Mercy Exposes What Opposition Has Become

In 1611 “corn” meant any grain, here wheat or barley. Deuteronomy 23:25 allowed a hungry traveller to pluck ears by hand from a neighbour’s field, so the question is not theft. “At that time” sets the Sabbath, the day of rest, straight after the promise of rest in 11:28–29. Only Matthew says the disciples were hungry.

The Mishnah lists thirty nine kinds of work forbidden on the Sabbath, and reaping is one of them; rubbing the ears to free the grain could count as threshing. The complaint uses a legal category. The Pharisees address Jesus, holding the teacher answerable for his students.

“Have ye not read” is a pointed question to men who read the law more carefully than anyone; Jesus uses it on them repeatedly (19:4; 21:16, 42; 22:31). The event is at Nob, where David, on the run from Saul, asked the priest Ahimelech for bread (1 Samuel 21:1–6).

The shewbread was twelve loaves set out each Sabbath on the golden table before the LORD and then eaten by the priests alone “in the holy place” (Leviticus 24:5–9). The “house of God” here is the tabernacle at Nob, since no temple had yet been built. The bread David took had just been replaced with hot bread.

On the Sabbath the priests doubled the daily burnt offering (Numbers 28:9–10), slaughtering, carrying and burning, all work forbidden to everyone else. The law itself required it. Only Matthew includes this second argument, and it points to the temple, which sets up verse 6.

The Greek word is neuter: “something greater than the temple”. Matthew uses the same neuter form in verses 41 and 42, “a greater than Jonas”, “a greater than Solomon”. The comparison is left slightly open, but in context it points to what is happening in Jesus.

“Guiltless” is the same Greek word as “blameless” in verse 5, applied there to the priests. The disciples are put on the same footing as priests serving in the temple. Hosea’s line appears here for the second time in the Gospel (9:13).

God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it at creation (Genesis 2:3), and the fourth commandment grounds the day in that act (Exodus 20:11). To claim lordship over it is to claim the right that belongs to the one who made it. Mark includes “The sabbath was made for man” (Mark 2:27); Matthew leaves that saying out.

Matthew’s wording reads as though it is the same day and “their synagogue” is the Pharisees’ own. Luke puts the healing “on another sabbath” (Luke 6:6). The argument that began in a grain field moves indoors, into a public assembly.

“Withered” is xeros, dry or shrivelled. When King Jeroboam stretched out his hand against a prophet at Bethel, it “dried up”, and was restored at the prophet’s prayer (1 Kings 13:4–6). Jewish law allowed healing on the Sabbath when life was in danger, and a withered hand was no emergency.

The question was live. The Dead Sea community’s Damascus Document forbids lifting an animal out of a pit on the Sabbath; later rabbis allowed providing food or something to climb on. Jesus assumes his Galilean hearers would simply haul the sheep out, which suggests what ordinary farmers did.

Jesus has changed the question. They asked whether it is lawful to “heal”, a medical category; Jesus answers that it is lawful to “do well”, which no one could argue against. “Better” is the comparison of worth used for the birds in 6:26.

Jesus does no work that anyone could name: no touch, no ointment, only a command, and the man does the stretching. “Like as the other” adds the detail of comparison, a hand matching its partner. Later in the chapter Jesus will stretch out his own hand toward his disciples (verse 49).

This is the first time in Matthew that anyone plans to kill Jesus since Herod in chapter 2. “Held a council” is the same phrase used in 27:1, when the chief priests take counsel to put him to death. The plot begins over a healed hand.

Mark says Jesus healed “many” (Mark 3:10); Matthew says “all”. The withdrawal does not shrink the ministry; the crowd simply relocates with him. Matthew mentions no one turned away.

“Charged” is epitimao, the strong verb used when Jesus “rebuked” the winds and sea (8:26). The order for silence is not gentle. It prepares for the quotation that follows, which explains the quiet in Isaiah’s own terms.

What follows, Isaiah 42:1–4, is the longest Old Testament quotation in Matthew, and the seventh time the book has paused on the words “that it might be fulfilled”. It comes not at a moment of triumph but just after a death plot and a retreat.

The Septuagint of Isaiah 42:1 names the servant as “Jacob” and “Israel”; Matthew’s wording has no such names and matches the voice at the baptism, “my beloved... in whom I am well pleased” (3:17). “Servant” is pais, the same word as the centurion’s servant in 8:6.

The Hebrew of Isaiah 42:2 reads “He shall not cry, nor lift up”. Matthew’s “strive” means to quarrel or wrangle, an apt choice in a chapter of disputes. Jesus has just refused to argue out a death plot in the open; he withdrew.

A “bruised reed” is a cracked cane, like a split reed pen or a shepherd’s pipe no longer worth keeping. “Smoking flax” is the linen wick of a clay lamp that smoulders when the oil runs low. Matthew ends the line “unto victory”, where Isaiah says “unto truth”.

This line follows the Septuagint; where Matthew has the Gentiles trusting in his name, Isaiah’s Hebrew has “the isles shall wait for his law”. The Greek form lets Matthew end the quotation on the name and on the Gentiles, a note he has been sounding since the magi.

Two afflictions that Jesus healed separately in 9:27–33, blindness and dumbness, now come together in one man. Matthew reports the speech before the sight: “both spake and saw”. The more a man has lost, the more obvious the restoration.

The Greek form of the question expects a hesitant no: “This could not be the son of David, could it?” The crowd dares the thought without quite committing to it. “Amazed” means to stand outside oneself, beside oneself with wonder.

“This fellow” is contemptuous, just “this one”. The charge was grave, since the law made sorcery a capital offence (Exodus 22:18). Centuries later a passage in the Talmud still says Jesus was put to death for practising sorcery and leading Israel astray.

