Jesus went about all the cities and the villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the Good News of the Kingdom, and healing every disease and every sickness among the people. But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion for them, because they were harassed and scattered, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest indeed is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Pray therefore that the Lord of the harvest will send out laborers into his harvest.”
Parallel Translations
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Jesus went about all the cities and the villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the Good News of the Kingdom, and healing every disease and every sickness among the people.
But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion for them, because they were harassed and scattered, like sheep without a shepherd.
Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest indeed is plentiful, but the laborers are few.
Pray therefore that the Lord of the harvest will send out laborers into his harvest.”
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And Iesus went about all cities and tounes teachynge in their synagoges and preachyng the glad tidinges of the kyngdome and healinge all maner sicknes and desease amonge the people.
But when he sawe the people he had compassion on the because they were pyned awaye and scattered abroade even as shepe havinge no shepherd.
Then sayde he to hys disciples: the hervest is greate but the laborers are feawe.
Wherfore praye the Lorde of the harvest to sende forthe laborers into hys harvest.
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And Iesus went about all cities and townes, teaching in their Synagogues, and preaching the Gospel of the kingdome, and healing euery sickenesse and euery disease among the people.
But when he saw the multitude, he had compassion vpon them, because they were dispersed, and scattered abroade, as sheepe hauing no shepheard.
Then saide he to his disciples, Surely the haruest is great, but the labourers are fewe.
Wherefore pray the Lord of the haruest, that he woulde sende foorth labourers into his haruest.
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Cross-references (53)
- Luke 10:2 (v37) Then he said to them, “The harvest is indeed plentiful, but the laborers are few. Pray therefore to the Lord of the harvest, that he may…
- Mark 16:15 (v37) He said to them, “Go into all the world, and preach the Good News to the whole creation.
- 1 Corinthians 3:9 (v37) For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s farming, God’s building.
- John 4:35-36 (v37) Don’t you say, ‘There are yet four months until the harvest?’ Behold, I tell you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, that they are…
- Matthew 28:19 (v37) Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
Show all 52 cross-references
- Luke 10:1-2 (v38) Now after these things, the Lord also appointed seventy others, and sent them two by two ahead of him into every city and place where he…
- Jeremiah 3:15 (v38) I will give you shepherds according to my heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding.
- Numbers 27:17 (v36) who may go out before them, and who may come in before them, and who may lead them out, and who may bring them in, that the congregation of…
- Luke 24:47 (v37) and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning at Jerusalem.
- 2 Corinthians 6:1 (v37) Working together, we entreat also that you do not receive the grace of God in vain,
- Mark 6:34 (v36) Jesus came out, saw a great multitude, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he began to…
- Acts 16:9 (v37) A vision appeared to Paul in the night. There was a man of Macedonia standing, begging him, and saying, “Come over into Macedonia and help…
- 2 Thessalonians 3:1 (v38) Finally, brothers, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may spread rapidly and be glorified, even as also with you,
- Psalms 68:11 (vv37–38) The Lord announced the word. The ones who proclaim it are a great company.
- 1 Thessalonians 5:12-13 (v37) But we beg you, brothers, to know those who labor among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you, and to respect and honor them…
- Matthew 4:23-24 (v35) Jesus went about in all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the Good News of the Kingdom, and healing every disease and every…
- Acts 10:38 (v35) even Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed him with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were…
- Jeremiah 50:6 (v36) My people have been lost sheep. Their shepherds have caused them to go astray. They have turned them away on the mountains. They have gone…
- Acts 13:2 (v38) As they served the Lord and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, “Separate Barnabas and Saul for me, for the work to which I have called them.”
- John 20:21 (v38) Jesus therefore said to them again, “Peace be to you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.”
- Philippians 2:19-21 (v37) But I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, that I also may be cheered up when I know how you are doing. For I have no one…
- 1 Timothy 5:17 (v37) Let the elders who rule well be counted worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in the word and in teaching.
- Ezekiel 34:3-6 (v36) You eat the fat. You clothe yourself with the wool. You kill the fatlings, but you don’t feed the sheep. You haven’t strengthened the…
- Matthew 14:14 (v36) Jesus went out, and he saw a great multitude. He had compassion on them, and healed their sick.
- Acts 18:10 (v37) for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many people in this city.”
- Colossians 4:11 (v37) and Jesus who is called Justus. These are my only fellow workers for God’s Kingdom who are of the circumcision, men who have been a comfort…
- Mark 6:56 (v35) Wherever he entered, into villages, or into cities, or into the country, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they…
- Luke 4:43-44 (v35) But he said to them, “I must preach the good news of God’s Kingdom to the other cities also. For this reason I have been sent.” He was…
- Acts 8:4 (v38) Therefore those who were scattered abroad went around preaching the word.
- 1 Corinthians 12:28 (v38) God has set some in the assembly: first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracle workers, then gifts of healings, helps,…
- Micah 5:7 (v38) The remnant of Jacob will be among many peoples, like dew from Yahweh, like showers on the grass, that don’t wait for man, nor wait for the…
- Zechariah 10:2 (v36) For the teraphim have spoken vanity, and the diviners have seen a lie; and they have told false dreams. They comfort in vain. Therefore…
- Matthew 11:5 (v35) the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news…
- 2 Chronicles 18:16 (v36) He said, “I saw all Israel scattered on the mountains, as sheep that have no shepherd. Yahweh said, ‘These have no master. Let them each…
- Matthew 10:6 (v36) Rather, go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
- Matthew 15:24 (v36) But he answered, “I wasn’t sent to anyone but the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
- Ephesians 4:11 (v38) He gave some to be apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, shepherds and teachers;
- 1 Kings 22:17 (v36) He said, “I saw all Israel scattered on the mountains, as sheep that have no shepherd. Yahweh said, ‘These have no master. Let them each…
- Luke 13:22 (v35) He went on his way through cities and villages, teaching, and traveling on to Jerusalem.
- Acts 2:22 (v35) “Men of Israel, hear these words! Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved by God to you by mighty works and wonders and signs which God did by…
- Hebrews 4:15 (v36) For we don’t have a high priest who can’t be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but one who has been in all points tempted like…
- Hebrews 5:2 (v36) The high priest can deal gently with those who are ignorant and going astray, because he himself is also surrounded with weakness.
- Zechariah 13:7-8 (v36) “Awake, sword, against my shepherd, and against the man who is close to me,” says Yahweh of Armies. “Strike the shepherd, and the sheep…
- Matthew 10:1-3 (v38) He called to himself his twelve disciples, and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and…
- Matthew 15:32 (v36) Jesus summoned his disciples and said, “I have compassion on the multitude, because they continue with me now three days and have nothing…
- Luke 6:12-13 (v38) In these days, he went out to the mountain to pray, and he continued all night in prayer to God. When it was day, he called his disciples,…
- Matthew 11:1 (v35) When Jesus had finished directing his twelve disciples, he departed from there to teach and preach in their cities.
- Mark 1:32-39 (v35) At evening, when the sun had set, they brought to him all who were sick, and those who were possessed by demons. All the city was gathered…
- Mark 6:6 (v35) He marveled because of their unbelief. He went around the villages teaching.
- Isaiah 56:9-11 (v36) All you animals of the field, come to devour, all you animals in the forest. His watchmen are blind. They are all without knowledge. They…
- Zechariah 11:16 (v36) For, behold, I will raise up a shepherd in the land, who will not visit those who are cut off, neither will seek those who are scattered,…
- Psalms 68:18 (v38) You have ascended on high. You have led away captives. You have received gifts among people, yes, among the rebellious also, that Yah God…
52 distinct cross-references across this passage (53 total citations).
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this passage (29 sources)
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Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv36, 38 Although the ordinary pastors cease, yet Christ hath not…
Although the ordinary pastors cease, yet Christ hath not cast off the care of his Church.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv35–38 35 And Jesus went about all the cities and…
35 And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.
Ver. 35. And Jesus went about, &c.] He was not by any affronts or hard usages of the enemy disheartened from well doing; but as the moon continues her course, though dogs bark and leap at her, En peragit cursus surda Diana suos; so did he, and so must we. "For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds," Heb 12:3. Convitia spreta exolescunt. The attacks are ignored. (Tacitus.)
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv35–38 We met with these words Mat 4:23, only there…
We met with these words Mat 4:23, only there it was all Galilee, by which probably this text ought to be expounded: See Poole on "Mat 4:23".
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv35, 37 Observe here, 1. Our Saviour’s great work and business…
Observe here, 1. Our Saviour’s great work and business in this world; it was doing good both to the bodies and souls of men; the most pleasant and delightful, the most happy and glorious work that a person can be employed about.
2. His unwearied diligence and industry, in this great and good work; He went about all the cities and villages, preaching the gospel, and healing diseases; he travelled from place to place, to seek occasions, and to lay hold upon all opportunities, of being useful and beneficial to mankind.
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Observe, 3. The particular instance of our Lord’s goodness and compassion towards the people in those cities and villages where he travelled: they wanted the preaching of the gospel, that is, faithful dispensers of it. For though they had the scribes and Pharisees to teach them, they instructed them rather in their own traditions than in the simplicity of the gospel; Christ pities the people as sheep without a shepherd.
Thence learn, That idle and lazy, unskilful and unfaithful, labourers in Christ’s harvest, are no labourers in his account. They were as sheep having no shepherd. He who doth not instruct his flock, and feed them with the sincere milk of the word, from a heart full of love to God and of compassion to souls, deserves not the name of a true shepherd. Dr. Whitby.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On v35 Here is, I. A conclusion of the foregoing account…
Here is, I. A conclusion of the foregoing account of Christ's preaching and miracles (Mat 9:35); He went about all the cities teaching and healing. This is the same we had before, Mat 4:23. There it ushers in the more particular record of Christ's preaching (ch. 5, 6 and 7) and of his cures (ch. 8 and 9), and here it is elegantly repeated in the close of these instances, as the quod erat demonstrandum - the point to be proved; as if the evangelist should say, "Now I hope I have made it out, by an induction of particulars, that Christ preached and healed; for you have had the heads of his sermons, and some few instances of his cures, which were wrought to confirm his doctrine: and these were written that you might believe." Some think that this was a second perambulation in Galilee, like the former; he visited again those whom he had before preached to. Though the Pharisees cavilled at him and opposed him, he went on with his work; he preached the gospel of the kingdom. He told them of a kingdom of grace and glory, now to be set up under the government of a Mediator: this was gospel indeed, good news, glad tidings of great joy.
Observe how Christ in his preaching had respect,
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1. To the private towns. He visited not only the great and wealthy cities, but the poor, obscure villages; there he preached, there he healed. The souls of those that are meanest in the world are as precious to Christ, and should be to us, as the souls of those that make the greatest figure. Rich and poor meet together in him, citizens and boors: his righteous acts towards the inhabitants of his villages must be rehearsed, Jdg 5:11.
2. To the public worship. He taught in their synagogues, (1.) That he might bear a testimony to solemn assemblies, even then when there were corruptions in them. We must not forsake the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is. (2.) That he might have an opportunity of preaching there, where people were gathered together, with an expectation to hear. Thus, even where the gospel church was founded, and Christian meetings erected, the apostles often preached in the synagogues of the Jews. It is the wisdom of the prudent, to make the best of that which is.
II. A preface, or introduction, to the account in the following chapter, of his sending forth his apostles. He took notice of the multitude (Mat 9:36); not only of the crowds that followed him, but of the vast numbers of people with whom (as he passed along) he observed the country to be replenished; he noticed what nests of souls the towns and cities were, and how thick of inhabitants; what abundance of people there were in every synagogue, and what places of concourse the openings of the gates were: so very populous was that nation now grown; and it was the effect of God's blessing on Abraham. Seeing this,
1. He pities them, and was concerned for them (Mat 9:36); He was moved with compassion on them; not upon a temporal account, as he pities the blind, and lame, and sick; but upon a spiritual account; he was concerned to see them ignorant and careless, and ready to perish for lack of vision. Note, Jesus Christ is a very compassionate friend to precious souls; here his bowels do in a special manner yearn. It was pity to souls that brought him from heaven to earth, and there to the cross. Misery is the object of mercy; and the miseries of sinful, self-destroying souls, are the greatest miseries: Christ pities those most that pity themselves least; so should we. The most Christian compassion is compassion to souls; it is most Christ-like.
See what moved this pity. (1.) They fainted; they were destitute, vexed, wearied. They strayed, so some; were loosed one from another; The staff of bands was broken, Zac 11:14. They wanted help for their souls, and had none at hand that was good for any thing. The scribes and Pharisees filled them with vain notions, burthened them with the traditions of the elders, deluded them into many mistakes, while they were not instructed in their duty, nor acquainted with the extent and spiritual nature of the divine law; therefore they fainted; for what spiritual health, and life, and vigour can there be in those souls, that are fed with husks and ashes, instead of the bread of life? Precious souls faint when duty is to be done, temptations to be resisted, afflictions to be borne, being not nourished up with the word of truth. (2.) They were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd. That expression is borrowed from Kg1 22:17, and it sets forth the sad condition of those that are destitute of faithful guides to go before them in the things of God. No creature is more apt to go astray than a sheep, and when gone astray more helpless, shiftless, and exposed, or more unapt to find the way home again: sinful souls are as lost sheep; they need the care of shepherds to bring them back. The teachers the Jews then had pretended to be shepherds, yet Christ says they had not shepherds, for they were worse than none; idle shepherds that led them away, instead of leading them back, and fleeced the flock, instead of feeding it: such shepherds as were described, Jer 23:1, etc. Eze 34:2, etc. Note, The case of those people is very pitiable, who either have no ministers at all, or those that are as bad as none; that seek their own things, not the things of Christ and souls.
2. He excited his disciples to pray for them. His pity put him upon devising means for the good of these people. It appears (Luk 6:12, Luk 6:13) that upon this occasion, before he sent out his apostles, he did himself spend a great deal of time in prayer. Note, Those we pity we should pray for. Having spoken to God for them he turns to his disciples, and tells them,
(1.) How the case stood; The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few. People desired good preaching, but there were few good preachers. There was a great deal of work to be done, and a great deal of good likely to be done, but there wanted hands to do it. [1.] It was an encouragement, that the harvest was so plenteous. It was not strange, that there were multitudes that needed instruction, but it was what does not often happen, that they who needed it, desired it, and were forward to receive it. They that were ill taught were desirous to be better taught; people's expectations were raised, and there was such a moving of affections, as promised well. Note, It is a blessed thing, to see people in love with good preaching. The valleys are then covered over with corn, and there are hopes it may be well gathered in. That is a gale of opportunity, that calls for a double care and diligence in the improvement of it; a harvest-day should be a busy day. [2.] It was a pity when it was so that the labourers should be so few; that the corn should shed and spoil, and rot upon the ground for want of reapers; loiterers many, but labourers very few. Note, It is ill with the church, when good work stands still, or goes slowly on, for want of good workmen; when it is so, the labourers that there are have need to be very busy.
(2.) What was their duty in this case (Mat 9:38); Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest. Note, The melancholy aspect of the times and the deplorable state of precious souls, should much excite and quicken prayer. When things look discouraging, we should pray more, and then we should complain and fear less. And we should adapt our prayers to the present exigencies of the church; such an understanding we ought to have of the times, as to know, not only what Israel ought to do, but what Israel ought to pray for. Note, [1.] God is the Lord of the harvest; my Father is the Husbandman, Joh 15:1. It is the vineyard of the Lord of hosts, Isa 5:7. It is for him and to him, and to his service and honour, that the harvest is gathered in. Ye are God's husbandry (Co1 3:9); his threshing, and the corn of his floor, Isa 21:10. He orders every thing concerning the harvest as he pleases; when and where the labourers shall work, and how long; and it is very comfortable to those who wish well to the harvest-work, that God himself presides in it, who will be sure to order all for the best. [2.] Ministers are and should be labourers in God's harvest; the ministry is a work and must be attended to accordingly; it is harvest-work, which is needful work; work that requires every thing to be done in its season, and diligence to do it thoroughly; but it is pleasant work; they reap in joy, and the joy of the preachers of the gospel is likened to the joy of harvest (Isa 9:2, Isa 9:3); and he that reapeth receiveth wages; the hire of the labourers that reap down God's field, shall not be kept back, as theirs was, Jam 5:4. [3.] It is God's work to send forth labourers; Christ makes ministers (Eph 4:11); the office is of his appointing, the qualifications of his working, the call of his giving. They will not be owned nor paid as labourers, that run without their errand, unqualified, uncalled. How shall they preach except they be sent? [4.] All that love Christ and souls, should show it by their earnest prayers to God, especially when the harvest is plenteous, that he would send forth more skillful, faithful, wise, and industrious labourers into his harvest; that he would raise up such as he will own in the conversion of sinners and the edification of saints; would give them a spirit for the work, call them to it, and succeed them in it; that he would give them wisdom to win souls; that he would thrust forth labourers, so some; intimating unwillingness to go forth, because of their own weakness and the people's badness, and opposition from men, that endeavour to thrust them out of the harvest; but we should pray that all contradiction from within and from without, may be conquered and got over. Christ puts his friends upon praying this, just before he sends apostles forth to labour in the harvest. Note, It is a good sign God is about to bestow some special mercy upon a people, when he stirs up those that have an interest at the throne of grace, to pray for it, Psa 10:17. Further observe, that Christ said this to his disciples, who were to be employed as labourers. They must pray, First, That God would send them forth. Here am I, send me, Isa 6:8. Note, Commissions, given in answer to prayer, are most likely to be successful; Paul is a chosen vessel, for behold he prays, Act 9:11, Act 9:15. Secondly, That he would send others forth. Note, Not the people only, but those who are themselves ministers, should pray for the increase of ministers. Though self-interest makes those that seek their own things desirous to be placed alone (the fewer ministers the more preferments), yet those that seek the things of Christ, desire more workmen, that more work may be done, though they be eclipsed by it.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv35–36 Then saith he unto his disciples,.... His heart being…
Then saith he unto his disciples,.... His heart being drawn out, and filled with pity to these poor people, upon observing the miserable and sad condition they were in; he turns himself to his disciples, whom he was about to call, and send forth in a more public manner to preach the Gospel, of which we read in the following chapter; and in order to quicken them to this service, and engage their hearts in it, says unto them,
the harvest truly is plenteous; meaning the large number of God's elect, which were in these cities, towns, and villages, and in other places: not that these were maturely prepared by anything in themselves, or done by them, for the grace of God; and much less ripe for the kingdom of glory, and therefore called an harvest: but as there are the appointed weeks of the harvest, or a set time for the harvest to be gathered in, so there is a certain fixed time, settled in the counsel, and by the purpose of God, for the effectual calling and conversion of his elect; and this time being come, with respect to these in Galilee, and other parts, Christ calls them an "harvest"; and because of their number, a large, or "plenteous" one.
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But the labourers are few: Gospel ministers; whose calling is a laborious one; whose business is to labour in the word and doctrine; to be constant in prayer; to give up themselves to meditation and reading; to study to show themselves workmen; to preach the word in season, and out of season; and diligently discharge the several duties of their office, to the glory of Christ, and the good of souls: but such painful and laborious ministers, who are willing to spend, and be spent for Christ and immortal souls, have been but few in all ages; generally speaking, there are more loiterers than labourers.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv36–38 Because they were faint - In soul rather than…
Because they were faint - In soul rather than in body. As sheep having no shepherd - And yet they had many teachers; they had scribes in every city. But they had none who cared for their souls, and none that were able, if they had been willing, to have wrought any deliverance. They had no pastors after God's own heart.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv35–38 Verse 35. Jesus went about all the cities and…
Verse 35. Jesus went about all the cities and villages] Of Galilee. See on Mt 4:23; Mt 4:24. A real minister of Jesus Christ, after his example, is neither detained in one place by a comfortable provision made by some, nor discouraged from pursuing his work by the calumny and persecution of others. It is proper to remark, that, wherever Christ comes, the proofs of his presence evidently appear: he works none but salutary and beneficial miracles, because his ministry is a ministry of salvation.
