{"commentary":{"id":"jamieson-fausset-brown","name":"Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary","website":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamieson-Fausset-Brown_Bible_Commentary","licenseUrl":"https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/","licenseNotes":null,"licenseNotice":null,"englishName":"Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary","language":"eng","textDirection":"rtl","sha256":"db3d4c8b3c1f32ef9d1430a57392e02bda3a17aac1f9bbe398461de021a3cb13","availableFormats":["json"],"listOfBooksApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/books.json","listOfProfilesApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/profiles.json","numberOfBooks":66,"totalNumberOfChapters":1187,"totalNumberOfVerses":17056,"totalNumberOfProfiles":0,"languageName":"English","languageEnglishName":"English"},"book":{"id":"MAT","commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","name":"Matthew","commonName":"Matthew","introduction":"THE author of this Gospel was a publican or tax gatherer, residing at Capernaum, on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. As to his identity with the \"Levi\" of the second and third Gospels, and other particulars, see on Mat 9:9. Hardly anything is known of his apostolic labors. That, after preaching to his countrymen in Palestine, he went to the East, is the general testimony of antiquity; but the precise scene or scenes of his ministry cannot be determined. That he died a natural death may be concluded from the belief of the best-informed of the Fathers--that of the apostles only three, James the Greater, Peter, and Paul, suffered martyrdom. That the first Gospel was written by this apostle is the testimony of all antiquity.\n\nFor the date of this Gospel we have only internal evidence, and that far from decisive. Accordingly, opinion is much divided. That it was the first issued of all the Gospels was universally believed. Hence, although in the order of the Gospels, those by the two apostles were placed first in the oldest manuscripts of the Old Latin version, while in all the Greek manuscripts, with scarcely an exception, the order is the same as in our Bibles, the Gospel according to Matthew is \"in every case\" placed first. And as this Gospel is of all the four the one which bears the most evident marks of having been prepared and constructed with a special view to the Jews--who certainly first required a written Gospel, and would be the first to make use of it--there can be no doubt that it was issued before any of the others. That it was written before the destruction of Jerusalem is equally certain; for as HUG observes [Introduction to the New Testament, p. 316, FOSDICK'S translation], when he reports our Lord's prophecy of that awful event, on coming to the warning about \"the abomination of desolation\" which they should \"see standing in the holy place,\" he interposes (contrary to his invariable practice, which is to relate without remark) a call to his readers to read intelligently--\"Whoso readeth, let him understand\" (Mat 24:15) --a call to attend to the divine signal for flight which could be intended only for those who lived before the event. But how long before that event this Gospel was written is not so clear. Some internal evidences seem to imply a very early date. Since the Jewish Christians were, for five or six years, exposed to persecution from their own countrymen--until the Jews, being persecuted by the Romans, had to look to themselves--it is not likely (it is argued) that they should be left so long without some written Gospel to reassure and sustain them, and Matthew's Gospel was eminently fitted for that purpose. But the digests to which Luke refers in his Introduction (see on Luk 1:1) would be sufficient for a time, especially as the living voice of the \"eye-witnesses and ministers of the Word\" was yet sounding abroad. Other considerations in favor of a very early date--such as the tender way in which the author seems studiously to speak of Herod Antipas, as if still reigning, and his writing of Pilate apparently as if still in power--seem to have no foundation in fact, and cannot therefore be made the ground of reasoning as to the date of this Gospel. Its Hebraic structure and hue, though they prove, as we think, that this Gospel must have been published at a period considerably anterior to the destruction of Jerusalem, are no evidence in favor of so early a date as A.D. 37 or 38--according to some of the Fathers, and, of the moderns, TILLEMONT, TOWNSON, OWEN, BIRKS, TREGELLES. On the other hand, the date suggested by the statement of IRENÆUS [Against Heresies, 3.1], that Matthew put forth his Gospel while Peter and Paul were at Rome preaching and founding the Church--or after A.D. 60--though probably the majority of critics are in favor of it, would seem rather too late, especially as the second and third Gospels, which were doubtless published, as well as this one, before the destruction of Jerusalem, had still to be issued. Certainly, such statements as the following, \"Wherefore that field is called the field of blood unto this day\" (Mat 27:8); \"And this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day\" (Mat 28:15), bespeak a date considerably later than the events recorded. We incline, therefore, to a date intermediate between the earlier and the later dates assigned to this Gospel, without pretending to greater precision.