Bible Commentaries
Matthew 22

Verses 1-46

XXII 1-14 Parable of the Wedding-Feast (cf.Luke 14:15-24)—This parable-allegory, unlike 21:33-44, is not directed against the Jewish leaders as such, though there is an ominous echo of 21:38-41 in 22:6-7. It is addressed to all and relates to the personnel of the Kingdom. The distinguished ones favoured with the invitation refuse, those of no distinction take their place. But even among these (Mt only) some are unworthy and so excluded.

1-2. ’Once more Jesus began to speak to them in parables’, in parabolic form. The situation about to be described (cf. 13:24, note) presents one aspect of the Kingdom. Jewish literature (cf. Edersheim 2, 425 f.) likened the Messianic era to a feast (cf.Isaiah 25:6) and the Messias himself to a bridegroom wedded to Israel; cf. the Targum on Ps 44( 45) 2(3); Edersheim 2, 718. It is clear at the outset, therefore, that the ’king’ is God and the ’son’ the Messias.

3-5. It was usual in the East to remind invited guests when the time drew near. The servants, presumably the Prophets, warn the chosen people that the marriage-feast (??µ??) is imminent. With great forbearance the king overlooks the refusal and sends a second group of servants to say that the feast stands waiting. This circumstance indicates that the second group of servants is representative of God’s envoys in the new order; cf. the invitation of 3:2; 10:7. The oxen and fatted animals suggest a feast of royal proportions, but the invited are more interested in their worldly cares.

6. Others (and the strange violence of the action suggests allegory) not content with insulting the servants (and through them their king) actually murder them. This treatment the Baptist had experienced and the Apostles been taught to expect, 10:28.

7. The king’s patience is at last exhausted and his revenge terrible: death for the murderers and ruin for their city. The ’city’ is plainly not the king’s capital which is elsewhere—perhaps (if the allegory has influenced the picture) in heaven itself. But it is as unnecessary to localize the ’city’ as it is to localize the ’vineyard’ of 21:33. The subsequent destruction of Jerusalem in a.d. 70 by the armies of Vespasian (God’s instrument) would give the words a significance perhaps missed by their first hearers.

8-10. The scene shifts to the palace. The king orders his servants (those of 3 or others) to bring in those who have not shown themselves unworthy of the royal honour. They are gathered indiscriminately from ’the street-crossings’, not chosen as Israel was chosen—we think automatically of the Gentiles; cf.Luke 13:29. Sinners and just alike, all are called, though not all found worthy. The bridal-hall is full.

11-13. In Mt, 10, not in Lk, our Lord describes the execution of the king’s command, 9, with a view to developing a warning for the newcomers; cf.Romans 11:19-21. One is found unsuitable when the king surveys the guests. The lack of attire befitting the occasion is not surprising since the guests had been hurriedly and indiscriminately assembled. The king’s sentence, therefore, is justified only if we assume that somehow or other the lack was culpable. Allegory is not concerned to explain such details. We are expected to see immediately that the ’wedding-garment’ is an allegorical element representing fitness for the Kingdom; lack of such fitness is obviously culpable and requires no explanation. The man has no excuse to offer. The king passes sentence and the banquet begins or rather is resumed under new conditions, i.e. it now becomes a banquet in which all are perfect. We are reminded of the parables of the Drag-net and of the Wheat and Cockle (cf. 13:39-40, 48-49) where the discrimination of bad and good is postponed until the Final Judgement. The banquet which is the Messianic era on earth passes into eternity with its worthy members. 14. It is difficult to see how the ’many called, few chosen’ (cf. 21:17, note) sums up either part of the parable. In the first part, 2-7, many are called but all refuse; in the second, 8-13, though the one man no doubt represents a class of persons, we are left with the clear impression that relatively ’many’ are chosen. Unless we treat the remark as a disjointed appendix (with Buzy, Mt, 295 f.) it would appear that it applies to the two parts taken together, Prat 2, 228. In the perspective of the parable and in the range of the experience of our Lord’s audience the invitation to the Kingdom has gone out to many—to the whole nation of Israel—and the nation as a whole has refused. Add to this the thought that even in the ’nation’ next invited, 21:43, there are some unworthy, 22:11 ff., and the ’many called, few chosen’ appears in its due proportions. It is to be remembered also that the term ’few’ is relative; they are ’many’ in 8:11. Moreover, the dictum refers not directly to the number of the saved (a question our Lord refuses to answer; Luke 13:23) but primarily to the members, and worthy members, of the Messianic kingdom on earth. The rest is the secret of the Father. Note: we have explained the parable as a unity. There are, however, reasons for holding that Mt has fused one parable (1-10 with the exception Of 6-7) with two fragments related in theme. The parable is found in Luke 14:16-24, the fragments concern the ’murderers’ (Mt only; 6-7) and the ’wedding-garment’ incident (Mt only; 11-14). cf. Buzy, RB 41 ( 1932) 38-43.

