Thoughts

The Pharisees accuse Jesus of allowing his disciples to break the Sabbath rest. Green (p144) points out the irony of this, coming immediately after Jesus’s offering in him ‘rest for your souls’. Jesus is quick to answer in a way that not only justifies the actions of the disciples, but also hints at his own identity. First, he draws their attention to a case (1 Sam 21:1‑9) where David and his men ate consecrated loaves from the Temple because of need, even though these were reserved only for the priests (the hint here is that Jesus is greater than David, and so he and his disciples can do likewise). Secondly, he referred to the fact that the priests in the Temple work on the Sabbath because Temple worship takes precedence over Sabbath regulation (the hint here being that now Jesus, greater than the Temple, also takes precedence). Finally he quotes Hosea 6:6 again reminding them that God desires mercy above sacrifice.

In any case, there is nothing in the written Law of Moses that prevents the disciples from doing as they did. They contravened only the oral Law, which to the Pharisees sometimes seemed to take precedence over the Law given by God (e.g. 15:6). What the disciples were doing was specifically permitted in Deut. 23:25, although it is not specified that it is also permitted on the Sabbath. However, the context in Deuteronomy is specifically drawing a contrast between something that could be considered as work (gathering into bowls) and something that is merely to satisfy hunger (plucking grapes to eat), which would certainly imply that in the eyes of God’s Law it would be a permissible act on the Sabbath. In fact, as the purpose of the Sabbath was rest, given as a reflection of God’s seventh day of rest after Creation, the Sabbath rest imitated the Edenic tradition, and in Eden there was cultivating and plucking fruits and grains for food (Gen 1:29, 2:15) as opposed to the harder workaday toil that came afterwards (Gen 3:17-19). In this way, the disciples were in fact resting from their labour (11:28) and celebrating the Sabbath. Chrysostom notes that in any case, keeping company with Jesus was in itself a Sabbath (XXXIX:3).

Chrysostom draws an interesting contrast between the Pharisees’ response to this violation of their beloved oral law, a short rebuke, and their response to the next violation, when Jesus heals the man’s withered hand. Again Jesus defends his action (this time with a comparison with something in their own oral law). Upon this healing, Matthew reports, they plot to have him killed. They see the same violation in two forms, and yet have a different reaction. Chrysostom suggests plausibly that the first was not so infuriating as a simple act of the disciples’ eating, but the second was insupportable as an act of great kindness and mercy (XXXIX:1). Why? Presumably because while the people would not pay a great deal of attention to the first, healing always drew them closer to Jesus as it elevated his status, making him all the more dangerous from the Pharisees’ point of view.

John the Baptist from prison sends his disciples to ask Jesus whether he is the one expected, or whether they are to wait for another. Green (p137) pictures John sitting in prison and not seeing the revolutionary behaviour from Jesus that he had expected. Chrysostom, in contrast, considers that for John to have such serious doubts now would bring into question all the confidence he had displayed in Jesus before (XXXVI:1) and therefore he is sending his disciples for their own benefit, rather than for his (XXXVI:2). The text does not give an indication of John’s motive, which must therefore remain a matter of conjecture, but a straight reading of the text would indicate that the question was a genuine question of John’s.

Green goes further than to suggest John’s doubts, however. Even after commenting on Jesus’s strong commendation of John that he was “a prophet… and much more than a prophet… there has never been anyone greater than John the Baptist” (11:9-11) Green interprets “the least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he” (11:11) to indicate that because of John’s doubts, he does not know the King and is not in the Kingdom (p138), and later (p144) he suggests that John even “rejected him” because of his doubts. This seems to be going a good deal further than the text.

There is another question, here, however. Most (if not all) English translations interpret the word ‘μικροτερος’ here as a superlative (‘least’) though technically it is in the form of a comparative (‘less’). Chrysostom takes it literally as a comparative, and suggests that the one who is ‘less’ in the Kingdom of Heaven than John is now Jesus: less in age, less in repute among the people, thus maintaining John’s standing from the previous verses without dropping it to exclusion from the Kingdom of Heaven as Green does.

In fact, even interpreting μικροτερος as ‘less’ still leaves open Green’s interpretation of John’s doubts (though not his rejection of Jesus!), but perhaps it could be modified by comparison with Jesus’s saying in Lk 11:27. In response to a woman’s crying out ‘blessed is the womb that bore you’, Jesus said ‘blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it’. This response clearly does not indicate that the keeper of God’s word should be blessed instead of his mother (see Lk 1:48: “all generations will call me blessed”), instead it means that (1) more important than biological affinity to him is obedience to God’s word and (2) the reason his mother is blessed is not primarily from carrying him in her womb, but because it was out of a life of obedience to God’s word that she received him into her womb. If this is a valid parallel, then, here Jesus would be indicating that (1) John’s great works as a prophet are not as important as the works of one who lives the life of righteousness he has been teaching as descriptive of life in the Kingdom of Heaven and (2) the reason that John will in the end be considered great is for living out the life of repentance and righteousness, not just for proclaiming the message. Thus John’s reputation established by Jesus in the preceding verses still stands – but in the context of Jesus’s teaching on life in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Most translations of Matthew either put 7:6 together with 7:1-5 or separate it as an isolated saying. Green also sees it rather in this way (p106), giving it a purely evangelistic connotation: don’t force the message on anyone, only go with the Spirit, where he has been leading the way. Chrysostom (p159) describes the dogs as those who have no desire to change, and the pigs as those submerged in unchaste lifestyles; this is good imagery of two examples of groups who may not be ready to receive the ‘pearl’. However there is no particular indication in the text of these allegorical interpretations, and indeed it seems more likely that the pigs and dogs are just parallel examples standing for people who for whatever reason are not ready to receive ‘what is holy’. Green lumps pigs and dogs together with the same interpretation Chrysostom gave to the dogs alone: those who are not ready for Christ’s message, the hard-hearted and unwilling to change.

Chrysostom, speaking of the swine trampling the pearl, gives the example (p160) of the secrecy of the mysteries of the Church: the secrecy (the unbaptised were not permitted to remain in the Church after the dismissal of the catechumens in the Liturgy) was so that those who were unprepared, and therefore in danger of not seeing the value of the ‘pearl’, would not be able to ‘trample’ it, or defile it by not giving it due reverence. This perhaps shows a connection for 7:6 with the passage that follows, 7:7-12. Chrysostom sees the ‘asking’, ‘seeking’ and ‘knocking’ as examples of our perseverance in approaching God (as, for example, in the story of the perseverant woman before the judge in Lk 18:1-8 – perhaps this could be Matthew’s parallel teaching, as he has no version of that parable). Whether or not it indicates perseverance, it certainly indicates that we have to make our own move for God to make his: that we must be prepared to ask.

The swine, on the other hand, are not prepared for the pearl, and therefore it would be a mistake to give it to them. Thus God also waits for the evidence that we are prepared, in that we are ‘asking’, ‘seeking’ or ‘knocking’ before he will cast his pearl before us. There is also an interesting contrast between the pearl being cast before the swine (7:6) and the hypothetical father who might give his son a stone (7:9). While it would be wrong to give holy things to the dogs, it would be equally wrong to give a serpent to a hungry child – a child who is seeking to eat will be given a fish by his father who loves him.