Matthew 22

CHAPTER XXII

Matthew 22:1

1 And Jesus answered and spoke again in parables to them, saying: The kingdom of the heavens has become like a king, who made a wedding for his son and sent his slaves to call those that had been called to the wedding; and they were not willing to come. The closing verses of the preceding chapter mark a pause. Then Jesus continued to speak (πάλινεἶπεν) to the same persons (αὐτοῖς), Sanhedrists and the pilgrims, but now making response (ἀποκριθείς) to what was in the hearts of his hearers when they perceived whom he had in mind when he spoke his previous parables. The plural “in parables” may be regarded a plural of category or a reference to the many parabolic features found in this extended parable. The situation is thus carefully sketched, and from this opening sentence to the very end of the parable the differences between this parable and the one recorded in Luke 14:16–24 are so great and so numerous that they must be regarded as two separate and independent parables.

Matthew 22:2

2 All that was said in regard to ὡμοιώθη in 13:24 applies here as well. In the course of its history the kingdom of the heavens (see 3:2) became like this picture through the unbelief of sinful men, some of whom were open and even violent unbelievers from the very start, others of whom were secret unbelievers or believers only for a time and who were then at last unmasked. But the historical aorist “did become like” is spoken from the standpoint of the end of the world when the earthly history of the kingdom will be complete as here portrayed. What happened throughout the whole New Testament era is compressed into this brief story of the King’s Son’s Wedding Feast. The addition of ἀνθρώπῳ to βασιλεῖ is pleonastic and need not be translated, cf., 21:33 and other parables; hence “a certain king” (our versions) is incorrect. The royal features must be noted throughout. This king is God, and his son is Christ.

The unity of the parable is at once expressed: “a king who made a wedding for his son.” We are told what happened in connection with this wedding, namely how the king and his son were treated by the various persons who had been invited to the wedding. For this reason nothing is said about the bride of the king’s son. The moment we perceive the force of the opening statement and note that it governs everything that is introduced into the parable, its grand unity will be apparent, and we shall not agree with those who speak of two parables pasted together (v. 3–10, and v. 11–14) or of a parable consisting of two parts. The perfect unity of the whole is again stated at the conclusion in v. 14. The word γάμος or its plural may mean either “a wedding” or “a wedding feast”; in v. 2–9 we have the plural, but in v. 8 and in 10–12 the singular. This wedding and the invitations to attend it picture the grace of God that provides salvation for the world of sinful men in connection with Christ. It includes redemption, the means of grace, and the efficacy of the Holy Spirit, as these apply equally to all men.

Matthew 22:3

3 The τοὺςκεκλημένους are the Jews. They are the ones who had received advance invitations through the Old Testament and its many prophets and promises. When in and through Christ the wedding was ready, the king sent them his δοῦλοι “to call them,” to ask that they should now come. These “slaves” of the king are not John the Baptist and Jesus, for the wedding was not as yet ready. These “slaves” are the apostles and their gospel call after the death and the glorification of Jesus. This interpretation relieves us of making Jesus one of the “slaves,” who is nothing less than the king’s son, and of then laboring to make the fact of his being one of these slaves plausible.

We are also relieved of bringing in the brief preaching tour of the Twelve (10:5, 6) and that of the seventy (Luke 10:1, 17), which may well be combined with the advance invitations of the prophets. These first “slaves” were the apostles and their ringing call on Pentecost and throughout the years following.

“And they were not willing,” with its negative “brings out sharply the element of will.” And the imperfect, as so often, leaves in the balance what the outcome of this unwillingness will be; this will be stated presently. “Were not willing” casts its light on all the preliminary and advance invitations the Jews had received. They had meant nothing to the Jews. God’s wonderful plans of grace had never captivated their hearts. The king had treated these men as nobles of his realm, but now we see how they regarded him.

Matthew 22:4

4 Now we learn what the imperfect tense led us to expect. Yet what the king now does fills us with surprise. An ordinary king would resent and punish the insult offered by such a treatment of his gracious and grand invitation. But not so this king who pictures the astounding grace and patience of God in Christ. Again he sent other slaves, saying: Tell those that have been called, Lo, I have prepared my breakfast, my steers having been slaughtered and all things prepared. Come to the wedding. But those that made light of it went away, the one to his own farm, the other upon his business; while the rest, having laid hold on his slaves, maltreated and killed them. But this king grew angry and, having sent his armies, destroyed those murderers and set fire to their city.

So this king actually repeats his invitation after it has been turned down—a true picture of God’s repeated calls of grace. And the sincerity and the earnest desire of his invitation are brought out by giving us its actual wording. Note that the invited are again designated as “they that have been called.” Are all those advance and now these final calls to be in vain? The new delegation of slaves is to tell these men the great news (“lo”) that the king has made everything ready (perfect tense, ἡτοίμακα) and thus is now waiting to begin the round of feasting and celebration. That is why we have ἄριστον, “breakfast,” the first meal of the day that was eaten about nine o’clock. Common Jewish weddings were celebrated for seven days.

This royal wedding would go far beyond that. The magnitude of the feast is indicated by the information that the steers have been slaughtered—so many guests were to be fed. No specific interpretation of this detail has ever been suggested that could be regarded as acceptable. “All things prepared” adds the thought that the vast amount of other viands and drink are likewise waiting to be consumed. Nothing further needs to be provided or prepared.

The call is renewed, “Hither to the wedding!” This new delegation of slaves is not identical with the first delegation. If the first delegation pictures the apostles, this second pictures their successors throughout Judaism. Again and again the men of Israel were made to hear the gospel call. Rom. 10:21.

Matthew 22:5

5 Two classes of these unwilling guests are named: οἱδὲἀμελήσαντες, and οἱδὲλοιποί (v. 6). The first class treated the invitation with disdain; they had far greater counterattractions than this wedding of their crown prince. What could these be? Two are mentioned as samples. One man went away to his own land instead of to the king’s palace; the other to his business affairs. Both must be thought of as lords; one who had landed estates, the other who had his great merchant enterprises.

Each found more satisfaction in these possessions than in accepting the king’s grace and favor offered at this son’s wedding. This class is found among the Jews as well as among men of all ages. They prefer the earthly to the heavenly, the transient to the eternal. They always treat the divine call with indifference; they always “go away.” Because they are so numerous Jesus spoke a special parable about them, Luke 14:16–24.

Matthew 22:6

6 Another class, here called “the rest,” is more vicious. They laid hold of the king’s messengers, maltreated and even killed them. These are the Jewish persecutors, a part of whose vicious acts are preserved for us in the Acts. These, too, have had successors beyond the confines of Judaism.

Matthew 22:7

7 This king’s grace and his patience have their limits. God’s love will not be insulted forever. The fact that ἄνθρωπος is now omitted before βασιλεύς has no special significance; it would not be in place after the article. To say he is now altogether “king” and not “man,” is to misunderstand the Greek—he is now just what he was from the start. The fact that God should grow angry (ingressive aorist, R. 834) has always met objection on the part of rationalists who cannot appreciate the conception of a holiness and righteousness that must finally settle with sin and the obdurate sinner. Yet God’s anger is never a human passion. The Scriptures present a far different picture.

The fact that the king sends out his armies against the murderers of his ambassadors is regarded as a departure from the parable and an introduction of the reality instead, since no king would start war in the middle of preparations for a wedding. But this seems strained. A word spoken by the king would set his soldiers in motion. The grandness of this king grows. We note the immensity of his wedding preparations, the many slaves that rush about at his bidding, the captains and the armies that are ready for war on the instant. The picture of God shines through this imagery; we are led to think of “his angels that excel in strength, that do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word,” Ps. 103:20.

We surely know that his destruction of those murderers and his burning their city was just about literally fulfilled in the terrible destruction of Jerusalem, 23:38. We need not ask where the king had his palace and prepared the wedding. It was not in the city of those murderers. They were his high officials (the Sanhedrin), peers of his realm, in charge of the king’s people and his possessions. They were destroyed in the bloody ruins. The king dwelt in his glory, for this king pictures God, his palace is the church, his armies the angels, his loyal subjects all true believers in Christ—and these alone can partake of the wedding he prepares.

Since so great matters are to be pictured in one human illustration, let us not expect too much from the illustration. Those citizens that merely disdained to accept the invitation lost their possessions when the city went up in flames. The destruction of Jerusalem is one of the outstanding examples of the divine judgment which in some way and in due time overtakes all who obdurately reject the Son and his wedding.

