Matthew 21:15-17

B. The Children in the Temple: the High Priests and Scribes. Matthew 21:15-17

15And [But, δέ] when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things26 that he did, and the children crying in the temple, and saying, Hosanna to the Son of David; they were sore displeased, 16And said unto him, Hearest thou what these say? And Jesus saith unto them, Yea; have ye never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected [prepared, κατηρτὶσω]27 praise (Psalms 8:2)? 17And he left them, and went out of the city into Bethany; and he lodged there.

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

Matthew 21:15. The wonderful things, τὰ θανμάσια—More comprehensive than wonders or miracles. The expression occurs in the New Testament only here, but in the Sept. and the Classics it is common. The moral miracle, in a wider sense, which exhibited the Lord as King in His temple, is combined with the miracles proper.

And the children.—According to Sepp (Leben Jesu, iii. 192), by these children we must understand the virgins and youths consecrated to the temple-service. There can be no doubt that there were such youths dedicated to the temple; but, as they were under the immediate authority of the priests, their jubilant cries would at once have been suppressed by these priests themselves.

Matthew 21:16. Hearest thou what these say?—By this question they indirectly declared that they did not attribute to Him the Messianic dignity which this Messianic Hosanna involved. At the same time, they pronounced their judgment that children were not authorized to express any religious sentiment or opinion. It was contempt of the little ones. They laid the stress on the doctrinal utterance of the little ones; Christ, on the other hand, on their religious singing.

Have ye never read?—Psalms 8:2 [ Matthew 21:3 in the Hebrew and German text]. The passage of the Psalm finds the praise of God (in the original: a might; Sept.: praise) in the mouth of theocratical children, and even in the lispings of sucklings. Not that the Israelite sucklings might be three or four years old, and certainly not because of “the tender sounds of lisping sucklings.” The thought is, that the Great God of heaven is glorified by the seemingly insignificant men of this lower earth, including the very lowest of them, down to the very root of life. In the children and sucklings of the theocratic Church His praise begins to grow: it begins with the very life of human nature accepted by grace. The antitheses to be noted here, are the mouth of the infants, as also the sucklings and praising. But Christ gives this passage prominence, because in it the Old Testament expressly approved and praised just that which here took place. In the application of this Scripture, we find without doubt the following points:—1. The praise of the Messiah is the praise of God. 2. The praise of children is a praise which God Himself has prepared for Himself, the miraculous energy of His Spirit. 3. The scribes might fill up the rest: Thou hast prepared praise—“on account of Thine adversaries, to bring to silence the enemy and the accuser.” Not only are the passages themselves, which Christ quotes from the Old Testament, of the highest importance, but also the connection of those passages. The eighth Psalm is to be reckoned among the typical Messianic Psalms; it describes man in his higher Christological relations.

Matthew 21:17. And He left them.—How often does this indicate the moment of His moral discomfiture of His enemies, and of His free withdrawal from the contest! He passed the night in Bethany, which was His stronghold. On Bethany, see above, Matthew 21:1.

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. Christ rules in the midst of His enemies, Psalms 90:0.

2. God oft prepares for Himself a praise from the lips of infants and new-born babes, in opposition to the adult and aged who dishonor His name; and from the lips of a younger generation, who have not yet reached office and dignity, in opposition to a decaying generation of fathers who deny their official calling to give the Lord His praise.3. The same children, whom they would denounce as wicked disturbers, Christ regards as a chorus of unconscious prophets of His own advent.

4. Not only the blind and the lame, the afflicted and the children, but the Greeks also who desired to see Jesus, illustrated this great day. John 12:20-36 belongs to the same history, but probably to the day following.

[5. Heubner: May God in mercy protect us from such theologians and priests as are offended by children and their harmless songs! Children, too, are to sing the praises of God and of Christ. Would that our children were trained from early infancy for such praise.—P. S.]