Among the people.] εν τω λαω. This clause is omitted by about fifty MSS., several of them of the first antiquity and authority; by the Complutensian, and by Bengel; by both the Syriac, both the Arabic, both the Persic; the Ethiopic, Gothic, Saxon, and all the Itala, except four. Griesbach has left it out of the text.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv35, 37 Mat 9:35-36. Jesus went about all the cities, teaching…
Mat 9:35-36. Jesus went about all the cities, teaching in their synagogues — See on Mat 4:23. When he saw the multitude he was moved with compassion — Having come from heaven to earth to seek and save lost sinners, he was affected to see such multitudes desirous of instruction, and yet destitute of it, and in danger of perishing without it, being either deserted or misled by their spiritual guides, and living in ignorance of the things which it most concerned them to know, and in a state of guilt and depravity. Because they fainted — The original expression: εκλελυμενοι, denotes here a kind of faintness, or weakness, which is caused by hunger and weariness. Perhaps the expression may refer partly to the fatigue of their frequent journeys in following Christ from place to place; for many of them came, not only from the several parts of Galilee, but also from Judea and Idumea, from beyond Jordan: and the borders of Tyre and Zidon. Faintness of soul, however, is undoubtedly intended here, rather than of body. And were scattered abroad — Gr. ερριμμενοι, an expression which, according to Elsner, means exposed to continual danger, as sheep having no shepherd. And yet this people had many teachers; they had scribes in every city, and the priests, whose lips should have dispensed knowledge, and at whose mouth the people should have sought the law, (Mal 2:7,) were to be found in all parts of the land. But they had no teachers who cared for their souls; and none who were able, if they had been willing, to have given them such instruction as they needed. They had no pastors after God’s own heart. “The teachers just mentioned,” says Macknight, “were blind, perverse, lazy guides, who every day discovered their ignorance and wickedness more and more. They either neglected the office of teaching altogether, or they filled the people’s minds with high notions of ritual observances and traditions, to the utter disparagement of moral duties, which in a manner they trampled under foot; so that instead of serving God, they served their own glory, their gain, and their belly. Wherefore, any appearance of religion which they had, was wholly feigned and hypocritical; insomuch that they rather did hurt by it than were of real service to the interests of [piety and] virtue. Besides, the common people, being distracted by the disagreeing factions of the Pharisees and Sadducees, knew not what to choose or refuse. The case therefore called loudly for the compassion of Jesus, which indeed was never wanting to them at any time, for he always cherished the tenderest affection toward his countrymen; but it flowed particularly on this occasion, when he considered that they were in great distress for want of spiritual food.” And therefore being deeply touched with a feeling of their miserable condition, he resolved to provide some remedy for it; which, as the evangelist here states, he proceeded to do immediately, directing his disciples to intercede with God to send forth labourers into his harvest, and immediately afterward appointing and sending those labourers.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv35–37 And Jesus went about all the cities and villages…
And Jesus went about all the cities and villages ... - That is, in all parts of Galilee, for his labors were, as yet, confined to that part of Palestine. Compare the notes at Mat 4:24-25.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On v36 He had compassion on them. The bowels of his…
He had compassion on them. The bowels of his compassion yearned to see multitudes cast down and oppressed, like sheep that are without a shepherd. The Pharisees indeed were their shepherds; but they acted the part of ravenous wolves, not only neglecting to lead the people to virtue, but even hindering, as much as they could, their advancement in good; for when the admiring multitude cried out, "Never did the like appear in Israel," they immediately decried it, saying, "By the prince of devils he casteth out devils." (St. John Chrysostom, hom. xxxiii.)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v35 Triumph of Christ over the reviling of the Pharisees.…
VIII
Triumph of Christ over the reviling of the Pharisees. Royal preparation for the mission of the Apostles. The power of Christ unfolding in all its fulness, as also the misery of the people. The one Helper about to manifest Himself by many helpers.
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Mat_9:35-38
35And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel [good news] of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and everydisease [weakness, infirmity, μαλακίαν] among the people.27 36But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted [were harassed28],and were scattered abroad [abandoned], as sheep having no shepherd. 37Then saith he unto [to] his disciples, The harvest truly [indeed] is plenteous [great, πολύς],29 but the labourers are few; 38Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
The general narrative given in the text serves as introduction to the following section, which describes the mission of the Apostles. At the same time, it also forms the conclusion of the preceding narrative. As the Lord unfolds His power, the misery and need of the people increasingly appear; He stretches forth His arms and raises up the Twelve Apostles, to carry on the work, and to spread its blessings. Thus His prophetic merges in His royal work.
Mat_9:35. And Jesus went about.—From the parallel passages we gather that Jesus now travelled along the lake, through the cities and villages of Galilee. It is but natural that the popular misery should then unfold to His view in all its fulness. Accordingly, we distinguish three missionary journeys of Jesus in Galilee. 1. To the Mount of Beatitudes; 2. across the sea; 3. through the valley, along the shore, in the direction of Jerusalem. It is to the latter that the text refers.
Mat_9:36. They were ἐσκυλμὲνοι.—Explanations: 1. The common reading, ἐκλελυμένοι, faint, tired. So some. a. With reference to the people, who had travelled a considerable distance and were faint (Fritzsche). b. In a figurative sense, a flock without a shepherd, and hence tired by going astray (Kuinoel).—2. According to the meaning of σκύλλειν, to tear, to plague. a. Bretschneider: torn by wolves. b. De Wette: plagued by hunger, by cold, by ravening beasts, etc. c. Meyer and the Vulgate: vexati. But the first point to be ascertained is, whether the term refers to the difficulties of a flock without a shepherd, or to positive sufferings which it had to undergo. As the latter is evidently conveyed by the verb, we explain it as meaning afflicted, beaten down, and scattered by thorns, by anxiety, by ravenous beasts, and plagues of every sort.—Ἐῤῥιμμένοι (ῥίπτειν, to cast down, to stretch down), not scattered (Beza, Luther, Authorized Version), but cast down, beaten down by flight or by weariness (Kypke, de Wette); or stretched down as sheep that are worn out (Meyer).
Mat_9:37. The harvest is great (occurs in Luk_10:2, at the sending forth of the seventy);—i.e., the number of people who are accessible to the Gospel, and ready to receive it, is great.—The laborers are few.—As yet, Jesus was the only laborer. Their prayers were intended to prepare them for their mission.
Mat_9:38. The Lord of the harvest, that He will send forth laborers.—His work is the work of God: ἐκβάλῃ, the urgent necessity existing, should determine the Lord of the harvest to drive forth, or to thrust forth, laborers.30 De Wette calls attention to the circumstance, that it is God who is asked to send laborers. He is so far right, as the call of Christ ultimately proceeds from God, just as the kingdom of the Saviour is that of God.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. The deep need of the world determined the Lord to manifest His royal dignity. Neither the priesthood nor the kingdoms of the ancient world were capable of bringing any real help to men. Even chosen Israel, with its high priests, sanhedrim, rulers, and rabbins, were but a scattered, broken-down, hopeless, and helpless flock. Under these circumstances it was that Christ manifested Himself as the Shepherd of His people, which implied that He was the Shepherd of all nations.31 The deep moral misery of the people appeared most clearly in the rich and fertile district of Galilee, with its numerous and prosperous cities.
2. In the same moment, when Christ was about to manifest Himself as King, and in His compassion to condescend to the boundless misery of His people, He prepared to found the apostolic office, which He graciously endowed with His gifts and His Spirit, for the salvation of the world.
3. In the life and actings of Jesus, we always find these two elements combined: provision for what is future and distant, with provision for what is present and immediate—a due regard for what was general, and care for that which was special and urgent.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
Jesus went about doing good to all (Act_10:38): 1. The extent of His labors (about all the cities and villages); 2. the order of His labors (teaching in their synagogues); 3. the characteristic feature of His labors (preaching the gospel of the kingdom); 4. the seal of His labors (healing every sickness, etc.).—While the Lord passed through rich cities and villages, His attention was mainly directed to the need and the sufferings of the people.—How wants seem to grow in proportion as the Lord gives help: 1. This help brings them to light; 2. it inspires with courage to make them known.—But when He saw the multitudes He was moved with compassion on them.—Christ looking on the scattered flock of man: 1. A look of penetration; 2. a look of sorrow; 3. a look of saving mercy.—The impression which the people made on the Lord: 1. Not admiration, but pity; 2. not aversion, but pity; 3. not discouragement, but pity.—The Church under the hierarchical shepherds of older and more modern times: 1. Without a shepherd, and therefore without protection, and broken down; 2. without a shepherd, and therefore not led to the green pastures, and cast down.—Christ born to be the Shepherd of men, and in His compassion the Shepherd of His people.—Christ born to be the King of men, by His compassion the King of His people.—What induced Christ to manifest Himself as King instead of Prophet.—The compassion of Christ enlisting heaven and earth for our succor: 1. The grace of the Father; 2. the prayer of His people; 3. the service of His messengers.—The harvest is great, but the laborers are few.—How those who judge according to the letter reverse this saying; but those who judge according to the spirit feel its deep import.—The great need of man, the great harvest of God.—The prayer to God for laborers forming the commencement of the kingdom of heaven: 1. The commencement of the apostolate; 2. the commencement of the Church; 3. the commencement of missionary labors; 4. the commencement of the final completion of the Church of God.—The right laborers; 1. They are sent by God; 2. in answer to the prayers of His people; 3. furnished by Christ for the work; 4. consecrated for the spiritual and temporal wants of the people; 5. instruments of mercy in the hands of Christ.—Our Father in heaven, the Lord of the harvest: 1. The seed is His; 2. the field is His; 3. the harvest is His.—How Christ is employed about the harvest of God. He takes charge, 1. of the seed, as being the Word from the beginning; 2. of the field, as being the great Laborer and Servant of the Lord; 3. of the harvest, as being the Son and the Judge of the world.—How Christ summons His own to coöperate with Him, in order to spread through them His blessings over the earth.32—The great King, in whom the grace of God itself has appeared to His people.
Rieger:—The Lord always looked upon the common people with pity, treated them with indulgence, and traced the cause of their misery to their leaders, who exclude others from the kingdom of heaven.
Starke:—Good shepherds are one of the most precious gifts of God, even as bad pastors are the greatest misfortune and plague of the world.—Quesnel:—The whole earth is the field where the harvest of the Lord is to be gathered.—Many labor in the name of the Lord; but few will He own as His servants.—Osiander:—Ministers are fellow-workers with God, 1Co_3:9; 2Co_6:1.—Successful laborers are obtained in answer to prayer.—Cramer:—This prayer enters into the three first petitions in the Lord’s Prayer.—The prayer of the pious members of the congregation is mightier than the protection of the state.
Heubner:—What an accusation against the scribes and priests!—Oh, if people would only pray as they ought for pastors!—That He send them (ἐκβάλῃ) by the mighty impulse of His Spirit.
Footnotes:
[27] Mat_9:35.—[The words of the text. rec.: among the people, ἐν τῷ λαῷ, are retained by Lange, but omitted in all modern critical editions, German and English (including Wordsworth), and were probably inserted from Mat_4:23.—P. S.]
[28] Mat_9:36.—[Dr. Lange translates: zerschlagen, as he adopts the reading ἐσκυλμένοι, jaded, [illigible words] (from σκύλλω, to strip, to lacerate, then metaph. to trouble, to vex; hence the Vulgata: vexati), which is supported by the best MSS., א., B., C., D., etc., the ancient versions, and the critical editors, Griesb., Lachm., Tischend., Meyer, Alford, Wordsworth. The reading of the Received Text: ἐκλελυμένοι (from εκλύω, to loosen, debilitate, ἐκλύομαι, to faint, to be exhausted) has no weighty critical authority in its favor.—P. S.]
[29] Mat_9:37.—[Lange after Luther: Die Ernte ist gross, i.e., great, which is more correct than plenteous, since πολύς refers to the extent of the harvest field and the labor to be performed which far exceeds the capacity of the small number of laborers. Comp. Conant ad loc.—P. S.]
[30][The verb ἐκβάλλειν, to expel, to cast out, like the Hebrew שָׁלַח and גָּרַשׁ, signifies sometimes to send forth; comp. Mat_13:52 (E. V.: bringeth forth out of his treasure); Mar_1:12 (driveth him into the wilderness); Mar_9:43 (sent him away); Luk_10:2; Luk_10:35; Joh_10:4 (he putteth forth his own sheep), comp. Mat_10:34, βαλεῖν εἰρήνην, ‘I am come to send peace on earth.’ But perhaps there is some reference here to the urgent necessity of laborers, as Dr. Lange explains above, or to the Divine impulse, as Dr. Wordsworth suggests, which constrains men unwilling and unable of themselves to labor in so great a work, and makes them feel and say: ‘Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel’ (1Co_9:16).—P. S.]
[31][Dr. Whedon on Mat_9:33 : “No doubt our Lord primarily has in view the Jewish multitudes before Him. Yet in more distant prospect is to be included the wide field of the world and its vast harvest in the coming age.”—]
[32][Dr. Whedon: “Pray ye therefore.—Divine operation waits upon human coöperation. God will do, in answer to prayer, what will not be done without prayer. Low faith in the Church produces slow development of the work of salvation.”—P. S.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv35–38 THIRD GALILEAN CIRCUIT--MISSION OF THE TWELVE APOSTLES. (Mat. 9:35-10:5)
THIRD GALILEAN CIRCUIT--MISSION OF THE TWELVE APOSTLES. (Mat. 9:35-10:5)
And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people--The italicized words are of more than doubtful authority here, and were probably introduced here from Mat 4:23. The language here is so identical with that used in describing the first circuit (Mat 4:23), that we may presume the work done on both occasions was much the same. It was just a further preparation of the soil, and a fresh sowing of the precious seed. (See on Mat 4:23). To these fruitful journeyings of the Redeemer, "with healing in His wings," Peter no doubt alludes, when, in his address to the household of Cornelius, he spoke of "How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil: for God was with Him" (Act 10:38).
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Jesus Compassionating the Multitudes, Asks Prayer for Help (Mat 9:36-38). He had now returned from His preaching and healing circuit, and the result, as at the close of the first one, was the gathering of a vast and motley multitude around Him. After a whole night spent in prayer, He had called His more immediate disciples, and from them had solemnly chosen the twelve; then, coming down from the mountain, on which this was transacted, to the multitudes that waited for Him below, He had addressed to them--as we take it--that discourse which bears so strong a resemblance to the Sermon on the Mount that many critics take it to be the same. (See on Luke 6:12-49; and Mat 5:1, Introductory Remarks). Soon after this, it should seem, the multitudes still hanging on Him, Jesus is touched with their wretched and helpless condition, and acts as is now to be described.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv35–38 § 56. — PREPARATION FOR SENDING FORTH THE TWELVE,…
§ 56. — PREPARATION FOR SENDING FORTH THE TWELVE, Mat_9:35-38.
Matthew having, in chapters fifth, sixth, and seventh, given the platform of the new dispensation, and in chapters eighth and ninth, specimens of our Lord’s miracles, proceeds now to narrate the occasion and mode of sending forth his disciples upon their ministrations. The present paragraph gives a summary of our Lord’s travels and ministry previous to his solemn declaration that the labourers were too few for harvest. The evangelist proceeds, then, in the next chapter, to relate how our Lord sent the “labourers” forth.
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35. Went about all the cities and villages — Before sending forth his preachers, over how wide a circuit, and with what an active ministry, did our Lord himself precede them. He was the original itinerant, and they but his commissioned imitators. Cities and villages — Wherever he found a sufficiently dense population. Synagogues — The Jewish synagogues were the first scene of the preached Gospel; and so acceptable was our Lord’s preaching, that the Jewish people of Galilee did not exclude him. See note on Mat_4:23.
Preaching the gospel… healing… sickness — His mercy to the body secured reception for his medicine for the soul.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv35–38 35–38. The Preaching of Jesus. The Harvest of the…
35–38. The Preaching of Jesus. The Harvest of the World
35. See ch. Mat_4:23. All diseases, acute as well as chronic.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv35–38 (35) And Jesus went about.—The verse is all but…
(35) And Jesus went about.—The verse is all but identical with Mat_4:23, and may be described as recording our Lord’s second mission circuit in Galilee, in which He was accompanied probably by His disciples, whom, however, He had not as yet invested with a delegated authority as His “apostles,” or representatives. It is manifestly the beginning of the section which contains the great discourse of Matthew 10, and was intended to lead up to it.
Every sickness and every disease—i.e., every variety or type, rather than every individual case. The work of healing was, we must believe, dependent, as before, on the faith of those who came seeking to be healed. Of the two words, the former is in the Greek the stronger, and, though the relative significance of the English words is not sharply defined, it would, perhaps, be better to invert the renderings.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv35, 36, 38 Ver. 35-Mat_11:1. THE AGENCY THAT CHRIST ESTABLISHED TO ENCOURAGE…
Ver. 35-Mat_11:1. THE AGENCY THAT CHRIST ESTABLISHED TO ENCOURAGE AND GUIDE THE SPIRIT OF INQUIRY THAT HAD BEEN EVOKED, AND HIS COMMISSION TO HIS AGENTS. He spares no pains himself (ver. 35). Yet his work is insufficient, and he sends forth others (ver. 36-Mat_10:1). A parenthesis, the names of the agents. (Mat_10:2-4) The commission to the agents. (Mat_10:5-42) He still teaches and preaches. (Mat_11:1)
Observe that in this section we have not, properly speaking, an account of the call or choosing of the twelve, (Mar_3:13, 14 Luk_6:12, Luk_6:13) but of their appointment as missioners. (parallel passages: Mar_6:7; and especially Luk_9:1) For
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(1) the call is placed much earlier, chronologically, in Mark and Luke;
(2) Mat_9:35 is equivalent to Mar_6:6, long after the call of the twelve;
(3) Mat_9:36 (end) is equivalent to Mar_6:34, where it refers to what took place immediately after the return from the mission;
(4) the parallel passages agree that the charge was given at the mission itself, not at the call.
Further, it may even be doubted whether the twelve received the name of apostles at the call, whether, in fact, they did not rather receive it only after the commission related here. We find, indeed, that Mark (Mar_3:14; cf. Luk_6:13) says, "whom he also named apostles," adding, "that they might be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach;" but the title there may be entirely proleptic, and the description of their office partially so.
Parts of the section, e.g. Mat_9:37, 38 and much of Mt 10., are recorded in Luke as belonging to the mission of the seventy, but which is their original connexion can hardly be decided. Other parts seem to have been spoken originally on quite other occasions. (Mat_10:17-22, Mat_10:23, Mat_10:34, Mat_10:35, Mat_10:37, Mat_10:38, Mat_10:39, 40, 42) It would, therefore, appear that St. Matthew wished to lay stress on the appointment of agents and the kind of instruction that our Lord gave them, rather than to distinguish critically between the various agents employed and the particular instructions that Christ gave on each occasion when they were sent forth. (see further on Mat_10:5)
Parallel passages: Mar_6:6. (Luk_13:22) And Jesus went about all the cities and (the, Revised Version) villages. The Revised Version rightly restricts the "all" to the cities ( taleiv pasav kai tamav). It would have been impossible to visit all the villages. A village was distinguished from a city by being
(1) unwalled (though occasionally towns were themselves unwalled);
(2) dependent on the cities (cf. Schurer, II 1. p. 154, seq. ). Teaching, etc. From this point the verse is identical with Mat_4:23 (where see notes), except that the end of that verse, "among the people," is not found in the true text of our passage, but has been inserted thence. Its omission here and the alteration of the words," in all Galilee," to "all the cities and the villages," are both due to the wider scope of what follows. Observe that in Mat_4:23 our Lord"s circuit is the occasion of crowds resorting to him, and serves as an introduction to a full account of his personal teaching, while here it is the occasion of his sending representatives, and serves as an introduction to his commission to them. As to the phrase, "healing all manner of disease and all manner of sickness," notice that the recurrence of terminology (Mat_4:23 Mat_10:1) falls in with the oral theory, especially in its catechetical form (cf. "Introduction," p. 9).
Vers. 35-38. The missionary work of Christ.
I HIS JOURNEYS THROUGH GALILEE
1. He went everywhere. H is activity was unceasing. He visited every city and village in that thickly populated district. It was a new thing in the history of the world a Missionary of salvation sent from heaven, spending his time in ceaseless journeys, in constant wearying labour, and that not for gum, not for pleasure, but for love"s sake, to win dying souls to God and heaven. It is a high example to the ministers of his holy Word and sacraments.
