Commentary on Matthew (Commentary on the New Testament Book #1)

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Introduction

Dear reader,

Here you have part of a commentary on the whole New Testament, published by Baker Academic both in hardback and as an ebook. The electronic version has been broken into segments for your convenience and affordability, though if you like what you find here you may want to consider the whole at a proportionately lower cost. Whether in whole or in part, the e-version puts my comments at your fingertips on your easily portable Kindle, iPad, smartphone, or similar device.

I’ve written this commentary especially for busy people like you—lay people with jobs and families that take up a lot of time, Bible study leaders, pastors, and all who take the New Testament seriously—that is, people who time-wise and perhaps money-wise can’t afford the luxury of numerous heavyweight, technical commentaries on the individual books making up the section of the Bible we call the New Testament. So technical questions are avoided almost entirely, and the commentary concentrates on what will prove useful for understanding the scriptural text as a basis for your personal life as a Christian, for discussion with others, and for teaching and preaching.

Group discussion, teaching, and preaching all involve speaking aloud, of course, and when the New Testament was written, even private reading was done aloud. Moreover, most authors dictated their material to a writing secretary, and books were ordinarily read aloud to an audience. In this commentary, then, I’ve avoided almost all abbreviations (which don’t come through as such in oral speech) and have freely used contractions that characterize speaking (we’ll, you’re, they’ve, and so on). To indicate emphasis in oral speech, italics also occur fairly often.

You’ll mostly have to make your own practical and devotional applications of the scriptural text. But such applications shouldn’t disregard or violate the meanings intended by the Scripture’s divinely inspired authors and should draw on the richness of those meanings. So I’ve interpreted them in detail. Bold print indicates the text being interpreted. Translations of the original Greek are my own. Because of the interpretations’ close attention to detail, my translations usually, though not always, gravitate to the literal and sometimes produce run-on sentences and other nonstandard, convoluted, and even highly unnatural English. Square brackets enclose intervening clarifications, however, plus words in English that don’t correspond to words in the Greek text but do need supplying to make good sense. (As a language, Greek has a much greater tendency than English does to omit words meant to be supplied mentally.) Seemingly odd word-choices in a translation get justified in the following comments. It needs to be said as well that the very awkwardness of a literal translation often highlights features of the scriptural text obscured, eclipsed, or even contradicted by loose translations and paraphrases.

Literal translation also produces some politically incorrect English. Though brothers often includes sisters, for example, sisters doesn’t include brothers. Similarly, masculine pronouns may include females as well as males, but not vice versa. These pronouns, brothers, and other masculine expressions that on occasion are gender-inclusive correspond to the original, however, and help give a linguistic feel for the male-dominated culture in which the New Testament originated and which its language reflects. Preachers, Bible study leaders, and others should make whatever adjustments they think necessary for contemporary audiences but should not garble the text’s intended meaning.

Out of respect for your abilities so far as English is concerned, I’ve not dumbed down the vocabulary used in translations and interpretations. Like the translations, interpretations are my own. Rather than reading straight through, many of you may consult the interpretation of an individual passage now and then. So I’ve had to engage in a certain amount of repetition. To offset the repetition and keep the material in bounds, I rarely discuss others’ interpretations. But I’ve not neglected to canvass them in my research.

On the theological front, the commentary is unabashedly evangelical, so that my prayers accompany this volume in support of all you who strive for faithfulness to the New Testament as the word of God.

Robert Gundry

Matthew

Very early church tradition attributes the writing of this Gospel to the apostle Matthew, also called Levi (compare Matthew 9:9 with Mark 2:14; Luke 5:27). The Gospel has in view persecution that exposes a rift between Christians who remain faithful to their Christian profession despite the persecution and those who because of it are proving themselves unfaithful. Matthew encourages faithfulness by highlighting Jesus’ messiahship and divine sonship, defines faithfulness in terms of Christian behavior and verbal testimony, and warns against unfaithfulness by accenting its eternally dreadful consequence.