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

The obduracy of the priests and scribes in the presence of the Lord’s miracles in the temple.—The question of the Pharisees; or, the evening clouds.—Not for one day did the hypocrites permit the Lord to rule undisturbed in His temple.—The jubilant children and the murmuring scribes: Earnest pastime and trifling earnestness in the temple; the free play of children a divine prophecy, and the constrained temple-service a godless play.28—The echo of the palm-entry in the hearts and lips of the children.—The Son of David, the beautiful dream of the youth in Israel.—The children’s Hosanna: 1. A significant act of childlike piety; 2. a noble blossom of the hope of Israel; 3. a divine testimony to the glory of Christ; 4. a sad echo of the elders’ dying Hosanna.—The mouth of babes and sucklings, in its vocation to condemn presumptuous tutorship in the Church.—Hearest Thou what these say? To unbelief, in the garb of bigotry, the most touching testimonies of faith are but blasphemies.—Those who are always reading, but do no more than read, must always hear the Lord’s question: Have ye never read?—They who read wrongly, objected to the Lord that He heard wrongly.—Christ and the Scriptures for ever bear witness to each other, against false scribes and false Christians.—Jesus leaves the contemners of His name to themselves, and goes His way. 1. He leaves them refuted and confounded; 2. He goes to His friends, to His rest and His work, with His own.—One day of the Lord is as a thousand years (Psalms 90:4; 2 Peter 3:8).—Christ in the temple the Restorer of all original rights in one right: 1. Of all rights (those of the Gentiles, of the poor, of the children); 2. in one right (that of God and His Anointed).

Starke:—Quesnel: The envy, covetousness, and ambition of corrupt clergy do more harm in the Church than its open enemies can do.—The world cannot bear that God and Christ should be honored.—Zeisius: The world mocks all pious simplicity.—Hardened and envious persecutors we must leave, and escape from danger.

Heubner:—Quench not the Spirit, especially among children.—Only Childlike hearts can praise Him aright.—Melanchthon (at the conference at Torgau): We need not be anxious; I have seen those who fight for us (praying mothers and children).

[Nast:—The children in the temple, proclaiming the honors of Christ, as emblems of the apostles and disciples, whom Christ calls “babes” in contrast to the wise and prudent of the world. “I thank thee, Father,” etc., Matthew 11:25.—P. S.]

C. The Deceptive Fig-tree, rich in Leaves, but without Fruit on the Temple-mount. The Symbolical Cursing. Matthew 21:18-22

(Mark 11:12-14; Mark 11:20-26.)

18Now in the morning, as he returned into the city, he hungered. 19And when he saw a fig tree in the way [seeing one (solitary) fig tree by the road side],29 he came to it, and found nothing thereon, but leaves only, and [And he] said unto it, Let no fruit30 grow on thee henceforward for ever. And presently [forthwith] the fig tree withered away. 20And when the disciples saw it, they marvelled, saying, How soon is the fig tree withered away!31 [And] 21Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not [do not doubt], ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree [not only shall ye do this with the fig tree],32 but also if ye shall say unto this mountain [of the temple], Be thou removed [taken up, Αρθητι], and be thou cast [and cast, καὶ βλήθητι] into the sea; it shall be done. 22And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

Matthew 21:18. He hungered.—Mark gives us here the stricter note of time. On the day of the procession Jesus only looked round the temple observingly; He then went out to Bethany, for it was evening. On Monday morning, as He went back to the temple, He was hungry; and this gave occasion for the cursing of the fig-tree. A day later, on Tuesday morning (not the evening before), the disciples, again accompanying the Lord to the city, found the fig-tree dried up from the roots. Matthew combines the two separate points of this transaction in one, in order to make more prominent the meaning of the whole. He would bring before the reader’s mind the antitype of the barren fig-tree, the high priests and scribes in their unbelieving conduct.33 The Lord’s hunger on this morning shows us with what ardor He went to take up His abode in the temple: He had not taken time to eat His breakfast at Bethany.34

