What Cannot Be Kept by Holding Tighter

“When Jesus had finished these sayings” is the formula that closes each of the book’s five long discourses (7:28; 11:1; 13:53; 19:1; 26:1). “Coasts” meant borders or districts in 1611, not seashore. Beyond Jordan is Perea, ruled by Herod Antipas, whose own marriage John had condemned and died for (14:3–4).

Mark says that here Jesus “taught them again” (Mark 10:1); Matthew makes it healing. Pilgrims from Galilee often went up to Jerusalem by the east bank to avoid Samaria, which would explain the great crowds on this road.

“For every cause” is Matthew’s addition, and it names a live dispute over Deuteronomy 24:1. The Mishnah (Gittin 9:10) records the school of Shammai allowing divorce only for unchastity, the school of Hillel even if she spoiled his food, and Akiva if he found a woman fairer. “Tempting” means testing, as in 16:1 and 22:35.

“Have ye not read” is Jesus’ challenge to professional readers (12:3; 21:16; 22:31). The Damascus Document from Qumran cites the same line, “male and female he created them”, against a man taking a second wife (CD 4:21). Jesus uses it for the permanence of the first.

In Genesis 2:24 these words are not presented as a speech; Jesus attributes them to the Creator: “and said”. “Cleave” is kollao, to be glued. “They twain” follows the Greek Old Testament, which reads “the two”; the Hebrew has only “they shall be one flesh”.

“No more twain” is Jesus’ own conclusion drawn from the quotation. “Joined together” is syzeugnymi, literally yoked together, from the same root as the yoke he offered in 11:29–30. “Man” translates anthropos, any human being, which includes the husband himself.

Deuteronomy 24:1–4 does not command divorce. It assumes a man may put his wife away and regulates the result: he must give her a written bill, and he may not take her back after she has married another. The written “get” protected the woman by proving she was free to remarry.

“Hardness of your hearts” is sklerokardia, the word the Greek Old Testament uses in Deuteronomy 10:16: circumcise the foreskin of your heart. Jesus says “your hearts” and “your wives”, placing his hearers alongside the generation that first received the law.

The exception appears only in Matthew (here and 5:32); Mark 10:11 and Luke 16:18 give the saying without it. The word is porneia, broader than moicheia, the word for adultery in the same verse. Some read it as sexual unfaithfulness, others as a marriage within forbidden degrees (Leviticus 18), a sense porneia may carry in Acts 15:20.

“The case” is aitia, the same word as “cause” in verse 3. If a man’s case with his wife is that he cannot dismiss her for any cause, they say, better not to marry. The reaction shows how far the easier view had become their assumption.

“Receive” is choreo, to have room for, to make space. “This saying” is ambiguous: it may mean Jesus’ teaching on divorce, or the disciples’ own remark that it is better not to marry. Interpreters divide on which, and the answer changes what the eunuch saying that follows is about.

Rabbinic law also distinguished a eunuch “of the sun”, so from birth, from one made so by men (Mishnah Yevamot 8:4). Deuteronomy 23:1 shut the castrated out of the assembly, but Isaiah 56:3–5 promised eunuchs who keep the covenant a name better than sons. Eusebius says Origen took the third kind literally in his youth (Ecclesiastical History 6.8).

Matthew adds “and pray” to Mark’s account. Laying hands on the young to bless them goes back to Jacob crossing his hands over Ephraim and Manasseh (Genesis 48:14). “Rebuked” is the verb Jesus used against the devil in 17:18 and Peter used against Jesus in 16:22.

“Suffer” means allow. “Of such” is toiouton, of those like these, so the kingdom belongs to the childlike as well as to children. Mark says Jesus was much displeased and took them in his arms (Mark 10:14, 16); Matthew leaves out both the indignation and the embrace.

Mark includes the saying about receiving the kingdom as a little child here (Mark 10:15). Matthew has already used a version of it in 18:3, so the scene ends with the action alone: hands laid on, and a departure.

The man is only “one”; the book calls him young in verse 20 and rich in verse 22, and it is Luke who makes him a ruler. His question assumes one good deed will do it, and “that I may have” is the verb of owning, the same one used in verse 22 of what he “had”.

The oldest manuscripts of Matthew read differently: “Master, what good thing shall I do?” and then “Why askest thou me concerning that which is good? There is one that is good.” The King James follows a text brought into line with Mark 10:17–18. “Enter into life” means eternal life, as in 18:8–9.

“Which?” is poias, what kind, a real question when teachers debated weighty and light commandments (23:23). Jesus gives the sixth to ninth commandments in their Hebrew order. “Do no murder” is more exact than “Thou shalt not kill” in Exodus 20:13; the Greek verb names murder.

The fifth commandment comes after the others, and then Leviticus 19:18, which only Matthew adds here. The tenth commandment, against coveting, is missing, and Mark’s substitute, “defraud not”, is dropped too. It may be an inference that the omission is pointed, but the missing commandment is the one this man’s answer will test.

Neaniskos, young man, in Greek usage could reach into a man’s thirties. The best texts of Matthew lack “from my youth up”, which is in Mark and Luke. Only Matthew gives him the question “what lack I yet?”, the verb of falling short.

“Perfect” is teleios, whole or complete, the word that ended the teaching on loving enemies: “Be ye therefore perfect” (5:48). Medieval theology built a higher tier of “counsels of perfection” on this verse; the Reformers rejected that reading, taking the command as a test for this man.

“Possessions” is ktemata, a word often used of landed property; Ananias “sold a possession” in Acts 5:1, and it was a field. He is the only person in Matthew who hears “follow me” and walks the other way.

“Hardly” in 1611 meant with difficulty, not scarcely. The Greek is dyskolos, hard to do. The saying is spoken to the disciples after the man has gone, so the lesson is drawn from him in his absence.

Matthew nearly always writes “kingdom of heaven”; this is one of a handful of places he writes “kingdom of God” (6:33; 12:28; 21:31, 43). The Talmud makes the impossible an elephant through a needle’s eye (Berakhot 55b). A few late manuscripts read kamilos, a rope, for kamelos, camel, an attempt to make the image manageable.

Deuteronomy 28 promised plenty to the obedient, and the disciples reason from that: if the rich, who look blessed, cannot enter, then who can? “Exceedingly amazed” is the strongest form of the astonishment the crowds felt at the Sermon on the Mount (7:28).

“Beheld them” is emblepo, to look straight at someone. The words recall the Greek of Genesis 18:14, where the LORD asks whether anything is impossible for him before Sarah’s son is born, and Job 42:2, “thou canst do every thing”.

Peter speaks for all of them. “Forsaken” is the verb used when he and Andrew “straightway left their nets” (4:20). Only Matthew keeps the blunt second half, “what shall we have therefore?”, and it echoes the verb of the rich man’s “that I may have” in verse 16.

“Regeneration” is palingenesia, rebirth, used by Stoics for the world’s renewal and by Josephus for Israel’s restoration after exile; elsewhere in the New Testament only at Titus 3:5. Daniel 7:9 saw thrones set for judgment. Judas is among those promised a throne as he hears it.

“An hundredfold” is the yield of the good soil in 13:8 and 13:23. Mark promises the hundredfold “now in this time... with persecutions” (Mark 10:30); Matthew drops both, pointing the reward beyond the present age. Mark’s “for my sake, and the gospel’s” becomes “for my name’s sake”.

The chapter break falls in the middle of one thought. The parable of the labourers begins “For” (20:1) and ends with this saying turned around, “So the last shall be first, and the first last” (20:16), so the verse stands as the parable’s opening bracket.