a feast (22:3, 8), but few are in the end among the chosen.
Here Jesus’ opponents seek to force him to choose between revolution—which would allow them to charge him before the Romans—and accommodation with the Romans—which they suppose he opposes (because he opposed their own leadership in the temple). The success of a protagonist’s wisdom under “testing” with difficult questions was an ancient theme (cf. 1 Kings 10:1); Jesus’ superior wisdom is demonstrated in Matthew 22:15-46.
22:15-16. *Pharisees tended to be nationalistic, whereas Herodians were clients of Herod, the Roman vassal; they worked together only in extraordinary situations. Pharisees would be concerned about Jewish legal requirements to have witnesses for a charge but would be ready to investigate charges concerning Jesus’ disloyalty to the *law. The Herodians, who apparently wished for a restoration of Herodian rule in Judea (which *Pilate currently governed), were naturally disturbed by messianic figures who might cause Rome to tighten its direct control over the land.
22:17. The Pharisees pit the obligations of peace with Rome against the nationalistic, messianic fervor that they assume Jesus promotes; a disastrous tax revolt two decades earlier had shown where such fervor could lead. If he publicly takes the view characterized by those later called *Zealots (no king but God), the Herodians can have him arrested; if he rejects that view (which he does), he may compromise his following.
22:18-20. In contrast to King Agrippa later, at this time both Herod Antipas and Judea mostly circulated copper Roman coins without the deified emperor’s image, which was offensive to Jewish sensitivity (though after A.D. 6 they were nonetheless Roman coins). The strictest Jews avoided images altogether. But foreign coins, which bore the emperor’s image and mention of his divine status, were in common circulation in Palestine, where neither gold nor silver coins were permitted to be struck. The silver denarius, probably minted in Lyon, was required to pay taxes in Palestine as elsewhere in the empire, and Jewish people had to use it whether they liked it or not. In this period the side with the emperor’s image read, “Tiberius Caesar, son of the divine Augustus.”
Revolutionaries in A.D. 6 had violently protested the tax involving such coins and incurred terrible Roman retaliation that destroyed Galilee’s largest city (walking distance from Nazareth). If Jesus’ questioners here are concerned about paying Roman taxes, they obviously ought not to be carrying this coin.
22:21-22. Some scholars think that Jesus alluded to people made in God’s image (Gen 1:26-27), hence says to give Caesar the less important matter of money, but to give one’s life to God. Repartee that put one’s interrogators in a bad light was characteristic of popular teachers in both Jewish and Greek traditions, and Jesus proves himself among the most effective of ancient teachers. In a society that emphasized honor and shame, Jesus’ witty responses put them to shame.
22:23. In ancient Judaism the *Sadducees were especially notorious for not believing in *resurrection; later *rabbis who considered themselves successors of the Pharisees often classified Sadducees as heretics for this view (although the Sadducees, who vanished in the years after A.D. 70, were probably no longer around to respond).
22:24. The Sadducees’ question concerns the law of levirate marriage, a custom practiced in many cultures both in antiquity and today (see Deut 25:5). It provides economic and social protection to widows in certain kinds of family-oriented societies where women cannot earn adequate wages. Students of Jewish *law were still expounding this *Old Testament principle in Jesus’ day and afterward, though rabbinic rules differed from the Old Testament in some respects (e.g., the brother married the widow and the children she bore him were now his own).
22:25-27. The Sadducees borrow the story line from the Jewish book of Tobit, where righteous Sarah’s first seven husbands died, slain by the jealous *demon Asmodeus. Some second-century rabbis proposed that a two- or three-time widow should not marry again, lest she bring harm on her next husband too (cf. Gen 38:11).
22:28. In defining Jewish law, teachers often debated hypothetical situations. But later *rabbinic literature is also full of examples of mocking questions posed by pagans, apostates or those they considered heretics, like the Sadducees.
22:29-30. Most Jewish people did not believe that angels needed to procreate (since they did not die, and some believed that God also regularly created new angels), or (normally) to eat or drink. Sadducees reportedly denied the developed angelology of some of their contemporaries.
“Marry” refers to the groom, whereas “be given in marriage” refers to the bride betrothed by her father.
22:31. Jewish teachers sometimes contested their opponents’ points by appealing to Scripture with phrases like, “Go and read.” The accusation implied in “Have you never read?” was even harsher (22:31; cf. 12:3; 19:4; 21:16, 42).
22:32-33. Arguing against their Sadducean opponents, the Pharisees commonly tried to prove the resurrection from the law of Moses (one rabbi even suggested that the resurrection was taught in every passage in the law; cf. also *4 Maccabees 7:18-19; 16:25; 18:19). Jesus here does the same. He argues that God would not claim to be the God of those who no longer exist; indeed, his faithfulness to his covenant demands that if he is their God after death, death is not the final word for them. Some other ancient Jewish writers used similar arguments to show that the patriarchs remain alive. One of the most common Jewish prayers of the period recites God’s faithfulness to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as a living reality for their own time.
Jewish teachers often debated which commandments were the greatest or could summarize much of the *law; among options were honoring parents or loving neighbors as oneself. Following Jewish interpretive technique, Jesus links the two commandments (Deut 6:5; Lev 19:18) by a shared key expression in Hebrew: “And you shall love” (veʾahavta). Jewish ethics repeatedly stressed love of God and of others.
22:34-38. This commandment was so important to Judaism that it was regularly recited. Deuteronomy 6:5 demanded loving God with all one’s “heart, soul and might”; “might” here becomes “mind” (which was implicit in the Hebrew understanding of “heart”), but the image is still “with one’s whole person.” (*New Testament writers apparently revocalized the Hebrew term for “might” as “mind,” a Hebrew term that sounded similar; such revocalization was a common Jewish interpretive practice.)
22:38. Koine Greek sometimes used “great” (NASB) to mean (NRSV) “greatest.”
22:39. Jewish tradition sometimes joined the second commandment with the first.
22:40. Some other teachers also used these commandments as summaries of the law, which is how they also appear in their contexts in the *Old Testament.
By definition, the Christ, or anointed one, was the royal descendant of David (Is 9:7; 11:1; Ps 2; 89; 132). Yet people typically thought of a son as a subordinate, a perspective inappropriate concerning Jesus. The one who would reign in God’s *kingdom was David’s “Lord,” not merely his descendant; he would thus be greater than the resurrected David.
Jewish people agreed that the *Holy Spirit inspired the Scriptures (22:43). When Jewish teachers challenged their hearers to resolve apparent discrepancies in Scripture, they assumed that both texts were true (in this case, Jesus knows that he is both David’s son and David’s Lord; Mt 1:1) and were simply asking how to harmonize them. Jesus’ opponents apparently have no answer to his question, perhaps because Jewish interpreters did not apply Psalm 110:1 to the *Messiah.
Those silenced by a speaker’s wisdom had been publicly shamed and would be careful before engaging in such a public battle of wits with the speaker again. When contemporary literature reports hearers being overawed by a wise speaker’s (usually the protagonist’s) wisdom, the readers are meant to respect the speaker’s wisdom too (e.g., 1 Esdras 4:41-42).
The other Gospels also record Jesus’ disputes with *scribes and *Pharisees (Mk 12:38-40; Lk 11:39-52), but many scholars believe that Matthew focuses greater attention on these disputes than do Mark and Luke because scribes and Pharisees constituted the chief Jewish opposition his readers faced in Syria-Palestine (see the introduction to Matthew). That is, on this view, Matthew sometimes focuses on parts of Jesus’ life and teachings most relevant to Matthew’s audience, just as we sometimes do for our hearers today. Scribes and Pharisees were originally distinct though overlapping groups (Lk 11:39-52), but those who threatened Matthew’s readers were the joint successors of both these groups. Matthew also intends this warning to apply against these opponents’ counterparts in the *church (Mt 24:45-51).
23:1-2. Some scholars have pointed to a prominent seat in many *synagogues as a “seat of Moses” (cf. 23:6), but Jesus presumably means this expression figuratively. The Pharisaic scribes who articulated the *law believed their traditions were rooted in Moses’ own teaching and fancied themselves Moses’ successors for their own generation.
23:3. Pharisaic teachers normally taught that knowing Scripture took precedence over obeying it, because knowing it was the prerequisite for obeying it; but they themselves would have agreed that one must obey it and not just learn it.
23:4-5. “Phylacteries” are tefillin, small boxes affixed by a leather strap to one’s head and left hand during morning and evening prayers; Scripture passages were inserted in these boxes (the practice is based on an overly literal reading of Deut 6:8). These passages were then recited as part of the prayers; rules concerning this later became stricter under the *rabbis. For the tassels, see comment on 9:20 and 14:36.
23:6. Everywhere in Mediterranean antiquity, seating was a matter of honor or dishonor; in Jewish circles, seating was according to rank in the *Qumran assemblies, traditions about the Sanhedrin and later rabbinic schools. This practice also obtained at banquets; those assigned seats in lower-status places frequently complained, as ancient literature amply attests. The most prominent seats in the synagogue perhaps varied in this period before synagogue architecture was standardized; one first-century synagogue seems to suggest a lack of seating rank. Probably in most synagogues the most honored seats were on the bema, the platform for the reading of the Law; elders and people of status may have often been seated in benches along the walls. At least some synagogues had other benches as well; in some synagogues, however, many hearers may have remained on mats on the floor.
23:7. Greetings were an essential courtesy in Greek and Jewish cultures. Greetings (“Peace be with you”) were so important socially that specific rules developed how to greet whom when; for example, the person of lower status coming upon a person of higher status should be first to offer a greeting. Not to hail a person superior in understanding the *law was a grievous insult. Marketplaces were the most crowded places in town.
23:8. “Rabbi” means “my master” and came to be commonly applied to teachers as a title of respect (something like “Reverend” or “Father” today); they were especially “masters” of their pupils. They were venerated in a variety of ways.
23:9-11. People in antiquity often addressed elders or community leaders as “fathers”; for this reason, some also called their teachers (cf. 23:8) “Abba,” or “Papa,” and teachers sometimes addressed their *disciples as their children. Society emphasized respect for honor and rank, often hereditary, and rabbis’ authority and honor placed them on a higher level than the disciples. Jesus says that only God is to receive such superior respect; all other Christians are peers.
23:12. The principle stated here occurs in Proverbs 25:6-7 with reference to seating at banquets, and elsewhere the principle refers to the future time when God equalizes everyone (Is 2:11-12; 5:15; cf. Ezek 17:24; 21:26).
Like beatitudes (see Mt 5:3-12), woes were an *Old Testament form of prayer. The prophets commonly employed them to pronounce judgment, and they are akin to “alases” or, perhaps here, curses (“Cursed be . . . ” in contrast to the blessing formula, “Blessed be . . . ”; cf. Deut 27–28).
Pharisees were not all of one kind, and the later rabbis, who generally considered themselves spiritual heirs of the Pharisees, report criticisms of several sorts of Pharisees whose hearts were not right (e.g., “the bruised Pharisee,” who kept bumping into things because his eyes were closed to avoid seeing a woman). These reports emphasize that motives are critical; the best motive is fear of the Lord, or (in the more refined version) love of God. *Rabbinic literature regularly condemns hypocrisy and demands proper motives. Jesus’ opponents would have agreed with most of his ethics, and perhaps protested that they were not really violating them.