\n\nWe have adverted to the strikingly Jewish character and coloring of this Gospel. The facts which it selects, the points to which it gives prominence, the cast of thought and phraseology, all bespeak the Jewish point of view from which it was written and to which it was directed. This has been noticed from the beginning, and is universally acknowledged. It is of the greatest consequence to the right interpretation of it; but the tendency among some even of the best of the Germans to infer, from this special design of the first Gospel, a certain laxity on the part of the Evangelist in the treatment of his facts, must be guarded against.\n\nBut by far the most interesting and important point connected with this Gospel is the language in which it was written. It is believed by a formidable number of critics that this Gospel was originally written in what is loosely called Hebrew, but more correctly Aramaic, or Syro-Chaldaic, the native tongue of the country at the time of our Lord; and that the Greek Matthew which we now possess is a translation of that work, either by the Evangelist himself or some unknown hand. The evidence on which this opinion is grounded is wholly external, but it has been deemed conclusive by GROTIUS, MICHAELIS (and his translator), MARSH, TOWNSON, CAMPBELL, OLSHAUSEN, CRESWELL, MEYER, EBRARD, LANGE, DAVIDSON, CURETON, TREGELLES, WEBSTER and WILKINSON, &c. The evidence referred to cannot be given here, but will be found, with remarks on its unsatisfactory character, in the Introduction to the Gospels prefixed to our larger Commentary, pp. 28-31.\n\nBut how stand the facts as to our Greek Gospel? We have not a title of historical evidence that it is a translation, either by Matthew himself or anyone else. All antiquity refers to it as the work of Matthew the publican and apostle, just as the other Gospels are ascribed to their respective authors. This Greek Gospel was from the first received by the Church as an integral part of the one quadriform Gospel. And while the Fathers often advert to the two Gospels which we have from apostles, and the two which we have from men not apostles--in order to show that as that of Mark leans so entirely on Peter, and that of Luke on Paul, these are really no less apostolical than the other two--though we attach less weight to this circumstance than they did, we cannot but think it striking that, in thus speaking, they never drop a hint that the full apostolic authority of the Greek Matthew had ever been questioned on the ground of its not being the original. Further, not a trace can be discovered in this Gospel itself of its being a translation. MICHAELIS tried to detect, and fancied that he had succeeded in detecting, one or two such. Other Germans since, and DAVIDSON and CURETON among ourselves, have made the same attempt. But the entire failure of all such attempts is now generally admitted, and candid advocates of a Hebrew original are quite ready to own that none such are to be found, and that but for external testimony no one would have imagined that the Greek was not the original. This they regard as showing how perfectly the translation has been executed; but those who know best what translating from one language into another is will be the readiest to own that this is tantamount to giving up the question. This Gospel proclaims its own originality in a number of striking points; such as its manner of quoting from the Old Testament, and its phraseology in some peculiar cases. But the close verbal coincidences of our Greek Matthew with the next two Gospels must not be quite passed over. There are but two possible ways of explaining this. Either the translator, sacrificing verbal fidelity in his version, intentionally conformed certain parts of his author's work to the second and third Gospels--in which case it can hardly be called Matthew's Gospel at all--or our Greek Matthew is itself the original.\n\nMoved by these considerations, some advocates of a Hebrew original have adopted the theory of a double original; the external testimony, they think, requiring us to believe in a Hebrew original, while internal evidence is decisive in favor of the originality of the Greek. This theory is espoused by GUERICKS, OLSHAUSEN, THIERSCH, TOWNSON, TREGELLES, &c. But, besides that this looks too like an artificial theory, invented to solve a difficulty, it is utterly void of historical support. There is not a vestige of testimony to support it in Christian antiquity. This ought to be decisive against it.\n\nIt remains, then, that our Greek Matthew is the original of that Gospel, and that no other original ever existed. It is greatly to the credit of DEAN ALFORD, that after maintaining, in the first edition of his Greek Testament the theory of a Hebrew original, he thus expresses himself in the second and subsequent editions: \"On the whole, then, I find myself constrained to abandon the view maintained in my first edition, and to adopt that of a Greek original.