15-22 The Tribute Question (Mark 12:13-17; Luke 20:20-26)—15-16. The Pharisees seek to trap Jesus with a question. To hide the trap they do not approach him themselves but send their students (not yet Rabbis). With these are the Herodians, a political and not a religious sect, supporters of the Herodian princes; in this respect they did not share the Pharisees’ outlook which was anti-Herodian. Both parties were at one, however, in their interim policy of subservience to Rome. It was to their common interest to scotch a movement which threatened or seemed to threaten the stalus quo. They open the debate with a compliment calculated to disarm. They insist, tendentiously, upon the Master’s well-known independence of thought (e.g. 7:29) and outspoken expression even against the person of the ruling power, Luke 13:31 f. It seems from this emphasis that they hope for an anti-Roman decision which later they were forced to fabricate, Luke 23:2. The word ’tribute’ (??+??s??) here apparently embraces all taxes (capitation, land-tax, etc.) payable to the civil power. The question is dishonest: Pharisees and Herodians had long since adjusted their conscience to the payment. But it presents Jesus with a dilemma. Should he advise non-payment, as they hope and expect, he becomes indictable to Rome. The pseudoMessias, Judas the Galilean, had perished for this very cause, twenty years before in a.d. 7. Should he advise payment he loses his Messianic credit with the people for whom Messianism spelt independence of foreign yoke.

18. Our Lord, knowing the insincerity of the question, could refuse to answer but does not.

19. As usual (e.g. 21:31-40) he asks the objectors to contribute to their own downfall and they show him a silver denarius (cf. 17:23-26, note), the Roman coin with which the taxes were so often paid.

20. The coin was probably of Tiberius ( a.d. 14-37) with, on the obverse, the laureate head of this emperor and the inscription: ’Ti(berius) Caesar Divi Aug(usti) F(ilius) Augustus’ ( HDB 3, 427 f.).

21. Plainly the coin came from Caesar, it is right that it should be returned (?p?d?te) to him. These civil transactions are on one plane, God’s rights on another. There is no inevitable clash, provided (as was the case in the relationship of Rome and Jewry) that the civil demands did not encroach upon the duties of man to God.

22. The answer is a simple one. But it amazes the adversaries because they have no suspicion of the simple principle from which it emerges. Messianism is for them inevitably a political movement and their dilemma, 17, consequently exhaustive and fatal. It is the spiritual nature of our Lord’s Messianism that provides the third alternative which is, not compromise, but due delimitation of spheres; cf.Jn

23-33 Bodily Resurrection attacked (Mark 12:18-27, Mark 12:34b; Luke 20:27-40)—The Sadducees, 3:7-10, note, now appear on the scene not, as the Pharisees had attempted, to involve Jesus with the political authorities, but with a question of Jewish doctrine and practice. They seek either to score a point off the Pharisees by winning his support or else, if our Lord defends the Pharisees’ doctrine, to make game of him. The Sadducees, despite the fact that from their ranks the priests were chosen, believed the one God to be uninterested in his creation. They therefore denied divine providence, the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body. The Pharisees’ doctrine of bodily resurrection was firmly held but, to judge by certain texts, crass (Bonsirven 1, 482-5). In the question put to our Lord, therefore, another dilemma is implied: either a very material conception of resurrection or no resurrection at all. As before, our Lord has a third alternative to ’propose, 30, which proceeds from the high spirituality of his mind.

23-27. The Sadducees quote Deuteronomy 25:5 enunciating the ’levitate’ law. They propose a case in which each of seven brothers, all being childless, had successively equal rights over the one wife. What when these rights become simultaneous after death? It reduces the idea of bodily resurrection to absurdity!

28-30. The objection shows ignorance of God’s power to raise man and woman bodily to the chaste condition of the angels who, being immortal, need not to reproduce their kind.

