The New Testament Devotional Commentary, Volume 1: Matthew, Mark, and Luke

By Bo Giertz and Bror Erickson

Bo Giertz was a serious biblical scholar who avoided the ivory tower. He studied classics in undergrad before taking up theology in preparation for the ministry. In 1930 he spent time on an archeological dig in Palestine and travelled the country with his exegetical professor Anton Fridrichsen who insisted on "Biblical Realism," which avoided fundamentalism and yet refused to succumb to higher criticism. In these commentaries, Bo Giertz takes what he learned from a lifetime of such study and application in in sermons and visits with people to open Scripture to anyone who wants to grow in their faith. He never avoids the hard questions concerning the texts, and yet tackles them in such a way as to restore confidence in God's word. Here, he is concerned with what the text meant to those who first wrote it and heard it so he can deliver the same goods to us today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: 1517 Publishing
• Release date: Nov 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781945978807

Book preview

Matthew Chapter 1

1–17 The Savior’s Genealogy

Matthew begins with the genealogy of Jesus. He gives it a superscription that could be a superscription for the whole gospel: Jesus Christ, David’s Son, Abraham’s Son. There is more to the word Christ than we normally consider. Christ is Greek and means the anointed. It is a translation of the Hebrew Messiah. What Matthew wants to say first of all is that this Jesus who he will now describe is the promised Messiah. He writes for Jews, and he comes to describe how this Jesus, who was crucified, really was the Messiah that God had promised to send and for whom his people waited centuries. The Messiah would be born of David’s descendants. This Jesus was of David’s lineage (David’s son as the Jews said). Thus, he was also Abraham’s son and heir to all the promises that God had given to Israel’s patriarchs.

Then the genealogy follows. It is Joseph’s genealogy that Matthew gives us, though he tells us in the same breath that Joseph was only the foster father of Jesus. There was nothing unreasonable about this for a Jew. From the time Joseph took the boy Jesus in as his son, he belonged to Joseph’s descendants with everything that could mean. Jesus was thus a legitimate heir to all the promises that God had given to David and his house.

We might wonder why a craftsman like Joseph would have been so careful about his ancestors. But among the Jews, this was not so unusual. There are a number of places in the Old Testament where how one should transfer family records is detailed. It could be important to have them in order. Upon the return from Babel (Babylon), there were people of a priestly line who sought after their family records but could not find them. The consequence was that they were excluded from the priesthood as unclean (Ezra 2:62).

Luke also gives genealogy, but it looks completely different. How one has sought to explain this fact is described in the commentary on the third chapter of Luke. Here we only say that Matthew had access to a genealogy that apparently told him a few essential things.

First, he, or someone who studied this genealogy before him, has noticed that it can be divided into three parts, each of which contains fourteen generations. The three parts correspond to three main stages in Israel’s history: the first period up to David, then the period of the royal dynasty, and finally, the time of distress during and after the Babylonian captivity. Matthew, or someone before him, became attached to the number fourteen. It is a double seven number, and seven was the holy number that the Jews found in so much of God’s work. Whoever discovered that one could count three periods consisting of two times seven generations here had apparently seen God’s hand in this. He believed that here God showed that he had shaped this history.

In the genealogy we have before us, the last group only has thirteen generations. This is because King Jehoiakim has fallen off. He reigned before Jechoniah and was carried off to Babylon. That he has fallen off can be easily explained as a copy mistake. Jechoniah is Joachin in Hebrew, which is easy to confuse with Joachim. The confusion assumes, or perhaps we can say shows, that this genealogy must have been submitted in Hebrew. ¹

All the names in this genealogy from Abraham up to Zerubbabel are found in the Old Testament. It can be hard for us to recognize them because we have them from their Greek forms. Isai has become Jessie, Rehabeam is called Rehoboam, Hiskia is called Hezekiah, etc.

Thus, it is the old line of Kings that appears in the second part. Meanwhile, three generations have been skipped. This could also be explained with a copyist mistake that hopped from one name to another that looked quite similar. ²

Meanwhile, the genealogy we have before us is not at all normal. Contrary to good custom, someone added the names of three women to the first part. These were the great grandmothers of Jesus: Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth. To this is added the wife of Uriah. Rahab was a harlot. Tamar was an unwed mother. Uriah’s wife was an adulteress. Ruth was a Moabite and belonged to a people that the Israelites were not to mix with. These were the kind of women that would receive the upturned noses of the pious and modest. Why have they been included? Certainly, one reason was to show that the Messiah really was born into a family of sinners. This is also said with the names of his royal forefathers. Seven of them are mentioned in scripture with the understanding that they did evil in the eyes of the Lord. There may have been another reason for incorporating these women, namely that the Jews spoke ill of Mary and had circulated evil rumors. The Messiah could not be born of such a woman! This genealogy gives the answer: The Messiah is actually born into a sinful family. Otherwise, he would not be a descendant of David. The old royal house had all these blemishes in its genealogy. But Matthew now adds, with the birth of the Messiah, things went another way. He will describe that now.

