New Testament

As a conclusion to the parable of the two sons, Jesus declares: “tax collectors and prostitutes” are entering the kingdom of God before you! (Matthew 21:31b-32). They are entering the kingdom before the Jewish leaders who questioned Jesus’s authority because the teachers refused to believe John the Baptist and Jesus.

Jesus says the bottom level of purity in the Jewish tradition will enter the Kingdom before the top levels. There is something more important than external purity issues that qualifies one for entrance into the kingdom: Repentance from sin, a “pure heart” that can only be created by God, and the kind of honest acknowledgment of one’s need (as in the case of the tax collector and the Pharisee parable in Luke 18).

This is a continuation of the “first shall be last” theme that Jesus began teaching in Matthew 19-20. Those that expect to be a part in the Messiah’s program are not, and those that probably do not expect to enter the kingdom are included because of their humble faith.

That the tax collectors and prostitutes enter the kingdom at any time would shock his Jewish audience. But to enter before those who are ritually pure, students of the Law is an affront! For some commentators, the religious Jews have no chance at getting into the kingdom because of their current unbelief. But this is not how the verb is used throughout the rest of the New Testament, so likely what is meant here is that the Pharisee may yet enter the kingdom, but he will be at the “end of the line!”

Note the tense of the verb: tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom, a present tense verb. Not “will enter” but are currently participating in the kingdom. This is because Jesus is the king, and because he is present the Kingdom is present. Tax collectors are celebrating with Jesus and the Religious Leaders are not. Jesus is a friend of sinners, the Religious Leaders are not.

The reason these chief priests and elders will not enter the kingdom of God first is that they did not believe John as the prostitutes and tax collectors did. John taught the “way of righteousness” which seems to mean that he was teaching the people what the will of God was.

In Matthew 3:15 Jesus says that he must be baptized to “fulfill all righteousness,” implying that it is God’s will for him to be baptized even though he does not need to be cleansed of sin. John the Baptist pointed the way to the Messiah, not the Messiah himself. Those that looked to what he showed are the ones that are now participating in the kingdom.

The phrase “way of righteousness” is an Old Testament and intertestamental phrase, found in Proverbs 8:20, 12:28, 16:31, 2 Peter 1:21, and the intertestamental sources. John came as a teacher of righteousness, but never claimed to be the source of that righteousness, he simply pointed the way to the righteousness of God, the Messiah Jesus. This is all very similar to Luke 7:29-30, there Luke makes it clear that the low levels of Jewish society believed John, but the teachers of the Law did not.

Jesus forces the teachers of the Law to make the decision which son did the will of the father, then transferred the guilt of the first son to them. The teachers of the Law are the ones that should have understood John, and later Jesus and immediately followed them. They are the ones that said they would do the work (expecting the Messiah), but when Jesus came, they didn’t do the work.

Because they do not do the will of the father, they are to come under judgement. This is not explicit in this parable, but in the next parable the Jewish leadership is to come under judgment.

After Jesus answers a group of Jewish leaders who challenged Jesus’s authority, the questioners remained silent. They refuse to answer the question of the source of John the Baptist’s authority. Jesus therefore presses them by questioning these chief priests with the brief parable of the two sons. Jesus asks them to respond to a “theological / philosophical” puzzle, which he will tie into John’s ministry and those that have repented of their sins because of the preaching of John.

A father asks two sons to go work in a field, one says that he will, but does not, the other says he will not, but feels guilty and does go to work. To refuse to do what a father asks is insulting to the father, and it in fact an act of rebellion. “The surprise is the father tolerates this” (Nolland, Matthew, 861). To work in the family vineyard is something a father would expect his sons to do.

The first son initially refuses, but “changes his mind.” This word (μεταμέλομαι) is not the normal word for repentance in the New Testament although it is similar. There is a sense of regret in the word (TDNT 4:626), maybe “to have second thoughts.” Jesus will use the word again in verse 32, the elders who rejected John have not “changed their minds” or regretted that decision and followed Jesus.

The second son responds positively, “I will go sir.” He is apparently a respectful and obedient child. But he never does go to the vineyard and work.  If the first son was insulting, this son is overly polite and appears obedient, but he is not.  The word “sir” is the word normally translated “lord” (κύριος) and was used generally the way we might use the word sir today. The translation is a good one, but it obscures some very critical parallels in Matthew’s gospel.

There are several people in Matthew who refer to Jesus (or a character in a parable that is by implication either Jesus or God) as “lord.” Simply to call on Jesus as “sir” is not enough, there must be a transformation of a person’s whole being to become a part of the Kingdom of heaven (Matt 7:21-22; 25:11-13; 25:44).