2. His preaching. He taught in the synagogues; they were still open to him. The Pharisees had for some time distrusted him; they were beginning to oppose him, but their opposition was not yet formal, decided. It expressed itself in angry looks, in words spoken among themselves. He was recognized as a Teacher, a Rabbi; he was honoured by the people. He was a welcome Preacher in every village synagogue. The Lord most holy was wont to preach in the smallest villages, in the humblest synagogues. His servants should imitate him in his humility, in his zeal for the salvation of the poorest and the most ignorant. He preached the gospel of the kingdom, the good news of the kingdom which was to spread over the whole earth, which was to be established in the hearts of men, which was in God"s good time to be manifested in glory. It was good news then; it is good news now. The message is heard daily; people listen carelessly, without thought; but when God the Holy Ghost brings the Word home to the heart, it comes with all the freshness of a new life, a new hope; it is good news indeed. May he bring the gracious message to our souls!
3. His care for the sick. He healed every disease. His servants must care for the bodies as well as for the souls of his people; they must tend the sick and suffering, for so did Jesus Christ.
II THE MULTITUDES.
1. The Lord"s compassion. As he moved hither and thither, he saw the great masses of the people crowded together in those populous towns, neglected and uncured for. His heart was deeply moved, as many a good man"s heart is moved by the like sight now. He was the good Shepherd. He saw the flock scattered here and there, some cast down, prostrate on the earth; some wandering, bruised, their fleeces torn (eskulmenoi) by wolves. There was no shepherd; the shepherds of Israel (Ezekiel 34) were feeding themselves, and not the flock. They did not heal that which was sick, or bind up that which was broken, or seek that which was lost. The flock was scattered upon all the face of the earth. The Pharisees despised the poor and ignorant the "people of the earth," as they called them. The good Shepherd came to seek and to save that which was lost. He is our great Example.
2. His exhortation to prayer. The figure is changed. Spiritual things are only inadequately expressed in human language; each parable, each illustration, brings out some new feature, a new side of the underlying truth. The people were described as God"s flock; now they are his harvest. The harvest of souls is plenteous; all the world over it is growing, ripening for the great day. But the labourers are few. The harvest is the Lord"s; all souls are his; it is he who sends the labourers, who casts them forth (as the word means) into the harvest-field by the energy of a Divine mission, by the call of the Holy Spirit. Only he can give that holiness, that zeal, that self-denying love for souls, without which they cannot fulfil their arduous task. Therefore he bids us pray. It is the Lord"s harvest; he cares for it; yet, in the deep mystery of the relations between heaven and earth, there is need of human prayer. It must be so, or the Lord would not have enjoined it. "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." Nothing is beyond the reach of faithful prayer, for the Lord himself hath said, "All things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive." A supply of faithful ministers is of the very utmost importance for the well-being of the Church. Then we must pray for the ministers of God"s Holy Word. It is in the strength of the prayer of the Church that they pursue their solemn work; when they fail, when they are wanting in faith, in humility, in love, in "self-denying labour, the fault may lie in part with those who do not pray for them according to the Lord"s commandment. He sends forth the labourers; pray for his blessing on them and on their work.
LESSONS.
1. The Lord"s ministers must try by his gracious help to visit as he visited, to preach as he preached.
2. His sheep are very dear to him; his people must care for them.
3. All Christians must pray for the ministers of his Holy Word and sacraments.
Vers. 35-38 and Mat_10:1. The compassion of Jesus.
This comes remarkably before us in this paragraph. We have it in both its aspects, viz. the human and the Divine. Note, then
I THE HUMANITY OF THE COMPASSION OF JESUS.
1. His compassion was moved by the multitudes he saw.
(1) God, who is compassion itself, cannot be subject to emotion. Divine emotion in Scripture teaching is the human emotion which has a Divine source, as when we are sensible of the working in us of a Divine compassion. Such was the human compassion which, in the highest perfection, moved the heart of Jesus.
(2) It moved him as he considered the multitudes of men he met with in his itineration of the cities and villages (ver. 35). To him they were more than the multiplication of mere units. 3/lore than mere "hands." He viewed them as multitudes of rational, capable, responsible, immortal beings.
2. His compassion was moved by the condition in which he found them.
(1) They were "distressed" physically and spiritually.
(a) By disease and sickness.
(b) By demoniacal possession. The demoralization of the nation as described by Josephus was fearful.
(2) They were "scattered, as sheep not having a shepherd". (cf. 1Ki_22:17)
(a) Not that they were without synagogues. It was in visiting synagogues Jesus saw the multitudes. In the abounding of Churches there may yet be a famine of the Word of God.
(b) Not that they were without scribes. These were in every city, yet they despised and neglected the flock. (cf. Jer_23:1, etc.; Joh_7:49)
(c) Human traditions were substituted for the Divine Word. To this day Jewish teachers combine to make void the Word of God through their traditions. So do apostate Christian teachers.
(3) The multitudes were like the harvest ready for the reapers, but no reapers were there to gather in the precious grain. It was "plenteous," but ready to shed and spoil and rot upon the ground.
3. His compassion moved him to prayer.
(1) Jesus spent the whole night in prayer for the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
(2) He moved his disciples also to pray. They were too modest to record whether they also had spent. the whole night in prayer.
(3) The burden of the prayer was that the Lord of the harvest would send forth labourers into his harvest. Note: It is the purest compassion to benefit the souls of men. Other things will follow. (cf. 1Ki_3:13 Psa_37:35 Mat_6:33 1Ti_4:8) Does a truly human, Christlike compassion so intensely move us as to lead us to pray and labour for souls?
II THE DIVINITY OF THE COMPASSION OF JESUS.
1. This brought him down from heaven.
(1) His incarnation was in pursuance of the anti-mundane covenant. (see Heb_10:5-7)
(2) Compassion moved him. (see Isa_59:16 Joh_3:16, 17 15:13)
2. It is manifest here in the authority of his preaching.
(1) He preached the "gospel of the kingdom." His own kingdom. That kingdom in which he himself is King.
(2) The authority of his preaching was from himself. For he spake "not as the scribes." Not even as the inspired prophets. As the Fountain of all holy inspiration.
(3) In the Divine sense the compassionate Jesus is still going through cities and villages preaching his gospel.
3. Or, the miracles by which he attested it.
(1) They were Divine.
(a) Evincing power over visible nature.
(b) Dominion over the invisible world.
(2) They were wrought immediately by him. In his own Name.
4. In his delegation to his disciples of authority to preach.
(1) He instructed them first to "pray the Lord of the harvest that he send forth labourers into his harvest." In which note:
(a) That the harvest is the Lord"s.
(b) That he only can qualify and commission true labourers labourers worthy of the work.
(2) Then he acted himself as Lord of the harvest, calling and commissioning the twelve. (cf. Mat_10:1 Eph_4:11)
(3) Christ sent forth those whom he moved to pray. Prayerfulness is a preparation for the ministry. How earnestly should the flock pray for true pastors 1
5. In his delegation to his disciples of miracle-working power.
(1) He made them masters of disease and sickness. Also of evil spirits. Note:
(a) "Unclean spirits" are distinguished here from "all manner of disease and all manner of sickness.
(b) The design of the gospel is to vanquish the devil and cure the maladies of the world.
(2) The mastery with which the disciples were invested was not to be exercised in their own, but in their Master"s Name.
(3) There is, therefore, no comparison between the sense in which Jesus commissioned his disciples, and that in which Moses appointed Joshua or Elijah called Elisha to be their successors.
(4) Though the call to the ministry is Divine, to despise human learning is fanaticism. J.A.M.
Christ"s day-by-day duties.
The more special and public acts and events of a man"s life gain place in his biography, but the commonplace, everyday associations of a man give the true impression of him. It is said that "no man is a hero to his valet;" but he ought to be. The routine life of a man should be the best revelation of the man. We may dwell on the greater scenes of our Lord"s life, and learn much; but we know him imperfectly until we fairly estimate how he bore the strain of daily, commonplace duties. Four terms are used to describe our Lord"s everyday life.
I JOURNEYING. He "went about all the cities and villages." Galilee was very thickly peopled at this time. Josephus exaggerates, but he says of Galilee, "The cities here lie very thick, and the very many villages here and there are everywhere so full of people, by the richness of their soil, that the very least of them contained about fifteen thousand inhabitants." He reports two hundred and forty cities and villages in the district. This gives us an idea of our Lord"s active labours. Notice that
(1) he was concerned for the village as well as for the town;
(2) that such itinerating work is bodily exhausting;
(3) that constant fresh scenes and associations destroy soul-quietness, and make the due maintenance of the spiritual life exceedingly difficult. We may sympathize with Christ.
II TEACHING. We now know that the afternoon service at the synagogue was conducted somewhat as a Bible-class, those present asking questions and giving answers. In such scenes our Lord naturally took his place as Teacher. Scripture was the text-book. Note that our Lord sought to arouse the activity of men"s minds. He wanted intelligent religion. Teachers find in him their Model.
III PREACHING. This term represents the morning service in the synagogues, when announcements and expositions were given, but no response from the people was looked for. Preaching may be said to include three things:
(1) heralding;
(2) expounding;
(3) persuading.
Christ had a message; he opened up the Scriptures (as at Nazareth, see Luke 4); and he could persuade to the acceptance of the truth. But teaching and preaching make heavy demands on spiritual strength.
IV HEALING. This is always to be regarded as auxiliary and illustrative work. Needful in those days, in order to call attention to the new Teacher, and awaken interest in him. It did for that day what newspapers and advertisements will do for great leaders and teachers nowadays. R.T.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John A. Broadus 1886 · Public Domain On v35 Mat 9:35 to Mat 10:15.
Mat 9:35 to Mat 10:15.
Mission Of The Twelve
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Our Lord here undertakes another circuit of Galilee, similar to that described in Mat 4:23 ff., and in connection with it he now sends out the Twelve to engage in the same work, viz., to make the Same proclamation of the near approach of the Messianic reign (compare Mat 10:7 with Mat 4:17), and to work similar miracles of healing. (Mat 10:1, Mat 10:8) Before sending forth the Twelve, our Lord addressed them a long discourse, (Mat 10:5-42) giving them instruction not only for this mission, but for all their subsequent labours in his name; after which discourse he went to his work, (Mat 11:1) and they to theirs. (Mar 6:12 f.; Luk 9:6)—Some prefer to consider this as not the record of a distinct journey, but simply a return to the general statement of Mat 4:23. The idea would thus be, that having given a grand specimen of our Lord’s teaching (ch. 5-7), and a group of specimens of his miracles (ch. 8 and 9), the Evangelist now repeats the general description of his journeying, teaching and healing (same terms in Mat 9:35 as in Mat 4:23), and presently branches off again to describe the mission of the Twelve. But it seems more likely that this was a second and distinct journey. Indeed, Luke appears to give a third journey, (Luk 8:1-3) which a Harmony would make intermediate between the two in Matthew.—Our present section includes so much of the address to the Twelve as is given by Mark and Luke also. The remainder (Mat 10:16-42) is given by Matthew only.
I. Mat 9:35 to Mat 10:1. Jesus Is Moved To Send Out The Twelve
While engaged in a circuit of Galilee, he is moved with compassion at the spiritual destitution of the people, and begins to prepare the Twelve for going out as teachers. The portion in Mat 9:35-38 is found in Matthew alone, except that Mark (Mar 6:6) says simply, ’And he went round about the villages teaching.’
Mat 9:35. Same as Mat 4:23, except that for ’went about all Galilee’ we here have more particularly, went about all the cities and (the) villages, referring still to Galilee, as the connection and the circumstances show. All is so placed in the Greek as to be confined to the cities; and he could not have visited all the villages. Josephus says there were in Galilee not less than two hundred and four cities and populous villages. (See on "Mat 4:12".) The word rendered villages denotes properly a town without walls, as opposed to a fortified town. The larger places would of course all be fortified. We learn then that our Lord made a thorough circuit, going into all the large towns, and very generally into the smaller places also. He did not go only where he could have a very large congregation. For every sickness and every disease—i.e., every kind, not necessarily every case—and for the other terms, see on "Mat 4:23". Among the people, com. Greek text, is omitted on overwhelming evidence. Here again, as in Mat 8:16 and Mat 4:23, we must pause and dwell on the strong general statement, or we shall not adequately conceive of the immense extent of our Lord’s work as a Healer.
Mat 9:36. But when he saw the multitudes—crowds—as in Mat 5:1. As there his compassion led to a long address on the Mount, so here it leads him to send out the Twelve, that they might aid in the so much needed work of teaching and healing. Similarly after the return of the Twelve. (Mar 6:34) In the present case, as in Mat 5:1, we understand that what follows took place at some unassigned time in the course of the circuit just described. Because they fainted, best text, were distressed, or ’harassed,’ ’worried,’ rendered ’trouble’ in Mar 5:35 Luk 8:49. The evidence for this Greek word rather than ’fainted’ (com. Greek text) is ample. Scattered, literally, ’thrown,’ ’hurled,’ might mean prostrate (so Davidson), lying down, as being worn out and unable to go forward, or might mean cast off, neglected; the general conception remains the same, that of a flock worried and suffering for lack of a shepherd’s care. In the East, where sheep wander freely in wild, unenclosed regions, so as to require constant attention, this image is very striking. Meyer supposes that our Lord saw the people to be worn out with following him in long journeys, and that this suggested to him the image of a flock tired down; but the supposition seems quite improbable. (Weiss). The people were greatly in need of spiritual instruction and guidance, for those who professed to be their shepherds were not faithful and safe guides. (See the same expression in Num 27:17, and compare 1Ki 22:17; Jer 50:6; Eze 34:5; Zec 10:2)
Mat 9:37-38. He seeks to awaken a similar compassion in his followers. Disciples, see on "Mat 5:1". There were probably other disciples present, besides the Twelve, (Mat 10:1) and the exhortation to pray was addressed to them all, but only the Twelve were at that time sent forth; at a later period, seventy others. (Luk 10:1) The figure of reaping a harvest he had employed before (perhaps a year before), at Jacob’s well, (Joh 4:25 ff.) and will use again when sending out the seventy. (Luk 10:2) Truly represents the Greek word (men) explained on Mat 3:11, which denotes merely that this clause is set in contrast with what follows. The idea is sufficiently expressed in English by an emphatic utterance of ’harvest’ and ’labourers’; it was so rendered by Tyn. and Gen. (so also Davidson), ’truly’ being introduced by Great Bible. The harvest signifies, not (as some explain) the elect, those who will actually be saved, but men in general, who unless gathered and saved will perish like wheat that is not reaped.—This compassion for perishing men will naturally lead to prayer for labourers, (Mat 9:38) and such compassion and prayer will form the best preparation for going forth to be labourers ourselves. (Mat 10:1) Any man who is called of God to devote himself to preaching the gospel will have felt something, ought to have felt much, of this pitying love for his perishing fellow men, and will have prayed much for their rescue; and those engaged in that work should be careful to maintain, as long as they live, this same pity and prayer. And not only preachers, but all Christians, should feel as Jesus felt, and should regularly and habitually pray this prayer. Send forth is literally cast out, ’throw out,’ or ’thrust out,’ the same word that is used in Mat 9:33 f., in Mat 10:1, and above in Mat 9:25 (where see note). Compare its use in Mar 1:12; Jas 2:25. It always implies urgency, haste, constraint, or some such idea, and here means that the labourers should be sent out promptly, pushed into their work. Beza: "For we are all very tardy, especially in such matters."This same word is retained when our Lord speaks to the seventy. (Luk 10:2)[1] Such labourers as the Lord of the harvest does put forth, we may endeavour, with his blessing, to train for the better performance of their work (see on "Mat 10:1"); but they must be his labourers, not ours, called into the work, and urged to the performance of it, by himself.
[1] That he send forth’ is a non-final use of hopos, see on Mat 5:29.
Mission Of The Twelve, Cont
Mat 10:1. Having led the disciples to feel interest in perishing throngs of men, and encouraged them to pray for labourers, Jesus now bids them go forth to labour themselves. We ought carefully to observe the slow and gradual process by which our Lord prepared the Twelve for their great and important life-work. First, he called various individuals to be his disciples, as, for example, those in Joh 1:35-51; these went with him for a time, but afterwards returned to their homes and their secular employments. Next, he called some to attach themselves permanently to him, as above in Mat 4:18-22, stating at the time his intention to make them fishers of men. After a while, he selected from the general mass of his followers the Twelve, who were to be specially near to him, and to be trained for special duties; delivering to them, immediately after their selection (see on "Mat 5:1"), a great discourse on the true nature of that Messianic reign which they were to aid in bringing about. And now, at a still later period, when they have been long hearing his discourses to the people, talking with him familiarly in private, and witnessing his multiplied miracles, he sends them forth, two and two, to preach and heal; but not yet to work independently of him, for they are only to go before and prepare the way for his coming. After a season spent in such personal labours, they will return, and remain long with him, receiving further instruction, which they will more earnestly desire and more fully appreciate, from their attempts at actual preaching. And finally, after his ascension, they will be ready, with the Holy Spirit as their abiding Instructor, to go and disciple all nations. After all this training they could do nothing without the Spirit; yet, though they were to have the Spirit, they must also have this training—doing what they could, meanwhile, to reap the great and perishing harvest, but devoting themselves mainly to preparation for wider usefulness in the coming years.
With Mat 10:1-15 compare Mar 6:7-11 Luk 9:1-5. Disciples, see on "Mat 5:1".—Power, authority, which in such a case would carry with it the power, see on "Mat 9:6". As to demoniacal possessions, see on "Mat 8:28". These spirits are called unclean, because of their own wickedness, and perhaps because their presence was a pollution to the person possessed (compare on Mat 12:43 ff.); and this served to distinguish them from good or pure spirits. Sometimes they are called ’evil spirits.’ All manner of, etc., every disease and every infirmity, compare Mat 9:35, Mat 4:23.
II. Mat 10:2-4. List Of The Twelve
Matthew has not mentioned the selection of the Twelve, which took place before this. (Mar 3:13 Luk 6:13, compare on Mat 5:1) At the time when he wrote, the twelve apostles were well known, and he speaks of them accordingly: ’his twelve disciples,’ ’the twelve apostles.’ The number twelve was probably chosen with reference to the number of tribes (see on "Mat 19:28"). Apostles; the name, borrowed from Greek apostolos, ’one sent off,’ or ’sent forth,’ is here introduced by Matt. for the first time, in connection with the occasion on which they were first actually sent forth (Mat 10:5) to labour. But our Lord gave them that name when he selected the Twelve. (see Luk 6:13) The word is translated ’one that is sent’ in Joh 13:16; ’messenger’ in 1Co 8:13 Php 2:25; everywhere else in Com. Ver. and Rev. Ver., it is ’apostle.’ Jesus himself is called an apostle, i.e., sent by God, in Heb 8:1. Our word missionary, derived from the Latin, likewise signifies "one sent."
Curious, and in some respects instructive results, may be obtained from a comparison of the four lists of the Twelve.
Mat 10:2
Mar 3:16 f.
Luk 6:14 f.
Act 1:13 f.