18–25 The Birth Of The Savior

Among the Jews, engagement was a solemn act with legally binding consequences, the same as a wedding among us (or betrothal in ancient times). This could be the motivation to use the word betrothal here. After the betrothal, one spoke of man and wife, though the woman still lived with her parents. The wedding consisted in that the man took his wife with him, so that they built their own home and lived together. If the man died during the betrothal, the woman was considered a widow. It was adultery if a betrothed woman gave herself to another. There could be strict punishments and, in any case, disgrace. Joseph wanted to shield his betrothed from this and even thought of arranging a divorce quietly. He then sees an angel in a dream, and the angel tells him that Mary is innocent and that the child that she carries has been conceived in a manner like no other child in the world. Therefore, Joseph shall take his wife and give the child the name Jesus because this Jesus shall save his people from their sins. This sentence does not quite make sense in English (or Greek). But it does in Hebrew or Aramaic. The name Jesus (the same name as the Old Testament name of Joshua) means the Lord saves. A name means more to the Jews than it does to us. It often contained a confession or a motto. Names were thought to be bearers of a person’s inner being. There was both a proclamation and a promise from God in the name Jesus.

There is also a particular meaning in the words save his people from their sins. That the Messiah would save his people was common Jewish belief. But he would do it by freeing them through defeating their enemies. The angel’s word gives another picture of the Messiah; the picture that Matthew comes to show in his gospel. It is the picture of the suffering Savior. He is the one who is persecuted and rejected, but it is precisely in this way that he wins the forgiveness of sins for his people.

All this happened, Matthew says, so that the word of scripture would be fulfilled, and then he cites the word of Isaiah about the virgin, who would bear a son (Isaiah 7:14). He cites it according to a Greek translation that was commonly used among the Jews (that which is called the Septuagint). In the Hebrew text, a word is used for virgin that can mean both virgin and young woman. Our contemporary church Bible translates the word with young woman in Isaiah but says virgin in this place as the then-current Greek translation did.

In what follows, we will encounter time and time again in Mathew the thought that the scriptures (also known as the Old Testament) receive their fulfillment in Christ. Matthew often uses it as a way to cite and interpret scripture that can seem a hard haul for us. But this manner of reading and explaining the scripture was commonly accepted at the time. While modern scientific method regards it as obvious that one should try to determine what the authors of the Bible originally meant with their utterances, the Jews, and Jesus also, were convinced that there was more to the biblical word than the meaning that the word might have had in a particular historical situation. One was really convinced that God spoke through these words and that he hid an inexhaustible wealth within them that one could access through diligent study. To explore the scriptures means to compare one place with another, to take heed of the great context of scripture, and to find allusions and references to that which happened both before and after. One immersed himself in all the particulars of the text. One considered pronunciation as he learned it, the written text (that consisted of consonants without vowels), and took account of alternate pronunciation as well as new meanings.

Here we have an example of this manner of reading. Isaiah says that the virgin’s son shall be called Emmanuel. Now Matthew says that this has been fulfilled by Mary naming her son Jesus. This conclusion has no meaning if it is not clear to one that both of these names say the same thing, or rather that God has said the same thing in both cases. That The Lord Saves really means that God is with us. This God, who ought to be against us, shows that he makes our forsaken cause his own when he sends us his son as a Savior. He comes to us and will never again abandon us. This thought permeates all of Matthew’s Gospel up to the very last verse: See, I am with you always until the end of time.

Naturally, one could ask: How could Matthew know what he reports concerning the birth of Jesus? It goes against everything that we would otherwise believe. So it is understandable that some would like to explain it away as pious legend. Fifty years ago, it was common to claim that the legend of Jesus’ supernatural birth arose from the Hellenistic world. Among the Greeks there are many myths concerning the sons of gods who lived on earth. It was not strange if one came to attribute similar thoughts to Jesus. But this theory does not hold. It can be shown that the record of the birth of Jesus (as we have them in the first two chapters of Matthew and another version in Luke) must have had their origin among people who thought and spoke Aramaic and knew the Hebrew Bible. They had to have originated in Jewish lands, either in Palestine or Syria. But then this puts the question in a completely different context. For a Jew it was not at all natural but actually offensive to think that the Messiah would have been born in such a manner. Among the Jewish Christians in Palestine and Syria, the mother church in Jerusalem had a completely dominating position up until the year 70 when the city was destroyed. In the early church, Jesus’s own brother James was the leading figure until his death (around the year 62). Relatives of Jesus were found among the Christians in Palestine until at least the year 130. So, it would seem unlikely that these Jewish Christian circles would have been able to author legends that their leaders knew were baseless. Therefore, of course, it becomes conceivable if one figures that within the early church, there were preserved stories that went back to those closest to Jesus. What Matthew speaks of is the course of events as it would have been described by Joseph, while the other version we have in Luke gives us the events as they would have been perceived from Mary’s point of view.

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1. This is not quite as big a problem in the ESV and other English translations as the names have largely taken on the same form here as they have taken in the translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew, it is however a problem inherent to the Greek and Hebrew texts.

2. Though copyist mistakes are a possible explanation, and Bo Giertz was not afraid to mention their possibility, there are other explanations for such seeming discrepancies, that may have actually been intentional. Bo Giertz often avoids arguing by conceding points he sees unessential to historicity and reliability of the text so he can concentrate on what the text means to communicate.

