Jesus

After questions about taxes and the resurrection,  Jesus asks the Pharisees about the Messiah. The Pharisees say the Messiah is the Son of David.

That Jesus is the son of David is a consistent theme throughout the book of Matthew. In 21:9 Jesus is called the Son of David as he enters Jerusalem, a clear messianic title at that time. When asked, the Pharisees respond (accurately) that the Messiah is the Son of David. Reading Matthew from the beginning, we know that Jesus is the son of David (Matthew 1:1, 1:17). But the Pharisees refuse to accept that Jesus is the son of David!

To follow up their answer, Jesus quotes Psalm 110:1, an important Psalm which implies the Messiah will be the son of David. Patriarchal society gives the father ultimate respect, so one would expect the son of David to be subservient to David. But that is not the case in Psalm 110. Jesus points out that David is speaking “in the Spirit”, or under inspiration.  He is not speaking falsely, he is telling the truth, that the Messiah, his son, is above him as Lord.

Psalm 110 is an important messianic psalm in the New Testament. Who is the first Lord in Psalm 110? The word is Yahweh, the second lord is Adonai, In the original context, this might be God saying to David, I have anointed you as king; alternatively, it could refer to Solomon, the son of David who is seated alongside David on his through, anointed with oil, brought into Jerusalem on a donkey, and inaugurates a kingdom of peace and prosperity. Sitting at the right hand, alluding to enthronement at the ascension of Jesus.

How can the Messiah be a “son of David” and a high priest since he is not from the tribe of Levi? He is a priest in the order of Melchizedek. Melchizedek was a king of Salem and priest of the Most High God who blessed Abraham (Genesis 14). Since he is appears in Genesis  without  any introduction fascinating some later writers and he became a messianic figure (see this post in Melchizedek in Hebrews 7). Melchizedek was the king of Jerusalem in the age prior to the Davidic Kingdom. Since David captured Jerusalem as his capitol, he became a king in the line of Melchizedek.  As the son of David, Jesus is both a king (in the line of David) and a priest (in the line of Melchizedek).

This son of David will put “enemies will be under his feet.” This cannot refer to Solomon, although he experienced peace and prosperity (foreshadowing the future kingdom). The apocalyptic imagery of 110:6, judging the nations and heaping up the dead. This cannot refer to the reign of Solomon, David, or any other king of Israel or Judah.  Philippians 2:5-11 echoes this, since Jesus is obedient to the father, he is exalted to the very highest place (the right hand of the father is not mentioned, but he is seated), and given a name that is above every name.

Jesus’s response to the Pharisees goes back to the original question in Matthew 21:23-27: Where does the authority of the Son of David come from?  This returns to the question in Matthew 21:23-27, where did Jesus get his authority? Jesus demonstrates his authority throughout Matthew, by the way he teaches, through his miracles, etc. Now he asks the Pharisees to give an answer: where that authority comes from?

Pharisees are speechless with this question, and they do not dare to ask him any further questions.  They likely have enough to convict him of heresy, they would not want the crowds to become any more convinced of Jesus’ claims.

The conflict with the Jewish leadership is over and they have been silenced. They are now afraid to ask Jesus any questions! Jesus then turns to his disciples and the crowds and condemns the Jewish leadership (and the Pharisees in particular) for their utter hypocrisy as leaders of Israel.

After the Pharisees attempted to trap Jesus with a question about paying taxes to Caesar, some  Sadducees ask Jesus a theological question about the resurrection.

The Sadducees are known in the New Testament as the group that denied the resurrection, afterlife, and angels. The believed that when the body died, so did the soul.  As a result, they were more interested in the present time, and were the group that seized political power in Jerusalem. One of the reasons that they could deny the resurrection is that they held the Pentateuch to be the Scripture, almost to the point of denying the rest of scripture authority.  In the five books of Moses, there is little teaching concerning the resurrection

The Question: A woman had seven husbands who died, so who is her husband in the resurrection?  The question is based on the practice of Levirate marriage in the Law (Deut 25:5-10). A man who had a brother die childless (without a male heir) to marry the widow.

The point was to keep the property within the family and to carry on the family name. This was practiced before the Law (Judah’s son in Gen 38). Boaz acts as a kinsmen redeemer for Ruth. The question assumes this woman was a childless widow who married each of seven brothers, all dying before providing an heir.

This unfortunate situation is fictional, although perhaps based on Tobit 3:7-9.