Hypocrites originally meant play-actors but by this time the term was also used pejoratively for two-faced people, whose behavior either differed from their belief or varied when they were with different people.
23:13. The image of power to shut someone out is the image of the doorkeeper with the keys to the house; see comment on 16:19.
23:14. This verse is not in all Greek manuscripts of Matthew; for background on its content, see comment on Mark 12:40.
23:15. Pharisees did not have missionaries as such, but Jewish people outside Palestine were always eager to make converts among the *Gentiles, and the wing of Pharisaism most influenced by *Hillel was said to be especially open to converting non-Jews to Judaism. Judaism continued to make many converts for centuries, until it was finally stifled by the legislation of Roman Christendom, with which it was in competition (although the Romans had always resented and tried to limit Jewish proselytism, including in pre-Christian times).
“Child of hell” means someone destined to go there. The problem here is not making converts (28:19) but teaching them wrongly.
23:16-22. Jews were no longer allowed to pronounce the sacred name of God in this period. By swearing lesser oaths, some people hoped to avoid the consequences of swearing by God’s name if they could not keep their vow or if their oath turned out to be mistaken. As people swore or vowed by things related to God instead of by God himself, more and more things became substitutes for the divine name and thus became roundabout ways of seeming to swear by God while hoping to buffer the consequences. See comment on 5:33-37.
23:23. The principle that virtues like justice, mercy and faith are most important is familiar from Scripture (Deut 10:12-13; Mic 6:8), and the rabbis themselves sometimes summarized the law in terms of general principles like love. Most Pharisees and other Jewish interpreters like Philo agreed that there were heavier and lighter parts of the law. They would have responded to Jesus that they attended to minutiae only because even the smallest detail of the law was important to the pious; they taught that one should devote as much attention to the little details as to the principles. But Jesus was not against the law (see Mt 5:19); his point is that they should have learned justice, mercy and covenant faithfulness first (9:13; 12:7).
Tithes were especially used to support the priests and Levites (and for a celebration shared by the entire community every third year). “Dill” and Luke’s “rue” (Lk 11:42) are similar words in *Aramaic, possibly reflecting an original Aramaic source here. The law did not explicitly require tithing these dried green plants. Different groups of Pharisees debated among themselves whether to tithe cummin.
23:24. The *hyperbole here is humorous and would certainly catch ancient hearers’ attention. Wanting to avoid the impurity caused by a dead insect in their drink, Pharisees would strain out any insect larger than a lentil before it could die in order to preserve the fluid (cf. Lev 11:32, 34). Pharisees considered gnats, which were smaller than lentils, exempt from this impurity, but the scrupulous Pharisee of Jesus’ hyperbole would not have taken any chances. Yet Jesus charges hyperbolically that they would leave a camel (the largest animal in Palestine and also ritually unclean, Lev 11:4) in the cup and gulp it down. Their attention to the law’s details was fine, but they had missed the main point (Mt 23:23). (The similarity between the Aramaic terms for camel [gamla] and gnat [kamla] may have also caught their attention.)
23:25-26. Ritual purity was important to the Pharisees, so they washed their vessels as well as themselves in ritual baths. The school of *Shammai—the Pharisaic majority in this period—said that the outside of a cup could be clean even if the inside were not; the minority view of Hillel’s followers was that the inside of the cup must be cleansed first. Jesus sides with the school of Hillel on this point, but does this so that he can make a figurative statement about the inside of the heart.
23:27-28. Nothing spread ritual impurity as severely as a corpse (it made anyone who touched it unclean for a week—Num 19:11); Pharisees believed that one contracted impurity if even one’s shadow touched a corpse or grave. Inconspicuous tombs (or limestone ossuaries) would be whitewashed each spring before Passover to warn passersby to avoid them and so avoid impurity; the Pharisees either lacked this telltale warning (Lk 11:44) or pretended that it was a mark of distinction rather than evidence of impurity. Matthew emphasizes instead whitewash’s function as a beautifying agent employed to conceal corruption. “Whitewash” probably alludes to Ezekiel 13:10-12 and 22:28; it may have covered over a wall’s weakness but would not stop its collapse.
This is the final woe (23:29).
23:29-30. Ancient Judaism emphasized more often than the *Old Testament had that Israel had martyred its prophets (e.g., Jer 26:20-23; cf. 2 Chron 36:15-16). The Jewish community in this period built tombs as monuments for the prophets and righteous (including some who were not martyred, like David or Huldah).
23:31. Jesus’ point here is, “Like father, like son”; corporate sin and guilt continued among the descendants of the wicked unless they repented (Ex 20:5; Deut 23:2-6; 1 Sam 15:2-3; Is 1:4; etc.).
23:32. This is an ironic challenge, typical of the prophets (Is 6:9; Jer 44:25; Amos 4:4-5): Go ahead and sin if you must, but God will judge you for it (Eccles 11:9)!
23:33. Being called vipers, or a kind of venomous snake, was bad enough (Ps 58:4; 140:3; cf. Gen 3). But the offspring of a viper was reputed to eat its way out of its pregnant mother’s belly, so calling someone the offspring of vipers could imply that one was guilty of the universally horrifying crime of matricide. In other words, this was worse than just calling someone a viper!
23:34. Prophets were sent by God according to the Old Testament, or by Wisdom (cf. Lk 11:49) in some Jewish traditions; here they are sent by Jesus.
Some Jews allowed that *prophecy still happened, many doubted that prophets in the Old Testament sense remained active (a notion apparently challenged here). Here Jesus mentions several clerical categories: prophets, wise men (wisdom teachers who circulated proverbs, etc.) and scribes to explain Scriptures (cf. 13:52). Crucifixion was the severest Roman punishment, reserved for the lowest classes of non-Romans; any Jew who delivered another Jew over to such a punishment was naturally despised by his people. Synagogue scourgings were a form of discipline inflicted on errant members of the Jewish community (see comment on 10:17); on “city to city,” see comment on 10:23.
23:35. Bloodguilt was a serious matter, affecting the whole community and not just the individuals directly responsible (Deut 21:1-9). God himself would avenge it (Deut 32:43; Ps 79:10).
Insofar as one can speak of the sequence of the Hebrew Bible at all (it was then on separate scrolls), it was traditionally arranged in a different sequence than our modern English versions of the Old Testament. In it Zechariah is the last martyr (2 Chron 24:20-22), and Abel is the first, as in our Bibles (Gen 4:8). Jewish tradition expanded the accounts of both martyrdoms, declaring that after Zechariah’s death a fountain of blood appeared in the temple that not even the slaughter of thousands of priests could appease. Abel’s blood cried out for vengeance (Gen 4:10), and in this tradition Zechariah’s did the same (biblically, he explicitly prayed for judgment; 2 Chron 24:22). From the first martyr to the last, Jesus says, their judgment is saved up for the particularly wicked generation.The Zechariah murdered in the temple was son of Jehoiada the priest (2 Chron 24:22), not Zechariah son of Berechiah (Zech 1:1), who lived much later in Israel’s history. But Matthew apparently uses the Jewish interpretive technique of combining key words to coalesce two Zechariahs, referring to one and alluding to the other, as he did with Amon/Amos and Asa/Asaph in his genealogy in chapter 1. (The suggestion of some scholars that “Zechariah” also alludes to a prophet martyred in A.D. 67 is unlikely.)
23:36. “This generation” occurs also in Matthew 11:16; 13:39, 45; and 16:4; see comment on 24:34. This is the generation that would see the destruction of the temple. For the image of generations of guilt climaxing in the guiltiest generation on whom the whole judgment is poured out, see Jeremiah 16:10-13.
23:37. Jewish tradition claimed that Jewish people were under God’s wings (cf. *1 Enoch 39:7; *2 Baruch 41:4; Sifre Deuteronomy 296.3.1; 306.4.1; 314.1.1-6), and when a Jewish person converted a *Gentile, he or she brought that Gentile “under the wings of God’s presence” (Sifre Numbers 80.1.1). The Old Testament also portrays God as an eagle hovering over its offspring (Deut 32:11; cf. Ex 19:4), protecting Israel under his wings (Ps 17:8; 36:7; 57:1; 61:4; 63:7; 91:4) and terrifying Israel’s foes in the same way (Jer 49:22). This is one Old Testament image of God’s love for his people; here Jesus fills this divine role.
Prophets sometimes addressed Jerusalem directly (Jer 13:27), and repetition of a name in direct address is common in Jewish texts. On “killing the prophets,” see comment on 23:29-30.
23:38. The “house” could mean Israel (Jer 12:7), but in this context almost certainly means the temple (e.g., Judith 9:13), which would also be left “desolate” (Mt 24:15) in A.D. 70. In the Old Testament, the temple was called God’s house; perhaps it is called “your house” here to declare that God’s presence has exited it, as in Ezekiel 10–11.
23:39. On the significance of this citation, see comment on 21:9. The Old Testament prophets and subsequent Jewish tradition suggested that the redemption would not come until after Israel’s widespread *repentance (cf. Is 30:19; Jer 31:18-19; Hos 14:1-7).
Chapter 23 began Jesus’ warning of God’s judgment against certain elements of the religious establishment; this chapter extends that judgment to the temple itself. After it was destroyed in A.D. 70, many of the Jewish people saw God’s hand of judgment in the destruction.
24:1. Although Greeks counted Ephesus’s Artemis temple as one of the seven wonders of the world, Jerusalem’s temple was actually far larger and more magnificent. The Jerusalem temple was one of the most splendid structures of all antiquity and seemed strong and invincible (cf., e.g., *Letter of Aristeas 100-101). It was the central symbol of Judaism and was renowned for its beauty. See further comment on Mark 13:1.
24:2. Some Greek philosophers were unimpressed with magnificent structures, but Jesus’ response goes far beyond this attitude—he speaks of judgment. Some other Jewish groups (including the *Qumran sect) also expected the temple to be judged; but most Jews, regardless of their other differences, found in the temple a symbol of their Jewish unity and would have been appalled to think that God would allow it to be destroyed (as in Jer 7:4-15). Some stones were left on others (e.g., part of one wall still stands), but this fact does not weaken the force of the *hyperbole: the temple was almost entirely demolished in A.D. 70.
24:3. *Old Testament prophets often grouped events together by their topic rather than their chronology, and in this discourse Jesus does the same. He addresses what in Matthew are grammatically two separate questions: the time of the temple’s destruction and the time of the end. The *disciples may have viewed these questions as integrally related, but Jesus will distinguish them: when will the temple be destroyed (within a generation)? What will be the sign of his coming (at an hour known to no one)?
Preliminary signs indicating the nearness of the end appear in many Jewish *apocalyptic writings (e.g., *2 Baruch 70:7), but much material characteristic of such texts (the final war, Rome’s destruction, mutant babies, etc.) is missing here. Most of the preliminary signs that other apocalyptic thinkers expected for the end are explicitly not indicators of the end here (Mt 24:6-8).