Matthew Chapter 2

1–12 The Wise Men

To many modern people, the story of the wise men reads like a saga. The innocent and solemn style contributes to this impression.

But the world of antiquity was different than ours, and similar things have happened in history. In 66 A.D., King Tiridates of Armenia, thus from an Eastern land, came to Rome to praise Caesar Nero, and he undertook the trip based on some revelation in the stars.

People of antiquity possessed an immense interest in the starry sky and the course of the planets. The wise men were astrologers (magi in Greek). Astrologers were at the same time both astronomers and astrologers. They observed the starry skies, and they believed they could interpret them as signs.

People have tried to figure out if at that time there could have been some occasional constellation that occurred in the heavens, and Kepler (who died in 1630) found that in the year 7 B.C., there was an extremely rare meeting between Jupiter and Saturn in the constellation Pisces. Christ was born seven years before Christ. Our yearly count—which comes to us from the sixth century—is based upon an incorrect calculation of the year of Christ’s birth. So now a cuneiform tablet has also been found at an archeological dig in Sippar (a city on the Euphrates that was a center for astrology) with a calendar for the year 7 B.C. that prophesies precisely this unusual constellation and gives the dates for it (it occurred many times during the year). We also have—approximately—found out what the position of the planets was considered to mean. Jupiter stood for a world leader; Saturn, for Palestine; and the constellation Pisces was connected with the world’s longest age. This would have been good enough reason for any of the learned in the east to travel to Palestine.

It was said by these astrologers that they saw the new king’s star on the rise. One has wondered concerning the meaning of the words (in our present Bible translation, they translate it to say in the east—rather wrongly). The word could have something to do with the appearance of a new star. It could also mean a planet that ascends to complete that which the astrologers so noticeably meant when two planets merge and shine twice as bright. Naturally, all of this is speculation. Yet, in any case, it shows that the narration falls within the limits of that which is entirely comprehensible.

Thus, King Herod’s reaction is understandable. Herod lived in perpetual fear of uprising. To him, a messiah meant a rival for the throne, an enemy that must be moved out of the way. But it had to happen discretely. Anything could happen if the people found out that he killed their Messiah.

Matthew apparently wants to say that the star that rose in the Eastern Lands began to shine again when the wise men traveled south of Jerusalem to come to Bethlehem (a road less than six miles). This would support the speculation that the great constellation appeared repeatedly during the year 7 B.C. But one might restrain oneself with such explanations. Matthew certainly means that it was an intervention of God that the star appeared again as they went on the way. And for a Christian, it is clear that not everything that happened during the life of Jesus must be demonstrated to have happened in another context. The appearance of Jesus is unique in history.

The folk fantasy has broadened beyond this story. The three astrologers have become kings, and their gifts have become princely gifts. It is more realistic when an early church father says that they opened their knapsacks and took out their gifts. At the time, wise men were hardly richer than current academics.

In any case, what this story meant to Matthew is clear: The Messiah whom the Jews rejected was praised by the gentiles. To praise means to bend the knee and fall down before a lord and so acknowledge his power. The word can also mean to worship God. And apparently, Matthew wants to say that these wise men actually worshiped the Savior of the world. The Jews, who had the scriptures and could therefore immediately say that the Messiah would be born, were the ones who were blind and hardened. But the gentiles, that had only seen a little glimpse of God’s light in creation, understood and they came to Christ.

13–15 The Flight to Egypt

Matthew gives us a picture of King Herod and the conditions of his day that agree completely with other sources. Herod was a dictator, ruthless with his authority, which he kept with the help of spies and terror. There were many who fled, and Egypt was the common place of refuge, especially if one lived near the southern border of Palestine.

Herod died just before the Passover in the year 4 A.D. Thus, Joseph’s sojourn could have been for around three years. It is not mentioned in any other place in the New Testament, but it looks as if the opponents of Jesus heard talk of it. They assert, according to an old Jewish source, that Jesus had learned the black arts of Egypt. This was how his enemies explained his miracles. Thus, they seem to have picked up on some rumor about Jesus visiting Egypt when he was young, though they could not have gotten this knowledge from Matthew, who assumes that he returned as a young boy.

Once again, Matthew sees the fulfillment of God’s plans as they were revealed in scripture. He cites the prophet Hosea, this time according to the Hebrew text, not the Septuagint. The prophet’s words deal with Israel, whom God calls my Son. Naturally, Matthew knew this. But as a pious Jew, he believed that in the story of Israel’s destiny, God had weaved in a picture of that which would happen to God’s people in the future. When the Messiah came, something would happen that repeated and fulfilled what God had done with the fathers. The future work of God was hinted at and depicted in that which he had done before.

16–18 The Infanticide In Bethlehem

Herod’s rule was full of brutal bloodshed. His suspiciousness grew with the years. Three of his own sons fell victim to it, and even upon his deathbed, he planned a bloodbath for the land’s leading families (something that was thwarted by his death). The ill deeds in Bethlehem are not mentioned in any other sources but are completely in line with what we otherwise know about his sick fear of all that could threaten his power, and his absolute ruthlessness when it came to maintaining it.

