Glory on the Mountain, Weakness Below

The mountain is never named. From the fourth century tradition fixed on Tabor, though Tabor carried a fortified village on its summit; Hermon, rising above Caesarea Philippi where 16:13 left them, is the usual modern suggestion. The same three are taken apart again in Gethsemane (26:37), where there is no light at all.

“Transfigured” is metamorphoo, the verb Paul uses for believers being “transformed” (Romans 12:2; 2 Corinthians 3:18). Only Matthew says the face shone “as the sun”, which recalls Moses coming down from Sinai with his face shining (Exodus 34:29) and Jesus’ own promise that the righteous will shine forth as the sun (13:43).

“Elias” is the Greek spelling of Elijah; the King James keeps the Greek forms of Hebrew names in the New Testament. Both men had met God on the same mountain, Sinai or Horeb (Exodus 24; 1 Kings 19:8), and both left the earth strangely: Moses buried by God in an unknown grave, Elijah taken up in a whirlwind.

Matthew’s Peter says “Lord” where Mark has “Rabbi”, adds the deferential “if thou wilt”, and Matthew drops Mark’s comment that he did not know what to say (Mark 9:6). The “tabernacles” are booths, skene, the shelters of the Feast of Tabernacles and the word the Greek Old Testament uses for the tent of meeting.

“Overshadowed” is the verb the Greek Old Testament uses when the cloud abode on the tabernacle and Moses could not enter (Exodus 40:35). Peter offered to pitch three shelters; God’s own cloud covers them instead. “Hear ye him” takes up Deuteronomy 18:15, where Moses promised a prophet like himself: “unto him ye shall hearken.”

Mark places the disciples’ fear at the vision; Matthew alone places it at the voice and has them fall face down. The sequence follows Daniel 10:9–10 closely: a man falls on his face at a heavenly word, and then a hand touches him.

Only Matthew records the touch. Jesus has touched a leper (8:3) and a fevered hand (8:15) in this book, and now touches men flattened by holiness. “Arise” is egeiro, Matthew’s verb for raising the dead (9:25; 27:52), and the one he uses in verse 23 for the Son of man who “shall be raised again”.

The Greek is emphatic, “him, Jesus, alone”. Moses, Elijah and the cloud have all gone, and the one left standing is the one the voice told them to hear. What they see when they look up is ordinary: a teacher they have walked with for months.

“Vision” is horama, a thing seen, used of visions in Acts and not implying anything unreal. Every earlier command to silence in Matthew was open ended (8:4; 9:30; 16:20); this is the first with a date on it, the resurrection. The glory can be told only once the death has happened.

The “then” carries their puzzle. The scribes read Malachi 4:5, “I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD”, as a timetable. Elijah has only now appeared, after the Messiah is already among them, so the order seems wrong.

“Restore” is apokathistemi, the verb in the Greek of Malachi 4:6, where Elijah turns the heart of the fathers to the children. Peter later speaks of “the times of restitution of all things” (Acts 3:21) with the noun from the same root.

“Whatsoever they listed”: in 1611 “list” meant to wish or please, so they did to him whatever they liked. The treatment is exactly what 14:3–11 records, John bound, imprisoned and beheaded on a whim at a birthday feast. “Of them” puts the Son of man in the same hands.

Matthew alone adds this line, and it answers 11:14, where Jesus had said of John, “if ye will receive it, this is Elias.” The phrasing matches 16:12, “Then understood they”. Where Mark often leaves the disciples baffled, Matthew tends to record the point at which they finally grasp it.

Mark gives this healing sixteen verses (Mark 9:14–29), with a debate with scribes, a convulsion, and the father’s cry for help with his unbelief. Matthew keeps eight and cuts all of that. The kneeling man is the one thing retained from Mark’s opening.

“Lunatick” renders seleniazomai, literally “moonstruck”, used in the New Testament only here and at 4:24, where the moonstruck are listed separately from those possessed with devils. “Have mercy” is the cry of the Canaanite woman for her daughter (15:22), who was also “grievously vexed”.

Nine disciples waited below while three went up. The father speaks of them as “thy disciples”, which makes their failure a question about their master. Some readers hear Exodus 32 behind the scene, Moses coming down from the mountain of glory to find the people below in disarray; the text does not draw the line itself.

The phrase reaches back to the Song of Moses: “a perverse and crooked generation” and “children in whom is no faith” (Deuteronomy 32:5, 20). “Suffer” is 1611 English for bear with or put up with. The rebuke is wide, covering the crowd and the disciples together.

“From that very hour” is word for word what Matthew wrote of the Canaanite woman’s daughter (15:28), another healed child. The boy is called pais here, a child, where the father had said “my son”. The healing itself takes one clause.

“Apart” is kat’ idian, the same phrase used of the mountain in verse 1. Three disciples went apart for glory; now the nine come apart to ask about failure. Their question is practical and uncomfortable, and Jesus does not avoid it.

The oldest manuscripts read oligopistia, “little faith”, Matthew’s own word for the disciples (6:30; 8:26; 14:31; 16:8); the Greek behind the King James has apistia, “unbelief”. The mustard seed was already “the least of all seeds” in 13:32. “This mountain” points to the one they have just come down from.

The verse is missing from Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, and most modern editions treat it as brought in from Mark 9:29. The King James follows the later Greek text that carries it. “This kind” implies that such spirits are not all alike.

This is the second of three passion predictions (16:21; 20:18–19). Its new element is a play on words: the Son of man is handed over into the hands of men. “Betrayed” is paradidomi, to hand over, the verb used for John being “cast into prison” in 4:12.

Mark says the disciples did not understand and were afraid to ask (Mark 9:32); Matthew replaces that with grief. The same verb for sorrow returns at the Last Supper, “they were exceeding sorrowful” (26:22), and of Jesus himself in Gethsemane (26:37).

“Tribute money” is the didrachma, the two drachma coin equal to the half shekel every Jewish man from twenty up paid yearly toward the temple (Exodus 30:13–15). After AD 70 Rome diverted the same tax to the temple of Jupiter in Rome. Only Matthew records this episode, set in Capernaum where Peter had his house (8:14).

“Custom” is telos, a toll on goods; “tribute” is kensos, the head tax counted by census. The collectors spoke to Peter outside, and Jesus raises the matter before Peter says a word about it. “What thinkest thou?” is a question Matthew’s Jesus asks often (18:12; 21:28; 22:42).

“Strangers” are allotrioi, those outside the household, not foreigners. The conclusion is plural, the sons are free, which brings Peter inside the family. Priests in Jesus’ day claimed exemption from the half shekel; the Mishnah (Shekalim 1:4) records the rabbis disputing that claim.

“Offend” is skandalizo, to trip up. In 16:23 Peter was the stumbling block to Jesus; here Jesus takes care not to be one to the collectors. The “piece of money” is a stater, a four drachma coin, exactly two half shekels. This is the only hook in the Gospels; every other catch comes by net.