Matthew 22:8

8 Then he says to the slaves: The wedding is prepared, but they that have been called were not worthy. Be going, therefore, to the outlets of the roads, and as many as you shall find call to the wedding. And those slaves, having gone out into the roads, brought together all, as many as they found, both wicked and good; and the wedding was filled with those reclining at table. The deplorable fact, so significant for the Jewish hearers of Jesus, is stated by the king himself: the wedding ready—those called (here named thus for the last time) not worthy. The word ἄξιος is here used as in Acts 13:46: the unworthiness lies not in the lack of some merit, but in the wicked rejection of the king’s gracious invitations.

Matthew 22:9

9 “Be going” is a durative present tense and implies that the slaves are to keep on going until the wedding was provided with guests. The διέξοδοιτῶνὁδῶν are usually thought to be crossroads, yet this leaves the genitive unexplained. The first noun in this combination is used to designate the outcome of a trial and, when it is applied to roads, refers to their terminals, where all the traffic that passes along the roads is bound to arrive. This seems to be the sense of this noun and its genitive in the present connection. Yet these are not the roads that come to an end in the open country but the roads as they come in from the outlying districts to the various cities of the king’s great realm. The greatness of the king and of his domain thus becomes more impressive.

At the points thus indicated all the inhabitants of the king’s realm will be reached. Thus the outlets or terminals of the roads express the universality of the gospel call which is also indicated in the addition: “and as many as you shall find call to the wedding.”

Matthew 22:10

10 The slaves do this very thing. The addition of ἐκεῖνοι is important. The very slaves who were sent to those who refused to come (the Jews) were now sent to invite whomever they found (also the Gentiles), as Paul expresses it in Acts 13:46. Yet the emphatic “all, as many as they found,” includes Jews and not only Gentiles. Jerusalem was destroyed, the Jewish leaders had perished, but Jews were scattered everywhere, and these together with the Gentiles were bidden to come. The fact that many of those called would not come is omitted from the parable in order not to overload it.

Besides, if any still repeated the rejection of the call, their fate has already been sufficiently indicated by what befell those who were first called. The point now stressed is the fact that the wedding was completely “filled with those reclining at table” in order to dine in Oriental fashion, by being stretched out on broad couches. The wedding was celebrated by prolonged feasts (v. 4).

Those actually brought in are described as “both wicked and good,” and by bringing in both indiscriminately the slaves made no mistake. No one class of men is excluded from the gospel call. As far as “the wicked” are concerned, we have 21:31, 32. This helps us to understand “the good”; for these are such as had not practiced open sin such as the publicans and harlots were guilty of. Take the malefactor as a sample of “the wicked,” and Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathaea as samples of “the good.” Before God all men are equally guilty, and the gospel call finds them in this condition. A distinction between wicked and good before men are called necessarily refers only to the common judgment of men who call those wicked who descend to vice and crime and those good who cultivate the justitia civilis, an outwardly decent and respectable life.

The thought is not that the latter accept the gospel call more readily than the former. It is the call alone with the divine grace that is operative in it that brings men into the kingdom irrespective of their former condition, whether they were despised or admired by the world. Parables sometimes turn from the figure to the reality, for at some point figures fall short of the reality. This is scarcely the case here where “wicked as well as good” helps to bring out the universality of the call for all types of sinners.

Matthew 22:11

11 The story is not completed at this point as those suppose who think that the rest is a little parable by itself or only a sort of appendix to the parable proper. If the parable stopped at verse 10, it would be incomplete and its climax would be missing. We should have “wicked and good” at the wedding without a solution of this duality. We should have men transplanted into the kingdom just as they are in the world. Nor should we know what a real acceptance of the gospel call is in distinction from a sham acceptance. The parable would stop with the entrance of the Gentiles, which occurred in the very middle of the gospel work, whereas it ought to go on to the very end of the work, even as it was designed to do this from the very start. So Jesus takes us to the point where the gospel call is complete and no further slaves are sent out to invite guests to the wedding.

And the king, having gone in to view those reclining at table, saw there a man not having been garmented with a wedding garment. And he says to him, Fellow, how didst thou come here not having a wedding garment? And he was struck speechless. Then the king said to the ministrants: Having bound his feet and hands, throw him out into the outer darkness. There shall be the weeping and the gnashing of the teeth.

The supreme moment when the king steps in to see the guests ranged on magnificent couches at the endless tables, is the climax of the entire parable. All else led up to this moment, and what follows is the result of this moment. The infinitive θεάσασθαι, “to view,” “to behold,” the aorist to indicate one complete act of viewing, suggests nothing of a judicial nature. He came in, not as a judge with critical eyes, perhaps to find something wrong, but as the glorious king he was to feast his eyes on the entire scene and on all the guests at the royal tables of his royal son’s wedding.

The fact that when the king thus comes in he is met by an insulting sight does not alter the sense of θεάσασθαι. No one would have thought it possible that among these many, many guests, so graciously invited, one would have dared to come in with his own old clothes on and not clad in a wedding garment like all the rest. The king’s eyes light upon such a man. It is well, when in preaching we apply this parable and say with Luther and others that this was only one of many such men. But this is a parable, and this one man is introduced into the parable as is the one mentioned in 18:24 and again the one spoken of in v. 28, to make each of us search himself and ask, “Lord, is it I?”

The perfect participle ἐνδεδυμένον is passive, R. 485, “not having been garmented” by the attendants, those who had garmented all the rest. The perfect participle, of course, has its present force: he was now without the necessary garment. This is the only case in Matthew’s Gospel where οὐ instead of μή negates a participle, and this οὐ is used to make the negation the more clear-cut and decisive (R. 1138) and thereby to stress the fact. In the very next verse we have μὴἔχωνἔνδυμαγάμου to express the very same thought, and there μή lays stress on the argument expressed in the king’s question. So this is the outrageous thing the king saw: a man minus the wedding robe.

There is a difference of view among the commentators as to what this wedding garment is. Is it the righteousness of life or that of faith; a garment the guest provides for himself or one the king provides for his guests; good works or Christ’s merits? It is surprising to note that so many favor the former. The parable shuts this out. If this man was unable to furnish a fine garment for himself, he would have had a sound reply ready when the king asked him why he had no proper garment; but the man is struck dumb by the question. In all that precedes those who were invited from the roads are not represented as first going to their distant homes to get their wedding garments.

The very idea is precluded. How could such people have garments that were grand enough for a royal wedding? The king also at once notes this man’s garment which is a glaring blotch among the garments the others wore. The king did not ask whether each man’s garment was fine enough and then found one that was below par with the man wearing it saying that it was the best he had. No; all the rest have wedding garments, this man has no wedding garment; all the rest had the garments that were provided by the king himself which were grand beyond anything they could afford and hence were at once recognized by the king, but this man had no such garment, he was garbed in his own clothes.

The evidence that in the Orient and even among the Greeks garments were provided for honored guests, not one but several to be worn in turn, thus relieving the guests of undue expenditure on their part, and adding to the magnificence of the grand host, is quite sufficient, and we may point to Gen. 45:22; Judges 14:12, 19; 2 Kings 5:22, notably also 10:22 and Esther 6:8; 8:15; Rev. 19:8, 9. Moreover, the Analogy of Faith completely excludes the thought that our own works and moral fitness ever enable us to become acceptable to God. Works do not admit into the kingdom. When we have done all we are unprofitable servants, “we have done that which was our duty to do,” Luke 17:10. The wedding garment is the justitia Christi, the imputed righteousness which is ours by faith. If faith is the garment (Luther), it is the faith that, like a cup, holds this free gift of righteousness; no other saving faith exists. “He hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robes of righteousness,” and these are bridal as Isa. 61:10 shows. In Rev. 19:8, we have the same bridal scene, the white bridal linen is provided for the bride by the bridegroom, and this is “the righteousness of saints.”

Matthew 22:12

12 On the king’s address to this man, ἑταῖρε, compare 20:13. This is not a gentle word such as “friend”; it is rather like our “fellow,” even etymologically. It is the opposite of an address the king would use when speaking to the other guests. It indicates this fellow’s fate. When he is asked how he came in without the wedding garment, the μή used with ἔχων (unlike οὐ with the participle in v. 11) indicating that the king is considering this insult to his grace, we already hear the king’s verdict: this man insults the king, his son, the wedding, and the guests. How did he dare to reject the wedding garment offered him and yet force himself into this wedding?

How did he dare to regard his own garments as being good enough when here everything was royal? No reasonable answer is possible. Note that ἐφιμώθη is passive; it does not mean, “he was speechless,” but, “he was made speechless,” i.e., by the question. In the parables this speechlessness or, when an answer is attempted, the very answer condemns. The righteousness and the justice of God are thus made to stand out. Woe to him who rejects Christ and then faces God speechless or attempting some folly of speech!

Matthew 22:13

13 This man was not one of the guests, he only pretended to be one. By rejecting the wedding garment he excluded himself from the blessed number of the guests. His pretense endures only for a moment, concerns only himself and not the king. No man ever deceived God. Hence the terrible order for his immediate expulsion. He is to share the fate of those mentioned in v. 7.