24:4-5. Many false messianic figures arose in the first century (and subsequently); they often attracted large and devoted followings. Although *Josephus, writing for *Gentile readers, describes them as “false prophets” rather than as messiahs, their political aspirations are usually apparent in his descriptions.
24:6-8. These troubles were associated with the sufferings many Jews thought would immediately precede the end (e.g., *4 Ezra 9:3; 13:31-32; 2 Baruch 27:7; 70:3; *Sibylline Oracles 2:22-24; 3:660-61). Some compared these troubles to “birth pangs,” or the “birth pangs of the *Messiah” or of the messianic era (e.g., in the *Qumran Hymns; cf. Is 13:8; Hos 13:13). For Jesus, they are only the “beginning of birth pangs” and characterize life as normal in this age. He describes some of them in Old Testament language (2 Chron 15:6; Is 19:2; Jer 51:46).
24:9-14. Universal persecution, apostasy and worldwide missions revival mark the final era. These events began to characterize Jesus’ movement in the first century, although not yet on a worldwide scale.
Under pressure, many converts to Judaism reverted to paganism, and Jewish texts warn of many Jewish people turning from God in the end time as they had just before the rise of the *Maccabees in the second century B.C. Apostasy and especially handing over friends to persecutors were considered horrible crimes.
Thus Jewish readers would have readily understood Jesus’ warning about persecution and apostasy here; his teaching concerning the spread of the good news of the *kingdom among all nations, however, runs counter to prevailing Jewish teaching. Although apocalyptic writers expected persecution by the nations (cf. Dan 7:21, 25), they did not anticipate a widespread conversion of Gentiles before the end. (Some did envision the subjugation and/or conversion of nations during the end; others envisioned their destruction.)
One prerequisite for Christ’s return was the series of events fulfilled in A.D. 66–70, events accurately predicted by Jesus.
24:15. The “abomination that brings about desolation” in Daniel 9:27 occurs after the cutting off of the Messiah (a passage subject to various interpretations); Daniel 11:31 sounds as if it should have occurred in the second century B.C., and 12:11 at the time of the end, so some interpreters have felt that the *prophecy was accomplished in stages. Some interpreters believe that parts of Daniel’s prophecy remain to be fulfilled; others believe that all of it was fulfilled in the first century.
The first-century Jewish historian Josephus felt that Daniel was fulfilled when revolutionaries slaughtered the priests in the temple in A.D. 66, committing a sacrilege for which God brought about the desolation of the temple (human bloodshed in the temple desecrated it; cf. comment on 23:35). This sacrilege would have been the signal for Christians to flee Jerusalem (24:16); early Christian historians tell us that Christian prophets warned the Jewish Christians to flee Jerusalem at this time.
Three and a half years later, the temple was left “desolate” in 70, when the Romans destroyed it with fire and then erected their own standards on the site. As Jewish people knew (it is lamented in the *Dead Sea Scrolls), these standards bore the insignia of the Roman emperor, who was worshiped as divine in the Eastern Mediterranean; they would thus have sealed the site’s desecration. Jerusalem’s citizens had felt that even bringing these standards into Jerusalem temporarily (as *Pilate had done roughly three and one-half years before Jesus uttered this warning) defiled the holy city. On several occasions the Jerusalemites had shown that they preferred death to their temple’s defilement.
24:16. The mountains were the easiest place in Judea to hide; armies had often used them for waging guerrilla warfare (cf., e.g., 1 Sam 23:26; 1 Maccabees 2:28). Early Christian tradition indicates that the Jerusalem Christians fled to Pella at the base of mountains to the north; although the Judean hill country lay all about Jerusalem, the route northward to Pella would be through the Jordan Valley. Both the mountains and the route to Pella could have provided places of refuge, but the flight to Pella shows that the mountain saying in 24:16 was not made up after the event.
24:17. The roof, which was flat, was used for prayer, drying vegetables and other functions. The staircase from this roof was on the outside of the house; one could thus descend without entering the house. Even if there is an element of *hyperbole, it graphically underlines the point of urgency.
24:18. Workers would wear an outer cloak to the fields when they began the day about 6 a.m.; as the day grew warmer, they left their cloaks on the edge of the field. Because people needed them as blankets to stay warm at night, creditors could not seize these outer cloaks overnight (Deut 24:13). Here haste (hence preserving life) takes priority over even the most crucial possesions.
24:19. Mothers may have nursed infants for their first two years before weaning them. Being pregnant or nursing a child made travel much more difficult. Famine would also make pregnancy and nursing much more problematic. Indeed, Josephus reports that the siege of Jerusalem became so difficult that some women ate their children (as in Lev 26:29; Deut 28:57; 2 Kings 6:29). Similar language elsewhere can refer to grief over the loss of young children, physically unprepared for the hardships.
24:20. Winter restricted conditions for travel, immobilizing even most armies. In the winter, the otherwise dry creek beds (wadis) were flooded with water and became difficult to cross; this was even more true of the Jordan River. In spring 68 some Jewish fugitives from another city did try to escape the Roman army during the war and, delayed by Jordan’s flooded waters, were mostly slaughtered.
Jewish *law prohibited riding horses, mules and other means of transportation on the sabbath; even one’s walking distance was regulated. Transportation and passage would thus be difficult to obtain on the sabbath, especially if residents of Jerusalem wished to flee secretly without being challenged by the patriotic *Zealots. The sabbath could be violated to save life, but those who did not recognize the situation’s urgency would not cooperate.
24:21. Here Jesus borrows the language of Daniel 12:1, referring to the final era of tribulation necessary before the dead would be raised (12:11-13). “Never before or again” was sometimes hyperbolic (cf. Josh 10:14 with Ex 8:13; Num 14:20; 2 Kings 6:18), although Josephus concurs that the sufferings of 66–70 exceeded any before them in human history.
24:22. Jesus might mean the 1,290 days of Dan 12:11-12; the time would be shortened to ensure survivors.
24:23-24. Some Jewish false prophets in first-century Judea drew large followings by claiming that they could perform miracles, such as parting the Jordan or making the walls of Jerusalem fall down; they failed to make good on such promises. In addition, many magicians claimed to work miraculous cures, and some Jewish false prophets probably made similar claims. Some others reportedly prophesied that Jerusalem or the temple would not fall—some of them right up until their deaths in the burning temple.
24:25. Advance warning encouraged trust in God (Is 48:5).
24:26. Would-be messiahs most often came in the wilderness, trying to imitate Moses, who had long ago led his people through the wilderness. (Jewish people expected a deliverer like Moses, as in Deut 18:15.) After A.D. 70 and especially after the crushing defeat in A.D. 135, many Palestinian Jews grew more skeptical of messianic claimants (*Sadducees already had been).
24:27. False messiahs could not duplicate this sign. This is the coming of the Lord described by passages like Zechariah 14:3-8, with Jesus filling the role most Jewish readers expected God to fill.
24:28. Jesus’ return will not be a secret event; it will be the place of the last battle, leaving his enemies as food for vultures (Ezek 32:4-6; 39:17-20). Being eaten instead of buried was considered a horrible fate (Deut 28:26; 1 Sam 17:44; Ps 79:2). Greeks sometimes believed that such lack of burial precluded entrance into the underworld.
24:29. This reference to astronomical events is *Old Testament language for the time of God’s judgment at the final battle (e.g., Is 13:10; 24:23; 34:4; Ezek 32:7-8; Joel 3:14; Zech 14:6). Similar cosmic language was sometimes applied to judgments or other divine acts in history as well (e.g., Ps 18:6-19; Jer 4:20-28; *Sibylline Oracles). Many in antiquity viewed darkness as a frightful judgment (cf. Ex 9:21-23); eclipses also usually generated fear. Both Jew and Gentile regarded signs in the heavens as portentous, and Josephus reports some signs in the heavens (on a much smaller scale) in connection with the fall of Jerusalem.
24:30. This heavenly appearance of the sign of the *Son of Man is the ultimate sign of Jesus’ coming (24:3)—too late to prepare. The text combines Zechariah 12:10-12, where in the end God brings his people to repent of the pain they have caused him, and Daniel 7:13-14, where a representative of suffering Israel would receive the *kingdom from God and reign forever. (Cf. also Rev 1:7.) In the Dead Sea Scrolls, “clouds” refer to the hosts of angels at God’s coming; in the Old Testament, this image could refer to the cloud of God’s glory or to literal clouds.
24:31. Trumpets were used to announce the accession of kings and other great events. In the Old Testament they were especially used to gather God’s people (most frequently for war); the prophets often used the trumpet as a symbol warning of impending battle and devastation (e.g., Jer 4:5, 19, 21; Zeph 1:16). The trumpet had already been used for the gathering of God’s people in the end time (Is 27:13), a gathering associated with Israel’s salvation (Is 11:12; 43:5; 49:5; 56:8; and commonly in Jewish tradition) and God’s final war (Zech 9:14-16). A regularly recited Jewish prayer from this period mentions this future gathering of Israel at the sound of the trumpet; various other ancient Jewish texts agree. It was thus a natural image for the gathering of believers (cf. 1 Cor 15:52; 1 Thess 4:16).
“From one end of heaven to the other” may communicate in a popular image of the day: heaven was a dome over the earth, so this phrase is similar to our equally figurative “from one end of the earth to the other”—i.e., everywhere (cf. Mk 13:27).
24:32-33. This is the first of seven future-kingdom *parables, paralleling the seven parables on the presence of the *kingdom in chapter 13.
Unlike most Palestinian trees, fig trees lose their leaves in winter; they would have been in leaf by this time of year, however, predicting the fruit that should appear on them in the summer. Jesus had earlier used this tree as a parable for the temple’s destruction (see Mk 11:12-25). But the meaning is ultimately decided by the context: when the signs he had listed (including the temple’s destruction) were fulfilled, his coming would be imminent.
24:34. The temple was destroyed roughly forty years after Jesus spoke these words (which refer to the temple’s demise rather than to the Second Coming—see comment on 24:3). The Dead Sea Scrolls anticipated a final, forty-year generation of tribulation before the end; Jesus apparently leaves the period between the final earthly sign (the temple’s demise) and his return indeterminate.
24:35. Even Jewish prophets would not speak thus of their own words (Zech 1:5-6); such a claim was made only for God’s words, spoken through Moses and the prophets (cf. Jer 31:35-37). Those who claimed that their words were unchangeable believed that they spoke infallibly for God (cf. Zech 1:5-6; comment on Rev 22:18-19; *rabbis spoke thus concerning the authority of the Old Testament).
24:36. See perhaps Zechariah 14:7. Although God had made the crucial things known to his people, he always kept some mysteries secret (Deut 29:29; cf. *4 Ezra 4:52).
Jewish teachers struggled with a tension between two positions: (1) one could predict when the *Messiah would come, in a time ordained only by God; and (2) one could not predict his coming, but he would come whenever Israel repented and wholly followed God.