Simon Peter
Simon Peter
Simon Peter
Simon Peter
Andrew
James
Andrew
James
James
John
James
John
Philip
Philip
Philip
Philip
Bartholomew
Bartholomew
Bartholomew
Bartholomew
Thomas
Matthew
Matthew
Bartholomew
Matthew
Thomas
Thomas
Matthew
James the son of Alpheus
James the son of Alpheus
James the son of Alpheus
James the son of Alpheus
Thaddeus
Thaddeus
Simon the Zealot
Simon the Zealot
Simon the Canaanite
Simon the Canaanite
Judas the brother of James
Judas the brother of James
Philip
Philip
Philip
Philip
Judas Iscariot
Judas Iscariot
Judas Iscariot
(Vacant)
We observe at once that, with all the variety in the order of succession, Simon Peter is always first, and Judas Iscariot last. Again, the first six names in Matthew, Mark, and Luke are the five earliest known converts., (Joh 1:35-51) together with James, the brother of one of them; and the first four in all the lists are the two pairs of brothers whose call to follow Jesus is the earliest mentioned. (Mat 4:18-22) Furthermore we note in each of the lists three groups of four, headed respectively in every list by Peter, Philip, and James, which groups contain always the same four persons, though within the limits of each group the order greatly varies, except as to Judas Iscariot. It seems a natural and unavoidable inference that the Twelve were in some sense divided into three companies of four, each having a recognized leader. The foremost in the first company, and at the head of all the Twelve, is Simon Peter. When Matthew says, First, Simon who is called Peter, he cannot mean merely that this happens to be the name first mentioned by him; and there is no explanation in the fact that those are mentioned first who first came to Jesus; for then Andrew and probably John, ought to precede Peter. (Joh 1:35 ff.) It is unquestionable that Simon Peter was a sort of leader among the Twelve. (See on "Mat 16:18".) As regards the remaining members of the first company or group of four, we may suppose that Matthew and Luke put Andrew next to Simon because they were brothers; while Mark and Acts and Mar 13:3 place James and John next to Simon, because they three were admitted to special intimacy and favour with Jesus, being the only persons present on several solemn occasions. (See on "Mat 17:1".) The four who formed this first group are mentioned in Mar 13:3 as making private inquiries of Jesus concerning the destruction of the temple, etc. In the second company, Matthew puts Thomas before himself (compare Acts), while Mark and Luke place Matthew first. After Philip, Matthew, Mark and Luke put Bartholomew, probably the same as Nathanael, who was brought to Jesus by Philip (Joh 1:46 ff) In the third company of four, Simon the Cananite in Matthew and Mark is obviously the same as Simon the Zealot in Luke and Acts (see below); hence Thaddeus (Lebbeus is a false reading) must be only another name of Judas the brother of James. He might naturally be put next to his brother, as by Matthew and Mark; or Luke’s order may indicate that Simon the Zealot was reckoned the more important personage. Observe that there are among the Twelve three pairs of brothers—Simon and Andrew, James and John, James the son of Alpheus, and Judas the brother of James (though this last may be ’son,’ see below); also that Matthew and Luke give the list in couples, and Mark (Mar 6:7) says they were sent forth ’by two and two,’ and these couples would easily lead to the grouping into fours. It would be natural that in different journeyings the couples should somewhat vary, and this might perhaps account for the different order of names in the several groups of four.
Simon who is called Peter. Simon was a Greek name, but in the New Testament is pretty certainly a contraction of Simeon, which form is given in Act 15:14, and by some authorities in 2Pe 1:1. Simeon signified hearing. (Gen 29:33) Simon was a native of Bethsaida, (Joh 1:44) a town on the Sea of Galilee, described below on Mat 11:21. His father’s name was Jonah or John (see on "Mat 16:17"). He and his brother Andrew were fishermen on the Lake of Galilee. Andrew, and probably Simon also. was a disciple of John the Baptist, before coming to know Jesus. (Joh 1:35 ff.) Jesus gave to Simon when he first approached him, the surname of Cephas, (Joh 1:43) which in the Aramaic language spoken by them, signified a rock or stone (Kepha, Greek form Kephas), and which was translated into the Greek, signifying the same thing; hence Latin Petrus, English Peter. The Aramaic Cephas is always used by Paul (1 Corinthians, Gal. correct text), and nowhere else in N. T. (except Joh 1:43) After following Jesus for some time, Simon appears to have returned to his business as a fisherman, and was subsequently prominent among those called to be regular attendants. (See on "Mat 4:18 ff.") The principal events of his subsequent life are given in Mat 8:14 ff Mat 14:28 ff.; Mat 16:16 Matthew 16, 22 ff.; Joh 13:6 ff.; Mat 26:33, Mat 26:69 ff.; Joh 21:15 ff.; then in Act 1:15, Act 2:14, Act 4:8, Act 5:3, Act 8:14 ff.; Act 10:1 ff.; Act 12:3 ff.; Act 15:7. He was an ardent and impulsive man, of great force of character, and extremely self-confident. Sad experience, through the special influences of the Sprit, wrought a great change in him, though still, the last time he appears distinctly in the N. T. history, we discern the same impulsiveness and readiness to change, as of yore. (Gal 2:11) He seems to have been at Babylon, where there were many Jews, at the time of writing his First Epistle. (1Pe 5:13) The traditions concerning his later life are very uncertain, and so as to all the apostles except John. As regards Peter’s position of leader among the Twelve, see on "Mat 16:18"f.
Andrew. The name is Greek, signifying ’manly.’ The facts concerning his parentage. residence, occupation, and early discipleship have been mentioned in connection with Peter. The only other cases in which he appears are Joh 6:8, Joh 12:22 Mar 13:3. The traditions concerning him are wholly unreliable. Yet he is important to us, not only as one of the inspired apostles, but as the means of bringing to Jesus his own brother Simon. All the usefulness of Simon Peter is, in one sense, due to the brother who told him of Jesus. And so, many a one in every age, little known himself, and of no marked influence otherwise, has been among the great benefactors of mankind, by bringing to Jesus some other person who proved widely useful.
James and John. James was probably the elder, as he is usually mentioned first, while John is sometimes put foremost, (Luk 9:28 Act 12:2) probably because more prominent, and because alone surviving when the books were written. James is originally the same name as Jacob, ’supplanter,’ being written in the Greek, Iacobos, Latin, Iacobus, then Jacopus, Jacomus, and so James. John is the Hebrew Johanan, ’Jehovah graciously gave,’ see on "Mat 3:1". Their father, Zebedee, was a fisherman on the Lake of Galilee, (Mat 4:21) but apparently a man of some property, as he employed hired servants, (Mar 1:20) and as his wife was one of the women who contributed to the support of Jesus and his disciples (Mat 27:55 f.; Luk 8:3), and probably a man of good social position, as we find John familiarly acquainted at the house of the high priest. (Joh 18:15 f.) Prom their mother Salome (see on "Mat 27:56") was perhaps inherited the ambition (see on "Mat 20:26"), and perhaps also the ardor, intensity, vehemence, and warm affection, which characterized her sons. These qualities of theirs were doubtless the ground of the name Boanerges, ’sons of thunder,’ which Jesus gave to the two brothers. (Mar 3:17) John appears to have been a disciple of John the Baptist, it being almost certain that he was the unnamed disciple of Joh 1:35-41.
We have no account of any call of James, until the time when the two brothers, with Simon and Andrew, were called to become our Lord’s constant followers; (Mat 4:21) John at least was probably with Jesus during the previous labours recorded in his Gospel. (Matthew 2-4.) The peculiar temperament of the brothers appears in Mar 9:38 ff.; Luk 9:52 ff.; Mat 20:20 ff. After this last event, we hear nothing of James, save as present at Gethsemane, and included in the list of Act 1:13, until the time when Herod Agrippa I. put him to death, (Act 12:2) the first martyr among the apostles.
John, however, appears quite frequently, usually in immediate association with Peter, between whom and himself there was probably a special friendship. Together they were sent to prepare for the Paschal Supper, (Luk 22:8) at which John was allowed to lean on Jesus’ breast, "the disciple whom Jesus loved." Together they (and James) witnessed the agony in the garden, and both followed to the trial. (Joh 18:15.) At the cross, John only of the Twelve seems to have been present, drawn by his ardent affection, and perhaps relying to some extent on his acquaintance with the high-priest for safety; and there he received the mother of his dying friend as one of his own family. Peter and John were also together in Joh 20:2 ff.; Joh 21:2 ff.; Act 3:1 ff.; Act 8:14 Gal 2:9. From Revelations Gal 1:9 we learn that at some time he was in exile on the Island of Patmos. There seems little doubt that he spent many years in "Asia," i.e., Proconsular Asia, particularly about Ephesus, and there wrote his inspired works. Several early traditions in regard to him are pleasing and probably true, particularly the story of his reclaiming the young robber, of his keeping a tame bird, of his saying, "Little children, love one another," and of his leaving a house because a noted false teacher was there. John as disciplined by grace, exhibits one of the noblest types of human character. The love with which his Epistles abound has in it nothing effeminate. He strongly condemns and severely denounces the prevailing errors and evils. He is not merely contemplative, but intensely practical; insisting that Christian love must show itself in holiness and usefulness, or it is naught. Still vehement, uncompromising, and outspoken, the loving and beloved old man has not ceased to be the "Son of Thunder"; but the vaulting ambition which once aspired to be next to royalty in a worldly kingdom, now seeks to overcome the world, to bear testimony to the truth, to purify the churches, and glorify God.
Mat 10:3. Philip. The name is Greek, signifying "lover of horses." Philip, like Peter and Andrew, was a native of Bethsaida, (Joh 1:45) and one of those who left the Baptist at the Jordan to follow Jesus, his friend Nathanael, or Bartholomew, being also brought to Jesus through his influence. (Joh 1:44 ff.) The only recorded incidents of his life are given in Joh 6:5 ff.; Mat 12:21, Mat 14:8 ff. And yet he was apparently one of the leaders among the Twelve, always standing at the head of the second group of four. The traditions concerning him are quite unreliable. He must of course be distinguished from Philip the Evangelist, of whom we read in the Acts. The name Bartholomew is Bar Tolmai, ’son of Tolmai,’ and Tolmai (perhaps ’plowman’) is an O. T. name, having in the Septuagint of Jos 15:14 the form Tholami, and in Josephus "Ant.," 20, 1, 1, the form Tholomeus. Nathanael denotes ’God-given,’ like Theodore, etc. From Joh 21:2 we naturally suppose Nathanael to have been one of the Twelve; and as it was Philip who brought Nathanael to Jesus, (Joh 1:44 ff.) and Bartholomew stands immediately after Philip in the catalogues of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we conclude that Nathanael and Bartholomew were the same person. The only fact known in his history is that he was a native of Cana. (Joh 21:2) The traditions concerning him are of little or no value. But he stands out in conspicuous lustre from the tribute of Jesus when he first approached him,"Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile"! (Joh 1:47) Thomas. This name signifying ’twin’ was sometimes translated into the Greek Didymus, (Joh 11:16) which means the same thing, just as Cephas and Peter are used, or Messiah and Christ. The incidents given of his life are in Joh 11:16, Joh 14:4 f.; Joh 20:24 ff. He does not deserve to be called "doubting Thomas,"in the usual sense of the phrase; he was desponding, slow to believe what he ardently desired (as he had been ready to believe the worst, Joh 11:16), but when convinced, uttering the noblest confession in the Gospels. (Joh 20:28) The traditions concerning him are uncertain. As to Matthew, see on "Mat 9:9". It is a trait of humility that he speaks of himself as Matthew, the publican; recalling the discreditable business which he had formerly followed, while the other catalogues make no such allusion. Eusebius says ("Hist." iii. 24, 6) that "Matthew, after first preaching to the Hebrews, when he was about to go also to other nations, committed to writing in his native tongue the Gospel according to him, thus supplying the place of his presence." Papias, who wrote about A. D. 130, says: "Matthew composed in the Hebrew language the oracles, and every one interpreted them as he was able." The term "oracles" might mean simply discourses, or might have a more general sense, including narrative, as in Rom 3:2. The relation of this Hebrew (Aramaic) writing to our Greek Gospel we have scarcely the means of determining. See the works on Canon and on Introduction.—The later history of Matthew is unknown; the traditions are unreliable.
James the son of Alpheus. If we adopt the much more probable view that this James is distinct from "James the brother of the Lord" (see on Mat 13:55), we are left with scarcely any knowledge of this eminent apostle, the leader in the third group of four. His father’s name was Alpheus or Halpheus, which was also the name of Matthew’s father. (Mar 2:14) Clopas (Joh 19:25) might be another form of the same name, but we cannot say that it was the same person. As to whether James was the brother of Judas Thaddeus, see below.
The copious accounts sometimes given of him result from identifying him with James the brother of the Lord. Thaddeus. This alone is the name in Matt. and Mark, according to the correct text.[1] We have seen from comparing the catalogue that Thaddeus must be only another name of ’Judas the brother of James,’ as given in Luke and Acts. He was thus known as Judas the beloved, or darling. In Luke and Acts he is distinguished from Judas Iscariot by calling him ’Judas of James,’ or ’James’s Judas,’ a form of expression which is quite common in Greek, and which usually adds the father of the person described, but sometimes another connection, such as husband, son, brother, or even friend. (See Winer, p. 190 237.) An eminent example is that of the early Christian writer Eusebius, who, after the death of his friend Pamphilus, always called himself Eusebius of Pamphilus. If nothing were known to the contrary, we should naturally translate ’Judas son of James,’ as is done by the Peshito and Thebaic versions, and by our Rev. Ver. (Luk 6:16 Act 1:13) Compare Bishop Lightfoot on Gal., p. 256. But as the Epistle of Jude begins ’Judas, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James’ (where brother is expressed in the Greek), we seem entirely warranted in using that fact to solve the ambiguity of Luke’s expression ’Judas of James,’ and understanding it to mean the brother of James; yet it is impossible to determine the question with certainty, for we cannot even be certain that the Epistle was written by the apostle Judas. The only incident in the life of Judas Thaddeus is given in Joh 14:22. The traditions concerning him are worthless.
[1] It is given by B à 2 cursives, the two Egyptian versions, the Latin Vulgate, and several copies of the Old Latin. Lebbeus alone is given by D, some Latin documents, and Hosychius, and so is a feebly supported "Western" reading. (D and some copies of the Old Latin make the same change in Mar 3:18) From these two easily arose "conflate" readings, "Lebbeus who was surnamed Thaddeus," "Thaddeus who was surnamed Lebbeus," etc. The name Thaddeus is usually derived from the Aramaic thad, the female breast, Hebrew shad, and would thus signify cherished in the bosom, ’beloved,’ Now, Jerome says that Lebbeus (which obviously comes from leb, heart) signifies coreulum, sweetheart, darling. We can easily understand how the "Western" documents, so given to arbitrary changes, might change the unfamiliar Thaddeus to a word of similar meaning formed upon a very familiar root. Thus all the phenomena are accounted for, and Thaddeus alone stands as the name in Matt., as well as in Mark. The perplexity of several recent writers has arisen from taking Lebbeus to mean hearty, courageous, overlooking Jerome’s definition.
Simon the Canaanite, or Cananaean. The name Simon being very common, this apostle is distinguished from Simon Peter and others by the surname Cananaean, which in Aramaic would signify the same thing as the Greek word Zelotes given in Luke and Acts, viz., ’Zealot.’ Thirty years later than this, as we find from Josephus ("War,"4, 3, 9), there existed a party calling themselves Zealots, as being very zealous for the national religion and institutions. (Compare Act 21:20 Rom 10:2) They were accustomed to punish without trial, to "lynch" any Jew who seemed to them a traitor or violator of the law, finding precedent and sanction in the ease of Phinehas. (Num 25:7) This practice, as must always happen when it is continued, led finally to gross abuses and horrid cruelties, and the Zealots had no small part in the ruin of the nation. It is likely that the party already existed in the time of our Lord (having come down from Judas the Galilean), (Act 5:27) though on a much smaller scale than afterwards, and that Simon had at one time belonged to it, and thus acquired his surname, Zelotes or Cananaean. It is quite a mistake to confound this with Canaanite, which in Greek is materially different; (Mat 15:22) the mistake is found as early as Great Bible, "Simon of Canaan," (so in Bagster’s Hexapla, both in Matt. and Mark. Bishop Lightfoot Rev. seems to be mistaken in ascribing the double a to the Bishop’s Bible.) Of this apostle’s history we know nothing at all. The fact that he had been a Zealot would suggest an ardent nature; it is probable that, like Paul, he showed in doing good the same fiery zeal he had shown in doing evil.
Judas Iscariot has the same surname in Joh 12:4, Joh 13:2. His father was called Simon Iscariot. (Joh 6:71, Joh 13:26, correct text.) Judas is a Greek form of Judah. (See on "Mat 1:2".) The surname Iscariot is Ish-Kerioth, ’man of Kerioth,’ a town in the tribe of Judah; (Jos 15:15) it is spelled Iscarioth in the better Greek text of Mar 3:19 Luk 6:16. So Ish-Tob, ’man of Tob’ or ’men of Tob’ is in the Sept., Istob, and in Josephus Istobos. The fact that his father had the same surname quite excludes Lightfoot’s fanciful etymologies from Latin scortea, a leathern apron, because he carried the hag, or from Hebrew askara, strangling. All the other disciples appear to have been Galileans (though that is not certain), and this difference might have some effect on Judas in preventing full sympathy with the others. We know nothing of his early history or his call to he a disciple. It was not only a matter of divine foreknowledge that he would betray his Teacher—as all things are—but was distinctly foreseen from an early period by Jesus, (Joh 6:64) who in his human mind was not omniscient. (Mat 24:36) That a person in whom this was foreseen should be chosen one of the Twelve, is not more mysterious than a thousand other things which are done in the providence of the same Lord. Weiss : "The other disciples, too, were not without great weaknesses and faults of character, which were certainly no secret to Jesus..... On the other hand, Judas must have possessed special endowments, for Jesus to consider it desirable to secure him as a disciple." His talent for business, with the care of the common fund, seems to have developed a ruinous avarice, even in the very company of Jesus. He shows us that the greatest outward privileges may be of no avail, and may even be perverted into a curse; and he exemplifies the gradual progress, the terrible power, and the awful results, of covetousness. It may very well be that in the beginning he was sincere and meant to be faithful; but as so often happens, his gift became his snare.—It is some relief to our distress when we see men in high places of Christian usefulness at the present day falling utterly away, to remember that it was so at the beginning, even among our Lord’s chosen Twelve. Judas must have wrought miracles like the others, (compare Mat 7:22 f.) and his preaching must have produced effects like theirs, or the difference would have been noticed by him and them. In like manner now, a bad man sometimes preaches, and God converts souls through his instrumentality; and these, when he afterwards turns out to have been all the while a bad man at heart, may well mourn for him, but need have no fears as to the preciousness of the truths he proclaimed, or scruples as to the validity of the ordinances he administered. As to the motives of Judas in the betrayal, see on "Mat 26:14 ff.", and as to his remorse and self-destruction, see on "Mat 27:3 ff." Betrayed, is literally, delivered up (margin Rev. Ver.), the same word as in Mat 10:17, Mat 10:19, Mat 10:21, above in Mat 5:25, and often, It is a part of the characteristic moderation of the Evangelists that never, except in Luk 6:16, do they apply to Judas the harsh words betray and traitor, which have become so fixed in our usage. Compare on Mat 17:22.
III. Mat 10:5-15. Instructions To The Twelve
The remainder of Matthew 10 contains the charge given to the Twelve on sending them out. (Compare on Mat 9:35) The earlier portion of this, (Mat 10:5-15) is also briefly reported by Mark, (Mar 6:8-11) and Luke. (Mat 9:3-5) The rest (Mat 10:16-42) is found in Matthew only. (See below on "Mat 10:16".) A charge closely resembling the earlier part of this discourse was also given to the Seventy, when sent out some time later. (Luk 10:1-16)
Mat 10:5 f, These twelve Jesus sent forth; in Greek the verb from which comes apostolos, ’one sent off.’ (See on "Mat 10:2".) We learn from Mark (Mar 6:7) that he sent them ’two and two.’ This arrangement may possibly have been suggested by the fact that there were among the Twelve two or three pairs of brothers (see on "Mat 10:2"f.), but it had also some important advantages, both as regards the apostles themselves, and as to their work. The two served as company for each other, preventing the loneliness which the apostle Paul took so much pains to avoid on his journeys. They could also relieve each other in preaching, which, in the open air, and to the crowds gathered by their miracles, would be laborious, as our Lord himself found it. And then the testimony of the two witnesses concerning the teachings and miracles of the Great Prophet who was coming after them, would be more impressive among the people than that of one alone. The Seventy also were sent forth two and two. (Luk 10:1) Compare Ecc 4:9-12 Luk 7:19.—how long these journeyings and labours of the six pairs of apostles continued, we have no means of ascertaining; one would conjecture a few weeks. Way of the Gentiles, like ’the removal of Babylon’ (compare on Mat 1:11), and ’the way of the tree of life,’, (Gen 3:24) readily signifies a way leading to the Gentiles (so rendered by Tyndale), a road to Gentile countries. (Compare also Jer 2:18 Act 2:28, Act 16:17) In travelling on the southern border of Galilee, they would of course come near some Samaritan towns; thus we see that the language is quite precise—Do not enter a city of the Samaritans, do not go off into a road to the Gentiles.
