Category Archives: Matthew

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A virgin will be with child: Matthew’s interpretation of Isaiah — Matthew 1:23, Isaiah 7:14

We are familiar with the New Testament use of the virgin-born son passage as a reference to Jesus in Matthew 1:23, but most of us have never considered how Matthew came to this conclusion.  Matthew does not use all his Old Testament prophecies the same way.  Some of Matthew’s other Scripture texts refer in the Old Testament not to Jesus but to Israel; for instance, “out of Egypt I called My son” clearly refers to Israel’s exodus from Egypt in Hosea 11:1, but Matthew applies it to Jesus’ exodus from Egypt (Matt. 2:15).  Matthew is not saying that Hosea had Jesus in mind; he is saying that Jesus as the ultimate son of Abraham (Matt. 1:1) recapitulates Israel’s experiences (for instance, his forty days in the wilderness and His quotations from Deuteronomy in Matt. 4:1-11).  That very chapter of Hosea goes on to speak of a new exodus, a new era of salvation comparable to the old one.  Matthew quotes Hosea 11:1 because he knows that Hosea himself pointed to a future salvation.

So before we read Matthew’s application of Isaiah 7:14 into Isaiah, we must carefully examine what Isaiah 7:14 means in context.  (If this exercise makes you nervous, you can skip to our conclusion, but make sure you come back and follow our discussion the whole way through.)  Although Matthew 1:23 clearly refers to Jesus being born of a virgin (the Greek term is clear), scholars dispute whether the Hebrew words in Isaiah also refer necessarily to a “virgin” or, more generally, to a “young woman.”  For the sake of argument, we will avoid this point and examine the context only.

The king of Assyria was encroaching on the boundaries of Israel (the kingdom of Samaria) and Syria (Aram, the kingdom of Damascus).  Realizing that they were in trouble, they tried to get the king of Judah (the kingdom of Jerusalem) to join them in fighting the Assyrians.  When he proved uncooperative, they sought to force him to join their coalition.  At this time, God sent the prophet Isaiah to Ahaz, king of Judah, to warn him not to join the coalition of Israel and Syria.  (Keep in mind that Judah and Israel were two separate countries by this point in their history.)  Syria or Aram (represented by its capital Damascus) and Israel or Ephraim (represented by Samaria) would be crushed shortly (7:4-9).

Isaiah even offered the Judean king Ahaz a sign to confirm that Aram and Israel would quickly fall (7:10-13).  The sign was one that would get Ahaz’s attention: a woman would bear a son and name him Immanuel, “God is with us” (7:14).  Before the son would know right from wrong, while still eating curds (7:15; this was in Isaiah’s day, 7:21-25), the Assyrian king would devastate Aram and Israel (7:16-20).  In other words, the child would be born in Ahaz’s generation!  But then, why was the son named, “God is with us”?  Perhaps for the same reason that all Isaiah’s children bore symbolic names (8:18), just as Hosea’s children were prophetic signs to the northern kingdom of Israel in roughly the same period (Hosea 2:4-9).  We will come back to this point later in our discussion.

After offering this prophecy to Ahaz, Isaiah was sent in to “the prophetess” (presumably his young, new wife, who may have also had the gift of prophecy) and she got pregnant.  They named the son “Mahershalalhashbaz”—”Swift is the booty, speedy is the prey.”  God said to name the child this as a sign to Judah that God would quickly give Judah’s enemies into the hands of the Assyrian army.  Before the boy was old enough to utter the most childish form of, “Mother” or “Father,” Assyria would plunder Aram and Israel (8:1-10).  In other words, Isaiah’s own son would be the sign to Ahaz: his birth would be quickly followed by the devastation of the lands to the north that had sought to force Judah into their coalition.  Judah needed to know that “God is with us,” and that Aram’s and Israel’s “booty” would be carried away “speedily,” and its “prey…swiftly” (7:14; 8:3).