24:37-39. Jewish tradition emphasized the evils of Noah’s generation in much fuller detail than the Bible had, but the emphasis here is on their unpreparedness.
24:40-41. In the context of 24:37-39, “taken” may mean “taken to judgment” (cf. Jer 6:11 NASB, NRSV). Women worked together grinding at a shared handmill, perhaps in a courtyard shared with other houses, and often became as close as relatives. Wives of *Pharisees were allowed to work together with unreligious women (provided they did not involve themselves in any infringements of Pharisaic purity rules); thus the scenario of women of different convictions working together is not unusual.
24:42. “Watch” involves staying alert and ready the way a night watchman or guard would (cf. 24:43).
24:43-44. Thieves could “break in” by digging through the clay wall of the average Palestinian Jewish home, or by (more quickly but loudly) breaking in a door. (A more well-to-do householder with stronger walls would often have servants to watch the doors for him.) A thief who broke in at night, unlike one who broke in during the day, could be killed with impunity because he was regarded as potentially dangerous to life, expecting people to be home at night (Ex 22:2-3). God’s judgment, of course, would be more dangerous than the average night thief (e.g., Jer 49:9; Obad 5).
Often a well-to-do householder had a slave who was a “manager,” or “steward,” managing his estate. Such a high-level slave could be in charge of giving rations to the other servants and could abuse his authority only if the master were not present. (Absentee landowners and householders were common, especially if they owned other estates at a great distance. In some stories of the period, absentee kings, landowners or husbands posed temptations to those remaining behind.)
Some laws viewed slaves as persons, while other laws viewed them as property (for economic matters). Although masters were allowed to beat slaves, it was in their economic interests not to do so often or severely. A slave who abused the other slaves was mistreating his master’s “property”; often these other servants were also objects of the master’s personal concern. Drunkenness was despised, especially if slaves drank wine and banqueted at the master’s expense without his knowledge. Dismemberment (normally after death) was a punishment considered too cruel by Jews but nevertheless practiced by some Gentiles.
Being a bridesmaid was a great honor; to be insultingly unprepared and shut out of the feast was the stuff of which young women’s nightmares were made. Professed believers must endure in faith to the end (24:13).
25:1. On “the kingdom is like,” see comment on 13:24. Weddings were held toward evening and torches were used as part of the celebration, which focused on a procession leading the bride to the groom’s house. It is unlikely that “lamps” refers to the small Herodian oil lamps, which could be carried in the hand; all the evidence points instead here to real torches, which were also used in Greek and Roman wedding ceremonies. For many people, these torches may have been sticks wrapped with oil-soaked rags. In many traditional Palestinian villages in more recent times, the wedding feast occurs at night after a day of dancing; the bridesmaids leave the bride, with whom they have been staying, and go out to meet the bridegroom with torches. They then escort him back to his bride, whom they all in turn escort to the groom’s home.
25:2-7. Torches like these could not burn indefinitely; some evidence suggests that they may have burned for only fifteen minutes before the burnt rags would have to be removed and new oil-soaked rags would need to be wrapped on the sticks of which they were made. Because not all the details of ancient Palestinian weddings are known, it is not clear whether the *parable envisions the lamps as burning while the bridesmaids slept (to avoid the delay of having to rekindle them) or as being lit only after the first announcement of the bridegroom’s coming (as many scholars think). Either way, if the bridegroom delayed longer than they anticipated, their lamps would not last unless they had an extra reserve of oil. Bridegrooms were often late, and their comings were repeatedly announced until they arrived.
25:8. The bridesmaids needed sufficient oil to keep the torches lit during the procession to the groom’s home and the dancing.
25:9. Trying to share the oil would have left too little for any of the torches and ruined the wedding ceremony. It would have been difficult to find dealers at this time of night, however (although some catering shops could have been open if they were near a large city); the foolish bridesmaids were definitely going to be late.
25:10. The young women were supposed to meet the bridegroom, who would then fetch his bride from her home and lead the whole procession back to his father’s house for the feast. Some suggest that by portraying himself as the bridegroom, Jesus implies his deity (Is 54:5; Jer 2:2; Hos 2:14-20). Although people would often come and go during wedding feasts, the bolt used to shut doors was noisy and cumbersome; perhaps it represents an effort to be repeated only if necessary, making new visitors unwelcome (cf. Lk 11:7).
25:11-13. The foolish bridesmaids missed the entire procession back to the groom’s house, their primary role, along with the festive singing and dancing. They also missed the critical element of the Jewish wedding, in which the bride was brought into the groom’s home under the wedding canopy. “I do not know you” could be used in deliberate refusals to recognize someone indeed known. As they had (through lack of seriousness about their responsibility) insulted the wedding families, so now they receive a deliberate insult. Weddings typically lasted seven days, and much of a village would be welcome; these foolish girls, however, were unwelcome, and might carry this shame in village gossip for years. In one later rabbinic parable, a king invited guests to a banquet without specifying the date. Only the most conscientious invitees were dressed and waiting at the door when the banquet arrived, leaving the others outside in shame. Rabbinic parables also address readiness for death (though Jesus refers here to his return).
Wealthy landowners usually delegated the control and multiplication of their wealth to trained accountants, who could be free persons or, as here, servants. In view of the impending day of reckoning, believers must make the wisest use of all that the Lord has entrusted to them, to make it count for him; they must never take their stewardships for granted (24:45-51).
25:14. Well-to-do masters often went on long journeys, sometimes to oversee properties elsewhere or on government assignments. Given the uncertainties of transportation in those days, the time of return for even a well-planned trip would be uncertain. Wealthy persons usually depended on trained accountants to multiply their capital; such workers could be either free or (as here) slave. (Slaves could also be managers of estates.) In antiquity, slaves could often earn money and even buy property.
25:15. Although the exact value of a talent varied from period to period and place to place, we may estimate the values of these investments at roughly thirty to fifty thousand, twelve to twenty thousand and six to ten thousand denarii. Since one denarius was close to an average day’s wage in this period, this would be a “small sum” (25:21, 23) only to a very rich master.
25:16-17. Those with sufficient capital could invest it at a profit; for instance, they could lend it to moneychangers who would use it to turn a profit and give them a substantial share. Lending money at interest directly was also profitable, given the exorbitant interest rates of the period. The normal Roman rate for private loans was twelve percent, though one *patron is reported to have lent to an entire city at roughly fifty percent interest! Because most people did not have capital available for investment, those who did could reap large profits.
25:18. One of the safest—and least profitable—ways of protecting one’s money was to bury it in the ground; such buried reserves are still occasionally found where someone never returned to retrieve his or her deposits. (Lk 19:20 portrays a worse method.)
25:19-23. One could normally at least double one’s investment; those with capital could often accomplish far more. The principle that integrity in smaller matters qualified one to prove one’s integrity in larger matters was often invoked in antiquity. Some have suggested that Jesus used an *Aramaic term for “joy” that also means “festival” (cf. 25:10); the master threw a feast at his return and honored his helpful servants.
25:24-25. The smallest possible investment, providing some interest on a savings deposit, could not have endangered the deposit; it would have been as safe as burying the money. The third slave should have known better; he simply did not care what happened to his master’s property (see comment on 25:15-17). The phrase “You have what is yours” was used in Jewish transactions to say, “I am not responsible for this any further.”
25:26-27. Although usury, charging interest on a loan or a deposit, was technically against Jewish *law (Ex 22:25; Lev 25:36-37; Deut 23:19-20; Neh 5:7; Ps 15:5; Prov 28:8; Ezek 18:8, 13, 17; 22:12), *Gentiles were not bound to refrain from it; further, Jewish people could charge Gentiles, and many wealthy Jewish aristocrats followed Greek custom more than official Jewish teaching anyway. In any case, Jesus could expect his Jewish hearers to grasp the full imagery of this *parable, just as other *rabbis could tell parables about kings long after kings had ceased in Jewish Palestine.
25:28-30. Darkness is elsewhere used as an image for hell (8:12).
25:31. The *Son of Man was going to come to reign for God (Dan 7:13-14; cf. the *Similitudes of Enoch, of uncertain date), and some Jewish *apocalypses (perhaps following Greek images of the realm of the dead) described human judges before the final day of judgment. But the description of absolute authority afforded Jesus here fits most precisely the standard Jewish picture of God judging the nations in the day of judgment. For the angels, see comment on 16:27.
25:32. God judging the nations (e.g., Is 2:4; Mic 4:3) was a standard part of Jewish expectation for the future. God would distinguish among the sheep (Ezek 34:17). Although sheep and goats grazed together, some scholars write that Palestinian shepherds normally separated sheep and goats at night because goats need to be warm at night while sheep prefer open air. Certainly sheep were considered more valuable than goats, so that owners usually had many more sheep than goats (though this is not part of Jesus’ analogy here; cf. 7:13-14). The greater profitability of sheep may have influenced how these terms would be heard figuratively; for instance, in a pagan dream handbook sheep were associated with good while goats were associated with trouble. Most people in the eastern Mediterranean preferred goats’ and sheep’s cheese to that made from cows’ milk. Sheep were shorn for wool twice a year; people used both sheepskins and goatskins for leather when the animals died, but preferred goatskins.
25:33. The right is the preferred side in ancient texts; in the few scenes of judgment where it occurs, the right side is for the righteous and the left for the wicked (e.g., the Testament of Abraham recension A).
25:34. “Inherit the kingdom” is a familiar phrase; in Jewish tradition, the *kingdom was prepared for Israel, who had been predestined by God. The king in Jewish parables is virtually always God; here it refers to Jesus.
25:35-36. Except for visiting the imprisoned, the deeds Jesus lists are standard righteous deeds in Jewish ethics. Providing for the poor, giving hospitality to the stranger and visiting the sick were basic to Jewish piety.
25:37-39. An unclear statement followed by a counterquestion was a standard method of moving an argument forward (see, e.g., Mal 1:6-7).
25:40. In some Jewish apocalyptic texts, the nations would be judged for how they treated Israel. In the Bible, God also judged people for how they treated the poor (e.g., Prov 19:17). But given the use of “brothers” or “sisters” (12:50; 28:10; the Greek term can include both genders) and perhaps “least” (5:19; 11:11; cf. 18:4; 20:26; 23:11) elsewhere in Matthew, many argue that this passage refers to receiving messengers of Christ. Such missionaries needed shelter, food and help in imprisonment and other complications caused by persecution; see comment on 10:11-14. Receiving them was like receiving *Christ (on the Jewish principle of agency, see comment on 10:40-42). The judgment of all nations thus had to be preceded by the proclamation of the kingdom among them (24:14).
25:41-45. Some Jewish traditions (like the *Qumran War Scroll) report that Belial (*Satan) was created for the pit; destruction was not God’s original purpose for people (*4 Ezra 8:59-60). In many Jewish traditions, the *demons were fallen angels (cf. comment on 2 Pet 2:4). Jewish tradition was divided on the duration of hell; this passage’s description of it as “eternal” was certainly not merely a concession to a universal image in Judaism.
