The greatest commandment and David’s lord in Matthew 22
The lectionary reading for the then-called 'Concluding Sunday afterward Trinity' as we about the end of Year A is Matthew 22.34–46. Having had three symbolic actions from Jesus (entering the city, overturning the tables, withering the fig tree) and iii parables (the two sons, the wicked tenants, the wedding banquet), we have now reached the 3rd of 3 hostile questions to Jesus. The first came concluding week, asking nigh paying the poll tax; the second, about resurrection, is skipped over in the lectionary, but I explore information technology in thinking about whether we are sexed in heaven; and the third is a short version of the question almost the greatest commandment.
The Sadducees and Pharisees were rival groups inside Judaism, taking dissimilar positions on the scope of Scripture, the estimation of the law, and belief in the resurrection. (The Sadducees did non believe in resurrection, so they were pitiful, you lot see…?). Every bit Matthew has delineated in more than item the groups that opposed Jesus in Jerusalem, since Jesus has refuted the challenge of the Sadducees, information technology is now the turn of the Pharisees. The term 'lawyer' just occurs here in Matthew, and agrees with the clarification of the questioner in Luke 10.25f, though the tone and occasion is different there, and the question of how to sum up the law was not an unusual i. In Marker'due south closer parallel, the questioner is a 'scribe', a member of the professional class who worked with legal documents but also paid shut attention to Scripture; during Jesus' ministry in Galilee, Mark sees the scribes every bit his main opponents, where Matthew identifies them as Pharisees, and the two groups will have overlapped.
Luke's inquisitor seems more neutral, even if he seeks to 'justify' himself (Luke 10.29). In Mark's parallel with Matthew, there is a more positive exchange, in which Jesus tells the scribe he is 'not far' from the kingdom of God, characterising the kingdom as an almost physical space (Mark 12.34). But Matthew interprets the question as hostile; the motive is to 'test' or 'tempt' Jesus (peirazo), the term Matthew has previously used of the Pharisees (Matt 16.1, 19.3) likewise equally the devil (Matt 4.1) and Jesus has used of them in the previous episode (Matt 22.18).
Summarising Scripture is an age-old activity. Andrew Wilson, of NewFrontiers, offers a 12-verse summary of the whole of the Bible here, and I have recently been making use of a very proficient, brusque summary of The New Testament in Seven Sentences by Gary Burge. (In fact, Burge really summarises the NT in 7 words, each with a verse attached, which connect the message of the NT with the OT and the whole narrative of scripture: fulfilment; kingdom; cross; grace; covenant; Spirit; completion.) This kind of 'large pic' summarising is actually an important part of our 'biblical literacy', helping us to read well. Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart identified two cardinal skills in reading Scripture inHow to Read the Bible for All its Worth—to have an overview of the big moving picture, and to exist able to focus on the particulars of any passage, and and so in reading well to movement betwixt the one and the other.
So it is non surprising that we detect, within Scripture itself, summaries of Scripture! In rabbinic discussion (b Mak24a) it was idea that there were summaries in Ps 15 (in 11 points), Is 33.15–16 (in six points), Micah half dozen.8 (in three), Is 56.1 (in two) and in Amos 5.4b and Hab 2.4b in one. The summary in Micah is well known in Christian reflection:
He has shown all you lot people what is skilful. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God (Micah 6.eight)
and Paul makes primal apply of the one in Habakkuk 2.4 'the righteous shall alive by faith[fulness]' in Rom i.17 and Gal 3.11.
Rabbi Hillel (living simply prior to the time of Jesus) was famously challenged by someone to recite the whole police whilst standing on one leg. He replied:
What is hateful to you, practise not practice to your fellow: this is the whole Torah; the rest is the caption; go and larn.
This is close to its inverse that Jesus has already offered as a summary early in the gospel, in Matt seven.12:
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums upwards the Law and the Prophets.
It is notable that Jesus offers thepositive version, and interesting that, in offering this summary, he appears to side with Hillel (whose rival Shammai refused to respond the homo), where in other issues (especially on union and divorce) his teaching is closer to the bourgeois Shammai than the liberal Hillel.
There are several things worth noting about Jesus' summary.
Start, although it is quite unlike from the other summaries noted above, there is no particular reason to think that it was necessarily unique or original to Jesus. Several other rabbinical summaries have the 2-fold focus on God and neighbor, and in fact this matches the 'two tablets' of the Ten Commandments, in which the kickoff half is conspicuously oriented to God, and the 2nd half oriented to social relationships. The Jewish philosopher Philo even appears (in his exposition of special lawsSpec Leg2.63) to suggest that the ii tablets of the Commandments had these 2 concerns as headings on them, so that those who kept the first v commandments werephilotheoi(lovers of God) and those who kept the second v were philanthropoi (lovers of people).