Tobit 3:7–9 (NRSV) On the same day, at Ecbatana in Media, it also happened that Sarah, the daughter of Raguel, was reproached by one of her father’s maids. 8 For she had been married to seven husbands, and the wicked demon Asmodeus had killed each of them before they had been with her as is customary for wives. So the maid said to her, “You are the one who kills your husbands! See, you have already been married to seven husbands and have not borne the name of a single one of them. 9 Why do you beat us? Because your husbands are dead? Go with them! May we never see a son or daughter of yours!”

Like a parable, the details of the story do not matter as much as the application the Sadducees want to make to the resurrection of the dead. The Law requires these extra marriages, but does that not make for a messy situation if all these husbands are raised from the dead?

If a woman marries seven times in this life, who is her husband in the afterlife?  This is an argument which reduces the opponent’s position to an absurdity. If the situation is absurd, then the argument is dismissed

Jesus’s answer dismisses the Sadducees. They do not understand God’s power. They are wrong (ESV), translating πλανάω. “You are deceived,” Jesus says, because you do not know the Scripture. A Sadducee claims to know the scripture, but because they limit their practice to the Pentateuch, they rejected the resurrection as taught by the Pharisees.

Since the key verse in the Hebrew Bible is Daniel 12:2, It is likely the Sadducees rejected Daniel as authoritative for doctrine and practice. Jesus says if the Sadducees accepted the whole Old Testament, they would not have a problem with the resurrection of the dead. Robert Gundry suggested, “the Sadducees denied the existence of angels lends sarcasm to Jesus’ comparing the absence of marriage in the society of the resurrected with the absence of marriage among angels” (Matthew 446).

But the bigger problem is limiting the power of God. They do not accept resurrection because they do not believe God can/will raise corruptible flesh into incorruptible. Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:55, “we shall be changed” into something different than what we are like now.

Jesus’s answer to their absurd situation is to state that in the resurrection, we will be different. Jesus does not say here that we will be changed into angels, only that with regards to reproduction, we will be like the angels, who do not marry. The idea that people would reproduce in eternity is ridiculous, immortal beings reproducing is almost a logical contraction.

m.Ber. 17A F A pearl in the mouth of Rab: “The world to come is not like this world. In the world to come there is neither eating nor drinking nor procreating nor give and take nor envy nor hatred nor competition. But the righteous are enthroned with their crowns on their heads, enjoying the splendor of the Presence of God. For it is said, ‘And they beheld God and [it was that that they] ate and drank’ (Ex. 24:11).”

Does this mean that we will not have feelings toward our spouses in heaven?  We can’t tell from this passage, the meaning of marriage in this life will not be there in the afterlife, we will not live lives like we are living now.  All the definitions we have for things will be tossed, and a new life, altogether different will be lived.

The second half of his answer is to prove the resurrection from the Pentateuch, the scripture held authoritative by the Sadducees. The scripture Jesus uses is from Exodus 3:6, God declares that he is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. If God is the God of these men, then they must be alive since he is the God of the living. This argument seems thin, but the idea that God would declare himself the God of dead people is silly, he is the God of those who are alive, and those men he mentioned are alive with him.

Matthew 22:34 says Jesus silenced the Sadducees. The verb (φιμόω) means they were unable to answer him, as if they were muzzled. This is the same word Matthew used for the unprepared guest at the wedding banquet when he was questioned by the king (22:12).

After three parables in response to a challenge to his authority, the Pharisees and Herodians plot to entangle Jesus with a political question with no safe answer: paying taxes to Caesar. For Pharisees and Herodians to join forces is a little like Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump joining forces against a common enemy. Impossible!

This is a plot (συμβούλιον, literally, “take council”) to capture Jesus (v. 15). Matthew uses this word five times (12:14; 22:15; 27:1, 7; 28:12), each time describing a plot against Jesus. The idea is of plotting, etc. This incident was foreshadowed in 12:14, just after Jesus declared that the Pharisees were committing an unforgivable sin.

The plot should trap Jesus by his own words. The verb (παγιδεύω) is only used here in the New Testament, elsewhere it is used for snaring birds with a net (BrillDAG). The word evokes the image a net entangling something so that they cannot get out of a trap. We have all said things we immediately regret, then try to back out of what we said and end up saying something even worse.

The Pharisees flatter Jesus before asking the question (v. 16). This is not at all unusual (especially if this is a younger disciple) and the questioner does not say anything untrue about Jesus.  Jesus is true and he does teach the way of God truthfully. “The way” may refer to the way of righteousness (Psalm 1, for example). Jesus is not swayed by appearances, literally, “to look at the face of men.” This usually means “does not show favoritism.”