25:46. *Eternal life was promised to the righteous after their *resurrection at the end of the age (Dan 12:2). Some Jewish teachers believed that hell was temporary and that at the end some people would be burned up and others released; other Jewish teachers spoke as if hell were eternal. Jesus here sides with the latter group.
See comments on Mark 14:1-11 for further details on this passage. Ancient writers and speakers often communicated points by contrasting characters. This *narrative provides three contrasting evaluations of Jesus’ worth: lavish devotion (26:7); less devotion (26:8); and the biblical price of a slave (26:15). Regarding the passion narrative more generally, ancient biographers generally devoted greater attention to a person’s death when it was particularly significant (e.g., martyrdom), as is certainly the case with Jesus.
26:1-2. Inhabitants of the Roman Empire, especially in places like Jewish Palestine, saw crucifixion as the cruelest, most painful and most degrading form of common criminal execution. Passover commemorated God redeeming Israel through the blood of lambs.
26:3-5. Rome ruled through local aristocracies; the leading priests and elders of Jerusalem largely belonged to the social elite there. Jerusalem’s Sanhedrin, or municipal ruling council, drew from the local elite; despite their influence, their sentiments should not be confused with those of the rest of their people, and certainly not with Jesus’ Jewish followers from Galilee. Most other Jewish groups, including *Pharisees and *Essenes, had conflicts with this group. A private meeting to plot the execution of a person not yet convicted violated conventional Jewish ethics (and Roman ethics as well). Their fear of a riot at the festival (v. 5), however, was entirely reasonable: under the crowded conditions of the festivals, riots were more likely than at any other time, and hundreds of people had been trampled in tumults at some previous festivals. The Roman governor came from Caesarea at the feasts to forestall any trouble, and Roman security was increased during this season. The priestly aristocracy were, above all, guardians of the status quo, and they would have to deal with messianic claimants in the most politically expedient way; they dare not arrest Jesus publicly (26:55). On Caiaphas, see comment on John 11:47-48.
26:6. Bethany was one of those villages near Jerusalem where Passover pilgrims could spend the night with hosts (though Jesus will eat the Passover within the city, 26:18). On Simon the “leper,” see comment on Mark 14:3.
26:7. It was customary to anoint the heads of important guests, but this woman’s anointing of Jesus is extraordinary. This perfume (undoubtedly imported from the East) was expensive, worth a year of a common laborer’s wages, and had probably been kept in her family as an heirloom. Its fragrance was preserved by its sealing in alabaster (the favored container for perfume). Once the flask was broken, the freshness could be lost, and the contents would have to be used quickly.
26:8-9. Although Judaism valued charity toward the needy at all times, some Jewish tradition suggests that people thought about this virtue even more during festival seasons (Tobit 2:2; Mishnah Pesahim 9:11; 10:1).
26:10-11. Jesus’ reply probably contains an allusion to Deuteronomy 15:11, which urges generosity to the poor, who will always be in the land. Ancient comparisons did not always denigrate the lesser element in the comparison. He does not play down giving to the poor but plays up what follows: devotion to Jesus himself must precede and inform all other important and godly agendas.
26:12. In Jewish tradition, kings (including, by definition, the *Messiah, or “anointed one”), priests and others had to be anointed for service. But Jesus here stresses a different kind of anointing undoubtedly unintended by the woman: anointing a body for burial (see Mk 16:1); he will soon wear a different crown. Similar flasks found in tombs show that such ointments were often used for the dead.
26:13. Ancients applied such statements to those whose memory was preserved in epics or other famous works.
26:14-16. People in antiquity usually viewed betrayal (e.g., of one’s people or friends) as a heinous crime. Chief priests would be easily located, but they would not have been accessible to Judas (especially during the festival) had his mission been less in line with their interests. The average price of slaves varied from place to place and period to period, but Matthew’s biblically informed readers would probably recognize thirty pieces of silver as the average *Old Testament compensation for the death of a slave (Ex 21:32); Judas sells his master cheaply. Matthew also thinks of the rejected but faithful shepherd in Zechariah 11:12-13 (see the quotation in Mt 27:9-10). Ancient writers often made use of irony; Matthew’s use of the term paradidomi (“betray,” “hand over”) ironically connects the guilt of Judas (26:15-16, 21, 23-25, 45-48), Jerusalem’s elite (27:2, 18) and *Pilate (27:26).
See comments on Mark 14:12-26 for further details.
26:17. By this period “the Feast of Unleavened Bread,” which immediately followed Passover in the Bible, had been extended in popular parlance to include the Passover itself. Representatives from each family would “prepare the Passover” (i.e., have the priests slaughter a lamb for them in the temple), then return with it for the later meal, eaten after sundown. Others would prepare the other dishes.
26:18-19. Because the Passover was supposed to be eaten within Jerusalem’s walls (or its immediate environs), most homes included guests during the night of the feast. Bethany (21:17) lay outside the city’s larger boundaries.
26:20. The Passover was to be eaten at night. In April, at the time of the Passover, sundown in Jerusalem came by 6 p.m., so their meal could have started then. Table fellowship was intimate at the feast; one or two families normally shared the meal (later sources, probably reflecting at least an average minimum, stipulated a minimum of ten persons); here Jesus and his closest *disciples make up the family unit. The usual posture at meals was sitting, but reclining on couches (if available), originally a Greek practice, was customary for feasts.
26:21-23. Bitter herbs were dipped into a mixture of nuts, fruit and vinegar to lessen their bitterness. That someone who was betraying a person would “dip in the bowl” with that person would have horrified ancient readers, who saw hospitality and the sharing of table fellowship as an intimate bond establishing a covenant of friendship. Based on the *Dead Sea Scrolls, some suggest that if “with me” refers to timing, Judas’s dipping would have also been a deliberate mark of rebellion, since the group’s leader should dip first.
26:24-25. Those lamenting in Greek tragedies and in the Bible often mourned the day of their birth (Job 3; Jer 20:14-18). Such laments were rhetorical expressions of deep grief, but Jesus here uses the same language as a statement of fact. Other Jewish teachers also observed that it would have been better for a person never to have been born than to have denied the eternal God, been unfaithful to the *law, or the like; it seems to have been a common statement of Jewish wisdom (*rabbis; *4 Ezra 7:69; *1 Enoch 38:2; 2 Enoch 41:2).
26:26. It was customary for the head of the household to give thanks for the bread and wine before any meal, but special blessings were said over bread and wine at the Passover meal. We should not understand “This is my body” literally, in a chemical sense, just as Jesus’ contemporaries did not take literally the standard Jewish interpretation spoken over the Passover bread: “This is the bread of affliction our ancestors ate when they came from Egypt.” (Taken literally, that bread would have been centuries old, and it had already been eaten anyway.) Rather, Jewish people were in a sense reenacting Passover so as to participate in the experience. The lifting up and explanation of the unleavened bread took place after the first cup.
26:27. Adapting some Greek banquet customs, four cups of red wine came to be used in the annual Passover celebrations, and if these were in use by the first century (as is likely), this cup may be the third or fourth. The leader of the group would take the goblet in both hands, then hold it in his right, a handbreadth above the table.
26:28. In the *Old Testament, covenants were ratified by the blood of sacrifice; God had also redeemed his people from Egypt by the blood of the Passover lamb. The language alludes especially to Exodus 24:8, when Moses sprinkled the people with sacrificial blood at Mount Sinai. “On behalf of the many” probably alludes to Isaiah 53 (see comment on Mt 20:28). Passover ritual interpreted the cup but did not interpret it as blood, because Jewish law and custom were revolted by the idea of drinking any creature’s blood—especially human blood.
26:29. Jewish people often offered vows of abstinence: “I will not eat any such and such until this happens,” or “I vow that I will not use this until that happens.” Jesus vows not to drink wine again until the kingdom comes, and he apparently abstains from the fourth cup. Jewish tradition commonly portrayed the time of the kingdom as a banquet (based on texts like Is 25:6), when the Bible had promised an unending supply of wine (cf. Amos 9:13-14).
26:30. Jewish tradition suggests that after the meal, it was customary to sing psalms antiphonally from the Hallel, which consisted of Psalms 113–118. The walk to the Mount of Olives took at least fifteen minutes.
See comment on Mark 14:27-42.
26:31-32. On “stumbling” (“fall away”—NASB), see comment on 18:6. Zechariah 13:7 (the shepherd quotation) is not clearly messianic (Zech 13:1-9 refers to striking false prophets in judgment, following Deut 13:1-11; cf. Zech 10:2; 11:3, 15-17), but the principle of sheep scattering from a smitten shepherd certainly applies equally well to the divine shepherd (Mt 25:32; cf. 18:12-14). Some other ancient Jewish readers understood Zechariah 13:7 positively (CD 19.5-9).
26:33-35. Ancient sources typically regarded the rooster as a reliable reporter of the advent of dawn, and night guards, shepherds and others who were awake at night were also familiar with other crowings, which, depending on the time of year, varied between 11:30 p.m. and 3:30 a.m. The point is that the denial was imminent.
26:36. They may have arrived at Gethsemane by 10 or 11 p.m. (which was well into the night in that culture). Gethsemane seems to have included an olive grove and probably an olive press (hence its name, which means “oil press”); it was on the western slope or base of the Mount of Olives, facing Jerusalem. Because Passover night had to be spent within the larger boundaries of Jerusalem, which did not include Bethany, they would not return to Bethany that night (21:17).
26:37-38. Jesus’ description of his grief draws on *Old Testament language (Ps 42:5-6, 11; 43:5; Jon 4:9; cf. Ps 142:3-6; 143:3-4); compare Matthew 27:46. Greek philosophers emphasized facing death calmly, but Jesus, like the OT tradition (and most people), approached the experience of death with anguish.
26:39. The cup (20:22; cf. 26:27; 27:48) may allude to the Old Testament image of a cup of judgment given to the nations; see comment on Mark 10:39. Jewish readers would regard applauding God’s will even to one’s own hurt as virtuous (e.g., 1 Maccabees 3:59-60; rabbis; Dead Sea Scrolls).
26:40. The disciples were to “stand watch” like the porters, slaves in charge of the door, in the *parable in Mark 13:34-36. It was customary to stay awake late on the Passover night and to speak of God’s redemption. They should have been able to stay awake to keep watch; they had probably stayed up late on most other Passovers of their lives. According to one Jewish teaching, if anyone in the Passover group fell asleep (not merely dozed), the group was thereby dissolved; the teaching may, however, be too late for relevance to this period.
26:41. On watching and praying in the night, compare perhaps Ps 63:6; 77:6; 119:148. “Temptation” here is “testing”; given the common Jewish religious uses of the word, Jesus is saying: “lest you fall prey to the testing you are about to face.” The contrast between “spirit” and “body” simply means that one may mean well on impulse (26:33; cf. the use of “spirit” in many cases in Proverbs), but the body is susceptible to exhaustion.
26:42-46. Romans appreciated loyalty to one’s sense of duty; Judaism stressed faithfulness to God’s law even to the point of dying for it. Thus all ancient readers would have recognized heroism in Jesus’ intense faithfulness to his calling.
See further comment on Mark 14:43-52.