THE GENEALOGY OF JESUS CHRIST

Matthew 1:1–17

This passage divides into a heading for Jesus’ genealogy (1:1), the genealogy proper (1:2–16), and a numerical summary of the genealogy (1:17). The genealogy proper subdivides into generations from Abraham to David (1:2–6a), from David to Jeconiah and his brothers (1:6b–11), and from Jeconiah to Jesus (1:12–16).

1:1: The record of the genesis of Jesus Christ, the son [= descendant] of David the son [= descendant] of Abraham. The genesis of Jesus Christ will consist in his genealogy. In Genesis 5:1, whose phraseology Matthew echoes in part, a genealogy takes its name after the first on the following list (Adam). But Matthew titles this genealogy after the last on the following list (Jesus). This reversal and the borrowing of Old Testament phraseology make the genealogy portray Jesus as the goal and fulfillment of the Old Testament. Matthew designs the portrayal to confirm in their Christian faith his audience of Jewish Christians, who are suffering persecution and tempted to save their necks by recanting. Strengthening this portrayal of Jesus are Matthew’s additions of (1) Christ, the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew Messiah, which refers to the one God has anointed to bring salvation to his people; (2) the son of David, David being the prototype of the messianic king; and (3) the son of Abraham, father of the Jewish nation. This last phrase probably refers to David rather than Jesus as Abraham’s descendant, though of course Jesus too descended from Abraham. The omission of all ancestors prior to Abraham suits the coming identification of Jesus as the king of the Jews (2:2; contrast the tracing of Jesus’ genealogy as far back as Adam, father of the whole human race, in Luke 3:38). In the following genealogical list fathered has to do solely with impregnating the mother of the next male or males on the list.

1:2–6a: Abraham fathered Isaac, and Isaac fathered Jacob, and Jacob fathered Judah and his brothers, ³and Judah fathered Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez fathered Hezron, and Hezron fathered Aram, ⁴and Aram fathered Amminadab, and Amminadab fathered Nahshon, and Nahshon fathered Salmon, ⁵and Salmon fathered Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz fathered Obed by Ruth, and Obed fathered Jesse, ⁶aand Jesse fathered David the king [compare 1 Chronicles 1:34; 2:1–2, 4–5, 9–12, 15; Ruth 4:18–22]. Since Davidic kings came from the tribe of Judah, Jesus’ descent from Judah prepares for the presentation of Jesus as the messianic king in David’s line. Mention of Judah’s brothers, unnecessary in a purely genealogical list, portrays the old people of God as a brotherhood in anticipation of Matthew’s portrayal of the church, God’s new people, as also a brotherhood (5:22–24, 47; 7:3–5; 18:15, 21, 35; 23:8; 25:40). The mention of Tamar, emphasized by the inclusion of her son Zerah despite his falling outside Jesus’ lineage, brings a Gentile into the genealogy. For she was probably a Gentile (see Genesis 38) and was certainly thought to be so by many Jews in the New Testament era. Thus she becomes for Matthew a prototype of Gentiles who convert to Jesus the Messiah and whose conversion Jesus will promote in 28:18–20. Two other women, Rahab and Ruth (both of them Gentiles without question and celebrated by Jewish rabbis as converts to Judaism), join Tamar as further prototypes of Gentile converts to the church (see Joshua 2, 6; Ruth 1–4). The introduction of Rahab is especially striking in that the Old Testament contains no indication of Salmon’s fathering Boaz by her. The designation of David as the king adopts a designation of him that’s frequent in the Old Testament and prepares for Matthew’s portrayal of Jesus as the messianic king after the likeness of David and in fulfillment of God’s promise to David (2 Samuel 7:1–17).