Secondly, dissimilar either the Gold Rule (in its positive or negative forms) or the summaries in the prophets, Jesus is here summarising the lawfrom inside the law. This really diffuses the differences between the Pharisees and Sadducees, the latter of whom considered Torah lone to be scripture. Simply it also means that at that place is no suggestion here that the law is in any waydisplacedby the teaching of Jesus. Of course, the Gilt Dominion is very close to the command to beloved, since though the term is mentioned, this is conspicuously the motivation for 'doing unto others…'
As Philip Jenson has pointed out (How to Interpret Erstwhile Attestation Law) the police cloth within the Pentateuch varies in its degree of particular and generalisation, so that some regulations are very context specific, whilst others are much more high level and general. A key issue in its estimation, then, is to notation these differences and the relations between the different kinds of laws that nosotros observe—which is much more assisting than the traditional but rather arbitrary approach of trying to discern between the sacrificial, ceremonial and moral laws (equally set up out in Article VII of the Articles of Faith) since these three problems are non neatly compartmentalised in the Pentateuch itself.
Jesus picks out two such summary statements, the first from Deut 6.4 and the second from Lev 19.xviii. The offset of these forms the central confession of Judaism, generally thought in this period to be recited morning and evening by all observant Jews (though there is some argue well-nigh when this practise became regular). Jesus is not telling his listeners anything that they practice not know, and so here his pedagogy is in continuity, rather than discontinuity, with accepted practice and priorities. He is calling his beau Jews back to their biblical roots, not away in some discontinuous new management.
Thirdly, Jesus is thus offering, from within the constabulary, a hermeneutical principle for reading the law.
They summarise not only the law (which was the question asked) but as well the prophets, since the whole scriptural revelation is understood to witness to the same divine will… This does not hateful, every bit some modernistic ethicists accept argued, that 'all you need is dearest', then that 1 tin can dispense with the upstanding rules set out in the Torah. It is rather to say that those rules find their truthful role in working out the practical implications of the love for God and neighbour on which they are based (R T France, NICNT, p 847).
It is surely no accident that Jesus places 'love of God' beginning and 'love of neighbor' second; whilst we cannot claim to love God whom nosotros cannot see if nosotros do not love our neighbor whom we can see (1 John 4.20), because of human sin and selfishness, which distorts both our perception and our action, nosotros cannot truly love our neighbor unless we love God and attend to the pattern of life to which he calls u.s.a..
Matthew's version of Deut 6.4 follows the Greek translation for the first ii aspects, equally does Marker ('middle' and 'soul') though his grammar varies slightly, using the Greeken ('in') rather than Marker'due southex ('from') which is a more literal translation of the Hebrew prepositionb–.It is important to note, though, that in Deuteronomy and for Jesus, these terms have a rather different sense from our usual English language linguistic communication assumptions; there is a very good exploration of the meanings of these terms in the Bible Projection videos on theShema, on dear, heart, and soul. Mark's account of Jesus' summary expands the final term in Deut six.iv,me'od, intotwo terms 'listen' and 'strength', and it appears as though Matthew has truncated the concluding in club to match the original three terms. Butme'od is a difficult term to interpret, most usually being used as an adverb to hateful 'very', and thus having the sense of loving God with all the abundance of things that yous are and have. Within the rabbinical tradition, it is sometimes translated as strength, listen or even money—thus pointing to all the resources and power that we take. Once again the Bible Project video on this term is fantabulous.
The final role of our reading sees this series of conflicts brought to a close for the fourth dimension being. Having seen off the questions of his opponents, Jesus now asks the a question—equally he did at the beginning, in Matt 21.24 about the ministry of John the Baptist, and so that these ii questions form a frame for the whole episode. Where Mark recounts this equally a monologue, Matthew depicts it as an substitution, with questions and answers, in closer keeping with conventional rabbinical pedagogy practice of the time.
'Son of David' is a key term within Matthew's gospel, being a key term in the opening genealogy (Matt ane.1), the designation of Jesus' adoptive father Joseph in line with this (Matt 1.twenty), the form of address of Jesus by others (in Matt 9.27, 12.23, 15.22 and 20.thirty), and being Matthew's distinctive summary of the greeting by pilgrims of Jesus equally he enters Jerusalem in Matt 21.9. But, with its potentially political overtones and therefore possibility of misunderstanding, this is the terminal time in the gospel that Jesus uses the term.
Ps 110 is the most quoted psalm in the New Testament. Critical scholarship is sceptical about its original intention as a messianic psalm, reading it rather every bit a courtier speaking in exaggerated terms about the current king. But if it is in fact written by David (rather than merely being in Davidic style), then David can hardly be referring to himself.
Jesus alludes to Ps 110.1 again in his trial at Matt 26.64, there linking it with the Son of Human coming to the ancient of days in Dan 7.xiii and being seated at his right hand, thus combining two quite different images (son of David, son of man) and reading both in messianic terms. Both are therefore used to point to Jesus' ascension to the Father.
What lies ahead of him now is not a triumphant reign over God'south people but rejection past them, not a royal throne but a humiliating execution. It is only after that mission is achieved that he can wait forward to sitting at the right hand of his Father in a heavenly, not an earthly, kingship… (R T France, NICNT, p 849).
(The flick at top is an extract from 'The Pharisees question Jesus' by James Tissot, part of his series on the life of Jesus.)
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