After laying on the flattery, they ask the question: Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? (v. 17). The question asks for a decision based on the Law, does the Mosaic Law require us to pay taxes to Rome?  If Jesus answers yes, then he sounds “pro-Rome” and risks being attacked by the patriotic crowds gathered for Passover. If he says no, then he risks being arrested by the Romans as an anti-Rome rebel.

What was the problem with taxes? Taxation was both a political and religious issue in the first century.  In A. D. 6, a Galilean Jew named Judas led a revolt against paying taxes to Rome (Acts 5:37; Josephus, Ant. 18.1). For Judas the Galilean, any tax paid to Rome was a symbol of subjugation. His sons were executed in AD 46 (Ant. 20.5.2) and his grandson was involved in the First Jewish Revolt (Menachem ben Judah, JW 2.433-450). Rome set high taxes in Palestine since the region was troublesome (Nolland, Matthew, 896).

Josephus, Jewish Wars, 2:118 Under his [Archelaus, AD 6] administration it was that a certain Galilean, whose name was Judas, prevailed with his countrymen to revolt; and said they were cowards if they would endure to pay a tax to the Romans, and would, after God, submit to mortal men as their lords. This man was a teacher of a peculiar sect of his own, and was not at all like the rest of those their leaders.

Acts 5:37 After him Judas the Galilean rose up in the days of the census and drew away some of the people after him. He too perished, and all who followed him were scattered.

Another issue may have involved the imagery used on Roman coins. A Roman denarius almost always used an image of the emperor and propaganda calling the Emperor a son of the divine Augustus, the savior, etc. In all cultures, money is propaganda. Rome used coinage to create the image of an all-powerful empire responsible for peace and prosperity. “The Essenes refused to use the denarius, ‘saying that they ought not either to carry, or behold, or fashion an image” (Davies and Allison, Matthew 3:216, but they cite no source for this).

Jesus responds with great wisdom (22:18-22). He is fully aware this is a trap and that the whole crowd is waiting for his answer. Jesus calls them hypocrites. The hypocrisy of the Pharisees is the theme of Matthew 23. The word originally referred to an actor, someone playing a role, a “pretender” (BDAG). The Pharisees asking the question are pretending to be respectful towards Jesus, but they are full of malice and want to trap Jesus into saying something worthy of arrest and maybe even execution.

Jesus asks then to show him a “coin for the tax.” A Roman denarius is a common coin worth about day’s wage for a laborer. In Matthew 20:1-2, the owner of a vineyard promised some workers a denarius for working one day in his vineyard. It is not unusual a Pharisee would have a Roman coin. Even if they hated Rome, they still needed the coins to buy and sell. (Imagine visiting China and refusing to use money with Mao’s picture on it.)

Jesus declares, “Give Caesar what is due to Caesar.” What happens if you do not “Render unto Caesar”?  Jesus is saying something like “pay Caesar what you owe him.” Some people in the audience might think “we owe him nothing” while others see taxes as payment for the service the Romans provide (roads, aqueducts, military protection). Could someone pay the taxes without worshiping Caesar?  A Pharisee might say yes: if we pay the taxes then Rome leaves us alone and we can study Torah in peace. A Herodian would agree as well, they are the local government benefiting from Roman taxes, although they might have been more inclined to offer more deference to the emperor (there was an Augustan Temple in Caesarea, for example).

Jesus then adds, “But give to God what is due to God.” If Jesus is right about paying taxes to Rome because they are obligations which are due, then how much more important are one’s obligations to God!  In the context of the first century, one’s obligation to God might include the Temple Tax (which Jesus paid, Matthew 17:24-27, for example).

Consider all of Jesus’s teaching in Matthew: one’s obligations to God go far beyond money (tithes and offerings). There are several times in the book Jesus’s demands from the true disciples go far beyond the Pharisees, for example.

In the context of the parables in Matthew 21-22, the Pharisees and Herodians who are asking him this question are not giving to God what he is due, they are hypocrites. Since they rejected Jesus as Messiah, they are not “rendering unto God.”

Jesus said the kingdom of heaven is like a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son (Matt 22:1). The people he invited to the banquet refused to come, so he replaced them with people living on the fringes of society. As the replacement guests settle into the banquet, the king comes to look over his guests. He discovers an unprepared man not wearing a wedding garment (22:11b-12). Who is the unprepared guest?

The king calls the man “friend,” but this word (ἑταῖρος) refers to someone who is not a friend (φίλος). Some translations will use “comrade,” although that English word bad connotations. It refers to an acquaintance who is not a friend, but it is strange to call someone an acquaintance to their face. The word is rare in the New Testament and Matthew may have chosen the word to foreshadow who he wants us to see as the unprepared guest. In Matthew 20:13, the master of the vineyard refers to the workers who complain about their pay as “friend.” In that context, the all-day workers are the religious leaders in contrast to the recent workers, likely Jesus’s disciples and the lowly types following him.