\"\n\nOne argument has been adduced on the other side, on which not a little reliance has been placed; but the determination of the main question does not, in our opinion, depend upon the point which it raises. It has been very confidently affirmed that the Greek language was not sufficiently understood by the Jews of Palestine when Matthew published his Gospel to make it at all probable that he would write a Gospel, for their benefit in the first instance, in that language. Now, as this merely alleges the improbability of a Greek original, it is enough to place against it the evidence already adduced, which is positive, in favor of the sole originality of our Greek Matthew. It is indeed a question how far the Greek language was understood in Palestine at the time referred to. But we advise the reader not to be drawn into that question as essential to the settlement of the other one. It is an element in it, no doubt, but not an essential element. There are extremes on both sides of it. The old idea, that our Lord hardly ever spoke anything but Syro-Chaldaic, is now pretty nearly exploded. Many, however, will not go the length, on the other side, of HUG (in his Introduction to the New Testament, pp. 326, &c.) and ROBERTS (\"Discussions of the Gospels,\" &c., pp. 25, &c.). For ourselves, though we believe that our Lord, in all the more public scenes of His ministry, spoke in Greek, all we think it necessary here to say is that there is no ground to believe that Greek was so little understood in Palestine as to make it improbable that Matthew would write his Gospel exclusively in that language--so improbable as to outweigh the evidence that he did so. And when we think of the number of digests or short narratives of the principal facts of our Lord's history which we know from Luke (Luk 1:1-4) were floating about for some time before he wrote his Gospel, of which he speaks by no means disrespectfully, and nearly all of which would be in the mother tongue, we can have no doubt that the Jewish Christians and the Jews of Palestine generally would have from the first reliable written matter sufficient to supply every necessary requirement until the publican-apostle should leisurely draw up the first of the four Gospels in a language to them not a strange tongue, while to the rest of the world it was the language in which the entire quadriform Gospel was to be for all time enshrined. The following among others hold to this view of the sole originality of the Greek Matthew: ERASMUS, CALVIN, BEZA, LIGHTFOOT, WETSTEIN, LARDNER, HUG, FRITZSCHE, CREDNER, DE WETTE, STUART, DA COSTA, FAIRBAIRN, ROBERTS.\n\nOn two other questions regarding this Gospel it would have been desirable to say something, had not our available space been already exhausted: The characteristics, both in language and matter, by which it is distinguished from the other three, and its relation to the second and third Gospels. On the latter of these topics--whether one or more of the Evangelists made use of the materials of the other Gospels, and, if so, which of the Evangelists drew from which--the opinions are just as numerous as the possibilities of the case, every conceivable way of it having one or more who plead for it. The most popular opinion until recently--and perhaps the most popular still--is that the second Evangelist availed himself more or less of the materials of the first Gospel, and the third of the materials of both the first and second Gospels. Here we can but state our own belief, that each of the first three Evangelists wrote independently of both the others; while the fourth, familiar with the first three, wrote to supplement them, and, even where he travels along the same line, wrote quite independently of them. This judgment we express, with all deference for those who think otherwise, as the result of a close study of each of the Gospels in immediate juxtaposition and comparison with the others. On the former of the two topics noticed, the linguistic peculiarities of each of the Gospels have been handled most closely and ably by CREDNER [Einleitung (Introduction to the New Testament)], of whose results a good summary will be found in DAVIDSON'S Introduction to the New Testament. The other peculiarities of the Gospels have been most felicitously and beautifully brought out by DA COSTA in his Four Witnesses, to which we must simply refer the reader, though it contains a few things in which we cannot concur. \n\n\n\nNext: Matthew Chapter 1\n\n","order":40,"numberOfChapters":28,"sha256":"85230502f7845520bbf6f2983f2d40076dbb901c7feac0d1cfa0d62c8b7d54f8","firstChapterNumber":1,"firstChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/MAT/1.json","firstChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"MAT","chapter":1},"lastChapterNumber":28,"lastChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/MAT/28.json","lastChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"MAT","chapter":28},"totalNumberOfVerses":525},"chapter":{"number":3,"content":[{"type":"verse","number":2,"content":["And