Matthew16chapter 16

The place is the point. Caesarea Philippi lay at the northern edge of the land, beside a great spring gushing from a cliff at the base of Mount Hermon. The site had been a shrine of the Greek god Pan for centuries, its rock face cut with niches for idols, and Philip the tetrarch had rebuilt the town and named it for Caesar. It was, in short, the most pagan ground in the region.

The demand for a sign from heaven came from an unlikely alliance. Pharisees and Sadducees disagreed about nearly everything — resurrection, angels, the authority of tradition — and their appearing together shows how far the opposition had consolidated.

The answer about the weather is the folk forecasting of any coastal country: red sky at evening, fine tomorrow; red and threatening at morning, storm coming. They could read the sky and not the times.

The keys given to Peter carry an Old Testament echo a Jewish reader would catch. In Isaiah, a royal steward is given the key of the house of David — the officer who controls access to the king. Binding and loosing was standard rabbinic language for declaring a thing forbidden or permitted.