Once again, Matthew has found an Old Testament prophecy, and again we can see how one thought concerning the scriptures. One was convinced that the word of scripture, aside from the immediate meaning it had in the situation in which the words were spoken, had another meaning (or many others) and were directed to the people in coming ages who would recognize themselves in them. Matthew cites a word from Jeremiah, where Rachel weeps because the enemies have murdered her children. She does this as a matriarch. She had been dead for centuries before the destruction of Jerusalem that Jeremiah speaks about. Rama, where the cry is heard, lies to the north of Jerusalem. But the prophecy brought to mind the thought of Bethlehem because Rachel’s grave was visible just outside that city. When the children were murdered in Bethlehem, the prophecy received new reality. It could be applied to the events of the day. And for a pious Jew, it was clear that this was God’s purpose, that his word would have such application at the time of the Messiah. Here one could see what God meant by that which happened. Among other things, one could see that the enemies, even for all their bloody deeds, could not hinder God from carrying out his plans. Perhaps Matthew wanted people to remember the rest of Jeremiah, where the Lord promises to comfort those who mourn and says: your work shall have its reward. The children in Bethlehem died so that the Messiah would live and give life to the dead.

19–23 The Road To Galilee

Matthew carries the story along in the same style as the Old Testament, with the same twists that are repeated time after time.

Thus, at God’s command, Joseph returns to his land but does not dare to settle in Judea. Archelaus, a tyrant of the worst sort, ruled there. He ruled so violently that the Romans deposed him after nine years. Instead, Joseph continued to Galilee (where another one of Herod’s sons was prince) and settled in Nazareth. Matthew does not mention anything about Joseph and Mary having lived there earlier, something that Luke, as is known, has much to tell us. One can think of many explanations about the matter, but they are and remain only guesses. We stand here before one of the many points where the source’s scanty information does not give us a picture that is clear and unambiguous.

The people of Jerusalem and Judea considered Galilee to be a backwater, where the people were unreliably mixed and had a strange dialect. The people in Nazareth had a bad reputation. There was something condescending about Jesus being called a Nazarene. But Matthew says that this was the meaning. This was precisely the name he was supposed to have according to the prophets. What Matthew points to is unclear. It is possible that he is thinking about Isaiah (11:1) concerning the shoot from Jessie’s root. In Hebrew, shoot is neser. Every Hebrew word root normally consists of three consonants that then bend into all sorts of different forms and derivatives. These three consonants are called radicals and have a fundamental meaning for the Semitic language. The three radicals NSR in neser can also form the Hebrew word for Nazarene. For the Jews, it was natural to see a connection here. Thus, the nickname Nazarene hid the word shoot, which was a description of the Messiah. There was also a parallel, namely with the word nasir, a man of God like Samson who received the commission to save Israel. But this only fits if a man writes the word in a Greek way.

Matthew Chapter 3

1–12 John The Baptist

So far, what Matthew has said belongs to the subject matter peculiar to his gospel—the things he alone mentions. The contents of the first two chapters may have come from sources and sages in their Jewish environment. Now he begins to draw from the paradosis (the inherited knowledge) that was the church’s common possession. One of these solid, oral traditions had already been recorded. In all likelihood, Matthew knew of Mark’s Gospel. What Mark has to say about the Baptist is also found in Matthew, partially written in the same words. But he has more to say, and this is also found for the most part in Luke. As has already been said, he had access to one or more records, which, for the most part, contained the words of Jesus and were mostly identical. There is, as we also mentioned in the introduction, reason to believe that the apostle Matthew made such a collection and that this was incorporated into the gospel that was given his name. Whoever finally wrote the gospel as we now have it used these sources and all the personal knowledge he acquired during his many years as a leader in the congregation and as a participant in the divine service where this paradosis was perpetually repeated and inculcated.

That the evangelist uses what he heard, or what he himself read, in the divine service is noticeable already in his manner of saying: at that time… (or literally in those days). Even today, many of the readings begin this way during the high mass. Naturally, Matthew does not mean that the Baptist stepped forth at the time when Joseph journeyed to Nazareth. He just repeated the words that he had so often heard said.

The Baptist awakened an unfathomable attention with his preaching. Even Josephus, the great Jewish historian, who as a youth was a contemporary of the apostles, tells about the event. John stepped forth in the Judean desert (literally: Judea’s Wasteland), the rocky desert east of Jerusalem that sloped down to the Jordan valley and then crossed into the same barren slopes where Jericho lies like an oasis. He lived as a hermit, ate what was found in the wasteland, and wore the same clothes the prophet Elijah once wore. His message was as attention-grabbing as possible: The Messiah is coming now. Make yourselves ready to meet him, the kingdom of heaven is near!

The kingdom of heaven means the same thing as the kingdom of God. As a good Jew, Matthew avoided using the name of God and would rather use some paraphrase. God’s kingdom was the coming dominion that God would establish when he made all things new through his Messiah. As a preparation, John now preaches repentance. The Hebrew word for repentance has the same basic meaning as the Swedish (also the English): to make an about-face. In Greek a person would say metanoia, which literally means change of mind or a new manner of thinking. In Swedish, we also use the word betterment, ¹ but then we might be reminded that it does not mean to be better so that one begins to live more morally but to change the whole of his direction in life and turn his heart completely to God.