saying, Repent ye--Though the word strictly denotes a change of mind, it has respect here (and wherever it is used in connection with salvation) primarily to that sense of sin which leads the sinner to flee from the wrath to come, to look for relief only from above, and eagerly to fall in with the provided remedy. \n\nfor the kingdom of heaven is at hand--This sublime phrase, used in none of the other Gospels, occurs in this peculiarly Jewish Gospel nearly thirty times; and being suggested by Daniel's grand vision of the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven to the Ancient of days, to receive His investiture in a world-wide kingdom (Dan 7:13-14), it was fitted at once both to meet the national expectations and to turn them into the right channel. A kingdom for which repentance was the proper preparation behooved to be essentially spiritual. Deliverance from sin, the great blessing of Christ's kingdom (Mat 1:21), can be valued by those only to whom sin is a burden (Mat 9:12). John's great work, accordingly, was to awaken this feeling and hold out the hope of a speedy and precious remedy.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":3,"content":["For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying-- (Mat 11:3). \n\nThe voice of one crying in the wilderness--(See on Luk 3:2); the scene of his ministry corresponding to its rough nature. \n\nPrepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight--This prediction is quoted in all the four Gospels, showing that it was regarded as a great outstanding one, and the predicted forerunner as the connecting link between the old and the new economies. Like the great ones of the earth, the Prince of peace was to have His immediate approach proclaimed and His way prepared; and the call here--taking it generally--is a call to put out of the way whatever would obstruct His progress and hinder His complete triumph, whether those hindrances were public or personal, outward or inward. In Luke (Luk 3:5-6) the quotation is thus continued: \"Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.\" Levelling and smoothing are here the obvious figures whose sense is conveyed in the first words of the proclamation--\"Prepare ye the way of the Lord.\" The idea is that every obstruction shall be so removed as to reveal to the whole world the salvation of God in Him whose name is the \"Saviour.\" (Compare Psa 98:3; Isa 11:10; Isa 49:6; Isa 52:10; Luk 2:31-32; Act 13:47).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":4,"content":["And the same John had his raiment of camel's hair--woven of it. \n\nand a leathern girdle about his loins--the prophetic dress of Elijah (Kg2 1:8; and see Zac 13:4). \n\nand his meat was locusts--the great, well-known Eastern locust, a food of the poor (Lev 11:22). \n\nand wild honey--made by wild bees (Sa1 14:25-26). This dress and diet, with the shrill cry in the wilderness, would recall the stern days of Elijah.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":5,"content":["Then went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judea, and all the region round about Jordan--From the metropolitan center to the extremities of the Judean province the cry of this great preacher of repentance and herald of the approaching Messiah brought trooping penitents and eager expectants.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":6,"content":["And were baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins--probably confessing aloud. This baptism was at once a public seal of their felt need of deliverance from sin, of their expectation of the coming Deliverer, and of their readiness to welcome Him when He appeared. The baptism itself startled, and was intended to startle, them. They were familiar enough with the baptism of proselytes from heathenism; but this baptism of Jews themselves was quite new and strange to them.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":7,"content":["But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them--astonished at such a spectacle. \n\nO generation of vipers--\"Viper brood,\" expressing the deadly influence of both sects alike upon the community. Mutually and entirely antagonistic as were their religious principles and spirit, the stem prophet charges both alike with being the poisoners of the nation's religious principles. In Mat 12:34; Mat 23:33, this strong language of the Baptist is anew applied by the faithful and true Witness to the Pharisees specifically--the only party that had zeal enough actively to diffuse this poison. \n\nwho hath warned you--given you the hint, as the idea is. \n\nto flee from the wrath to come?--\"What can have brought you hither?\" John more than suspected it was not so much their own spiritual anxieties as the popularity of his movement that had drawn them thither. What an expression is this, \"The wrath to come!