So why did Matthew think Isaiah 7:14 could be applied to Jesus?  Probably not for the same reason we often do.  We apply Isaiah 7:14 to Jesus because we never read its immediate context; Matthew probably applied it to Jesus because he read past the immediate context to the broader context of surrounding passages.  As we mentioned before, Isaiah’s children were for “signs,” each teaching Judah of what God would do (8:18).  The immediate sign of God being with Judah would be the conquest of their enemies to the north; but the ultimate act of God being with them would be when God Himself actually came to be with them.  In the very next passage, Isaiah announces a hope that would extend beyond Judah even to the northern kingdom of Israel (9:1-2), a conquering king, a child who would be born to the house of Judah (9:3-7).  Not only would He be called “God is with us”; like his other titles, which appropriately apply to Him, “Mighty God” would apply to Him (9:6, a title of God also found in the context, 10:21).  This Davidic King (9:7) would be God in the flesh (9:6); in the ancient near East, where Israel may have been unusual for not turning its kings into gods, Isaiah certainly would not have risked calling this king “Mighty God” if he had not meant that God Himself was coming to reign as one of David’s descendants.  Matthew was right, but not for the reason we would have assumed!

Some critics of Matthew, who believe that he simply did not know the context, are skeptical.  It is fair to point out to them that Matthew demonstrates his knowledge of the context just three chapters later.  There he applies to Jesus a passage from Isaiah 9:1-2 (Matt 4:15-16), showing that the context of Isaiah 7:14 remains fresh in his mind!

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Are we to bind and loose demons? — Matthew 18:18

I used to follow a popular misinterpretation of this verse.  As a young Christian, I used to use Matthew 18:18 to “bind” and “loose” demons whenever I would pray (as if demons were always standing by listening).  Fortunately, God is more concerned with our faith than with our formulas, and graciously answered my prayers whether or not I threw any “binding” in.  But one day I read Matthew 18:18 in context, and I realized that I had been misinterpreting the passage.  Because my prayers had “worked,” I decided to keep “binding” and “loosing”—but now that I knew better, the practice did not work anymore, because I could no longer do it in the integrity of my heart before God!  Happily, I found that God still answered my prayers prayed in Jesus’ name without “binding.”

What do “binding” and “loosing” mean in this context?  In the context, Jesus indicates that if one’s fellow-Christian is living a sinful lifestyle, one must confront that Christian; if he or she refuses to listen, one should bring others so one will have two or three witnesses if one must bring the matter before the church.  If despite repeated loving confrontations that person refuses to repent, the church must put that person out of the church to teach the person repentance (Matt. 18:15-17).  In this context, Jesus declares that whatever they “bind” or “loose” on earth will have already been “bound” or “loosed” in heaven–i.e., under these circumstances, they clearly act on God’s authority (18:18).  Because the terms “binding” and “loosing” literally have to do with imprisoning or releasing people, and Jewish teachers used these terms to describe their legal authority, the terms make good sense in this context: the church must discipline its erring members, removing them from participation in the church if they continue in unapologetic sin.

The “two or three” who pray in this context (18:19) refer to the two or three witnesses (18:16).  I used to read this passage and worry that my prayers would be less efficacious if I could not find someone to join me in prayer; I did wonder, however, why my own faith would be insufficient.  But this verse does not imply that prayer is efficacious only for a minimum of two persons; it promises that even if only two witnesses are available, and even if the prayers or actions on earth involve something as serious as withdrawing a person from the church, God will back up His servants whom He has authorized.

Perhaps the specific prayer in mind is a prayer that God will bring the disfellowshiped person to repentance and restoration; if so, Jesus deliberately contrasts the attitude required of His followers with the two or three witnesses in the Old Testament law, who were to be the first to stone those against whom they testified (Deut. 17:7).  Probably alluding to a Jewish saying circulating in the early centuries of this era—”Wherever two or three gather to study God’s law, His presence is among them”—Jesus assures His followers (specifically the witnesses) of His presence even in the difficult situation of church discipline (Matt 18:20).  Of course the principle of answered prayer applies to other prayers as well, but he specifies “two or three” here because he is referring to the “two or three” he just mentioned.

Although we cannot take space here to comment further on the matter, this particular passage does not support the common practice of “binding” demons as it is done today.  Whereas “binding demons” in the way it is generally practiced today has no warrant in this text, however, it does appear in some ancient magical texts, which makes this practice even more suspect.  When Jesus claims to have “bound the strong man” (Matt 12:29), he does not first tell Satan, “I bind you” before casting out demons.  He had already defeated the strong man by overcoming temptation and obeying the Father’s will; thus He was free to exercise His authority and cast out demons.