Like a criminal the man is bound hand and foot and thrown out. This is still an Oriental figure. But at this point the figurative language of the parable is frankly abandoned because it is unable to picture the reality, and the reality itself is brought forward: “into the outer darkness,” etc., see the exposition of the same words in 8:12. He is cast into hell. Whatever name may be given to this outer darkness, its description as here repeated is more than sufficient to identify it and to make us recoil from its horrors.

Matthew 22:14

14 At the conclusion of the parable Jesus sums it up in brief: For many are called ones, but few elected ones. Both κλητοί and ἐκλεκτοί are verbals and are equal to passive participles, the agent back of the passive idea being God: “called by God,” “elected by God.” Moreover, in both verbals the entire action is included, that of God’s calling and that of God’s electing. This, too, is plain, that here the calling (καλεῖν) signifies the invitation of grace which may be accepted by means of the grace it contains, or which, in spite of that grace, may be rejected by man’s vicious perversity. Hence “many” are called ones, and far fewer are elected ones. As so often, the absence of the articles intends to stress the quality of the nouns. To be sure, the parable shows us who the elect are, namely those who accept the call and the garment of Christ’s righteousness; and thus also who the non-elect are, all those who obdurately reject the call either in violence, or by indifference, or by spurning Christ’s righteousness.

The first are those who never believed, the last those who pretended to believe. Among the latter those who secretly fall from faith, often also called the Zeitglaeubigen, are included. Therefore it is unwarranted to assert that this parable shows us only who the elect are. In the very word ἐκλεκτοί we have the whole divine act of election, even as we cannot have elect without their election. The parable reveals this great act of election. It shows us how some are chosen, how the rest could not be chosen.

This is the reason why this parable constitutes one of the supreme sedes doctrinae for the doctrine of election (Concordia Triglotta 1069, 14) together with Rom. 8:29, etc.; and Eph. 1:4, etc., and why in the statement of what constitutes election (paragraphs 15–22) most of the items are drawn from this parable, just as Chemnitz also chose this parable as the text for his notable sermon on election.

The divine act of election occurred in eternity. Since human minds cannot think in terms of eternity, Jesus uses the terms of time, but in such a way as to show us with entire clearness what God did in eternity. God is not hampered by time. All that would occur in time was absolutely present to him before time began: his whole plan of grace with all its operations and effects, exactly as these are sketched in the parable. We thus see why the elect are so few in number—so many eliminate themselves in one way (v. 3–7) or in another (v. 11–13). We see how in eternity there came to be an ἐκλογή and an act of ἐκλέγεσθαι with these ἐκλεκτοί as the result.

Jesus enables us to see just what God’s election is. The one great act of God he spreads out in its component parts in the parable. Election is all that this parable presents from beginning to end, from the redemption of the whole human race to the glorification of those who enter heaven. Because of our limited understanding we are like children for whom Jesus must take it all apart when showing it to us, whereas to God it is all one whole. For God the end is already in the beginning. That is why the whole is truly God’s election.

It is the sum of God’s eternal grace which produces and thereby accepts saints that are clothed in Christ’s righteousness as his own forever in eternal glory.

The essential point in this comprehensive act is the one pictured in v. 11: the king’s looking for the wedding garment, Christ’s righteousness embraced by faith. The whole act culminates in this point. Noting this culmination, we may also say that the divine election is that specific part of God’s eternal grace which accepts the saints whom he has succeeded in clothing in Christ’s righteousness as his own forever in eternal glory.

The identical grace is present in both views. The former looks from the cause of God’s election (the grace) to its effect (the elect); the latter looks at the effect (the elect) as produced by the cause (the grace).Neither cause and effect nor effect and cause can be separated, for the attempt to separate them would lead to a misunderstanding of both.

Matthew 22:15

15 Sanhedrists, high priests and elders, confronted Jesus in 21:23, and in 21:45 we see that these elders were Pharisees. The Sadducees and Pharisees from the Sanhedrin had fared ill at the hands of Jesus (21:23–22:14). From now on the two groups operate separately (here, and in v. 23, 34, 41). Then the Pharisees went and took counsel how to ensnare him in a statement. It is still Tuesday; see 21:12, and compare 26:1. The Pharisees retire in a separate group and concoct a cunning scheme to ensnare Jesus (this verb is found only here in the New Testament) like a bird in a hidden noose of thread. It is to be done “in a statement” that he is to be led to make, not realizing its fatal consequences for him until it is too late.

Matthew 22:16

16 Their scheme is carried out. They send to him their disciples in company with the Herodians, saying: Teacher, we know that thou art truthful and teachest the way of God in truth and carest for no one, for thou dost not look on men’s countenance. Tell us, therefore, how does it seem to thee? Is it lawful to pay poll tax to Caesar or not? Luke 20:20 calls these emissaries of the Pharisees “spies who feigned themselves to be righteous,” and adds that their plot was to deliver Jesus into the hands of the governor. These disciples were men whom Jesus had not met before, who thus could pose as honest inquirers.

The Pharisees arranged matters so that their disciples were accompanied by the Herodians. The latter were to act as witnesses, and their word would be more effective with the Roman governor than that of mere disciples of the Pharisees. The preposition μετά precludes the idea that these disciples and the Herodians should act as though they were disputing with each other about the tax and were now appealing to Jesus to settle their dispute. The Herodians, likewise strangers to Jesus, would not be recognized as Herodians by him.

We meet “Herodians” only incidentally in the Gospels. They appear as a minor political, non-religious party among the Jews and were supporters of the alien Herodian dynasty which ruled under Cæsar, an arrangement which was far preferable to the Jewish nation than Cæsar’s direct rule through Roman procurators. The Herodians thus favored the Roman tax because of the dependence of the house of Herod on Rome. In all such matters the Pharisees opposed them and ever demanded complete independence from Rome and autonomy for the Jews. To them any Roman tax was thus “unlawful” in the sight of God. Yet as the Pharisees joined hands with their opponents, the Sadducees, in their attack on Jesus, so here they ally themselves with their other opponents, the Herodians, in this attempt to destroy Jesus. In a few days Herod and Pilate became friends in the same manner.

This delegation comes with an astounding acknowledgment of the teaching and the character of Jesus as though they themselves were about to become Jesus’ most ardent disciples. With honeyed words of flattery, a great captatio benevolentiae, they seek to throw Jesus off his guard. Their masters have coached them well, for they have put into their disciples’ mouth an acknowledgment of Jesus which every Jew should have most sincerely made. In their lying fashion they ape the truth quite perfectly. Jesus was indeed ἀληθής, absolutely “truthful.” He taught “the way of God” (see 21:32) marked out by God for every Israelite to follow “in truth,” most perfectly. He “cared for no one” and in anything he said was never swayed by any man’s fear or favor.

This elaborate preamble will certainly lead Jesus to live up to the estimate thus made of him: he will consider no man, not even Cæsar in Rome when giving his answer. To men who think of him so highly he will speak without the least reserve. He is thus assured in advance that, whatever men like the Sanhedrists would do, these men who are now speaking to Jesus will accept and prize his answer and will thank him for it from the bottom of their hearts.

Jesus certainly lived up to this estimate of him: he saw their hypocrisy (Mark) and craftiness (Luke) with his eyes of truth (John 2:24, 25). The way in which they tried to lure him into their snare was rather silly. Even a lesser mind than that of Jesus could have detected the false tone in their flattering words.

Matthew 22:17

17 Now their question. Jesus is to tell them just what he thinks, “Is it lawful to pay personal tax to Cæsar or not?” Mark adds, “Shall we pay it or shall we not pay it?” Mark 12:15, we who above all want to walk in “the way of God.” The answer was almost laid upon the tongue of Jesus. He whom no man’s fear or favor could possibly sway would not even stop to think but would say frankly, “In God’s eyes it is not lawful.” The κῆνσος is the poll tax which was exacted from every individual and was thus considered as a special badge of servitude to the Roman power by the Jews; hence the disputes among the rabbis about paying especially this tax. Compare 17:25 and note that the τέλη (plural) are levies on goods and wares at harbors, piers, and city gates which were less galling to the Jews.

Matthew 22:18

18 But having perceived their wickedness, Jesus said: Why are you tempting me, hypocrites? Show me the poll tax coin. And they brought him a denarius. And he says to them, Whose this image and the superscription? They say to him, Caesar’s. Then he says to them, Duly give, therefore, the things of Caesar to Caesar and the things of God to God.