Samaritans. samaria was the district lying between Judea and Galilee. The dislike between the Jews and the Samaritans had its beginnings as far back as the earliest times of Israel in the jealousy existing between the tribes of Judah and Ephraim, which finally led to the division into two kingdoms. When the people of the Northern Kingdom (who came to be called Samaritans from the capital city, Samaria, 1Ki 16:24), were carried into captivity by the Assyrians, the country was partly occupied by Mesopotamian colonists, who were idolaters. These gradually coalesced with the dregs of the Israelites who had been left in the land, and with the fugitives who returned from surrounding countries, into a half-heathen nation, attempting to unite idolatry with the worship of Jehovah. When the people of the Southern Kingdom, the Jews, returned from their captivity in Babylon, and undertook to rebuild the temple at Jerusalem, the Samaritans proffered to help them; and being repulsed, as not of pure Israelitish descent, they then did all in their power to hinder the building of the temple, and the fortification of the city. A brother of the Jewish high-priest, having married a Samaritan woman, and being unwilling to put her away as required went over to the Samaritans, and was made priest in a temple built for him on Mount Gerizim (Jos."Ant.," 11, 8, 2), which the Samaritans from that time began to contend was the proper place for the worship of Jehovah, rather than Jerusalem. (Joh 4:20) These causes naturally led to bitter hatred between Jews and Samaritans, and they were constantly attempting to injure and insult each other, while under the dominion of the Greek kings of Syria. John Hyrcanus conquered the Samaritans, destroying their temple and capital (about B. C. 125). Pompey established their independence (B. C. 63). At the time of our Lord’s public ministry, Judea and Samaria were governed by the same Roman procurator, but as distinct administrative districts; and the hatred between the two nations, cherished through centuries, and combining all the elements of race jealousy, religious rivalry, political hostility, and numerous old grudges, had become so intense that the world has probably never seen its parallel. The theory of some writers that the Samaritans were of purely heathen origins would suppose that the entire population of tile Northern people was deported by the Assyrians—a thing extremely improbable; would render the frequent claim of the Samaritans to be Jews an absurdity; and would make it difficult to account for the Samaritan Pentateuch, and the Samaritan expectation of Messiah. For the Samaritans, like the Jews, expected the Messiah, (Joh 4:25, Joh 4:29) and something like a year before this mission of the Twelve our Lord’s preaching among them at Sychar was warmly received, and many believed on him. (Joh 4:39-42) Some time after this mission he also went twice through Samaria, and spoke and acted kindly towards them. (Luk 9:51 ff.; Luk 17:11 ff.) Why, then, might not the Twelve go into their cities? It is enough to reply that the Twelve had not then such feelings towards that people as would qualify them to do good there. The proposal of James and John to call down fire from heaven upon a Samaritan village (Luk 9:52 ff.) shows that there would have been bitter controversies, with the old national hate ever ready to burst out. (Compare Bruce,"Training of the Twelve.") In Act 1:8, Samaria is expressly included in the field of their appointed labours after the ascension. (Compare Act 8:5)
Mat 10:6. To the lost sheep, etc., compare on Mat 9:36; and see the same figure employed in Isa 53:6 Jer 50:6 Eze 34:5. Our Lord confined his own personal labours almost entirely to the Jews; he declares, in Mat 15:24, that his mission was ’to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,’ the same expression as here; though at a later period he says that he has other sheep which are not of this fold.’ (Joh 10:16) It was a part of the peculiar privileges of the Jewish nation that the gospel should be first preached to them; (Luk 24:47 Act 13:46 Rom 1:16) yet Jesus frequently intimated that these exclusive privileges could not last always (Mat 8:11, Mat 10:18, Mat 21:43, Mat 22:9, Mat 24:14) By confining his labours and those of the Twelve to them he avoided exciting their prejudices, and thus deprived them of even the poor excuse for rejecting him which they would have found in his preaching freely among the Gentiles and Samaritans. Accordingly, Matthew mentions this limitation, while Mark and Luke do not. Even at a later period, Paul found it almost impossible to convince some Jewish Christians that the Gentiles were to be admitted to the privileges of the gospel, without becoming Jews. And then had the reign of Messiah been proclaimed to the Gentiles before it had been welcomed by many Jews, the former might have made it a very plausible objection to the new religion that it was not believed in at home, where it was best understood. Furthermore, as regards this mission of the Twelve, they were as yet too ignorant themselves of the true nature of Messiah’s kingdom to undertake its propagation among the Gentiles; they would have introduced the current Jewish errors on the subject. Some years later, when their own course of early instruction was completed, and the Spirit was come, they were prepared to preach "repentance and remission of sins... unto all the nations." (Luk 24:47, Rev. Ver.) For the present they could prepare the Jews among whom they went for the preaching of Jesus, and what they said would not strengthen, but so far as it went would rather correct the popular errors. Such a restriction of labour to the Jews is not addressed to the Seventy, (Luk 10:1 ff.) but it is really involved in the statement that they were to go where Jesus was going.
Mat 10:7 f. Preach, see on "Mat 4:17". The kingdom of heaven is at hand, see on "Mat 8:2". This was the same announcement that John the Baptist had made, and with which Jesus himself had begun his ministry in Galilee (compare on Mat 4:17); so the Seventy likewise. (Luk 10:9) Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils—demons. The Greek has no article. The original means, Heal sick, i.e., persons, etc. They were not commanded to heal all the sick they met with. Probably they restricted their miracles, as Jesus himself usually did, to those who showed desire and faith. The Seventy also were commanded to heal the sick, in every city which received them. (Luk 10:9) As to leprosy, see on Mat 8:2; and upon demoniacal possessions, see on Mat 8:28-31. The clause raise dead, i.e., persons, is not certainly genuine, but most probably.[1] Freely (or, gratis) ye have received, freely (or, gratis) give. The word which Tyn., etc., and Com. Ver. here render ’freely’ really signifies ’as a gift,’ and is exactly rendered gratis, by the Latin versions and Rheims. It is not opposed to the idea of giving or receiving in a stingy way, or on a small scale, but to the idea of giving or receiving for pay. Observe the force of the word, as thus explained, in Rom 3:24; 1Co 11:7; Rev 21:6, Rev 22:17. (Compare Isa 55:1) The Jewish exorcisers who pretended to cast out demons were no doubt accustomed to have pay; and physicians of course took pay for healing the sick. The Twelve could easily have obtained money, in large sums, for the cures they were empowered to perform. We might think it strange that they should need to be told not to do so; but they had as yet very imperfect conceptions of the nature of Christ’s work, and not merely might Judas Iscariot have been glad enough to drive a brisk trade in miraculous healing for pay, but others of them might have seen no impropriety in receiving compensation for conferring such important benefits. Jesus tells them they received gratis, and must give gratis. They had not purchased the power of miraculous healing—as Simon Magus wished to do, (Act 8:18)—nor obtained it by long and expensive study, and laborious practice; it was received as a gift, and must be exercised in like manner. The miracles were really credentials for their teaching, as well as indications of divine benevolence, and should be used accordingly. As to teaching, we find Micah (Mic 3:11) making it a reproach that the heads of Israel "judge for reward, priests teach for hire, and prophets divine for money." Some of the later Jewish writers maintained very earnestly, though often on fanciful grounds, and though many rabbis acted quite otherwise, that a man ought not to teach the law for pay, but gratuitously—just as Socrates and Plato held with reference to philosophy.
[1] It is omitted by all later uncials, and more than one hundred and fifty cursives, by the Thebaic and Armenian, some Syriac and Æthiopic codices, and some Fathers. The concurrence of B and à with C and D, supported by the other versions, some fifteen cursives and various Fathers, requires us to retain the reading. The words may have been omitted because no other passage of the Gospels ascribes to the apostles this power. Plumptre thinks they were inserted because of such later instances as Act 9:40, Act 20:9 ff. The words are retained by Lachm., Tisch., Treg., W. H., and Weiss.
Mat 10:9 f. While they were thus to work their miracles, and teach the people, without pay, they must, on the other hand, look to those among whom they went for food and clothing, (Mat 10:9 f.) and for a hospitable reception. (Mat 10:11-15) They must neither seek for gain, (Mat 19:8) nor be anxious about their livelihood, but laying aside both selfish aims and personal cares, devote themselves to their appointed task. He therefore directs them to lay in no money, whether gold, silver, or copper, no provision bag, nor staff, nor extra clothing, nor even a loaf of bread; (Mar 6:8 Luk 9:3) since the labourer is worthy of his sustenance. Our Lord is not giving an exact list of objects to be dispensed with, but is only illustrating the principle; and so (Luketteroth) it is not strange that the other Gospels give the details somewhat differently.
Provide neither gold, etc., or, as in Rev, Ver., Get you no gold, nor silver, nor copper, in your girdles. The expression involves a climax—not gold, nor yet silver, nor even copper. Mark (Mar 6:8) mentions only copper; Luke (Luk 9:3) only silver, ’Brass,’ as in Com. Ver., a mixture of copper and zinc, is not believed to have been in use among the ancients; they made coins, and a great variety of utensils and implements, sometimes of pure copper, but more frequently of bronze, a mixture of copper and tin, and it is this that is commonly meant in Scripture by the word copper. The ’girdle’ (see on "Mat 3:4") was often of fine materials and elegant workmanship, and made hollow so as to carry money. The word rendered ’purse’ in Luk 10:4, is different, and denotes a small pouch, like our purse. No scrip, etc., or, no bag for the road, (travelling bag, or haversack), the word signifying a leather bag or wallet, used for carrying provisions when travelling. The English word ’scrip’ was formerly used in that sense, but is now obsolete. Two coats, the word meaning the inner garment or long shirt, described on Mat 5:40. It was not uncommon to wear two of them at once, but was unnecessary; and so John the Baptist (Luk 3:11) directed him who had two to give to him who had none. In setting out on a journey it is natural to assume additional or thicker clothing; and even this is here prohibited. (Compare Mar 6:9) Or it may mean that they must not carry with them a change of clothing, but trust to obtaining it when needed. Neither shoes, or, sandals. See on "Mat 3:11". Nor yet staves —better— nor staff. The singular is tile best supported reading of the Greek text. Mark, (Mar 6:8) ’he charged them to take nothing for their journey save a staff only,’ would not necessarily conflict with Matthew. The one forbids them to procure a staff for the purpose, the other allows them to carry with them one already possessed. But Luke (Luk 9:3) uses the same Greek term as Mark, they must not carry a staff, and we have to fall back upon the principle stated above; there are indeed many cases in which the Evangelists give details differently, while the substance is the same. So in Matthew they are forbidden to procure sandals, while Mark has it, ’but to go shod with sandals.’ These soles of leather or raw hide, bound under the feet, would very soon wear out in travelling, and one setting out on a long pedestrian journey would naturally wish to lay in a supply of them; but the disciples must go with those they had on. Compare as to the Seventy Luk 10:4. We might take for granted that these specific directions were designed only for the existing circumstances of the disciples, and were meant to be followed after the Ascension only according to the principles involved, not according to the particular details. Still more clearly is that seen in the directions of Mat 10:11 ff., which are manifestly founded upon the peculiar usages of Oriental hospitality. And this view is established beyond controversy by Luk 22:35 ff., where under different circumstances they are commanded to pursue an altogether different course. Yet there have not been wanting some to contend, and even persons fanatical enough to attempt carrying the idea into practice, that ministers now, and especially foreign missionaries, should always go forth in the way here directed. But our Lord himself and the Twelve with him sometimes had money, which Judas carried in a purse, (Joh 12:6) and expended from time to time in supplying their wants and in relieving the poor. (Joh 13:29) For the workman is worthy of his meat—or—sustenance, this being the exact meaning of the word—whatever is needed to sustain life. To the Seventy he said, (Luk 10:7) ’for the labourer is worthy of his hire,’ and this is the form in which Paul quotes the saying. (1Ti 5:18) Aristotle says,"A slave’s hire is his sustenance." (Compare Num 18:31) It was a very useless variation for Tyndale, etc., and Com. Ver., to put ’workman’ here, when the same word is rendered ’labourers’ just above in Mat 9:37 f., and also in the corresponding passages of Luke and 1 Timothy Our Lord here distinctly sets forth the same truth concerning the preacher’s right to have his wants supplied by those among whom he labours, which Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians 9, and 1Ti 5:17 f. Some think the meaning bore to be that as God’s labourers they had a right to expect that he would give them sustenance, by his providence; but that view does not well suit the connection here, or in Luk 10:7, nor at all accord with Paul’s use of the saying in 1 Tim. See also 1Co 9:14, which seems to refer to this passage, if we there understand ’the Lord’ to mean, as so often in the Epistles, the Lord Jesus.
Mat 10:11-13. Whatsoever city or town (village), see on "Mat 9:35". Nearly all the people were gathered into cities or villages, it being unusual to live alone in the country, and indeed unsafe, from the unsettled condition of affairs and the prevalence of robbers; in fact, travellers in Palestine have to pursue a similar course now. Inquire, search out, or ’ascertain by investigation,’ a stronger term than ’enquire.’ Who in it is worthy, i.e., a man of piety and hospitality such as would make a fit associate and a willing host. And there abide till ye go hence, viz., forth from the city. In addressing the Seventy, (Luk 10:7) he adds ’go not from house to house.’ The chief object of this injunction seems to have been to make them feel perfectly easy about the burden of entertaining them; they must not even trouble themselves to change their stopping-place in a town, with a view to divide the burden. They had a right to a support, and must go without fear to a suitable place and stay there. It would not prove a real burden to entertain two men on a hurried journey, and they would of course not go to stay with a family which they learned was very poor. We can see another advantage of this course in that they could give themselves more uninterruptedly to their public labours. Thomson says (Vol. ii., 407), that at the present day, "when a stranger arrives in a village or an encampment, the neighbours, one after another, usually invite him to eat with them. There is a strict etiquette about it, involving much ostentation and hypocrisy, and a failure in the due observance of such hospitality is frequently resented, and often leads to alienations and feuds amongst neighbours."—The apostles found in carrying out the directions here given, that they lacked nothing—all their wants were supplied. (Luk 22:35) Into a (the) house, i.e., the one selected according to his direction. Salute it. The form of salutation would be readily understood, and was stated to the Seventy, (Luk 10:5) "Peace be to this house." This was the common salutation among the Jews, e. g., Luk 24:36; Joh 20:19, Joh 20:21, Joh 20:26; 1Sa 25:6; Psa 122:7, Psa 122:8. The Hebrew word employed, shalom, signified originally wholeness, soundness, and hence health, welfare, prosperity, well-being in general; and then peace, as opposed to war, because this so greatly conduces to prosperity and welfare in general. As a salutation, the term was thus an invocation of good of every kind, a benediction, a wish that one might be blessed in every respect. It is important to observe this breadth of meaning in the term, when studying various passages, such as Joh 14:27; Jas 2:16, and the opening and closing salutations of several of the Epistles. The same word, salaam, is now used by the Arabs. If the house be worthy, i. e., of your abiding in it, as in Mat 10:11. The emphasis in the Greek is on ’be,’ and if the house be worthy, as you were informed.—If (Mat 10:11) it be not worthy, let your peace return to you, without having accomplished anything. (Compare Isa 45:23, Isa 55:11) The explanation offered by many, that he says the benediction would come back and do good to themselves, does not appear to be warranted by the usage of similar expressions, although the idea which would thus be conveyed, is itself just and Scriptural.
Mat 10:14 f. Out of that house or (that) city. He refers at the same time to the case of an individual refusing them hospitality, and of a community refusing to hear their message. They would turn away from an individual, shaking off the dust of their feet, if he refused to receive or hear, but would not necessarily abandon the whole community for his sake. But if a city refused to receive or hear, then they would turn away from that city, shaking off the dust of their feet. These two directions are blended in one sentence. Whosoever is singular here, plural in Luk 9:5. Shaking off the dust, etc., denoted that they wanted nothing whatever to do with them, counting them vile, and all that pertained to them polluting. We find Paul doing this in Act 13:51, Act 18:6. The Talmud represents it as common for Jews to do so when re-entering the Holy Land from a heathen country. Similar is the ancient and modern Oriental custom of removing shoes when entering a holy place. Our Lord himself had already been rejected at Nazareth, (Luk 4:16) and in the country of the Gadarenes, and was rejected afterwards at a Samaritan village; (Luk 9:52) indeed, in general, ’he came to his own, and his own received him not.’ (Joh 1:11) We need not then be surprised if some reject us and our message, since it was so with Jesus, and so with the apostles, even on the Day of Pentecost. More tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah, compare on Mat 11:22, Mat 11:24. This solemn utterance is here given by Matthew only, the corresponding sentence in Mar 6:11 being an unquestionably spurious though early addition to the text, such as we so often find made in parallel passages.
Homiletical And Practical
Mat 9:36-38. What a theme for meditation is the Saviour’s compassion—at once human compassion and divine—and not a mere sentiment, but leading him to corresponding action, as Teacher and as Redeemer; and also leading him to send out others to teach the way of salvation. Every one now who is truly sent forth of God to spend his life in proclaiming salvation is really a fruit of the Saviour’s compassion for the perishing. Looking over a congregation, or any crowd, do you feel a tender concern for their salvation? Thinking of the millions who are perishing, in our own and other lands, do you long for their salvation and pray for it? If not, you are not like Jesus.—The prayer for labourers ought much oftener to form a part of our public and private supplications. All Christian men and women, and boys and girls, ought to feel that they have a work to do in gathering the great harvest of souls, that waves wide and perishing over all the earth.
Mat 9:36-38. Luther: "The world think nothing more trifling and despicable than the ministers of the word, or labourers in the Lord’s harvest; but that is like rejoicing over their own endless misfortune."
Mat 9:36 to Mat 10:6. Origin and development of a call to the ministry. (1) Compassionate reflection upon the perishing condition of men, Mat 10:36 f. (2) Prayer that God will send forth labourers, Mat 10:38. (3) Conviction that we ourselves must go, Mat 10:1, Mat 10:5. Henry: "Those who are to be ministers ought, (1) to live near to Christ; (2) to be taught by him."
Mat 10:1. Henry: "This was that famous jury, (and to make it a grand jury, Paul was added to it) that was impanelled to inquire between the King of kings and the body of mankind; and in this chapter they have their charge given them by him to whom all judgment was committed."
Mat 10:2. Henry: "Kinsmen may be dear companions in Christian labour."
Mat 10:7 f. The relation between the supernatural and the miraculous.
Mat 10:9-13. Hospitality to travelling preachers; compare Heb 13:2, 2Jn 1:10.
Mat 10:12 f. The courtesies of life may be the vehicles of temporal and spiritual blessing.
Mat 10:14 f. Dreadful guilt of rejecting the gospel. Henry: "The best and most powerful preachers of the gospel must expect to meet with some who will not so much as give them the hearing, nor show them any token of respect."—It may be suggested that in sermons on the twelve apostles it would be well to group two or more of those concerning whom we know very little into one discourse, rather than use uncertain traditions as material.
John A. Broadus, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (American Baptist Publication Society, 1886) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv35, 36, 38 Healing every sickness.
Mat_9:35
Healing every sickness.
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Christ the Physician
Christs healing activity had this double value: it was evidence of His Divine authority as a Teacher; it was a picture in detail addressed to the sense of what, as a restorer of our race, He meant to do in regions altogether beyond the sphere of sense. But these aspects of His care for the human body were not primary, but incidental. We may infer with reverence and certainty that His first object was to show Himself as the restorer of human nature as a whole-not of the reason and conscience only, without the body. Thus our Lord has thrown radiance upon the medical profession, associating it with His redemptive work.
1. The physician can point out with authority given to no other man the present operative force of some of the laws of God. The connection between indulgence and decay. He can give physical reasons for moral truth.