\" God's \"wrath,\" in Scripture, is His righteous displeasure against sin, and consequently against all in whose skirts sin is found, arising out of the essential and eternal opposition of His nature to all moral evil. This is called \"the coming wrath,\" not as being wholly future--for as a merited sentence it lies on the sinner already, and its effects, both inward and outward, are to some extent experienced even now--but because the impenitent sinner will not, until \"the judgment of the great day,\" be concluded under it, will not have sentence publicly and irrevocably passed upon him, will not have it discharged upon him and experience its effects without mixture and without hope. In this view of it, it is a wrath wholly to come, as is implied in the noticeably different form of the expression employed by the apostle in Th1 1:10. Not that even true penitents came to John's baptism with all these views of \"the wrath to come.\" But what he says is that this was the real import of the step itself. In this view of it, how striking is the word he employs to express that step--fleeing from it--as of one who, beholding a tide of fiery wrath rolling rapidly towards him, sees in instant flight his only escape!\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":8,"content":["Bring forth therefore fruits--the true reading clearly is \"fruit\"; \n\nmeet for repentance--that is, such fruit as befits a true penitent. John now being gifted with a knowledge of the human heart, like a true minister of righteousness and lover of souls here directs them how to evidence and carry out their repentance, supposing it genuine; and in the following verses warns them of their danger in case it were not.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":9,"content":["And think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father--that pillow on which the nation so fatally reposed, that rock on which at length it split. \n\nfor I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham--that is, \"Flatter not yourselves with the fond delusion that God stands in need of you, to make good His promise of a seed to Abraham; for I tell you that, though you were all to perish, God is as able to raise up a seed to Abraham out of those stones as He was to take Abraham himself out of the rock whence he was hewn, out of the hole of the pit whence he was digged\" (Isa 51:1). Though the stem speaker may have pointed as he spoke to the pebbles of the bare clay hills that lay around (so STANLEY'S Sinai and Palestine), it was clearly the calling of the Gentiles at that time stone-dead in their sins, and quite as unconscious of it--into the room of unbelieving and disinherited Israel that he meant thus to indicate (see Mat 21:43; Rom 11:20, Rom 11:30).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":10,"content":["And now also--And even already. \n\nthe axe is laid unto--\"lieth at.\" \n\nthe root of the trees--as it were ready to strike: an expressive figure of impending judgment, only to be averted in the way next described. \n\ntherefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire--Language so personal and individual as this can scarcely be understood of any national judgment like the approaching destruction of Jerusalem, with the breaking up of the Jewish polity and the extrusion of the chosen people from their peculiar privileges which followed it; though this would serve as the dark shadow, cast before, of a more terrible retribution to come. The \"fire,\" which in another verse is called \"unquenchable,\" can be no other than that future \"torment\" of the impenitent whose \"smoke ascendeth up for ever and ever,\" and which by the Judge Himself is styled \"everlasting punishment\" (Mat 25:46). What a strength, too, of just indignation is in that word \"cast\" or \"flung into the fire!\"\n\nThe third Gospel here adds the following important particulars in Luk 3:10-16.\n\n\nLuk 3:10 : \n\nAnd the people--the multitudes. \n\nasked him, saying, What shall we do then?--that is, to show the sincerity of our repentance.\n\n\nLuk 3:11 : \n\nHe answereth and saith unto them, He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat--provisions, victuals. \n\nlet him do likewise--This is directed against the reigning avarice and selfishness. (Compare the corresponding precepts of the Sermon on the Mount, Mat 5:40-42).\n\n\nLuk 3:12 : \n\nThen came also the publicans to be baptized, and said unto him, Master--Teacher. \n\nwhat shall we do?--In what special way is the genuineness of our repentance to be manifested?\n\n\nLuk 3:13 : \n\nAnd he said unto them, Exact no more than that which is appointed you--This is directed against that extortion which made the publicans a byword. (See on Mat 5:46; Luk 15:1).\n\n\nLuk 3:14 : \n\nAnd the soldiers--rather, \"And soldiers\"--the word means \"soldiers on active duty.\" \n\nlikewise demanded--asked. \n\nof him, saying, And what shall we do? And he said unto them, Do violence to no man--Intimidate. The word signifies to \"shake thoroughly,\" and refers probably to the extorting of money or other property. \n\nneither accuse any falsely--by acting as informers vexatiously on frivolous or false pretexts. \n\nand be content with your wages--or \"rations.