And having heard, they marvelled and, having left him, went away. Matthew calls the motive behind the flattery and the question downright “wickedness,” πονηρία, the active, vicious evil in the hearts of these disciples of the Pharisees. That is how their teachers had trained them. Jesus addresses them as “hypocrites,” ὑπό in the word conveying the idea of show actors wearing a mask as the ancient actors did (R. 633). Their fair speech distils only poison. “Why are you tempting me?” exposes their secret, vicious intention in a flash. And these liars have no defense.

Yes, Jesus told them the truth, and without fear or favor!

Matthew 22:19

19 Yet, although they are unworthy of an answer, Jesus gives an answer to their question and does so in his own impressive way. He demands to be shown the coin with which this poll tax was always paid, and promptly one of his questioners hands him a denarius, see 20:2, in purchasing value the price of a day’s labor and the wage of a Roman soldier, 17 cents in our money. The Roman senate had the right to mint only copper coins; the right to mint gold and silver coins was reserved for the emperor. The denarius was a small silver coin which was usually stamped with the emperor’s head (occasionally with that of a member of his household) and invariably with the name and the title of the reigning emperor. Jesus asks, “Whose this image and superscription?”

Matthew 22:20

20 “Jesus begins in a childish and foolish way as though he did not know the image and the inscription and could not read, so that they quickly thought, surely, here we have him, he is afraid and intends to dissimulate about the emperor and dares not speak against him. But he takes the word right out of their mouth, making them surrender with their confession. They dare not be silent, for just as they bade him answer, so he now bids them answer. If they were silent, he would say, ‘If you will not give answer to my question, neither will I answer your question (21:27).’” Luther.

Matthew 22:21

21 Besides, the question seems so innocent and so harmless that they see no reason to pause and thus reply without hesitation, “Cæsar’s.” Digging a pit for Jesus, they have now tumbled into it themselves. Unwittingly they have answered their own question. All that Jesus does is to point this out to them.

Trench, Synonyms, 1, 78, points out the exact meaning of εἰκών, “image,” which always implies a prototype which it does not merely resemble but from which it is drawn. It is the German Abbild, which presupposes a Vorbild. The emperor’s face is depicted on the coin; so the sun shines in the water, the statue presents the man, the child is the image of its parent. But ὁμοίωμα or ὁμοίωσις, “likeness,” means only resemblance and does not include derivation: two men may look alike; one egg resembles another.

In ἀπόδοτε the ἀπό should not be overlooked for it gives the verb the force “to give what is due,” what our obligation requires us to give. The admirable nature of Jesus’ answer was fully recognized already by his hostile questioners the moment they heard it, and few have ever found fault with it, although some have failed to see all that these brief words convey. The answer is so perfect because it is so complete. The Jews considered the poll tax by itself; the only way to consider it properly was to place it among all “the things of Cæsar” and then to look at these in connection with (καί) all “the things of God.” Then all difficulties, those of the poll tax and a thousand others, at once disappear. The trouble with regard to so many casual questions is that we look at only the one question and fail to rise to the comprehensive view which takes in the whole domain of which the one question is only a trivial part. Jesus always saw the whole, and Paul rises to the same height, notably in solving the intricate problems that had arisen in Corinth. The wisdom that can do this is from above.

Jesus asked for an actual coin that might be taken out of the wallet of one of his questioners. All of them carried such money. He makes them say that this is the emperor’s coinage. They have accepted it, and it is their money, the money accepted by their entire nation. This implies that their nation belongs to the empire. This coinage was one of the advantages they enjoyed under the emperor’s rule, a sample of other similar advantages.

The emperor was their ruler—this coin that bore his image, taken from their own pockets, is the incontestable evidence. In the providence of God the Jews are this emperor’s subjects. That suffices. That settled their obligations toward the emperor, the matter of paying him the poll tax now in force and all other duties toward him. This is the force of οὖν, “therefore,” with which Jesus connects his reply with the coin and its image. “Duly give, therefore, to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s” includes all their obligations to “the higher powers ordained of God,” Rom. 13:1–7. “The things that are Cæsar’s” include, not only tribute, but likewise fear and honor. Whether a government makes this easy or hard for us makes no difference.

Our duty is plain. Let the rulers look well to theirs and recognize that also they are answerable to God who likewise rules over them.

This is only a part of the answer. The question, “Is it lawful or not?” referred to God and implied, “Is the payment of this tax in harmony or in dissonance with our obligations to him?” Therefore Jesus answers by adding, “and the things of God to God.” This “and” places the two obligations side by side. There is to be no clash between them but quite the contrary. Neither obligation interferes with the other. “The things of God” are all that our relation to him involves: contrition, faith, love, worship, obedience, submission to his providential guidance, even to his correction and chiding. We misunderstand Jesus when we think that he says that the obligation to God has nothing to do with the obligation to our government. The “and” of Jesus intends to cancel the “or” of his questioners (v. 17).

These are no alternatives, they harmonize, yea, more; by giving to God what is God’s we for his sake give to the ruler what is his. For our obligation to God includes everything in our life, its citizenship as well as our religion. This “and” connects a small field with the whole field. And only by seeing both in their true relation do we see either aright. From Cæsar Jesus rises to God; he does not make them parallel.

The emperor’s image was on the coins that were in the pockets of the Jews, and Jesus pointed to that image when he said, “Duly give to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s.” He connected the obligation with the image. When he now adds in identical words, “and the things of God to God,” are we not led to think of a corresponding connection of this obligation with an image, namely the image of God in which he created us and which his Son now restores in us? To say the least, the thought is captivating. And in fact, only as we truly attain God’s image in us shall we truly render to him what is his due.

Jesus acknowledges the state as a divine institution that is willed by God. His own conduct before Pilate exemplifies this fact, in particular his word recorded in John 19:11. His word about Cæsar regards the state and our relation to it as a separate domain, and the doctrine of the separation of church and state is thus the only legitimate conclusion to be drawn from what he says. Yet church and state are not mere parallels and equals. Our obligations to God are the whole of life, those to the state one part of this whole. While church and state are separate in the way indicated, there is no gulf between them.

They are not like two watertight compartments. The church will always put conscience, namely as governed by God, into our relation to the state (Rom. 13:5). This the church constantly contributes to the state. What the state normally contributes and always ought to contribute to the church Rom. 13:3, 4 make plain. Thus each aids the other, but the second aids in the higher way. When either seeks to control the other, usurps the functions of the other, havoc results for both as history bears witness.

Matthew 22:22

22 Well might all who heard the answer of Jesus “marvel”; the pity is that they did no more. All they did was to leave him and to go away. No man ever spoke like this man (John 7:46); why then did they leave him?

Matthew 22:23

23 On that day there came to him Sadducees, claiming there is no resurrection, and inquired of him, saying: Teacher, Moses said, if one shall die, not having children, his brother shall espouse his wife and shall raise up seed for his brother. Lest we put too much into v. 22 and think that the departure of the Pharisees and the Herodians implies that Jesus was through for the day, Matthew writes that the new interrogation took place on the same day (Tuesday). This time a group of Sadducees (freethinkers, morally loose, see 2:7) confront Jesus. No outstanding persons among them are named, and thus we may think of a group of these men who represented the opposition of their entire party to Jesus and had conceived a way to trip Jesus and at the same time to maintain their skeptic views against the orthodox Pharisees. “Claiming there is no resurrection” summarizes their position on the point at issue, hence no article is needed with the participle; εἶναι is the tense of the direct discourse (ἐστίν). We still use the present tense in general and in doctrinal propositions. “They inquired,” the verb implying, “with all due dignity.”

Matthew 22:24

24 Behind their formality they hide their real purpose, hence they use no flattery such as the other delegation employed. Feeling their lofty superiority as Sadducees, they were also naturally disinclined to exalt Jesus even in hypocrisy. Josephus comments on their coarse manners, a sample of which appears in John 11:49. While they formally address Jesus as “Teacher” they really intend to show what a wretched teacher he is. They summarize the Mosaic law regarding levirate marriage (Deut. 25:5, etc.). The verb ἐπιγαμβρεύειν means “to marry as a brother-in-law” or levir, beschwaegern. The idea behind this law was, not to let the dead, childless brother’s line die out; the first son of the new marriage (none of the other children) would be regarded as the dead man’s child.

Matthew 22:25

25 All this is preamble. Now comes the real question. Now there were with us seven brothers; and the first, having married, ended and, not having seed, left his wife to his brother; likewise also the second, and the third, until the seven. And last of all the woman died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife of the seven shall she be; for all had her? The logic of the case presented is a reductio ad absurdum against the defenders of the resurrection.

This is done by means of a supposed dilemma, either horn of which offers an impossible, untenable, really ludicrous situation. The fallacy of the logic lies in the falsity of the assumption that in this Sadducean dilemma tertium non datur. These men thought that they were wielding a two-edged sword, either edge of which would be fatal to Jesus, and they never dreamed that he would strike the flat side of their blade and snap it off at the very handle. They are a sample of how some men study the Scriptures by means of their own logic.