2. The physician can point out the true limits of human knowledge. He knows the ignorance of science.
3. The medical profession may be a teacher of reverence-reverence for the body as the tabernacle of the soul.
4. The profession of medicine is from the nature, I had almost dared to say from the necessity, of the case a teacher of benevolence. (Canon Liddon.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v36 Chapter 9
Chapter 9
The King's Ambassadors - Mat_9:36-38; Mat_10:1-42
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I - THE MISSION. {Mat_9:36-38 - Mat_10:1-5}
So far the King Himself has done all the work of the kingdom. But it has grown upon Him, so that He can no longer do it without assistance; He must therefore provide Himself with deputies. His doing so will be the first step in the organisation of His world-wide kingdom. He reveals, however, no plan laid down to meet all possible emergencies. It is enough to provide for necessities as they develop themselves. He constructs no mechanism beforehand into the different parts of which life may be afterwards guided or forced; His only care is about the life, knowing well that if only this be full and strong, the appropriate organization will be ready when it is needed.
In conformity with this principle He does not make His arrangements, necessary as they manifestly are, without first providing that they shall not be mechanical, but vital, that they shall originate, not as a contrivance of mind, but as an outflow of soul. First, we are informed by the Evangelist that the soul of the Master Himself was stirred with compassion as He looked upon the multitude, and thought how much they needed in the way of shepherding, and how little it was possible for them to have. It was no matter of planning for the extension of His kingdom; it was a great yearning over the sheep that were scattered, and torn, {Mat_9:36, Gk. of oldest MSS.} and lost. {Mat_10:6} But it is not enough that the Masters heart should be touched: the disciples also must be moved. So He turns their thoughts in the same direction, urging them to observe how plenteous the harvest, how few the labourers; and therefore to pray that the lack may be speedily supplied. He sets them thinking and praying about it-the only way to lay foundations for that which shall be true and lasting. Let it be observed further, that the two emblems He uses present most strikingly the great motives to missionary work: compassion for the lost, and zeal for the Divine glory. "Sheep having no shepherd,"-this appeals to our human sympathies; the Lord of the harvest deprived of His harvest for want of labourers to gather it in, -this appeals to our love and loyalty to God.
The result of their thought and prayer presently appears; for we read in the next sentence of the setting apart of the twelve disciples to the work. It does not follow, because the narrative is continuous, that the events recorded were; it is probable that an interval elapsed which would be largely spent in prayer, according to the word of the Master.
This is the first mention of the Twelve in this Gospel; but it is evident that the number had been already made up, for they are spoken of as "His twelve disciples." It would appear from the second and third gospels that, immediately before the delivery of the Sermon on the Mount, the Twelve were chosen from the whole number of disciples to be constantly with Him, as witnesses of His works and learners of His doctrine. By this time they had been so far instructed and trained by their companionship with Christ, that they could be safely intrusted with a mission by themselves; accordingly, He for the first time gives them power to do deeds of mercy of the same sort as those which He Himself had been doing, as signs of the kingdom of heaven.
As the apostles have not been mentioned before, their names are appropriately given here. The number "twelve" was no doubt significant, as suggestive of the twelve tribes of Israel; but there was plainly no attempt to have the tribes represented separately. It would seem as if all were Galileans, except one, and that one was Judas Iscariot (i.e., the man of Kerioth, supposed to be a town in Judea). The reason of this almost exclusive choice of Galileans is in all probability to be found in the simple fact that there were none other available. There had been those, in the course of His Judean ministry, who had after a certain fashion believed on Him; but there was not one of them whom He could trust with such work as this. {Joh_2:23-25} It may be thought, indeed, that surely there might have been some better representative-at least, than Judas proved himself to be-of the southern tribes; but why should we think so? We have no reason to suppose that Judas was a traitor at heart when he was chosen. Perhaps there was in him at that time the making of as grand an apostle as the best of them. It was not long, indeed, before the demon in him began to betray itself to the searching glance of the Master {Joh_6:70} but had he only in the power of the Master he followed, cast that demon out of his own heart, as possibly enough he may have helped in this very mission to cast demons out of others, all would have been well. The subsequent fall of the traitor does not by any means show that Christ now made a mistaken choice; it only shows that the highest privileges and opportunities may, by the tolerance of sin in the heart, be not only all in vain, but may lead to a condemnation and ruin more terrible by far than would have been possible without them.
Not only was the apostolate Galilean, - it was plebeian, and that without a solitary exception. It seems to include not a single person of recognised rank or position. Again, we believe that this is to be accounted for by the simple fact that there were none of these available. We cannot suppose that if there had been a disciple like Paul in the ranks, the Master would have hesitated to give him a place in the sacred college; but, seeing there was none, He would not go out of His way to secure a representative of the learned or the great. Had Nicodemus been bold enough to come out decidedly on the Lords side, or had Joseph of Arimathea developed earlier that splendid courage which he showed when the Masters work on earth was done, we can scarcely doubt that their names might have been included in the roll. But there is no such name; and now, as we look back, was it not better so? Otherwise there could not have been such a wonderful illustration of the great fact that "God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty"; there could not otherwise have been the same invincible evidence that the work these men did was not the work of men, but was indeed and in truth the doing of God.
Though they were all from the lower ranks of life, they were characterised by great varieties of gifts and dispositions. Some of them, indeed, are scarcely known to us at all. It may be that they were more or less ordinary men, who made no special mark; but it would be rash to set this down as certain, or even as probable, seeing that our records of the time are so scanty, and are manifestly constructed with the idea, not of giving to every man his due-as would be the poor ideal of a mere writer of history-but of making nothing of the men, and everything of the cause and of the Master in Whose great Personality theirs was merged. But those of them who do appear in the records are men of such varied dispositions and powers that the Twelve might after all have been a fair miniature of the Church at large. Some of the selections seem very strange. We have already referred to Judas the traitor. But there were those among them who must have been far less likely men than he. There were two in particular, the choice of whom seemed to violate all dictates of wisdom and prudence. These were Matthew the publican and Simon the Cananean or Zealot. To have a publican, hated as the whole class was, among the apostles, was apparently to invite the hostility and contempt of the great majority of the nation, and especially of those who were strongly national in feeling. On the other hand, to invite one who was known as a Zealot a radical and revolutionist in politics, a man who had identified himself with the wildest schemes for the overthrow of the Government, was to provoke the opposition of all the law-abiding and peace-loving people of the time. Yet how could the heavenly King have more effectually shown that His kingdom was not of this world, that the petty party spirit of the day had no place in it whatever, that it mattered not what a man had been, if now he was renewed in the spirit of his mind, and consecrated in heart and soul and life to do the will of God and serve his Master Christ?
So it has come to pass that, though these twelve men had nothing at all to recommend them to the favour of the world, and though there was very much from every worldly point of view to create the strongest prejudices against them and to militate against their influence, yet they have, by the grace of their Divine Master, so triumphed over all, that when we think of them now, it is not as fishermen, nor as publican or Zealot-even the traitor has simply dropped out of sight-we see before us only "the glorious company of the apostles"!
II-THE COMMISSION. {Mat_10:5-42}
"These twelve Jesus sent forth" (in pairs, as we learn elsewhere, and as is indicated here, perhaps, by the grouping in the list), "and charged them." This leads us to look at their commission. It begins with a limitation, which, however, was only to be temporary. The time had not yet come for the opening of the door to the Gentiles. Besides this, we must remember that the Saviours heart was yearning over His own people. This appears in the tender way He speaks of them as "the lost sheep of the house of Israel." Moreover, the apostles were by no means ready, with all their national prejudices still rank in them, to be intrusted with so delicate and difficult a duty as getting into communication with an alien race. Accordingly their field is strictly limited to their own countrymen.
There seems to have been a limitation also in their message. They had themselves been to some extent instructed in regard to the nature of the kingdom, its blessedness, its righteousness, its leading principles and features; but, though they may have begun to get some glimpse of the truth in regard to these great matters, they certainly had not yet made it their own; accordingly they are given, as the substance of their preaching, only the simple announcement, with which the Baptist had also begun his ministry, and with which Christ commenced His: "The kingdom of heaven is at hand." Though there seems to have been a limitation on the teaching side, there was none on the side of healing, for their Lord empowers them to do the very same things for the relief of their suffering fellow-countrymen as they had seen Himself doing. We have already seen how much teaching there was in these signs of the kingdom; and we can well believe that it was far better, considering the stage of advancement the apostles had reached, that reliance should be placed on the light such deeds of mercy would necessarily throw on the nature of the kingdom, than on any exposition which, apart from their Master, they could at that time have been able to give. Above all it is to be clear that the privileges of the kingdom are free to all; its blessings are to be dispensed without money and without price: "Freely ye have received, freely give."
How, then, were they to be supported? About this they were to give themselves no concern. They were now to put in practice the great command, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness," relying on the promise, "all these things shall be added unto you." But in no miraculous way are they to look for the provision of their wants. They are to be maintained by those among whom and for whom they labour. This was to be no burden, but a privilege, reserved for those who were found "worthy." {Mat_10:11} Nor was it to be divided among as many as possible. They were to stay on with the same person who first received them, as the one whom the Master had chosen for the honour; while, if any refused to recognise it as a privilege, there was to be no weak solicitation, but a dignified withdrawal. The regulations throughout are manifestly intended to keep most vividly before their minds that they went not in their own names, nor in their own strength, nor at their own charges, -that they were ambassadors of a King, clothed with His authority, armed with His power, vested with His rights; so that there is a manifest appropriateness in the solemn words with which this part of the commission closes: "Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city" which rejects you. {Mat_10:15}
The part of the charge which follows, and which the limitation of our plan will not allow us to illustrate point by point, bears not so much on the work more immediately before them as on the whole work of their apostolate. It may have been spoken, as some suppose, later on, and only put here as germane to the occasion; for, as we have seen, the arrangement of this gospel is not chronological, but is largely topical. Still there seems no very strong reason for supposing that the entire discourse was not spoken at this very time; for why should not the apostles in the very beginning of their way have some idea of what it would cost them to accept the work to which they were now called?
The leading thoughts are these: They must expect to be exposed to trial and suffering in the prosecution of their mission. The Master Himself was sorely tried, and the servant must not expect exemption. He is not indeed to court trials, or to submit to persecutions which are not inevitable: "When they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another." On the other hand, when the path of duty lies evidently through trial or danger, he must not shirk it, but face it boldly; and in all emergencies he is to place implicit confidence in Him Whose servant he is: "When they deliver you up, be not anxious how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that hour what ye shall speak" (R.V.). "The very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not, therefore." There is no way of avoiding the cross; and they would be quite unworthy of their Master should they seek to avoid it. Yet there is a great reward for those who bravely take it up and patiently bear it to the end. It is the way to higher honour, {Mat_10:32} and to the only life that is worthy of the name; {Mat_10:39} while to turn away from it is to choose a path which leads to shame {Mat_10:33} and death. {Mat_10:39}
The passage, taken up, as so much of it has been, with the anticipations of ill-treatment which the apostles will receive in setting out as sheep in the midst of wolves, closes most appropriately and beautifully with a series of blessings on those who will treat them well, ending with the encouraging assurance that even a cup of cold water given to a thirsty disciple will not be forgotten of God.
The lessons on Christian work with which this passage abounds are so numerous that it would be vain to attempt to unfold them. It is not merely a record of facts; it is an embodiment of great principles which are to govern the disciples of Christ in their service to the end of the world. If only the Church as a whole were to think and pray as Christ taught His disciples to think and pray before this great event; and then if the labourers whom God has sent, or would, in answer to the prayers of the Church, immediately send, into His harvest were to act-not necessarily according to the letter, but in every part according to the spirit of these instructions, - using their own faculties with all the wisdom of the serpent, and trusting to Divine grace and power with all the simplicity of the dove-it would not be long before all the scattered sheep were gathered into the fold, all the ripe sheaves garnered for the Lord of the harvest!
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv35–38 35. Jesus went about all the cities. He began…
35. Jesus went about all the cities. He began to widen the area of his ministry.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v36 MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Mat_9:36-38
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Mat_9:36-38
Preparing for change.—We seem here to be like men arriving at a new stage on their journey. At such a juncture they naturally ask, on the one hand, how far they have reached; and, on the other, what is required by them more. With regard to our Saviour’s ministry, we shall find that both these questions are answered for us in the passage before us.
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I. The nature of the position arrived at.—This was a position in which, on the one hand, there were great evidences of success. Twice before we have had special mention of such evidences. One (Mat_4:25) just before the delivery of the Sermon on the Mount. One (Mat_8:18) before leaving Capernaum for “the other side.” So also here, as it were, we see the Saviour stirred by like evidence of success on seeing the “multitudes” at His feet. To a feeling heart it is always affecting to see a vast assemblage of souls. Still more to know that they have assembled together to hear what can be said to them by that heart. Much must have been done by it already, very much, before they were brought to that point. A position, on the other hand, in which there were still greater evidences of necessity. For what, in fact, and as they were were these vast multitudes like? They were like those who had already received very much; but who also, on that very account, were in need of still more. They were like unnumbered “sheep,” who, just because of their numbers, needed tending the more. They were like plenteous crops which, because of their plenteousness, needed reaping the more. If it was affecting, therefore, to see their abundance, it was still more so to see their condition. So many sheep waiting to be tended, and no one to do it! So many harvests asking to be reaped, and no one to reply! No one at any rate, in such way as that Master-shepherd desired; and desired so because only His wisdom knew as well the depth as the reality of their need. Oh! for more and better means of following up this success!
II. The nature of the requirements thus brought into view.—These are shown by reverting again to the nature of the comparisons which are here employed by our Lord. To what, e.g. are we pointed, on the one hand, by the figure of “sheep?” What do “sheep” need but to be shepherded? To be under pastoral care? Also to be so in such degree as both their condition and their numbers demand? Being so many, and being so exposed, and being also so recently “found” and acquired, as it were, and not having as yet gone very much farther—if all so far—as to “know the voice” of their shepherd, they required attention, so to speak, at every moment and side. Instead of which, as things were, the Saviour beheld them “fainting and scattered abroad”—fainting (so some) because “fleeced” (?)—deprived of support rather than supplied with it—scattered from the fold, not gathered into it. Under that aspect the great need was that of “pastors and teachers” (Eph_4:11) to labour under the Saviour. On the other side what are we pointed to by the similitude of the “harvest”? Is it not to the fact that amongst those vast multitudes gathered together before the Saviour (representatives of others beside) there were very many who could hardly yet be rightly described as His “sheep.” They were rather ready to hear than hearers already; disciples rather in desire than in attainments; souls that “had need” of being made acquainted with the first principles of the kingdom of God (Heb_5:12). Little was possessed by such but the desire to possess. If they were to be taught, there must be some to teach them. If they were to be “gathered in,” there must be those to do it. Under this head, therefore, the great need was that of “evangelists” and preachers of Christ—reapers rather than shepherds—the men of the sickle rather than those of the crook.
This being so, what ought to be done? What ought first to be done? The close of this passage teaches to pray. “Pray ye, therefore”—because of these things—before anything else. This is the first lesson taught by this Scripture. In all your necessities begin with prayer. Too often too many of us only bring it in last. “There is nothing left but to pray”—we sometimes hear said of the sick. “I am sure I have tried all and every one. I see nothing now but to pray.” Observe here, therefore, how exactly different was the way of our Lord. Whether, on the one hand, with His counsel, in teaching His disciples. Whether, on the other hand, with Himself as we find at this very time from Luk_6:12-13. Why go to prayer first? Because it takes us at once to the right quarters. Who so certain to know about the harvest and all its needs as the Lord of the harvest? Who so likely to be interested in them? Who so able to help? Who so able, especially in this case where the need of help is extreme; where labourers have to be even “thrust forth” (Mat_9:38) to this work? Who so able to do this as He who sent Saul of Tarsus into His harvest? Also, because it is not only worse than idle to begin anywhere else; but self-sufficient and presumptuous and distrustful also in an equal degree.
HOMILIES ON THE VERSES
Mat_9:36-38. Motives to missionary work.—The two emblems Christ uses present most strikingly the great motives to missionary work.
I. Compassion for the lost.
II. Zeal for the Divine glory.—“Sheep having no shepherd”—this appeals to our human sympathies; the Lord of the harvest deprived of His harvest for want of labourers to gather it in—this appeals to our love and loyalty to God.—J. M. Gibson, D.D.
Compassion for the multitude.—Under two aspects the state of the people appeared to the Saviour’s eye and affected His heart.
I. As scattered sheep having no shepherd.—In all antiquity, both heathen and Hebrew, it was usual to speak of nations as flocks and their rulers as shepherds. A people without instruction, guidance, and motive, were sheep without a shepherd. The Old Testament uses this mode of speech frequently. In the time of our Saviour’s sojourn in Galilee the rulers, priests, and scribes were bound to shepherd the people, to watch over them, and feed them with knowledge, disclosing to them the love of the Divine Shepherd of Israel. But these men went about to establish their own righteousness, exalting and pleasing themselves, while the people were perishing for lack of knowledge.
1. The eye of Christ, while fixed on men’s outward condition, is fastened most earnestly on their moral and spiritual condition.—So should ours be.
2. The Lord spoke of the fault of the shepherds rather than of the sheep.—i.e. He will reckon most strictly with men that have positions of trust and opportunities of usefulness.
3. The cure of moral and spiritual neglect must be gradual.—Why did not the Son of God, at one stroke, with Divine power, remedy all that was wrong? Conversions may be in the twinkling of an eye, but much has to be done and taught before, and much after.
II. As a plenteous harvest spoiling for want of reapers.
1. Labourers are needed.
2. The Spirit of God blesses the pains we take to bring our instruments to the best efficiency.
3. But men are demanded sent by the Lord of the harvest Himself.—How to get them is clearly indicated in Mat_9:38. There is another array of reapers coming for whom you do not need to pray (Mat_13:41).—Donald Fraser, D.D.
Mat_9:36. Compassion for the multitude.—This compassion is:—
I. The incident of brotherhood.—The one great mark of the humanity of Jesus is the perfect naturalness of the feeling which it expresses the moment the scene calls it forth. Nothing is ever arranged for. Nothing is ever got up. As He goes, that happens which sets the fountain playing. That is Christ’s brotherhood, and Christ’s brotherhood is not a thing of yesterday, it is to-day too. He is what He was. “I am He that liveth and was dead.” Wherever there is the Christ-spirit there is the sense of kinship with the struggling, with the weary, with the restless, with the ever moving multitudes.
II. The mainspring of action.—Human action, like human life, is very complex. Motives are various. There is a man who does kind things now and again. He does generous things even now and again, but it is by a sort of fluke. He is, perhaps, religious in a sense, but he is essentially selfish. The mainspring is self. And the multitudes—why, they are only to him what he can get out of them! His interest does not really travel beyond that. There is another man. Occasionally he does a hard thing; occasionally he speaks a harsh word and his judgment is harsh, but it is a mistake. In the core of his being he is a really generous-souled man. And yet, because Christ loved the multitudes so well, He never pandered to them. That is what a great many people are doing in this day. It is very very difficult to find persons who will speak honestly and deal faithfully and truly with the multitudes.
III. The revelation of God.—He who is thus moved is the very brightness of the Father’s glory. All love in us is a reflection of a love that is greater than ours. But Christ is more than a reflection; He is the exact likeness. He is God in our very flesh. What you behold in Him is the sign of that which God eternal is.—J. M. Lang, D.D.
Multitudes.—A right view of a multitude cannot but deeply affect a right-hearted man.
1. Diversified histories.
2. Conflicting emotions.
3. Opposite relations to God and truth.
4. Different destinies.—J. Parker, D.D.
Pity.—Balzac, in “The Alchemist,” in depicting an ideally perfect love, makes the object of it deformed, thus profoundly indicating that love is not at its height and perfection without the element of pity (T. T. Munger). Nothing but the infinite Pity is sufficient for the infinite pathos of human life.—Shorthouse’s “John Inglesant.”
Mat_9:37-38. The abundance of the harvest and the scarcity of the labourers.
—
I. The harvest.
II. The labourers.
III. The Saviour’s plan for increasing the number of the labourers.—
1. Where persons offer this prayer in sincerity, they make a solemn acknowledgment that God must do all the work.
2. They mean that, when God raises up men, they will furnish the means to convey them to the heathen, and support them when they get there.
3. When young men utter this prayer, they mean that, if it is the will of God, they are ready to become labourers.
4. When Christian parents offer up this prayer they express their willingness that their children should go.—Richard Knill.