The second son is “all talk and no deeds.” The first son refused, not make any promise yet ends up doing the deeds that are expected of him.

Which son did want the father wanted (21:31-32)? The obvious answer is that the one who went and work for the father is the one that did the will of the father. The scribes that respond are condemning themselves with this answer, since clearly the son that does not go into the field represents them.

What is unusual (to me at least) is that neither son is the ideal. Which would you rather have, a child that refuses to obey but eventually does, or a son that says the right words, but never obeys in the end? The third possibility is a son that says that he will obey and then actually does what he says that he will do. Perhaps this is the case of the person who has entered the kingdom of heaven, they can promise to obey God and they can follow through on that promise with obedience.

What is the meaning of the Parable of the Two Sons? The point of the contrast is between the religious establishment and the under-class, Jesus does not have the third possibility in mind here. There would logically be a fourth possibility, the one who refuses to obey and never repents either. This might be the unsaved person that dies in their unbelief, but they are even further from the point of the parable!

There are two other possibilities, a son who does immediately what he is told, and a son who refuses and never changes his mind. It is possible there were followers of Jesus who immediately followed him and never turned back (Peter and the other disciples?) and others heard Jesus and immediately dismissed him as “not the Messiah” (Sadducees? Caiaphas?). But the parable is not concerned with the best or worst examples, it is the people in the middle who are called to respond to Jesus.

There is good news for both sons: the father did not punish them for their insult. This demonstrates the patience of God, like the father he wants both children to go to the vineyard and he is willing to wait for them to change their mind.

The bad news is the time of God’s patience is running out. The chief priests and elders must decide now who Jesus is. In a few days, they will do just that as they shout to Pilate for Barabbas to be released and Jesus crucified (Matt 27:20).

The chief priests and the elders ask Jesus who authorized him to “do these things” (21:23). They what to know where Jesus get his authority to condemn the Temple as if he were a prophet sent from God.

This group includes influential groups in Jerusalem, and they may be questioning Jesus as members of the Sanhedrin. It is the chief priests and elders who persuade the crowd to demand Barabbas (Matt 27:20). It is likely they were not present when Jesus turned the tables and made his prophetic pronouncement on the people selling in the Temple. Now that the troublemaker was back, they come to Jesus and demand to know who he thinks he is!

They ask about Jesus’s authority to do “these things.” To what are they referring? It is possible they are talking about the miracles and signs which he has performed throughout his ministry (such as healing of blind and lame in Matthew 21:14). In Mark, Jesus did not do any public miracles in Jerusalem prior to this question.

More likely, they are questioning his authority to disrupt selling in the temple and to condemn it as a “den of thieves.” Jesus publicly challenged Temple aristocracy and humiliated them by comparing them to Jeremiah’s generation, tacitly suggesting they would soon fall under the judgment described in Jeremiah 7. Jesus will be clear in Matthew 24 about the coming judgment.

These representatives of the Temple aristocracy are not really asking to see Jesus’s ordination papers or check his rabbinical transcripts. They want to embarrass Jesus and expose him as a fraud (Hellerman, “Challenging the Authority of Jesus,” 223).

What kind of authority did these officials think Jesus might have? A rabbinic “ordination.” The question could be “Which rabbinical school has authorized you to teach?” But the source of his authority to teach is not the question, but rather his authority to condemn the temple. The issue is Jesus’s prophetic authority: does Jesus’s authority come from God, or was his condemnation of the Temple by his own authority?

Jesus has not been shy about telling his followers where his authority came from. In Matthew 11:27 and 28:18 it is clear Jesus’s authority comes from God, his father.

Matthew 11:27 (ESV) All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

Matthew 28:18 (ESV) And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Taken together with the Parable of the Tenants (21:33-46), the answer Jesus would give is his authority comes from God because he is the son of God. He is the son sent to those in charge of God’s vineyard, the Temple and Jerusalem.

Jesus’s response is a counter-question: Where did John get his authority? (21:24-25a) This is not evasive (a good political answer). This is the way Jewish teachers typically debate issues.  The question seems on the surface to be different than the question put to Jesus. Mark includes the borderline disrespectful “answer me!” omitted in Matthew and Luke.

Jesus’s question is about John’s authority to baptize. Did that authority come from heaven (God) or man (the official channels in Jerusalem)? The question is “self-incriminating.” Whatever the chief priests answer will result in accepting the authority of Jesus.   When John first appeared in Matthew, he was baptizing people to prepare them for the soon-arrival of the Messiah. When Jesus is baptized there is a theophany announcing that Jesus is God’s son. Jesus is reminding the people following him from the beginning that he is God’s Son.

