Commentary on Matthew 11–12

Does John, held in prison, not know the Lord? Does so great a prophet not know his God? Yet as forerunner he announced him as coming, as prophet he recognized him standing there, as confessor he worshiped him as he approached. How did error creep into knowledge so varied and so abundant? But the Lord’s following testimony about him does not allow this to be thought. Nor indeed can it be believed that the glory of the Holy Spirit was absent from him when placed in prison, since he would provide the light of his power to the apostles when they were placed in prison. But in the things done in John a fuller understanding is offered; and with the effect of the deed, the grace expressed in him is perceived: so that the prophet himself prophesied even by the kind of his own condition, because in him the form of the law was set forth. For the law announced Christ, preached forgiveness of sins, and promised the kingdom of heaven; and John fulfilled this whole work of the law. So, the law now ceasing, which, shut in by the sins of the people and bound by the vices of the nation, was held in chains and prison so that Christ could not be understood, the law sends to look at the Gospels: so that unbelief may behold the truth of the words in the deeds; and that what was bound within it by the deceit of sins may be set free through the understanding of gospel freedom. By such an example, then, John provides not for his own ignorance but for his disciples’; for he himself had preached him as coming for the forgiveness of sins. But so that they might know that no other had been preached by him, he sent his disciples to look at his works: so that his works might give authority to John’s words, and no other Christ be expected than him to whom the works had given testimony. And when the Lord had shown himself wholly by the wonders of his deeds, namely by the sight of the blind, the running of the lame, the healing of lepers, the hearing of the deaf, the voice of the dumb, the life of the dead, and the preaching to the poor, he says: “Blessed is he who is not scandalized in me.” Had anything yet been done in Christ that could scandalize John? Certainly not. For he was still occupied in the very course of his teaching and work. But we must look at the force and proper meaning of the preceding sentence, what it is that good news is preached to the poor: that is, to those who will have lost their soul, who will have taken up their cross and followed, who will become humble in spirit, for whom a kingdom is prepared in heaven. So, since this whole sum of sufferings would meet in the Lord, and his cross would be a stumbling block to very many, he declared them blessed whose faith the cross, death, and burial would not put to the test. So he showed what John had guarded against, saying that they are blessed for whom there had been nothing to stumble at in him: because John had sent his disciples out of fear for them, so that they might hear and see Christ. But lest this could be referred to John, as though he had been scandalized at something in Christ, as they were going away he spoke to the crowds about him: “What did you go out into the desert to see? A reed shaken by the wind?” The desert must be understood as empty of the Holy Spirit, a place where there is no dwelling of God. For by the reed such a man is shown, handsome with the empty glory of worldly life, but hollow within of the fruit of truth; pleasing outwardly and nothing inwardly; to be moved by every movement of the winds, that is, by the breath of unclean spirits, without strength for standing firm, and empty in the marrow of the soul. So when he says, “What did you go out into the desert to see? A reed shaken by the wind?”, he says this: Did you go out to see a man empty of the knowledge of God and wandering at the breath of unclean spirits? For he says this with the feeling of one rebuking rather than affirming: showing, that is, that one who is both empty and fickle is not to be seen in John. “But what did you go out to see? A man dressed in soft clothing? Behold, those who wear soft clothing are in the houses of kings.” By the garment he signifies the body, the covering with which the soul is clothed, which grows soft with luxury and wantonness. “But those dressed in soft things are in the houses of kings.” By kings the transgressing angels are named: for these are the powerful of the world and the rulers of the earth. So those dressed in soft things are in the houses of kings, that is, those whose bodies are loose and dissolved through luxury are the dwelling of demons, who choose a seat like their own purposes and works. “But what did you go out to see? A prophet? I tell you, even more than a prophet,” and so on. The Lord shows the whole glory of John, saying that he is beyond a prophet: because to him alone it was granted both to prophesy Christ and to see him. And how is he believed not to know Christ, he who, sent in the power of an angel, prepared the way for the one to come, and than whom no greater prophet has arisen among those born of women; except that he who is less than he, that is, he