John baptized. Baptisms and ritual ablutions were well known among the Jews. But there was something peculiar with John’s baptism. It was a preparation to meet the Messiah. One confessed his sins and joined with those who now waited for God’s great intervention. For Matthew and all Christians, it was obvious that this great intervention of God then came through Jesus Christ, and that John had been sent by God to prepare the way for Jesus.

There was an immense flow of people to John. From Jerusalem, it is just over a day’s journey down to the Jordan. Among those who crowded around the Baptist were also many of the Pharisees and Sadducees. The Pharisees were the strict and pious in the land; they took particular care with the Law. They belonged to a movement that had its roots in the great awakening of the people that had renewed Israel almost 200 years before, during a time of martyrdom when Judaism was threatened with eradication, and the Maccabees organized resistance among the people. The Sadducees constituted an antithesis. They were the cultured Jews who adapted to the times, wealthy, cool in the faith, and gifted with the highest office in the Temple and the great council.

They received a harsh reception from the Baptist. His sermon on repentance was radical. Like the prophets, he rejected all the claims to be the chosen people if they were not matched by obedience to God and faithfulness to the Lord. His proclamation about the Messiah did not fit with the popular hopes for a utopia for all Jews with victory over and judgment on Israel’s enemies. Instead, it would be a judgment for all, even for Israel. Therefore, it called for repentance. When the Messiah came, he would be like the farmer who went out to the threshing floor on a summer day when all the harvest is threshed by oxen and lays there as drifts of chaff and crumbled straw. When the offshore wind begins to blow, the farmer throws his seed to the heavens. The wind takes the chaff and stubble, but the grain falls down into a heap that is tossed again and becomes purer and purer until it is finally ready to be added to the cereal bin. But the chaff is burned up. And here, the idyllic scene is changed from the picture of seed being tossed in glittering clouds of gold against a blue sky in the summer to a scene of judgment illuminated by flames from the fire that never goes out.

13–17 The Baptism Of Jesus

Then, Jesus comes. This is how it literally reads in Matthew. He likes to begin new sections with a then (a stylistic feature that this translator seeks to preserve), and he often sets the verb in the present tense (the form indicating contemporary action), as we also do when we make a story lively and engaging. The difference is that Matthew changes between verb forms for present and past, which we do not like to do (this is a stylistic feature that can hardly be translated in Swedish [or English]).

Thus, Jesus has come journeying from Galilee to be baptized. But John hesitates. He has before him the man who can give the real baptism. He is the one who baptizes with the Spirit and fire, and who comes with the salvation and judgment to which John could only point forward. Then Jesus says that they must fulfill all righteousness. Through Jesus, everything would be fulfilled and completed, even the law and righteousness. He would fulfill everything in obedience to God, but he would also take upon himself all that the people had broken. Therefore, he would now be baptized with the baptism of repentance, just like any other sinner. If one takes the meaning of his words in this way, then his baptism becomes an ordination to his work of giving his life for the redemption of many (20:28).

That the baptism of Jesus should be considered a consecration to his work as the Messiah and Savior is shown in the following. When he comes up out of the water, the heavens open. Some manuscripts add for him and apparently have the same conception of the story as the other gospels: This was something Jesus saw and heard. There was confirmation that he was the one who would come, he who possessed the Holy Spirit. The voice from the heavens contains an obvious reference to one of the great prophets (Isaiah 42:1): Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him. The Messiah is thus a servant, a suffering servant of the Lord, who will atone for that which is broken (Isaiah 53). He is God’s beloved Son, and for just this reason, he is able to give his life for the world.

Thus, the baptism of Jesus is a consecration. Therefore, there is nothing in the New Testament that equates the baptism of Jesus with the baptism he would later institute, namely Christian baptism.

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1. Bättring, This word means both repentance and to become better which is why Bo Giertz has to explain the difference here.

Matthew Chapter 4

1–11 Jesus Is Tempted

After his baptism, Jesus was led up into the wilderness. The path literally goes up. The wilderness is the mountainous desert that towers like a wall of cliffs just west of the Jordan valley. He was led there by the Spirit, thus, according to God’s will. It belonged to his task that he should now meet the Tempter.

How can one know anything about what happened up there while he was alone? Even Luke talks about the three temptations. Mark makes short shrift of the same event. The temptation belonged to the apostolic message of Jesus, and it is easy to believe that Jesus himself told his disciples about his temptation. That Jesus had really been tempted in all things like us (Hebrews 4:15) was known in the early church. And these temptations deal with precisely that which would be real for him who was something more than a common man. It is told in a manner that is artful and realistic. The whole time it deals with real temptations that become vivid, and at the same time, the question of whether it is touching upon an external or internal experience is left open. It belongs to the essence of the Tempter that he can use our fantasies to show us real possibilities that lay before us and which force us to decide.

The first temptation is whether God’s Son should use his power for his own benefit (which, of course, would not have violated anyone else’s rights.) Jesus had fasted for a long time, and he was hungry. But he deflects the Tempter’s attack with a word from scripture (from Deuteronomy), which says that the most urgent thing in life is not daily bread but God’s plan and God’s will, which he reveals in his word. And the Son of Man has not come to be served but to serve (20:28). The power he had was for the benefit of others, not for himself.