\" We may take this, say WEBSTER and WILKINSON, as a warning against mutiny, which the officers attempted to suppress by largesses and donations. And thus the \"fruits\" which would evidence their repentance were just resistance to the reigning sins--particularly of the class to which the penitent belonged--and the manifestation of an opposite spirit.\n\n\nLuk 3:15 : \n\nAnd as the people were in expectation--in a state of excitement, looking for something new \n\nand all men mused in their hearts of John, whether he were the Christ, or not--rather, \"whether he himself might be the Christ.\" The structure of this clause implies that they could hardly think it, but yet could not help asking themselves whether it might not be; showing both how successful he had been in awakening the expectation of Messiah's immediate appearing, and the high estimation and even reverence, which his own character commanded.\n\n\nLuk 3:16 : \n\nJohn answered--either to that deputation from Jerusalem, of which we read in Joh 1:19, &c., or on some other occasion, to remove impressions derogatory to his blessed Master, which he knew to be taking hold of the popular mind. \n\nsaying unto them all--in solemn protestation.\n\n(We now return to the first Gospel.)\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":11,"content":["I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance--(See on Mat 3:6); \n\nbut he that cometh after me is mightier than I--In Mark and Luke this is more emphatic--\"But there cometh the Mightier than I\" (Mar 1:7; Luk 3:16). \n\nwhose shoes--sandals. \n\nI am not worthy to bear--The sandals were tied and untied, and borne about by the meanest servants. \n\nhe shall baptize you--the emphatic \"He\": \"He it is,\" to the exclusion of all others, \"that shall baptize you.\" \n\nwith the Holy Ghost--\"So far from entertaining such a thought as laying claim to the honors of Messiahship, the meanest services I can render to that \"Mightier than I that is coming after me\" are too high an honor for me; I am but the servant, but the Master is coming; I administer but the outward symbol of purification; His it is, as His sole prerogative, to dispense the inward reality. Beautiful spirit, distinguishing this servant of Christ throughout! \n\nand with fire--To take this as a distinct baptism from that of the Spirit--a baptism of the impenitent with hell-fire--is exceedingly unnatural. Yet this was the view of ORIGEN among the Fathers; and among moderns, of NEANDER, MEYER, DE WETTE, and LANGE. Nor is it much better to refer it to the fire of the great day, by which the earth and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Clearly, as we think, it is but the fiery character of the Spirit's operations upon the soul-searching, consuming, refining, sublimating--as nearly all good interpreters understand the words. And thus, in two successive clauses, the two most familiar emblems--water and fire--are employed to set forth the same purifying operations of the Holy Ghost upon the soul.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":12,"content":["Whose fan--winnowing fan. \n\nis in his hand--ready for use. This is no other than the preaching of the Gospel, even now beginning, the effect of which would be to separate the solid from the spiritually worthless, as wheat, by the winnowing fan, from the chaff. (Compare the similar representation in Mal 3:1-3). \n\nand he will throughly purge his floor--threshing-floor; that is, the visible Church. \n\nand gather his wheat--His true-hearted saints; so called for their solid worth (compare Amo 9:9; Luk 22:31). \n\ninto the garner--\"the kingdom of their Father,\" as this \"garner\" or \"barn\" is beautifully explained by our Lord in the parable of the wheat and the tares (Mat 13:30, Mat 13:43). \n\nbut he will burn up the chaff--empty, worthless professors of religion, void of all solid religious principle and character (see Psa 1:4). \n\nwith unquenchable fire--Singular is the strength of this apparent contradiction of figures:--to be burnt up, but with a fire that is unquenchable; the one expressing the utter destruction of all that constitutes one's true life, the other the continued consciousness of existence in that awful condition.\n\nLuke adds the following important particulars (Luk 3:18-20) :\n\n\nLuk 3:18 : \n\nAnd many other things in his exhortation preached he unto the people--showing that we have here but an abstract of his teaching. Besides what we read in Joh 1:29, Joh 1:33-34; Joh 3:27-36, the incidental allusion to his having taught his disciples to pray (Luk 11:1) --of which not a word is said elsewhere--shows how varied his teaching was.\n\n\nLuk 3:19 : \n\nBut Herod the tetrarch, being reproved by him for Herodias his brother Philip's wife, and for all the evils which Herod had done--In this last clause we have an important fact, here only mentioned, showing how thoroughgoing was the fidelity of the Baptist to his royal hearer, and how strong must have been the workings of conscience in that slave of passion when, notwithstanding such plainness, he \"did many things, and heard John gladly\" (Mar 6:20).