These deniers of the resurrection still have many followers. The view that Judaism developed the doctrine of the resurrection at a late date (say at Solomon’s time) and that it was little known even after that period is untenable. Abraham believed that God could raise his son from the dead (Heb. 11:19). Only the skeptic Sadducees disbelieved the resurrection, and their objection shows how extensively this doctrine was held. Between these two terminals there is extensive Scriptural evidence, and even Abraham speaks of the resurrection as something that was long and fully known.

Matthew 22:26

26 The Sadducees cite the case of the seven brothers as a real case, and Jesus does not contradict them in regard to the reality. It is wrong to call even Sadducees liars without proper evidence. While they use this case of seven brothers because they had it, for the sake of their argument two brothers would suffice, and such cases were certainly numerous among the Jews.

Matthew 22:27

27 The death of the woman is necessary for the argument in order to transfer all the persons concerned into the other world and thus to show actually, and not merely hypothetically, how absurd the resurrection appears when it is considered in the light of Deut. 25:5, etc. The playing of one word of Scripture (one that seems to suit error) against some great Scripture doctrine and to buttress this by a number of Scripture passages, was practiced already in the days of the Sadducees.

Matthew 22:28

28 Thus the conundrum is propounded to Jesus. Supposing for the sake of argument that there is a resurrection and that these dead bodies of ours rise again from their graves, what then about this woman? All seven brothers were equally her husbands. In the resurrection will all seven be her husbands? The very idea is monstrous already in this life and how much more so in the life to come! Or which one of the seven will be her husband, and why the one, and why not some other one of the seven, she having had a child by none?

With seven holding equal rights, why set six aside? Again an impossible situation. The Sadducees thus are certain that there is no resurrection, and that Moses himself proves it in Deuteronomy, and that no man can overthrow this solid proof. We may well suppose that they had tried this proof against many a Pharisee and made a laughingstock of every opponent. Jesus was to be their next victim.

Matthew 22:29

29 But Jesus answered and said to them: You are deceiving yourselves, not having known the Scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection neither do they marry, nor are they given in marriage, on the contrary, they are as angels in heaven. The bubble blown by the folly of the Sadducees is punctured. We must regard πλανᾶσθε as a middle, “you are deceiving yourselves,” namely by drawing a false conclusion from the word of Moses, one that does not lie in his words about the levirate marriage. How the Sadducees come to do this the participial clause explains, “not having known the Scriptures,” μὴεἰδότες, the aorist to express prior action. A genuine previous knowledge of the Scriptures would have made it impossible for the Sadducees to misuse that word of Moses as they did.

This is guilty and by no means unavoidable and thus excusable ignorance on the part of the Sadducees. Their Old Testament plainly teaches the resurrection of the dead, and in spite of it, and though they have had these Scriptures constantly before their eyes, they “have not known,” what they teach. In this way they came to abuse Moses’ word. The Sadducees introduce a false premise, one that is absolutely foreign to Moses, namely that in the other world the same conditions prevail that obtain in this world. Where does the Old Testament teach anything of this sort?

“Nor the power of God” have they known, i.e., from the Scriptures. This is not God’s power to raise the dead but his power in regard to the dead bodies as he raises them, as though the only possible way in which he could raise them would be to make them exactly as they were in this earthly life. What a pitiful conception the Sadducees had of the power of God in the world to come! That conception was the product of their blindness not of the revelation God had placed into their hands. But that is the way in which many make use of the Scriptures to this day, and they do so especially in regard to the revelation concerning the resurrection of the dead. Jesus declares that the Old Testament reveals the resurrection, even the power of God in the way in which he will raise the dead; but many modern theologians deny what Jesus asserts regarding the Old Testament.

Matthew 22:30

30 The γάρ clause points out where the error lies. With one stroke it sweeps away the seven men that the Sadducees refer to in their self-deception. The horns of the dilemma on which Jesus is to impale himself crumple up and fade into nothing. “For in the resurrection neither do they marry (namely men), nor are they given in marriage (namely women),” R. 392. Luke 20:35, 36 expands this statement by emphasizing the fact that Jesus speaks of the resurrection of the blessed and of their condition in heaven. The entire arrangement of sex, marriage, reproduction, and childbirth, and all laws pertaining to these is intended for the earthly life only and not for the life to come. The Sadducees should have known this from the Scriptures.

But this difference between our present life and that to come does not imply that our bodies will be discarded. Jesus expressly says that the change will take place “in the resurrection,” in the divine act which will bring forth our bodies from their graves.

“But (they shall be) as angels in heaven,” says Jesus who came from heaven. He does more than merely to refute his opponents, he instructs them and us besides. Not “angels” but “as angels” in regard to sex and marriage. “Just as the children of the resurrection no longer die (in heaven), so also they no longer need marriage to replenish the race.” Besser. “Where there is no dying, there is also no succession of children.” Augustine. As the number of the angels is complete and fixed, so will be that of the children of God in the resurrection. Already this is enough to establish the likeness existing between the angels and the saints. But we may add that our bodies will be lifted above the narrow limitations of matter as it is at present; they will be made perfect instruments of the spirits and accord in all things with the glorious conditions obtaining in the world to come.

The idea that the angels, too, possess corporeity is without a basis in Scripture. This idea assumes that the angels have an etherial, firelike body; and when it is consistently held, attributes a body of some indefinable form also to God. But the Scriptures know the angels only as πνεύματα, spirits, and in many connections use this term as the opposite of all that is bodily or material. See the fuller discussion in Philippi, Glaubenslehre, II, 296, etc. When angels appear to men on earth they are given a form in order to become visible, just as Jehovah assumed a form in the theophanies.

Matthew 22:31

31 But concerning the resurrection of the dead, did you not read that spoken by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not the God of dead men but of living men. The Sadducees had falsely appealed to the Scriptures (as Satan did in 4:6); Jesus crushes this appeal by himself truly appealing to the Scriptures (as he did in 4:7). The Scriptures are the true court of appeal. Jesus unmasks one of the hidden batteries of Scripture and delivers a volley that is the more annihilating because it comes from an unexpected quarter. But why does he use Exod. 3:6 or its parallels instead of obvious passages such as Dan. 12:2?

Some answer, because the Sadducees accepted only the Pentateuch and rejected the prophetic books; but the proof for this view seems to be rather slender. Jesus probably used Exodus because this passage involves a deduction as a proof for the resurrection. The Sadducees had made a false deduction from Deuteronomy; Jesus shows them how to make a correct deduction from Scripture, one that clearly lies in the words of Scripture themselves and does not go one inch beyond them.

Once more the point at issue is stressed: “concerning the resurrection of the dead.” And here the genitive τῶννεκρῶν is added in order to shut out every misconception regarding the word “resurrection.” “The dead” are the dead bodies in the graves; these bodies shall experience the resurrection by being made alive again and being glorified at the last day. Modernistic exegesis says to us, “Positive proof of the resurrection—or rather of the life after death.” “He thought of the life after death as non-material.” But the whole question at issue is concerned about the dead bodies in the graves—shall they be raised up and live again or not? Regarding this question Jesus asks (as he did in 21:42) with a tone of surprise, “Did you not read that spoken by God?” Of course they had read this word—but how? Just as so many read God’s words today. Jesus cites a word that was uttered by God in person and was recorded as having been uttered by him, and not merely a regulation communicated through Moses for the period of the old covenant only: the arrangement of levirate marriages.

Matthew 22:32

32 This word is the covenant name which God gave to himself, “I am the God of Abraham,” etc., and it is not necessary to say how the Jews gloried in this name and title. Through the patriarchs it connected the Jews with God as his children; it placed them into the covenant through which this connection was made; and it made that covenant the seal by which all the promises it contained were divinely guaranteed. Among those promises was “the resurrection of the dead.” And now the asyndeton lifts the cover and reveals what lies underneath: “He is not the God of dead men but of living men,” both νεκρῶν and ζώντων are masculine. Moreover, ὁΘεός is the predicate, the article making it identical and interchangeable with the subject which is contained in οὐκἔστιν, R. 768. Since Θεός is used as a proper name, the sense is the same whether the article is added or omitted; this is likewise true of terms that denote persons or objects only one of which exists. Exegetically the textual question whether the article is genuine or not does not alter the interpretation.

Our versions make ὁΘεός the subject. This is probably done on account of the article; the predicate is then to be implied. But the Greek would naturally connect the genitives with ὁΘεός as their natural governing noun, which thus must be the predicate in the sentence. And the emphasis is on these genitives: not the God “of dead men” but “of living men.”