1:6b–11: And David fathered Solomon by the [wife] of Uriah, ⁷and Solomon fathered Rehoboam, and Rehoboam fathered Abijah, and Abijah fathered Asaph, ⁸and Asaph fathered Jehoshaphat, and Jehoshaphat fathered Joram, and Joram fathered Uzziah, ⁹and Uzziah fathered Jotham, and Jotham fathered Ahaz, and Ahaz fathered Hezekiah, ¹⁰and Hezekiah fathered Manasseh, and Manasseh fathered Amos, and Amos fathered Josiah, ¹¹and Josiah fathered Jeconiah and his brothers during the period of the deportation to Babylon [compare 1 Chronicles 3:5, 10–16]. Here we have a list of Jewish kings in David’s line, so that the list foreshadows Jesus as the Davidic king of the Jews. Again, however, a woman comes into the list. Unlike the previously mentioned women, however, she isn’t named, though in fact she was named Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11:3; 12:24). Matthew omits her name and leaves wife to be inferred so as to center attention on her husband Uriah. Though she was a Jewess so far as we can tell from her father’s name (2 Samuel 11:3; compare 2 Samuel 23:34), she was—so to speak—a Gentile by marriage. For Uriah was well known to be a Gentile, as indicated by his repeatedly being called the Hittite in 2 Samuel 11–12. Thus the [wife] of Uriah joins the previously mentioned women as vanguards of the Gentiles who’ll convert to Christ and whose conversion he will promote (see 28:18–20 again). The Old Testament speaks of a king named Asa. Despite English translations to the contrary, Matthew adds -ph to Asa- for a reference to the psalmist Asaph, part of whose Psalm 78 he’ll quote as fulfilled prophecy and whom he’ll call the prophet (13:35). With this massaging of the name, then, the king himself becomes a kind of prophecy concerning Jesus the king of the Jews. Similarly, the Old Testament speaks of a king named Amon. And again despite English translations to the contrary, Matthew replaces -n with -s to get a reference to the prophet Amos, to whose prophecy in Amos 3:5 Matthew’s quotation of Jesus’ saying in 10:29 will conform. With the massaging of his name, this king too becomes a kind of prophecy concerning Jesus the king of the Jews. Just as Matthew mentioned Judah’s brothers as well as Judah himself, he mentions the brothers of Jeconiah. But the Old Testament, which also calls him Jehoiachin, registers only one brother of Jeconiah (1 Chronicles 3:16; 2 Chronicles 36:10). So Matthew’s ascribing to him brothers, perhaps in the sense of his fellow Jews deported with him to Babylon (2 Kings 24:10–16), puts renewed, extra emphasis on the old people of God as a brotherhood in anticipation of the church, God’s new people, as also a brotherhood (compare the comments on 1:2).

Matthew omits the three successive kings Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah (for whom see 1 Chronicles 3:11–12), all of them belonging to the line of Athaliah, daughter of the infamous King Ahab in the northern kingdom of Israel and each of them suffering a violent death because of their wickedness (2 Chronicles 22:1–9; 24:20–27; 25:14–28). So even though the three omitted kings descended on their father’s side from David, Matthew’s omitting them conforms to the Lord’s visiting the iniquity of Ahab up through the third and fourth generations of his children, here through his daughter’s line (Exodus 20:5; Numbers 14:18 [compare 1 Kings 21:21; 2 Kings 10:30]). But a more important reason for these omissions will come out in 1:17; and to make that reason viable, Matthew now omits a fourth king, Jehoiakim (for whom see 1 Chronicles 3:15). As the addition of the king to David brought the first subdivision of the genealogy to a close, so the addition of during the period of the deportation to Babylon brings the second subdivision to a close. This deportation also spelled the end of rule by David and his descendants and therefore paves the way for its revival in Jesus.

