The Confession That Must Learn the Cross

Pharisees and Sadducees disagreed on almost everything, including the resurrection and the authority of oral tradition, and Matthew is the Gospel that keeps pairing them (3:7; 16:6, 11, 12). “Tempting” is the verb used of the tempter in the wilderness (4:1). A sign “from heaven” means something in the sky, like Elijah’s fire on Carmel.

From “When it is evening” to the end of verse 3 is missing in some important early manuscripts, though most include it. A red evening sky promising fair weather is the source, through this verse, of the English saying about a red sky at night being the shepherd’s delight.

“Lowring” means dark and threatening, overcast. “Discern” is a verb for judging between things, telling one from another. “The times” translates kairoi, the appointed seasons, not the hours of the clock: they can forecast tomorrow’s rain and not the hour they are living in.

The sentence repeats 12:39 almost word for word, but this time Jesus gives no explanation of Jonah. Then “he left them, and departed”: the first verb is a strong one, to leave behind. The conversation is ended by his walking away.

“The other side” is the northeastern shore, on the way toward Caesarea Philippi. Mark says they had only one loaf with them in the boat (Mark 8:14). Men who had gathered nineteen baskets of leftovers across two meals now have nothing packed.

Leaven was a lump of old fermented dough kept back and worked into the next batch, spreading unseen through the whole. Paul quotes a saying, “a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump” (1 Corinthians 5:6). Mark’s version warns of “the leaven of Herod” instead of the Sadducees (Mark 8:15).

“Reasoned among themselves” means they talked it over in low voices. They hear a food word and think of food, perhaps supposing he means not to buy bread from Pharisees or Sadducees. The misunderstanding is entirely practical.

The last of Matthew’s uses of “O ye of little faith”, and the only one that is not about danger. The worry is about lunch, exactly the anxiety over what to eat that the word was first attached to in the sermon (6:30–31).

The baskets in this verse are kophinoi, the word used at the feeding of the five thousand (14:20). Even in a quick reminder the account keeps the first meal’s own vocabulary. “Remember” is the key demand: memory is treated as a part of faith.

Spyrides this time, the large hampers of 15:37, not the wicker baskets of the verse before. The two meals keep their distinct words even when recalled together. Jesus quizzes them on numbers they could hardly have forgotten.

“How is it” is a question of real bewilderment. The warning is repeated word for word, as if the first time had simply not been heard. The subject of the whole exchange has never been bread.

Matthew interprets the leaven as “doctrine”, teaching; Luke 12:1 says it is “hypocrisy”. The Pharisees and Sadducees taught opposite things on the resurrection and on tradition, yet their teaching is treated as a single leaven. Then at last “understood they”, the verb that has dogged them since 13:51.

Caesarea Philippi lay at the foot of Mount Hermon, beside a spring feeding the Jordan and a cave shrine to the god Pan; Herod the Great had built a temple to Augustus there. Philip the tetrarch renamed the town for Caesar and himself. It is the furthest north Jesus goes in Matthew.

John the Baptist was Herod’s guess (14:2); Elijah was the expected forerunner (Malachi 4:5). Only Matthew adds Jeremiah. In Second Maccabees Jeremiah appears in a vision to Judas Maccabeus and hands him a golden sword (2 Maccabees 15:13–16), which shows how alive the prophet was in popular hope.

The “ye” is emphatic and plural: but you, all of you, who do you say I am? The first question was about opinion; this one leaves no room to report what others think.

Mark has only “Thou art the Christ” (Mark 8:29) and Luke “The Christ of God” (Luke 9:20); Matthew’s form is the fullest. “The living God” was the Old Testament title that set Israel’s God against lifeless idols (Jeremiah 10:10), apt in a town whose landmark was a shrine to Pan.

“Bar-jona” is Aramaic for “son of Jonah”; John’s Gospel calls Peter’s father Jona or John (John 1:42). The sign of Jonah was mentioned only in verse 4. “Flesh and blood” is a Hebrew phrase for human beings in their frailty, as when Paul says he “conferred not with flesh and blood” (Galatians 1:16).

In Greek Peter is Petros and the rock is petra; in Aramaic both would be Kepha, which is why Paul calls him Cephas. “Church”, ekklesia, appears in the Gospels only here and in 18:17; the Greek Old Testament used it for the assembly of Israel. “The gates of hell” recalls “the gates of death” in Job 38:17.

Isaiah 22:22 gives the palace steward Eliakim “the key of the house of David”, so that “he shall open, and none shall shut”. “Bind” and “loose” were terms teachers used for forbidding and permitting. The Greek tenses can be read “shall have been bound in heaven”, as though earth ratifies what heaven has settled.

Many manuscripts read simply “the Christ”, without “Jesus”. The silence may reflect how the title was popularly understood, as a warrior king who would drive out Rome; the next verse explains what it will mean instead. “Charged” here is a verb for a formal order.

“Must” is the Greek dei, a necessity laid down, not a forecast. Elders, chief priests and scribes were the three groups that made up the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem. “The third day” may echo Hosea 6:2: “in the third day he will raise us up.”

“Took him” means took him aside, even took hold of him. “Be it far from thee” renders a Greek idiom that is literally “merciful to thee”, meaning God forbid, heaven spare you. Peter rebukes the man he has just called the Son of the living God.

“Behind me” is the disciple’s place, the position of “Follow me” in 4:19; Peter is sent back to where a follower walks. “Offence” is skandalon, a stone to trip on: the rock has become a stumbling stone. In 1611 “savourest” meant to have a taste for, to relish.

The address widens from Peter to all the disciples. In the Greek, “deny” and “take up” are single decisive acts, while “follow” is continuous: a choice made once, and a walking that goes on. “Come after me” uses the same “behind me” words as verse 23.

Jesus says this a second time (10:39), now with “save” where the first form had “find”. “Will save” means wishes to save, sets out to keep. The saying lands just after he has described what he himself will lose in Jerusalem.

“Soul” is the same Greek word as “life” in verse 25; the King James changes the English, not the Greek. “In exchange” means a price paid to buy something back. Psalm 49:7–8 says no man can give God “a ransom” for a brother, “for the redemption of their soul is precious”.

Psalm 62:12 says, “thou renderest to every man according to his work”, and Proverbs 24:12 asks the same of God. The angels are the reapers of 13:41. Glory, angels and judgment come directly after talk of suffering, with no softening in between.

“Taste of death” is a Semitic idiom for dying. From the early church on, many have read the saying as fulfilled six days later on the mountain where three disciples see Jesus transfigured (17:1–2); others point to the resurrection or the coming of the Spirit. The chapter break falls in the middle of that link.