Matthew 21:19. One fig-tree (μίαν).—Bengel: Unam illo loco. The fig-tree, תְּאֵנָה ficus, carica, was, like the vine, one of the most extensive and best cared-for productions of Palestine: this appears in the saying, “Under his own vine and fig-tree,”—a figure of peace (1 Kings 4:25). Compare on it the Bibl. Encyclops., especially Winer’s, and also Robinson and von Schubert on the Holy Land. The Rabbins studied under the shadow of the fig-tree, as in an arbor. It was often planted by the waysides, because the dust of the road was an absorbing counteraction to the strong flow of the sap,—so hindering a too great development of leaves, and promoting its fruitfulness. The fig itself was a common and much esteemed article of food. Three kinds were distinguished: 1. The early fig, Bicura, Boccore, which ripened after a mild winter at the end of June, and in Jerusalem still earlier. 2. The summer fig, Kermus, which ripened in August. 3. The winter fig, or later Kermus, which came to maturity only after the leaves were gone, and would hang through a mild winter into the spring: it was larger than the summer fig, and of a dark violet color. This last kind cannot here be meant, since a winter fig-tree might well have been long ago robbed of its fruit; and for the spring fig this might seem a too early period of the year. But its extraordinary show of leaves so early, gave a promise of early figs; since in the fig-tree the blossom and the fruit appear before the formation of the leaves.35 Thus it was this profusion of leaves which warranted the Lord in expecting to find figs on the tree. But the fruit was wanting. Mark explains: οὐ γὰρ ἦν καιρὸς σύκων.36 This does not mean, however, that at such a time of year figs were not to be expected; but that the tree had not yet been stripped, if it had ever borne fruit. The symbolical element, however, is the main thing here. A fig-tree laden with leaves promised fruit: if all fruit was wanting, it was a deceiver; and therefore an apt image of the hypocritical Jewish priesthood.

By the road-side: ἐπὶ τῆς ὁδοῦ.—“The tree stood over the way, either on an elevation in the way, or the way was a declining one.” Meyer. But a third supposition may be made, that the tree extended its branches over the level path.

Let no fruit grow on thee henceforth for ever.—The same criticism which objected against the treatment of the Gergesenes, that it was an invasion of private property, objects against the cursing of the fig-tree, that it was an outrage upon the forest laws. But as the driving out of the demons was no wild hunt, so the word of cursing was no felling axe. It cannot be said that a miracle of punishment was alien to Christ’s spirit. But this was not properly a miracle of punishment: it was a symbolical sign of the punishment which the people had to expect from God, but which our Lord exhibited as a sign of His own retribution, as being already the glorified King. And in this warning act—which was to seal to the disciples the subsequent judicial prophecies, and especially to release their hearts from all faith in the seeming sanctity of the temple-worship—lay the great design of the whole transaction. Jesus made a symbolical use of the attractive appearance of the leaves, and executed a symbolical judgment of the deceptive tree, which deluded and mocked the hungry traveller, in order to teach His disciples that they also must at last cease to seek spiritual nourishment from the leaf-covered, but fruitless priesthood, and look forward to the Divine judgments which would cause the withering away of the theocratic people.37

And forthwith (παραχρῆμα) the fig-tree withered away.—The tree was diseased through the overflow of its false life, which exhausted itself in luxuriant foliage. But the word of curse was miraculous, and the first prelude of that great miraculous work of Christ which at His advent will blast all the evil of this present world. But primarily it was an earnest of the speedy withering of the land, when the palms should vanish, the fig-trees wither, the fountains be sealed up, and Canaan become a waste. Paulus explained it as an announcement of the speedy natural death of the tree in popular language; Strauss, as a mythical construction of the parable in Luke 13:6; Origen, Chrysostom, and the moderns generally, as a prophetic symbolical representation of the doom upon the spiritual unfruitfulness of Israel. [The absence of any instruction on this symbolical meaning of the destruction of the fig-tree, is no valid objection against it; for this meaning readily suggested itself in view of the time and place of the act, and the whole series of denunciatory discourses which follow are an eloquent commentary, as Meyer correctly remarks, on the silent symbolical eloquence of the withered fig-tree.—P. S.]