1:12–16: And after the deportation to Babylon Jeconiah fathered Shealtiel, and Shealtiel fathered Zerubbabel, ¹³and Zerubbabel fathered Abiud, and Abiud fathered Eliakim, and Eliakim fathered Azor, ¹⁴and Azor fathered Zadok, and Zadok fathered Achim, and Achim fathered Eliud, ¹⁵and Eliud fathered Eleazar, and Eleazar fathered Matthan, and Matthan fathered Jacob, ¹⁶and Jacob fathered Joseph the husband of Mary, by whom [referring to Mary] Jesus who is called Christ was born [compare 1 Chronicles 3:17–19a]. The Lord disqualified Jeconiah’s sons (Jeremiah 22:24–30) but restored to favor Jeconiah’s grandson Zerubbabel (Haggai 2:23). So Luke’s saying that Neri fathered Shealtiel has to do with biological lineage, whereas Matthew’s saying—with an eye on the Lord’s disqualification of Jeconiah’s sons—that Jeconiah fathered Shealtiel has to do with legal lineage, Shealtiel belonging to another branch of David’s family (so also 1 Chronicles 3:17). In Zerubbabel the biological and legal lines reunite (compare Ezra 3:2). By taking Abiud as meaning my father [is] Judah, Matthew points again to Jesus’ belonging to the tribe from which the Davidic Messiah was to come. Eliakim likewise points to Jesus’ Davidic messiahship in that according to Isaiah 22:20–24, a passage Matthew will echo in 16:19, this name belongs to a man who’ll receive the key of the house of David. Azor is a shortened form of Azariah, an alternate name of the Davidic king Uzziah, already listed in 1:8–9, and therefore another pointer to Jesus’ Davidic ancestry. There was an earlier Zadok who ministered as high priest during David’s reign, so that Zadok here in Jesus’ genealogy points yet again to Davidic royalty. As a shortened form of Ahimaaz, Achim does the same since Ahimaaz was a son of David’s high priest Zadok. Matthew presents Eliud as meaning God of Judah to connote the royal tribe to which Jesus belongs as the king of the Jews. So these names, differing from those we find in reverse order in Luke 3:24b–27b, symbolize Jesus’ qualification as a descendant of David to inherit David’s throne.

Except for a slight difference in spelling, Matthew agrees with Luke 3:24 in Matthan. But instead of Heli (Luke 3:23) he writes Jacob, so that this Jacob fathered Jesus’ foster father Joseph just as the Old Testament Jacob fathered as one of his twelve sons the Joseph who was sold into Egypt (compare Matthew’s writing Joseph in 13:55 instead of the Joses of Mark 6:3 and often conforming the wording of this Gospel elsewhere to that of the Old Testament). The addition of the husband of Mary to Joseph shows that Jesus, though not fathered biologically by Joseph, belonged legally to David’s line. For legal rights came through the father even though he was only a foster father, and Joseph took Mary to wife before Jesus’ birth (1:20–25). By whom [referring to Mary] Jesus . . . was born prepares for divine action in the conception and birth of Jesus, for Matthew has carefully avoided saying that Joseph fathered Jesus. Who is called Christ draws the conclusion that so far as legal ancestry is concerned, Jesus is qualified to be the messianic king.

1:17: Therefore [drawing a conclusion from the foregoing list] all the generations from Abraham to David [are] fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon [are] fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ [are] fourteen generations. 1 Chronicles 1:34; 2:1–15 provided fourteen generations from Abraham through David. But why does Matthew divide the rest of the genealogy into two more sets of fourteen generations each, and do so at the cost of omitting four Davidic kings in the second set and listing eight fewer generations than Luke does in the third set? He wants to say numerically what the listed names have already said genealogically, which is that in Jesus the Davidic Messiah has come. For the numerical values of the Hebrew consonants in David’s name add up to fourteen: D (4) + V (6) + D (4) = 14. (Before the introduction of Arabic numerals, letters of the alphabet stood for numbers; and Hebrew was written without vowels.) The omissions mean that for the second and third sets all the generations refers to the generations listed by Matthew, not to all the generations found in the Old Testament. That Matthew constructs three sets of fourteen also corresponds to the spelling of David’s name in Hebrew with three consonants and puts a triple emphasis on Jesus’ Davidic ancestry. So the first set ended with royal power (David the king), the second with loss of royal power (the deportation to Babylon), and the third with a revival of royal power (the Christ). But to get his third set of fourteen Matthew counts Mary as well as Joseph. In other words, the one chronological generation represented by them carries within it two other kinds of generation, a legal (Joseph’s) and a physical (Mary’s). Otherwise we have only thirteen, since Jeconiah belonged to the second set of fourteen just as David belonged to the first. The counting of Mary harmonizes with Matthew’s distinguishing between Jesus’ royal lineage through Joseph (compare Joseph’s being addressed with son of David in 1:20) and Jesus’ divine generation through Mary. Since Jesus fulfills the Jews’ messianic hope, Matthew’s audience of persecuted Jewish Christians mustn’t give up their faith to avoid further persecution.