Mat_9:38. The Lord of the harvest.—
I. The seed is His.
II. The field is His.
III. The harvest is His.—J. P. Lange, D.D.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain On vv35, 37 Mat 9:35-36; Mar 6:6. Matthew “And Jesus was a…
THIRD EVANGELISTIC TOUR
Mat 9:35-36; Mar 6:6. Matthew “And Jesus was a going round all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every ailment among the people.” Our Savior, now the third time, accompanied by the twelve apostles whom He had chosen, and the holy women who cooperated with their ministry, and not a few voluntary disciples, radiates out from Capernaum, traversing the whole country of Galilee, which included the tribes of Dan, Naphtali, Zebulun, and Issachar, preaching the gospel of the kingdom in all their villages and cities. Hence we see that Jesus was an evangelist of the most aggressive character, not only peregrinating the whole country, and preaching the gospel of spiritual salvation full and free, but indiscriminately healing the sick. “And seeing the multitudes, He was moved with compassion in their behalf, because they were fleeced and abandoned, as sheep having no shepherd.” N.B. These people were all members of the Jewish Church, gathering Sabbatically in their synagogues, which everywhere abounded, and enjoying the ministry of the scribes, their pastors, and the expositions of their cultured theologians (called “lawyers,” because they expounded the laws of Moses and the prophets). Now why does Jesus thus speak of those people, describing them as poor sheep having been sheared closely, and turned out of the fold to weather the storm and take chances with the wild beasts and robbers? The case is very plain. The word here, which I translate “fleeced,” is eskulmenoi, which also means “harassed, vexed, abused,” signifying the treatment which those people received at the hands of the ministry who had charge of them. And the other, errimmenoi, means “forsaken, abandoned, cast away.” Now, of course, these strong affirmations of our Lord have a spiritual signification, revealing the sad fact that these people were utterly destitute of competent spiritual guides.
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Now do not forget that these were Jews, holding regular membership in the Church which God established, and enjoying all the privileges of the synagogue worship, with the living ministry faithfully serving them. What was the matter? Those preachers, with all their learning, were spiritually dead, — ”the blind leading the blind,” laying heavy financial burdens on the people, and neglecting their souls, thus practically abandoning them for the devil. O how history repeats itself! We do not have to go back to the Judaic ages in order to find the Lord’s sheep “fleeced” and abandoned for the wolves to devour.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
F. W. Grant 1903 · Public Domain On v35 Section 2. (Mat 9:35-38; Mat 10:1-42.)
Section 2. (Mat 9:35-38; Mat 10:1-42.)
His Messengers.
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The Lord refuses, then, the leaders of the people as representing the people themselves. They are mere misleaders, shepherds not feeding the flock, but injuring and rending them. As He goes up and down Galilee, constantly bearing testimony of the Kingdom at hand, and doing every where the mighty deeds which were the demonstration of the power of God already among them to bring it in, His heart is moved with the misery of their condition. Yet the sheltering wings of divine mercy were manifestly ready to be folded over them. It depended but upon themselves whether they would welcome the love that was seeking them. The abundant miracles, appealing as they did to the very senses of men; by the relief of need in every form and however desperate, could not but appeal to every legitimate self-interest on man’s part. And, however it might be with the nation at large, He is assured of the harvest that will reward labor in these beckoning fields. But the laborers, where are they? He bids His disciples, therefore supplicate the Lord of the harvest that He would thrust forth laborers into His harvest - not merely "send" but impel them to go out and then He turns these praying ones into laborers themselves. He gives them authority to do the works that He is doing - power over the whole power of the enemy and every outward consequence of sin; and sends them out to testify thus by word and work of the Kingdom drawing nigh.
The messengers thus sent out are themselves significant. We are familiar with their manifest deficiencies from a mere human point of view, deficiencies which made them only the more dependent upon that divine power which worked in them and through them. The apostle of the Gentiles afterwards, himself a man of very different up-bringing from these Galilean fishermen; and just when addressing himself to the vain and luxurious inhabitants of a wealthy pagan city, expressly stripped himself of any natural advantages that he might have, and "came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto them the testimony of God." And this was expressly that his speech and his preaching might not be with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power" (1Co 2:1; 1Co 2:4). It is certain that these rude instruments, as we should call them, yet moulded and energized by the Spirit of God, did a work such as has never since been done. Doubtless there was a fitness so given to them, transcending all the power of the schools to accomplish since. It is remarkable, with but an exception or two, how little we know of this or of them. In the Gospels themselves we much more often have them held up as warnings to us, than for our imitation. In the Acts, where most we should expect to find them, only one or two - fewer than in the Gospels - are at all prominent. And even these soon pass from our sight, and scarcely even a fragment of tradition of them remains. The "Acts" are, as has been well said, rather the acts of the Spirit of God, sovereignly using any that He will, than the "Acts of the Apostles," as they have come without warrant to be called; though Paul the apostle - not any of the twelve - is the principal figure in the latter half of the book. It is to the Spirit of God, evidently, that we are commended, and to practise the same utter dependence upon Him as they did.
No doubt, what we have of these earliest workmen should reveal to us much more than we have ever found in it. Even their names and their number should be significant. The Lord Himself connects them with the twelve tribes of Israel, over whom they are to rule in the day of the earth’s "regeneration" (Mat 19:28). And on the foundations of the heavenly city their names are also found (Rev 21:14). Twelve is indeed the number of manifest divine rule, as we have often seen, and these twelve names should have lessons for us in such connection. Their ministry is specially connected with the Kingdom, as Paul’s is eminently with the Church (Col 1:25*), and thus, probably, it is that their names are on the foundations of the city of God, which is the centre of divine government in that scene to which the book of Revelation carries us forward.
{*Where read "minister" - not "a minister" - "to complete the word of God."}
But we have here only a preparatory testimony addressed to Israel, and the names are in pairs, six pairs, as they were sent out by the Lord, two and two, not disregarding apparently in this the natural or spiritual ties which link men together. Simon and Andrew are brothers, and Simon had been led by his brother to Jesus: here there were both links. The sons of Zebedee come next. Then Philip and Bartholomew, the latter supposed to be that Nathanael, whom Philip had brought to the Lord. Beyond this we are not able to go in realizing such connection, and as to the names and persons had better leave what can be said of them to develop naturally from the history.
Here they are upon a special mission to the "lost sheep" - already that -"of the house of Israel," and are strictly forbidden to go whether to Gentiles or Samaritans. It is not at all an evangelization after the Christian pattern; and the directions given to them are only in part applicable to the present time. They were to proclaim the Kingdom as at hand, accompanying the proclamation with what the apostle calls, because of their connection with this, the "powers of the age" (not "world") "to come" (Heb 6:5). Sickness and death would yield to them; leprosy, (which had to do also with defilement before God,) and the power of the enemy: blessings to be scattered far and wide, as manifesting the grace which they themselves also had received. They were to take no supply, whether of money or clothing, as not going out into a heathen world but among those professedly owning God, with whose message they came, and as under the guardianship of the King their Master, - having a right, therefore, to expect the sustenance due to His laborers. Referring to this afterwards, and appealing to their own experience of how this expectation had been fulfilled to them, He distinctly recalls this commandment, in view of their going out into die world after His rejection (Luk 22:35-36); and the laborers of an after-time are distinctly commended by the apostle, "because that for His Name’s sake they went forth, taking nothing of the Gentiles" (3Jn 1:7). But now the King’s messengers were not to go as strangers: in every city or village those worthy were to be sought out, and with these they were to abide till they went forth from the city. The "peace" with which they greeted a house, made good, if it were worthy, with substantial blessing, would more than recompense all that they might receive. If it were not worthy, then the blessing would be as if it were not uttered. Finally, against house or city that would not receive them, they were to shake off the dust of their feet, as not willing to carry with them the least particle of that which belonged to those in hostility to their Lord. It would be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment than for that city.
(2) Invitation and warning thus went hand in hand; but the Lord does not hide from the disciples the fact that the nation, nay, the world, would reject Him, and therefore them. He puts this indeed fully before them, to prepare them for it and encourage them in view of it: He was sending them forth as sheep in the midst of wolves, - a hopeless thing to natural expectation; they were therefore to be as prudent - or wary - as serpents, but pure as doves, - without the serpent’s deceit. Men would deliver them up to councils, or sanhedrim, spiritual courts connected with the synagogues themselves. But beyond this they would bring them before governors and kings, the secular Gentile powers, as we see in the Lord’s case, necessarily under a different charge, and with a malice which He would turn to a testimony in the highest places and to the Gentiles at large, whom grace was content to seek even in such a manner. Paul’s case illustrates all this fully at a later day.
But they need not be careful as to their defence at such times. They would not be left to mere unaided wisdom. As the cause of Christ the Spirit of their Father would take it up and give them words fitted. Yet the hatred of them would be so intense as to break through all natural ties, and change the strongest affections into bitterest enmity. Brother would rise against brother, father against child, children against parents: they must endure, and at the end would come deliverance. Fleeing from one city to another, they would not have gone over the cities of Israel till the Son of man was come.
These last words make it plain that the mission of the twelve, while a mission to Israel only, and necessarily broken off by the judgment upon Jerusalem and the dispersion of the people, if not before, yet is not in the Lord’s mind at an end even now. It will be taken up again under similar circumstances, but in the face of bitterer persecution; and continued until the actual coming of the Son of man from heaven and the consequent deliverance of His own at a time yet future. No doubt the Lord’s words could not as yet be understood by those to whom He spoke; and they have been a cause of great perplexity to commentators, and variously interpreted by them in consequence. Had they not mostly confounded this testimony to Israel alone with the general publication of the gospel since, they would have had their perplexity increased. The occurrence of the same exhortation and encouragement with the distinct and detailed prophecy of the coming of the Son of man; in the twenty-fourth chapter, assures us as to the meaning here. Again there we are told that "he that endureth to the end shall be saved," the special troubles of the last days are put before us, and the Lord’s coming at the end "with all His holy angels with Him." But even as to the meaning of this, many have gone quite astray; while the lack of understanding of the parenthetical nature of the present Christian time has necessarily confounded things which should have been kept far apart. In the Old Testament prophecy the present time of grace to the Gentiles never appears; and to this character the words of the Lord here conform. The new dispensation was not yet in view, and could not be while yet the testimony to Israel was going on. But this is, on this very account, not yet the place to consider what will necessarily be before us a little further on. (See Mat 13:35.)
(3) The Lord urges now upon His disciples their necessary identification with Himself, so that they can expect no better treatment than He Himself received. If they had called the Master of the house Beelzebul,* how much more those of his household. Beelzebul means the "lord of the dwelling," - the Satanic "master of the house," who made the demon-possessed his habitation. They called Him this who was the lawful Master, the One stronger than the strong, who set the poor captives free (Mat 12:29). What, then; would they call the men of His household? But then from such raving there was nothing to fear. All would one day be unveiled and brought to light; and in that confidence they might proclaim upon the house-tops whatever they had heard of Him in greatest privacy.
{*So all the editors. Most commentators take it as a contemptuous alteration of Baalzebub, "lord of flies," the Philistine god of Ekron. Edersheim says that zebul means, in Rabbinic language, only the Temple, and suggests that zibbul may be referred to, which means "sacrificing to idols." Others take zebul as "dung;" but this is zebel. I give what seems most satisfactory, following Lange (Commentary on Matthew).}
It was true that in their enmity to it men might kill the body: this was their limit; by doing so they would only deprive themselves of further power. The soul would survive beyond their reach. God could destroy both body and soul in hell,* and He who has this power is the One only to be feared. We cannot but remember, in view of the Lord’s words here, that there was a Judas already among this little band of witnesses for Christ, - a man whose surname was "Iscariot,"** and who "from the beginning" was known by Him to be the traitor (Joh 6:64). Solemn words of our Lord in the presence of such an one; and surely for his ears.
{*Man has spirit as well as soul, but the Lord speaks of soul here, doubtless, because it is in closest connection with the body, - which is therefore called the "psychical" (not "natural) body" (1Co 15:44), - of which it is the "life." Psyche, like nephesh in the Old Testament, is thus used for "life" and "soul." Of "spirit" there is not in Scripture a possible question; of soul there might be; but the Lord affirms here its survival also. The common thought of body and soul being the whole man has clouded the truth of immortality, as if it had to be proved from a solitary text or so, as here; and also from its making man only what the beast is, in which there is also a "living soul" (Gen 1:30). Spirit is what is distinctive of man (1Co 2:11).
Again, when the Lord speaks of body and soul in hell, He does not speak of "killing" any more, but of "destroying," - a word used as to "ruin" of any kind. (See, for a full discussion, my "Facts and Theories as to a Future State.")}
**The surname "Iscariot" has had many interpretations: commentators in general having pretty well settled down now into the belief that it means "Ish Kerioth," or the "man of Kerioth." If so, he was the one Judean among the disciples, who otherwise were of Galilee; and some see much significance in this. But is it not much more probable that it is from the same root with, and akin to Issachar, "there is reward," or "hire," too near identity being naturally avoided with one of the fathers of Israel? There seems to have been a form of the word, shacar, from which is derived the word eshcar (Eze 27:15) of similar meaning. Iscariot might mean even thus the "trafficker," more closely connected with his crime than "hireling" would be. Notice how we are reminded of this surname (which may have been given him afterwards) at the very time when he puts himself into Satan’s hands for the betrayal of the Lord (Luk 22:3).}
But He goes on to encourage them with the blessed thought of being in relation to such an one as Father, without whom not one of those sparrows which men sold two for a penny,* could fall to the ground, and whose tender care had numbered every hair of His children’s heads. They were of more account, then, than many sparrows.
{*An assarion, really equal to a cent, or a halfpenny sterling[ca.1899].}
But they must confess Christ before men: whoso confessed Him before men He also would confess before His Father in heaven; and whoso denied Him, He also would deny before His Father - He could not now say their Father - in heaven. Grace never sets aside the holiness of God, but conforms us to its conditions; while divine holiness does not set aside the grace, which always receives the penitent: and the chief of the apostles furnishes us with the illustration of this.
(4) {Verse 34, ’send’: Ballein is to put on over a thing, as clothes, armor, or to put [into the mind]; but rather the former here with put peace upon the earth," "clothe the earth with peace;" "send" is too much as if the sword were His intention, whereas it is the result of the world being away from God.}
The test of true discipleship is found then in the preference of Christ to all things whatsoever else. The Prince of peace had come into the world, and yet the effect of His presence would not be to produce peace as between man and man; but on the contrary to bring out all the opposition of the heart to Him. For this they must be prepared. Variance would be introduced into families, - an effect with which the truths has been invariably reproached. Professing disciples would have to take their choice, therefore, between Himself and all else, were it father, mother, son or daughter: the inmates of a man’s house would be his foes. No one would be fit to be a disciple of His who did not accept this, and take up his cross to follow Him. Here for the first time He intimates the death before Him, - the shame which He has turned to glory: a dread word now for those whom He is sending out as heralds of His Kingdom, but with all the intimation of sorrow and rejection. Humbling Himself to all that the enmity of man can do, His language is that of serenest, fullest consciousness of a title far more than royal - a divine title. With the world thus against Him, He putting forth no power to subdue it, nor even to shelter His people from the vindictive hatred which He predicts, He claims from all that will be His disciples the most perfect devotedness that could be shown by man. He is to be dearer than the dearest, nearer than those bound by the closest of ties. And under such constraint they are to follow Him as the perfect, supreme example of all that is highest to be attained: to be "worthy of Him" their whole ambition! How His glory shines out here from the depth of self-abasement.
(5) He goes on to declare the recompense, connecting it with the conditions already laid down. "He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he who has lost his life" - not simply as having done this, but - "for My sake, shall find it." This is no principle of asceticism, or anything like that: it is His love governing in the face of a hostile world. Then He identifies Himself in the fullest way with those sent forth by Him: "he that receiveth you receiveth Me, and he that receiveth Me receiveth Him that sent Me." This principle He now extends beyond those He is addressing: "He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet’s reward; and he that receiveth a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man’s reward." That is, where mind and heart identify one with the prophet or the righteous man; God will identify him: the receiver of a prophet shall be blessed with the prophet. And divine love will forget nothing that is done for love’s sake: "whosoever shall give to one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, he shall in no wise lose his reward."
F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v36
Matthew
A CHRISTLIKE JUDGMENT OF MEN
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Mat 9:36.
In the course of our Lord’s wandering life of teaching and healing, there had naturally gathered around Him a large number of persons who followed Him from place to place, and we have here cast into a symbol the impression produced upon Him by their outward condition. That is to say, He sees them lying there weary, and footsore, and travel-stained. They have flung themselves down by the wayside. There is no leader or guide, no Joshua or director to order their march; they are a worn-out, tired, unregulated mob, and the sight smites upon His eye, and it smites upon His heart. He says to Himself, if I may venture to put words into His lips, ‘There are a worse weariness, and a worse wandering, and a worse anarchy, and a worse disorder afflicting men than that poor mob of tired pedestrians shows.’ Matthew, who was always fond of showing the links and connections between the Old Testament and the New, casts our Lord’s impression of what He then saw into language borrowed from the prophecy of Ezekiel {Eze 34:12}, which tells of a flock that is scattered in a dark and cloudy day, that is broken, and torn, and driven away. I venture to see in the text three points: {1} Christ teaching us how to look at men; {2} Christ teaching us how to feel at such a sight; and {3} Christ teaching us what to do with the feeling. ‘When He saw the multitude, He was moved with compassion, because they fainted and were scattered abroad.’ ‘Then He said unto His disciples, the harvest is plenteous, the labourers are few, pray ye the Lord of the harvest to send forth labourers unto the harvest.’ And then there follows, ‘And when He had called unto Him His twelve disciples, He gave them power against unclean spirits to cast them out.’ There are, then, these three points;-just a word or two about each of them.
I. Here we have our Lord teaching us how to look at men.
The picture of my text is, of course, in its broad outlines, very clear and intelligible, but there may be a little difficulty as to the precise force of the language. The obscurity of it is in some degree reflected in the margin of our Bibles; so, perhaps, you will permit one word of an expository nature. The description of the flock, ‘Because they fainted and were scattered abroad,’ is couched in the original in a couple of words, one of which means properly ‘torn’ or ‘fainting,’ according as one or other of two readings of the text is adopted, and the other means ‘lying down.’ Now, the former of these gives a very pathetic picture if we apply it to the individuals that made up the flock. We have then the image of the poor sheep that has lost its way, struggling through briars and thorns, getting out of them with its fleece all torn and hanging in strips dangling at its heels, or of it as lacerated by the beasts of the field to whom it is a prey. If we take the metaphor, as seems more probably to be intended, as applying not so much to the individuals as to the flock, then it comes to mean ‘torn asunder,’ ‘thrown apart,’ and gives us the notion of anarchic confusion into which the flock comes if there be no shepherd to lead it. Then the other word, which our Bible translates ‘were scattered abroad,’ seems to mean more properly ‘lying down,’ and it gives the idea of the poor, wearied creature, after all its struggles and wanderings, utterly beaten and dejected, having lost its way, at its wits’ end and resourceless, flinging itself down there in despair, and panting its timid life out anywhere where it finds itself. So it comes to be a picture of the utter weariness and hopelessness of all men’s efforts apart from that Guide and Shepherd, who alone can lead them in the way. And then both of these miserable states, the laceration if you take the one explanation, the disintegration and casting apart if you take the other, the weariness and exhaustion, are traced to their source, they are ‘as sheep having no shepherd.’ He has gone, and so all this comes. With this explanation we may take the points of view that are thus suggested simply as they lie before us.
