Commentary on Matthew: From The Baker Illustrated Bible Commentary

By Jeannine K. Brown

Comprehensive, accessible, and fully illustrated--this commentary on Matthew is a must-have resource.

You want a deeper understanding of the Scriptures, but the notes in your study Bible don't give you enough depth or insight. This commentary was created with you in mind.

Each volume of The Baker Illustrated Bible Commentary is a nontechnical, section-by-section commentary on one book or section of the Bible that provides reliable and readable interpretations of the Scriptures from leading evangelical scholars. This information-packed commentary will help you gain a deeper understanding of the Bible in your own personal study or in preparation for teaching. It tackles problematic questions, calls attention to the spiritual and personal aspects of the biblical message, and brings out important points of biblical theology, making it invaluable to anyone seeking to get the most out of their Bible study.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
• Release date: Oct 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781493424634

Jeannine K. Brown

Jeannine K. Brown is professor of New Testament at Bethel Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. Her books include Scripture as Communication, The Gospels as Stories, and biblical commentaries on the Gospel of Matthew. She is also a coeditor of the second edition of The Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels.

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© 2012 by Baker Publishing Group

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Previously published in The Baker Illustrated Bible Commentary edited by Gary M. Burge and Andrew E. Hill in 2012

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ISBN 978-1-4934-2463-4

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Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Abbreviations

Introduction

Commentary

1. Jesus’s Identity and Preparation for Ministry (1:1–4:16)

A. Birth and Infancy (1:1–2:23)

B. Baptism and Temptation (3:1–4:16)

2. Jesus’s Announcement of the Kingdom to Israel and Resulting Responses (4:17–16:20)

A. Proclamation of the Kingdom in Word and Action (4:17–11:1)

B. Rejection by Leaders and Jesus’s Withdrawal from Conflict (11:2–16:20)

3. Jesus to Jerusalem: Kingdom Enactment through Death and Resurrection (16:21–28:20)

A. Journey to the Cross and Teaching on Discipleship (16:21–20:28)

B. Final Proclamation, Confrontation, and Judgment in Jerusalem (20:29–25:46)

C. Jesus’s Execution by Rome and Resurrection/Vindication by God (26:1–28:20)

Time Lines

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Abbreviations

Matthew

Jeannine K. Brown

Introduction

Purpose

The author of the Gospel of Matthew, writing to believers in Jesus in the latter part of the first century, portrays Jesus as God’s chosen Messiah, who paradoxically ushers in the reign of God through his self-giving ministry and death. Matthew communicates that Jesus’s messianic claims and mission are vindicated at his resurrection, when God grants him all authority. Matthew seeks to persuade his readers to respond in trust, loyalty, and obedience to Jesus Messiah and his teachings and to empower them to invite others to follow and obey Jesus through the promise of Jesus’s presence with them.

A Narrative Reading

This commentary offers a narrative reading of Matthew, emphasizing its story features, internal coherence, and thematic development. Narrative criticism as a method for studying the Gospels analyzes a narrative at two levels—story and discourse. Analysis of the story level focuses on setting, character, and plot development. Discourse-level assessment focuses on the ways the implied author (implied within the narrative) tells the story to communicate with the implied audience. An author communicates on the discourse level through sequencing (see Sources below), structural devices (see Structure below), thematic development, and authorial comments. (For a description of narrative analysis, including implied author and audience concepts, see Brown 2007, 157–63, also 40–42.) For example, Matthew narrates nine miracle stories in 8:1–9:34 in order to stress themes of Jesus’s authority and the importance of faith. Thus, while attending to story and discourse levels, a narrative reading also seeks to understand the book of Matthew in light of its historical setting.

Author, Date, and Audience

Although the Gospel itself is anonymous, the title (added in the second century) specifies Matthew as the author. Church tradition also attributes it to Matthew the apostle (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.24.16, citing testimony from Papias, a second-century bishop). Modern scholarship has questioned these traditions, but certain scholars continue to support Matthew as the author of the first Gospel (see discussion in Keener, 38–41).

One difficulty for determining authorship is the nature of narratives, which point away from the author and toward the story being told. Matthew’s author intends the audience to focus its attention on Jesus and the events and time frame of his life rather than on the author and the author’s world. Yet reconstructing something about the author, audience, and date from the Gospel is possible by studying indirect references within the story (e.g., does 22:7 indicate Matthew writes after the destruction of Jerusalem?) and attending to direct authorial commentary where it occurs (e.g., 24:15; 28:15). Such reconstruction of the implied author, date, and audience (implied within the narrative) may be sketchy, since internal evidence can support contrasting reconstructions (as in the dating of Matthew).

The internal evidence of the first Gospel suggests that the author is a Jewish follower of Jesus (e.g., 1:2–17; Old Testament fulfillment themes), possibly from a scribal background (cf. 13:52; 23:1–2), who writes to a primarily Jewish audience (e.g., explanation of Pharisaic traditions from Mark 7:3–4 omitted in Matt. 15:1–2; also Gentile-inclusion theme), most likely between AD 68 and 85. In this commentary, Matthew will be used to refer to the Gospel’s implied author.

Sources

Matthew’s clearest source is the Jewish Scriptures (the Old Testament), which he cites and alludes to frequently (over seventy times by some counts). In fact, the Old Testament story is assumed and evoked throughout Matthew (e.g., Israel’s exile and restoration in chapters 1–4; Psalm 22 in Matt. 27:32–50). Of the four evangelists, Matthew cites the Old Testament most often. Ten times he employs a formulaic introduction to highlight Jesus as fulfillment of the Old Testament (1:22–23; 2:15; 2:17–18; 2:23; 4:14–16; 8:17; 12:17–21; 13:35; 21:4–5; 27:9; cf. also 2:5; 3:3; 13:13–15). These fulfillment quotations typically connect at the story level (by connecting the Old Testament quotation with an event in Jesus’s life) and function theologically (on the discourse level) to illuminate Jesus’s fulfillment of Old Testament themes and contours in a more thematic way (see commentary on 2:1–23). Richard Beaton refers to the bi-referentiality of these citations (see Beaton, 5, 120; these two levels of narrative are described below). Matthew’s use of the Old Testament sets Jesus’s life and mission within the story and promises of Israel.

An icon of Matthew from a larger piece entitled Christ and Twelve Apostles (Antalya, Turkey, nineteenth century AD) [Copyright © Baker Photo Archive. Courtesy of the Antalya Museum, Turkey. ]

Modern Gospels scholarship has argued for a written dependence between Matthew, Mark, and Luke (the Synoptic Gospels), given their frequent overlap. Matthew most likely used Mark as a source for his Gospel, along with other oral and/or written Jesus traditions. Matthew begins making use of Mark at Matthew 3:3 (cf. Mark 1:3), continuing to borrow material throughout his Gospel. (About 90 percent of Mark is included in Matthew.) He omits some material from Mark (e.g., Mark 8:22–26), adds freely to it (e.g., blocks of Jesus’s teachings), and sometimes rearranges passage order (e.g., Mark 4:35–5:43 lies behind Matt. 8:23–9:26 prior to material from Mark 2:23–4:34 in Matt. 12:1–13:58). Such freedom of arrangement would have fit ancient narrative practices. For example, Greco-Roman biographies were typically arranged by topic rather than strict chronology (e.g., eight kingdom parables clustered in Matthew 13).

Theological Themes

God’s reign (the kingdom of God) as theological centerpiece. Studying a Gospel’s theology involves exploring the author’s presentation of God’s person and activity, which in Matthew focuses on the kingdom of God (Matthew’s kingdom of heaven;