There is no response possible without acknowledging Jesus’s authority (21:25b-27). In a private dialogue, the chief and elders realize there is no answer possible without accepting Jesus’s authority comes from God. John soundly condemned the Temple aristocracy, directly condemning the Pharisees and Sadducees as a “brood of vipers” (Matt 3:7) and declaring that the axe was already at the root (3:10), wheat as being gathered into the barn and the chaff was about to be burned up (3:12).

John was on the outside of the religious establishment, but he was also popular with the people. Even a few years after his death, John the Baptist was still respected many of those gathered for Passover in the Temple courts. John was a true prophet of God who was killed by the hated family of Herod. By accepting John as a prophet, the teachers open themselves up for the obvious. Jesus will respond, “John thought I was the Messiah; if he was a prophet, why don’t you believe him?”

Jesus refuses to answer the question, although he has already been clear, his authority to “do these things” comes from his father, God.

A day after his prophetic demonstration in the Temple, Jesus approaches a fig tree expecting to find some fruit, but there is none. Because there is no fruit, Jesus curses the fig tree (21:18-19). Why does Jesus curse the fig tree?

The adverb “early” (πρωΐ) can have the sense of early morning. The idea here is Jesus and his disciples made an early start to get to Jerusalem before the crowds. While walking down the mount of Olives or across the Kidron Valley, he sees a fig tree and looks for a piece of fruit to satisfy his hunger.

When Jesus approaches the tree, it has no fruit. Why did he think a fig tree would have fruit in the early spring? Although Matthew omits the details, Mark says this is not the time of year for fruit. But even early in the season a fig tree will have some figs which Jesus could eat (old fruit, underripe fruit, etc.) This tree only has leaves, no fruit at all whether good or bad.  Nolland says fig trees produce fruit before leaves. That the tree has leaves implies that it ought to have some fruit even this early in the season. He cites Eric F. F. Bishop who took pictures of a fig tree loaded with fruit on April 16, 1936. Bishop also says Palestinians ate unripe figs (Eric F. F. Bishop, Jesus of Palestine [Lutterworth, 1955], 217).

The Old Testament prophets often used barren trees as symbols for Israel’s unfaithfulness.

Jeremiah 8:13 (ESV) When I would gather them, declares the Lord, there are no grapes on the vine, nor figs on the fig tree; even the leaves are withered, and what I gave them has passed away from them.”

Micah 7:1 (ESV) Woe is me! For I have become as when the summer fruit has been gathered, as when the grapes have been gleaned: there is no cluster to eat, no first-ripe fig that my soul desires.

Cursing the fig tree is a symbolic miracle which explains what happened in the previous day Temple. Jesus came to his people expecting to find fruit, but there was nothing! This is not a petulant response to finding nothing for breakfast. Jesus does not do miracles for no reason; they all point in some way to his mission as the Messiah.

Jesus says, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” Does this mean Israel has been totally rejected as God’s people?  The image is dramatic: the tree withered immediately. The verb “withered” is used in the LXX to describe drying up the Red Sea (Isa 50:2; 2 Kings 19:24), but it is also used various other predictions of apocalyptic destruction and ruined cities (LXX Isa 61:4, translated “deserted”; Jer 25:9, translated “devastation’; Ezek 6:6 and 12:20, translated “abandoned”; Ezek 19:7, translated “desolated”; Ezek 36:4, “deserted places.”)

This symbolic miracle may refer to the judgment on Israel in the very near future. Rome will devastate Jerusalem in AD 70, events Jesus predicts in Matthew 24.  For some interpreters, the fig tree represents a final curse on Israel. The kingdom of God has been given to the Gentiles (see, for example, Robert Stein, “The Cleansing of the Temple in Mark (11:15-19),” pages 21-33 in Gospels and Traditions [Baker, 1991]).

The only witnesses to this symbolic miracle are the disciples, the ones who should “get the point.” But like other similar symbolic miracles, the disciples do not immediately understand what Jesus intended by the miracle.

The disciples marvel that the fig tree immediately withered (21:20-22). Why would this surprise them after seeing all the miracles Jesus has already done? Matthew (following Mark) includes a brief teaching about prayer here. Matthew 17:20 is very similar “moving a mountain” saying: “For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.”

Since Jesus and his disciples are on (or near) the Mount of Olives, the mountain that is thrown into the sea would be the Mount of Olives. This raises the possibility Jesus has in mind Zechariah 14:4-5. At a time when the nations gather against Jerusalem, the Lord goes out to battle and his feet will touch the Mount of Olives and split the mountain into two parts.