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Baptized with fire — Matthew 3:11

One modern denomination in the U.S. is the “Fire-Baptized Holiness Church”; many other Christians also happily claim to be “baptized in the Holy Ghost and fire.” We know and appreciate, of course, what they mean; they mean holiness, and holiness is essential. But is that what John the Baptist means by “fire baptism” in this passage? Fire is sometimes used as a symbol of God’s consuming holiness or of purifying trials in the Bible; but when fire is conjoined with the image of baptism in the New Testament, it has to do not with mere purification of the individual, but with purifying the whole world by judgment. (Judgment is the most common symbolic application fire in the Bible.) Rather than cross-referencing to other passages that use the image of fire in different ways, we ought to examine what the “baptized in fire” text means in its own context. We ought to use the passage itself before jumping to a concordance.

The context is a call to repentance, and much of the audience promised this fire baptism was unwilling to repent. John the Baptist was immersing people in water as a sign of their repentance and preparation for the coming Kingdom of God (Matt. 3:2, 6). (Jewish people used baptism when non-Jews would convert to Judaism, but John demanded that even religious Jewish people come to God on the same terms on which Gentiles should; cf. 3:9.) John warned the Pharisees about God’s coming wrath (3:7), and that unless they bore fruit (3:8) God’s ax of judgment would cast them into the fire (3:10; cf. 12:33). Fruitless trees were worthless except for fuel. But chaff was barely even useful as fuel (it burned quickly), yet the chaff of which John spoke would be burned with “unquenchable”—eternal—”fire” (3:12).

In the verses just before and just after our verse, “fire” is hellfire (3:10, 12). When John the Baptist speaks of a baptism in fire, he uses an image of judgment that follows through the whole paragraph. Remember that John’s hearers here are not repentant people (3:7). The Messiah is coming to give his audience a twofold baptism, and different members of his audience would experience different parts of it. Some may repent, be gathered into the barn and receive the Spirit. The unrepentant, however, would be chaff, trees cut down, and would receive the fire!

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The “three wise men” or Magi of Matthew 2:1-6

Ancient narrators often taught moral lessons by contrasting various characters, some good, some bad, and some mixed. In this narrative, there are three characters or sets of characters that warrant special attention in 2:1-6. They are the Magi (“wise men”), Herod the Great, and the scribes.

Magi were a caste of Persian astrologers–that is, they practiced a profession explicitly forbidden in the Old Testament (Deut 18:10; Is 47:13). The term is actually used in Greek translations of the Old Testament to describe Daniel’s enemies who wanted to kill him! One of their jobs as Magi was to promote the honor of the king of Persia, whose official title was “king of kings and lord of lords.” But these Magi come to honor the true king of kings born in Judea. Matthew thus shocks his Jewish-Christian readers by telling them of pagans who came to worship Jesus, implying that we cannot predict beforehand who will respond to our message; we must share it with everyone.

Herod the Great was a ruthless ruler who was paranoid about anyone threatening his kingship. Not being Jewish by birth (he was a descendant of the ancient Edomites) he was insecure about his title, “King of the Judeans,” and did not want to share it with anyone else. He had two of his sons executed because he was told they were plotting against him (it turned out to be false), and another son executed for plotting against him–while Herod himself was dying. (“Better to be Herod’s pig than his son,” the emperor was reported to have complained.) A young high priest who was getting too popular and might have provided competition for Herod had a drowning accident–in a very shallow pool. Herod was the sort of person that this narrative describes! But killing the male children of Bethlehem (given Bethlehem’s population in this period, maybe twenty boys) recalls how Pharaoh treated Israelite boys in Exodus. The pagan Magi worshiped the true king of the Jews; Herod the king of God’s people, however, acted like a pagan king.

Most troubling of all, however, are the leading priests and scribes (2:4). These were the Bible professors and leading ministers of their day. They know where the Messiah will be born (2:5-6), but do not join the Magi on their quest. The people who knew the Bible the best took it for granted–a sin that only people who know the Bible can commit. And a generation later, when Jesus could no longer be taken for granted, their successors wanted him dead (Matt 26:3-4).

The line between taking Jesus for granted and wanting him out of our way may remain rather thin today as well. Especially when background helps us learn more about the characters in this narrative, it warns us in stark terms not to prejudge who will respond to the gospel–and not to think of ourselves more highly than we ought.