Bible Commentaries

CHAPTER 16.

SIGN SEEKERS: CAESAREA PHILIPPI.

Again a dramatically impressive juxtaposition of events. First an ominous encounter with ill-affected men professedly in quest of a sign, then in a place of retreat a first announcement in startlingly plain terms of an approaching tragic crisis.

Matthew 16:1-12. Demand for a sign (Mark 8:11-21).

Matthew 16:1. προσελθόντες: one of Mt.’s oft-recurring descriptive words.—φαρ. καὶ Σαδδ.: a new combination, with sinister purpose, of classes of the community not accustomed to act together; wide apart, indeed, in social position and religious tendency, but made allies Proverbs tem, by common dislike to the movement identified with Jesus. Already scribes by themselves had asked a sign (Matthew 12:38). Now they are joined by a party representing the priestly and governing classes among whom the “Sadducees” were to be found (Wellhausen, Die Pharisäer und die Sadducäer). Mk. mentions only the Pharisees (Matthew 16:11), but he makes Jesus refer to the leaven of Herod in the subsequent conversation with the disciples, whence might legitimately be inferred the presence of representatives of that leaven. These Mt. calls “Sadducees,” probably the better-known name, and practically identical with the Herod leaven. The “Herodians” were, I imagine, people for whom Herod the Great was a hero, a kind of Messiah, all the Messiah they cared for or believed in, one who could help worldly-minded Israelites to be proud of their country (vide Grotius on Matthew 16:6). It was among Sadducees that such hero-worshippers were likely to be found.—ἐπηρώτησαν: here like the simple verb (Matthew 25:23) = requested, with infinitive, ἐπιδεῖξαι, completing the object of desire.—σημεῖον ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ: before (Matthew 12:38) only a sign. Now a sign from heaven. What might that be? Chrys. (Hom. liii.) suggests: to stop the course of the sun, to bridle the moon, to produce thunder, or to change the air, or something of that sort. These suggestions will do as well as any. Probably the interrogators had no definite idea what they wanted, beyond desiring to embarrass or nonplus Christ.

Matthew 16:2-4. Reply of Jesus.

Matthew 16:2-3, hough not in [95] and bracketed by W. H[96], may be regarded as part of the text. Somewhat similar is Luke 12:54-56. On some occasion Jesus must have contrasted the shrewd observation of His contemporaries in the natural sphere with their spiritual obtuseness.

[95] Codex Vaticanus (sæc. iv.), published in photographic facsimile in 1889 under the care of the Abbate Cozza-Luzi.

[96] Westcott and Hort.

Matthew 16:2. εὐδία, fine weather! (εὖ, Διός genitive of Ζεύς).—πυρράζει γὰρ ὁ ὀ.: that the sign = a ruddy sky in the evening (πυῤῥίζειν in Leviticus 13:19; Leviticus 13:24).

Matthew 16:3. χειμών, a storm to-day; sign the same, a ruddy sky in the morning.—στυγνάζων, late but expressive = triste coelum. No special meteorological skill indicated thereby, only the average power of observation based on experience, which is common to man kind. Lightfoot credits the Jews with special interest in such observations, and Christ was willing to give them full credit for skill in that sphere. His complaint was that they showed no such skill in the ethical sphere; they could not discern the signs of the times (τῶν καιρῶν: the reference being, of course, chiefly to their own time). Neither Pharisees nor Sadducees had any idea that the end of the Jewish state was so near. They said εὐδία when they should have said χειμών. They mistook the time of day; thought it was the eve of a good time corning when it was the morning of the judgment day. For a historical parallel, vide Carlyle’s French Revolution, book ii., chap. i., Astraea Redux.

Matthew 16:4. ide chap. Matthew 12:39.

Matthew 16:5-12. The one important thing in this section is the reflection of Jesus on what had just taken place. The historical setting is not clear. Jesus left the sign seekers after giving them their answer. The disciples cross the lake; in which direction? With or without their Master? They forget to take bread. When? On setting out or after arrival at the other side? ἐλθόντες εἰς τ. π., Matthew 16:5, naturally suggests the latter, but, as Grotius remarks, the verb ἔρχεσθαι in the Gospels sometimes means ire not venire (vide, e.g., Luke 15:20). Suffice it to say that either in the boat or after arrival at the opposite side Jesus uttered a memorable word.

Matthew 16:6. ὁρᾶτε καὶ προσέχετε: an abrupt, urgent admonition to look out for, in order to take heed of, a phenomenon of very sinister import; in Scottish idiom “see and beware of”. More impressive still in Mk.: ὁρᾶτε, βλέπετε, a duality giving emphasis to the command (ἀναδίπλωσις, ἐμφαίνουσα ἐπίτασιν τῆς παραγγελίας, Euthy.).—ζύμης, leaven, here conceived as an evil influence, working, however, after the same manner as the leaven in the parable (Matthew 13:33). It Is a spirit, a zeitgeist, insinuating itself everywhere, and spreading more and more in society, which Jesus instinctively shrank from in horror, and from which He wished to guard His disciples.—τῶν φαρ. καὶ Σαδ: one leaven, of two parties viewed as one, hence no article before Σαδ. Two leavens separately named in Mk., but even there juxtaposition in the warning implies affinity. The leaven of Pharisaism is made thoroughly known to us in the Gospels by detailed characterisation. Sadducaism very seldom appears on the stage, and few words of Jesus concerning it are recorded; yet enough to indicate its character as secular or “worldly”. The two classes, antagonistic at many points of belief and practice, would be at one in dislike of single-hearted devotion to truth and righteousness, whether in the Baptist (Matthew 3:7) or in Jesus. This common action in reference to either might not be a matter of arrangement, and each might come with its own characteristic mood: the Pharisee with bitter animosity, the Sadducee with good-natured scepticism and in quest of amusement, as when they propounded the riddle about the woman married to seven brothers. Both moods revealed utter lack of appreciation, no friendship to be looked for in either quarter, both to be dreaded.

Matthew 16:7. ἐν ἑαυτοῖς: either each man in his own mind (Weiss), or among themselves, apart from the Master (Meyer).—ὅτι may be recitative or = “because”. He gives this warning because, etc.; sense the same. They take the Master to mean: do not buy bread from persons belonging to the obnoxious sects! or rather perhaps: do not take your directions as to the leaven to be used in baking from that quarter. Vide Lightfoot ad loc. Stupid mistake, yet pardonable when we remember the abruptness of the warning and the wide gulf between Master and disciples: He a prophet with prescient eye, seeing the forces of evil at work and what they were leading to; they very commonplace persons lacking insight and foresight. Note the solitariness of Christ.