who is questioned, who is not believed, to whom his own works give no testimony, is greater in the kingdom of heaven? … “To what shall I liken this generation? It is like children sitting in the market place and calling to one another,” and the rest. This whole speech is a reproach of unbelief, and it comes down from the feeling of the preceding complaint: that the insolent people was not taught by the various kinds of preaching. By the children he signifies the prophets, who in the midst of the synagogue, as in the public gathering of the market place, rebuke the people because they did not comply with the office of the body to those singing to them, that is, did not obey their words. For the movement of dancers is fitted to the measure of singers. In simplicity of mind, like children, they preached, and called them to the confession of singing psalms to God, as is held in the song of Moses, of Isaiah, of David, and of the other prophets; and again the preaching of John did not bend them to repentance for sins and to grief and mourning for old offenses: to them the law seemed heavy, difficult, and troublesome with its prescriptions about drink and food, having sin in it, which he calls a demon, because through the difficulty of its observance it was necessary for them to sin in the law; and again the preaching of the Gospel in Christ does not please them with its freedom of life, through which the difficulties and burdens of the law have been relaxed, and tax collectors and sinners have now believed: and so, so many and such kinds of warnings having been in vain, they are neither justified by grace and have been cast off from the law. “And wisdom has been justified by her children”: by those, namely, who, doing violence to the kingdom of heaven, seize it by the justification of faith: confessing that it is the just work of Wisdom that it has transferred its gift from the stubborn and unbelieving to the faithful and obedient. It is not idle in this place to look at the force of the saying. “And Wisdom has been justified”: he certainly spoke of himself. For he himself is Wisdom, not from its effects but by nature: for everything has a power. But every activity is the effect of power; and the work of power is not the same as power, and the effecting is distinguished from the effected. For many are accustomed to evade the apostle’s saying, in which he says that Christ is the wisdom of God and the power of God, in these ways: that in his creation from the Virgin the wisdom and power of God appeared effective, and in his birth the work of divine prudence and might is understood; and that in him there is the effect rather than the nature of wisdom. So that nothing of this sort could be understood, he called himself Wisdom, showing it in himself, not the things that are its. For the work of Wisdom is faith, hope, love, chastity, fasting, self-control, humility, kindness: but these are the works of the nature, not the nature itself; and the thing itself that makes does not consist in the things that are made. Why would the Apostle have said “the power of God and the wisdom of God,” if wisdom was created from that Wisdom which was? “Woe to you, Chorazin and Bethsaida; for if the powers that have been done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon,” and the rest. The curse of disobedience is decreed together with the blessing of obedience. For the gospel had to be preached first to the Jews; but by the privilege of preaching the odium of unbelief is heaped up, since they are refuted by the example of believers, to whom no wonder of deeds was set forth and all salvation is from faith. For in Bethsaida and Capernaum the dumb praise the Lord, the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame run about, the dead come to feel; and the wonder at such things moved no one to a will to believe, though the mere hearing of the deeds ought to have called them to fear and swept them into faith. But they make light not only of the sins of Tyre and Sidon but even those of Sodom and Gomorrah: because perhaps those would have had the disposition to believe if the sight of such powers had befallen them. “At that time Jesus answered and said: I confess to you, Lord, Father of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and revealed them to little ones,” and the rest. Fittingly such a confession is joined to the preceding words. For although the salvation of Israel would have been desirable, yet the faith of the nations, long since preached, was not outside the Lord’s joy. For the secrets and powers of the heavenly words are hidden from the wise and revealed to little ones: little in malice, not in understanding; and wise by the presumption of their folly, not for reasons of prudence. And the Lord confirms the fairness of this deed by the judgment of the Father’s will: that those who disdain to become little ones in God should henceforth be foolish in their wisdom. And lest anything less in him than what is in God should be thought, he says that all things have been handed over to him by the Father, and that he is known to the Father alone, and the Father known to himself