The next time the Tempter makes this attempt with the word of God. He takes Jesus (in thought?) to the pinnacle of the temple. Perhaps, the dizzying high wall against the Kidron Valley, that looked like a tower to the crowds below. This time it is a miracle of legitimation, one such as the Jews demanded over and over again in order to believe. In the 91st Psalm (that can be summarized as a Psalm about the Messiah), it was written that God’s angels should carry him in their hands. Jesus answers with another word from scripture, again from Deuteronomy. It is to tempt God when one demands his protection without being obedient to him. True faith could not be awakened by impressing people in such a manner.

Then comes the last temptation. Again the scene is truly Palestinian: the high vista where the eye sweeps over the vast expanses like that which is seen from the mountaintops along the Jordan Valley, or perhaps even from the top of Mount Hermon where with the naked eye one can see an area approximately as great as the lands in the maps of Palestine inhabiting our Bibles (though offset by ten miles to the north.) No fantasy is needed to conceive of what lies beyond the horizon. In a world that remembered Alexander the Great well, and had seen the Roman Empire grow, thoughts of world domination were alive. That the Messiah would establish something in this manner was precisely what many Jews believed and taught. But Jesus rejects this thought as satanic. His kingdom was not of this world.

12–17 Jesus Debuts In Galilee

So, something profound and disruptive happens. John is arrested because he criticized his prince’s lifestyle. The awakening lost its leader. He is suspected of being an enemy of the state. Jesus then returns to Galilee but leaves his childhood home of Nazareth up in the mountains and goes down to Capernaum by the Sea of Galilee (30 kilometers away as the crow flies but with a difference in elevation of 700 meters).

In ancient times this area had been the tribal lands of Zebulun and Naphtali (the common Greek forms of the names are used here: Sabulon and Neftalim.) The tribes had long since been carried off and disappeared within the kingdom of Assyria. Heathens had taken possession of the land. Then there was a new influx of Jews. In Jerusalem one looked at the mixed population of the north with a certain amount of skepticism. But Isaiah had prophesied concerning these tracts, and Matthew cites it. This is the same prophecy that we hear in the Christmas Epistle, a prophecy concerning the Messiah. Matthew also concludes that this is the fulfillment of that prophecy. It is included in God’s plan that the Messiah would first appear up here in Galilee.

So, Jesus begins to preach. His message was linked directly to what John had said: the kingdom of heaven is near. Now in this time, something decisive would happen. God would intervene and realize that for which Israel had waited so long. For this, his people should now return to their God.

18–22 The First Disciples

Right from the beginning, Jesus called disciples. Rabbis also surrounded themselves with disciples. Such a disciple would follow his master and be instructed by him so that he could repeat what his master said and spread it further. Jesus also pointed to something that demanded continuation right from the beginning.

The scene is painted realistically and vividly. Simon and Andrew fish with throw nets. These are circular and equipped with sinkers on the outer edges. They are thrown out over the surface of the water so that they unfold like a parachute. If thrown right, they fall upon the catch, the fish that can be seen in the shallow water. Jacob and John sit there in their boat and mending their nets that would be placed or drawn through deeper water.

When Jesus calls, he has only one demand: the disciples shall follow him. They shall be willing to hear and learn. Jesus’ disciple does not need to know or believe more than that; he considers it worthwhile to listen to Jesus.

But in this case, the call means something more than merely being a disciple. Jesus had many disciples. But from them, he would later choose twelve for a particular commission, a task for the rest of their lives, that which we call an office in the church. He points to it with the words: I shall make you fishers of men. They should be sent out with the kingdom of heaven’s net, which should be laid out in the sea of people and gather together all types of fish.

23–25 The First Time

This little section is really a superscription with a summary of that which follows. While Mark begins his description of what happens with some typical episode from the first days of Jesus in Capernaum, Mathew normally orders the contents so that he first gives an overview of Jesus’s proclamation (chap. 5–7) and then of his works (chap. 8–9). As an introduction, he first summarizes that Jesus wandered about Galilee. He preached the gospel of the kingdom in their synagogues. The divine service in the synagogue was a lay-led service (the Priesthood did their service in the Temple in Jerusalem). It was the scribes that were responsible for instruction and explained the scriptures. As a layman knowledgeable in the scriptures, Jesus had the right to speak in the synagogue.

But he also healed the sick. As we shall see, this was part of the gospel of the kingdom of heaven. That Jesus carried out works that slapped everyone with amazement is shown in the reaction of his enemies (even the Jewish sources witness to this reaction). They could not deny the facts. They were forced to find a different explanation than that God looked to his people, and so they accused him of being a black magus in cahoots with powerful and evil spirits.

Among the sick are also named lunatics. The Greek word refers to someone made sick by the moon’s influence and points to those who had episodes that disappeared and came again. People associated these episodes with the cycles of the moon. The same old notion is behind the English word for insanity: lunatic.

Matthew describes the immense inlet of people. They did not only come from Galilee and Judea but also from the lands beyond the Jordan and from the Decapolis (the land southeast of the Sea of Galilee.)

Matthew Chapter 5

1–2 Jesus Preaches on the Mountain

So Matthew begins with a summary of Jesus’ instruction. He gives us a model example of both what Jesus said and what would happen as he instructed. Jesus went up on a mountain. The mountain is the highland that rises around the Sea of Galilee like a wreath of dominating heights. First, there was the beach and then the mountain slopes with their grain fields. Then came the boulders and ridges where sheep graze between the stones. Large crowds could gather there without trampling the seed, and a person can speak there clearly and be heard out over the crowds.

