The Expected One Arrives in an Unexpected Manner

Matthew never reports the twelve setting out or coming back; Mark and Luke both do (Mark 6:12–13, 30; Luke 9:6, 10). The commission ends and Jesus himself goes on teaching. “Their cities” most likely means the towns of Galilee, the places the next paragraphs name and rebuke.

Josephus names the prison: Machaerus, Herod’s fortress on a hilltop east of the Dead Sea. Matthew calls these “the works of Christ”, using the title in his own voice for the first time since the birth account (1:17; 2:4). John hears of the deeds secondhand, through a wall.

“He that should come” is literally “the coming one”, John’s own phrase from 3:11, “he that cometh after me”. Psalm 118:26 blesses “he that cometh in the name of the LORD”, the line the Jerusalem crowd will shout in 21:9.

“Hear and see” follows the order of the Gospel so far: words first in chapters 5 to 7, then deeds in chapters 8 and 9. “Shew John again” means report back to him. The messengers are made witnesses rather than carriers of a verdict.

The list gathers lines from Isaiah 35:5–6, 26:19 and 61:1. Lepers appear in none of Isaiah’s lists; they are added from what has actually happened (8:2–4). Isaiah 61:1 also promises “the opening of the prison to them that are bound”, a line that goes unsaid to a man in prison.

“Offended in me” means caused to stumble over me. Isaiah 8:14 says the LORD himself will be “a stone of stumbling and for a rock of offence to both the houses of Israel”. The saying works as one more beatitude, spoken for a man who might be tempted to doubt.

Cane grass grew thick along the Jordan, where John preached, and bent with every wind. Some have suggested a sharper edge: Herod Antipas put a reed on the first coins he minted at Tiberias. That reading is a scholar’s suggestion, but the man who bends to public opinion is the obvious target either way.

“Soft raiment” was the dress of court, the opposite of John’s camel’s hair and leather belt (3:4). That outfit copied Elijah’s, “an hairy man, and girt with a girdle of leather” (2 Kings 1:8), which prepares for the identification in verse 14.

The same question comes three times, each answer rising higher. The crowds had walked down to the Jordan “out of Jerusalem, and all Judaea” to see John (3:5), a long, hot descent. Jesus asks them what they thought the trip was for.

The quotation joins Malachi 3:1 to Exodus 23:20, where God says “I send an Angel before thee” to lead Israel through the wilderness; in Greek the openings are identical. Malachi reads “before me”; here it is “before thy face”, so the messenger prepares for someone God is addressing.

“Born of women” is a Hebrew way of saying human beings, as in Job 14:1, “Man that is born of a woman is of few days.” “Hath not risen” uses the verb for a prophet being raised up by God (Deuteronomy 18:15).

The Greek verb can be passive, “suffers violence”, or middle, “forces its way in”. Readers have taken the violent as enemies such as Herod who jailed John, as zealots trying to seize the kingdom by arms, or as eager people pressing in. Luke’s version reads “every man presseth into it” (Luke 16:16).

Only here in Matthew do the prophets come before the law, and the law too is said to “prophesy”. The whole of Scripture is pictured as pointing forward to a moment, and John is where that pointing ends.

Malachi’s book closes with the promise, “I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD” (Malachi 4:5). “If ye will receive it” concedes that this is not obvious. In John’s Gospel the Baptist himself says “I am not” when asked if he is Elijah (John 1:21).

The first time Matthew uses this formula; it returns in the parables chapter (13:9, 43). Moses told Israel that the LORD had not yet given them “ears to hear, unto this day” (Deuteronomy 29:4), so having ears was never simply a matter of anatomy.

“This generation” echoes the wilderness generation of Psalm 95:10: “Forty years long was I grieved with this generation.” The “markets” were the open squares where children played and where, in 20:3, men stood waiting to be hired.

The children are playing weddings and funerals, the two great public events of a village. The flute served both. “Lamented” means to beat the breast in grief, and in Greek “danced” and “lamented” end with the same sound, which suggests a rhyme was meant.

John ate locusts and wild honey (3:4), and Luke says he would drink neither wine nor strong drink (Luke 1:15), so “neither eating nor drinking” is hyperbole for austerity. “He hath a devil” is the same charge later thrown at Jesus (John 10:20).

“Gluttonous, and a winebibber” echoes Deuteronomy 21:20, the rebellious son who is “a glutton, and a drunkard”, a charge that carried the death penalty. Many manuscripts read “wisdom is justified of her works”, which ties back to “the works of Christ” in verse 2.

Matthew records no mighty work at all in Chorazin, and only a few in Bethsaida elsewhere in the Gospels. The verse implies a ministry much larger than the pages record. “Upbraid” means to reproach openly, face to face.

Chorazin lay a couple of miles north of Capernaum in the basalt hills and appears in the Bible only here and in Luke 10:13. Bethsaida was the home town of Peter, Andrew and Philip (John 1:44). When Jonah preached, the king of Nineveh put on sackcloth and sat in ashes (Jonah 3:6).

Tyre was the city of which Ezekiel said, “thou shalt be built no more” (Ezekiel 26:14), and Amos condemned it for selling captives while forgetting “the brotherly covenant” (Amos 1:9). Jesus names the prophets’ classic Gentile target to shame a Jewish town.

The words echo Isaiah’s taunt against the king of Babylon: “I will ascend into heaven... Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell” (Isaiah 14:13–15). “Hell” here is Hades, the realm of the dead, not the Gehenna of fire. Capernaum, Jesus’ own base, receives the harshest line.

Abraham once bargained God down to sparing Sodom for ten righteous men, and ten could not be found (Genesis 18:32). Jesus says the works done in Capernaum would have been enough to keep Sodom standing. Verses 22 and 24 close their two woes with the same shape, a pair set side by side.

“Answered” when no one has asked is a Hebrew idiom for responding to what has just happened. “Lord of heaven and earth” recalls Melchizedek’s blessing of Abram by God “possessor of heaven and earth” (Genesis 14:19). “Babes” are infants too young to speak, like those of Psalm 8:2, quoted in 21:16.

“Even so” is a plain “yes”. “It seemed good in thy sight” uses the root of the word spoken at the baptism, “in whom I am well pleased” (3:17). The Father’s good pleasure explains the choice, and no other reason is offered.

So much does this sound like John’s Gospel that one nineteenth century scholar called it a thunderbolt from the Johannine sky. “Delivered” is the verb for passing on a teaching from master to pupil. “Knoweth” is the stronger form, to know fully.

“Labour” means toil to exhaustion; “heavy laden” pictures a pack animal loaded down. Ben Sira had wisdom call, “Draw near unto me, ye unlearned”, and promise that he who takes her yoke finds rest (Ecclesiasticus 51:23–27). Jesus speaks as wisdom speaks, in the first person.

Teachers spoke of taking on “the yoke of the kingdom of heaven” when reciting the Shema, and of the yoke of the commandments. “Ye shall find rest unto your souls” is Jeremiah 6:16, where Israel was told to ask for the old paths and answered, “We will not walk therein.”

“Easy” is chrestos, kind or well fitting, the way a good yoke is shaped not to chafe the ox’s neck. Justin Martyr, writing in the second century, said Jesus as a carpenter made ploughs and yokes. Whether or not he did, the image fits the trade.