alone, or to whom he has wished to reveal him: and he will reveal him to the one by whom he is asked to wish to reveal. By this revelation he teaches that the substance of both is the same in their mutual knowledge, since whoever knew the Son would also know the Father in the Son: because all things have been handed over to him by the Father. And what has been handed over is nothing other than what in the Son is known to the Father alone. And what is the Father’s is known to the Son alone. And so in this secret of mutual knowledge it is understood that nothing else has stood in the Son than what in the Father is unknowable. Then he calls to himself those laboring under the difficulties of the law and burdened by the sins of the world; and he promises that he will take away their labor and burden, if only they take up his yoke, that is, receive the precepts of his commandments and come to him by the mystery of the cross: because he is humble and meek of heart, and in these things they will find rest for their souls: setting before them the allurements of a sweet yoke and a light burden, so that he may give believers the knowledge of that good which he alone knows in the Father. And what is sweeter than his yoke, what lighter than his burden: to become approved, to abstain from crime, to will good, to refuse evil, to love all, to hate none, to attain eternal things, not to be captured by present things, to refuse to inflict on another what is troublesome to suffer oneself.

“At that time Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath; and his disciples, being hungry, began to pluck the ears and eat.” The going out into the grain field, the Sabbath day, the hunger of the disciples, the plucking of the ears, the accusation of the Pharisees, and the Lord’s answer have, like the rest, an understanding of an inner cause lying beneath. For, as we have said, all the truths of the deeds attain, in the very effects of the events, an image of future truth like themselves and to be understood from them. And first we must consider that this speech began thus: “At that time Jesus went through the grain fields,” that is, at the time when he confessed thanks to God the Father for the salvation given to the nations: so that the same sense might hold together both what precedes and what follows. Let us run through the rest, then. The field is the world; the Sabbath is rest; the crop is the advance of those who will believe toward the harvest. So, having gone out into the field on the Sabbath, the Lord’s advance into this world is in the rest of the law, visiting that crop, that is, the sowing of the human race. And since the hunger is a hunger for human salvation, the disciples hasten to pluck and pull the ears, that is, to satisfy themselves with the salvation of the saints. For the food of ears does not suit man, nor is eating plucked ears of grain useful: but the appearance of the deed carries out the truth of a future deed, and the power of the inserted words unfolds the mystery of both hunger and satisfaction. The Pharisees, who thought the key of heaven was in their keeping, accuse the disciples of doing unlawful things: these the Lord reminded of the deed in which, under the matter of events, the reason of prophecy is contained, that David, hungry, together with those who were with him, was filled by similarly unlawful things. For if it was not lawful to be done, David would not have been believed to have done it without crime. But in the law he prophesied by deeds without the guilt of crime: that he himself, with the others, was filled with the loaves of presentation: showing thus that Christ with the apostles was to be satisfied by the salvation of the nations, which seemed unlawful to the Jews. He also reminds them of another prophecy, so that they might recognize that all things said earlier in the law were fulfilled in him: that the priests violate the Sabbath in the temple without crime; indicating, that is, himself as the temple, in which, through the apostolic teaching, while the people of the law faithlessly stood in the way, salvation is given to the nations: because he himself is greater than the Sabbath, and the gospel faith works in Christ without the guilt of violating the law. And to show that the whole effect of the events contained this image of the future work, he added: “For if you knew what this is, I desire mercy, not sacrifice, you would never have condemned the innocent.” The work of our salvation is not in sacrifice but in mercy; and with the law ceasing, we are saved in God’s goodness. If they had understood the gift of this thing, they would never have condemned the innocent, that is, the apostles, whom they would accuse out of hatred of having transgressed the law, when, the old order of sacrifices ceasing, the newness of mercy would come to the help of all through them; nor would they have thought that the Lord of the Sabbath was bound by the rule of the Sabbath. These things were said and done in the field. And after this, when he had entered the synagogue, they bring a man with a withered hand, asking whether it was lawful to heal on the