More foreboding, this is the word Jesus uses when Judas approaches him in the Garden (Matt 26:50). Judas appeared to be in the inner circle, but he was not really part of the inner circle. When the kingdom of heaven arrives, there will be some who appeared to be part of Jesus’s family who were not genuine members, the were false insiders. So, Matthew used the word for the religious leaders who complain about his lowly followers and Judas, the disciple who betrayed him.

How was he supposed to get a wedding garment? Remember the replacement guests were the poor, people living on the fringes of society. They are not likely to own fancy clothes worthy of the king’s wedding banquet. There is no good explanation for how he should have obtained his wedding banquet. This does not stop commentaries and pastors from passing along the idea the king would hand out nice clothes to the guests as they entered the banquet hall, as if this was modern restaurant that requires men to wear a coat and tie. But there is no evidence this ever happened in the ancient world, nor does the king offer loaner clothes in the parable.

What does the wedding garment represent? For many interpreters, the wedding garment represents salvation because they have already allegorized the wedding banquet as eternal life or the replacement guests as the church. In a previous post I argued the replacement guests are not the later (gentile) church, but rather Jesus’s disciples and other followers. They were people from the fringes of society: Galilean fishermen, tax-collectors, prostitutes, and other sinners. They have entered the wedding banquet and have been eating with Jesus all along. It was the religious establishment, the Pharisees, scribes, and other Temple aristocracy who refused to follow Jesus. But are all Jesus’s followers really true disciples? The guest without proper wedding garments is a follower who is going to reject Jesus in the next few days when he is arrested and crucified. The most obvious example is Judas, but there were many who rejected Jesus as messiah when he was crucified.

The unprepared guest was unable to answer the king. The verb (φιμόω) literally means “he was muzzled.” The king therefore order the man be bound and cast into the outer darkness, in the place where “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (22:13). This is a key phrase in Matthew and refers to the final, eschatological judgment. In Matthew 8:12 the “sons of the kingdom” will be thrown there. When the Son of Man comes his angels will gather all the law breakers out of his kingdom and throw then in the fiery furnace where “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (13:42, 50). The wicked servant who does not expect the return of hos master will be cut in pieces put with the hypocrites in a place where “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (24:51). Finally, the foolish servant who does not properly invest on behalf of his master is also thrown into the outer darkness where “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (25:30).

Jesus concludes, “Many are Called, Few are Chosen” (Matt 22:14). This cryptic line is usually assigned to a later layer of tradition which sought to apply the parable to a new situation in the early church. For example, Dodd thought the line was added by Matthew to “guard against the reception of the Gentiles into the Church on too easy terms” (Dodd, Parables of the Kingdom, 122).

Like the image of a wedding feast for an eschatological kingdom, the idea of the “elect” is a powerful image in Second Temple Period Judaism.  Of critical importance is the election of Israel as God’s people and the covenant he made with them. Philo, for example, said “Yet out of the whole human race He chose as of special merit and judged worthy of pre–eminence over all, those who are in a true sense men, and called them to the service of Himself, the perennial fountain of things excellent” (Spec. Laws 1.303).

If my reading of the Wedding Banquet parable is correct, then perhaps the saying plays on the idea of Israel’s election in general, and Jesus’ followers in particular. The saying means something like: “not all of the elect Israel are chosen to enter the kingdom.” The first guests are “all Israel,” the second guests are the outsiders who have participated in table fellowship with Jesus and have entered the Kingdom of Heaven. As Snodgrass concludes, while some Jews have rejected Jesus as Messiah, “other Jews will respond” (Stories with Intent, 321).

In Matthew’s gospel, the Parable of the Wedding Banquet is the third of three parables which answer a challenge to his authority (Matt 21:23-27). The brief Parable of the Two Sons (Matt 21:28–32) contrasts two types of responses to Jesus’ invitation to participate in the kingdom. The one who have responded to Jesus’ invitation are the tax–collectors and sinners. These outsiders are entering the kingdom before the chief priests and elders of the people. The Parable of the Tenants (Matt 21:33-45) described the religious leaders as not only failing to respond properly to the call of the owner of the vineyard. This third parable in the series describes the kingdom of heaven as a wedding banquet to which the subjects of a king are invited. As in the first two parables, there are two groups described; those who enter the wedding feast and those who do not.