26:47. Because they are sent by prominent men of Jerusalem, the band that comes to arrest Jesus is probably the temple guard. They come prepared for armed resistance from one they suppose is a messianic revolutionary.
26:48. Although there may have been a full moon, a sign would make it easier to find the right person, especially since they had to act quickly before confusion ensued. Arresting others might not be necessary (see comment on Jn 18:8). Judas’ kiss might also delay the other disciples’ suspicions of the large party approaching them.
26:49-50. A kiss (usually a light kiss on the lips in that culture) was a sign of special affection among family members and close friends, or of a disciple’s honor and affection for his teacher. Judas’s kiss is thus a special act of hypocrisy (cf. Prov 27:6). Given ancient values concerning hospitality, friendship and covenant loyalty, any of Matthew’s readers encountering this story for the first time would have been horrified by the narration of the betrayal. Judas appears as the most contemptible of traitors; Jesus appears as one unjustly betrayed.
26:51. Although this servant is probably not a Levite and thus unable to minister in the temple anyway, some point out that those who were missing appendages such as ears were barred from serving in the sanctuary. (Jesus’ disciple is probably aiming for the neck or something more substantial than an ear, however.)
26:52. These are not the words of a violent revolutionary (26:47). End-time schemes often included a great battle between the people of light and the people of darkness, and Jesus certainly expected violence (24:1-2); but his own followers were to stay clear of it. Matthew’s readers might hear this possibly familiar saying (cf. the Sentences of the Syriac Menander 15-19) ironically: the temple authorities’ behavior, perhaps partly motivated by the desire to keep peace for the Romans (Mt 26:1-5), invited the sword of judgment at the hands of the Romans in A.D. 66–70.
26:53-54. Legions normally had six thousand soldiers, so Jesus is saying that he could summon around seventy-two thousand angels (a legion per disciple). Even a human force of this size could have easily crushed the whole temple guard and the Roman garrison in the fortress Antonia, many times over; rarely did any nation field such vast armies in one place. The whole of Syria had only three legions (Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 17.286). Such an angelic force could have easily defeated any human army raised against them. God’s heavenly armies occasionally appear in the *Old Testament, and they were invincible (e.g., 2 Kings 6:17; cf. 2 Sam 5:24; 2 Kings 19:35). *Qumran’s War Scroll expected angelic help at the final battle.
26:55-56. Subversives (like the later assassins who slew Jewish aristocrats under cover of the crowds in the temple) did their acts secretly or in a way that would enable them to avoid capture; the Romans and their local agents were always concerned about such groups. Far from being hidden, Jesus’ teaching had been public and unconcealed—unlike his enemies’ current action under the cloak of night.
See comments on Mark 14:53-65. Brutal as the narrative appears, it depicts how justice was sometimes carried out in antiquity, including by the Sanhedrin. *Josephus recounts another prophetic figure, Joshua ben Hananiah, who predicted the temple’s destruction a few years before it came about. The priestly leaders arrested him, handed him over to a Roman governor, and he was flogged, Josephus says, until his bones showed. Joshua was then released, because he had no following and was considered insane (Josephus, Jewish War 6.300-305). By contrast, Jesus had followers and could appear to the elite as a challenge to their political power; he could not be safely released.
26:57. Later tradition recounts that the full Sanhedrin normally met in their special meeting hall in the temple, the Chamber of Hewn Stone; writing in the first century, Josephus suggests that they met instead very close to the temple. In this case, many members of the Sanhedrin hold a secret night meeting without advance notice in the *high priest’s home, though they are investigating what they will claim is a capital offense. At least according to later Pharisaic legal ideals, such a meeting was illegal on all these counts: capital trials had to meet during the day, and only after a day had intervened might the court render a verdict. Only the worst criminals could be executed at festivals. Pharisaic rules forbade executions at feasts except for the most heinous crimes. But the priestly aristocracy would pay little attention to Pharisaic scruples, and they had to hurry before Jesus’ popularity with the crowds forced his release or made him more of a hero. Given the short notice, possibly many members of the Sanhedrin not inclined to consent were not invited. Most ancient ethics prohibited such a sudden, nocturnal trial, but political necessity often trumped legal ethics.
26:58. Trespassing on the high priest’s private property required much courage from a Galilean fisherman. The guards are presumably members of the temple guard, probably waiting to see the results of the trial inside. Regardless of whether they had all been assigned guard duty that night, they may have stayed up later than usual because it was Passover.
26:59-60. The virtuous Jewish tradition of diligent cross-examination of witnesses brings the false testimony into question. But once these witnesses had contradicted one another, they should have been declared false and the case against Jesus regarded as fabricated; under Jewish (and Roman) law, in a capital case, false witnesses were supposed to be put to death (see Deut 19:16-21; also the Dead Sea Scrolls). Even though Rome had not given the Sanhedrin jurisdiction to execute false witnesses, the Sanhedrin should have at least disciplined them; that the case continues uninterrupted demonstrates severe bias among the council members gathered there.
26:61. Many Jewish people expected that God would establish a new, purified temple when he put down the Romans. Outsiders had naturally misinterpreted Jesus’ teaching about a new temple and warning about the old temple’s destruction as the threat of a mad, messianic revolutionary or end-time prophet, hence as a threat to public security. But they still fail the cross-examination.
26:62. In the *Old Testament, a judge would normally stand to render the verdict. At least according to later rabbinic law, the high priest could not legally force Jesus to convict himself out of his own mouth, but the priestly aristocracy would pay little attention to Pharisaic regulations even if this rule were already widely held. The official finally asks whether Jesus thinks of himself as a *messiah—hence, to a high priest’s mind, as a revolutionary.
26:63. The high priest tries to compel Jesus to speak by appealing to the divine name; thus the phrase “adjure” (KJV, NASB, RSV), “charge under oath” (NIV; cf. NRSV; cf. also 1 Sam 14:24; 1 Kings 22:16). False oaths in God’s name were forbidden in the Old Testament as “taking his name in vain.” From the Jerusalem aristocrats’ standpoint, a false messiah was a threat to peace with Rome, which allowed no kings except Caesar and his approved vassals.
26:64. “You say so” may indicate that this is their choice of wording and not his. Jesus’ statement here is a claim to be not only a mortal messiah but the cosmic ruler of Daniel 7:13-14, the embodiment of Israel’s call, the one who would come in glory and reign forever; the phrase “from now on” is especially offensive, because he thereby claims this role in the present, which would imply that he is their judge rather than they being his judges. “Power” was one Jewish title for God. (See “*Son of Man” in the glossary.)
26:65. One would tear one’s clothes as a sign of mourning or *repentance, including when hearing the sacred name blasphemed. According to stricter Pharisaic standards, unless Jesus mentions the sacred Hebrew name of God, or summons them to idolatry (e.g., by calling himself God, which he does not do at this point) or in some other way insults God’s dignity, he is not technically guilty of blasphemy (see comment on 9:3). Jesus’ association of himself with God could be considered offensive, but the high priest had not proved it untrue. The priestly aristocracy had fewer restrictions against conviction than Pharisees did, however.
26:66. The high priest was not permitted to judge a case alone; he had to solicit the council’s vote. (If later rabbinic sources give any indication concerning how the Sanhedrin may have functioned, the clerk may have called for each member’s vote by name, but such technicalities may be out of place in this less formal hearing.) Judicial excuses aside here, Jesus clearly poses a threat to the temple establishment, and as a messianic claimant he threatens their power and the nation’s stability (cf. Jer 26:9, 11).
26:67-68. Unlike public flogging, the behavior represented here—spitting on, striking and taunting a prisoner—was against Jewish law. Abuse of prisoners was common but violated ancient ethics. Ironically, while they mock Jesus as a false prophet, his *prophecy about Peter is being fulfilled (26:69-75).
See comment on Mark 14:66-72.
26:69-72. As a servant in an aristocratic household near the temple, this woman may have been near the temple and could have gotten a good look at Jesus’ *disciples in the temple courts. Peter’s evasive answer in verse 70 is not precisely betrayal—in contrast to verse 72. “I do not know what you say” is the standard form for denial in Jewish legal texts; calling a known person “the man” was sometimes used contemptuously. Taking God’s name in vain (Ex 20:7) involved the swearing of false oaths (Mt 26:72), which essentially invited God’s punishment if one were lying.
26:73. Galilean accents differed from Judean accents; Galileans were careless with their vowels and failed to clearly differentiate the various guttural consonants. The high priest’s servants and temple guard would have lived in Jerusalem and viewed themselves as Judeans. Some scholars have suggested that Judeans associated Galileans with revolutionaries, but the evidence for this suggestion is at best ambiguous; given the ancient mistrust between urban and rural dwellers, however, it is not unlikely that many Jerusalemites looked down on Galileans. But the point here is simply that the hearer assumes—rightly—that disciples of a Galilean teacher were themselves Galileans.
26:74. The “curses” Peter utters are not vulgar words; rather, he swears by various things that he does not know Jesus (cf. 5:33-37), invoking curses on himself if he is lying.
26:75. For most people in the ancient Mediterranean, rooster’s crowing marked daybreak. Those who were awake much earlier may have recognized an earlier Palestinian rooster crowing between 12:30 and 2:30 a.m. In any case, it was fulfilled speedily.
Ancient writers often laid contrasting pictures of characters side by side. Peter’s remorse (26:75) contrasts here with that of Judas, who killed himself instead of repenting (27:5).
27:1-2. To provide legality, the leaders have a brief, early morning “official” hearing to ratify the night’s decision; only daylight hearings were legal. Presumably this meeting was in the Sanhedrin’s regular meeting place near the temple. Jerusalem’s authorities have to bring Jesus to *Pilate, because they were not authorized by the Romans to execute the death penalty themselves. Pilate would be available as early as sunrise; like other Roman officials, he would finish his regular public day before noon.
27:3-4. Some later Jewish teachers held that even the recantation of a false witness for the prosecution could not reverse the verdict; the officials here seem less concerned with legal theory than with political expediency, however.
On thirty pieces of silver, see comment on 26:15. Those who dealt in bribes were accursed under the *law (Deut 27:25), and a false witness was liable to the punishment appropriate for the alleged crime of the accused (Deut 19:18-19). Having innocent blood on one’s hands meant that one was guilty of murder; in the *Old Testament, this guilt could be expiated only by the blood of the murderer or, if the murderer was unknown, through a sacrifice (Gen 4:10; 9:6; Num 35:33; Deut 21:1-9). God could, however, grant mercy to the repentant (Gen 4:15; 2 Sam 12:13-14).
27:5. Judas’s suicide is an act of despair (cf. Saul—1 Sam 31:4; the traitor Ahithophel—2 Sam 17:23). Roman tradition considered suicide a nobler way to die than letting others kill one. To some Jewish people it was likewise noble if it was performed to avoid falling into the hands of torturers or to avoid being defiled (e.g., in *Josephus and in *4 Maccabees, possibly under Greek influence). But Judaism, especially strict Palestinian Judaism, normally regarded it as evil. (Ancient readers would thus view Judas’s act in a more negative light than they would view that of the jailer in Acts 16:27.) Hanging was often viewed as a dishonorable form of suicide.