Sabbath, seeking from his answer an occasion to accuse him. He shut them up with the example of a sheep falling into a pit, which they would be careful to pull out on the Sabbath without crime; and that a man, who surpasses a sheep, is more rightly to be healed; and that the Sabbath must not be thought able to be violated by the ministry of human salvation, which the concern to pull a sheep out of a pit does not violate. Such a healing by the Lord is fittingly placed next. For after his return from the crop, from which the apostles had already received the fruits of the sowing, he came to the synagogue, to prepare from there also workers for his harvest, who afterward appeared, many of them, together with the apostles. These, then, are healed in the maimed man. For they did not have the substance for giving salvation, and the office of the hand had ceased, and the ministry of the body by which anything is done and imparted had withered. So the Lord commanded him to stretch out his hand, which was restored to him like the other. All the healing is in the word, and the hand is given back like the other, that is, it is made like the ministry of the apostles for the office of giving salvation: and he teaches the Pharisees that they ought not to take it ill that the work of human salvation is in the apostles, since their own hand would be restored to the ministry of the same office if they believed. But hatred of the deed stirs the Pharisees, and they take counsel against him: because, seeing a man in the body, they did not understand God in the works. And knowing their counsels, he withdrew, so that he might be known to be far from the counsels of the malicious. And many crowds followed him: as he withdraws from the unbelievers, the company of the faithful attends him. To those whom he heals he commanded silence. But was silence about the healing being commanded? Certainly not; for the health given back to each was its own witness. But by commanding secrecy he both declines the boasting of glorying about himself and nevertheless provides the knowledge of himself in the very act of warning that he be kept silent about; because the observance of silence proceeds from a thing that must be kept silent. Indeed, through this will to be kept silent about, the effect of the sayings through Isaiah is fulfilled: concerning whose prophecy we now point out only this: that he is beloved by God, and that in him there is the good pleasure of the Father’s will, and that the Spirit of God is upon him, and that judgment is announced by him to the nations, and that the reed which was shaken was not broken, and the smoking flax not quenched: that is, the perishable and shaken bodies of the nations were not crushed but rather kept for salvation; nor was the small amount of fire still smoldering in the flax quenched, that is, the spirit was not taken away from the small number of Israel out of the remnants of the old grace; because there is the possibility of taking up again the whole light in the time of repentance. But this is prescribed within the limits of a fixed time, until he sends out victory to judgment, that is, until, the power of death having been removed, he brings in judgment by the return of his glory, the nations believing in his name through faith. “Then a man was brought to him having a demon, blind and dumb,” and the rest. The fitting healing of the demoniac, blind and dumb man follows. For not without reason, when he had said that all the crowds were healed in common, is a man having a demon, blind and dumb, now brought from outside: so that the same order of understanding might follow without any ambiguity. The Pharisees accused the apostles of plucking ears, that is, of plucking men of the world; mercy was proclaimed above sacrifice; the man with the withered hand brought in the synagogue was healed: and these things not only did nothing to convert Israel, but the Pharisees even take counsel to kill him. It was fitting, then, that after these things the salvation of the nations should come about in the form of this one man: so that he who was the dwelling of a demon, blind and dumb, might be made ready to hold God, and behold God in Christ, and praise the works of Christ with the confession of God. The crowds were amazed at the work of this deed; but the hatred of the Pharisees grows heavier. For since these great works of his exceeded human weakness, they avoid the shame of their own confession by a greater crime of faithlessness: so that, since they could not think these were the works of a man and would not confess them as God’s, they said that all this power of his over demons was from Beelzebub, prince of demons. “But Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said to them: Every kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste.” The word of God is rich, and, set as the argument of understanding, supplies an abundance of examples of itself; and whether understood simply or looked into inwardly, it is necessary for every advance. But leaving aside the things that lie open to common understanding, let us dwell on the inner causes. “Every kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste.” About to answer what had been said about Beelzebub, he turned the condition of his answer against those very people to whom he was answering. For the law is from God, and the promise of the kingdom of Israel is from the law, and the birth and coming of Christ are from the law. If the kingdom of the law is divided against itself, it must be dissolved. And all power is taken away by division, and the strength of a kingdom separated against itself is consumed: and so Israel lost the kingdom from the law, since the people of the law fights against the fulfillment of the law in Christ. “But also a city and a house divided against itself will not stand.” The reason of the house and city is the same as that of the kingdom. But the city here indicated is Jerusalem, always glorious with rule over nations. Now, after it blazed with the fury of the people against its Lord, and drove out his apostles with the crowds of believers, it will not stand, by the division of those departing from it: and so, by this division, the destruction of that city, which soon followed, is announced. “If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself.” They condemn the malice of their former saying, by which they said that he did these things by Beelzebub, by the very kind of thing they said: not understanding that they had confessed that Beelzebub was divided; and that if he had been forced into his division, so that a demon drove out demons and the division itself stood against itself, it must be reckoned from this too that there is more power in the one who divided than in those who were divided. So he has already been divided and forced against himself, and his kingdom has been dissolved by such a division. “But if by the power of Beelzebub” Christ casts out demons, “your sons,” that is, the apostles, in whose name do they cast them out? And therefore they are worthily appointed judges over them, since Christ will be found to have given them that power against demons which he himself is denied to have had. So if the disciples work in Christ, and Christ works from the Spirit of God, the kingdom of God is present, now poured into the apostles through the office of the mediator. But when Christ is accused of having power through Beelzebub, God is blasphemed in Christ: and so an insult of inexpiable abuse against God is prepared through the Pharisees in the name of Beelzebub. “How can anyone enter the house of a strong man and plunder his goods?” and the rest. He indicates that all the devil’s power was crushed by him in the first temptation, because no one may enter the house of a strong man and plunder his goods unless he has bound the strong man, and then he will plunder his house; and one who does this must be stronger than that strong man. So he was bound then, when, named Satan by the Lord, he was bound by the very naming of his wickedness: from him, thus bound, he took the spoils and carried off the house, that is, he brought back under his own right us, once his weapons and the soldiers of his kingdom, and, the strong man being conquered and bound, he acquired for himself from us a house empty and useful. And he shows that he is far from having borrowed any power from him: since he who is not with him is against him, and he who does not gather with him scatters. From this it is understood to be a matter of great danger to think ill of him, with whom not to be is the same as to be against him, and not to gather is to scatter. “Every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men; but the blasphemy of the Spirit will not be forgiven.” He condemns with a most severe definition the opinion of the Pharisees and the perversity of those who think as they do, promising pardon for all sins and refusing indulgence to blasphemy of the Spirit. For whereas all other words and deeds are released by generous pardon, there is no mercy if God is denied in Christ. And concerning the thing in which one sins without pardon, he spends the kindness of a repeated warning: that sins of every kind whatever are to be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is not to be forgiven. For what is so beyond pardon as to deny in Christ that he is God, and to take away the substance of the Father’s Spirit existing in him: since he accomplishes every work in the Spirit of God, and he himself is the kingdom of heaven, and in him God is reconciling the world to himself? So whatever insult has arisen against Christ will all arise against God: because God is in Christ and Christ in God. “Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad,” and the rest. The speech both shows itself in the present and carries itself into the future. For in the present it refutes the Jews, who, though they understood that the works of Christ were beyond human power, still would not confess that they were God’s. And for the future it convicts every perversity of faith, namely of those who, taking away from the Lord divinity and communion in the Father’s substance, have boiled over into various pursuits of heresy: doing neither, neither living among the nations under the pardon