THE BIRTH OF JESUS CHRIST AS DAVID’S SON AND GOD WITH US

Matthew 1:18–25

On the one hand, this passage explains how Jesus came to have the legal status of a descendant of David even though Joseph didn’t father him: Joseph, himself a son [= descendant] of David, brought Jesus into David’s line by taking Mary to wife prior to Jesus’ birth and by naming him at his birth. Without this explanation the preceding genealogy of Jesus through Joseph is pointless (see especially 1:16). On the other hand, this passage highlights Jesus’ deity by noting that Mary became pregnant after her betrothal to Joseph but before her marriage to him and sexual intercourse with him. So she bore a divine child as the result of generation by the Holy Spirit.

1:18–19: And the genesis of Jesus Christ was thus [= happened in this way]. Here the genesis of Jesus Christ has to do with his birth as a followup to genesis as his genealogy in 1:1. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, before they came together [in marriage] she was found to have [a child] in [her] womb by the Holy Spirit. By the Holy Spirit parallels by Tamar, by Rahab, by Ruth, by the [wife] of Uriah, and by whom [Mary] in 1:3, 5–6, 16—all in reference to women—so that Matthew carefully avoids portraying the Holy Spirit as performing a male function through carnal intercourse in impregnating Mary. Thus she will still be virginal when she gives birth to Jesus (contrast pagan myths in which a god impregnates a human female carnally). Joseph found Mary to be pregnant, but he didn’t yet know she was pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Matthew mentions the Holy Spirit’s role as advance information which emphasizes that role. ¹⁹But Joseph her husband, being righteous and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to divorce her privately. In Jewish society full betrothal was so binding that breaking it required a certificate of divorce, and the death of one party during the period of betrothal made the other party a widow or widower. So before his marriage to Mary, Joseph was her husband in the sense of a husband designate (compare Deuteronomy 22:23–24). Joseph’s being righteous refers to his planning to divorce Mary on the ground she’d fornicated with another man, so that it would have been wrong for Joseph to marry her (compare Deuteronomy 22:23–24, which stipulates the stoning to death of an engaged girl and a man not her fiancé who’d impregnated her without her yelling out in protest; also Numbers 5:11–31; Matthew 5:32; 19:9). Joseph’s being righteous also makes him a prototype of Jesus’ disciples, whose righteousness Matthew will repeatedly stress after the pattern of Jesus himself (see, for example, 3:15; 5:10, 20; 25:37, 46; 27:19). Likewise, Joseph’s not wanting to disgrace [Mary] characterizes him with the mercy that will mark Jesus’ disciples (5:7; 18:33). Planning to divorce Mary privately means planning to divorce her in the absence of two or three witnesses. The Mosaic law didn’t require them (see Deuteronomy 24:1–4), but they’d become customary to protect the husband against a denial of the divorce by his ex-wife’s father. To spare Mary disgrace before witnesses, Joseph planned to waive this precaution.