According to ancient thought, if Judas had hanged himself in the sanctuary he would have defiled it (though he may have just “gone away” to locate a more convenient place). Flinging the money in the temple alludes to Zechariah 11:13 (see comment on Mt 27:9).
27:6. Ancient writers often used irony, and Matthew is no exception: the chief priests are more concerned about the legal technicality of blood money for the treasury than that they issued the money for a judicial murder or that Judas is about to kill himself (cf. 23:23-24). Although the Old Testament did not explicitly prohibit the use of such money, they are careful to use it for something possibly doubly unclean (burying strangers). Some commentators have suggested that the mention of the treasury could reflect a Hebrew pun on the word translated “potter” (27:7; by a slight change of Hebrew spelling one could read “potter” as “treasury”), but this suggestion is not certain.
27:7-8. Burying people who had no one else to bury them was an act of piety (cf. the story of Tobit). Many Jews from around the world visited Jerusalem or moved there in their old age, and if they died without sufficient funds others would need to pay for their burial; the “strangers” might also include unclean *Gentiles. (There is also a Jewish tradition of burying condemned criminals in such a field.) Thus the *high priests no doubt saw their behavior as pious!
27:9-10. Jewish scholars could cite some texts while simultaneously alluding to others. Matthew here quotes Zechariah 11:12-13, but by attributing it to Jeremiah he also alludes to a similar text that he wishes his more skillful readers to catch (Jer 32:6-10; cf. 19:1-4, 10-11). (Because the composite quotation is nearly verbatim from these texts, and because large works like Matthew’s Gospel normally went through multiple drafts tested before audiences, Matthew probably was well aware of what he was doing, rather than merely accidentally citing the wrong author, unless he is using a list of standard messianic proof texts instead of citing directly from Zechariah. He probably deliberately evokes both texts.) Zechariah 11:12-13 refers to the low valuation God’s people had placed on him; they valued him at the price of a slave (Ex 21:32).
27:11. The governor had complete latitude in his decisions, though he would normally respect custom. This interrogation presumably occurs at Herod’s old palace, where Roman governors resided when in Jerusalem. The charge presented to Pilate is clearly that Jesus claims to be a king, i.e., that he is a revolutionary acting for the overthrow of Rome. The charge “King of the Jews” interprets Jesus’ messianic role for Pilate as treason against the emperor’s majesty; calling oneself “king” was a capital offense. Under Tiberius (the current emperor), even suspicion of minor forms of treason led to execution, and Tiberius’ agents dare not fail to prosecute such offenses.
27:12. A defendant who offered no defense was normally convicted by default.
27:13-14. Jewish martyr stories also report rulers’ amazement at martyrs’ refusal to compromise. Although most of these stories are fictitious, they reflect not only the genuine astonishment of *Gentiles unfamiliar with Jewish commitment to the details of their law but also the ancient ideal of bravery in standing against tyrants.
27:15-18. Customs like this release of a prisoner varied locally. Roman law recognized two kinds of amnesty: acquittal before the trial and pardon of the condemned; this is the latter. Pilate was not required by law to cooperate, but governors often followed local traditions. Moreover, Pilate had severely irritated the priestly aristocracy and Jerusalemites at the beginning of his tenure and may have wished to avoid further problems; several years later, his further actions led to complaints and his recall from Judea. (If the trial is as late as October of A.D. 31, Pilate’s main political supporter in Rome had just been executed, and he was on shaky ground politically; but the events of Mt 27 probably occurred before then.) Having heard of Jesus’ popularity, he may miscalculate whom the crowds would choose.
27:19. The “judgment seat” seems to have been outside the palace. Although traditionally governors had to travel without their wives, by this period they were allowed to take their wives with them to the provinces. Further, although Roman matrons were ideally quiet, many stories praised aristocratic Roman women who privately influenced their husbands to some noble course of action. Dreams were respected in all Mediterranean cultures as sometimes being revelatory (see comment on 1:20; 2:12).
27:20-23. These events occur early in the morning (see 27:1-2), and much of the crowd may not be those whom Jesus had been teaching after arriving from Bethany each day. Jesus’ primary supporters were probably especially fellow Galileans. But ancient literature also reports how quickly the masses often changed allegiances (e.g., in *Tacitus; 1 Sam 11:12). The chief priests were well respected and more visible than Jesus, especially to local Judeans and to foreign Jews visiting Jerusalem for the feast and unfamiliar with local politics. Barabbas would also appeal to those drawn to more militant responses to Roman oppression than Jesus provided. The leaders view Jesus, who has a significant following, as a greater political threat than Barabbas.
27:24. Washing hands was a typically Jewish (but also sometimes Gentile) way of declaring one’s innocence (Deut 21:6; *Letter of Aristeas 306), but Pilate’s words and action absolve his guilt no more than the exactly parallel words of the chief priests in Matthew 27:4, or those of others who acceded to subordinates’ unjust demands for the cause of political expediency (e.g., Jer 38:5). This was not the first time that the threat of riots had forced Pilate to relent; he had brought Roman standards (viewed by Jews as idols because they venerated the “divine” emperor) into Jerusalem, and withdrawn them only because mass protests forced him to either slaughter the populace or relent.
27:25. Once the responsibility for a murder or crime was attached to one person, another was considered free (cf. Gen 27:13; 2 Sam 3:28-29). Matthew probably relates this cry of the crowd to the judgment of A.D. 66–70 that crushed the next generation of Jerusalemites; he would not have approved of the anti-Semitic use to which this verse was subsequently put (cf., e.g., Mt 5:39, 43-44).
27:26. One would be stripped before a scourging or execution. Crucifixion was prefaced by scourging, either on the way to the cross or before the victim began the trip to the cross. Tied to a post, the condemned person would be beaten with the flagellum: a leather whip with metal knotted into its thongs. This whipping bloodied the victim’s back, leaving strips of flesh hanging from the wounds. By weakening the victim’s constitution, it would shorten the time it would take the condemned person to die on the cross.
Crucifixion was the most shameful and painful form of execution known in antiquity. Stripped naked—especially shameful for Palestinian Jews—the condemned would be hanged in the sight of the crowds, regarded as a criminal, unable to restrain the excretion of wastes in public and subjected to excruciating torture. Sometimes the victim would be tied to the cross with ropes; in other cases, as with Jesus, he would also be nailed to the cross. His hands would not be free to swat away insects attracted to his bloodied back or other wounds. The victim’s own weight would pull his body into a position that eventually prevented breathing, if he did not die by dehydration or (if nailed to the cross) blood loss first. A footstand on the cross allowed him some support, but sooner or later his strength would give out, and (usually after several days) he would die from suffocation or (usually more quickly) dehydration.
27:27. The Praetorium in this period was Herod the Great’s old palace, where the Roman prefect stayed when he visited Jerusalem. A cohort of six hundred men was normally stationed in Jerusalem (at the fortress Antonia on the Temple Mount), reinforced by additional troops who accompanied Pilate to the feast in case they were necessary for riot control.
27:28. Nakedness was especially embarrassing to a Jewish person in antiquity. Red robes would be those most readily available, because soldiers wore red capes; this garment could resemble the purple robe of the pre-Roman Greek rulers of the East. Roman soldiers often played games to pass time: they carved on the stone pavement of the fortress Antonia, where they were garrisoned on the Temple Mount, and knucklebones used as dice have also been recovered there.
27:29. The soldiers’ kneeling before Jesus parodies royal homage in the Greek East. The reed is meant to parody a scepter; military floggings often used bamboo canes, so one may have been on hand among the soldiers. “King of the Jews” is an ironic taunt but may also reflect some typical Roman anti-Judaism; as auxiliaries in this region, the soldiers are probably ethnically Syrian. “Hail!” was the standard salute to the Roman emperor.
27:30. Spitting on a person was one of the most grievous insults short of violence; Jewish people considered the spittle of non-Jews particularly unclean. Some think that the soldiers’ spitting on Jesus might parody the kiss of homage expected by rulers of the Greek East, but it could be simply pure contempt.
27:31. Those being crucified by the Romans were stripped naked; Jewish *law on stoning stripped a man of all but a loincloth. An actual execution squad on average consisted of four men, but is perhaps more here given the multiple victims.
27:32. Cyrene, a large city in what is now Libya in North Africa, was ethnically divided among Libyans, Greeks and Jews; the Jewish community probably included some local converts. “Simon” is a Greek name commonly used by Jewish people (because of its resemblance with the biblical “Simeon”). Like multitudes of foreign Jews, Simon had come to Jerusalem for the feast. Roman soldiers could impress any person into service to carry things for them. The condemned person himself normally had to carry the horizontal beam (Latin patibulum) of the cross out to the site where the upright stake (Latin palus) awaited; but Jesus’ back had been too severely scourged for him to continue this (see comment on 27:26).
27:33. The likeliest site for Golgotha (near the Holy Sepulcher) used the remains of an ancient rock quarry.
27:34. The women of Jerusalem had prepared a painkilling potion of drugged wine for condemned men to drink; Jesus, committed to the full agony of the cross, refuses it (cf. 26:29). Psalm 69:21 speaks of both “gall” and “vinegar” (Mk 15:36 emphasizes the latter). The *Aramaic term for “myrrh” (Mk 15:23) resembles the Hebrew term for “gall.”
27:35-36. Romans completely stripped the person being executed. Roman law permitted the execution squad any minor possessions the executed person carried (cf. also Ps 22:18). The custom of casting lots, common in both the *Old Testament and Greek culture, was a common ancient way to make decisions of this nature.
27:37. The condemned person sometimes carried the charge (Latin titulus) to the site of execution.
27:38. The word for “robbers” here is the standard term in Josephus for revolutionaries; presumably they had been colleagues of Barabbas. Executing criminals at festivals increased the publicity, hence the deterrent value, of their deaths.
27:39. The Gospel writers purposely describe the ridicule in the language of the righteous sufferer of Psalm 22:7.
27:40. Those who pass by repeat *Satan’s taunt of Matthew 4:3, 7, still emphasizing their expectation of a political *messiah. Ironically, even those within the *narrative should have realized how closely the accusers’ words echo the mocking words of the wicked in Wisdom of Solomon 2:18: “If the righteous person really is a son of God, God will help him and deliver him from those who resist him.”
27:41-42. Compare 4:3, 6.
27:43-44. The language of the religious authorities exactly parallels Psalm 22:8; the righteous sufferer himself quotes this psalm in Matthew 27:46 (Ps 22:1).
27:45. The “sixth hour” begins by noon, the “ninth hour” by 3 p.m.; crucifixions rarely ended so quickly. The latter time, when Jesus dies, was close to the time of the evening offering in the temple. Darkness was one of the plagues in Egypt (the one preceding the sacrifice of the first paschal lamb) and occurs in the prophets as a judgment for the end time; both Jews and most pagans considered darkenings of the sky (especially eclipses) bad omens. Cf. Amos 8:9.