of ignorance nor engaged in the knowledge of the truth. By the tree he signifies himself placed in the body: because through the inner fruitfulness of his power all richness goes out into fruit. So either the tree is to be made good with good fruits, or established as bad with bad fruits: because the tree itself will testify about itself from its fruits: not that, according to the nature of trees, a tree that is good can be made bad, or the same tree be good with its branches if it is bad; but so that through this meaning we might understand that Christ is either to be abandoned as useless or kept as good for the usefulness of his good fruits: because words against the Son of Man are under pardon, but blasphemy of the Spirit lacks pardon. But to take a middle course, to grant Christ some things and deny what are the greatest; to venerate him as God and strip him of communion with God: this is blasphemy of the Spirit: so that, while through wonder at such great works you do not dare to take away the name of God, through malice of mind and sense you pluck away his nobility, which you were compelled to confess in name, by denying communion in the Father’s substance. And therefore the Lord extends the gift of his goodness even in this, saying that either a bad tree with bad fruits or a good one with good fruits must be made: because in the opinion of a bad tree, pardon has been laid up in the secret of God’s indulgence (for every sin is to be forgiven); in the confession of a good one, the fruit is eternal: lest, falling into a middle opinion between the two, while we do not dare to establish him as bad and will not confess him as good, we be left in the indissoluble judgment of a corrupt opinion about him. … We cannot doubt, then, that all this is to be referred to the person of this people: but we must consider how each of the things set forth is assigned to particular times and events. Above, namely in the name of the Ninevites and of the queen of the South, the faith of the nations was justified: but long before, after many grave sins against God, the law was given to the Jews. And their sins are contained in the books of Moses. For after so many proofs of divine power, that is, Egypt struck with ten plagues, the pillar of cloud and light serving them night and day, a road provided in the Red Sea, springs flowing from split rocks, manna supplied to the hungry, and finally a people living for forty years in the life and condition of angels, cattle and stones were afterward worshiped and supplicated, dances and songs were held for them, and metals were called gods. So the law, given afterward, by its intervention cast out the unclean spirit sitting in the hearts of this people and shut it out as by a kind of guard of surrounding power. Going out from there, it wandered about the desert and dry nations, leaving its old house, so as to rest in them in an undisturbed dwelling until the day of judgment. But again, when the grace of God was imparted to the nations, after the living spring flowed in the washing of water, it has no place of dwelling with them; and since it no longer had rest in them, reckoning within itself, it thinks it best to return to the house from which it set out. This house, cleansed by the law, adorned by the proclamations of the prophets, and prepared by the coming of Christ, is found empty: from which both the guard of the law has departed (because the whole law is until John) and Christ has not been received to dwell. And so it is both empty of an inhabitant and deserted by its guards: though, with the inhabitant coming, it has been both cleansed and adorned by the care of those who went before. So seven more wicked spirits are taken along; because as many gifts of graces had been destined with Christ, which that manifold wisdom of God placed in him with a sevenfold glory: so that the possession of iniquity might be as great as that of graces would have been. And so the last state of that man will be worse than the first: because the unclean spirit had gone out of the Jews from fear of the law, but now it will return into them with vengeance for the grace rejected by them. And since he spoke all this in the power of the Father’s majesty, when it was announced to him that his mother and brothers were waiting outside, stretching his hand toward his disciples he answered that these were his brothers and mother; and that whoever obeyed the Father’s will was his brother, sister, and mother: making himself the pattern for all of acting and thinking, that the right and name of all kinship is to be held no longer from the condition of birth but from the communion of the church. But he must not be thought to have thought scornfully of his mother, to whom, set in his passion, he gave the affection of the greatest care. But in this too a typological reason was kept, that his mother and brothers stood outside, although they had, like the others, the power of entering to him. But because he came to his own and his own did not receive him, in his mother and brothers the synagogue and the Israelites are prefigured, keeping away from entering and approaching him.