In the Middle East, it is common for a speaker to sit when he instructs or lectures. So, Jesus sits down too. His disciples gather close around him. Here, Matthew uses the word disciple for the first time and also mentions that Jesus had already gathered a large crowd of disciples, in the same manner as the rabbis. And when it says that he gave them instruction, one can assume that it happened in the manner that was obvious to all disciples in Israel: the disciples would repeat and inculcate the Master’s words until they had memorized it.

3–12 The Beatitudes

The beatitudes are not a catalog of Christian virtues in terms of endeavors. Rather they are a proclamation, an intervention of God. They contain the promise of God’s kingdom, a promise that is given to a gathering of people who live in affliction and have a hard time believing that they are children of the kingdom.

It is to this particular group that Jesus turns, people who actually lived in his environs. When he calls them poor, he uses an expression that was already known from the Old Testament. It indicated pious people for the most part, the poor little people who loved the scriptures and the divine service (the structured worship service of the synagogue). They took God’s law seriously, and it was precisely for that reason that they were so aware of how far they came up short. Socially they were often oppressed and neglected. Left out and powerless as they were, they had learned to depend on God for everything. They were the quiet in the land (Ps.35:20), those who waited for the consolation of Israel and for the redemption of Jerusalem (Luke 2:25, 38). They were well acquainted with scripture. They knew the promise of the Messiah and lived in the hope of God’s great intervention.

Matthew calls them poor in spirit while Luke simply says poor (6:20) because we have two different ways of translating the same Aramaic word. Matthew desires to emphasize that their poverty is not only of material things. They also felt poor in spiritual applications. This is what separated them from Pharisees. Their piety had not made them sure and satisfied, but poor and small. We, too, talk about spiritual poverty concerning people who have taken God’s demands with the fullest seriousness and really want to live as Christians, but who for this very reason see how much they lack.

Now Jesus also says that God’s kingdom is for precisely such as these. This is the gospel. God comes to them. God makes it possible for them to be his children. God receives them in the kingdom. Jesus himself stands here as God’s envoy, who promises them all this on God’s behalf. Yet the kingdom is hidden, but it comes, and it comes quickly.

All the other beatitudes are variations of the same promise to the poor people. They mourn over all injustice, both that which happens in the world and that which is found in their own hearts. When they are called meek, the meaning is approximately the same as in the first beatitude. The poor are humble, peaceful. They do not assert themselves in protests of power but have laid the matter in God’s hands. They hunger and thirst for righteousness, thus for God to prevail out in the world and in their hearts. They are pure in heart, which means that their hearts lie open before God, without reservation and without trying to cheat and hide anything away. They enact peace because they do not assert themselves. They do not fight for prestige and money but would rather suffer injustice. They forgive and smooth out conflicts. They suffer persecution and are resented precisely because they seek God and his righteousness.

Thus, it is these poor and despised that God now receives in his kingdom. In his kingdom, they are comforted, they are satisfied, and they get to see God. They are God’s happy children. When the world is judged, they are met by mercy. They are sons of God as it is actually written in the seventh beatitude. They are included in the ranks of the heavenly beings that serve and praise God.

So it is that this kingdom is something that comes on the one day when God makes all things new. But it shines through that it is already a reality here, though one cannot yet see it with their eyes. God comes with comfort and mercy, even in the here and now. Perhaps Jesus also means that even here on earth, God’s dominion is seen when God intervenes. The expression they shall inherit the earth can be interpreted this way.

One ought to notice how obvious it is for Jesus that they who believe the gospel will suffer persecution. It happened to the prophets. So, it has always been with God’s poor, and so it will remain. Throughout the whole New Testament, persecution is something that one must normally deal with. It is a sign that one is on the right path.

The reward in heaven is what is called a reward of grace. It is not a reimbursement or a payment that one has a right too. It is God’s gift, and as undeserved as all the other rewards that God promises a person.

13–16 Salt And Light

You are the salt of the earth. This too is a description of the children of the kingdom. Where Jesus is received, the people become salt. Without salt, food becomes insipid and spoiled. The salt preserves it from putrefaction. The disciples have the same function in the world. In this fact, there lies an admonishment: If salt loses its saltiness, then one throws it out on the village street, the refuse dump for the Middle East. Perhaps Jesus means this as an unreasonable adaptation. Salt cannot quit being salt. So, it ought to be just as absurd that a Christian should lose his spiritual saltiness. Here it is not a question of blatant apostasy, but of a process that makes the disciples so like the world that no one sees that they are any different than anyone else any longer. Then he is worthless and thrown out of consideration.

The picture of the world’s light says something of the same thing. Again, it is a question of a fact: The disciples are the light of the world. One cannot dim a city that sits on a hill. On the slopes behind Capernaum this was something a person could see with one’s own eyes. On the other side of the lake, somewhere between twelve and eighteen miles ¹ away were the Greek cities of Hippos and Gadara with their temples and colonnades high up on the horizon. At dawn, their silhouettes were seen, and in the evening they shined like gold in the sunset. So, God has set his church in the world. The disciples cannot hide their faith. That would be like tending an oil lamp and then putting it under a basket (the bushel one measured flour with). Then it is extinguished. Instead, one secures it to the candelabra, in which one could put the oil lamp or hang it up with a chain. Then it lights up the whole house. Jesus proceeds from the fact that a house had only one room, as was often the case for his poor compatriots.

