Matthewchapter 17
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Speaks with:Mark 9×6Luke 9×4Matthew 22×3Malachi 4×3Mark 8×3Luke 24×2
The Transfiguration — Gustave Doré (engraving), public domain
Summary
Chapter summary
Transfiguration on the mount. Moses, Elijah, the bright cloud, the Father's voice. Descent and the demoniac boy whom the disciples could not heal ('this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting'). Second passion prediction. The temple-tax miracle. Peter and the coin in the fish's mouth.
Context
Gospel · Matthew — Matthew overview
- A. 1–13 Transfigured on the High Mountain
- B. 14–21 The Boy the Disciples Could Not Heal
- C. 22–27 The Coin in the Fish's Mouth
The outline
A.Transfigured on the High Mountainvv. 1 to 13
Read vv. 1 to 13 →B.The Boy the Disciples Could Not Healvv. 14 to 21
Read vv. 14 to 21 →C.The Coin in the Fish's Mouthvv. 22 to 27
Read vv. 22 to 27 →
The world behind this chapter
Matthew 17The history
Which mountain is not certain. The traditional site is Tabor in Galilee, but Tabor had a settlement on its summit in that period, and the story's location just after Caesarea Philippi has led many to prefer a spur of Mount Hermon, which rises over nine thousand feet nearby and is snow-capped much of the year.
Peter's offer to build three shelters is a festival reflex. At the Feast of Tabernacles, Jewish families lived a week in booths of branches, remembering the wilderness and looking for the age to come. Faced with Moses and Elijah, Peter reaches for the nearest liturgy he knows.
The tax collectors in Capernaum are not Rome's men. The two-drachma payment was the annual temple tax, rooted in Exodus, that every Jewish male over twenty paid toward the sacrifices and upkeep in Jerusalem. It was collected locally in the weeks before Passover and shipped to the city.
The coin in the fish is exact, not vague. A stater was worth four drachmas — precisely two temple taxes, one for Jesus and one for Peter. Fish in that lake, particularly the broad-mouthed species still caught there, are known to pick up and hold small objects.
What it meant to them
The voice on the mountain repeats what was said at the baptism and adds three words: listen to him. For readers being told to listen instead to the teachers of their synagogue, that instruction settled the question of whose voice ranked highest.
The tax episode then modelled how they should live in the meantime. Sons are free, Jesus says — and pays anyway, so as not to give offence. A community with a genuine claim to freedom still chose not to make every point it could win.
Sources cited
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament
- Joachim Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus
The text of this chapter
This site records the readings below for this chapter. Spelling and word-order differences that change no meaning are passed over.
Matthew 17:21
Prayer and fasting, a verse that is missing from Matthew
Matthew's verse 21, "this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting" — is absent from the earliest manuscripts and looks like a copy of Mark 9:29 that a scribe wrote into the margin.
What the manuscripts read here →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.