First of all, notice how here, as always to Jesus Christ, the outward was nothing, except as a symbol and manifestation of the inward; how the thing that He saw in a man was not the external accidents of circumstance or position, for His true, clear gaze and His loving, wise heart went straight to the essence of the matter, and dealt with the man not according to what he might happen to be in the categories of earth, but to what he was in the categories of heaven. All the same to Him whether it was some poor harlot, or a rabbi; all the same to Him whether it was Pilate on the judgment-seat, or the penitent thief hanging at His side. These gauds and shows were nothing; sheer away He cut them all, and went down to the hidden heart of the man, and He allocated and ranged them according to that. Christian men and women, do you try to do the same thing, and to get rid of all these superficial veils and curtains with which we drape ourselves and attitudinise in the world, and to see men as Christ saw them, both in regard to your judgment of them, and in regard to your judgment of yourselves? ‘I am a scholar and a wise man; a great thinker; a rich merchant; a man of rising importance and influence.’ Very well; what does that matter? ‘I am ignorant or a pauper’; be it so. Let us get below all that. The one question worth asking and worth answering is, ‘How am I affected towards Him?’ There are many temporary and local principles of arrangement and order among men; but they will all vanish some day, and there will be one regulating and arranging principle, and it is this: ‘Do I love God in Jesus Christ, or do I not?’ Oh! for myself, for yourself, and for all our outlook towards others, let us not forget that the inmost, deepest, hidden man of the heart is the man, and that all else is naught, and that its whole character is absolutely determined by its relation to Jesus Christ.
But this is somewhat aside from my main purpose, which is rather briefly to expand the various phases which, as I have already suggested, are included in such an emblem. The first of them is this: Try to think for yourselves of the condition of humanity as apart from Christ-shepherdless. That old metaphor of a shepherd which comes out of the Old Testament is there sometimes used to indicate a prophet, and sometimes to indicate a king. I suppose we may put both of these uses together, as far as our present purposes are concerned; and this is what I want to insist upon. I dare say some people here will think it is very old-fashioned, very narrow in these broad and liberal days; but what I would say is this, that unless Jesus Christ is both Guide and Teacher, we have neither guide nor teacher but are shepherdless without Him. There are plenty of rulers. There was no lack of other authority in the days of His flesh. There were crowds of rabbis, guides, and directors. The life of the nation was throttled by the authorities that had planted themselves upon its back, and yet Christ saw that there were none of those who were fit for the work, or afforded the adequate guidance. And so it is, now and always. There have been hosts of men who have sought to impose their authority upon an era. Where is there one that has swayed passion, that has ruled hearts, that has impressed his own image on the will, that has made obedience an honour, and absolute, abject devotion to his command a very patent of nobility? Here, and nowhere beside. Besides that Christ there is no ruler amongst men who can come to them and say to his servant, ‘Go,’ and he goeth, and to this man, ‘Do this,’ and he doeth it. Obedience to any besides is treason against the dignity of our own nature; disobedience to Him is both treason against our nature and blasphemy against God. ‘Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ, Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father.’ There is the deepest reason for His rule.
And as for ‘teacher,’ whom are we to put up beside Him? Is it to be these dim figures of religious reformers that are gliding, ghostlike, to their doom, being wrapped round and round about by ever thicker and thicker folds of the inevitable oblivion that swallows all that is human? Brethren, by common consent it is Christ or nobody. Aaron dies upon Hor; Moses dies upon Pisgah; the teachers, the leaders, the guides, the under-shepherds, pass away one by one; and if this Christ be but a Man and a Teacher, He too will pass away. Shall I be thought very blind to the signs of the times if I say that I see no sign of His dominion being exhausted, of His influence being diminished, of His guidance being capable of being dispensed with? You may say, ‘Oh, we do not want any teacher or guide; we do not want a shepherd.’ I am not going to enter upon that question now at all, except just to say this, that the instincts of humanity rise up in contradiction, as it seems to me, of that cold and cheerless creed, and that we have this fact staring us in the face, that men are made capable of a devotion and submission the most passionate, the most absolute, the most mighty force in their lives, to human guides and ensamples, and that it is all wasted unless there be somewhere a Man, our Brother, who shall come to us and say, ‘All that ever went before Me are thieves and robbers; I am the Good Shepherd; follow Me, and ye shall not walk in darkness,’ ‘He saw the multitudes as sheep having no shepherd.’
Still further, take that other phase of the metaphor which, as I suggested, the text includes, namely, the idea of disintegration, the rending apart of social ties and union, unless there be the centre of unity in the shepherd of the flock. ‘I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered,’ says the old prophecy. Of course, for what is there to hold them together unless it be their guide and their director? So we are brought face to face with this plain prosaic rendering of the metaphor-that but for the centre of unity provided for mankind in the person and work of Jesus Christ, there is no satisfaction of the deep hunger for unity and society with which in that case God would have cursed mankind. For whilst there are many other bonds most true, most blessed, God-given, and mighty, such as that of the sacred unity of the family, and that of the nation and many others of which we need not speak, yet all these are constantly being disintegrated by the unresting waves of that gnawing sea of selfishness, if I may so say, which, like the waters upon our eastern coasts, eats and eats for ever at the base of the cliffs, so that society in all its forms, whether it be built upon identity of opinion, which is perhaps the shabbiest bond of all, or whether it be built upon purposes of mutual action, which is a great deal better, or whether it be built upon hatred of other people, which is the modern form of patriotism, or whether it be built upon the domestic affections, which are the purest and highest of all-all the other bonds of society, such as creeds, schools, nations, associations, leagues, families, denominations, all go sooner or later. The base is eaten out of them, because every man that belongs to them has in him that tyrannous, dominant self, which is ever seeking to assert its own supremacy. Here is Babel, with its half-finished tower, built on slime; and there is Pentecost, with its great Spirit; here is the confusion, there is the unifying; here the disintegration, there the power that draws them all together. ‘They were scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd,’ and one looks out over the world and sees great tracts of country and long dismal generations of time, in which the very thought of unity and charity and human bonds knitting men together has faded from the consciousness of the race, and then one turns to blessed, sweet, simple words that say, ‘there shall be one flock and one shepherd,’ and ‘I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me.’ Drawing thus, He will draw them into the eternal, mighty bond of union that shall never be broken, and is all the more precious and all the more true because it is not a unity like the vulgar unities that express themselves in external associations. You know, of course or if you do not know it will be a good thing that you should know, that that verse in John’s Gospel which I have quoted has been terribly mangled by a little slip of our translators. Christ said, ‘Other sheep I must bring which are not of this fold,’ the fold being the external unity of the Jewish church-an enclosure made of hurdles that you can stick in the ground. ‘I shall bring them,’ says He, ‘and there shall be one’-{not, as our Bible says, ‘fold,’-but something far better}-’there shall be one flock’; which becomes a unity not by wattling round about it on the outside, but by a shepherd standing in the middle. ‘There shall be one flock and one shepherd’-a unity which is neither the destruction of the variety of the churches, nor the crushing of men, nationalities, and types of character all down into one dead level beneath the heel of a conqueror, but the unity which subsists in the many operations of the one Spirit, and is expressed by all the forms of the one inspired grace.
Then passing by altogether the other idea which I said was only doubtfully suggested by the words-namely, that of laceration and wounding-let me say a word about the last of the aspects of humanity when Christless, which is set forth in this text, and that is, the dejected weariness arising from the fruitless wanderings wherewith men are cursed. As a verse in the Book of Proverbs puts it, ‘The labour of the foolish wearieth every one of them, because they know not how to go to the city.’ Putting aside the metaphor, the plain truth which it embodies is just this, that there is in all men’s souls a deep longing after peace and rest, after goodness and beauty and truth, and that all the strenuous efforts to satisfy these longings, either by social reforms or by individual culture and discipline, are pathetically vain and profitless, because there is none to guide them. The sheep go wandering in any direction, and with no goal; and wherever one has jumped, a dozen others will go after him, and so they are wearied out long before the day’s journey is ended, and they never reach the goal. Put that into less vivid, and, therefore, as people generally suppose, more accurate, language, and it is a statement of the universal law of human history that, after any epoch of great aspirations and strong excitement of the noblest parts of human nature, there has always come a reaction of corruption and a collapse from weariness. What did ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’ end in? A guillotine. What do all similar epochs end in, when they do not take the Christ to march ahead of them? An utter disgust and disillusion, and a despair of all progress. That is why wild revolutionists in their youth are always obstinate Conservatives in their old age. The wandering sheep are footsore, and they fling themselves down by the wayside. That is why heathenism presents to us the aspect that it does. There is nothing about it that seems to me more tragical than the weary languor that besets it. Do you ever think of the depth of pathetic, tragic meaning that there is in that verse in one of the Psalms, ‘Such as sit in darkness and in the shadow of death’? There they sit, because there is no hope in rising and moving. They would have to grope if they arose, and so with folded hands they sit like the Buddha, which one great section of heathenism has taken as being the true emblem and ideal of the noblest life. Absolute passivity lays hold upon them all-torpor, stagnation, no dream of advance or progress. The sheep are dejected, despairing, anarchic, disintegrated, lacerated, guideless, and shepherdless-away from Christ. So He thought them. God give you and me grace, dear brethren, to see, as Christ saw, the condition of humanity and our own apart from Him.
II. And now let me say a word in the next place as to the second movement of His mind and heart here. He teaches us not only how to think of men, but how that sight should touch us.
‘He was moved with compassion on them when He saw the multitude’-with the eye of a god, I was going to say, and the heart of a man. Pity belongs to the idea of divinity; compassion belongs to the idea of divinity incarnate; and the motion that passed across His heart is the motion that I would seek may pass, with its sweet and healing breath, across yours and mine. The right emotion for a Christian looking on the Christless crowds is pity, not aversion; pity, not anger; pity, not curiosity; pity, not indifference. How many of us walk the streets of the towns in which our lot is cast, and never know one touch of that emotion, when we look at these people here in England torn, and anarchic, and wearied, and shepherdless, within sound of our psalm-singing in our chapels? Why, on any Sunday there are thousands of men and women standing about the streets who, we may be sure, have not seen the inside of a church or a chapel since they were married, and that not one in five hundred of all the good people that are going with their prayer-books and hymn-books to church and chapel ever think anything about them as they pass them by; and some of them, perhaps, if they come to any especially disreputable one, will gather up their skirts and keep on the safe side of the pavement, and there an end of it. But Jesus Christ had no aversions. His white purity was a great deal nearer to the blackness of the woman that was a sinner, than was the leprous whiteness of the whited sepulchre of the self-righteous Pharisee. He had neither aversion, nor anger, nor indifference.
And, if I might venture to touch upon another matter, compassion and not curiosity is an especial lesson for the day to the more thoughtful and cultivated amongst our congregations. I have just said that the appropriate Christian feeling in contemplating the state of the sheep without the Shepherd is compassion, not curiosity. That reminder is particularly needful in view of the prominence to-day of investigations into the new science of Comparative Religion. I speak with most unfeigned respect of it and of its teachers, and gratefully hail the wonderful light that it is casting upon ideas underlying the strange and often savage and obscene rites of heathenism; but it has a side of danger in it against which I would warn you all, especially young, reading men and women. The time has not yet come when we can afford to let such investigations be our principal occupation in the face of heathenism. If idolatry was dead we could afford to do that, but it is alive-the more’s the pity; and it is not only a curious instance of the workings of man’s intelligence, and a great apocalypse of earlier stages of society, but, besides that, it is a lie that is deceiving and damning our brethren, and we have got to kill it first and dissect it afterwards. So I say, do not only think of heathenism in its various forms as a subject for speculation and analysis; as much as you like of that, only do not let it drive out the other thing, and after you have tried to understand it, then come back to my text, ‘He was moved with compassion.’ And so pity, and neither anger, nor aversion, nor curiosity, nor indifference is what I urge as the Christian emotion.
III. Let us take this text as teaching us how Christ would have us act, after such emotion built and based upon such a look.
It is perfectly legitimate, although it is by no means the highest motive, to appeal to feeling as a stimulus to action. We have a right to base our urging of Christian men and women to missionary work either at home or abroad, upon the ground of the condition of the men to whom the Gospel has to be carried. I know that if taken alone it is a very inadequate motive. I believe that any failure that may be manifest in the interest of Christian people in missionary work is largely traceable to the blunder we have made in dwelling on superficial motives more than we ought to have done, in proportion to the degree in which we have dwelt on the deepest. We have been gathering the surface-water instead of going right down to the green sand, to which the artesian well must be sunk if the stream is to come up without pumping or wasting. So I say that a deeper reason than the sorrow and darkness of the heathen is-’the love of Christ constraineth me’; but yet the first is a legitimate one. Only remember this, that Bishop Butler taught us long ago, that if you excite emotions which are intended to lead to action, and the action does not follow, the excitation of the emotion without its appropriate action makes the heart a great deal harder than it was before. That is why it is playing with edged tools to speak so much to our Christian audiences, as we sometimes hear done, about the condition of the heathen as a stimulus to missionary work. If a man does not respond and do something, some crust of callousness and coldness comes over his own heart. You cannot indulge in the luxury of emotion which you do not use to drive your spindles, without doing yourselves harm. It is never intended to be blown off as waste steam and allowed to vanish into the air. It is meant to be conserved and guided, and to have something done with it. Therefore beware of sentimental contemplation of the sad condition of the shepherdless sheep which does not move you to do anything to help them.
One word more. Take my text as a guide to the form of action into which we are to cast the emotions that should spring from this gaze upon the world. I will only name three points. Christ opened His mouth and spake to them, and taught them many things; Christ said to His disciples, ‘Pray ye the Lord of the harvest’; and Christ sent out His apostles to preach the Kingdom. These three things in their bearing upon us are-personal work, prayer, help to send forth Christ’s messengers. There is nothing like personal work for making a man understand and feel the miseries of his fellows. Christian men and women, it is your first business everywhere to proclaim the name of Jesus Christ, and no prayers and no subscriptions absolve you from that. In this army a man cannot buy himself off and send in a substitute at the cost of an annual guinea. If Christ sent the apostles, do you hold up the hands of the apostles’ successors, and so by God’s grace you and I may help on the coming of that blessed day when there shall be one flock and one Shepherd, and when ‘the Lamb that is in the midst of the throne’-for the Shepherd is Himself a lamb-’shall feed them and lead them, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. W. McGarvey 1914 · Public Domain On v35 J. W. McGarvey's The Fourfold Gospel [LXI. Third Circuit…
J. W. McGarvey's The Fourfold Gospel [LXI. Third Circuit of Galilee].
LXI. THIRD CIRCUIT OF GALILEE. THE TWELVE INSTRUCTED AND SENT FORTH. aMATT. IX. 35-38; X. 1, 5-42; XI. 1; bMARK VI. 6-13; cLUKE IX. 1-6.
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b6 And he aJesus bwent about aall the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner sickness and all manner of sickness. [In the first circuit of Galilee some of the twelve accompanied Jesus as disciples (see Mar_16:15). As Jesus himself was sent only to the Jews, so during his days on earth he sent his disciples only to them.] 7 As ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. [It was set up about a year later, on the day of Pentecost, under the direction of the Holy Spirit-- Act_2:1-4.] 8 Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons: freely ye received, freely give. [Here is the true rule of giving. Paul repeats it at 1Co_16:2. If we would obey this rule, we would make this a happy world.] c3 And he said unto them, Take nothing for your journey, a9 Get you no gold, nor silver, cnor money; anor brass in your purses; cneither staff, nor wallet, afor your journey, cnor bread, neither have two coats. anor shoes, nor staff: for the workman is worthy of his food. [The prohibition is against securing these things before starting, and at their own expense. It is not that they would have no need for the articles mentioned, but that "the laborer is worthy of his food," and they were to depend on the people for whose benefit they labored, to furnish what they might need. This passage is alluded to by Paul ( 1Co_9:14). To rightly understand this prohibition we must remember that the apostles were to make but a brief tour of a few weeks, and that it was among their own countrymen, among a people habitually given to hospitality; moreover, that the apostles were imbued with powers which would win for them the respect of the religious and the gratitude of the well-to-do. The special and temporary commission was, therefore, never intended as a rule under which we are to act in preaching the gospel in other ages and in other lands.] b10 And he said unto them a11 And into whatsoever city or village ye shall enter, search out who in it is worthy; and there abide till ye go forth. [The customs of the East gave rise to this rule. The ceremonies and forms with which a guest was received were tedious and time-consuming vanities, while the mission of the apostles required haste.] 12 And as ye enter [364] come into an house, salute it. 13 And if the house be worthy, let your peace come upon it: but if it be not worthy, let your peace return to you. [The form of salutation on entering a house was, "Peace to this house." The apostles are told to salute each house, and are assured that the peace prayed for shall return to them if the house is not worthy; that is, they shall receive, in this case, the blessing pronounced on the house.] bWheresoever ye enter into a house, there abide till ye depart thence. c4 And into whatsoever house ye enter, there abide, and thence depart. b11 And whatsoever place shall not receive you, and they hear you not [Jesus here warns them that their experiences would not always be pleasant], a14 And whosoever cas many as ashall creceive you not, anor hear your words, bas ye go forth thence, aout of that house or that city [The word "house" indicates a partial and the word "city" a complete rejection], { cwhen you depart from that city, bshake off the dust that is under your feet aof your feet. cfrom your feet bfor a testimony unto them. cagainst them. [The dust of heathen lands as compared with the land of Israel was regarded as polluted and unholy ( Amo_2:7, Eze_27:30). The Jew, therefore, considered himself defiled by such dust. For the apostles, therefore, to shake off the dust of any city of Israel from their clothes or feet was to place that city on a level with the cities of the heathen, and to renounce all further intercourse with it.] a15 Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than for that city. [For comment on similar remarks, see 2Sa_12:20, Mat_6:16, Mat_6:17). When an apostle stood over a sick man to heal him by a touch or a word, he was about to send him out of his sick chamber, and just before the word was spoken, the oil was applied. It was, therefore, no more than a token or symbol that the man was restored to his liberty, and was from that moment to be confined to his chamber no longer. Comp. Jam_5:14. This practice bears about the same relation to the Romish practice of extreme unction as the Lord's Supper does to the mass, or as a true baptism does to the sprinkling of an infant.]
[FFG 362-369]
J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv35–36 Continuation of Christ’s Teaching and Healing Ministry.
Continuation of Christ’s Teaching and Healing Ministry.
A ministry of the Gospel:
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v. 35. And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.
Another summary of Christ’s prophetical work, like chapter 4:23-25. Repeatedly, without becoming weary, Jesus makes His trips through the Galilean country. The people of the country had full opportunity, not only to know the truth, but to become established in the truth. He visited not only all the cities, but also the villages, teaching in preparation for the acceptance of the message which He brought, preaching the Gospel-news itself, and giving proof of its divine character by the miracles of healing which He performed. The Gospel of the Kingdom He proclaimed, not of a kingdom of this world, neither a temporal principality nor a social reformation, but a communion of believers in union with Him as their Head. "That means to be in the kingdom of heaven, if I am a living member of Christianity, and not only hear the Gospel, but also believe."
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv35, 37 Connecting Statement:
Connecting Statement:
Verse 35 is the end of the part of the story that began in Matthew 8:1 about Jesus' healing ministry in Galilee. (See: End of Story)
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General Information:
Verse 36 begins a new part of the story where Jesus teaches his disciples and sends them to preach and heal as he has done.
all the cities
The word "all" is an exaggeration to emphasize how very many cities Jesus went to. He did not necessarily go to every one of them. AT: "many of the cities" (See: Hyperbole and Generalization)
cities ... villages
"large villages ... small villages" or "large towns ... small towns"
the gospel of the kingdom
Here "kingdom" refers to God's rule as king. See how you translated this in Matthew 4:23.
all kinds of disease and all kinds of sickness
"every disease and every sickness." The words "disease" and "sickness" are closely related but should be translated as two different words if possible. "Disease" is what causes a person to be sick. "Sickness" is the physical weakness or affliction that results from having a disease.
They were like sheep without a shepherd
This simile means they did not have a leader to take care of them. AT: "The people did not have a leader" (See: Simile)
translationWords
teach
synagogue
preach
good news
kingdom
cure
compassion
ewe
shepherd
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv35–37 9:35–11:1 Jesus here extends his ministry (shown in 4:23–9:34)…
9:35–11:1 Jesus here extends his ministry (shown in 4:23–9:34) to others within Israel through his disciples (10:5-6). Jesus’ instructions to his disciples (10:5-42) focus on missionary activity and its consequent opposition and hardship.
9:35 This verse connects with the section begun at 4:23. Matthew has presented Jesus to his readers as the Messiah who teaches, preaches, heals, casts out demons, and calls for a decisive response of faith.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.