Matthew 21:21. If ye say to this mountain.—The mountain to which the Lord pointed, wag doubtless the hill of the temple itself. It was, like the fig-tree, a figure of the hypocritical character, of the Jewish worship, as it lay in the way of the spread of the gospel, a future hindrance to His disciples in their work. This mountain, the theocratic Judaism, must be cast into the sea of the nations (destruction of Jerusalem), before the Church of Christ could reach its consummation and free development. Certainly this was not to be effected by judicial punishment on the part of the disciples themselves; but it was for them to exhibit symbolically the judgment of God, which would issue in such a translation of the temple mountain, by turning away from the Jews, and carrying the gospel, the true Zion, to the sea of the Gentile world. The displacement of the temple mountain had therefore two points, which, however, here coalesce.

Matthew 21:22. [And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, etc.—This promise is confined, of course, to prayers of faith ( Matthew 21:21-22), which implies agreement with the will of God, and excludes the abuse of this promise.—In John, Christ defines believing and effective prayer to be prayer in His name, John 14:13; John 15:16; John 16:24.—P. S.]

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

[1. The cursing of the fig-tree is both a Parable and a Prophecy in action, performed on the public road near the city and the temple, on Monday of the Passion-week, exhibiting Christ as the final Judge of that people which soon afterward crucified Him.—P. S.]

2. Jesus did not so much curse the fig-tree, as make manifest the curse of its internal blight It was, as it respects a fig-tree, only dead wood, fit only for the fire. To this destination He now gave it up. That Jesus had in view the spiritual condition of His people as figured by this tree, is plain from the parable, Luke 13:6. Yet Israel was, in God’s purpose, the early fig-tree among the nations, Hosea 9:10.

3. The withered fig-tree was a sign of many judgments: (1) A sign of the withering congregation of the temple or the expiring of the theocracy; (2) of withering Canaan; (3) of withering external church organizations and sects; (4) of the withering old earth: The sudden blight was a token of the instantaneousness of the judgment—of the catastrophes which had been in secret long prepared for.[4. The Saviour performed innumerable miracles of mercy on living and feeling men, but only one miracle of judgment, and that not on a human being, which He came to save, but on an unfruitful, unfeeling tree, and with a view to benefit all impenitent sinners by timely warning them of their danger. Thus we have even here a proof of Christ’s goodness in His severity. Thus even the barren fig-tree bears constant fruit in the garden of Holy Scripture as a symbol of the fearful doom of hypocritical ostentation and unfruitfulness. (Comp. similar remarks of Hilary, Grotius, Heubner, Trench, and Wordsworth.)—P. S.][5. The tree was not cursed so much for being barren, as for being false. No fruit could be expected of any nation before Christ; for the time of figs was not yet. The true fruit of any people before the Incarnation would hare been to own that they had no fruit, that without Christ they could do nothing. The Gentiles owned this; but the Jews boasted of their law, temple, worship, ceremonies, prerogatives, and good works, thus resembling the fig-tree with pretentious, deceitful leaves without fruit Their condemnation was, not that they were sick, but that, being sick, they counted themselves whole. (Condensed from Trench and Witsius.)—P. S.]

[6. Striking simultaneous exhibition of Christ’s humanity in hungering, and of His divinity in the destruction of the fig-tree by a word of Almighty power which can create and can destroy. Bengel: Maxima humanitatis et deitatis indicia uno tempore edere solitue est. John 11:35; John 11:40. Wordsworth: “He hungers as a Man, and withers the tree as God. Whenever He gives signs of human infirmity, some proof of His divine power is always near.” Comp. the poverty of His birth, and the song of angels and the adoration of the shepherds and magi; the circumcision, and the name of Christ; the purification in the temple, and the hymn of Simeon and Hanna; His obedience to His parents, and astonishing wisdom in the temple; the baptism on Jordan, and the voice from heaven and the Holy Spirit descending on Him; the announcement of His passion, and the transfiguration on the mount; the payment of tribute-money to the temple, and the miracle of the fish with the stater; the cross, and the royal inscription, etc.—P. S.]