31-32. It shows ignorance, too, of the very Scriptures they have ventured to quote. Our Lord chooses a text from Exodus 3:6 (not, e.g., from the clear text of Daniel 12:1-2) perhaps because, as is highly probable, the Sadducees accepted only the Pentateuch as having full canonical authority. In its original setting, the revelation in the ’burning bush’, the text strictly implies that the God who was now speaking with Moses was the same God as his ancestors adored. Here our Lord draws out its fuller sense after a fashion no Rabbi could resent. The living God could not be named after a dead thing; yet God himself uses the title ’God of Abraham’. Abraham, therefore, still lives. Nor is it only of the soul’s continuing life that our Lord speaks. In the first place, this is not the difficulty, 25, 28; in the second place, Jewish theology did not distinguish immortality and bodily resurrection, 2 Mac 12:43 f. Thus the Pharisees, believing in immortality, accepted resurrection; the Sadducees denied the first and therefore the second. There was no third school. It is against this theological background that our Lord’s argument must be read. If Abraham lives at all (and the Exodus text proves that he does) he lives with a view to bodily resurrection. And indeed even outside this background but within the total OT context the words of Exodus are significant. Setting aside explicit texts (e.g.Pss 15( 16) 10-11; 48(19) 16;72(73) 24) the whole OT protests that God could never desert his servants—he is their God as he is the God of Abraham. Neither Abraham, therefore, nor any other faithful servant can perish utterly.

33. Again the admiration (cf. 22) and again, it seems, because the objectors nave not grasped the simple principle, viz. the spiritual nature even of bodily resurrection. Evidently the Sadducees had never thus heard their difficulty answered by the Pharisees.

34-40 The Great Commandment (Mark 12:28-34a; cf. Luke 10:25-28)—34. The new approach to Jesus has in Mt the air of a conspiracy unless we read (Lagrange) against the weight of MS evidence: the Pharisees ’gathered about him’ (?p ’a?t??) instead of ’gathered together’ (?p? t? a?t?). In this latter reading the Pharisees are presented as pursuing the attack (though, cf. infra, they have chosen an unsuitable representative). The former reading shows them somewhat conciliated by the repulse of the Sadducees.

35-36. One versed in the Law puts a question probably debated in the schools ( SB 1, 900-5). The 613 commandments of the Law were subdivided into’ light’ and ’grave’, infringements of the latter being expiated only by death. These again were subdivided into small and great. Our Lord’s questioner is concerned only with the greatest of all. In Mark 12:28 he seems sincere; in Mt the word ’tempting’ suggests the opposite. The solution lies perhaps in the wide sense of this word (pe??????; perhaps ’probing’, ’sounding’, cf. Prat 2, 222); or possibly the lawyer’s initial hostility softened as the conversation advanced.

37-38. The words of the commandment, Deuteronomy 6:5, were familiar: they opened the twice-daily prayer—the Shema’; cf.Mark 12:29. They urged the submission of the heart (in Hebrew idiom, the centre of intelligence) and the soul (principle of sensitive faculties—emotion etc.) to God. And this ’with thy whole strength’ (Mt’s ’mind’ is probably due to the Greek translator).

39. It is more surprising that our Lord joins to this the love of neighbour, Leviticus 19:18. The fact that he speaks of the ’second’ commandment without being asked shows his unwillingness to separate the two. Love of neighbour and love of God are child and parent. The two commandments are ’like’ because true love of neighbour is but an overflow of true love of God. As our Lord is the first to present these two precepts as one so he is the first to give the widest meaning to the word ’neighbour’; cf. his explanation of the term on a similar, but apparently not the same, occasion in Luke 10:25-37.

40. From this double support hang (???µata?) ’Law and Prophets’. The last phrase significantly repeats 5:17 so that ’we now understand what this divine system was that Jesus had come not to destroy but to bring to perfection. It was essentially the law of charity’ ( Lagrange, Mt, 432).

41-46 The Messias Son and Lord of David (Mark 12:35-37a; Luke 20:41-44)—41-42. The recent question, 17, has betrayed a political conception of the Messias, 22, note; our Lord now invites reflexion. That the Messias was to be of the Davidic dynasty was the constant teaching of the prophets, Isaiah 11:1; Jeremiah 23:5; Ez 34:23 etc., and there is no hesitation in the Pharisees’ reply.

43-46. Yet in the Davidic psalm 109 (110) were written the inspired words: ’Yahweh said to my lord: Sit at my right hand’. The Pharisees evidently admitted that the Davidic ’my lord’ referred to the Messias. The Rabbis of the next two centuries, probably influenced by our Lord’s argument repeated and developed by the early Christians, did not. The psalm-verse, especially with its suggestion of the Messianic throne of Daniel 7:29, emphasized the transcendental nature of the Messias. ’Son of David’ is therefore not an adequate description of him. Our Lord leaves them with this thought. If honestly pursued it could take the Pharisees and others (cf.Mark 12:35) from ideas of a political Messias to the notion of one whose work was to be as spiritual as his origin.