The light that Jesus speaks about is not some human endowment or goodness. It is the radiance of God’s goodness. Jesus himself is the light of the world (John 8:12). They who belong to him are light in the Lord (Eph 5:8). It is this light that cannot be hidden away. Then it is extinguished. But where it shines, people will see that there are good works. And what is more: they notice wherefrom they come, and they praise God for them.

17–20 Jesus And The Law.

In daily parlance, the law and the prophets meant the whole of the Old Testament. Now Jesus says that they should not believe that he comes to rescind anything written in the scriptures. It retains its validity even to the smallest letter (Jesus says yod which was the smallest among the Hebrew letters and mentions the stroke that characterized them).

This can now allow some contradiction. It is obvious that Jesus rescinded the Sabbath commandment and taught people so. He did not follow all the prescriptions concerning clean and unclean. And here in the sermon on the Mount, he gives an immediate exposition of the law that changes and sharpens what Moses had taught. The explanation of this lies in Jesus’s own word. He has not come to rescind but fulfill. To fulfill here means to complete and give emphasis to that which is the law’s true meaning and point. The whole Old Testament was a foreshadowing and a prophecy that pointed to the future. Everything, even the law, had a deeper meaning that would be revealed when the Messiah stepped forth. When the Messiah fulfilled everything he also gave the correct interpretation of the law’s contents. At the same time, he laid a different foundation for salvation than the law. It is through faith in the Messiah that one becomes a child of God. But the demands of the law remain. Jesus does not open the way to God by striking out the demand so that the requirement can be fulfilled with a little goodwill. On the contrary, he sharpens the demand. The new that has come with him is not a modernization of the law, adapted to our abilities. But it is a new way to God, through faith in Christ. Therefore, Jesus can say that the strictest righteousness that was known at the time—that of the scribes and the pharisees—was not enough. In all its strictness, it was still a fudging. It changed God’s demand into a summary paragraph that really was difficult, and yet to some degree still achievable. But God’s demand is greater. It is that which Jesus now shows with a series of examples.

21–26 Murder, Anger And Enmity

You shall not murder was one of the Ten Commandments in God’s law. The Jews applied it to the outer deed, and in Moses’ law, there were conditions set for how a murderer should be judged. Now, Jesus says that the sin lies just as much in the heart as in the deed. Just being angry with your brother is already a sin. That is, it also falls under judgment. Some infractions were penalized by the local seat of justice, and there were more significant offenses that had to be taken up by the great council in Jerusalem. Now the meaning of what Jesus said is that he who is angry and reviles another makes himself guilty of something that is just as worthy of punishment. Even the wrath ought to be punished by the seat of justice. He who says you idiot (in Hebrew Raka, a term of abuse that does not seem to have been among the worst, comparable in style to you ass) deserves to come before the great council. Naturally, this is not a recommendation for civil law. It is the way Jesus explains how serious such sins are. Jesus means that it is before God that we are guilty, and we answer to his seat of justice. His three examples show this. If someone calls his brother a fool (which for the Jews of the time meant that he was godless), he is worthy of being thrown into Gehenna.

This is why it is so important to be reconciled if one knows that he has enmity with another. It does not do to come with a sacrificial gift to God if one does not want to be reconciled with his brother. When Jesus said this, the temple service remained, and it was obvious to his audience that one should bring his offerings there. But the word also means the sacrifice of prayer or the sacrifice of one’s self. Neither can the offering be brought forward by those who do not want to be reconciled. Intransigence closes the path to God, here in time and on the Day of Judgment. Still, we are on the way, and this means to reconcile yourself immediately. When judgment comes it is too late. To then have a counterpart that does not want to forgive means that one has an accuser who will turn them over to the judge. Then they end up in prison. Then it is too late. No one can pay his debt to the last penny.

27–30 Adultery

Then follows the next point where Jesus fulfills the law and shows its deepest meaning. God’s Son speaks again. Only he has authority to say, But I say to you and go beyond what God has already said in his word. And again, we see that Jesus does not abolish the law, but on the contrary, intensifies it. This does not only mean external works but even the innermost desires of the heart. And here it is serious. It is better to sacrifice that which one thinks is a piece of himself than to be altogether lost. There really is something of ourselves that does not come from God. One cannot affirm this. It does not do to just fulfill yourself and to be yourself. We are to fulfill God’s purpose for the life we received. And this purpose is laid out clearly in God’s Law.

Gehenna was the name of a valley outside of Jerusalem’s southern city wall. During the period of decline before the destruction of Jerusalem, there had been altars to Moloch built there where children were sacrifice and consumed by fire. So the place was hated, and the name came to describe the location where the unbelievers ended up after judgment. That Jesus thinks that there is such a place is revealed in a series of verses in the gospels.

31–32 Divorce

In the law of Moses (Deut. 24:1) it was incontestable that a man could divorce his wife by