1:20–21: But when he’d mulled over these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, "Joseph, son [= descendant] of David, don’t be afraid to take along Mary as your wife. For the [infant] conceived [literally, ‘fathered’] in her is by the Holy Spirit." Behold emphasizes the appearance of an angel of the Lord, and together they emphasize the following message of Jesus’ virginal conception and birth and of his saviorhood. Joseph’s Davidic sonship will insure Jesus’ Davidic sonship if Joseph carries out the angel’s instructions. The Holy Spirit replaces what Joseph thought to be the role of another man. Ordinarily, of course, fathered has to do with the sexual role of a male. But as in 1:18, by the Holy Spirit maintains the virginity of Mary by negating carnal intercourse—therefore the foregoing translation conceived. Don’t be afraid to take along Mary as your wife shows, as did before they came together in 1:18, that her husband in 1:19 meant her husband designate. ²¹And she’ll birth a son; and you shall call his name Jesus, for he himself will save his people from their sins. A son, because the Christ is to be a king like David, not a queen. She’ll birth is predictive. You shall call is prescriptive. And he himself will save is predictive again. By naming Jesus, Joseph is to adopt him as his legal though not biological offspring. He must bring Jesus into David’s line for Jesus to become the messianic king. Naming by Mary wouldn’t avail. But to be a king one must act like a king by saving his people from oppression (compare 1 Samuel 10:25–27, especially 27a, with 1 Samuel 11:1–11), just as David did (2 Samuel 5:1–3). Jesus’ Davidic kingship therefore implies that he himself will save his people, as indicated in the personal name to be given him. For according to popular etymology Jesus, Greek for the Hebrew name Joshua, means the Lord [is] salvation. To draw out this meaning, the angel quotes Psalm 130:8 but replaces the psalmist’s will redeem with will save for a closer link with the meaning of Jesus. Also, his people replaces the psalmist’s Israel because Jesus’ people will turn out to be the ethnically inclusive church rather than Israel (see 16:18, where he says my church; 3:12, where John the baptizer refers to his [Jesus’] wheat [compare 21:43]). And from their sins replaces the psalmist’s from all his [Israel’s] iniquities to anticipate Jesus’ forgiveness of sins (9:1–8; 26:28) and therefore deliverance from their oppressively judgmental consequences. The intensive "he himself" accents Jesus as the Savior; and this accent will lead to an affirmation of his deity, since only deity can save from sins by forgiving them.

1:22–23: And this whole thing has happened in order that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet would be fulfilled, saying, ²³"Behold, the virgin will have [an infant] in [her] womb and birth a son; and they’ll call his name Immanuel, which is translated, God [is] with us [Isaiah 7:14]." In Psalm 130:7–8 it’s the Lord who’ll redeem Israel from all his iniquities. So here in Matthew it’s Jesus as God with us who’ll save his people from their sins. He’s with us as God, not in static presence, but in saving activity. Has happened indicates a past event that has a continuing effect. In order that indicates divine purpose. This whole thing encompasses within that divine purpose all the preceding and following items that make up this episode. Nothing happened by chance. Instead of mentioning Isaiah’s name, Matthew writes by the Lord through the prophet to draw a parallel with the conveyance of a message by an angel of the Lord (1:20; see also 2:15 with 2:13). Would be fulfilled cites fulfilled prophecy as a reason Matthew’s audience of Christians shouldn’t recant under the pressure of persecution. He’s so eager to impress this reason on them that he cites the prophecy before narrating its fulfillment (as also in 2:15; 21:4–5). Behold calls special attention to Mary’s virginal conception and birthing of Jesus. But Matthew replaces Isaiah’s "And she will call his name Immanuel with And they will call his name Immanuel. They are Jesus’ church, the people just mentioned whom he’ll save from their sins. And he’ll save them from their sins because they, unlike Israel as a whole, will confess that he is God with us. The transliteration of the Hebrew Immanuel enables Matthew to draw out its meaning, God [is] with us." Jesus is with his people to save them from their sins, not merely on behalf of God, but as God (compare the sandwiching of Jesus as the Son between the Father and the Holy Spirit in 28:19).