Jesus’s criticism of the temple does not end here, the conflict with the Pharisees is entirely concerned with problems of the temple. The Parable of the Tenants has the priestly aristocracy losing their place of privilege, in the parable of the wedding banquet (22:1-12) the chief priests are replaced by the rabble, the very people who accepted Jesus as the Messiah (the blind and lame, 21:14; tax-collectors, prostitutes and other sinners, 21:32).

In fact, for most of his ministry it is the outcast who accept Jesus as Messiah and savior, the religious aristocracy reject him and plot to kill him.

After the Temple action, Jesus healing the blind and the lame (Matt 21:14). When children begin praising Jesus as the son of David, the chief priests and scribes become angry with Jesus because he does not tell the children to be silent. Jesus responds with the famous saying, “out of the mouth of infants.” In contemporary culture, the phrase is used when a child says something truthful or profound. But what did Jesus mean by this?

The blind and the lame are not permitted in the temple to sacrifice (Levi 21:18) and blind and lame animals were not acceptable sacrifices (Deut 15:21). The Qumran community (4QMMT 52-57) did not accept the blind and lame as part of their assembly.

4Q396 Col. ii:3 (4QMMT B 51-57) And also concerning the de[af who have not] heard the law 4 and the precept and the purity regulation, and have not heard the prec[epts of] Israel 5 for whoever neither sees nor hears, does not [know] how to act. But these 6 are approaching the purity of the temple.

1Q28a Col. ii:3 (1QRule of the Congregation) No man, defiled by any of the impurities 4 of a man, shall enter the assembly of these; and no-one who is defiled by these should be 5 established in his office amongst the congregation: everyone who is defiled in his flesh, paralysed in his feet or 6 in his hands, lame, blind, deaf, dumb or defiled in his flesh with a blemish 7 visible to the eyes, or the tottering old man who cannot keep upright in the midst of the assembly; 8 these shall not en[ter] to take their place [a]mong the congregation of the men of renown, for the angels 9 of holiness are among their [congre]gation.

Why are these blind and lame in the Temple courts? It may be the case these are beggars lined up on the way into the main courts. Since the Passover crowds were very large, a larger number of beggars would crowd into the court of the Gentiles. This would give people a chance to give alms as they purchased what they needed to make sacrifices. Like the sellers in the Temple courts, this convenient for people going into the Temple courts to make sacrifices.

The chief priests and scribes see the “wonderful things” Jesus is doing in the Temple courts and they are indignant that Jesus does not silence the children who are shouting “hosanna to the Son of David” (21:15-17). This is a continuation of the acclaim the crowds give to Jesus in the Triumphal Entry (Matthew 21:1-11).

Wonderful things (neuter plural of θαυμάσιος), “marvelous, amazing, stupendous” (BrillDAG). The adjective is used in LXX Exodus 3:20 for the wonderful things God will do to bring his people out of Egypt (a good Passover connection). In LXX Deuteronomy 34:12 it is used to describe Moses’s great deeds done in the sight of all Israel (this is the last line of Deuteronomy). Psalm 106:7 (LXX 105:7) applies the word to the wonderous works God did in Egypt, including the parting of the Red Sea.

The children are shouting the same words used at the triumphal entry, “Save us, Son of David.”  The chief priests and scribes were indignant when they heard these children. The verb (ἀγανακτέω) has the sense of annoyed, or even aroused to anger.

When James and John asked for the best seats in the Kingdom, the other disciples were indignant (Matt 20:24); when the woman anointed Jesus’s feet with expensive perfume, one of the disciples was indignant at the waste of money (Matt 26:8; Mark 14:4, John 12:1-11).

It may not be the healing in the temple that is the problem, but that the children respond to Jesus’s wonderful deeds by associating it with the coming of David. They think Jesus is the Messiah! The chief priests are indignant because Jesus does not deny he is the Messiah when the children call him the Son of David. “Don’t you hear what these children are saying?” From their perspective, Jesus is accepting praise as the Messiah.

Jesus responds, “out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies” (Psalm 8:2; LXX Psalm 8:3).  This is not the first time someone proclaims Jesus is the Son of David (9:27, two blind men; 15:22, a Canaanite woman; 20:20-31; two more blind men; 21:9, the crowds entering Jerusalem, see Nolland, Matthew, 847, note 13). With the exception of the crowds, the ones calling Jesus Son of David are the lowest of society (blind beggars, a Canaanite woman, and children). In Matthew 11:25 Jesus thanked God that he has revealed hidden things to the children. At the time, this seemed like a reference to the disciples (the “little ones”), but here literal children are announcing who Jesus really is.

Jesus leaves the temple and returns to Bethany for the evening. He will return the next morning and encounter even more opposition from the chief priests.