\n\n\nLuk 3:20 : \n\nAdded yet this above all, that he shut up John in prison--This imprisonment of John, however, did not take place for some time after this; and it is here recorded merely because the Evangelist did not intend to recur to his history till he had occasion to relate the message which he sent to Christ from his prison at MachÃ&brvbrrus (Luk 7:18, &c.).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":13,"content":["BAPTISM OF CHRIST AND DESCENT OF THE SPIRIT UPON HIM IMMEDIATELY THEREAFTER. ( = Mar 1:9-11; Luk 3:21-22; Joh 1:31-34). (Mat 3:13-17)\n\nThen cometh Jesus from Galilee to Jordan unto John, to be baptized of him--Moses rashly anticipated the divine call to deliver his people, and for this was fain to flee the house of bondage, and wait in obscurity for forty years more (Exo 2:11, &c.). Not so this greater than Moses. All but thirty years had He now spent in privacy at Nazareth, gradually ripening for His public work, and calmly awaiting the time appointed of the Father. Now it had arrived; and this movement from Galilee to Jordan is the step, doubtless, of deepest interest to all heaven since that first one which brought Him into the world. Luke (Luk 3:21) has this important addition--\"Now when all the people were baptized, it came to pass, that Jesus being baptized,\" &c.--implying that Jesus waited till all other applicants for baptism that day had been disposed of, ere He stepped forward, that He might not seem to be merely one of the crowd. Thus, as He rode into Jerusalem upon an ass \"whereon yet never man sat\" (Luk 19:30), and lay in a sepulchre \"wherein was never man yet laid\" (Joh 19:41), so in His baptism, too. He would be \"separate from sinners.\"\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":14,"content":["But John forbade him--rather, \"was (in the act of) hindering him,\" or \"attempting to hinder him.\" \n\nsaying, I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?--(How John came to recognize Him, when he says he knew Him not, see Joh 1:31-34). The emphasis of this most remarkable speech lies all in the pronouns: \"What! Shall the Master come for baptism to the servant--the sinless Saviour to a sinner?\" That thus much is in the Baptist's words will be clearly seen if it be observed that he evidently regarded Jesus as Himself needing no purification but rather qualified to impart it to those who did. And do not all his other testimonies to Christ fully bear out this sense of the words? But it were a pity if, in the glory of this testimony to Christ, we should miss the beautiful spirit in which it was borne--\"Lord, must I baptize Thee? Can I bring myself to do such a thing?\"--reminding us of Peter's exclamation at the supper table, \"Lord, dost Thou wash my feet?\" while it has nothing of the false humility and presumption which dictated Peter's next speech. \"Thou shall never wash my feet\" (Joh 13:6, Joh 13:8).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":15,"content":["And Jesus answering said unto him, Suffer it to be so now--\"Let it pass for the present\"; that is, \"Thou recoilest, and no wonder, for the seeming incongruity is startling; but in the present case do as thou art bidden.\" \n\nfor thus it becometh us--\"us,\" not in the sense of me and thee,\" or \"men in general,\" but as in Joh 3:11. \n\nto fulfil all righteousness--If this be rendered, with SCRIVENER, \"every ordinance,\" or, with CAMPBELL, \"every institution,\" the meaning is obvious enough; and the same sense is brought out by \"all righteousness,\" or compliance with everything enjoined, baptism included. Indeed, if this be the meaning, our version perhaps best brings out the force of the opening word \"Thus.\" But we incline to think that our Lord meant more than this. The import of circumcision and of baptism seems to be radically the same. And if our remarks on the circumcision of our Lord (see on Luk 2:21-24) are well founded, He would seem to have said, \"Thus do I impledge Myself to the whole righteousness of the Law--thus symbolically do enter on and engage to fulfil it all.\" Let the thoughtful reader weigh this. \n\nThen he suffered him--with true humility, yielding to higher authority than his own impressions of propriety.\n\nDescent of the Spirit upon the Baptized Redeemer (Mat 3:16-17).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":16,"content":["And Jesus when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water--rather, \"from the water.\" Mark has \"out of the water\" (Mar 1:10). \"and\"--adds Luke (Luk 3:21), \"while He was praying\"; a grand piece of information. Can there be a doubt about the burden of that prayer; a prayer sent up, probably, while yet in the water--His blessed head suffused with the baptismal element; a prayer continued likely as He stepped out of the stream, and again stood upon the dry ground; the work before Him, the needed and expected Spirit to rest upon Him for it, and the glory He would then put upon the Father that sent Him--would not these fill His breast, and find silent vent in such form as this?--\"Lo, I come; I delight to do Thy will, O God. Father, glorify Thy name. Show Me a token for good. Let the Spirit of the Lord God come upon Me, and I will preach the Gospel to the poor, and heal the broken-hearted, and send forth judgment unto victory.