“Dead men” are men whose bodies are lifeless, who are lying as such in their graves. If there is no resurrection, then the bodies of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would remain dead forever, and that would make God “the God of dead men”—an impossible thought. That would mean that death was not conquered; that death was holding its prey and was stronger than God; that redemption had failed, leaving death still triumphant. But no; the resurrection proves that God is “the God of living men.” Death has suffered its deathblow. Redemption has not failed. It has changed the death of God’s saints into a mere sleep.

The proof is the resurrection by which God wakes these dead bodies from their slumber. The precious dust of God’s saints may, indeed, appear to our eyes as other dust, dead dust; in reality God, Christ, heavenly power is over and in that dust, it is living dust, we shall see it live in glory forever. Thus the very name and title which God gave himself in the Old Testament as early as Exodus proves the resurrection.

The untenable interpretation is offered that the souls of the patriarchs are in sheol, the fabled “realm of the dead,” and that Christ had in mind a release of their souls from sheol, and that this would be their resurrection and prove God to be “the God of the living.” But such an interpretation makes Jesus’ refutation of the Sadducees a farce. They denied the resurrection of the dead bodies, and the substitution of a statement regarding only their souls, would be a deception, which, if detected, would seriously reflect on the entire character of Jesus. It is an evasion of the real issue to say that the patriarchs were “not absolutely dead men, non-existent men,” but “living” because they were enjoying eternal life in heaven. Then the Sadducees (ancient and modern) would be right in asserting that no resurrection of the dead bodies will take place. Jesus himself would be a Sadducee. He would be pretending to assert something “concerning the resurrection of the dead,” namely its reality, when in fact he says nothing at all about it and thus by his silence abolishes its reality.

Matthew 22:33

33 And when the multitudes heard they were amazed at his teaching. Matthew purposely uses the plural οἱὄχλοι, for not all these “multitudes” were present when Jesus answered the Sadducees. Many could not hear the voice of Jesus. They “heard” the report spread far and wide among the pilgrims who had assembled in vast numbers for the Passover. All who heard the story continued in a state of amazement (the verb is the durative imperfect) “at this teaching” which so thoroughly refuted the Sadducees on the basis of the Scriptures themselves and filled the very covenant name of God with the glorious truth of “the resurrection of the dead.” That name now shone in new splendor for them.

Matthew 22:34

34 Now the Pharisees, when they heard that he muzzled the Sadducees, where gathered together at one place; and one of them, learned in law, inquired, Teacher, what kind of commandment is great in the law? In 21:23 we see “high priests and elders” confronting Jesus; these were Sadducees and Pharisees in their official position, all of them Sanhedrists. In 22:16 only disciples of the Pharisees are put forward. Now we have a general assembly of the Pharisees, a gathering of all their forces in one place (ἐπὶτὸαὐτό is common in this sense). While συνήχθησαν is passive in form, “were brought together,” i.e., by being summoned, it may here be used in the middle sense, “they assembled themselves.” What caused them to gather was the news that Jesus had muzzled or silenced the Sadducees after their denial of the resurrection. This pleased the Pharisees exceedingly because they believed in the resurrection (Acts 23:8).

That is what induced them to propound another question to Jesus which they hoped would likewise lead Jesus to utter a pronouncement against the Sadducees. To make the motive of the Pharisees the desire to entangle Jesus, as had been done in the previous attacks on him, is rather unsatisfactory. The outcome of the present questioning is entirely too friendly for that (Mark 12:34). The one place where all the Pharisees assembled was in the vicinity of Jesus in the Temple court; a very few texts read ἐπʼ αὐτόν, “unto him,” which is substantially correct.

Matthew 22:35

35 One of their number, a νομικός, who was versed in the law or Torah, whom Mark calls “a scribe,” acts as their spokesman, apparently by general agreement. Mark tells the story as it pertains to this man alone, Matthew as it involves the whole crowd of Pharisees, none of whom, however, opens his mouth. This one man had heard the Sadducees reasoning together (Mark 12:28) after their defeat and had perceived how well Jesus had answered them. Now he has a question to ask Jesus, one that is of special interest to all the Pharisees. They all agreed that he shall proceed to ask it, and they all go along to see what Jesus will answer. “Tempting him” thus means, “trying Jesus out” to see how he would solve the new conundrum.

Matthew 22:36

36 We should translate, “What kind of commandment is great in the law?” Since often ποῖος has lost its qualitative sense, we must decide whether it has lost it here, so that the question might be, “Which specific commandment must be considered great?” We at once see that then the word used in the question should be the superlative: “greatest in the law.” But sometimes the positive is used in this way: “great”—all other commandments being regarded as less (R. 660). So this is not decisive, and R. 740 wavers. What is decisive here is the answer of Jesus which makes two commandments great and at the same time indicates what makes them so great. The qualitative ποία in the question is matched by the qualitative force of the answer.

To understand both the question and the great answer we must recall that the rabbis had no less than 613 commandments, 248 positive, 365 negative. In order to obtain so large a number they used gematria, a cabalistic method of interpretation by which the rabbis interchanged Hebrew words whose letters have the same numerical value when they are added. Among so many commandments some, of course, would be less important than others, and in a conflict of duties the more important would have precedence. To what this casuistry led we see in 15:4–6. Now, how was the greatness of a commandment to be determined? Of what kind (ποία) must it be?

One method was to judge by the severity of the penalty attached. Thus some magnified the commandments regarding the sacrifices, others the Sabbath laws, and still others the law and regulations regarding circumcision. What would Jesus say? But the chief point to these Pharisees was the fact that the Sadducees rejected all the Pharisaic commandments that were not plainly written in the law, all those that were only the tradition of the fathers. This was one form of their skepticism. Josephus, Antiquities, 13, 10, 6; 18, 1, 4.

Would Jesus side with the Sadducees?

Matthew 22:37

37 But Jesus said to him: Thou wilt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and with thy whole soul and with thy whole mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second, like it, this, Thou wilt love thy neighbor as thyself. In these two commandments the whole law hangs and the prophets. This is an answer without a preamble of rebuke, cf., v. 18 or v. 29. We note also that it is directed only to the questioner (αὐτῷ) and disregards, as it were, the assembled crowd of Pharisees who are conspicuous as such because of their phylacteries and their tasseled robes (23:5).

Jesus offers nothing but a simple and a direct answer; and Mark adds the remark that the lawyer who asked the question fully appreciated and even repeated the answer as being one that truly answered the question, and that thus he received the commendation of Jesus. The answer first quotes Deuteronomy 6:5, but not exactly according to either the Hebrew or the LXX; for in the last phrase these latter have “might,” whereas Jesus has “mind.” Mark records the three phrases that Matthew mentions, but adds a fourth that has “might” (“strength”) and is like the third in the Hebrew and the LXX. There is no difference in substance. Mark, however, adds the introductory statement, “Hear, O Israel,” etc.

On ἀγαπᾶν as expressing the love of intelligence and purpose, thus differeng from φιλεῖν which is the love of mere liking or affection, compare 5:44. In this instance it would be impossible to substitute φιλεῖν for ἀγαπᾶν. The latter implies that we know the true God in all his greatness and grace and that we turn to him with all our being. It would be impossible to apply to φιλεῖν the deep phrases, “with all thy heart,” etc.; but ἀγαπᾶν really involves these phrases. The future tense ἀγαπήσεις is used in legal phraseology as a substitute for the imperative (R. 330), and the future is volitive (R. 943) and expresses the lawgiver’s will. The three phrases are not condensed into “with thy whole heart, soul, and mind,” but spread out so as to place equal emphasis on each one.

Yet the heart is mentioned first, the soul properly next, and the mind last. To understand the psychological necessity of this order, study Delitzsch, Biblische Psychologie, 248, etc. In the Biblical conception the leb, καρδία, “heart,” is the very center of our personality; here also dwells the ψυχή, “the life” or “soul”; and here functions the διάνοια, “the mind” or power to think. The nephesh or ψυχή is the life that animates the body, the consciousness of which is in the “heart”; and the διάνοια is the reason together with all its functions, namely its thoughts, ideas, convictions, according to which the heart or personality acts. Since this is God’s own commandment, uttered by his own mouth, we here have a psychology of man as it is conceived by man’s own Creator who certainly knows man better than man can possibly know himself.

The word “whole” in the three phrases receives great emphasis because of its very repetition. God will have no mere part, allow no division or subtraction. Not even the smallest corner is to be closed against God. The whole heart, the seat of our personality; the whole soul, our sentient being itself; and the whole mind, the entire activity of this our being is to turn to God in love; Josh. 22:5, “to cleave unto him.” And this is to be done because he is the covenant God: Yahweh, “I am that I am,” the unchanging Lord who drew us into covenant relation with him; and ’Eloheka, the God of power and might, and, as the possessive shows, he who employs his power in our behalf. This great name is the epitome of the gospel. Both titles, and especially when they are combined, denote divine love and grace toward us.