27:46. Here Jesus quotes Psalm 22:1, which may have been part of the Scripture recitation at this time of day. His opponents do not pause to consider that the psalm ends with the sufferer’s vindication and triumph (Ps 22:25-31). Whereas Mark’s quotation is in Aramaic, Matthew’s is mainly in Hebrew.
27:47. Because Elijah was thought never to have died, some *rabbis felt that he was sent on errands like the angels, often to aid or deliver pious rabbis from trouble. Matthew’s Hebrew version of the prayer (Eli, 27:46) sounds closer to “Elijah” (Eliyahu) than Mark’s Aramaic version (Eloi).
27:48. This offer of a wine-soaked sponge may have been an act of mercy, because the wine could act as a painkiller. Perhaps the man thinks Jesus is delirious from pain. But sour wine was usually a remedy for thirst, and it may have been an attempt to revive him to perpetuate his suffering.
27:49. See comment on 27:47.
27:50. “Giving up one’s spirit” is used elsewhere to refer to death.
27:51-53. Stories were told of catastrophes occurring at the deaths of pious rabbis, especially those whose intercession had been vital to the world; on rare occasions, Greek writers also applied such stories to the deaths of prominent philosophers. These events would have communicated Jesus’ importance quite well to ancient observers and readers.
27:51. The veil (or curtain—NIV) is probably the one between the holy of holies—inhabited only by God—and the sanctuary where the priests ministered (Ex 26:33). Matthew might intend this tearing of the veil to recall the rending of clothes at the hearing of blasphemy (Mt 26:65). The point of the veil’s rending may be that by the cross God provides access for all people into his presence, or it may indicate the departure of God from the temple (as in Ezek 10–11). *Apocalypses sometimes mentioned a major earthquake shortly before the coming of the *kingdom.
27:52-53. Although these raisings of the dead *saints, like those in the *Old Testament, do not mean that they will not die again, they prefigure Judaism’s anticipated final *resurrection, when the dead will be raised never to die again. Archaeological evidence indicates that in popular (not official) Judaism, the tombs of saints were venerated. Gentiles sometimes understood appearances of the (not-raised) dead as omens of coming disaster (Ovid, Metamorphoses 15.797).
27:54. Here pagans—the executioners—are the first people after Jesus’ death to recognize, to some extent, his identity, although they may mean “*Son of God” quite differently than Jewish people and Christians (including Matthew) would have (cf. Dan 3:25, 29): a semidivine hero, son of a deity, rather than *Messiah.
27:55-56. Although an execution squad might restrict close access (lest the crowd’s view be obstructed), family and close friends might be present to lament at an execution; only the male *disciples would have been in danger as suspected allies of a revolutionary. Women often (though much less than men) performed the office of *patron, or benefactor, supporting religious or other groups; it became problematic only for critics already opposed to a group. But in ancient Jewish Palestine, critics could have denounced as scandalous these women accompanying Jesus’ disciples.
27:57. Arimathea was only about twenty miles from Jerusalem; given the location of Joseph’s tomb (27:60) and his historic membership in the Sanhedrin (Mk 15:43), Joseph’s primary residence is apparently now Jerusalem. Even if the sabbath had begun (hence “evening”), the urgent washing and preliminary burial were permitted even on the sabbath (before decomposition would begin).
27:58. Joseph is said to have been wealthy; he must have been prominent to have secured an audience with Pilate after his official public hours (which ended at noon). When Romans crucified persons, they usually denied them burial (leaving them to be eaten by vultures or dogs); Jewish scruples in Palestine demanded burial (Deut 21:23), but for the first year this could be in a dishonorable grave site for criminals, not a family tomb. Exceptions were often made when relatives asked for the body, but in the case of treason (as claiming to be the Jewish king would be) an exception would not be made unless the deceased had a prominent advocate. Jesus had a posthumous ally in this man of influence, who was not ashamed to go on record as his follower. Because prominent people viewed as allies of a condemned revolutionary could risk their lives by speaking up for him, Joseph risks a great deal to come forward.
The term used for “evening” included late afternoon as well as just after sundown. In any case, in this hot climate under Jewish *law the preliminary disposal of the body (including its washing, also practiced by other peoples) took precedence over celebration of the sabbath, even if the rest of the treatment of the body had to wait. Burying the dead was an important duty of the pious in Judaism. Public mourning was important for all the dead but was illegal for anyone who had been executed.
27:59-60. Being wrapped in a fine linen shroud would mark an honorable burial. To bury someone in one’s own family tomb was a special act of reverence and affection (cf. 1 Kings 13:30-31; cf. Is 53:12). (Cemeteries and burial plots in this period nearly always belonged to families.) In the first century, the body would normally be left to rot in the tomb’s antechamber for the first year; at the end of the year, the bones would be gathered into a box, which would slide into a slot on the wall. This practice probably related to the standard Jewish hope in the resurrection of the body at the end of the age. The stone rolled in front of the tomb was a carved, disk-shaped stone probably about three feet in diameter, rolled into place in a groove and moved back from the entrance only with great effort.
27:61. Women generally took part in preparing bodies for burial in the ancient world. The oldest tradition for the site of Jesus’ grave (the Roman Catholic location of the Holy Sepulcher) is a clearly first-century tomb located inside the walls of Jerusalem since the forties of the first century, even though the *New Testament and Jewish law required that the crucifixion happen outside the city walls. But King Agrippa I expanded the city walls during his reign (A.D. 41–44); at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion, that area was still outside the walls. Thus the tradition of the approximate site of Jesus’ burial and resurrection goes back to within roughly ten years of the event. (The traditional Protestant site contains tombs from a much later period and has no evidence to commend it.)
The priestly aristocracy, ever politically astute, takes no chances, and despite the sabbath and festival they obtain an audience with Pilate to secure the tomb. It is debated whether Pilate here provides them with Roman guards or tells them where the tomb is and permits them to post some of their temple guard; the guards’ fear of Pilate’s reprisals (28:14) could indicate that they are Roman guards, but they also answer to the *high priests (28:11) and it seems unlikely that Pilate would put his own soldiers at the chief priests’ disposal. The seal on the stone would make any tampering obvious. That the Jerusalem authorities would have acted thus on the sabbath indicates their special interest in the case as well as suggests the selectiveness of their piety.
That women are chosen as the first witnesses is highly significant; both Jewish and Roman law severely minimized the value of their witness. It fits Jesus’ countercultural and counterstatus ministry and certainly runs counter to what outsiders would have valued or anything the later *church would have chosen to invent.
28:1. Sabbath ended at sundown on Saturday evening; the women are on their way to the tomb by 6 a.m., as soon as there is enough light for them to see. Jewish mourners as well as pagans were often known to visit tombs within the three days after the burial, to ensure that their relative was dead; given the nature of crucifixion, however, such a precaution would be unnecessary here, and their primary interest is undoubtedly mourning.
28:2-4. Angels, especially visibly fiery ones (many ancient Jewish people believed that angels consisted of fire), generally terrified people (e.g., Judg 6:22-23; 13:19-20; cf. *4 Ezra 10:25-27; *3 Enoch 22:4-9). Jewish *apocalyptic literature sometimes portrayed angels or other figures with superhuman radiance. Jewish people normally expected angels to be clothed in white (though this was also true of priests and of some others). Stones closing tombs were usually extremely heavy and disk-shaped, so rolling it back singlehandedly and sitting on it underlines the superhuman character of the angel.
28:5-8. Jerusalem was the religious center of Judaism; Judeans sometimes still looked on Galilee as a place of former non-Jews (4:15). Yet Galilee was where some of Jesus’ revelations to his *disciples would take place; all four Gospels report that Jesus was better received there.
28:9-10. Whereas reports of ghosts were not very controversial in antiquity, bodily *resurrection differed and was, in the Roman empire, distinctively Jewish (see Dan 12:2). The witness of women was generally considered unreliable in that culture; *Josephus even claims that the Torah rejects women’s testimony in view of the weakness of their gender. Jesus, however, goes against the culture by revealing himself to the women and telling them to bear his message to the other disciples. This detail is definitely not one that ancient Christians would have invented; it did not appeal to their culture.
Guards faced serious consequences for falling asleep on the job (indeed, Roman guards could be executed), including jobs guarding the corpses of crucifixion victims (see the first-century Roman writer *Petronius Satyricon 112). But the priestly aristocracy had enough influence to protect their own interests. Like Judas (26:15), the guards act partly on mercenary motives; the bribe and the potential penalty they face for allowing Jesus’ body to disappear ensures their cooperation. (The officials’ promise to protect the guards from *Pilate may involve more bribery; despite Roman policy, Pilate is known to have been susceptible to this form of persuasion.) Matthew would be unlikely to report a charge against the resurrection that had not actually been made (28:15), and his report indicates that the Jerusalem authorities had sought to explain the empty tomb—but had never tried to deny it.
Ancient works sometimes contrasted characters: the true testimony of the women (28:1-10), in contrast to the false testimony of the guards (28:11-15), offers the proper model for the testimony of the church (28:16-20). Ancient works sometimes summarized major themes in their conclusions; Jesus’ closing words in 28:18-20 connect many dominant themes in Matthew’s Gospel, including Jesus’ authority, his commandments, his identity and God’s interest in even *Gentiles (cf. 1:3-5; 2:1-2; 3:9; 4:15; 8:5, 11, 28; 11:21-22; 12:41-42; 15:22; 24:14; 25:31-32; 27:54). Some have pointed out that Matthew 28:16-20 resembles some *Old Testament “commissioning narratives.”
28:16. God had often revealed himself on mountains in biblical tradition, especially in the *narratives about Moses.
28:17. Some who see Jesus’ appearance are doubtful, perhaps because it does not fit current expectations of the end time: all the dead were to be raised together, not the *Messiah first.
28:18. Here Jesus alludes to Daniel 7:13-14 (going beyond Mt 9:6 and climaxing a *kingdom theme in Matthew’s Gospel).
28:19-20. “Making *disciples” was the sort of thing *rabbis would do, but Jesus’ followers are to make disciples for Jesus, not for themselves. Subordinate participles explain the command, “Make disciples,” suggesting that making disciples involves three elements:
(1) Going, presumably to “the nations” who are being discipled. Many Jews outside Palestine sought converts among the “nations” (which can also be translated as “Gentiles” or “pagans”). But only a few converts ever studied under rabbis, so the idea of making Gentiles full disciples—followers of Jesus who would learn from and serve him—goes beyond this Jewish tradition. Isaiah predicted that Israel would be a witness to (or against) the nations in the end time (e.g., 42:6; 43:10; 44:8).
(2) Baptizing them. Because *baptism was an act of conversion (used for Gentiles converting to Judaism), it means initiating people to the faith. Jewish people recognized God as “Father” and his *Spirit as divine (sometimes as an aspect of God), but would find shocking “the Son” named between them.
(3) Teaching them Jesus’ commandments recorded in Matthew. Rabbis made disciples by teaching them.
Jewish literature called only God omnipresent; Jesus’ claim that he would always be with them (cf. also 1:23; 18:20), coupled with his being named alongside the Father in baptism (Jewish people did not baptize in the names of people), constitutes a proclamation of his deity.