\" While He was yet speaking-- \n\nlo, the heavens were opened--Mark says, sublimely, \"He saw the heavens cleaving\" (Mar 1:10). \n\nand he saw the Spirit of God descending--that is, He only, with the exception of His honored servant, as he tells us himself (Joh 1:32-34); the by-standers apparently seeing nothing. \n\nlike a dove, and lighting upon him--Luke says, \"in a bodily shape\" (Luk 3:22); that is, the blessed Spirit, assuming the corporeal form of a dove, descended thus upon His sacred head. But why in this form? The Scripture use of this emblem will be our best guide here. \"My dove, my undefiled is one,\" says the Song of Solomon (Sol 6:9). This is chaste purity. Again, \"Be ye harmless as doves,\" says Christ Himself (Mat 10:16). This is the same thing, in the form of inoffensiveness towards men. \"A conscience void of offense toward God and toward men\" (Act 24:16) expresses both. Further, when we read in the Song of Solomon (Sol 2:14), \"O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rocks, in the secret places of the stairs (see Isa 60:8), let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely\"--it is shrinking modesty, meekness, gentleness, that is thus charmingly depicted. In a word--not to allude to the historical emblem of the dove that flew back to the ark, bearing in its mouth the olive leaf of peace (Gen 8:11) --when we read (Psa 68:13), \"Ye shall be as the wings of a dove covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold,\" it is beauteousness that is thus held forth. And was not such that \"holy, harmless, undefiled One,\" the \"separate from sinners?\" \"Thou art fairer than the children of men; grace is poured into Thy lips; therefore God hath blessed Thee for ever!\" But the fourth Gospel gives us one more piece of information here, on the authority of one who saw and testified of it: \"John bare record, saying, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and IT ABODE UPON HIM.\" And lest we should think that this was an accidental thing, he adds that this last particular was expressly given him as part of the sign by which he was to recognize and identify Him as the Son of God: \"And I knew Him not: but He that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending AND REMAINING ON HIM, the same is He which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost. And I saw and bare record that this is the Son of God\" (Joh 1:32-34). And when with this we compare the predicted descent of the Spirit upon Messiah (Isa 11:2), \"And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him,\" we cannot doubt that it was this permanent and perfect resting of the Holy Ghost upon the Son of God--now and henceforward in His official capacity--that was here visibly manifested.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":17,"content":["And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is--Mark and Luke give it in the direct form, \"Thou art.\" (Mar 1:11; Luk 3:22). \n\nmy beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased--The verb is put in the aorist to express absolute complacency, once and for ever felt towards Him. The English here, at least to modern ears, is scarcely strong enough. \"I delight\" comes the nearest, perhaps, to that ineffable complacency which is manifestly intended; and this is the rather to be preferred, as it would immediately carry the thoughts back to that august Messianic prophecy to which the voice from heaven plainly alluded (Isa 42:1), \"Behold My Servant, whom I uphold; Mine Elect, IN WHOM MY SOUL DELIGHTETH.\" Nor are the words which follow to be overlooked, \"I have put My Spirit upon Him; He shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles.\" (The Septuagint perverts this, as it does most of the Messianic predictions, interpolating the word \"Jacob,\" and applying it to the Jews). Was this voice heard by the by-standers? From Matthew's form of it, one might suppose it so designed; but it would appear that it was not, and probably John only heard and saw anything peculiar about that great baptism. Accordingly, the words, \"Hear ye Him,\" are not added, as at the Transfiguration.\n\n\n\n\nNext: Matthew Chapter 4\n\n"]}],"introduction":"PREACHING AND MINISTRY OF JOHN. ( = Mar 1:1-8; Luke 3:1-18). (Mat 3:1-12)\n\nIn those days--of Christ's secluded life at Nazareth, where the last chapter left Him. \n\ncame John the Baptist, preaching--about six months before his Master. \n\nin the wilderness of Judea--the desert valley of the Jordan, thinly peopled and bare in pasture, a little north of Jerusalem.\n\n"},"thisChapterLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/MAT/3.json","thisChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"MAT","chapter":3},"nextChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/MAT/4.json","nextChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"MAT","chapter":4},"previousChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/MAT/2.json","previousChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"MAT","chapter":2},"numberOfVerses":16}