Matthew9chapter 9

Matthew 9:1-2

Jesus returns to Capernaum, his own city, and is met by a man sick of the palsy carried on a bed by others whose faith he sees and credits. Seeing their faith, not only the sick man's own, Jesus speaks first to the deeper need, thy sins be forgiven thee, a word no one there had asked for. The bench reads the order as deliberate: the man came for his legs and received, before that, his standing with God.

Matthew 9:3-4

Certain of the scribes charge blasphemy within themselves, silently, and Jesus answers a thought no one voiced, which is itself an unspoken claim to see as God sees. Their logic is sound as far as it runs: only God can forgive sins, so a man who claims to forgive them claims what belongs to God alone. The scribes are right about the theology and wrong about the man standing in front of them.

Matthew 9:5-6

Jesus poses the test himself: which is easier to say, thy sins be forgiven, or arise and walk, since both are equally beyond human power and only one can be checked by watching eyes. The healing is offered as proof of the forgiveness, that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, the title's claim made visible in a paralytic's legs. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown note the healed body is the receipt for a pardon no one could otherwise verify.

Matthew 9:7-8

He arose and departed to his house, the same command answered instantly that answered the centurion's servant, and the multitudes marvelled and glorified God. Matthew's own summary, which had given such power unto men, keeps the crowd's theology one step short of full recognition, praising the Giver while still classing Jesus among men who receive power rather than the one who has it in himself. The distance between marvelling and worshipping runs through the whole Gospel.

Matthew 9:9

Jesus saw a man named Matthew sitting at the receipt of custom, a tax booth on the Capernaum road, and called him with the same two words given to the fishermen, follow me. A publican farmed Rome's taxes for profit and was despised by his own people as a collaborator and an extortioner, which makes the call itself the sermon: the same authority that forgives sins now claims a man whose trade the law-abiding would not touch. He arose, and followed him, leaving the booth as Peter and Andrew had left the nets.

Matthew 9:10-11

Jesus sat at meat in the house, almost certainly Matthew's own by the parallel accounts, and many publicans and sinners came and sat down with him, a reclining table of the very company the Pharisees would not enter. The Pharisees put the question to the disciples rather than to Jesus directly, why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners, table fellowship in that culture being itself a declaration of acceptance. The bench reads their question as sincere by their own lights: a rabbi's company was thought to certify a man's standing.

Matthew 9:12-13

They that be whole need not a physician answers the Pharisees on their own premise, that he keeps company with sinners because sinners are exactly who a physician is for. The citation, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, is Hosea 6:6, and Jesus sends the Pharisees back to learn it, go ye and learn, a rabbinic formula ordinarily aimed at the untaught rather than the teachers. John Lightfoot notes the sting: men who prized ritual precision are told they have not yet understood their own Scriptures on the point that matters most, mercy over cultic correctness.

Matthew 9:14-15

The disciples of John ask why his disciples and the Pharisees fast often while Jesus' disciples do not, and Jesus answers from a wedding, the children of the bridechamber cannot mourn while the bridegroom is with them. He identifies himself as the bridegroom, the first sounding of the bridegroom thread that runs to the marriage of the king's son in chapter 22 and the ten virgins in chapter 25, drawing on Hosea's marriage theology of Israel and her God. The days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall they fast names his death plainly and reorders fasting as mourning for an absence rather than a work that earns favor.

Matthew 9:16-17

The two parables of the unshrunk cloth and the new wine both make the same point Jesus has just enacted at the wedding saying: what he brings will not simply patch onto the old system without tearing it or bursting it. New wine still fermenting needs a skin that can stretch, and an unfulled patch will shrink and tear the old garment further than the original hole. Adam Clarke reads both parables as Jesus preparing his disciples for a kingdom that fulfills the law rather than merely decorating it, needing its own form rather than the old wineskins of external Pharisaic religion.

Matthew 9:18-19

A certain ruler, named Jairus in Mark and Luke, a synagogue official, comes and worships him with a plea Matthew compresses to its bluntest form, my daughter is even now dead, though the parallels have her only dying when he leaves home. Come and lay thy hand upon her, and she shall live states a confidence in touch itself as sufficient, the same confidence that will surface in the woman who only needs to touch his garment two verses later. Jesus rises at once and follows, no hesitation recorded before a ruler's request, though a ruler of this kind commonly opposed him.

Matthew 9:20-22

A woman with an issue of blood twelve years, ritually unclean by Leviticus 15 for all that time and so barred from ordinary contact, comes behind him rather than face him and touches only the hem of his garment, the tzitzit fringe commanded in Numbers 15:38. Her private reasoning, if I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole, is answered publicly: Jesus turns, names her daughter, and credits her faith rather than the fabric, thy faith hath made thee whole. The bench notes the reversal matching the leper of chapter 8: contact that should have defiled him instead cleanses her, and she is made whole from that hour, the healing dated to the instant of touch.

Matthew 9:23-26

Jesus arrives to hired minstrels and a wailing crowd, the customary hired mourning of the culture, already underway though the child has only just died, and his the maid is not dead, but sleepeth draws open scorn, they laughed him to scorn. Sleep is his own word for death throughout the Gospels where resurrection is imminent, as at Lazarus's tomb in John 11, a description of death's temporary hold rather than a denial that she had died. He puts the mockers out, takes her by the hand, and the maid arose, the second resurrection scene of the Gospel after Jairus's daughter, and the report spreads through all that land.

Matthew 9:27-28

Two blind men follow him crying Thou Son of David, have mercy on us, the messianic title's first use as a direct address in Matthew and a beat in the son of David thread that runs from the genealogy to the temple children's shout at 21:15. Jesus does not answer in the street but waits until he is come into the house, and there puts the question to them directly, believe ye that I am able to do this, making explicit confession the condition he names before he acts. Their answer, Yea, Lord, is the shortest creed in the chapter.

Matthew 9:29-31

According to your faith be it unto you ties the healing to the faith just confessed, and their eyes were opened. Jesus straitly charged them, see that no man know it, one of several charges to silence in this stretch of the Gospel that the disciples do not keep, and Matthew records the disobedience without excusing it, they spread abroad his fame in all that country. The bench reads the charge as Jesus managing the crowd's messianic excitement rather than forbidding gratitude itself, wary of a following built on wonders rather than repentance.

Matthew 9:32-34

A dumb man possessed with a devil is brought as the blind men depart, and once the devil is cast out the dumb spake, drawing from the multitudes the strongest verdict of the chapter, it was never so seen in Israel. The Pharisees answer with the accusation Jesus will confront directly at 12:24, he casteth out devils through the prince of the devils, unable to deny the deed and so assigning it to the wrong source. Matthew Henry reads the charge as the darkest response yet recorded, worse than scorn or indifference, since it calls the Spirit's work the devil's.

Matthew 9:35-36

Jesus went about all the cities and villages summarizes a preaching and healing circuit paired almost word for word with 4:23, framing the miracles of chapters 8 and 9 as one unit bracketed by the same sentence. Moved with compassion on the multitudes because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd draws on Numbers 27:17 and Ezekiel 34's indictment of Israel's failed shepherds, and opens the shepherd thread that runs through the sending of the twelve, the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and the smitten shepherd of 26:31. The crowd's condition, not their sin alone, is what moves him.

Matthew 9:37-38

The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few turns the scattered-sheep image into a farming image without losing the compassion behind it, a field ready and unattended. Jesus does not send the disciples out yet in this verse but instructs them to pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth labourers, placing the initiative with God even as chapter 10 will show him commissioning the very twelve he tells them to pray for. Chrysostom notes the same men praying here become the answer to their own prayer within the next chapter.