By that name God proclaims the gospel to us as the supreme motive for us to return his love. Believing in such a God, how can we help but love him and render him the obedience of love? Luther was correct when, in his explanation of the Ten Commandments, he begins the explanation of each commandment with fear and love.

Moreover, this divine name proclaims the oneness of God. By so doing it in no way conflicts with his trinity, since this is the oneness of being not of person. This one God has revealed himself in three persons. As regards other gods, each one of these is, of course, also one. To call Israel’s God one would thus mean nothing at all, might even bear the false implication that he was the one and special god for the Jewish nation as other nations had this or that god. The oneness expressed in Yahweh ’Eloheka is the fact that he is the only God who is able to make and to keep a covenant; all other gods are nonentities, dead figures, nonliving, empty idols. In New Testament phraseology: as our Father in Christ Jesus loves us with the divine love of fatherhood, so we are in turn to love him as his devoted children in Christ Jesus.

Matthew 22:38

38 Because of the quality of this commandment which reaches up to the covenant of God and extends down through all our being, Jesus rightly says, “This is the great and first commandment,” by its very quality outranking all others that may be added. Once this is stated in all simplicity as Jesus states it here, how could any man even attempt a contradiction? By this commandment, therefore, all the other commandments and the many regulations given to the Jews through Moses are to be weighed and gauged. We have the illustrations given by Jesus himself in v. 21, and again in v. 32, where twice God’s name is made decisive in regard to legal questions (“Is it lawful,” v. 17; the law of levirate marriage, v. 24).

Matthew 22:39

39 But where supreme quality is the issue, a second commandment must be mentioned, namely the one in which the long list given in Lev. 19 culminates, the eighteenth verse: “Thou wilt love thy neighbor as thyself.” In quality it is “like” the one regarding God. Here again we have “love,” and here again we have the full extent of this love which includes every contact with our neighbor or our fellow-man. Some manuscripts have the dative: “like to this,” i.e., to the previous commandment. Compare 5:44, and again note that φιλεῖν would be out of place here, whereas the love of understanding and corresponding purpose is exactly what God does and must demand of us toward our neighbor even if that neighbor be a stranger to us (Luke 10:37) or a man who is filled with enmity toward us. The point in quoting this commandment in addition to the other is in this instance not the fact that love to God includes love to our neighbor, which is true enough; but that the quality and the high character of both commandments are “alike.” This, of course, leaves them in their natural order, the one concerning God remains “first,” and the other concerning man “second,” for God is infinitely above man.

Matthew 22:40

40 Because of their nature and their quality as indicated “in these two commandments the whole law (Torah, Pentateuch) hangs and the prophets” (all the other books of the Old Testament). These two are the nail from which all else written in the Old Testament hangs suspended. Take away this nail, and everything else would fall in a heap. It would lose its true meaning, significance, and purpose. Here again we have the emphatic ὅλος, “the whole law.” We cannot reduce “the law and the prophets” to the legal contents of the Old Testament books and say that the prophets explain and elucidate the many laws and regulations of Moses. This would obscure the gospel contents of the Old Testament.

But the fact that this is included in the First Commandment we have shown by pointing to the covenant name of God. See how Mark 12:29, 30 makes this gospel name prominent. No; the gospel, too, “hangs in these two commandments.” Only those who have and hold the gospel can to any degree fulfill these commandments, even as they are intended peculiarly for God’s own children. And these two commandments, as do no others, show the true need of the gospel; for, however well they may outwardly perform deeds of the law, by nature men lack the love demanded by these commandments, are thus altogether guilty before God, and can be saved and restored only by means of the gospel.

The answer of Jesus to the lawyer is so complete, so rich and satisfying, so illuminating in every way, that the lawyer himself said so in his own way (Mark 12:32, 33). When he said that this twofold love “is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices,” he indicated the kind of commandments he had hitherto considered of prime rank. But he yielded to Jesus and thus receives a significant commendation. This incident, however, stopped all further questioning of Jesus.

Matthew 22:41

41 After submitting to the various questionings recorded in 21:23–22:40, Jesus, in turn, propounds a question in all sincerity in order to lead his hearers to the truth. Now since the Pharisees had gathered together, Jesus inquired of them, saying: How does it seem to you concerning the Christ? Whose son is he? They say to him, David’s. Jesus has before him the same assemblage of Pharisees that was mentioned in v. 34. The perfect participle συνηγμένων plainly recalls συνήχθησαν of that verse, and its form implies that they were still thus assembled. Together with them there was present a throng of festival pilgrims, οἱὄχλοι, to whom Jesus turns after he has concluded his address to the Pharisees (23:1). In all dignity, as the verb implies, Jesus makes his inquiry.

Matthew 22:42

42 A variety of explanations has been offered as to why Jesus asks this question about the Messiah. Already the ancient fathers saw that Jesus here renews the supreme question he had a few weeks ago addressed to his own band of disciples, 16:13–16. Peter had given the true answer; the Pharisees refuse to give that answer. Until Palm Sunday Jesus had avoided use of the name “Messiah” because of its political and nationalistic implications. Now the time has arrived to disregard all such implications. On Palm Sunday Jesus had entered Jerusalem and the Temple as David’s son, Israel’s King, the Messiah.

The pilgrim multitudes had shouted his great titles, the boys marching in the Temple courts had echoed those shouts. As the Messiah Jesus now asks the Pharisees this question, and they know that it is not an academic or a theoretical inquiry but the supreme question concerning his own person. It is put objectively, in the third person: “What do you think about the Messiah? Whose son is he?” It is thereby made easier to answer; but it pertains to Jesus himself nontheless.

Luther finds a natural connection between the question concerning what makes a commandment great in the law (v. 36) and the answer Jesus gave (v. 37–40) and this great question which Jesus now asks and answers from Ps. 110. This connection has been denied, and yet it is only too obvious. Why would the covenant God of Israel, Yahweh Eloheka, ask his people to love him as he did if that love could never be realized in their hearts because of their sin and their doom under sin? His very covenant name points to the covenant promise of the Messiah in and through whose grace Israel would, indeed, come to love the Lord their God with the whole heart, soul, and mind (Jer. 31:33, 34). “The great and first commandment” (v. 38) and the Messiah, David’s son and David’s Lord, will ever belong together.

Jesus has one and only one object in asking this question: to add to the other revelations of his deity that Jesus had made this revelation which is quoted from David’s Psalm, which is so clear and complete that every Jew who believed the Scriptures must at once see and accept it. The purpose of Jesus is to win even these Pharisees to faith—remember the one that was not far from the kingdom (Mark 12:34)? The motive that prompts Jesus is the pure and mighty love of the two great commandments which are repeated by his own lips.

The Pharisees answer with great readiness, “David’s.” In fact, every Jewish child would have at once given the same answer. That is what all their scribes taught them on the basis of the Scriptures, Mark 12:35. When modernists reduce this to the subjective “normal belief of his (Jesus’) day” and admit only that the Messiah “might be descended from David,” and intimate that he might also have been descended from some other ancestor, they ignore all that both Testaments declare about the human ancestry of the promised Messiah. As far as Jesus is concerned, his legal sonship in David’s line is established by Matthew’s genealogical table in chapter one; and his natural sonship from David’s line is equally established by Luke’s table, 3:23, etc. His whole family connection was fully known (13:55, 56; 12:47). No more deadly weapon against the Messiahship of Jesus could have been found than the proof that he was not of David’s line; but his bitterest enemies never ventured to cast even the least doubt upon his human descent from David.

Matthew 22:43

43 The answer of the Pharisees was perfectly correct as far as it went. But it had to go much farther. For David had a large number of descendants. How was the one to be distinguished who would be the Messiah? If God had revealed no more concerning the Messiah than the fact that he would be a son of David he would have left his people altogether in the dark. Davidic descent was only one mark.

What was the other, the one that would make one of David’s sons stand out far above all the others, far above even a Solomon and a Hezekiah, would beyond a doubt make him the promised Messiah? Surely, the Scriptures would answer that question. In order to help these Jews and other bystanders to find this answer in the Scriptures, Jesus continues his question. He says to them: How, then, does David in Spirit call hint Lord, saying, The Lord said to my Lord, Be sitting at my right until I put thine enemies beneath thy feet? If, therefore, David calls him Lord, how is he his son?

These questions assume that it is self-evident that the Messiah would be David’s son and, in fact, rest on this assumption as an unquestionable fact. Moreover, these questions, together with their plainly implied answer, would be senseless unless two further things are true: first, that David wrote Psalms 110 and no one else; and secondly, that Yahweh actually did call this one son of David nothing less than David’s ’Adonai. The Jews have consistently interpreted this psalm as a Messianic psalm in spite of the New Testament and the Christian application to Jesus whom the synagogues reject as the Messiah.