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

How Jesus, with holy self-forgetfulness, early hastened to the scene of His great day’s work.—He spiritualized everything natural: even His own hunger and thirst were made awakening sermons.—Christ everywhere, in the best sense of the phrase, made a virtue out of necessity.—The barren fig-tree on the mountain of the temple a perpetual exhortation to the Church: 1. A faithful image of the priestly community in Israel as it then appeared (full of leaves, empty of fruit); 2. a warning example in its sudden blight under the curse (revealed as a dead tree, and as such given up to the fire).—The withering fig-tree as a warning to self-examination also for individual believers.—A sound fig-tree must put forth blossom earlier than leaves.—The interpretation of His act by His word: 1. The fig-tree has a close reference to the temple mountain; 2. as the fig-tree stopped Jesus in His way, so the temple mountain stopped the disciples; 3. as the Lord removed the hindrance by His miraculous word, so the disciples must overcome it by a miraculous faith, which should remove the hill of Zion into the midst of the nations (although, in doing so, the Jews were dispersed among the peoples).—All that the Christian asks in faith is given to him: 1. In faith it is given to him what he should ask; 2. in faith he asks what shall be given to him.

Starke:—The world often lets Christ’s servants suffer hunger and need.—When we are in want, we suffer what Jesus suffered.—Faith lays low all imaginations that exalt themselves against the knowledge of God, 2 Corinthians 10:4-5.—Teachers remove mountains when they overcome in faith, and remove out of the way, the hindrances which are thrown in the way of their vocation.—Faith and prayer: Faith is the source of prayer; prayer the voice of faith.

Lisco:—Jesus in His human necessity, Matthew 21:18; and in His divine power and dignity, Matthew 21:19.

Heubner:—Warnings in nature: Life killed by frost; blossom cankered by worms; fruit poisoned from within.—There was one even among the twelve disciples to whom this curse applied; and every one who is unfaithful to Christ has such a judgment of hardening, abandonment of God, to expect.—Jesus, after miracles of love, performs yet one miracle, which should demonstrate His power to punish and to ruin, as it belongs to the Judge of all flesh; He did not, however, perform this on man, whom He was not come to destroy, but on an inanimate object—Faith is here, and everywhere, the firm assurance of the heart concerning that which God wills.

Rieger:—We are reminded of the weeping over Jerusalem, Luke 19:0; of the parable of the two sons, Matthew 21:28-31; of Romans 11:20 : “Be not high-minded, but fear.”

Footnotes:

Matthew 21:15; Matthew 21:15.—[Wonderful thing is better for τὰ θαυμάσια mirabilia (Vulg.), than wonders, which Conant substitutes here for the Authorized Version. See the Exeg. Notes on Matthew 21:15.—P. S.]

[27] Matthew 21:16.—[Καταρτιζειν is variously translated in the English Version: to mend (Matthew 4:21), to restore (Galatians 6:1) to perfect (1Co 2:10; 2 Corinthians 13:13; Hebrews 13:21), to fit (Romans 9:22), to frame (Hebrews 11:3). to prepare (Hebrews 10:5). In Psalms 8:2, whence the above passage is quoted, the English Version reads: “Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained (or founded, established, Sept: κατηρτίσω for the Hebrew יִסַּד) strength (עֹז) because of thine enemies.” The proper translation here is: hast prepared, as in Hebrews 10:5 : σῶμα δὲ κατηρτίσω μοι a body hast thou prepared for me, as a sacrifice to thee. The translation: perfected, is from the Latin Vulgate: perjecisti. But Tyndale and Cranmer have: ordained (as in Psalms 8:2); Fritzsche: parasti tibi laudem; Luther: du hunt sugerichtet; de Wette, van Ess, Lange: du hast Lob bereitet; Ewald: ich will Preis oufrichten. As to the difference between strength in the Hebrew (עז) and praise in the Sept. and here (αἶνος), the latter is to be regarded as an explanation of the former. עֹז means both (Exodus 15:2; Psalms 29:1; Isaiah 12:2. etc.), and as it is here ordained out of the mouth, it must mean strength of speech or praise. The strength of the weak is praise, and the praise of God and Christ gives strength and power.—P. S.]