Some features of a wedding are missing in this parable. For example, there is no bride and the not important. Some writers who comment on this parable assume the bridegroom is Jesus (a reasonable assumption given Jesus’s own words in Matt 9:15), but also that the bride as the Church. This is unwarranted allegorizing since the bride is not mentioned at all. To try to fit an unmentioned bride into the parable causes problems, this usually leads to the replacement guests as the later New Covenant gentile church replacing the Old Covenant Jewish people. This is not what Jesus intended by the parable of the Wedding Banquet. The point is not the marriage of the bride and groom, but the king’s invitation to enter the wedding feast

A King Made a Wedding Banquet for His Son (22:1-10). Wedding banquet background, important event honoring the heir. A banquet of this type would be expected to be a village–wide event, a wedding feast hosted by a king would the main event in the capital city of a kingdom. Blickenstaff reports a papyri invitation which invites the whole village to attend the celebration (κῶμος) of a wedding (‘While the Bridegroom is With Them,’ 57). A calf would feed 35-75 people; Matthew 22:4 says at least two bulls have been slaughtered along with at least two fatted calves. At a minimum, this banquet would feed two hundred people. To miss a wedding banquet hosted by the king could be a politically dangerous choice, easily interpreted as both disrespectful and treasonous.

Why does the king send two invitations? The first invitation determines how much food to prepare, the second calls the people to come to the banquet and begin to eat the food that has now been prepared (like a “save the date” card in a modern wedding). When the food was nearly ready servants would be sent to gather the guests into the banquet. In the ancient world the food served at a banquet of this sort would have to be eaten that night or it would be wasted.

Anyone who refused the second invitation would have been especially rude. Since the food was prepared based on the first invitation, the original listener would have been struck by the absolute lack of social manners demonstrated by the invited guests. This observation frees the parable from the temptation to allegorize the two sets of servants as various prophets, etc.

When the banquet was about to begin, the original guests refused to come (22:5-7) The first-invited guests were unwilling to come. This is the working the parable of the Two Sons, the second son is not willing to obey the father, but eventually does obey (21:19). In the Parable of the Two Sons, the chief priests and Pharisees say they are willing, but refuse the father.

The invited guests pay no attention to the invitation, and some go off to their field or business. The word used for the careless attitude of the invited guests (ἀμελέω) appears four times in the New Testament. More importantly, the word appears two contexts in Jeremiah which employ the marriage metaphor. In LXX Jer 4:17 the word is a translation of the Hebrew מרה, to be “recalcitrant or rebellious” (HALOT).

The king responds dramatically: he destroyed their city while the dinner was on the table! The response of the king is exaggerated. He becomes angry and orders soldiers to burn the city with fire. Most commentaries on the Parable of the Wedding Banquet assume verses 6-7 refer to the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. But parables often exaggerate, there is no need for the destruction of a city to prophesy the fall of Jerusalem (or anything else).

The original guests were not worthy (22:8). Like the Parable of the Wicked Tenants (21:33-41), the original guests are the religious leaders, and the replacement guests are Jesus’s followers. This parable says the original guests have already been replaced by new guests.

Since the food is prepared, the king replaces the original guests with other people, both bad and good (22:8-10). The king is now faced with a dilemma. He has prepared an enormous banquet, but those who were invited were not worthy to enter. He therefore sends out a second set of servants to gather whomever they should find to fill the wedding feast.

The replacement guests are not the sort of people who would have been invited at all. They are “outsiders” in the kingdom of the parable. The noun διέξοδος has the sense of the edges of society but is used in the LXX for the borders of the Land (for example, Num 34:4). These are not outsiders in the sense that they are drawn from outside of the King’s domain, but outsiders in the sense that they live on the fringe of society.

This second set of invitations is routinely taken as an allegory of Christian mission, but Klyne Snodgrass calls this “merciless allegorizing” (Snodgrass, Stories with Intent, 315).  I agree. If this parable is consistent with the previous two parables, then the replacement guests must be those who have responded to Jesus’ invitation, they have already been eating and drinking with Jesus. They are the tax collectors, prostitutes and other sinners who live on the fringe of Jewish society. They are the very people who have been “filling the banquet” hosted by Jesus since the beginning of his ministry.

At this point, the parable seems quite clear, the original guests (the religious establishment) have been replaced by new guests (Jesus’s disciples). But are all of Jesus’s followers going to remain in the banquet? This parable has a second part to address this issue.

Bibliography:  Marianne Blickenstaff, ‘While the Bridegroom is with them’: Marriage, Family, Gender and Violence in the Gospel of Matthew (LNTS, T&T Clark, 2005). Phillip J. Long, Jesus the Bridegroom: The Origin of the Eschatological Feast as a Wedding Banquet in the Synoptic Gospels. Pickwick, 2012.