Against the critics who on subjective grounds deny that this Psalm was composed by David we put the word of Jesus in this passage; that of Luke and of Peter in Acts 2:34, 35; that of Paul in 1 Cor. 15:25, plus that of Hebrews 1:13; 10:13. David wrote this Psalm ἐνΠνεύματι (ἐντῷΠνεύματιτῷἉγίῳ, Mark 12:36), “in connection with the Spirit,” under the Holy Spirit’s influence, which, if it means anything, means by divine inspiration.

If this is denied, the result is more than disastrous. If David did not write this psalm, if David did not call this one son of his “my Lord,” if the Pharisees and all Judaism were mistaken regarding this point, and if Jesus, as a child of his times, was equally mistaken: then we have the sad picture of the great Jesus by a mistake proving to Jews caught in the same mistake what the mistakes of both disprove instead of prove. But if only the Pharisees were mistaken regarding the authorship of this psalm, if Jesus knew better, then Jesus used the ignorance of the Pharisees for his purpose and sinks to the level of a tricky modern lawyer who capitalizes on the ignorance of his opponent at court. In either case Jesus proves his deity by a false proof, according to one view ignorantly, according to the other consciously. In other words, he proves his deity by really disproving it. A mistaken Jesus, or a tricky Jesus, is not the model for us which the critics would make him.

Matthew 22:44

44 But even when the authorship of this psalm is attributed to David, we are not through. For in this psalm he most clearly distinguishes between himself and the far greater person of the Messiah, his future son and yet his almighty Lord. We are told that in no other psalm David thus distinguishes the type from the antitype. The answer is that in this psalm David does not operate with type (himself) and antitype (the Messiah). Even if this were his conception and if here alone he distinguishes clearly between the two, there is no law of God or man that a thing must be done more than once before it can be done at all. We are born only once, die only once, and no man denies either because they cannot point to repetitions. But the thesis that only in this psalm David clearly distinguishes between himself and the Messiah is untenable; he does so in 2 Sam. 23:1–7; again in Ps. 2:7, 12; and in Ps. 22 he goes so far beyond anything that he experienced that here, too, the Messiah stands out distinctly from David.

“The Lord said” is more expressive in the Hebrew: ne’um Yahweh, “communication of Jehovah,” Eingerauntes, something secretly whispered into the ear, the communication of a mystery. The expression is at times placed into the middle of a divine communication, like the Latin inquit, sometimes at the end, but repeatedly also at the head as is the case in this psalm. At times the recipient of the communication is added as here: “to my Lord,”’Adonai. The fact that this is David’s future son is understood by all concerned, is placed beyond question by Jesus himself, and is accepted by both Jewish and Christian exegesis. Yet this his own son David, who as the king had only Yahweh above him, calls “my Lord,” and the kind of ’Adon or “Lord” he has in mind is brought out by the description of him given in this psalm: he is one who sits at Yahweh’s right hand, one whose enemies are made his footstool, one who has the rod of strength out of Zion; and so on through the psalm. No wonder David called this son of his “my Lord.” This is the Messiah, the God-man, and thus even King David’s “Lord.” Note that Yahweh is here distinct from ’Adon; a clear revelation in the Old Testament of the persons of the Godhead.

Here one divine person speaks to the other. All three persons appear clearly in the Old Testament. No wonder the Baptist could freely mention all three, and no Jew ever objected when he heard mention of the Father, the Son of God, and the Spirit of God. The Jews’ sole objection was due to the fact that Jesus, the lowly man of Nazareth, called himself the Son, and that men received him as such. David was a prophet who by the illumination and the inspiration “in Spirit” wrote as he did.

Here divine exaltation is predicated of David’s son, the Messiah: “Be sitting (present imperative, durative) at my right (ἐκ, in the Greek idiom the right, the left, too, are always designated “from” the person, 20:21).” The Hebrew imperative sheb limini has actually become a Messianic title, “Sheblimini.” Yahweh’s right hand is his divine power and majesty, therefore also it is called “the right hand of power.” Compare the parallel passages on God’s right hand. To be sitting at God’s right is to exercise this power and this majesty to the fullest extent. This invitation to sit is thus the divine exaltation of Christ’s human nature. For as the Son, begotten from eternity, he is coequal with the Father and together with the Father and the Spirit exercises all power and majesty. When the Son assumed our human nature he communicated all his divine attributes to that nature. Just as a king who marries a humble maiden by virtue of that marriage makes her a queen so that she shares in all his royal prerogatives, so the Son did when he wedded our human nature.

But in order to accomplish his redemptive work it was necessary that the human nature pass through a state of humiliation while it was here on earth. So the human nature had the divine attributes bestowed upon it, but ordinarily, except when working miracles, did not use these attributes, Phil. 2:6, etc. Then at last followed the glorious exaltation: Christ in his human nature sat at his Father’s right hand.

Now comes the astounding clause “until I put thine enemies beneath thy feet.” Yahweh himself declares that he will put the exalted Messiah’s enemies under his feet (the variant reading, “put … as thy footstool,” follows the LXX and the Hebrew). These are ἐχθροί, personal enemies, who, unlike David, will not have this man to reign over them. Jesus faces some of these very enemies as he utters these mighty assurances of Yahweh concerning himself. These words must have burned into the souls of these Pharisees, but Yahweh’s terrible threat as it came from the lips of the despised Jesus only enraged them.

But the object of Jesus did not lie in this threat but in the revelation of the divine nature of his person whom David himself called “my Lord” and exalted as very God in this psalm. We need scarcely trouble about the interpretation which makes the Father and not the Son active. We have known for a long time that the opera ad extra sunt indivisa; all the persons of the Godhead share in all of them, and the Father works in and through the Son and the Spirit. In Ps. 2:9 the Messiah-King smites with a rod of iron, dashes in pieces like a potter’s vessel. That shows the Son at the Father’s right. God laughs at the raging of kings on the earth and at the violent hosts of men and of devils who assail his Son’s kingdom.

These expressions, such as making a footstool of enemies, Josh. 10:24 are anthropomorphitic. Conquering kings gave evidence of their triumph by placing a foot upon the neck of some conquered king. But here the figure is vastly magnified: all the Messiah’s enemies shall be his footstool. “Footstool” (Hebrew) matches the figure of the exalted Messiah’s “sitting” on the throne with the Father. “Temporal history shall end with the triumph of good over evil but not with the annihilation of evil but with its subjugation. To this point it will come when absolute omnipotence for and through the exalted Christ shows its effectiveness.” Delitzsch. On ‘ad, ἕως, “until,” see the author’s commentary on 1 Cor. 15:28.

Matthew 22:45

45 Here follows the question that is so deadly for these unbelieving Pharisees yet so illuminating and blessed for all believers: “If, therefore, David calls him Lord, how is he his son?” With οὖν Jesus makes his question a deduction from the statement of the psalm, just as in v. 43 οὖν deduces the question there asked from the answer of the Pharisees. The condition is one of reality: all must admit that in the psalm David calls the Messiah “his Lord.” The condition of reality challenges any denial of David’s own word recorded in Holy Writ.

The remarkable fact is that Jesus does not turn the question around and ask: “Since he is David’s son, as we all know, how can he at the same time be David’s Lord?” But no, Jesus puts it the other way: “How is he his son?” Nor dare we generalize: a man’s son is his lord. We must limit ourselves to David, Israel’s mightiest king, who lived and died having no man above him—and yet this great David makes his own son his Lord. The question of Jesus, put in the form he used, throws the Pharisees against this stone wall: the Messiah is David’s son!

The terrible error of the Pharisees is here exposed. Their conception of the Messiah was that he was David’s son and only David’s son, a mere human Messiah, however great and mighty he might be in his human glory and power. His deity was a closed book to their blind reading of Scripture. They dared not say that he was not to be David’s son; they knew that he would be. They dared not deny David’s inspired word that the Messiah would at the same time be David’s Lord and thus very God. Yet the Pharisees would not admit the Messiah’s deity.

Matthew 22:46

46 And no one was able to answer a word. Nor did anyone dare from that day on to inquire of him any further. The Pharisees remain dumb and silent. They had no answer since they were obdurate and refused to give the right answer. Although convicted, they will not yield. This was Tuesday. None of the evangelists reports what Jesus did on Wednesday or during the day on Thursday. It seems that after he left the Temple courts on Tuesday he never returned to teach there.

R. A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research, by A. T. Robertson, fourth edition.

Concordia Triglotta Triglot Concordia. The Symbolical Books of the Ev. Lutheran Church.