[28][In German: Das freis Kinderspiel sins göttlichs Prophtetie, der unfreie Tempelditnst sin ungöttiches Schauspiel geworden.—P. S.]

[29] Matthew 21:18.—[Ἰ δὼν συκῆν μίαν ἐπὶ ὁ δοῦ Lange, emphasizing μίαν, Er sahe Einen (einzelnen. single) Feigenbaum über dem Wege. Bengel: One in that place (unam illo loco). So also Meyer and Winer (ein vereinz elt dastehender Feigenbaum). Possibly it may have a symbolical reference to the singular position of the Jews as the one tree of God’s planting, standing conspicuous and alone both in favor and in guilt Others, however, explain the μίαν In this case from the later usage of the Hebrew אָחַד and the Aram. חַד.—P. S.]

[30] Matthew 21:19.—B., L. read: οὐμηκέτι. The Recepta omits οὐ as superfluous.

[31] Matthew 21:20.—[Lange I kewise takes the sentence as an exclamation, πως=quam. But the Lat. Vulgate (Quomodo continuo aruit?), Luther, van Ess, Meyer, Ewald, Winer, Conant take it as a question, and render πως παραχρῆμα ἐξηράνθη ἡ συκῆ How did the fig-tree forthwith wither away? So also the editions of Stier and Thei’e, Lachmann, Tischendorf, and Alford in their punctuation. The former view agrees better with the parallel passage in Mark 11:21, and to not inconsistent with the use of ἀποκριθεις which follows in both accounts. But we may regard it perhaps best as an interrogative exclamation. In any case the is of the E. V. ought to be stricken out and withered away substituted for is withered away; for εξηράνθη, as here used, expresses the act past and gone, while ἐξήρανται in Mark 11:21 signifies the result.—P. S.]

[32] Matthew 21:21.—[Οὐμόνον τὸ τῆς συκῆς ποιήσετε, lit.: this of the fig-tree, or: this with the fig-tree, as Luther, Ewald, and Lange have it (das mit dem Feigenbaum thun).—P. S.]

[33][Similarly Trench, On the Miracles, p. 43, who calls those who exaggerate such small chronological differences, “the true Pharisees of history, straining at [out] gnats and swallowing camels.”—P. S.]

[34][Bengel observes on ἐπείνασε esurivit: “rex ille gloriœ, Matthew 5:5. Miranda exinanitio.”—P. S.]

[35][Pliny, Hint. Nat. 16:49: Ei demum serius folium nascitur quom pomum.]

[36][On this passage of Mark there are different interpretations. See Com. in loc. and a long note in Trench (p. 441 sq.). Trench considers it very doubtful whether at that reason of the year, March or April, either fruits or leaves ordinarily appear on the fig-tree; but this tree, by putting forth leaves, nude pretension to be something more than others, to have fruit on it which in the fig-tree appears before the leaves. This tree vaunted itself to be In advance of all the other trees, and challenged the passer-by that he should come and refresh himself with its fruit. Yet when the Lord drew near, He found it like others without fruit, for, as Mark says, the time of figs had not yet arrived. The fault lay in the hypocritical pretension, the chief sin of Israel.—P. S ]

[37][Trench calls attention to the fact that the only times that the fig-tree appears prominently In the New Testament It appears as a symbol of evil; here and at Luke 13:6, According to an old tradition, it was the tree of temptation in Paradise. It is noticeable, also, that Adam attempted to cover his nakedness and shame with fig-leaves and to assume a false appearance before the Lord. But the Saviour, of course, in destroying the fig-tree because of its unfruitfulness, did not attribute to it any moral responsibility and guilt but simply a fitness as a symbol of moral unfruitfulness worthy of punishment—P. S.]