The Pharisees spoke when they “heard” of it, apparently not to his face, and Jesus answers anyway. “Brought to desolation” means turned into a wilderness. Jerusalem had seen it: in 63 BC the feud between two Hasmonean brothers let the Roman general Pompey walk into the city.

Jesus uses “Satan” here as another name for the same ruler of demons the Pharisees called Beelzebub. The argument takes for granted that Satan has a kingdom, the same claim implied when the devil offered Jesus the kingdoms of the world in 4:8–9.

“Your children” means your own people, those in your circle who perform exorcisms. Acts records Jewish exorcists, the seven sons of a priest named Sceva, trying to cast out spirits in Jesus’ name at Ephesus (Acts 19:13–14). Whatever explains their work explains his.

Luke has “the finger of God” (Luke 11:20), the phrase Pharaoh’s magicians used when they could not copy the plague of lice: “This is the finger of God” (Exodus 8:19). “Is come unto you” is a verb of arriving first, getting there before anyone expected.

Isaiah asked, “Shall the prey be taken from the mighty?” and the LORD answered, “Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken away” (Isaiah 49:24–25). “Spoil” means plunder. Each exorcism is pictured as a raid on a house whose owner has already been tied up.

Mark records the reverse saying in a different setting: “he that is not against us is on our part” (Mark 9:40). Both are true in their places. “Gathereth” and “scattereth” are the words of a shepherd with a flock, or a reaper with a harvest, the two images closing chapter 9.

“Ghost” is the old English word for spirit, as in giving up the ghost. The first half of the verse is extraordinarily broad, “all manner of sin and blasphemy”. The exception is defined by what has just happened: the Spirit’s work of setting a man free has been called the devil’s.

A word against the Son of man can be forgiven, as Peter’s denials were, and as Paul, “a blasphemer” by his own account, was forgiven (1 Timothy 1:13). “This world” and “the world to come” are the two ages of Jewish thought, the present age and the age after judgment.

“Make” here has the sense of “suppose” or “reckon”: either call the tree good and its fruit good, or call both rotten. Jesus demands consistency. His critics have admitted the fruit, a man seeing and speaking, and called the tree evil.

“Generation of vipers” was John the Baptist’s phrase (3:7), and Jesus uses it again in 23:33. “Abundance” means overflow: what spills out of a full vessel. The mouth gives away what the heart holds in excess.

“Treasure” is the storeroom from which a householder brings out his goods, as the scribe of the kingdom brings out “things new and old” in 13:52. Speech is pictured as fetching from stock, not inventing on the spot.

“Idle” is argos, literally “not working”, a careless word that does nothing. “Give account” is the language of bookkeeping, the same “account” a king settles with his servants in 18:23. Speech is recorded like entries in a ledger.

The address shifts to the singular, “thy words”, and the balanced shape suggests a proverb Jesus is quoting or coining. Proverbs 18:21 says, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue.” “Justified” is a court verdict.

A “sign” was a validating wonder, the kind Moses was given to perform before Israel (Exodus 4:8–9). The request comes minutes after a blind and dumb man was healed in front of them. They call him “Master”, Teacher, as opponents do in this Gospel.

“Adulterous” is the prophets’ word for Israel unfaithful to God as a wife to her husband (Hosea 2; Jeremiah 3:8–9). “Jonas” is the Greek form of Jonah. The sign given is not one they can command on demand.

The Greek word behind “whale” is ketos, any great sea creature; Jonah 1:17 says “a great fish”. Jewish reckoning counted part of a day as a whole day, so “three days and three nights” need not mean seventy two hours. Matthew elsewhere speaks of rising “the third day” (16:21).

Jonah’s whole recorded sermon is one line: “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown” (Jonah 3:4), five words in Hebrew. The people of Nineveh believed God and proclaimed a fast (Jonah 3:5). Pagans who heard less repented more.

The queen of Sheba came “to prove him with hard questions” (1 Kings 10:1), probably from southwest Arabia, a caravan journey of well over a thousand miles. “Uttermost parts of the earth” is not exaggeration from a Galilean point of view. She travelled to hear; this generation had only to walk outside.

Waterless places were thought the haunt of evil spirits; in Tobit the demon Asmodeus flees “into the utmost parts of Egypt” (Tobit 8:3). “Seeking rest” is an irony after 11:28, where Jesus offered rest to the weary. The spirit finds none.

The spirit calls the man “my house”, as if the former tenant still held the lease. “Empty” means unoccupied or idle, and “garnished” means put in order, even decorated. Everything has been cleaned, and nothing has moved in.

Seven signals completeness, full possession; Luke says seven devils had gone out of Mary Magdalene (Luke 8:2). Only Matthew applies the parable explicitly: “Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation.” A cleansed but unoccupied people is in more danger than before.

Matthew names the brothers in 13:55: James, Joses, Simon and Judas. Christians have read “brethren” as later sons of Mary and Joseph, as sons of Joseph by an earlier marriage, or, following Jerome, as cousins. The text itself does not settle it.

Some important early manuscripts leave out this verse. It repeats verse 46 almost word for word, and may have been added to supply the “him that told him” who is referred to in verse 48.

Jesus does not go out to them. Mark records that his family had earlier come “to lay hold on him”, saying “He is beside himself” (Mark 3:21), but Matthew includes no such motive. The question is asked of the messenger, and the room hears the answer.

The stretched out hand is the gesture of verse 13, now pointing rather than being healed. Mark says he “looked round about on them which sat about him” (Mark 3:34); Matthew narrows it to “his disciples”.

“Sister” appears in the answer though no one mentioned sisters in the question. Women were among his followers, and Matthew later names women who had followed him from Galilee to the cross (27:55–56). Doing the Father’s will is the family likeness.